Thursday, January 12, 2012

The Current Sad State of EVE-Online Noob PvP Training - Part 2

Fortunately for EVE there is a large player community that tries to help out. There are three so called 'Universities' that attempt to teach PvP to new players in a structured manner. These organizations are filled with volunteers who put enormous effort into helping teach new players how to PvP in EVE.

Some large Alliances (Goonswarm and Test come to mind) will accept new players if they meet certain out of game requirements and try to mold them into cannon fodder for their FCs. IMHO being cannon fodder (another alpha Maelstrom) is hardly PvP.

As for the other smaller corps that are spamming the recruitment channel or otherwise talking to new players promising PvP training, it is very much hit or miss. Some will provide a helping hand, others fail to do so. Some are even just out to scam. I would be surprised if evem 10% of noob recruits end up finding real help. The rest just get frustrated and quit the game.

That really leaves the three PvP universities as the only reliable hope for organized PvP training. To look at these options I created a new trial account with the 60-day key given out by CCP and tried to see how well these would work. I 'pretended' to be a noob knowing absolutely nothing (note: I used to be in Agony so didn't try there, went off memory). I will talk about this on my next post. The main question I wanted to know was... Was it possible for a new player to have a positive PvP training experience within the 14-day trial?

2 comments:

  1. I eagerly wait the results of your experiment. When I joined, I was one of the 10% that found an extremely helpful, family-like corp via the recruitment section of the forums. Great group - I don't fly with them anymore, but still talk to them daily, and would highly recommend them to any new player.

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  2. I have landed in the 90% over and over again. It's the part of EVE that I constantly forget about. Most corps I've been in have usually been 3-5 people that have been e-friends for years that wanted to fill out their fleet roster so they could do bigger/better stuff (i.e. they needed a Logi/Hulk/Hauler/CovOps Bitch to help them get more ISK/KillMails). Then there are the 3-5 buddies that build an entire missioning corp around them so they can PVP with the tax revenue. Or the 3-5 buddies that start a Worm-Hole corp so they can steal everyone's T3s a few months after their "recruitment drive." That was fun... I'd go on, but you get the idea.

    I've quit before over this kind of stuff, but now I just solo or hang out with a RL friend I got hooked on the game. I might roll the corp-recruitment dice again sometime, but I'd have to be reasonably certain the corp wasn't fail from the outset.

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