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Combat Interface and How We Improve New Player Retention

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Kimmi Chan Illuminatus Reforged The Revenant Order 219	Posted - 2012.06.30 22:08:00 - [31] - Quote Akai Kvaesir wrote: baltec1 wrote: Garresh wrote: [quote=baltec1] Except I see players with long combat histories who still can't fly for **. Besides which, this would just be convenient. The UI doesn't help with the nuances of combat. Anyways, try to keep from turning into a "shoot players it's good for them" thread. lol. Everyone else has managed with the UI. Simply because the current UI is manageable, does not mean it can be better. I refuse to believe that the spaceships we are hardwired into do not have better tactical systems than a grid and a opaque circle. Yes. We are immortal. We pilot the most technologically advanced machines in space. We do so with an interface that looks like something that runs on MS-DOS. -á"Miners mine so I don't have to." ~Metal Icarus**
Soundwave Plays Diablo Royal Amarr Institute Amarr Empire 5	Posted - 2012.06.30 22:22:00 - [32] - Quote Akai Kvaesir wrote: baltec1 wrote: Garresh wrote: [quote=baltec1] Except I see players with long combat histories who still can't fly for ****. Besides which, this would just be convenient. The UI doesn't help with the nuances of combat. Anyways, try to keep from turning into a "shoot players it's good for them" thread. lol. Everyone else has managed with the UI. Simply because the current UI is manageable, does not mean it can be better. I refuse to believe that the spaceships we are hardwired into do not have better tactical systems than a grid and a opaque circle. The problem is it would have a 3d real time interface like the matrix or district 9, which is not currently possible on a PC.
Garresh Opposite of Low 6	Posted - 2012.07.01 00:52:00 - [33] - Quote Yeah but they could make the UI look a lot cooler with a few effects without impeding it's usefulness.
baltec1 1574	Posted - 2012.07.01 16:46:00 - [34] - Quote Garresh wrote: Quote: New players dont need a new UI, they need a good corp. Its no coincidence that most of the nubs who get taken into the goon training programme stay in the game while a lot who join and stay in the NPC corps end up leaving. That's not a rational counterargument. You're saying that it is okay for Eve to be un-learnable without training. At what point did I say EVE is unlearnable? I managed to learn about EVE all on my loansome long before we got the new tutorials and waay before EVE-Uni and Red vs Blue were around. I didnt even get a free ship just 5000 isk.
Misanth RABBLE RABBLE RABBLE 632	Posted - 2012.07.01 16:54:00 - [35] - Quote OP, you see the exact same things in other games. WoT - people don't get the maps, basic concepts of tactic, don't understand basic game mechanics like how penetration and sloping works, etc. WoW and other similar fantasy EQ-clones - people don't understand opposing classes without having played them, and many don't understand how certain abilities that usually are 'useless' suddenly becomes useful (see afterburner in EVE PvP for example, situational strength). The simple answer to your post is that alot of people don't give a ****. They know it's usually better to manual pilot than to orbit, but they are too lazy to bother, and 'usually it works ok anyway'. Plus, they still have fun, so why care? They are happy. It's just that people like to do things the way they want, and they find it boring/etc to learn basic game mechanics. Many struggle to grasp it too because they simply don't understand simple maths, even tho they try. Others find this extremely easy instead. TL;DR I don't think you can "save" this game, make it easier for the playerbase, or something similar. It's just a fact you have to live with, and it's definately not only EVE that has it. shiptoastin' liek a baws
Garresh Opposite of Low 7	Posted - 2012.07.01 23:38:00 - [36] - Quote Givin it a bump.
