The lowdown on EVE Online's New Player Experience
by James Egan 
Feb 18th 2009 at 3:00PM
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Expansions, Game mechanics, Professions, News items, Races
Among all the massively multiplayer online games out there, with their respective learning curves, EVE Online perhaps has the deserved reputation for being the hardest MMO to get a grasp of. Much of that confusion is because the game itself is such a departure from your standard fantasy MMO, in almost every respect: open world/single server, PvP can happen everywhere, a harsh setting, and a UI that's a far cry from anything a player has seen in World of Warcraft.
The EVE in-game tutorial has been revamped a few times in order to make it easier for new players to get a handle on things. What is currently offered is a noticeable improvement over the tutorial of a few years ago, but CCP Games is in the process of completely reworking a player's first steps into the game's setting of New Eden. EVE Online developer CCP Fear's latest blog is, in his words, required reading for anyone interested in the game, new player or not. He says, "I want to get one misconception out of the way. This blog *will* concern you and everyone else. If you have played for a year, 6 years, 3 months or a week, you will want to read further than this. Chances are there will be changes that will affect you!"
EVE's New Player Experience (NPE) is arriving with next month's Apocrypha expansion. It's all about easing new players into the game, rather than having them make choices about character creation up front, when they don't know what they're doing. Eliminating those initial choices allows the rookie to focus on how to play the game, via an improved tutorial that slowly guides them through the possibilities. CCP Fear says, "For Apocrypha, we simplified this process. We eliminated choices that had no effect on you whatsoever and moved these choices to a more appropriate time where you could make an informed decision. You are in charge of your destiny."
A noticeable change is the reduction in skill points a player starts out with -- as some of the skills a player begins with in EVE are either not of use to them (at first) or are typically misunderstood. Once the NPE begins with the Apocrypha expansion, rookies will only receive about 50k skillpoints, as opposed to the 800k they begin with now. However, the idea isn't to impose limitations on a new player, but rather allow them to choose the path that best suits their playstyle as they discover it.
(As an aside here, a number of the dev blog's readers have pointed out that -- unless new players are able to earn skillpoints at an increased rate in the beginning -- a new player will find it difficult to do what most of us could do from day one with our 800k skillpoints. However, it's also worth mentioning that the game's older players began with far less than 800k skillpoints as well.)
The ability to alter your attributes is something new to EVE, as many of us made some choices with their attributes that were... a bit sub-optimal, let's say. Anyone who's played EVE for a while is well aware of the fact that the attribute choices you made at character creation directly impact your skill training times in certain areas, and many lament ever boosting Charisma at all.
CCP Fear says, "A new player will have the opportunity to respec his attributes twice. This allows a new player to change previous decisions they made resulting from not knowing the system. Once a year you -- and everyone else -- can take 14 attribute points, and re-arrange them within reason. Attributes can be set at values anywhere from 5 to 15. This means, that every year, you can take all your spare charisma points and put them into perception if you so please. Or the other way around."
As EVE Online is a game where players aren't locked into a given class, career, or profession, its present character creation system doesn't really reflect this. Not having to make some of these choices right off the bat means players won't pay the price for being ill-informed in the beginning as, let's face it, most of us are in the beginning. These changes allow for more dynamic way to play your character over time. For instance, it'll now be perfectly viable to start out as a mining/industry character and later move on to being a dedicated combat pilot.
The missions available to new players will teach them the basics of particular career paths. Each career will have 10 missions designed to show new players the ways that New Eden's pilots make their way through the game, be it industry, business, or military pursuits.
All of these changes are explained in greater detail in CCP Fear's dev blog "Your Revamped Rookie" and, as he said, it's definitely worth a read. The other devs have more blogs on the way that will provide more details on the New Player Experience in Apocrypha. They're also providing some clarifications in the related forum thread -- note that it's been confirmed that existing players can now only re-spec their attributes once per year, free of charge. You can see the thread for more on how EVE is changing in ways that affect existing players.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Holgar said on 5:21PM 2-18-2009
Ya the learning curve is well portrayed on that graph I gotta say...........
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danarchy said on 6:36PM 2-18-2009
Tried it...twice. Figured there had to be a reason for the rabid fanbase. What i found was i am either too stupid to figure the game out or it was intended for guys who can spend 11 hours a day reading guides and instructions and 3 playing.
Also the other players were not exactly gentle on the noobie, in fact it seemed as if they were all floating around out there just waiting for me to get where they could murderlate. I mean I have played on pvp servers for years and I accept being ganked but good lord this game turns it into a art form. Im starting to wonder if theres a geek teh newb achievment in the game or something
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ArsenalOfCharm said on 1:12AM 2-19-2009
There is, it gives you CCP haxxorz.
