New players are new money. Money is EVEs true life blood. I don't understand why anyone would be opposed to a limited, temporary gated concession area to further the game in the long run.

"You catch more flies with honey than vinegar"

Getting "into" eve doesnt need to be like the special forces selection

I have more faith in CCP than to do that.

People are focusing on the caging and the safety and ignoring that it would allow concentration of resources to assist and answer questions and THAT is actually the important thing.

The cage isnt to keep US out, it's to keep THEM in.


It doesnt matter how much people want it to be, EVE isnt SPARTA!!!!!!!!!!!! and new blood is the most important thing in the game, bar nothing. Getting it in in a manner that doesnt interfere TOO badly is critical. New people tell their friends, what do veterans do?

Either a gated zone or a zone where shooting each other is not permitted regardless of security setting or active wars.

Make these system unable to host any PoS, set for the future expansion Crius the system index setting to 15% default with rookie items worth zero (meaning the setup cost is zero) and class 1.0 sec minerals (Veldspar only).

I see only upsides to this idea, no downsides, unless you plan to go gank or harass new players.

I'll go a step further and recommend BRAVE since they at least partake in sov warfare and can teach newbies how that works in addition to what they both cover. Plus, I often feel like when I'm talking to EVE Uni players they still haven't figured out how it all works. BRAVE has never given me the same overly pretentious whitewash about passing "classes" that EVE Uni players are always on about, but those last two points are more opinion than legitimate points.

If that works so well, why is there such a chronic new player problem?

You think CCP are trying to address a problem that doesnt exist? Businesses don't do that.


Why so against controlled learning conditions?


Man, the old players have forgotten so much about being new.

I cautiously support this, more for the ease of education aspect than anything else. Its much easier to tell a bunch of people stuff they need to know when you know exactly where they'll be after all.

No, they are not. You have a rule, written on a wiki, that unless there have been recent changes to the tutorials, it has never been cited in game.

When you create a new toon in eve you are overwhelmed by the massive amount of informations Aura is giving you, and those informations are just a tiny bit of the story. You get told a bit of how to fit and fly your ship, how to attack target in space, you are not told anything on how to tank damage or how to fit your ship for pvp or pve, you are obscure of what's ganking, how to move your goods in relative safety, we need to teach them how to be a "gallant" (hello Code. people) , teach them to look out for Awoxing, to avoid stupid deaths and so on, the list can go on for pages.

The rookie system last really for 15 min at best, career agents are already in possibly dangerous space, nothing forbid a person to abuse of a new player as soon as he jumps off the "protected" system, and he is not yet aware what he's risking.

We need a new player to be fully aware the moment he leaves the starting zone he's in for all that's EVE. You might like it or not, but the great majority of the negative review about this game are all about its steep learning curve. And that you might like it or not the idea is not from some kind of golden carebear, but it's from themittani itself, the CEO of the Goonswarm federation and no, it's not 1st of april yet.

Times have changed, this kind of experience might have been fine 10 years, when I started, but not today Yes, I'm a forum alt, you are probably a forum alt too. Anyway, games, like industries and businesses manage to stay afloat because they can adapt to the times, and the numbers are clear.

You can see blogs from Greedygoblin, Themittani and other sources all pointing out in the direction eve is losing players, even if subs are managing to stay above the real number of players as many have two accounts, if not more. What's worse, is this bloggers are not watching the game from the same point of view, but they are all coming to the same conclusion about the loss of players and the lack of new blood in eve.

Now you said that once the selling point of eve was that is actually a very hard and merciless game, at the fanfest CCP admitted that many people (a shocking amount actually) enter the game, level up their raven and leave once their "game" is over and another part simply quit after failing at EVE soon after the actual NPE. Let's be honest, losing your hard earned ship to a mechanic or a gameplay you are totally not aware of is not very pleasant.

If you truly love this game, and you are, along all those other posting with posting agreeing and disagreeing in this thread, you must face the reality, EVE need to change and adapt to the times, and if this mean that steep learning curve that you so much loved need to be made a bit less steep, so be it.

That may be a chicken and egg situation. If people come out wanting to look for decent fights, odds of a high sec carebear corp appealing are low and they may look further afield. They come out only knowing missions and mining and no REAL battle, they're going to gravitate to wards those corps.

I'll freely admit this may not happen, but I'm somewhat optimistic about it.


@Kaerakh: I thought it was a given that all the assholes lived in high sec? Null/low is much more civilized.

except we're talking about the NPE here. do keep up, darling.

that's nice, but when they don't even understand how the UI works, doing all of that is irrelevant because they don't understand what's going on, nor do they understand what's going on within the context of the game.

you've just showed them a load of crap they don't understand and will put no effort in to remembering because you haven't even shown them how to undock.

it's like giving a toddler a book by dickens and going "read it or you're going to the orphanage", might want to teach them to read before you give them a book?

It's a very small theme park for young players. Think of it as a nursery. I appreciate you don't want the whole game to become a theme park, but could you at least think of the children!

The plus side being that we could potentially gate posting privileges behind having completed this tutorial zone. Someone couldn't post anywhere but the Newbie forum without having finished it.

Thereby the death of the NPC posting alt, one of EVE's most toxic features.