Pipa Porto School of Applied Knowledge Caldari State 199	Posted - 2012.07.02 00:05:00 - [37] - Quote Garresh wrote: Givin it a bump. This isn't the Bazaar. -RubyPorto IB4TS
Shanija Confetti Explosion 4	Posted - 2012.07.02 01:08:00 - [38] - Quote EVE's UI is criminally bad and I think it absolutely helps put new players off the game. One thing that's really weird about EVE is when you're a newbie in a Kestrel or a Caracal or something the combat can seem ludicrously simple even though you really have no clue about the game mechanics. You target stuff, press F1 and it blows up after a while. Stuff shoots at you and you probably end up with an inkling that moving away from the stuff can make it do less damage to your ship so that whatever random shield booster you ended up with can cope better. That's about it, though. Stuff like tracking, signature radius or god forbid explosion velocity is just completely invisible. It's there, and it can affect them, but they don't see it because it's hidden away in the game mechanics and not displayed anywhere other than a damage message that gets swamped in other messages. It's easy for them to think the game is a lot simpler mechanically than it is even though they understand nothing about it. The UI should display things that are relevant. Right now, the in-space UI displays almost nothing. Even basic things like velocity aren't represented at all without peering at the overview. You should be able to see this stuff by looking at the gamespace. The same goes for things like tracking and missile velocity. Heck, even stuff like "what type of ship is this" isn't displayed well, especially when it comes to player ships. The UI obviously isn't the main draw of the game, but it should facilitate the other stuff, and it doesn't do that well at all. It's all very well to say newbies need good corps and good opportunities, but that isn't at odds with the UI being awful - they're both true.
Kevin Gurnhill Megjallarhorn 0	Posted - 2012.07.17 02:25:00 - [39] - Quote I'd like to give the OP a +1. Firstly, i dont use the tactical overlay, i did when i first started, but found it obscenely underwhelming and almost useless once i had learned "oh, my guns have an 8km optimal range" theres no need for it, just a quick look in the info tab tells us our range, without having to open up the overlay and look at the bubbles, im sure most players are capable of getting that "8 is smaller than 15 so hes out of my optimal range" But the tactical overlay does need to be improved. Although, for people who dont want it - there could be an extra button "Advanced Overlay" or perhaps "Add more information", or hell - even just an option in the esc menu to add the extra information maybe a simple tickbox labelled "Additional Tactical Information". Or there could be multiple levels of additional information, selectable in its own sub-section with multiple tickboxes Add Speed to target Add Direction Indicator etc, ive been playing eve on and off for the past few years (I came back today actually, after a couple of months break), and i have to say - even though the ui has changed since i started, its still basically the same. Please CCP, update the Tactical Overlay, i would like to use it again!
Lipbite Express Hauler 143	Posted - 2012.07.17 02:45:00 - [40] - Quote This is good idea and relatively simple to do. It will take just 2-4 years to implement.
Kyle Ward Caldari Provisions Caldari State 227	Posted - 2012.07.17 03:08:00 - [41] - Quote I like it... Make it so! The Sandbox, you're playing it wrong!
Sabrina Solette Center for Advanced Studies Gallente Federation 8	Posted - 2012.07.17 03:09:00 - [42] - Quote For me it's because it's a character building game one of the old style space type games in MMO form. It's spaceships. There's no character levels and as such no end game. It's sandboxish. Those are reasons I return to this game. It has nothing to do with the UI although the changes they've done are welcome changes although not strictly necessary.
Gorinia Sanford Sons of Russ 23	Posted - 2012.07.17 04:34:00 - [43] - Quote Soundwave Plays Diablo wrote: We could have better player retention if soundwave didn't do interviews where he said he plays diablo and that he was happy that some new players got wtfbbq'd by the learning curve. Ok, that was tinged with sarcasm of course but here is my honest thoughts on player retention; There's people dedicated to griefing in this game, AND the learning curve is hard as hell. Both of those things combined keep the player retention a little bit too low. Eve needs to find some kind of balance between the learning curve and the "player driven content". I think CCP should link some kind article right on the "news feed" for the first 6 months of your 1st toon/account that helps you deal with that. The first sticky post in our corp forum is how to use EFT, Evemon, and the api system, with links to them all. Something like that, with an article on how to avoid being blown up when you are at a stage where you cant afford to lose your ship. I guess I lucked out and got recruited in the newb zone into my current corporation. Granted, we're an indy corp, but we have some folks who are experienced with PvP and giving us general advice on how to skill up and such. I started in early April on a trial because I heard about how Eve was challenging. I decided upon the industrial path primarily, although here and there I train up ancillary skills that will be useful to me. And the help of my corporation has been indispensable. However, I see now I really lucked into a good corp though. Who knows what would have happened had I been recruited into Douchebag Carl's corp though. +1 internets if anyone gets that reference.
