Monday, January 9, 2012

The Current Sad State of EVE-Online Noob PvP Training - Part 1

One of the reasons that I started this blog was to provide a resource and some inspiration for new players to learn to PvP. At the time there seemed to be a dearth of PvP blogs. Wensley's Rifter Drifter being the best of the few regularly updated PvP blogs with useful information for new players. Since I started the situation has improved significantly. Azual's Blog, The FNG, Flight of Dragons, etc. are all great resources. However it is not really enough. EVE is a PvP game. Players start playing EVE primarily because they want to get involved in the great PvP game. Yes some players come to EVE to play WOW in space, but they are usually transitory and only stay if they are somehow connected to the great PvP game.

To that end it would be ideal if new players to EVE could get up to speed on how PvP works quickly and easily. It would be ideal if most new players withing the trial period get a chance to experience the heart-stopping thrill of the first PvP engagement and kill. Instead this is nearly impossible and it is getting worse (it is getting harder and harder for a T1 frigate to survive and kill anything). The military and advanced military tutorials are pretty much useless. They introduce how to click the weapons/ewar and fire at a target, and that is about it. New players have to navigate a bunch of complex, contradictory and needlessly confusing rules about who can attack whom and where. For example just think of the overview. Even the EVE developers don't seem to understand the rules as they often release features that are broken due to aggression rules. See Incursion.

The problem is that new players have 14 days to decide that EVE is the game for them. If they never experience a PvP engagement during that time where they understand what is happening, how exactly are they supposed to figure it out.

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