When even Jester speaks out against ganking in EVE, we are probably facing a problem. When everyone tells EVE is too harsh on a new player, something is wrong. Not necessarily the way they think, but it's surely wrong some way.
I started exactly like the the newbie mentioned in the horror stories: no knowledge of the game and no friends, and pretty late, less than a year ago. Others known the game inside-out years before my character was created. They owned titans before I owned by first destroyer. According to the myth, I was set up for failure and only a miracle could save me. Instead of failure, I gained titanic wealth, I was not ganked once after the initial noob mistake of driving a Badger II to lowsec, I was not scammed and I experienced nullsec on my terms. And on top of that I got these so easily that I spent several blogposts whining how easy EVE is and how disappointed I am because of that.
Let me recite my motto: I do not believe in personal awesomeness. I'm a solid believer is that whatever I do can be repeated by an average person. Every time we see someone doing something unbelievable, we don't face an extraordinary man, we face an average guy using some knowledge we do not own yet. When we face a large group of people failing in something where we don't, we see equal people who are poisoned by some bad belief.
Since I never had to make serious effort for my achievements, I never felt in a cut-throat competition with equals and gaining my wealth rather looked like a 5-800M/hour grind than awesome winning, it's rather the second case. It's not that I know something right, it's something that the average EVE player does wrong. I've read another article of Jester several times because I felt it's important but didn't know how. The mistake of the average EVE new player was right there, explicitly stated:
CCP Solomon: The strong prey on the weak, but the weak aren't responding, and nobody's getting particularly fun or nourishing game play out of this. Is that a failure?
Seleene: Well then maybe they need to get more friends and they need to learn to defend themselves better in a PvP game.
Seleene, CSM head tells exactly what every successful and powerful player would suggest a newbie: get more friends and learn PvP. This answer is fundamentally and completely wrong and any new player following it is set up for failure, poverty and ragequit.
They don't give this advice because they are evil, but because their highsec newbie memories have long faded. Or they never was a highsec newbie, they are probably "community born" who podjumped to their out-of-game friends to nullsec on day 1. Nullsec mechanics favor blobbing. A fleet of 200 defeats the fleet of 100 unless extreme difference on their skill and/or ISK. Also, the fleet of 200 can force the fleet of 100 to fight by taking their space assets: moons, stations, systems.
Highsec (and somewhat lowsec) is completely different from nullsec and not because of bubbles, cynos and doomsdays:
Highsec, where the most new players start their EVE life is the most anti-social game ever: the mechanics actively penalize having friends. The more friends you have, the weaker you are. Every new corpie increases the chance of you being awoxed, scammed, robbed or wardecced. If you have zero friends and you are not oblivious to the basic game mechanics, you are practically invincible.
The newbies are devastated not because the game is harsh or unbalanced, they are devastated because they come with a strong, wrong belief that is reinforced by the veterans: "the strongest EVE ship is friendship". No. If you are in highsec, it's equal to self-destruct. CCP knows this, this is why wardec costs scale with target size, to somewhat protect the people with lot of friends from being obliterated. Remember the one time when Goons ran to CCP to save them: when Jade Constantine caught them in a highsec forever-war against practically every highsec PvP-ers. You can't blame Goons for having no friends or being shy of PvP, still they couldn't handle it.
I didn't progress despite of having no friends but because of it. I naturally played solo so did not even encounter the limitless amount of traps the average newbie falls. I couldn't be wardecced, I couldn't be awoxed, no spy could get into my trust and no bad player leeched on me. Joining a highsec corp is like taking from the "Gift for newbies" container.
Let me make a simple suggestion that makes EVE much more newbie-friendly: ban player corporations from highsec. Something like "the Empires has fed up with the destruction caused by capsuleers, so they decided that every capsuleer who do not pledge their allegiance to them are no longer protected by them", making every player corp member perma-suspect. Of course give a huge "if you get into this corp, everyone can freely shoot you in highsec" warning for the application interface. This would mean exactly what is already true for members of larger nullsec alliances: you are safer in your own sov-null than in highsec. Hell, player corp members would be safer in lowsec too. This way social players would go to low/null, while newbies who did not learn the game yet would be safe in Highsec from the largest danger: the siren song of noobcorps. Make every corp post a warning like this:
I started exactly like the the newbie mentioned in the horror stories: no knowledge of the game and no friends, and pretty late, less than a year ago. Others known the game inside-out years before my character was created. They owned titans before I owned by first destroyer. According to the myth, I was set up for failure and only a miracle could save me. Instead of failure, I gained titanic wealth, I was not ganked once after the initial noob mistake of driving a Badger II to lowsec, I was not scammed and I experienced nullsec on my terms. And on top of that I got these so easily that I spent several blogposts whining how easy EVE is and how disappointed I am because of that.