Garresh Opposite of Low 9	Posted - 2012.07.17 06:07:00 - [44] - Quote Whoa my thread got necro'd. Glad to see people still care though. Gorinia Sanford wrote: I know this is slightly off topic, but I have always wondered if it were possible to manually pilot. Can someone explain, briefly, how that's done? I honestly don't know. The Simple Answer: Double left click on any point in space. Your ship will fly towards it. The Long Answer: When people say manually piloting, they're not saying that you use that to the exclusion of all else. Good pilots will decide whether they trust their ship's navigational computer or need to override it for a given situation. Generally, on high eccentricity fights or situations where you need to break an orbit(by ******* with your enemy's nav computer) you'll manually pilot. Just cause I want to give an example, he's a summary of the last fight I got into in factional warfare: I was flying a Republic Fleet Firetail and I was being pursued by a Sentinel and a Caldari Navy Hookbill. I ran into a small complex where the sentinel couldn't enter, and manually flew in the opposite direction of the Amarr militia ships. Hookbill came in and started to follow. Before he landed I manually lowered my speed to make it look like my ship was slower than it was, and switched to RF EMP rounds. I let him slowly come towards me and then turned and aligned to a celestial to bait him into overheating. Once he overheated his afterburner I overheated my afterburner and flew straight at him. He was set to orbit, but I was manually flying straight at him, so his nav computer didn't react quickly enough, so I basically reached 2km from him right off the bat. Then he turned on a tracking disruptor. I was going to orbit him at about 3km to keep my speed up to reduce his missile damage, but I switched to approach at 500 to minimize transversal. Since he'd just selected orbit a 8km or 6km or whatever he set, his ship just flew in a straight line away from me to try and reach 6km before orbit, which meant my guns were basically firing at him at optimal range, and transversal was low enough that my guns completely destroyed him despite him using a tracking disruptor and rockets. Fun fact: I had a tracking disruptor too. I still won. I hope that gives an idea of how you use manual flight. There are tons of other uses besides just initiating a fight.
St Mio Imperial Academy Amarr Empire 903	Posted - 2012.07.17 06:47:00 - [45] - Quote Why just a coloured line? Why not graphs? Soon EVE shall no longer be Excel in Space, but TI-82 in Space!
Oberine Noriepa 844	Posted - 2012.07.17 07:34:00 - [46] - Quote Someone mentioned something like this during the Art Panel Q&A. I think it was Torfi who stated that something like this is planned for future UI overhauls. Screenshot While this screenshot doesn't display anything like what you're suggesting, it does show that there are plans in making the tactical overlay a lot more useful than it currently is. The UI, overall, is in need of a major update. It should be accessible, look cool, animate in cool and useful ways, and always keep the player aware of what's going on.
MotherMoon Blue Republic RvB - BLUE Republic 980	Posted - 2012.07.17 11:29:00 - [47] - Quote also just to add, better icons to show what kinda of ships are on the field Why dust 514 is on Console and not PCBattle field 3 sales Xbox 360: 2.2 million PlayStation 3: 1.5 million PC: 500,000http://dl.eve-files.com/media/1206/scimi.jpg
Hestia Mar Calmaretto 22	Posted - 2012.07.17 13:01:00 - [48] - Quote To respond to the OP, I feel that the sort of readouts/indications he suggests would only be of any use if the ship is being flown joystick-style rather than point and double click as we currently do; he's asking for info more suited to a flight-sim than EVE.
