Changed character creation?

[Setanta]

Maybe I missed something. I started an alt account to train up for hulks. Caldari -> Achura --> Inventor ... then no option to assign 5 points of go to Special Forces etc.

Did this change in the last patch? I know it was confusing setting up my main character a few months ago, but this has me more confused because it's EVE and it was... simple. Just add portrait and name and into the game you go.

Having said that, training speed seems faster then on my main - it's got me beat.

[Viin]

Yah it changed.

They reduced the starting SP but increased the speed (first 1mil or something like that goes twice as fast?).

[Phildo]

In 19 days I'm already at 1.4m SP on a new alt.  I really, really like the new skill changes.  It makes banging out learning take half the time!

[Endie]

Since it's free, I tried out the changes on a trial account. Over the fortnight, for a special purpose and with a main to play on, it is fine. But for a new player it sucks. Try starting a caldari character and being given a tough l1 combat mission when you can only use a bantam or heron and you have no missile skills at all. Sucks to be new.

[Fordel]

Since it's free, I tried out the changes on a trial account. Over the fortnight, for a special purpose and with a main to play on, it is fine. But for a new player it sucks. Try starting a caldari character and being given a tough l1 combat mission when you can only use a bantam or heron and you have no missile skills at all. Sucks to be new.

I did this too, but on a Gallente newbie instead. I got myself into a Incursus within a day or two I think, which is a huge problem. "Hey, try out our new game. Great your here, now wait another 3-12 hours until you can actually kill something, let alone kill it proper!"

[Sir T]

Eve is the worst game out there for new people by far. I had someone I was helping in eve uni quit, as I was suggesting basic modules to fit on his frig, and he raged he could not fit any of them, and he quit immediatly. I could not blame him.

People laugh at people that buy chars off ebay... but frankly those people are smart.

[Fordel]

The Tutorial information is a lot better, but at the same time it's a lot worse.


Every, single, fucking, icon I clicked brought up a 12+ step tutorial to read through.

[Numtini]

I bitched about this a bit earlier because I didn't know about the double training speed. If you tried Eve once upon a time, it's really opaque as to what is going on and why you're left with so few skills. I never saw anything about the training--maybe it tells you later in the tutorial or in some of the yadayada, but I never saw it. My reaction was just WTF no Frig IV?! Someone on the forums suggested it was to eliminate insta-ganker alts, but I'm not sure it really would do much other than put you back a few days.

One advantage is that from creating a few test characters everyone starts out almost entirely the same, so you can take whatever race your appearance and attitude most draw you to. As far as I can see, your only commitment is racial guns 1 and Frig 2 which is four hours of training. You get the same stat distribution for everyone (all 8s except cha 7) and a few free respecs.

The tutorial is pretty good for some of the basics (what is armor tanking, how do you know optimal range), but I'm not sure how quickly people would absorbe it. It certainly lobs skill books at you, but the tutorial went off the rails pretty fast for me. I created a Caldari and the tutorial missions hand you a missile ship without having given you any missile or rocket skills. I got a armor tanking demo and it forces me to equip the armor repairer and tells me to go turn it on after I get damaged, except at that point, I was rarely taking more than a single red box on the shield. A few times it told me to do things and gave me the skillbook, but of course it takes 20 minutes or whatever to train it. There are a couple of other times things were out of sync that I can't quite recall. But while the information is pretty good for raw newbies, its kind of a mess.

[kildorn]

The Tutorial information is a lot better, but at the same time it's a lot worse.


Every, single, fucking, icon I clicked brought up a 12+ step tutorial to read through.

It's funnier when you don't play for a month or two, and ALL THE FUCKING TUTORIALS COME BACK.

[Murgos]

I've been back for months and I still get tutorial pop-ups on screens I rarely use.  :-(

I think that with the change to the NPE CCP is tacitly admitting that actual new players are a marginal portion of their new accounts and they are trying to make life easier for people with alt-itis like Endie or Darius.

[Jayce]

I never got their reasoning.  The stated that this was intended to remove all the useless skills you get with your 800k sp newbie and let it be more focused.  Well here's an idea genius - remove the useless skills and replace them with useful ones instead of just removing them.

They could at least give you what's needed to go through the tutorial.  Just give the skill, not the book.  Or make them special insta-skill books.

I love the game, but lots of facets of it are really amateur hour.

[Thrawn]

I just love that cyno alts made after the patch can get by without ever having to upgrade their clone. 

[Sir T]

If I got my hands on eve code one of the may things I would change...

