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Review: Good for vets, -horrible- for new players.
Zojjj
Member Posts: 4
Thinking of trying the free trial? Here is my experience. Spend 10 minutes reading this and you might save yourself 20 hours of frustration. 
So I got the free trial going, after downloading the 500mb file 4 times cuz it kept saying it was corrupted.
I installed it, set up an account, and started a charcater. The character screen is pretty damn cool, you can morph the face into any 3d shape you like. Then I went through 10 pages of stats that meant nothing to me. I'm sure in the game they make lots of difference, but I couldn't figure out which was better for what.
So I get into the game and see kind of how it works, you have an escape pod that your body is wired into, and you install your pod into your ship to run it.
I did the tutorial, which took me 3 hours to finish! It taught me how to travel and to fight and to mine, to buy equipment, etc. I make it sound really simple here. The tutorial throws one function after another at you, your asset vault, the market history, the star map, the email system, 2% of the skill system, it went on forever. It had an annoying bug that when I pushed the Back button to read again what the tutorial said, it made me physically repeat all the steps again to continue the tutorial.
Another bug with the tutorial is that it doesn't tell you that your rookie gun you get at the start stops working after a while. I spent an hour trying to figure out why my gun wouldnt blow anything up. A new gun fixed the problem.
Each step in the tutorial took a minute or 3, as everything action takes about 30 seconds to do. Undocking from a station takes 30 seconds. Travelling to a warpgate takes 30 seconds. Warping to another star takes 30 seconds. Exiting a station by accident and trying to re-enter a station takes a minute, as it takes 30 more seconds to get re-entry permission. Forgetting to move an item from your hangar to your cargo hold cost me 20 minutes a couple times, very frustrating. You don't automatically get any items you buy, they go into a hangar somewhere, and you have to move the icon for the item into your ship's cargo hold to move it around. Makes sense, but this should be automatic.
So after 3 hours of tutorials, I was finally ready to start "playing". The first missions the game gave me were to deliver cargo from different parts of the galaxy. 4 missions took me about two hours. My actions to complete each mission:
1. Move the cargo from my hangar to my cargo bay
2. Find the place where I was supposed to take it and set it to my destination
3. Hit the Autopilot button
4. Wait 10 minutes while my ship travelled
5. Deliver the cargo.
6. Hit the Autopilot button
7. Wait 10 minutes again
8. Collect 10000 credits
When I say wait I mean "lie down on your bed for 10 minutes and do nothing" cuz thats what you do.
So I did this a few times, hoping that the next mission would be more interesting. Then I found out that the "agent" that was assigning me the missions was a certain type, and ALL of her missions were more or less the same. Screw that, I wanted to blow some shit up.
So I hunted around, trying to find bad guys like in the tutorial. No luck. "HEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!" in the help channel, they said "F10 scroll to agents" I spent 10 minutes figuring that out. He meant "go to the star map, set the map filter to availiable agents, and then look around the map for a close star that has a Security Agent, he will give you a fun mission" I found an agent, level 1 quality 18 whatever that means, and went there. I got to his base, accepted a mission that he made out to be very simple, and went to go fight some evil pirate drones. I get to the location, look at the specs of the enemy ship "very low threat" Oh good, perfect for a noob like me. So I start fighting; I can barely dent the enemy. I fled back to a base, bought the best guns I could, the best ammunition I could. Luckily I had invested 2 hours of "skill training" into level 2 guns, otherwise I would have had to wait 2 hours to be able to use my new guns. Level 3 guns took 10 hours of training... So I warp back to where the bad guys were, only it was a different place that I went to by accident. I see an enemy there, so I went to try out my new uber guns, killed them both in 1 hit. Wasn't sure if it was me or someone else, as I didn't see any reward for killing them. I then went to fight the original "very low threat" bad guys from before, where I still was unable to scratch one of the ships.
So i re-read the mission, it said that I had to destroy some silo, not any ships. Cool, maybe the ships are indestructable and the silo is dead in 1 hit? I flew over to it, when I got within locking range BOOM something blew me up.