Seishi Maru doMAL S.A. 33	Posted - 2012.07.17 13:51:00 - [49] - Quote The annalysis of player retention is fundamentally flawed . That because it fails to realize that 90% of world population is too stupid to understand anything mnore complex than frying an egg. A game that retain those people is NOT goign to be entretaining for the other 10%. Some games , some famous MMOs target those egg friers, Eve is a game that targets a lot of those other 10%. Some games that I wish there were more off even target the 0.5% that know how to do multiplications and divisions without a calculator.
Garresh Opposite of Low 11	Posted - 2012.07.18 05:31:00 - [50] - Quote Seishi Maru wrote: The annalysis of player retention is fundamentally flawed . That because it fails to realize that 90% of world population is too stupid to understand anything mnore complex than frying an egg. A game that retain those people is NOT goign to be entretaining for the other 10%. Some games , some famous MMOs target those egg friers, Eve is a game that targets a lot of those other 10%. Some games that I wish there were more off even target the 0.5% that know how to do multiplications and divisions without a calculator. I gotta disagree with you here. People ARE stupid, but the sad fact is that people are stupid by choice. Have a conversation with people who watch crappy reality TV shows. A surprising number of them(in my experience) are actually surprisingly intelligent, but watch them as their guilty pleasure because it makes them feel better about themselves. People smart and dumb prefer to take the path of least resistance in most situations, because that's generally logical. Why is Angry Birds so popular? Because it's the sort of game that can appeal to dumb people, but smart people can derive enjoyment from it as well without too much effort. Personally, that sort of intellectual laziness annoys the crap out of me, but I've seen too many absolutely brilliant people who enjoy the dumbest crap cranked out by ****** studios. Hell one of the smartest people I've ever known IRL, a complete *** grade A genius played eve to MINE. She enjoyed mining over anything else in eve because after an extremely stressful day she just wanted to unwind. So working along that train of thought, consider the following surprisingly common scenario: a player, we will refer to him as "Dumbutt", starts playing some crappy MMO(we will use WoW as an example because everyone has tried it and nobody likes it). He starts playing the game, and because it is easy, he enjoys it. For a while, he plays relatively casually and doesn't do much. But even the most lazy of minds eventually do seek some challenge. Dumbutt gets bored with soloing, and starts learning how to do instances. Fast forward. He hits max level, gets geared, develops that minimal mental stimulation that passes for "skill" in WoW, and enjoys himself for a time. Then he realizes WoW is terrible and quits, because even stupid players hate that ***** game these days. But before he quit, Dumbutt started theorycrafting and messing around with ze maths to optimize his stats and try to create optimal talent builds and whatnot. The reason he quit was because he realized that he had reached the absolute limit of what he could do, and everything was the same after that. For you see, Dumbutt was not actually a dumb player, he was simply lazy. In the stretch of time he played WoW, he did actually slowly increase the amount of mental energy put towards it. Very slowly, but he did try. Driven players(the kind that play eve) tend to advance up a skill curve extremely quickly. The near infinite possibilities of eve are perfect for players who want to keep learning new things, developing new skills, and becoming better in some way. But even the derpiest of players WANT to get better at something. They want to feel that sense of progress and development. They just want it to come in smaller, more bite sized chunks. They want to take their time, and splash around in the kiddie pool for a while. So the point I'm trying to make here is in regards to learning curves. Look at eve, and look at the rate of new player retention. There's a GIGANTIC cliff when eve first starts out. I'm sure you've all seen the picture, but I'll link it here: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3088/2335016192_6003c39c4c.jpg Thing is, that entry cliff isn't the only cliff in Eve. There's a second major learning/skill cliff which occurs when leaving high security space. I can't recall the exact statistic, but it was somewhere around the range of 85% of players in Eve had never left highsec. Hell, I dicked around in highsec for a long ass time before I grew a pair. The great thing about this interface change is that it smooths out BOTH cliffs, and would actively help players not only to stay in Eve, but also to feel more comfortable entering lowsec and nullsec. Consider factional warfare and players just starting out in PvP. That knowledge would allow them to understand WHY they're losing their fights, which would help them develop faster as a pilot. This would give them the push they need to keep taking ships to lowsec, rather than just giving up like I've seen happen with countless pilots in the past. Sorry for the rambling post, but I just can't agree that everyone is fundamentally stupid because I have seen tons of intelligent players who don't stick with eve. They try it, find it intimidating or don't see the nuances and intrigues of it, decide it's a stupid grindfest or has boring combat, and finally leave. I did this twice. I saw several successful eve players do this cycle multiple times over the course of YEARS. This needs to change.
baltec1 Bat Country 1653	Posted - 2012.07.18 05:42:00 - [51] - Quote People don't enter null not because of the interface but because they are cowardly and fear losing their stuff.
