My Perfect EVE
This post will not be about FW, but it’s something I’ve been musing on for a while in regards to EVE as a whole.
On any given night when I log into the EVE, the online count remains somewhere between 25 and 35 thousand players. Though EVE boasts of having over 400 thousand paid accounts, I believe, I rarely see that many logged in.
So let’s go with thirty-five thousand. Once you do the math, about half of those are probably alts, which seems like a lot of players still….but I think we need more!
I think the biggest problem with retaining new players is that there’s nothing much for them to do in the beginning. Sure, we ask them to sit through hours of tutorials, and I would wager that we lose a lot of potential players because they don’t ever really experience EVE.
Simply put, they give up before they ever really get started.
What I would absolutely love to see in the game is something that is immediate, something I can show my friends and be like ‘this is EVE’, something that they can do right in that moment. Sure, I can tell them stories. And yes, I can show them vaguely what goes on but it’s rather complicated and most people don’t want to stick around for months waiting for the game to get good.
So in my ideal version of EVE, when you logged on, you’d have a choice. Continue onto the usual game, OR, you can click on…
Flight Simulator.
In roleplay terms, it would be something our characters would use while in the Academy, or even just something they would do for sport.
Flight sims would offer a drop down menu, and you could click on various styles of ships. Ewar, for instance. Once you enter into the simulation, you would have an unending supply of that particular ship. You undock, you go blow up other pilots who are in the simulator. Want to see what it’s like flying a battle cruiser? Well okay! You can start over, try another ship style. Etc.
New players would have a chance to try out EVE in all it’s glory without having to worry about loss. They would have something immediate to connect to, have a better understanding of what goes on in the game because they would be trying it out versus hearing about it or watching player-made youtube videos that I’m sure make little sense to them.
The simulator wouldn’t have any real impact on our EVE. It wouldn’t water down the ruthlessness of what we all know and love. It’d just show new players a glimpse of what awaits them in New Eden…
sovereigntywars.wordpress.com 
May 24, 2012 at 9:16 pm
Eve is very hard to get into. If I had not recieved a helping hand from a friend who knows if I would have made it past the free trial. The reason I do like Eve though is because it is hard. Almost very thing you do has repercussions. Most of them are expensive.
The heart of Eve for me and many other people is PVP. Besting another person or people by superior numbers or better tactics or just plan luck puts Eve on a whole other level than other games. Nothing I have played had the depth or consequences that I get to experience almost every time I undock.
Sadly most people who try Eve never to to experience that rush. Running a tutorial and some starter missions is great to learn your overview and the basic game mechanics but it does nothing to show a new player what Eve is.
I think a simulator would be very cool. Getting dropped in a pretend important internet spaceship to pew with other people in a mix of ships would be a blast. All pilots would have to have equal skill points and implants assigned of course and no kill mails of any kind.
I don’t see this breaking the game in anyway. If people want to practice PVP for free they can log onto Sisi. Why not make a place where noobs can try out some ships and get an idea of what they like to fly. Give them an idea of what Eve has to offer.
May 24, 2012 at 9:24 pm
yay sisi ^_^
May 24, 2012 at 10:18 pm
sorry for my bad english
boost of t1 frigates was a good idea because its may be the first shipclass for beginners pvp. after one two months you skill gives you 90+% of max attribute of this ship class. so pvp its possible without feeling thats enemy learning skills make its sensless for you to engadging targets.
May 25, 2012 at 3:34 am
I tend to think experience should be “paid for” in this game. So I am against a simulation. Isk is so much a part of this game that I wouldn’t want it to be taken out of the equation even for training purposes.
I learned the precious little I know about pvp, by white knuckling it with my real time/money hanging in the balance. I wouldn’t want someone else to get that same experience in the simulator with no risk at all. I wouldn’t want my own experience to be won that way either. Knowing people who are good got good under those sorts of pressure situations is one of the main reasons they get some respect. If they got good from a no cost simulator – well its not as impressive.
As far as showing new players what its like you do have a point. I mean are they going to sit there for an hour as you warp around looking for a fight? Eve needs to offer more pvp action faster but I think the simulator or even an arena (where your ships cost isk) is the sell out option.
My perfect eve would be in faction war. But one where as soon as I log on I am immediately notified of several different enemies and allies fighting in different plexes. From there I could constantly be throwing my own ships into the fray. So long as I could afford them. The comms would primarilly be people giving general intel of where others are and then eve voice would be used for the individual fights.
My ideal eve would involve a lot less “roaming” and “hunting” and a lot more fighting.
CCP is so close to making this a reality with fw. However some of the decisions they make seem so off course it doesn’t seem like a priority at all.
May 25, 2012 at 6:23 pm
I’ve heard this idea come up before and the first time around I was a little worried about how it would effect PvP, but after thinking about it would be a nice stepping stone for early PvPer’s. It benefits new players because they get that adrenilin rush early game that games like WOW do very well. And it gives CCP a new way to show new players how to fit for PvP, such as having preset fits for ships etc.
It wouldn’t be detrimental to most PvP because most players who PvP want something more from it. Pirates want money, FW want fights with meaning, 0.0 want to control, defend and take space and WH want to be in a WH (these are generalisations, don’t flame me). And there could be the ship restriction that the pilots couldn’t fly anything larger then a battleship (like how high sec gates work) so that if they really like PvP then they are going to have to explore more of the game to get into the bigger ships.
The most exciting thing about it for me is if it’s a “training simulation” then some of the scenarios could be major ones found in the recent history of EVE. Such as the Amarr getting pawned by the Jovians, the Minmatar freeing their people and the Caldari admiral attacking Galente Prime to give Caldari Prime more time to evacuate. I personally think it would be incredibly cool to actually fly through all of those! 😀
May 27, 2012 at 10:01 am
The issue with simulators, or combat where nothing is risked is that, nothing is risked. Some people will hog the simulator, get “great” at killing noobs, then your noob will just log into the sim get fried by a “pro”, same as if he’d jumped into a lowsec pirate gate camp…
Wow that was fun… not. Ctrl+Q.
Learning the mechanics of the game takes time, running a few missions where 20dps is the hardest thing you’ll face is better than jumping into a pvp sim, where you’d probably last a few seconds.
I personally think the starter professions should be brought back, where the first 800k of Skills were pre-selected for you. Or maybe restrict the rookie systems to characters sub 60days (or sp number), and include a lowsec/nullsec rookie area, where pvp could take place freely.
June 1, 2012 at 2:54 pm
what if instead of an entirely new “simulator” server CCP allowed skillpoints to be added to your sisi character directly, without a request to CCP. like give everyone 5 million skillpoints so you could test out different training options and new players could be exposed to some of the pvp aspects immediately.