That was the last straw for me, having a "very low threat" ship annihilating me on a "noob quest". I think it was a more advanced quest, although completely unlabeled. In the chat "useless game. thanks for trying to help guys". "to each his own" someone replied. I quit.
Ater all of that, it made perfect sense to me. The developers have been developing the game for their existing subscribers, making the game jam pack full of features and quests and items to keep them interested. In the course of that development, they forgot about new players. My options were to either invest another 20 or 30 hours to learn the game enough to be able to play it, or say fuck it and find something better. As I didn't see the game as that fun in the first place, I chose option 2.
Comments
It's true the game is way more developed for people who have 6+ months worth of SP. Sounds to me though that you didn't even give the game an entire day, and you did 1 mission where you didn't even bother to read the instructions correctly. You could have mined or did more courier quests to get the money for a better frigate, you were still in the noob frigate if I'm not mistaken, which people tend to get out of within like 2-3 hours after finishing the tutorial, hell I was in a cruiser on my 3rd day playing. You could have also joined a player corp, they usaully give out "Starter Funds" to new players. You can also patrol astroid belts in .8 or .7 space, they spawn really easy NPCs, my drone could solo one. Agents are very easy to find, you go to your character info, you find a faction you have good standings with, you right click on that faction and select owner info, go to agents tab and there you go a whole list of every agent for that faction. As for me, I am 2 months old, I just got into an Apocalypse Battleship.
Would YOU give any merit to a review from a guy who spent 4 or 5 hours playtime with the game? I know I wouldn't.
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MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
Im not a eve fanbois
Daoc is more my thing but that post was funny as hell. Dunno why, just cracked me up.
ty
Maybe I got lucky, but I didn't have any of these issues when I started out a month ago. Of course, I did choose a skill set in character creation that gave me some starting combat skills. Other than buying a slightly stronger gun for my ship, I didn't make any mods starting out. My first combat mission went just fine.
After finishing the storyline missions (which didn't take too long, though it may have been a few hours), and selling or reprocessing things I couldn't use, I already had 1,000,000 ISK by day two or three. I think that may have been a little faster than average for a complete newbie, but just throwing my experience out there.
You sound like you enjoy combat, so perhaps starting with a combat-oriented character and/or training combat skills for a little while would improve your experience if you ever give it another chance.
For the record, the reason items don't move into your cargo automatically is that you can buy from other stations when you make a purchase and the local and regional economies would be pointless if something 5 systems away just magically appeared in your cargo. Also, sometimes the purchases aren't intended for hauling (ie. fittings for ships, skills, implants, almost everything you'd buy, etc.), so it would be a bit annoying to have to remove them from your cargo everytime you bought something at your current station. If you don't want to travel, set your search to the local system only - the furthest you'll have to travel is a few AU.
Thanks for the replies. I put 15-20 hours into it, though this is nothing compared to you vets. Like the dood said, to each his own.
I would axe 75% of the features for the first week of play to help noobs like me out.
3 days would be possible skill-wise if you started with the right ones. Even starting from scratch, Caldari Cruisers IV would only take me 3 days, and the other skills would be done within a single day. So with no starting help, it'd be ~4 days. As far as funding, if you go it alone, you could probably afford a cheap Osprey (~3 mil) if you're gung-ho about it. In my case, I joined a corp and got a slightly nicer cruiser as a welcoming gift. That was just after the 1 week mark.
As it is right now at the 1 month mark, I'd only have to train up Battecruisers I to have the skills to pilot a BC. I don't have the funding, but if I were really set on being in a BC by next week, I think I could raise the rest of the cost, so 2 months is by no means unreasonable.
It just depends on where you focus your skills. I started my learning skills after I hit training times of over 1 day, and got them all up to 4 for starters (which is pretty quick). I'd suggest taking them up further than that, but I took a short break at that point to grab some useful skills. The first 4 levels of each learning skill can chop several, several days off the training time of higher level skills.
EDIT: Sorry, I'm blind. Battleship, not battlecruiser. Anyway, I am two skill trainings away from a Caldari Battleship ability (which again, wouldn't take a huge amount of time - about 7 days total). The money on that's pretty high, so to get one by 2 months would involve some hardcore playing or a helpful player corp.
