Takseen
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Posted - 2009.10.22 17:59:00 -
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Ok, background first. I've been playing Eve for about 2 weeks, and was and still am involved with a hardcore raiding guild in World of Warcraft, so Eve's complexity was less intimidating for me than for most new players.
Here's a list of things that I feel were poorly explained by the first 3 tutorials. 1) The afterburner skillbook wasn't provided, and it didn't seem to be necessary to complete any of the missions. 2) The use of drones wasn't explained at all. 3) I spent a while on part 2 of Balancing the Books as I didn't understand the function of acceleration gates. 4) The first mining mission that requires you to fully mine out an asteroid confused a lot of people. 5) I declined a mission, assuming I'd be able to come back to it later. I ended up having to petition to restore the tutorial path. Better explanation of this is required. 6) I was left confused about the pros and cons of the various ammo types, for hybrid charges in my case.
Generally there's a lot of duplication in the mining and trading tutorials, so I'd suggest merging these, or creating a mining/exploration tutorial, and an industry and trade tutorial. The reward of an Industrial for the trading and mining paths is a terrible choice. Its not even usable by trial accounts, it requires a 500k ISK to buy the skillbook, a significant sum for a rookie, and it isn't even any good at mining despite the misleading name. This effectively funnels trials into the combat path. The Eve epic arc also forces players towards combat.
The benefits of Dense and Concentrated Veldspar are far too small, and are also poorly explained. If these were buffed to 50/100% bonus yield it would give an advantage to small scale newbie miners who could seek out the choice deposits, versus the big Hulk users who just mine out entire belts.
For a beginning hauler/trader, courier contracts are very unsafe. There should be a warning if a courier contract paths through low sec space, or involves docking at a POS. Being pointed towards each faction's major trade hub would also be nice.
The aggression timers shouldn't pop up when you are attacked by NPC rats, its just confusing.
The default market UI is TERRIBLE. Making meta level more transparent would make it much easier to sort through the various named modules. And again, without using a 3rd party program(EFT) its easy to buy a bunch of modules/weapons you can't actually fit. The default UI is also rather poor when it comes to finding available level 1 missions. I shouldn't have to tab out to a 3rd party website to do this.
Learning skills should be removed. They punish a player who actually wants to PLAY the game at the start, since they'll have fewer skillpoints in the long run. And they require yet another 3rd party program to use effectively. The same goes for attribute remaps. Remaps also punish players who want to start off as generalists, vs characters who start with a defined focus(IE alts).
There didn't seem to be any info on the race selection screen regarding what types of defence/offence each race specialises in. This is odd since its their only defining characteristic in-game.
Low level implants act as a barrier to low level PvP and low sec exploration. I acquired a full set of +1s fairly quickly, but they still comprise about 20% of my net worth so I can no longer risk getting podded. Earlier access to jump clones, or restricting implants to older characters, would help here.
Finally, I feel the standing penalties from level 1 missions and particularly storyline missions are both poorly explained, and rather restrictive for new players.
Don't get me wrong, theres loads of stuff I do like about the game. The backstory, the level of mechanical detail, the helpful players in rookie chat. But there are many issues I have noticed that are somewhat unwelcoming for rookies.
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