I like this new setup CCP is trying to pull. 50k Points so you can "create your own destiny" more like "so we can squeeze an extra month out of you. Reducing initial starting skill points is just going to hurt a noob rather than help him a lack of SP sets him either farther behind the curve. And now we won't be able to have lab rats out of the box... I find it in bad taste that CCP continually tries to suck its user base for every penny.
[/tinfoilhatrant]
xtrmlybad said on 1:42AM 2-19-2009
I agree. I understand how they want to approach newbies this time around, but 750k less skill points? Holy god, that's indeed a one month and half for a new player of training!
That being said, I like the idea of respeccing my character since it has pretty uneven attributes.
I trust thee CCP.
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-Drexel- said on 6:07AM 2-19-2009
Yikes! 750k less skill points at the start...isn't that completely backwards from what they should be doing? In a game were skill training occurs in real time which, obviously continues to move forward, they are only setting a new player back a month or more.
IMO they need to start new players with learnings 3+, advanced learnings 3+ and then let them allocate the 750k after an introduction period so they can make informed decisions. New players need to catch up not fall further behind.
This also has a big negative effect on alt creation. Currently you can create a pretty decent mining, trading or hauling character and within a week or so of training have them able to do that task pretty well...now alts will be months of training time off your main account...smells like squeezing blood out of the turnip to me, this only encourages more alt accounts or longer activations of existing accounts while adding nothing to the overall gaming experience as part of the new mechanic.
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Duffy said on 9:14AM 2-19-2009
I disagree with the player's somewhat.
I with CCP's logic behind changing character creation, it's far too complicated if you are a new to the game. A bunch of information that you don't understand is thrown at you and your choices could effect months of playtime. Hell, it took me two free trials and then my first time subscribing before I sorta figured out how to create an optimal character. (And even now mine is a bit more spread out then I probably would do now that I know better)
However, I agree with the sentiment that knocking the skill points down is a hindrance to new players. They should revamp this idea or come up with a better way to do "general starting skills", instead of just removing them.
It appears they got about 50% of the idea right, hopefully they work out the other half.
Lateris said on 9:33AM 2-19-2009
I was lucky to be part of a corp that educated me as I started years ago as my guild left SWG for Eve Online. But most are not as lucky. While others will research every detail some will just not do this for multiple reasons. I think a lot of the changes for the new player experience are helping new players. Eve is just a scientific monster that I dearly love.
I do agree with CCP's choice.
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kaskait said on 10:25AM 2-19-2009
I tried EO and still have an account even though I don't play that often.
But the learning curve is/was ridiculous. However I enjoyed the character creation at the beginning. And being pushed into the game after one PVE mission wasn't that bad.
But what killed me was the real time training sessions and plus I didn't know what training specs to take. It was a lot of research.
So I tried to ignore everything and spent my time tooling around in my ship, taking tourist screenshots.
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Inscrutibob said on 11:51AM 2-19-2009
Can we get an attribution on the cartoon please?
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James Egan said on 4:08PM 2-19-2009
@ Inscrutibob -- I wish I knew. The image has been floating around for years. If anyone is aware of where it originally appeared, please let us know. I'd be happy to give an image credit and link to the source.
ArsenalOfCharm said on 1:39PM 2-19-2009
Well there are core skills that every player is going to need, and they could give lvl 4 on some of these: Electronics, Weapon Upgrades, Engineering, Energy Grid Upgrades, and any of the learning skills. A 750k cut in starting SP isn't "So younger players are less confused" it's so CCP can nail an extra month out of them. It'll be interesting to see what new players can actually do with that low of SP. You may actually be able to do so very little that new players get bored and don't play the game. If anything in character creation CCP needs to stress two points heavily, first do the tutorial, second JOIN A CORP ASAP. Not joining a corp is probably the biggest mistake new players make only seconded by joining a crappy corp and not immediately moving when they aren't happy. It took my friend who recently started playing 3 corps till he found a home he was happy with.
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Pirate Penguin said on 1:56PM 2-19-2009
I thought I read somewhere that they were going to compensate for the lack of starting skills by speeding up the rate of skill gain for the first motnh or something?
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UltimateQ said on 3:35PM 2-19-2009
I can relate to that picture. Nothing against eve at all, I enjoy reading the news, and I wish I could get into it, but... I just can't! I'm one of those little guys who hung himself at the top of the curve.
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Bertie said on 11:20PM 2-19-2009
The SP will be double speed until 1.6 million.
Agree also with those who want either to ditch the Learning skills altogether or at minimum give new players 4/3 right off the bat. The new system is only going to _increase_ the pressure to train Learning right away -- in order to min-max it right, you're going to want to use all 1.6 million of those points on Learning.
Like also that they are reducing the inbalances in the starting stats; those who want to play a non-Caldari should be able to do so without feeling that they are gimping themselves.
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