90% scaling still does not work Plus all the other bug reports about the NPE are not closed yet.

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=131864&p=8 has a couple dev response posts about issues found during testing. Most where covered by the Devblog

We are aware of the bug reports (in particular CCP Goliath and I; we discussed them this morning). Thanks for the good work!

Awesome. I guess things like such a "quest tracker" are so standard in today's MMOs that I completely forgot about having such an UI clue outside the Journal window. Screw SiSi, patch it live now. :)

You can now get information on mission objectives using a handy panel in the HUD, allowing you to warp to locations without having to rely on the Journal or context menu.

You can now warp/jump to the next stargate from the Route panel in the HUD

Stop encouraging the cowboys!!!!

at any point do you show them the chat channels, or point out local chat, or aim them at any social channel to get them involved with the existing player base?

this has to be in there or you're teaching them how to play a single player game that happens to be a mmo.

get them talking to each other in local, or to the locals in the area as they run around doing the tutorials, open their eyes.

Repeated user testing showed that new players were far more comfortable right-clicking on everything, to the point where later tutorial steps that forced players to rely on Selected Item were tripping them up because they had no idea how to use it. This experience led us to rework our teaching throughout the tutorial to use right-click and the context menu, which subsequent testing confirmed as a much smoother experience.

have you thought of a way to clean up the help channel(s) ? sometimes they feel worse than jita local, even though they usually giva a lot of very usefull information

(Speaking of which is there a way that I can get a dev or GM to forcibly remove a character for me to let me get around the 10 hours thing to jump right in and try it?)

Voiceovers are gone for now.... Until such time as we can get a really good text-to-speech implementation (which we are actively looking at), they're out.

WTB Right click menu that is as sexy as the mission objective HUD panel.

Some thoughts I'd like to share about the blog. Overall impression is very positive, but some things just jumped out at me.

It was mentioned (and shown on the chart) that some people struggled with the part of the tutorial that introduced training queue and all that. Have you guys considered that the queue itself and the training system are the problem, not the tutorial?

What I mean is, I recently tried to get some people I know to play EVE. One of them, just as we reached the part with the skill queue, immediately wanted to see how long it would take for him to fly a specific ship. After he looked at training times, he just laughed and said the game is not for him because life is too short to waste on a game where it takes 3+ months to get anywhere. It's just too much of a commitment, one most people would be unwilling to make on an unproven game. Perhaps changing the skill training system, or even shifting the focus from character skill to player skill is the way to go.

Second thing that jumped out at me is changing the shields on the rookie ship so that the tutorial rats have no chance of killing the player. Did I read that right? Even in the most casual of MMOs, ones suitable for children of 6-8 years old, the beginner monsters have a very real chance to kill you. In some MMOs, being killed and dealing with it is part of the initial tutorial (like in upcoming Guild Wars 2, you where you get incapacitated during the tutorial no matter what you do). Off the top of my head, i can't even remember an MMO where you can't die to the very first enemy you engage.

Voiceovers being removed makes perfect sense, since tutorials are being reworked. But no audio for tutorials makes the game look dated and amateurish. In this day and age, there should be voiceovers for missions, for important events, etc. In other genres, voiceovers have been standard since approximately 2004. In MMOs, voiceovers are becoming standard, at least for important key quests, and some MMOs (SWTOR, and partially AoC) have voiceovers for everything. Having a wall of text thrown at you can be softened a bit with a voiceover, even a partial one that only generally describes the next step. Without the voice, it just reinforces the "spreadsheets in space" stigma that EVE has to deal with.

The +/- for full speed or stop is no better than triangles, really. Plus implies increase, minus implies reduction. If I knew nothing of the game, I would have assumed acceleration and deceleration, not full speed ahead or full stop. Changing the - to a stop sign and + to >> or "full" or something would be more in line with what the buttons actually do.

The new tooltips, while great, will do more harm than good for a new player. They show things like falloff or tracking speed, and the new pilot might see them before knowing what they even mean, or knowing if or how important that information is. Knowing myself, if I saw a tooltip like that, I would immediately start trying to find out how my actions influence tracking and falloff, because my assumption would be that the game is player-skill based, not character-skill based. And knowing EVE's UI, I would have a heck of a time finding out the answer, and when I did find it, I wouldn't like it because it would essentially take me to that training queue tutorial and explained to me that to increase those I'd be looking at three weeks' training time.

Having said that, I think the in-space pointers are going to pay off in a major way.

There is a mission in the carrier mission tutorials that you learn to die and deal with it... but they are talking the absolute earliest tutorial missions, you can't have people that come in and first thing that happens on undock is there popped its a bad experience.