I would remove stupid engineering skills like

Engineering and electronics. I'd also remove the toughening stuff like hull upgrades or have it default to 4. I would also remove the learning skills and just have you set your attributes the way you want at the start. Those are silly timesink skills that you have to train at some point but they are the ones that really ensure that a newbie is at a terrible disadvantage from the get go. That means that someone could get into a ship that is not make of tissue paper and you cant fit a thing to it because it does not have the power and grid of a Standard Ship. The power and toughness of a ship should be standard to be fair. Your attributes should be standard. To get them up to spec takes months and it simply should not ever.

[Azuredream]

If I got my hands on eve code one of the may things I would change...

I would remove stupid engineering skills like

Engineering and electronics. I'd also remove the toughening stuff like hull upgrades or have it default to 4. I would also remove the learning skills and just have you set your attributes the way you want at the start. Those are silly timesink skills that you have to train at some point but they are the ones that really ensure that a newbie is at a terrible disadvantage from the get go. That means that someone could get into a ship that is not make of tissue paper and you cant fit a thing to it because it does not have the power and grid of a Standard Ship. The power and toughness of a ship should be standard to be fair. Your attributes should be standard. To get them up to spec takes months and it simply should not ever.

I don't think anyone (sane) would shed a tear if the learning section was deleted and granted the points to everyone. Given they still keep adding stuff in expansions that has nothing to do with improving what people are actually doing in the game, I don't think I'll hold my breath.

[Setanta]

I like the way I could get my alt into a Badger II with hull extenders ASAP. My main is a bit all over the shop - into a Raven for now but with some mining skills and wanting to head into Cov-Ops territory. It's easy to mine hard and toss stuff into a can for the alt to store but damn which was my aim (skill training is killing me financially and the missions while good revenue are boring).

But I'd hate to be more of a newb than I was a few months ago - I can understand people getting pissed off and not making it past the first few days. One of my mates was watching me skill-plan into a Widow - 90 days... he shook his head in disbelief when I told him I had 2 months invested in the char already. WoW player sure, but the reality is that as people get tired of WoW, they migrate to other MMOs - WoW was my first, followed by WAR and then EVE.

WAR is dead for me (uninstalled/unsubscribed), WoW is boring; 90% Naxx 25 gear in less than 10 runs and WTF else is there to do? Achievements? LOL! EVE is ... interesting to experience (as opposed to play). I would have thought that the devs would have liked new blood into the game and accelerated learning even more to get them into semi-geared cruisers minimum without confusing them with learning etc. Second time around I understood EVEMon well enough to use the suggestion button to cut a day off training by training a lot more learning skills - try explaining that to a newb WoW player. I never had that knowledge on my first char - I wish I had.

Eve has so much to offer- it is complex in its simplicity and that's what makes it interesting. But it took me two months of training to work that out before I realised how the game is fun. CCP need to fix that - seriously.

[Azuredream]

WoW is boring; 90% Naxx 25 gear in less than 10 runs and WTF else is there to do? Achievements? LOL!

Achievements kept me subscribed for a good three months longer than the raiding treadmill did.

[Jayce]

Eve has so much to offer- it is complex in its simplicity and that's what makes it interesting. But it took me two months of training to work that out before I realised how the game is fun. CCP need to fix that - seriously.

The newbie experience if you aren't joining an established entity or mass-joining with 100 of your closest friends is (wait for it):




There is none.


And I agree that if they want to keep growing they should consider that.  Some sort of conduit toward faction warfare would be a good way to get people involved in the fun stuff fairly quickly.

A newbie in Goonswarm, for example, is treated well, valued, given frigates to lose, a role to play, and a bunch of up-to-date information about the game.  A newbie with just little old f13 (from my experience), pre-GS, was given cash and a bunch of :words: to read here and a channel to join for advice (f13 newbies still get this even if you look too spy-like to get in the corp proper).  If you aren't joining a group like that, forget it - you'll be confused and uninstall in a week, unless you are a particularly persistent sort of monkey.

[Pennilenko]

Eve has so much to offer- it is complex in its simplicity and that's what makes it interesting. But it took me two months of training to work that out before I realised how the game is fun. CCP need to fix that - seriously.

The newbie experience if you aren't joining an established entity or mass-joining with 100 of your closest friends is (wait for it):




There is none.


And I agree that if they want to keep growing they should consider that.  Some sort of conduit toward faction warfare would be a good way to get people involved in the fun stuff fairly quickly.