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MMOs Retired From: Earth and Beyond, Project Entropia, There, A Tale in the Desert, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, City of Heroes/Villains.
MMOs Currently (worth) Playing: None.
MMO hopefuls: Age of Conan.
I have to agree with the original poster. I tried the game 3 months back and it was very unfriendly towards newbs.
I didnt like the character creation. It looked extremely outdated but I suppose it didnt matter since you arent really playing a toon but rather a ship. A mistake in my opinion...how much better would the game be if you could just walk off your ship at some space dock for some drinks and to socialize.
I messed up near the beginning tutorial on how to move around and never could figure out how to restart it. I gave up trying to get the tutorial to show me again so just flew around totally lost. I tried asking for some help but that was useless.
The game definitely is in vet mode I'd say. Not that I blame their devs. At this stage in their game, its simply a matter of keeping their current players happy. They arent going to bring in waves of new players so why bother making the game easier for them. Overall though, I really wanted to like the game but I couldnt figure it out.
EVE Online is a different experience in a positive way for those who like the theme.
I went through little of what the original poster went through. Execpt the tutorial was easy, only the movement as well as map navigation took awhile. EVE has a steep learning curve, it always will. Once you get past it you'll face a rich experience (making binds for your way points so you can insta jump, planning out which ships you'll use, managing your characters).
The problem is it takes too long to get anything done. It was the first game I played in which I paid to not play. This is the reason I quit. I had to revolve my time around the game to get the most for my money (skills). I downloaded skill management software, using that I calculated it was two to three months before I could even put up a fight in 0.0 space. Around thirty dollars all in all before I could really have fun. (The developers introduced learning skills for new players, though it had an adverse effect.)
My suggestion to new players looking to get interested: Plan ahead. Plan what kind of characters you want along with the skills, ships you want to use, where you want to go and how long it'll take. It's a lot of work but to get the most out of this game you need to do this or else you'll find yourself sitting there in dock waiting for your skill to tick in. It's a different kind of fun, but it wasn't for me.
I hope one day they will introduce a way you can play to speed skill progression in some way, but this undermines the charm it has to the people who like it. I say kudos to them, look elsewhere for everyone else.
I fail to see how this game caters to veterans when it's actually EASIER for newbies now. They improved the tutorial by far and there are more opportunities for newbies to get up there through complexes and agent missions. I'll try to walk you through exactly what happened during your experience though.
I don't know what the problem was with the download but it's definitely not EVE's fault because it's worked fine for everyone else, including me on many occasions.
I never did the new tutorial myself so I don't know what it encompasses, but I do know that the things you mentioned are things that should definitely be covered if you want to learn how to play EVE. If anything, the length of the tutorial should show you just how in-depth the game can get.
As for that rookie gun, it wasn't broken. The optimal range on that gun is something around 750m, which means you pretty much have to be RIGHT next to the enemy to do any damage at all, and even then the damage is abysmal.
You don't have to wait for your ship to completely fly out from the station, you can just start warping to your target as soon as you get past a certain point, which is usually 2-3 seconds out of the station for most stations. As for travel times, EVE's travel times take a while but that's also why the universe feels so large and regions are localized. Besides, travel times exist in other games too so you can't exactly fault EVE for it. As for forgetting to move your items from your hangar to your ship, this is hardly EVE's fault, now is it?
The reason why the items you buy don't automatically come to you is because of how the economy works. Do you travel 9 jumps to pick up an item for cheaper, or do you travel 2 jumps for a more expensive item but save yourself a lot of travel time? Likewise, if you're selling ammo in a remote area, you can probably increase the price by quite a bit and people will still buy because the next closest place to get it is a few jumps out.
The reason why items in the hangar don't automatically go into your cargo hold is because you might have multiple items in the same hangar and you only want 1 of those items.
Your list of actions doesn't really sound any different than any other MMORPG. Here's my adapted version:
1. Talk to quest giver and receive item.
2. Find out where and who I'm supposed to deliver it to.
3. Run there.
4. Wait until I get there.
5. Talk to quest guy and give him the cargo.
6. Find out where my quest giver is.
7. Run back to him again.
8. Collect my reward.
You see how it's incredibly similar? I actually prefer EVE's system of autopilot because I can visit a webpage or do something else while my ship goes to its destination. This is compared to holding down the run key and moving around obstacles while looking at the same scenery over and over again in other MMORPGs. I'd rather be doing something else while my ship/character goes to the place of interest rather than endure the mundane run to get there.