Tutorial icon can not be removed from the newcom. The option gets covered up by the resume tutorial option and does not remove it from the neocom if highlighted and clicked. Do I need to bug report this?

Edit: I say this becouse there is also no way from inside the tutorial to drag that tutorial to chat. IE a player is not sure which tutorial page to link in chat so he opens up the tutorial and quickly goes thru the tutorials looking for the one that he wants to link. When the page is found you have to open up the help menu to drag the mission you want to chat.

second player

looks good, is there any chance of seeing that bungee effect out of the tutorials?
seems like it would be a good start to new "in space" UI's

New Player Experience : Rookie System Incursion Style Social Interaction

I was looking through your new tutorial on SISI for some curiosity to see what you've done.

I think you've done a great job laying the explanations out in a way that is easy for everyone to understand!


So, as I was doing this, I quickly realized that it was lacking that one thing that I know CCP really wants to bring into the situation... social interaction and player dependency.

And then it occured to me... you should have a "mini-incursion" (not necessarily Sansha) style event going on in Rookie systems. It can be optional or part of one of the missions you make. Make it a 3-5 Rookie Ship experience.

This looks OK. I remember one of the common questions in rookie help was 'where do I find the acceleration gate', so will there be a little pointer telling people to rightclick space? (was it there already, I can't remember much of the tutorials)

Other confusions was mainly due to item names and so on, especially when Aura didn't give a book or something the agent wanted you to use. Explaining to rookies they didn't need to fit a shuttle in their cargo if they built it on-site, despite the warning. A bit of difficulty between the 'industry' skill and the 'industry' skillset.

I really can't remember much, though. I guess these are the sorts of difficulties you catch with playtesters?

I worry a little about the tutorials and the Sisters of Eve missions that come after. They seem to shoo new players into mission running, which I think is really bad because missions are a mainly solo activity that gets boring fast. I remember reading a few jokes before starting the game about EVE being the 'singleplayer MMO'. I guess they were from people that never really got into the game? Rookies usually find help for the last couple of missions of the SoE arc, which is good.

I killed Dagan three times with other pilots :D

Is your new tutorial also telling ppl how boring this game is with broken nullsec, broken lowsec and empire that is now boring as ****?

at any point do you show them the chat channels, or point out local chat, or aim them at any social channel to get them involved with the existing player base?

this has to be in there or you're teaching them how to play a single player game that happens to be a mmo.

get them talking to each other in local, or to the locals in the area as they run around doing the tutorials, open their eyes.

Sounds like some nice improvements to the tutorials.

I dare say it would be nicer though if the embedded browser supported some kind of video tag; that would allow you to stream instructional videos inside the client and give people an orientation video for the various elements - even if it's only in English to start.

Or start it in windowed mode by default so people can see them using their normal web browser. Either way I'm pretty sure CCP's art department could come up with some pretty kick-ass tutorial videos.

HOLY SH*T




WOW IT TOOK CCP THIS LONG TO F*CKING FIGURE OUT PEOPLE LIKE THE RIGHT CLICK?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!

Maybe now youll understand why we wanted you to bring back all the damn right click options for the inventory shortcuts you stole away...

Don't REMOVE right click options, tidy them up and sort them logically!

Personally, at the start, the list of items in context menu was a little intimidating cause there were a lot of entries that were thus far unexplained besides the navigational ones.

Using the context menu also felt tedious to me and gave me a feeling of "Am I going to use this menu to get everywhere?"

I would have much more apprecia...

You can now warp/jump to the next stargate from the Route panel in the HUD

Tooltip picture in the blog shows falloff above optimal. Wouldn't it make more sense to show it the other way around or are you trying to brainwash new players to think like a Minmatar?

P.S. please send Team Five 0 on calligraphy classes...

After he looked at training times, he just laughed and said the game is not for him because life is too short to waste on a game where it takes 3+ months to get anywhere. It's just too much of a commitment, one most people would be unwilling to make on an unproven game. Perhaps changing the skill training system, or even shifting the focus from character skill to player skill is the way to go.

Voiceovers being removed makes perfect sense, since tutorials are being reworked. But no audio for tutorials makes the game look dated and amateurish. In this day and age, there should be voiceovers for missions, for important events, etc. In other genres, voiceovers have been standard since approximately 2004. In MMOs, voiceovers are becoming standard, at least for important key quests, and some MMOs (SWTOR, and partially AoC) have voiceovers for everything. Having a wall of text thrown at you can be softened a bit with a voiceover, even a partial one that only generally describes the next step. Without the voice, it just reinforces the "spreadsheets in space" stigma that EVE has to deal with.