Garresh Opposite of Low 11	Posted - 2012.07.18 05:47:00 - [52] - Quote baltec1 wrote: People don't enter null not because of the interface but because they are cowardly and fear losing their stuff. I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Throwaway PvP ships cost fuckall, but people still give up after one or two lowsec romps. It's not the financial cost people care about, but the psychological cost of wasting resources without learning anything or improving at all. I think even highsec players understand that isk comes and goes. Why else would people still shoot at me on the rare occassion when I ninja? Hell I've actually seen mission runners openly engage me, knowing full well I'll be back in a battleship 2 minutes later. Yeah a lot of highsec players are geniunely cowards. I won't deny that. But most of them just don't want to spend day after day losing ships and feeling that they've been wasting their time without doing anything productive.
baltec1 Bat Country 1653	Posted - 2012.07.18 05:53:00 - [53] - Quote Garresh wrote: baltec1 wrote: People don't enter null not because of the interface but because they are cowardly and fear losing their stuff. I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Throwaway PvP ships cost fuckall, but people still give up after one or two lowsec romps. Cost means nothing. They simply will not enter low sec because they are open to pvp with no concord protection. It doesn't matter how easy you make the UI to use they will still not leave high sec.
Halete Echoes of Korgoth Initiative 306	Posted - 2012.07.18 06:06:00 - [54] - Quote I kind of like the suggestion, I'm not certain I like the proposed execution. Yeah - EVE needs a lot of polish. I know I don't need the polish. Most of us don't need the polish. We play EVE because of what it presents as a single-shard sandbox, not because the gameplay and interface are amazingly fluid. I get that. That said, I don't think that simply ignoring quality-of-life changes is a good mode of operation for the long-term longevity of the game. I'd love to see EVE stick around for at least another decade, but I'd love even more to see it go beyond that and really flourish. Dirty heretical mud-child, reporting in.
Garresh Opposite of Low 13	Posted - 2012.07.18 06:08:00 - [55] - Quote baltec1 wrote: Garresh wrote: baltec1 wrote: People don't enter null not because of the interface but because they are cowardly and fear losing their stuff. I'm pretty sure that's not the case. Throwaway PvP ships cost fuckall, but people still give up after one or two lowsec romps. Cost means nothing. They simply will not enter low sec because they are open to pvp with no concord protection. It doesn't matter how easy you make the UI to use they will still not leave high sec. You are asserting that all players who live in highsec are cowards who would never leave the safety of highsec and never risk anything. Justify this with an argument? I would assert that there are a decently sized population of highsec players who want to leave but find the barrier of entry too high. And I'm not talking about miners. If people aren't interested in the idea, then why do they join corporations such as Red vs Blue? Why are highsec wars so goddamn common? Why do so many players with a geniune interest in PvP wind up getting caught in the mission running trap and settling with some crappy PvE corp? I will agree that many who engage in highsec PvP are looking for extremely unfair fights with neutral logistics, wardecs on PvE corps, and even some suicide gankers. But can you honestly say that everyone in highsec is completely content with no risk? Common advice to new players seems to be "run missions and amass wealth before you try anything risky", and they wind up quitting because they just never got around to making the jump to what they really want. If we get even 5% of the highsec population to move, that would be a huge success. If this works it would allow players who are trying eve to make that second leap into low/null PvP. Player retention would see a visible increase.
