Make a Jovian newbie zone. Shove ALL the newbies in it instead of scattering them across the galaxy. Stick a gate out to the real New Eden once they pass their tutorials. Turn player aggression off in that zone, because Nanobots, Jovians, or Jovian Nanobots ...

...

So we have our gated newbie zone. You don't let any non-newbie players access that area. When our nice safe newbie finishes his tutorial which hands him a few basic ships and modules and shows him the ropes, Jovian Nanobots teleport all the [stuff] in his newbie station hangar into a station on the other side of the zone's exit gate. You make sure before the newbie gets out of the Jovian Nanobot Playground that he understands that once he leaves the tutorial area, the gloves are off and that Eve Is Mean. Done and done.

Meanwhile, CCP can then use its ISD team, GMs, customer service reps or whatever to focus all their efforts on that zone, where all the real new players are. They can handhold the newbies, answer questions, and try to retain players in a hands-on way, rather than the current system where they have to hope a new player asks for help in the existing in-game newbie help channel rather than just uninstalling while rolling their eyes.

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

OP is trolling, right?

This isn't how eve works and doing something like this would just make the misconception new players have to worsen. you give a PvP free zone for new players then the players who join into to that will expect there to be other areas in eve that are like this. that will lead to a push to have more areas like this such as no pvp in .8+ then .6+ then no PvP in HS this would kill the sandbox

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.

no but you can't give them one set of rules to learn the game then remove them and there are places for rookies to go and learn the game w/o being babied EvE-Uni BRAVE ect as well as the rookie help channel and as many have pointed out the rookie starter systems are already protected

no but you can't give them one set of rules to learn the game then remove them and there are places for rookies to go and learn the game w/o being babied EvE-Uni BRAVE ect as well as the rookie help channel and as many have pointed out the rookie starter systems are already protected

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.

very true but i did recommend BRAVE and the reason i recommended EvE Uni as well is because of the different styles

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.

you just described what the rookie systems already are.

Zones like this should be for the tutorial only.

once eve has equipped you with what you need to play the game - show you how to fit a ship, how to fly around, how to warp, how to use a stargate etc - then you should be dumped in to the pond with the rest of us.

we also need to accept that the NPE shouldn't end with the tutorials, also. it's the new player experience, not the tutorial experience.

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.

but that learning curve is also one of the high points of eve. Does this attract the same type of ppl as WoW or Perfect World? no but that is not a bad thing there are better ways out there to fix the NPE without doing this

Don't mistake the attraction of depth as the same as a steep learning curve.

That said, if newbies were locked IN; they could even dedicate one system as a mini-RvB with GMs/ISD FCing - I'm aware I'm putting a lot on those guys and it'll be like herding cats but I'm trying to imagine a new player experience that doesn't just teach the ropes - but shows the awesome stuff people can get into early on. Trying to explain eve in rookie help is like trying to explain a parachute jump - you can try but 99.99% is lost. You need to DO it, not read about it - who is going to come out of a cool fleet/small gang battle and go 'you know what, I want to run missions/mine'?

Things like that are FAR easier in a locked area.


I wish people would stop thinking it's about newbie 'safety'; it is so much more than that.