Having said that, I think the in-space pointers are going to pay off in a major way. EDIT: In fact, it might be beneficial to re-do the game's UI to make better use of the in-space pointers. That is, instead of clicking an item in space, and the selected item changing, why not bring up the space pointer right on top of what you clicked, giving you the option to approach, warp, etc.? Would make the UI a whole lot more intuitive than it is right now.

Oh and forgot to say, I LOVE the new UI changes all of them, i really hope to start seeing imrpovements in the overall HUD for pvp etc, as it seems the devs are starting to get the hang of the new stuff carbon is offering, lets see some of this filter over from tutorials to the actual gameplay

Why does the blog have the 25th as the date it was released? :P

There is issue you can't align with 2 click on the planet or anything via overview if this thing is not on grid question is why ?

If I read the graph right, most people leave whilst being shown the Captains Quarters part of the game?

How is this a surprise? "EvE is WHEEEE spaceships! PEW PEW! Massive sandbox! But .... well, here is a room where you can do absolutely nothing useful whatsoever"

I really suspect you will get a higher retention rate from the NPE if you don't make the first thing they see a half baked feature with double the running requirements of the core game and little to no interaction with it.

Make CQ an optional tutorial AFTER the flying in space tutorial and you will avoid this lopsided and botched message about what EvE is from the start.

I had a look at the NPE recently and I can tell you I would NOT be playing this game if the first thing I had seen were "how to walk around your useless CQ .... oh and BTW it really doesn't work well and the camera is broken."

No, No, No, No, NO!

You call Caroline Dalton up and you bring her right on back.

This is something I don't mind seeing my RL bucks being spent on.

What do you mean by "quit" in reference to the tutorial stages? Quit the tutorial or the game? If you mean quit the tutorial, number might be inflated because when you guys announce "NEW NPE!" some of us hit the "restart NPE" and check it out, usually quitting it when we reach stuff that is either boring or we've seen before.

Also, the probing tutorial needs a MAJOR overhaul. It is rather lacking in many ways (first and foremost: ever tried doing that first mission in the time allotted with a new character? Because it is next to impossible).

Some thoughts I'd like to share about the blog. Overall impression is very positive, but some things just jumped out at me.

It was mentioned (and shown on the chart) that some people struggled with the part of the tutorial that introduced training queue and all that. Have you guys considered that the queue itself and the training system are the problem, not the tutorial?

What I mean is, I recently tried to get some people I know to play EVE. One of them, just as we reached the part with the skill queue, immediately wanted to see how long it would take for him to fly a specific ship. After he looked at training times, he just laughed and said the game is not for him because life is too short to waste on a game where it takes 3+ months to get anywhere. It's just too much of a commitment, one most people would be unwilling to make on an unproven game. Perhaps changing the skill training system, or even shifting the focus from character skill to player skill is the way to go.

Second thing that jumped out at me is changing the shields on the rookie ship so that the tutorial rats have no chance of killing the player. Did I read that right? Even in the most casual of MMOs, ones suitable for children of 6-8 years old, the beginner monsters have a very real chance to kill you. In some MMOs, being killed and dealing with it is part of the initial tutorial (like in upcoming Guild Wars 2, you where you get incapacitated during the tutorial no matter what you do). Off the top of my head, i can't even remember an MMO where you can't die to the very first enemy you engage.

Voiceovers being removed makes perfect sense, since tutorials are being reworked. But no audio for tutorials makes the game look dated and amateurish. In this day and age, there should be voiceovers for missions, for important events, etc. In other genres, voiceovers have been standard since approximately 2004. In MMOs, voiceovers are becoming standard, at least for important key quests, and some MMOs (SWTOR, and partially AoC) have voiceovers for everything. Having a wall of text thrown at you can be softened a bit with a voiceover, even a partial one that only generally describes the next step. Without the voice, it just reinforces the "spreadsheets in space" stigma that EVE has to deal with.

The +/- for full speed or stop is no better than triangles, really. Plus implies increase, minus implies reduction. If I knew nothing of the game, I would have assumed acceleration and deceleration, not full speed ahead or full stop. Changing the - to a stop sign and + to >> or "full" or something would be more in line with what the buttons actually do.