Oh, and another thing. Since the goal of this partially includes to not toss new players into the watery grave of the main game without properly preparing them for it, have them be skillpoint capped (idk, two million off hand, dunno how long they are expected to stay there) so long as they remain in the Jove Zone (or whatever you want to call it).

For all those so angrily opposed to this idea, why? Are >1 day old toons such a percentage of your targets that you can't stand to delay their entry into the universe by a few hours so they can get a good introduction as to the facts of life in New Eden.

As much as I am surprised to find myself agreeing with Mittens on this point I do.
A newbie only area so they can learn more about the game before having to deal with the rest of us would be helpful.
Who cares if you call it Jove space or what the heck ever......

You would have to build in several things to make it pointless to attempt to live there.
Perhaps a different fiat currency that is worthless in eve.
Perhaps no ships can leave the newbie zone.

Limit all ships to T1s and few skill books in the area so when you are ready for it you are guided out into Eve proper.
The details like that can be worked out to an point where the area won't become a danger to the economy.
Would it be possible for someone to live in that zone for their entire time in eve?
Perhaps but it would not be likely, limited ships limited missions and no effect at all to the economy of eve would eliminate
any reason to farm the area. Since we have a component of the community that goes out of their way to prove they can gank people anywhere anytime deal with that instantly. If they want PVP they get eve. Attacking another player instead of Concord blowing up their ship gets their pod dumped into high-sec in eve.

But (and this is the most important) get them access to the community.
There will always be people that leave the game. But time to get their feet under them and going the right way would be a big help. Yes I am aware that vets can and will create new alts to look around and have fun in newbie zones.
That could be helpful as well. With no way to make profit there and limited resources available it helps reduce the number of people that would stay there.

Short of concord insta popping someone in high-sec that aggro's a newb (like that wouldn't be abused to hell and back) it is the most elegant solution. It is also the best way to ensure that it dosen't "snowball" into the rest of high-sec as detractors claim. Eve remains unchanged and the newbs get a chance to learn before coming out to play.

Oh and CCP the gate is likely to be camped to hell and back so they appear in a random high sec system tied to the race of their choice. Or you could put them in low activity areas ... To get things started.

[quote=Christopher Tsutola]

It would in that any anti ganking and non PVP is ONLY in the newbie zone.
Nothing changes in Eve proper.
As far as the gate camp point goes. Fair enough :)
Although I am not one for hazing or initiations in general you make a valid point.

I would argue that, barring significant watchfulness and advocacy of the existing playerbase, that it is a definite scenario.

CCP has been adding more safety creep to highsec year after year without cease. Case in point, I have never once seen them patch out a "bug" faster than they did with the MTU drone aggro thing earlier. They did that in a week. That is their on record fastest fix ever.

Their efforts have largely gone to giving highsec more safety for their mindless themepark content while the POS architecture languishes for literally years.

So I would say it's a significant danger. And imo, if the dichotomy all the change crusaders are offering is true(which I know it's not, they use that as a scare tactic to try and bolster their shaky arguments), that we have to kill the game or the game will die, then I'd rather have it fade into obscurity rather than prostituted out to the thrice damned casuals before the servers go cold.

It can be done quite simply without doing anything more than what I suggested: One patch to fix the tutorials an an official newbie Player-run corporation maintained by CCP officials.

Assuming they do both competently...

As a recently new player, I can confirm just how many people who started playing at the same time I did are no longer playing 8 months later. Player retention is as bad as it was said to be in the panel. However, the players that remain tend to have more grit than the usual stock. That being said, there's nothing stopping people from sticking some sand in a few noobs' britches in between their pew and helping the process.

I have my doubts about how effective this idea will be. Do players leave because they've been griefed and they are new, or do they leave because they've been griefed period? Maybe this idea means we hold onto some new players for a little bit longer but still not for long.

NPE is not how WoW keeps its subscribers.

[b]Goal


Griefers and Gankers = loss of money = loss of subscribers thus making griefers and gankers the enemy of all because if subscribers leave because of them then CCP loses money. When CCP loses money it shuts down and the rest of us become very, very angry....hold on NPC attack....oh half hull in my Kronos...am I going to lose it........uh..no.

So because EvE is a harsh mistress then the griefer and ganker will feel the hard hand of the mistress because we like new Rookies to be trained and not the self centered trolls who can only master a two mm long ship in their life.

I agree. its walls of text and irritating, distracting pop-ups mid mission.

i had one new guy getting frustrated that he could not get past one of the tutorial missions, but because he hadnt read the mission info he didnt realise he was supposed to lose his ship.

I cant imagine a solution beyond some text to speech tech.

If I were to start over and be new to the game, I'd like a place to get to grips with as many of the games aspects as possible without getting wtfRaped the first time I try low sec in a horribly fit cruiser (Thanks Vrabac :) ). For this reason I would suggest a single constellation that:

No one over X (2-4?) months can access.
When you reach 2-4 months you and you're assets are moved out into the big wide world
Allows you to dip into the wider universe at any point and retreat to the relative safety of it if the big bad bully's hurt you.
Offers systems with sec status ranging from 1.0 to 0.0 and all the usual rules apply.
Contains a couple of unique items that are genuinely useful to other players to encourage the newbies to venture out.
Has few market resources, making newbies come out to get what they need

B