A noob mining in a Venture in 0.6 space far from the safe and protected noob systems is either brave, foolish, or maybe oblivious of how Eve works. I came upon one yesterday ( 1 day old ) who hadn’t a clue.
Most noobs seem to be oblivious to the fact that there are even protected systems. I haven’t done the NPE since a new Alpha account a few months back, but I’ll bet it still doesn’t mention protected systems. Certainly when I joined Eve a year ago there was nothing in the NPE about it…in fact noobs being protected in various systems was something I only learned about 8 months into the game !
What is the point of having protection for noobs…if noobs don’t know about it ?
They mine in those systems because the noob systems and immediately surrounding systems are usually mined out. Just because they are a 7 day old toon doesn’t mean they are a new player. No one is running around ganking ventures anyway.
Nah…you can mine in 0.9 Vittenyn, right next door to one of the main agent systems at Trossere. Or in 0.8 Mirilene next door to that…which is where I mined as a noob and there was always plenty of asteroids. I still mine there sometimes. These are all just one or two jumps from the starter system at Bourynes.
I think that they might be going to Isanamo because of AIR - it asks to mine plagioclase which is not to be found in 1.0 / 0.9.
Or they are after plagioclase themselves without incentive from AIR. Idk perhaps someone told them it is most profitable ore, or they need mexallon to build something they want to build (perhaps another AIR task of building a cruiser?).
Or you can just do what I did…buy them on the market. I can recall a number of agent missions where I did this. There’s also a few where you ‘have’ to visit some site to prove you have been there, but those are mainly within the actual agent systems.
Buying the ore doesn’t work for AIR challenges though. Neither it works for some missions that wants you to mine something (but those tends to lead into deapspace pocket so unlikely to be ganked).
So the question then arises…should missions be leading clueless 1 day old noobs into unprotected areas. What’s the point of having protection for noobs if the very missions they are sent on take them outside of that.
I still have a couple of ships in Trossere. Did the agents missions there. Mirilene, Vittenyn… All those systems only ever have Scordite and Veldspar, that’s it. Not much I could build with that. So I bought a few blueprints and mine in 0.5 and 0.4 so I can manufacture what I want and when I’ll get ganked I’ll manufacture or buy another Venture and scope out more 0.5 0.4 and even Null.
That’s the game. It’s fine by me.
Or maybe he’s playing it like a sandbox… I know, shocking.
The way I see it, yes they should lead new players into jaws of the gankers. After all they have absolutely nothing to lose, even that venture was given them for free.
And when they got ganked, they realize if this is game for them or not.
Sure, but on my very first day in Eve I had no idea what Scordite or Plagioclasse even were and some hours to even realise some minerals were worth more than others. I was so clueless that I even attacked some Autosythian Lancers ( thinking they’d be as easy as Serpentis…lol ). I certainly wasn’t heading off into 0.5 systems to look for specific minerals. It was only some days later that I discovered there were huge asteroids a few systems away in 0.5 Aurcel…and the rest is history.
Actually I agree. Being ganked should be part of the NPE and something gotten over with. The simulated ship loss in the NPE is not a ‘real’ loss so it never really sinks in. But I’d add the proviso that the ship should be replaced the first time. I guess one could argue that it is…in that one can do the mission again that provides the Venture ( at least I think so…have never actually tried that ).
But then…how many noobs are even aware they can get a new Venture for free ? That is what this thread is essentially about. Noob awareness.
Really, the NPE ought to explain all aspects such as ganking, gate camps, all forms of PvP and PvE and so on…rather that concentrating on glossy visuals. THE biggest problem for noobs is that of simply not knowing what questions to ask…because you don’t know what you don’t know.
CCP has to tread a thin line between presenting the game in a way which is attractive to the carebear general gamer, and yet prepares him/her for utter devastation and loss at the hands of other players.
After having brought up some very lively teenagers, I am in the unhappy position of having to tell you, Altara, that advice perceived as negative is routinely ignored by a remarkable number of would-be whizz-kids.
EDIT: In addition, I found the NPE very long when I tried it recently. That might be because I know the stuff, of course. Tacking on the sort of information you mention, above, would make it even longer. I don’t have the answer, I’m afraid.
I understand how a sci-fi game can be confusing. It takes me a few minutes to get acquainted with everything when I start a new game but that’s part of the fun.
I just headed over EVE wiki and started reading on my phone while I did the missions.
The Autothesians… CONCORD doesn’t shoot at them, I didn’t see why I should, lol.
I had the longest time setting up my Overview though. I thought it would be a cinch but the UI doesn’t make it easy.
Also, some players put useful info in their bio, like damage type and CONCORD response times… I save those into the Notebooks. Lots of info out there for anyone who wants to know.
I’ve been playing since 2006. We didn’t have an NPE, or hand holding, or free ships, and we made it through just fine. in other words, new players need to HTFU.
Unfortunately, the new players these days are part of the gotta have it now for no effort generation…
All the iterations of the NPE lacked critical information and I don’t really have hope CCP can manage to put all the necessary information in a short enough tutorial that the short attention span of today’s gamers would find acceptable instead of quitting (exceptions exist though) so I think it is somewhat impossible to achieve this goal.
Just my opinion though, would be better if somehow they could manage it but personally have no high hopes for it.
So instead players should rely on their own research (outside the game) to learn the ins and outs of EVE Online. This is the very lesson I bring up in my quick EVE guide among providing a set of useful initial information plus pointers to other sources of information and prominently featuring the fact doing research is part of the journey to learn the game.
Of course even my own guide is an out of game thing thus not sure how many actually reach it, though it is listed among the other EVE guides in the Steam community thus if someone looks up guides related to EVE on Steam (which includes might find them through google search) they might see it but if someone relies on in-game information only they will severely limit their own knowledge of the game.
So instead people should be shown this very important point and directed toward out of game sources instead like the E-UNI wiki, EVE-survival and so on.