baltec1 Bat Country 1653	Posted - 2012.07.18 06:24:00 - [56] - Quote Garresh wrote: You are asserting that all players who live in highsec are cowards who would never leave the safety of highsec and never risk anything. Justify this with an argument? Not all just most. And I back that up with over 6 years experience. RvB offers a lot of pvp on demand which is why so many join up. You can find them in low sec as much as high sec and even invading 0.0 for giggles. The people who want to try low sec and 0.0 will try it, the UI doesn't stop them. A massive bulk however have no interest in pvp and thus no interest in entering low sec or 0.0. These are the people who you see whining in local or the forums when they get blown up in their safehaven of highsec and who want to change EVE so they can be safe. If you want to make 5% of highsec nubs to make the leap into low sec or 0.0 you have to grab them when they are a few days old, provide them ships and get them fighting. Kill the idea that they cannot pvp untill they get x amount of skills before it sets in and keep them away from the NPC corps which are full of horrible advice and whines. Get them into a FW corp or do what the goons did and just roam around attacking anything and everything in rifters. Dumbing down the UI will never get more people into low sec.
Garresh Opposite of Low 13	Posted - 2012.07.18 06:28:00 - [57] - Quote Well I can't entirely disagree with you there. You make a few good points, but what about solo players who generally do their own thing? I don't think making the information more readily accessible would be a bad thing. Also, it's not "dumbing down" the interface. The information is already there. Eve's interface is criminally bad and making it so that information which is already there is more accessible to newer players who are still learning things would help. You're correct about keeping them away from NPC corps and terribad advice, but giving them the tools to more easily figure it out will do that naturally as they quickly outpace the knowledge of their peers.
baltec1 Bat Country 1653	Posted - 2012.07.18 06:40:00 - [58] - Quote Garresh wrote: Well I can't entirely disagree with you there. You make a few good points, but what about solo players who generally do their own thing? I don't think making the information more readily accessible would be a bad thing. Also, it's not "dumbing down" the interface. The information is already there. Eve's interface is criminally bad and making it so that information which is already there is more accessible to newer players who are still learning things would help. You're correct about keeping them away from NPC corps and terribad advice, but giving them the tools to more easily figure it out will do that naturally as they quickly outpace the knowledge of their peers. The problem with EVEs UI is that it is not like most of the other MMOs out there so people are not used to it. Once you do get used to it then it becomes rather easy. Not to say improvements cant be made, the new inventory sytem has made things a hell of a lot easyer and the change to the info shown while hovering over your guns is nice.
Suqq Madiq Amarr Empire 140	Posted - 2012.07.18 06:52:00 - [59] - Quote Player retention is fine. Do you think a server like TQ could handle another 20k pilots? 25k pilots? What if the population doubled? Parts of EVE would be literally unplayable on a single shard with ~100k concurrent users. Time Dilation would serve almost zero purpose if some of the larger nullblob affairs involved twice as many pilots as they do now. Until CCP figures out a way to drastically improve performance for the existing player base, I see no reason why anymore time should be spent on player retention. Adapt or Die. Or, in this case, Adapt or go back to WoW.
Debora Tsung The Investment Bankers Guild 0	Posted - 2012.07.19 06:31:00 - [60] - Quote Suqq Madiq wrote: Player retention is fine. Do you think a server like TQ could handle another 20k pilots? 25k pilots? What if the population doubled? Parts of EVE would be literally unplayable on a single shard with ~100k concurrent users. Time Dilation would serve almost zero purpose if some of the larger nullblob affairs involved twice as many pilots as they do now. Until CCP figures out a way to drastically improve performance for the existing player base, I see no reason why anymore time should be spent on player retention. Adapt or Die. Or, in this case, Adapt or go back to WoW. I do not believe that let's say 25 - 50 k or in the extreme even a doubled population of players would necessarily be a bad thing. The more players eve has the more money would be available to reinvest into eve's hardware and development. That said, the population wouldn't double over night so there'd be plenty of time for ccp to predict at what point the afore mentioned beefier hardware would be necessary and act accordingly (I know, ccp and acting accordingly, a real classic). I firmly believe that the more crowded HighSec gets, the more players will move into low or null. There's nothing a million chinese guys can't do cheaper.

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