Q: 'Starting skills are a huge barrier, can we give a lot more to new players'
A: Yes. But this is not a simple change. You guys seem fairly agreed that the small amount of starting skills, combined with a high amount of 'must have' support and requirement skills, leads to some really icky barriers to participation for new players. We are inclined to agree and we are in the process of laying out a plan to address the problem. Nothing is set in stone yet but it seems likely that we will try and move new players towards starting with significantly more SP. Maybe between 1 and 2 million. It also seems likely that we will probably avoid any major skill reworks or skill removals. As this plan solidifies you will hear more from us.

Because waiting for FIVE HOURS to just fit a T1 MWD is either engaging, fun or any use to anyone tbh.

Why is removing learning implants a difficult problem? Just get rid of them and increase base training rate to whatever the current long term player average training rate is. Add 1-2 week duration booster drugs if you really have to.

It's a small thing, might not even help people much but a popup or similar when people enter and exit the "newbie areas" would be very helpful.

For the new skills debate I suggest finding a common fit of a meta mod frigate and at the very least giving them the skills to fit the mods out the gate...MWDs...I'm looking at you...They can all be level 1 of the skill, whatever - at least then they dont have an entry barrier, but progression.

5 hours? It is 8 minutes. There are other things than MWD in the realm of prop mods.

@Ralph:

You can, 30 minutes after you started the game. 1 hr later you can fit a prop mod, use drones, repair mods and tank mods. 2 hours later, you can even use an MWD.

I do not understand how this little waiting time is a barrier at all.

No, it does not lead to any barriers. How is 1D 10H an entry barrier to anything?

The psychological difference of "an hour before I can even bother" vs "In just an hour I'll be even BETTER" is enormous when you are first experiencing a game.

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Q: 'Attributes aren't very interesting, you should remove them'
A: Again, we agree. Team Size Matters discussed removing them on the o7 show (or some other public venue) awhile back and it's still something we are very interested in. We need to figure out a good way to handle all the learning implants in the game though, which is actually a difficult problem. If any of you have awesome ideas for how to handle it don't hesitate to make suggestions.
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o/

Most "must have skills" take a few minutes to train so they are barely a barrier. I will admit that I started playing when choosing a race and bloodline gave you more then it currently does and that was great. Why not go back to a choice of "What do you want to do in Eve" when characters start?

If new players had some choices and were given skills based on those then there's no waiting and their initial attributes can be set based on those choices.

Imagine starting the game and being able to fly a Venture right away. Then you toss the character in a fitted Venture out in an asteroid belt and lead them through the mining tutorial. Barrier done, they can play right away.

Same goes for PVP or PVE, give them basic skills to ewar, guns, mwd, and other mods and let them use it right away. Fun from the first login.

They'll need to skill to get better but they right away see how to do what they chose to in Eve.

They don't even know that "fast tackle" is, they can't even keep track of the ranges and functionality differences of the mods required for tackle.

You nail it (accidentally) here.

They don't know what it is, they don't know they need the mods.

Until they do need it. And 99% of the time as a newbie that is because they want to do something NOW, but cant. Because prerequisites they didn't know about stand in the way of basic T1 mods.

So they can't do what they wanted.

This is NOT how you treat new blood, not if you want them hooked.

That's exactly how I felt when I first started EVE. Everything I wanted to do, took at least 3 or 4 hours of sitting at the dock, waiting for me to be able to fit the modules. I didn't like it, and so I quit.

[quote=afkalt][quote=Rivr Luzade]
Then, couple years later, I started reading about EVE. Visiting Reddit, reading forums and so on. I actually returned back just a couple months ago, and I had like 800k SP. Now I've been making steady progress, since with those 800k SP I put on queue when I last logged in (before I quit), I could actually do some ratting and mining (I was useless in PVP).

No, it does not lead to any barriers. How is 1D 10H an entry barrier to anything?