The first agent you talked to was a tutorial agent. He/she would have given you missions that familiarizes you with the game and the final reward is a nice item that you can either use or sell for about 1 mil isk.
The help channel contains players from the game. Sometimes the help is good and sometimes it's bad, but you cannot blame EVE for the players not helping you out.
The security agent you talked to was of a rather high quality (quality 18) and being a straight up newbie, he/she would have given you missions out of your caliber. When you warped to the wrong place, it was probably an asteroid belt with very easy NPC pirates who are a piece of cake to kill, even with the civilian weapon you get at the beginning. However, the mission that your agent sent you to was a deadspace mission (since it asks you to destroy a silo), which are the instances of EVE. You said you fought pirate drones which tend to fly around 7-8 km away from your ship at high speeds. The weapons you were using probably had an optimal greater than that, hence why you could not hit them.
All in all, it seems as if you wanted a more arcade-style game that you can jump into right away and start playing without having to learn a bunch of things at once, hence why you didn't understand the combat system and got yourself killed. You also didn't seem to like long travel times, which is a big part of EVE because it makes the world so big that people are grouped by their individual regions. Traveling to a new neighborhood really does feel that way because you don't know the trade routes, pirated systems, etc... anymore. And just like what someone said in chat, to each his own, and EVE didn't seem to be your type of game.
I would also like to add that many people get the wrong impression that skills determine your character's advancement when in fact it does not. Think of skill training as more of research in that the longer you play, the more technology is available to you and the better you can use older technology. The meat of the game, though, is in the economic simulation and player interaction and what you DO rather than what your character sheet says.
I can't say much about travel times. That's the reason why I quit EVE 4 times, but ever since I started to run it in windowed mode and do other things while my ship warps around, I've found it quite enjoyable because I can go back to the game during the interesting parts and leave it running the background during the mundane parts. I believe this is a reasonable trade-off considering that I spent the majority of my time in traditional MMORPGs running back and forth between quest givers and only a small portion of that time killing mobs or doing something else.
Oh my ... again such a thread.
Well, first off, what has your problems with the tutorial/game to do to do with "vet friendly" or not? When I started to play about 18 months ago, the Tutorial was a joke, since it explained very little things, yet it never came to my mind to say that the game was oriented toward the older players because of that. It simply had a bad tutorial... period. Yet, even with that I managed to do everything I wanted, go everywhere I wanted. Either I figured it out myself or I somebody could help me. Nowadays new players have it a lot easier to get into the game and keep up with
And just for info. Did you check the values of your ship? Did you check the values (mainly range) of your gun? Did you try to find a reason why you didn't do damage? Can you imagine that it is not only necessarily the amount of damage that prevented you from dealing damage ot the npc drone?
I don't want to blame you for not understanding EVE in 20 hours - I still don't do it fully after all this time, yet what I blame you for is assuming all new players have the same "problems", and you need to "warn" them.
Try it again with a helpful group of players, and you will see the difference in playing EVE, or any other MMO for that matter. Don't try to blame the old characters for all the evil in the EVE universe, rather make use of them to help you get on your feet faster. The possibilities are there..... use them.
I had my girl-friend in a cruiser within 24 hours of her playing. In this case skills are not the problem, but cash is - and that can be arranged (in this case I gave the needed amount). Also, I was in a Battleship in about 4 weeks, and that in a time when it was a lot harder to get cash (no I did NOT mine for the ship).
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Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
It takes me 20 minutes of in-game tutorial , 2 more hours to join a good corp and get the best frigate afterward, now its 1 month and I can drive my cruiser well and got 40 mil ISK and keep saving to buy an Apoc on my own
And leave if u dont like it , EVE wasnt a game for any 1. I'd say this game req a lil ... mature
ZZZ
Well. Eve is a game that require both patience and the ability to figure things out (By yourself or with help). I'm a 1+ year vet and I would say ofcause ppl with more money then me have it easier. But then again I can steal their money.
