Relworp
Gallente
Federal Navy Academy
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Posted - 2006.08.26 11:17:00 -
[1]
As a new player who started the game roughly 3 days before the latest patch that removed the starter missions, I belive I can give a unique aspect to the argument.
Firstly, my charachter I began with had the opportunity to use the begginer missions, My opinion as far as these missions, is that it's good, and bad, that they were removed.
It's good, as They are horrifically dull. Get this, go there, repeat. you do NOT want new players who just slogged through an hour long tutorial to have their first missions require about as much attention as a brick. Hit auto pilot, go afk. These missions really, and truely, gave a horrible "first impression" of the game. The only reason I stuck it out and didn't just uninstall eve off of my machine was due to all the rather intresting aspects of the game that "appeared" to be there, but were glossed over or outright ignored. As far as a new player is concenred, the game implies the only thing you can do is mine, and run couriers. Few people find either activity challenging or stimulating, especially when these missions rarely send you out of 0.8 sec space. I was actually very suprsied when i decided to try agents again (as from my experience with the tutorial, it seemed to indicate that agents were glorified courier services) and got given a combat mission.
Post-patch, I decided that my starting stats and skills were really aweful for how i intended to start off eve (electronic warfare and electronics isn't doing you any favours when the best you can pilot is a shuttle, also, 3 perc and 13 cha i found werent good starting attribs for a combat pilot). In any case, I re-rolled to my current charachter, this was post-patch and thus no starting missions. It then became painfully obvious to me how much i needed them. I had no money to train skills, i had no money to buy a new ship - and the kicker - agents wouldn't even *talk* to me unless their quality was outstandingly low, Makeing cash generation a chore of epic proportions. This is why they are needed, Yes, they may be dull and uninspired, but takeing them out and giving no compensation really makes the starting carreer of new pilots nigh unachievable.
Ironically, I solved my moneitary problems by purchasing a full account and using my first charachter as a mission runner, and quickly amased 4 million ISK, which i send to my current one. After a long proccess of running low-quality missions for high-sec agents (no one else will talk to me) and scrapeing together what few pennies i could manage, i was able to become self sufficient. My sec standing is still too low to allow me to run missions for anything outside of the one or two corps i grinded low-quality missions for. The best i can manage at the moment are -1 quality agents in 0.7 sec space.
I don't mind that you took out the missions, in fact i even stated in the rookie channel that they need to be modified to be more intresting for newer players. But You really need to give compensation for takeing them out, even as a temporary measure, It will take me many days of agent running just to get to the position my first charachter was.
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