What is the difference between a 2 month old toon that absolutely maxed out his Stiletto and me with my ~150 mil SP.
Nothing, ship to ship, I “might” have an advantage because I have been around a minute. He may nab me doing something dumb, because I don’t live in an interceptor anymore. Only flying a single role/platform all of the time has its advantages.
I started in 2010, and that was EXACTLY how I learned to PvP, in low sec, against pirates that were 5 years older than me (because that meant something at the time) and had a TON of SP when I was around 5mil.
Even in large fleet fights, you have ceptor battles FCs tend to send their fast movers in the same direction, so you end up slap fighting with fleet ceptors for pings and whatnot.
the sad thing here is that suggesting that part of the tutorial include such things as “how to join a corp” or a link to a recruitment channel are perceived as “handholding” instead of player retention tools.
CCP should understand that it isn’t the SP that keeps them playing, its the people they fly with.
I’m brand new. Honestly, I’m really enjoying it. That being said, I think EvE is a game you pretty much have to decide you’re going to play beforehand. If I had jumped in without any background, I’m not certain it would have hooked me.
If player retention is the goal, some slightly more extensive new player experience at the outset would be a good idea.
TL;DR I’m loving EvE, but that’s despite the pretty weak introduction to New Eden.
Why newbies dont stay is because there are insert profanity of choise people who ganks in High sec.
That was made me quit for 8 years.
However Eve has one of the if not the best community and helpful people i have seen and encounter in a game.
CCP has done a GREAT job with the ingame tutorials and easy to understand. i only have 2 main issues with this game.
Remove the proximity for looting in missions (i know there is tractors but i would like to play w/o them)
Well there’s the flip side. I PVE in lowsec and I love being hunted. It adds an element of excitement to my game and although it’s frustrating having someone come into your site just as you’re about to finish it, it’s just something that happens.
I have to be truthful, I find hisec PVE a little bland! The rewards aren’t that good and once you’re into even a moderately well fit Gila or HAC there’s very little that’s going to be challenging even in the hardest hisec sites. Not that they’re supposed to be, I underatand that.
I guess it all comes down to whether you’re playing for isk for playing to challenge yourself. I like the latter, the isk is a bonus.
I think a lot of new players fall into the isk grinding trap early on. They also get jaded by not making a lot of isk and how samey they content is. Pushing them to try new things can work both ways I suppose.
New Eden’s combination of complexity, permanent consequences for failure (e.g. no re-spawn with all your stuff intact), non-flight-simulator mechanics, multitude of choices for what one can do, and dark, paranoia-inducing atmosphere, only appeal to a limited number of gamers.
Only one of my gamer friends has tried EVE- the rest have no interest in playing for one or more of the reasons cited above. The one that played EVE moved on to Elite: Dangerous because he likes the flight physics better.
It may be difficult to understand for us who love the game- for whatever reasons- but what attracted us to EVE and keeps us here aren’t things most people are interested in.
What makes EvE unique is its players. The mechanics alone are boring and outdated. We stick around because of the conflict, friendships and enemies we make.
And this is why new players retention is so hard: how do you introduce new players to the community rather than just the gameplay mechanics?
EDIT: And how do you protect them from the wrong kind of people in their first month? I’m not talking about PvPers. Most PvPers I fly with are awesome helpful people. I’m talking about the sociopaths who take pleasure in ruining a newbro’s day for the sake of it.
This is my fifth attempt at Eve. I try every 2-3 years. And every time I find things have slightly improved. For beginners, that is. Because every time I tried I lasted unti lvl 2 missions. There are many reasons, but lets see just a few of them:
Time.
It’s very difficult to understand or accept that a simple travel to your agent can take 10-20 mins of nothing more but constantly pressing “jump”. “Oh, there’s an Autopilot option!”. Well that just turned this trip into 30-40 mins of doing absolutely nothing, besides being one thing every vet says you should not do. Why is there an autopilot, then?
I applaud the philosophy of real time learning, but … There is a chat channel “beginner fits” or something like that, where Algos is using lvl2 modules. Really, this is supposed to be a beginner fit?