The new tooltips, while great, will do more harm than good for a new player. They show things like falloff or tracking speed, and the new pilot might see them before knowing what they even mean, or knowing if or how important that information is. Knowing myself, if I saw a tooltip like that, I would immediately start trying to find out how my actions influence tracking and falloff, because my assumption would be that the game is player-skill based, not character-skill based. And knowing EVE's UI, I would have a heck of a time finding out the answer, and when I did find it, I wouldn't like it because it would essentially take me to that training queue tutorial and explained to me that to increase those I'd be looking at three weeks' training time.

Having said that, I think the in-space pointers are going to pay off in a major way. EDIT: In fact, it...

Overall this looks quite good.

But one thing bothers me: You made the assumption that the reason people quit the tutorial is because of a problem with the tutorial, that it was confusing or the player just did not get it. There is another reason: They understood the tutorial completely, but did not like what it was telling them. Take the "navigating your ship" step;

"You mean I got to double click in space?? I cannot fly my ship?? I'm out of here!"

Or "target practice";

"I just turn it on, and its random?? My personal skill is irrelevant?? I'm out of here!"

In other words, people may be quitting not due to the tutorial, but due to the game mechanics. Until you account for that, you do not really know what needs fixing. And you got to consider that if the issue is the game mechanics,maybe that is what needs to change.

Tutorial icon can not be removed from the newcom. The option gets covered up by the resume tutorial option and does not remove it from the neocom if highlighted and clicked. Do I need to bug report this?

Voiceovers are gone for now. We really like them, but as soon as the text stops matching up with the audio it's incredibly distracting, and it's not feasible to continually re-record them as adjustments are made. Until such time as we can get a really good text-to-speech implementation (which we are actively looking at), they're out.

Most important number is first/top, since beyond this range (optimal + 1x falloff) you have less than 50% chance of hitting.

Oh, I know all that. I'm relatively new to the game so I still vividly remember my own beginner experience not too long ago. I also have been trying the game practically every year since release, trying to get into it, but never really managed to make it stick.

I guess my point is that you can't tell people it's a harsh and unforgiving universe, and pit them against an enemy that can't possibly kill them. When a game is ludicrously easy it is just as much a turnoff as getting popped.

Though I guess it's a moot point anyway. Now that I think about it, I don't believe I ever had anyone I tried to get into this game come even close to getting popped in any tutorial. Heck, even L1s could be done in a snore coma with just one eye open. I guess what I'm saying is that it is a fine line between making the experience beginner friendly, and making it too easy and boring so they quit for lack of challenge. Myself personally, I tend to prefer games where the very first enemies make you work for it rather than just keel over from the first swing. It tends to be more engaging this way.

Quoted becouse I added an edit.

Looks good, however the gun tooltip is missing one major thing - tracking.

Silly(?) question: how can we do that, because on the picture I dont see anything special?

Thank you, wonderful changes!

Overall this looks quite good.

But one thing bothers me: You made the assumption that the reason people quit the tutorial is because of a problem with the tutorial, that it was confusing or the player just did not get it. There is another reason: They understood the tutorial completely, but did not like what it was telling them. Take the "navigating your ship" step;

"You mean I got to double click in space?? I cannot fly my ship?? I'm out of here!"

Or "target practice";

"I just turn it on, and its random?? My personal skill is irrelevant?? I'm out of here!"

In other words, people may be quitting not due to the tutorial, but due to the game mechanics. Until you account for that, you do not really know what needs fixing. And you got to consider that if the issue is the game mechanics,maybe that is what needs to change.

Good blog. I really like the walktrough of your process at the start. The process seems a lot better than a lot of players, me included, give you credit for. Hope the implementation is as good also.

On a constructive note: Would it be possible to turn the text "optimal" and "falloff" in the tooltip into a link to a wikipage explaining the concepts thoroughly? They may not be intuitively understandable by new players. (or older.. wasn't there several questions to the commentators on this during ATX?)

If possible, you should also do this to all the things in the show info windows.

I'm not 100% sure what's going on there. Is the tutorial window itself still open? I don't think you can remove something from the neocom while its window is open.

Nope window is closed option is there but even with the Neocom unclocked the icon does not get removed.

Edit.

Now it works. Next time i get it to hang ill bug report it.

So amazing! Love everything in this devblog.




Does this imply that *maybe, eventually* EVE will be fully voiced? Because that would be amazing.

I've written up a series of training guides and drills over the years for instructors to help players understand some fundamentals. I'm wondering if CCP would be interested if I shared these with them to see if they could find a way to implement them through software? They're designed from the perspective of demonstrating game mechanics, not simply lecture. They break the material down into small pieces and drills that can be repeated. I'd prefer to do this through private mail rather than the public forums if you're interested since it's quite a bit of information. It's on a private wiki i can give you access to.