A newbie in Goonswarm, for example, is treated well, valued, given frigates to lose, a role to play, and a bunch of up-to-date information about the game.  A newbie with just little old f13 (from my experience), pre-GS, was given cash and a bunch of :words: to read here and a channel to join for advice (f13 newbies still get this even if you look too spy-like to get in the corp proper).  If you aren't joining a group like that, forget it - you'll be confused and uninstall in a week, unless you are a particularly persistent sort of monkey.

I almost quit until F13 came to my rescue.

[amiable]

EvE is like Judaism in that its managment actively discourages new members from joining.

[tazelbain]

No tutorial in the world is going change that fact established corps distrust newbies for fear of them being spies.

[Amarr HM]

How long does the 100% training last for or how many SP before it goes back to normal?

[schild]

EvE is like Judaism in that its managment actively discourages new members from joining.

Hey now, depends on the denomination. Orthodox or Conservative, sure you're right. Reconstructionist, Reform, or Humanist? It's so easy to join.

[Phildo]

All you have to do is say Tarvu's Prayer!

[Amarr HM]

How long does the 100% training last for or how many SP before it goes back to normal?

Anyone know?   

[Thrawn]

Anyone know?   

It was between 1-2m I think. 

[Amarr HM]

If it lasts up to 2m then newbies are fucking laughing. They have a skill queue which most of us didn't have, double speed learning skills, which means you get to your peak learning a lot quicker and finally they don't start with any baggage.

[Cadaverine]

It only lasts up to 1 million.  Still gets most of the learning skills out of the way pretty quickly.

[Fordel]

It lasts till 1.6 or whatever, BUT the double training speed doesn't go away until the last skill you start up finishes. So you can cheese it and train up BS 5 twice as fast if you max it out. Or whatever, etc.

[Phildo]

No shit?  I finished a skill at like 1.62m SP... god dammit.

[eldaec]

I think dying also breaks the spell, so does pausing for a clone jump or plugging in an implant. 

Basically you need to keep EVE distracted from anything that might change your attributes or otherwise cause it to glance at your skill training and realise 'MY GOD! YOU'RE TRAINING AT DOUBLE SPEED!'.

[Setanta]

The speed is fantastic. I decided to grab another two accounts, one to train up a dedicated miner and the other as a dedicated frigate runner. Why 2? Because my main was my first char and has 4mill SP all over the place and I'm playing catch up with all the upgrades etc.

Main: Analytical mind at 5, rest at 4 with +4 implants in
Learning speed: 2009 SP/hour
Alts: mostly 3-4 in the base learning skills
Learning speed: 3499 SP/hour with +3 implants on each

The speed is an awesome boost.

One is going straight to hulk, sort out mining skills and move her to one of the other accounts when she does what I want of her (mine/haul), the other trained into basic PvE rifter but is now training all learning skills as close to 5 as I can before it runs out as I haven't mapped out the path for her yet - probably focusing her on Frigates/Assault frigs only because I find them fun and training the main backwards is counter productive when I should be consolidating the Upgrades V.

[Pax]

It lasts till 1.6 or whatever, BUT the double training speed doesn't go away until the last skill you start up finishes. So you can cheese it and train up BS 5 twice as fast if you max it out. Or whatever, etc.

It was nice while it lasted.

A change has been made to the client and server skill point gain calculations for rookie pilots below the 1.6 million skill point threshold. Skill point increase per minute is now based on the total skill points you will have after completing the skill, instead of your total skill points. This effectively means that skill point gain will be calculated properly when crossing a bonus boundary. This means that adding a skill, which has 756,000 skill points when you are on the threshold (i.e. 1,590.000), will not benefit from the double skill training bonus and will be trained at normal speed.

[Setanta]

Damn, I was holding off on mining barge V for the overlap - looks like I need to do it now (20 days)

[Numtini]

Having just passed the 1.6m barrier on my baby pirate, I have to say it comes down like the headsman's axe. At about 1.5 I ran out of the easy 1x level I-IV skills and needed to do the Vs and then the second tiers. So while training time only doubled, I went from a couple of skills a day to a couple of skills a week and it felt like it quadrupled or more. I'm in a great corp with a RL friend and for the first time ever, having fun in the game, but I can't really think this is going to be good for players who are trying out Eve for the first time.

[Amarr HM]

but I can't really think this is going to be good for players who are trying out Eve for the first time.

You are basically given 800k sp of your choosing for nothing and a skill queue, newbies never had it so good.