I am thankful to all that try to help beginners, be it with fits, guides, or a kind word, but there is a huge disconnect here if you guys think that a beginner is someon who is capable of using a lvl 2 modules. There is a whole world of newbs that see lvl 2s as a top of the mountain. I am using this guide as a goal, but I would appreciate if there was a true beginner fit for me to look at.
To much reliance for information on outside sources.
When you get your precious ship destroyed in seconds and you have no idea what happened, why it happened and how to prevent it from happening again, and the only way to find out is to use an outside source, it gives you an impression that there is somethign lacking in the game.
Eve is a wonderfully complex game, but it’s also a tremendously pathetic when it comes to teaching the ways of New Eden. It is a game that from the moment your agent missions are over, simply pushes you into the deep water and yells “I’ve shown you how to do in on dry land, now swim in real ocean”.
There are a lot of starting missions, but if their job was supposed to be teaching new players the mechanics and intricacies of Eve, they should be fired and new missions employed instead. The chasm between these missions and being warp prevented, cap drained in 3 seconds or destroyed in 5 secs after you followed acceleration gate and was thus unable to use “warp to within …” is just too big.
Is this really an MMO where I fly my ship?
Outside of a chat channel, a new player does not have a feeling like this a game populated by other players. Where are they? Oh, one of my contacts is a player. But he is just a dot, like me.
Eve is not a game where you fly your ship, it’s a game where you position your ship. We are not pilots, but captains, tacticians, pupeteers. A lot of times, you don’t even see any ships, you just see dots moving. All those you tube videos of large battles and beautiful ships do attract new players to the game, but the moment they find themselves in it, they get the feeling they are playing some other game, a game of chess in space.
This is a sandbox, this is a PVP, this is not a game for care bears
Attitude, in short. If there is one thing that gaming industry has proven in last 20 years, it’s the simple (but weird) fact that games cannnot work for casuals and elites at the same time, with both being satisfied. If you care about game losing new players, if you want new blood, you will have to sacrifice something so the game becomes more approachable.
Because let’s face it. Eve is more akin to a hobby or a second job. And that makes it not fun for casual play.
A lot of text for probably nothing you haven’t heard already. On one hand it could be said, this game is not for those that need hand holding, but on the other hand, if one uses this kind of philosophy, it could also be said, this game is only for no-lifers.
Eve is a wonderful, complex space simulation. Not a game as much as us casuals would have wanted, and problably too much of a game to long timers.
I am hoping I will find something to keep me playing, this time, but the next few days/weeks will tell. Considering Star citizen is never going to become playable, I am also hoping CCP and Egosoft combine their efforts and make Eve X in the near future. Complexity of Eve with fun of actually flying your ship.
This isnt different from acing quests in other MMOs. The difference being that there’s a lot of people who are more than happy to advise, you just need to ask them.
I fly zoomed in quite close so I can see my ship. I love the Arby.
If you let others opinions influence you in that way, you will find yourself extremely limited. You should do what you ENJOY, not what peer pressure tells you is the best way to “win”, whatever that is.
I remember a time when we bought games on 20 floppies. Took forever to install and then we prayed they worked. No one wrote to the devs to demand they change this or that. We barely ever knew how to reach them.
The more gaming evolves the less players are satisfied it seems.
If you stopped playing several times now, doing missions. Why not realise that it is perhaps the missions that make you stop playing?
There are SO many different play styles open to starting players, alpha or not. If one play style doesn’t entice you to play then pick something different to do.
It would certainly help with player retention to facilitate new players making social connections within the game. Social connections are the alpha and omega in this game, yet you get through the tutorial without having to make contact to anyone.
I’m sure there were many new players who tried out EVE, liked the setting and everything but ultimately quit because they failed to connect with the other players.
Good comment; and to the extent I have made connections, they are 2+ years into a game where they have all the skills they need, ships to fly, and tell me to go make some isk and blah blah…where I get my a&& shot off.
im a new player, i love the game! but i took a break because too many carebear changes and also too much free stuff! gona check back in some months and hope it will change to the better!