It's just not feasible, sorry. As soon as we find a single text bug, or we change a feature that's mentioned at the beginning, we either have to re-record or drop the voice, and even if money was no object, the turn-around time on re-records makes it not worth it.

A lot of it was the skill queue, but a lot of it was also making you walk the full length of the CQ, we suspect. In any case, there's no CQ tutorial at all now. We don't feel that starting in the CQ is harmful to the experience of new players, though, so we've not changed the way the client is initially configured.

The thing with tooltips is as soon as you move the mouse off the module, the tooltip goes away :P

I totally see your the point, but in practical terms I don't think it's an issue in this case as it's only one mission, you're not going to run into the regen balance-point unless you're *really* slow at killing them, and we've not yet explained how shield regen works so it shouldn't be obvious to new players that eventually they'll reach a point where they're not taking any more damage. In 99% of cases players are going to see their shield going down, realize that they're in danger and kill the enemies really quickly, and in the other 1%, they really do need their hands held

It kinda gives new players an overly soft intro to what is billed as a "hard game" - up the difficulty. Most people who get to the point where they are actually in the tutorial are there fully expecting cold and unforgiving.

Most important number is first/top, since beyond this range (optimal + 1x falloff) you have less than 50% chance of hitting.

How about a square for the full stop, and two filled in arrows for full speed?


http://jesusnjim.com/images/vcrcontrols/fastforward.png

Pretty much just the regular stop and fast forward symbols

The stop square is a good idea, but in many other contexts multiple arrows imply warp.
Notably in the selected item window where ->> is warp to the selected object.

Voiceovers are gone for now. We really like them, but as soon as the text stops matching up with the audio it's incredibly distracting, and it's not feasible to continually re-record them as adjustments are made. Until such time as we can get a really good text-to-speech implementation (which we are actively looking at), they're out.

hit me up with those things :)

There is issue you can't align with 2 click on the planet or anything via overview if this thing is not on grid question is why ?

We're very much aware that the way "to hit" works isn't exactly intuitive, but it's not something we're going to solve with a tooltip



EVE is already plenty hard at the beginning without actually killing you outright on your first mission, and with the current level of regen, everyone who's not as confused as as Vincent Athena's wife should get the *impression* that they're immediately in danger and never discover that they were safe all along. If they walk away from that mission feeling like they could've died, then our work here is done.

I'm not sure if this is an issue you also encountered, or it was just me messing up the tutorial because I just wanted to show a friend the game and rushed through it but I made a fresh Amarr character on TQ and started the tutorial.

I was given an armor repairer that I needed to use, but I did not have the skill for.
And it didn't help that I had lost half my armor while blowing up a structure, so I was kinda 'stuck' in the tutorial, as I could not tank the...enemies.

I resorted to canflipping in an effort to pay for the skillbook.

I'm not sure if this is an issue you also encountered, or it was just me messing up the tutorial because I just wanted to show a friend the game and rushed through it but I made a fresh Amarr character on TQ and started the tutorial.

I was given an armor repairer that I needed to use, but I did not have the skill for.
And it didn't help that I had lost half my armor while blowing up a structure, so I was kinda 'stuck' in the tutorial, as I could not tank the...enemies.

I resorted to canflipping in an effort to pay for the skillbook.

The first mission gives the skill book but you do not need to use it untill you receive the standerd repairer on the second mission.

I'm quite sure I was not given one, as I could not find it anywhere, but it might be that I failed to accept the gift. I would assume it would just appear in the hangar, and that it would be mentioned somewhere in the tutorial, but I did not see it.

Few years ago as a newbie one of the hardest things to understand was how weapon range + tracking works in Eve. At first I thought Falloff included Optimal, I had no clue that falloff meant also reduced hit chance or what signature resolution and radius stats in ships meant etc. After some months of playing someone nice enough showed me this: Eve tracking. After seeing this, it all became clear to me and combat became a lot easier for me. I hope the new tutorials show something like in the above link.

Secondly, in the devblog there's the weapon tooltip. It's nice and dandy but could the tooltip also display the maximum range of weapon (optimal + 2x Falloff) and mention on Falloff range line that the weapon has reduced hit chance at this range?

Then there's the "monsters" called trackingspeed / accuracy in weapon stats and ship's transversal speed that affects hitting the target - it's probably not related to these tutorials but in future revisions of fitting screen, could some dev f.ex add a new info to fitting screen that gives the following info for weapons: Tracks target at optimal range with transversal speed less than "calculated speed value here". I think something like this would help a lot of players to understand what those rad/s and transversal speeds mean.