Let me recite my motto: I do not believe in personal awesomeness. I'm a solid believer is that whatever I do can be repeated by an average person. Every time we see someone doing something unbelievable, we don't face an extraordinary man, we face an average guy using some knowledge we do not own yet. When we face a large group of people failing in something where we don't, we see equal people who are poisoned by some bad belief.
Since I never had to make serious effort for my achievements, I never felt in a cut-throat competition with equals and gaining my wealth rather looked like a 5-800M/hour grind than awesome winning, it's rather the second case. It's not that I know something right, it's something that the average EVE player does wrong. I've read another article of Jester several times because I felt it's important but didn't know how. The mistake of the average EVE new player was right there, explicitly stated:
Seleene: Well then maybe they need to get more friends and they need to learn to defend themselves better in a PvP game.
Seleene, CSM head tells exactly what every successful and powerful player would suggest a newbie: get more friends and learn PvP. This answer is fundamentally and completely wrong and any new player following it is set up for failure, poverty and ragequit.
They don't give this advice because they are evil, but because their highsec newbie memories have long faded. Or they never was a highsec newbie, they are probably "community born" who podjumped to their out-of-game friends to nullsec on day 1. Nullsec mechanics favor blobbing. A fleet of 200 defeats the fleet of 100 unless extreme difference on their skill and/or ISK. Also, the fleet of 200 can force the fleet of 100 to fight by taking their space assets: moons, stations, systems.
Highsec (and somewhat lowsec) is completely different from nullsec and not because of bubbles, cynos and doomsdays:
- Everyone can dock everywhere.
- No one has significant space assets that he'd care to lose.
- Neutrals are everywhere.
- Shooting neutrals is expensive due to Concord and faction police in case of low sec status.
- NPC corps can't be wardecced, player corps can.
- PvP between NPC corpmates is equal to shooting neutrals, PvP between player corpmates is allowed.
Highsec, where the most new players start their EVE life is the most anti-social game ever: the mechanics actively penalize having friends. The more friends you have, the weaker you are. Every new corpie increases the chance of you being awoxed, scammed, robbed or wardecced. If you have zero friends and you are not oblivious to the basic game mechanics, you are practically invincible.
The newbies are devastated not because the game is harsh or unbalanced, they are devastated because they come with a strong, wrong belief that is reinforced by the veterans: "the strongest EVE ship is friendship". No. If you are in highsec, it's equal to self-destruct. CCP knows this, this is why wardec costs scale with target size, to somewhat protect the people with lot of friends from being obliterated. Remember the one time when Goons ran to CCP to save them: when Jade Constantine caught them in a highsec forever-war against practically every highsec PvP-ers. You can't blame Goons for having no friends or being shy of PvP, still they couldn't handle it.
I didn't progress despite of having no friends but because of it. I naturally played solo so did not even encounter the limitless amount of traps the average newbie falls. I couldn't be wardecced, I couldn't be awoxed, no spy could get into my trust and no bad player leeched on me. Joining a highsec corp is like taking from the "Gift for newbies" container.
Let me make a simple suggestion that makes EVE much more newbie-friendly: ban player corporations from highsec. Something like "the Empires has fed up with the destruction caused by capsuleers, so they decided that every capsuleer who do not pledge their allegiance to them are no longer protected by them", making every player corp member perma-suspect. Of course give a huge "if you get into this corp, everyone can freely shoot you in highsec" warning for the application interface. This would mean exactly what is already true for members of larger nullsec alliances: you are safer in your own sov-null than in highsec. Hell, player corp members would be safer in lowsec too. This way social players would go to low/null, while newbies who did not learn the game yet would be safe in Highsec from the largest danger: the siren song of noobcorps. Make every corp post a warning like this:
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