I got my ship blown up once by a player that had only been playing for 2 months. He got some good loot from that, good for him. It's about if your ship is fitted to counter the fitting I have or not. That comes with experience and a good PvP corp's help.
Ofcause you will get a wiseass that answers sometimes when you ask for help. But if you ask the right person he might help you a very long way to enhance your gametime. I have personally help about 10+ noobs with alot of things such as Paying for their ships/skills, spending hours at end to learn them how to do combat and fit their ships, take them out mining to show them how to make it the most profitable. It can take hours even with help to learn just one of the aspects of the game cause you have so much freedom. You can do it anyway you want.
But the thing I really love with the game is the risk. You can lose 200 mil in 30 seconds but you can also get 200 mil in 30 seconds (ship droping loot). Every time I go in to PvP my heart starts to race. When I get in to a 1v1 with bad odds my hands shake. I love it, no other game can give me that experience. If I lose the ship? Who cares. It's the risk, the freedom and the community that makes this game the greatest game I have played. And what game doesn't have flaws.
I'd say if you're gonna try this game try it for the whole 14 days and get yourself some good help.
OO I got some nasty opposition
Funny that some of it comes from a guy who didn't do the tutorial.
About the file corruption: I downloaded twice, would not install cuz of "nsis error". Both downloads had the same checksum, so I figured the version eve had on the server was bad. I found some posts of other people that had the same problem, so I tried downloading an older client, it just hung on install for some reason. When I tried again 3 days later the download from the eve site worked.
About the rookie gun not working: Go into the rookie help chat for an hour and watch how many people are asking why they can't hurt the noob pirate ships with their civilian auto cannon. Everyone's 1st suggestion was that they were out of range, which I nor they were. Its a bug, or maybe a feature that they forgot to tell us about.
About questing: I've played EQ, WoW, AC, EaB, and a couple others. Yes the ideas are pretty much the same, only I don't ever remember waiting for 10 minutes while travelling. There was always something to do. EaB had some waiting, but not near as much. Enemies were always popping accross the screen.
No where did I say the game sucks. I'm saying that in order to have any fun you have to invest 30 hours into the game to decide if you like it or not. This might be intentional, to keep out annoying little 11 year olds. It keeps out just as many good gamers.
Hmm Im two weeks old or close to that and I have 2 cruisers, 2 frigates, a destroyer and an Industrial ship. none of them are set up for battle but I can fly them all. right now I spend most of my time mining. hence all the ships as Im experiemtning on the fastest miner I can set up atm.
I started at Frig 4... from there its cake. I also have all my learning skills at 4. I can make a few mil every evening Jet Can mining. (Omen mining Bestower picking it up)
I should state my brother bought me one cruiser and my corp gave me the other.
Also I had a friend experience the newbie gun bug. It shoots but it doesnt hit anything...
What sets this game apart from others is: No grind and for the most part I have found the player community to be great!
Only 1 small part of your post was about the tutorial. I don't see how it's 'funny' in any way.
We can't join rookie help after a certain amount of time has passed since account creation.
There was something to do while traveling? You mean holding forward and running past mobs that you don't want to fight anyway? Sure, something -might- happen, but from my experience that happens very very little. If you really enjoy running around that much though, more power to you. I know I'd rather do something else than run around hoping something interesting will happen.
I still stand by what I say. You did not take the time to learn the combat system and went in unprepared and got yourself killed. EVE isn't your typical 'click on mob and hit it repeatedly until dead' type of game and because you approached it with that mindset, it got you killed.
The game does actually have a grind, to get you status up with factions you have to run missions and they are a grind or if your just doing missions for money. Another grind that I find harder than other games is the mental one of clicking a button and my character can not advance any more for 5 weeks or so until it gets through training leaving my character stagnated.
As far as the vet thing I think you can compete with a vet as far as mining in a couple of months, thats about how long it would take you to get into a large mining barge. PVP would take you several months to compete with a vet due to all the skills you would need to train, tech 2 equpt, assault ships, hacs that would be 1v1, however you could get in a group and help out.