It droped into your hanger or will with the NPE this next week.

see? stupid. If anything maybe the NPE should inject and force the skill to level 1 on it's own.

New Player Experience : Rookie System Incursion Style Social Interaction

I was looking through your new tutorial on SISI for some curiosity to see what you've done.

I think you've done a great job laying the explanations out in a way that is easy for everyone to understand!


So, as I was doing this, I quickly realized that it was lacking that one thing that I know CCP really wants to bring into the situation... social interaction and player dependency.

And then it occured to me... you should have a "mini-incursion" (not necessarily Sansha) style event going on in Rookie systems. It can be optional or part of one of the missions you make. Make it a 3-5 Rookie Ship experience.

Why does the blog have the 25th as the date it was released? :P

Question: Why is falloff listed before optimal range on the weapon tool tip?

I've tried the new tutorial-arc on SISi, and overall, I must say, most impressive!

But no more Aura-voice?

Dis maek meh haz a sad :(

But seriously guys, please do try to bring that back when feasible to do so -- Speaking only for myself, of course, but a HUGE part of my initial immersion (read: Falling in love so bloody hard with Mme. EVE) was from that voice-over.

As I say, the EVE Community is really great and has an immense insight into EVE Online that it would be a shame not using this knowledge and passion to improve EVE together.

With the new train to in the right click menu its realy ease to place in training

See responses here https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1720061#post1720061 and here https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1720165#post1720165 Note that this isn't "falloff" but "falloff range", which is optimal + 1x falloff.

We left tracking off because we wanted to keep it simple, and because actually using that number is sufficiently advanced behavior that you probably know your tracking value already.

Or, put another way, it's (IME) rare that you're in the middle of a fight and think "oh crap, what's my tracking in radians/s?"

Stage Four: Evaluation and adjustment

Once we were done with the main implementation work, we went through several rounds of user-testing with external volunteers. As you'd expect, we learned an awful lot from this, and came away from each session with long lists of adjustments to make.

A key example of this is how we teach in-space commands. We'd assumed initially that using visible UI functionality would be better than relying on context menus, so we endeavoured to teach with the Overview and Selected Item as much as possible. Repeated user testing showed that new players were far more comfortable right-clicking on everything, to the point where later tutorial steps that forced players to rely on Selected Item were tripping them up because they had no idea how to use it. This experience led us to rework our teaching throughout the tutorial to use right-click and the context menu, which subsequent testing confirmed as a much smoother experience.

...and some bad spots (most notably the bit right at the very start where we try to teach the skill queue before you've even undocked)

...This experience led us to rework our teaching throughout the tutorial to use right-click and the context menu, which subsequent testing confirmed as a much smoother experience.

Then just label it "Maximum Range". Clear. Concise. Not EASILY ameniable to misinterpretation like the current phrasing.

Clarity is good. Maximum Range is better :)

Ok before I go any further, it really looks like the advance tutorials, the ones for the career agents have not been updated, before I go scrutinizing them could I get a dev response as to whether they've actually been updated? No point in me dissecting them if there are changes soon to come

I personally disagree. (And I must stress that this is my personal opinion as a player, I am not a games designer, I am not trying to tell CCP how to do their job, just sharing my thoughts.)

For some reason many developers in the past few years, now CCP included, pretend that the only interaction a new player has with the game is through the tutorials. They feel the need to explain every tiny bit through lengthy series of "do this, trust me" instructions and/or throw a huge wall of text at the player.

Now I don't know about others, but when I get into a game, especially such a complex one, I tend to do a little bit of reading on it. I knew EVE was advertised as extremely complex, I spent about two weeks browsing the official website, forums, and guides before I even registered to get a feel of the game. Even if one doesn't do this research beforehand, all these resources are readily available - in EVE even without tabbing out of the game through the IGB.

In my opinion the tutorial should explain how to use the UI - how to undock, how to fly your ship, how to shoot at things. As far as I remember that was what it was like when I started. Then there were I think three career agents to show off the various career paths, and off to the real game. The tutorial shouldn't be explaining game mechanics - especially as complex as tracking or fitting ships. These should be explained on the game's webpage in a quick guide, and then in great detail through manuals and gameplay guides.

(Going off on a tangent here, but still related to the NPE - these kind of things are ridiculously difficult to get to from eveonline.com. Personally along with the links "One universe", "The Sandbox" etc. at the top I would add one for "Guides" or "Game Mechanics" or something.)

