Aven Valkyr
Aven's Flight School
Zero Fux.
6
   |
Posted - 2015.09.19 01:28:57 -
[1] - Quote
I would like to add some thoughts and ideas to this. I've been around for a while and I have trained many a new player. This is going to be lengthy so I will try to make it easy to follow.
Despite the griping about the current newbie system, the system does do one good thing. It guides the new player towards the EVE community. Forces them to ask questions. Yes this game has a steep learning curve, but you do not want to fill a newbies head with so much info that they are able to solo the game. Do not take this away from the community. Be careful in what you do because of this. Bringing newbro's into a corp and guiding them in whatever it is they want to do is paramount to the community of this game.
Since my career has pretty much exlusively involved combat, that's the angle I'm going to play here. I've done the career arc for the mining tutorial agent but didn't bother actually mining. I just bought the materials. So a lot of what I'm going to say here is going to be combat related, however much of it will globally affect new players' first impressions of the game.
So here is a breakdown of this topic:
1) Things that newbro's are very often confused about
2) Weaknesses in the initial start up with the game
3) Problems with the career agents
4) Things that are not explained very well or not explained at all
5) Initial skills and balancing
6) Fixes to the aforementioned issues
1) Things that newbro's are very often confused about
The meat of this one will be composed of questions I'm commonly asked
Q) What is a module?
Q) The agent gave me a new gun, why can't I use it?
Q) Why do I always have to travel to a gate after warping when other people usually land right on it
Q) What is an agent?
Q) How do I find missions?
Q) How do I survive a fight?
Q) Why is there so little selection in the market?
Q) How do I find a corp?
Q) What should I train for?
2) Weaknesses in the initial start up with the game
a) The player is placed in a random system with no guidance on where to go or how to start
b) Training comes in the form of popup dialogue boxes which are complicated and difficult to read.
c) Agents aren't explained very well and there is no direction on how to get to the starter agents
b) Players are given a plethora of skill books, many of which have no relation whatsoever on the race they have chosen
e) Players who start the game wanting to mine for example are given many skillbooks related to combat.
f) Things don't flash, blink, highlight, or anything visually indicating the player what the tutorial is trying to show them. There is no "click this, and now click this. Now right click this and click this" to get to what is being taught.
g) The market window settings are set to "show only available" and on the "system" setting. This is a horrible idea. "show only available" is more of an advanced feature that newbies should not have to worry about. The market doubles as the in-game item catalogue. It should be available for new players to view in its entirety and pick what they want to train for.
h) Newbies don't know the difference between empire and low sec and can traverse dangerously into hostile territory without understanding what they are doing.
i) The starter ship is a joke. one civilian gun and one civilian repair module
j) The overview is set to show every celestial object and it's dog. Give newbies a simple overview. Stations, gates, other players and NPC's. That's it
k) Factions, standings and NPC agents (L1 to L4) aren't explained at all. The agent locator isn't explained.
3) Problems with the career agents
a) Too many ships are given out and not enough modules. Of course, a skillbook is required by a newbro to run a module. This is an OK function.
b) Fitting a ship for the first time is very confusing. Agent missions don't explain how to do this whatsoever. The game expects you to know, or to seek out answers for newbies to ask
c) Missions are given based on knowing how the core mechanics of the game already work. Players are expected to know how the market works, how the fitting window works, how to fit a ship according to its traits, what ammo types to use, what an optimal range is, etc.
d) Missions don't do enough explaining of the core game mechanics
e) Missions aren't very well described. There's storyline background such as in the combat mission arc that the player is expected to read, on top of the mission objectives that must be met. The mission where the player is expected to fly out in the ship provided for the sole purpose of being destroyed should be axed.
f) The anomaly scanning mission arc could use a total revamp, utilizing a system of highlighted windows and blinking window objects
4) Things that are not explained very well or not explained at all
a) Using autopilot to set a desto but manually using warp to 0
b) Fitting ships to their traits (for example this ship gives bonuses to lasers and not hybrids)
c) Using the overview and making custom overview tabs. Saving and sharing overview settings
d) Potential career path and what to train for
e) Breaking down what different ships are good for. For example, T2 Assault Frigs. Heavy assault cruisers. Logistics. Mining vessels. Industrial ships in general. Battleships, Battlecruisers. Etc.
f) Hotkeys (F to engage drones, A to align to an object, D to warp to and jump or dock, F1 through F4, weapon grouping)
g) How attributes work and why implants are important
h) Skill training time multipliers, indicating what skills are easy and what skills are hard to train
Continued... |