The community is great except for those few american bashers.
I recently signed up for EVE...again.
I checked it out a long time ago, but not for very long. I decided to give it a serious shot with the 14 day trial.
I am not sure I agree with the original poster, but I can say you have to want to play this type of game to be interested in this type of game. Most of the things stated were very similar to any other MMO, other than this is in space and looks much more vast.
The tutorial was cake for me and didn't seem to take long at all. I do have a problem with the tutorial cranking up every time I run EVE on a new computer or make a new character, but that really doesn't bother me too much.
I had a corrupt file issue with the EVE installer on my first download. I defragged my hard-drive and then I downloaded it again and everything was fine.
After playing for 2 weeks, taking a month off and then starting up again, I now have about 4 ships including a Destroyer, a mining frigate, a combat frigate and the n00b ship. I opted for the destroyer to help protect the miners in my corporation. I am in a small corporation of friends, but we are still able to get money together in order to have fun and build.
Because of what I do, I have a huge amount of patience for installing, learning and playing new games. Eve is really an outstanding game with an unusual and sometimes unexplainable hook that keeps me coming back night after night. The game is a lot about politics and making money. You can make a name for yourself as a pirate, ore thief, merchant, or owner. Believe me, when you make a name of yourself as a pirate, everyone will know quickly. Ore thieves are hated.
Anyway, I don't really agree this game is only vet friendly. As a matter of fact, the in game community was amazingly helpful and friendly to this newbie. I received a welcome pack of gear within an hour of me being in the game. The guy even met me halfway to give it to me.
Have fun out there!
Fadinaway
Playerbase Solutions
http://www.playerbasesolutions.com
Well, every game has its grind. The thing is I don't understand is why the original poster says the game is good for vets and bad for new players when CCP made it EASIER on new players by giving them a full-fledged tutorial and if you complete all 10 training agent missions, you get a nice implant which lowers training time, or if you so wish, sell it for about 1 mil isk. Also, there's tons of newbie training complexes that you can go to and kill mobs there easily and get some decent isk and maybe some good beginning loot too. I fail to see how that's harder than how it used to be, where all we got was a text-based tutorial that popped up in a box and was hella buggy and virtually nothing we could kill easily as a newbie.
I don't mind if you don't like EVE, I myself quit the game 4 times before out of boredom (but found myself coming back eventually). In the same line, I probably don't like whatever game you like. Every person has their reasons liking or disliking a game. What I don't like, however, is someone who enters the game and tries to kill something almost instantly and get pwned, then comes on here and makes a long rant post about how it was too hard on him because he didn't want to figure out the combat system.
I think its a happy medium for all - I know of no other game where a few new players in cruisers can attack and beat a vetran player in a battleship....
Its alot easier than it was for new players as isk is easier to make now.
well i'm on day 4 i have enough to buy a battleship and i already have a catalyst with full guns i don't really think that he's a strait up liar
I hope some day we can all put aside our racisms and prejudices and just laugh at people
i have to say it's alot n00b friendlier now than it was 3 or 4 months ago... i had a freetrial bakc then...i just crteated a new account and if you do have the time to read though teh entire tutorials or at least the flying part:)... you'll get teh game.... i'm on day 4 or 5 and i have 3 mil a cruiser and alot of friends in my corps... and judging by the amount of freetrialers that are playing right now i think they are pulling in a good amount of people....not disagreeing but thats my 2 cents
I hope some day we can all put aside our racisms and prejudices and just laugh at people
I thought the game was hella easy as a newb. Sure I lost a newb ship when I tried to tackle a mission that was too hard, but I dont remember quitting the game and posting a horrible review about it after that. Then later I lost a cruiser due to a low security gate camp, but I still dont remember crying about that one. I think it's great that the losses are real losses, instead of the typical "Oh I died and didn't lose anything, but I'm sick for 15 minutes" kind of deaths. I like being able to kill someone and know that they really liked that ship.
I think on some level this game is too "real" for most people.
Oh and on a sidenote, you probably couldn't hit those drones because you were too close and they were moving too fast. You should check out the Player Guide on www.eve-online.com. That should help you out.
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I live to fight, and fight to live.