Quite often showing too much is even worse than showing too little. If the game doesn't explain a mechanic, the player looks for another source of this information. But if the tutorial provides a half-arsed explanation, the player is under the impression that he already understands it, and is content with what he knows. However in fact his understanding is lacking at best and misguided at worst.

The tutorial also shouldn't be explaining how to do things efficiently - as in, how to fit your ships, how to run missions, etc. This is something for the player to explore and discover by themselves. Trying to imprint a certain way of doing things to people early on has the same negative effects as I pointed out above (lack of detail leading to misguided understanding), but also ruins the sense of discovery, trying various approaches and seeing what works - basically everything that makes a game a game, and not just following a set of instructions you read off the screen.

This is not about making the game more difficult for the sake of it being difficult (or conversely easier for the sake of being easier). The information should be readily available,but it shouldn't be forced onto the player in bits and pieces however CCP thinks is the best. I don't like being told by an NPC to fit a web and use it on another NPC. I want to read a little about what webs do, why is it a good idea to use one, and when should one be used.

Would be interested to see, how many people quit after seeing the awful inventory system.

Thanks for all the comments. Especially from those who actually tried the new aura-tutorials on sisi.

I am taking lots of notes from these comments :)

edit: for a couple of questions -
We were given a short timeframe to get some awesome people, we had to pick where we could make the best impact. I would have loved to give the career agents a thorough workover, improve a lot of UI, etc. But we tried to hit the biggest problem areas.

Those who have tried the new tutorial will note the use of civvie modules while giving you a quick skill to learn to use the "full" modules in the next missions.

You might have also noticed an extra tab on the skills in your head - you can see what each level of a skill will allow you to use.

you can now use Back and Next to page through the entire string with no breaks or restrictions.

You say in the devblog players prefer the right-click method. However in step 19 of the tutorial you say
"To look at a ship or other object in space, select it, and use the the Look At button in Selected Item, which looks like an eye."

Either change this to right click instructions, or add a pointer, pointing to the eye on the selected item panel.

Do the gun/ammo tool tips include skill/implant modifiers in optimal/falloff/dps numbers? I would assume so, but you know what they say about assuming...

I'm not sure if this is an issue you also encountered, or it was just me messing up the tutorial because I just wanted to show a friend the game and rushed through it but I made a fresh Amarr character on TQ and started the tutorial.

I was given an armor repairer that I needed to use, but I did not have the skill for.
And it didn't help that I had lost half my armor while blowing up a structure, so I was kinda 'stuck' in the tutorial, as I could not tank the...enemies.

I resorted to canflipping in an effort to pay for the skillbook.

Section 23: Additional Reading should not include medical clones. Corporations and skills are fine to talk about while your ship is auto-piloting to a station but the medical clones bit should be saved until the player is IN a station. It is more relevant there, where they can actually upgrade their clone while they read that bit of the tutorial. Having them read it while flying in space is a recipe for forgetting and then them cursing you when they die and lose skill points.

Request: On the agent menu "Add Waypoint" would be nice to have if the mission is in another system.

Ok before I go any further, it really looks like the advance tutorials, the ones for the career agents have not been updated, before I go scrutinizing them could I get a dev response as to whether they've actually been updated? No point in me dissecting them if there are changes soon to come

CCP is just figuring this out now?

After all of the constructive feedback on the Inventory re-vamp regarding conventional computer user-interface interactions and well thought-out posts on why the removal of right-click access to various hangars was terribly detrimental to game-play....

And CCP took the word of volunteer testers over the word of loyal customers regarding value of right-click contextual menus. Words fail me at this point.

Edit: Does the new tutorial content include information and a walk-through on how to most efficiently use the re-vamped Inventory UI elements?

While i havent done the caldari tutorial before, one of the BIGGEST things that was confusing to me was how missile "range works". I think one thing that NEEDS to be explained in ALL the tutorials is how flight time and missile speed work together to get your that range you can hit out to. I was maybe 3 months into eve the first time i used rockets and it confused the hell out of me to have to figure out how flight time and speed and all that worked together, especially after basicly being trained to think in terms of optimal and falloff for normal guns and then not have a set number with missils/rockets.

Your solution is to eliminate it .. hmmmmm. What one does when dealing with noobs children new comers who exhibit disinterest in something that will ultimately help them is to play into their natural curiosity but not forcefully. Introduce the skills as normal (assuming the bad spot doesn't extend that far) and rest assured that they will poke around until they press the queue button .. at which point you can tell them there is a guide available should they want/need it (you can use one of those fancy new pop-ups!) .. most like figuring stuff out themselves though.

If a child refuses to eat nothing but pizza, the absolutely worst thing one can do is to let the little bastard eat nothing but pizza . Yes, the context menu has improved a lot since I started out .. to the point of usefulness even .. but to base the entire introduction to Eve on nothing but will come back and...

why not have basic skills inject and start at level 1? I'm honestly just curious what the goal is to make players train these skills instead of starting them out with them?

IMO this will lead to a lot of confusion.

The new player will never know if he actually did everything right or not when clicking 'Next'.

Worse is, before recognising that there are no restrictions, he will have the impression of having done everyting correctly even if he hasn't just because he can go to the next page of the tutorial. He will then end up in a dead end where the tutorial text does not match his actual progression soon. This is totally different from every other game tutorial out there...

No, No, No, No, NO!

You call Caroline Dalton up and you bring her right on back.

This is something I don't mind seeing my RL bucks being spent on.

Yes Yes - bring her voice back.. she was perfect!! i'loved her voice in 2006...

Hey CCP Greyscale, why not use that massive TV screen you have in the Captains Quarters to display tutorial videos? New players can select a video and watch it in game.

Keep up the good work.

We tried that. Works nice enough, but there were problems then with translation, and making the screen into a real media player (pause, replay, etc)...

But it's not maximum range, just the range where you do 50% damage which is a good guideline to what range you should usually try to keep inside. Maximum range is Optimal + 2x Falloff.
Calling it something that it's not is not better.

It's not "falloff" either though..

How about "Effective range"? It is quite intuitive: "My gun can shoot further than this, but this is the maximum range it will be effective at." It even have the advantage of being a common military term for, well.. just this, really.

Thanks for the suggestion, we'll think about it.

New players are going to have neither the money nor the need to upgrade their clone at this point, so I think it's kinda a moot point. We put the additional reading in to fill time while you travel; if we don't mention clones there we're not mentioning them elsewhere as we don't want to break up the actual learning stages with irrelevant info, and we feel that it's better to mention them than not

second player

looks good, is there any chance of seeing that bungee effect out of the tutorials?
seems like it would be a good start to new "in space" UI's

From my point of view you're reading *way* too much into a single decision there. This isn't part of some grand design strategy to eliminate all hint of setting or immersion from EVE. It's the result of doing a one-month tutorial improvement drive and playing it as safely as possible because we want to get it right first time. Again, we've sat through watching people who've never touched EVE before try to just *finish* the tutorial, and we've watched them repeatedly stumble over things you or I would be able to do through muscle memory alone. Dangling bits of lore in front of people is not helpful if they quit the trial out of frustration after five minutes.

As with keyboard shortcuts, efficient techniques, teaching advanced knowledge and so on, whenever we've been faced with a choice between "set the player up in a better place down the road" and "increase the chances of the player getting through the next five minutes", we've always chosen the latter, because without it the former has no chance to pay off. This tutorial isn't a statement of intent that we're stripping lore from EVE any more than it's a statement of intent that we're removing keyboard shortcuts.

Will we add more of this sort of stuff back into the tutorial in the future? Maybe, yes, but only if we can prove to our own satisfaction that it works. Team PE is picking up the baton from us after this release, and I know CCP Sisyphus has plenty more adjustments and improvements he wants to make. For now, though, we've implemented things that we've been able to demonstrate as effective in the limited time available.


Also, new characters still start in the CQ not the hangar view, we're just not explicitly teaching the controls for that environment.

I don't mean to sound negative about the tutorial, quite the opposite, it looks very effective given the time and resources and there's some really slick elements in there. My concern is simply that you see lore as a complication rather than a tool to engage the new player - that's a cultural thing and something you're probably so entrenched in, you're unaware of it. The storyline really shouldn't be an afterthought, it should be ingrained into everything.

love the changes, Tried few of them on SISI however noted that the "tool tips" on modules when flying around are a bit fast to show up in my mind and just become annoying.when you use your mouse to activate things.

Bigger delay or some way to personalize this would be gold =)

Otherwise thumbs up o/

Right off the bat when you say "It will take around ninety minutes to complete" I think it would increase readability if you use the number 90 instead of the word.
"It will take around ninety minutes to complete"
vs
"It will take around 90 minutes to complete"

We've adjusted shield regen on Rookie Ship a little, so that tutorial NPCs no longer have any chance of killing them.

It's a powerful tool, but it's also the case that adding additional dimensions of value is inherently adding complication, which means adding risk to the project, and it was the team's assessment that we couldn't afford the risk in this case.

we can get a really good text-to-speech implementation (which we are actively looking at)

Yes you can!
http://www.ivona.com/us/