Game Journalist Reveals that He Can’t Follow Basic Instructions
massivelyop.com/2020/06/09/choose-my-adventur...Posted Jun 10, 2020, 12:14 AM UTC
109121
massivelyop.com
Didn't do career mission that give a frigate and destroyer, instead goes somewhere else and tries a level 1 mission in an ibis without any modules but guns. Goes as expected.
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One gun, actually.
And yeah, how the hell do you go from Aura tutorial to Eliminate the Pirate Campers, I've no idea
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Lololol aye that's for sure
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and it seems like it was Worlds Collides.. not a simple courier mission!
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Honestly I feel that the tutorial pushes you in the direction to do carreer missions. Idk why he felt like he knew better and decided not to when he wasn't really sure how to play the game yet
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Look, I get that this game can be unintuitive at first. I also have worked with enough new players in Rookie Help to realize that panic can set in easily and cause people to freeze up. But this guy is apparently a professional, and he’s even played before. You’d think he would know to take deep breaths, slow down, and read the instructions.
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Nooo.... that is too much to expect from a player. You have to hand everything to them on a silver plate. If you don't then your game is as a certain twitch streamer would say "dogshit ass game".
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That's a meta skill you learn from childhood interactions with physical objects like your sippy cup. "If all else fails, read the instructions." Every gamer faces that minor frustration in their first game. Every human deals with that their first time at school or assembling Ikea furniture.
That is how shit this article is: The journalist has convinced me that he is an alien from another planet in a human skin-suit trying to do the job of the human whose flesh he has borrowed and failing so hard at it that I'm wondering about the state of the alien civilization he is from. Have the aliens grown so decadent that they literally never fail, never face the smallest frustration, never have to go back and read the instructions? Maybe that's what they're doing on Earth! They finished science and have lived in a post-scarcity deathless civilization for so long they need to slum it with us monkeys to find the true meaning of Christmas!
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To be fair, the ideal game-design is one where the correct option is obvious from in-game hints rather than reading a bunch of text.
A good example on how EVE fails at this is ammo names. Fusion, Nuclear, Proton, which is going to be long-range?
Laser crystals have a nice correlation between the wavelength and the optimal range, but that only works if you've memorized the goddamned Electro-Magnetic spectrum.
Not to mention what damage types are done. Does a shrapnel bomb do kinetic damage because the chunks of shrapnel themselves are flying around?
One of the great things about EVE is the depth, but there's a bunch of ways everything could have been designed to get the best of both worlds.
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All true enough, although I'd argue that EVE has too much complexity reach this ideal state. In fact, I'd say that most MMOs are going to need you to pay some manner of attention at the beginning, even newer ones built with the mistakes of the past in mind.
but there's a bunch of ways everything could have been designed to get the best of both worlds.
The flip side of this argument is that old games like EVE were originally designed at the beginning of the MMO era, so they were the necessary test cases for what not to do. And EVE's design was unique among MMOs even back then, so it didn't directly benefit from the innovations made by World of Warcraft to the Everquest model. So as far as user experience goes--especially new user experience--EVE has been playing catchup ever since, trying to apply those lessons to its own model after the fact.
I'm still not going to give this guy a pass for skipping 90% of the introductory content and resources given to him in favor of running out in a rookie ship. You don't have to read a bunch of text to simply follow basic instructions.
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If my dipshit ass can figure out this game... This guy is just a douche who doesn't like it.
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Not who doesn't like it. Who doesn't even try to put 2 brain cells into use to figure out things.
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Like most ‘journalists’ that write shit for food.
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Couldn't of said it better myself. They all trout nonsense.
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Let's all take note that this guy bought an Ibis on the market.
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That's somehow worse than getting jita scammed.
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That's honestly the least bad thing here, there's no tutorial window that spells out in plain English that the "Board My Corvette" button exists.
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I haven't played in a while, but I'm pretty sure when you dock in station you get an evemail, a ding sound and a pop up telling you a free ship is there for you. Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but when you first start out, there is a cautionary pop up when you undock in a pod asking if you want to do that...
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no, you just dock in a pod now. There is a board my corvette button now that spawns rookie ships
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though it also does teach you to orbit targets to engage — something that, as I understand, is bad practice
What
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In solo PvP you can maybe get an advantage by manually piloting, but as you know that's MUCH harder to do well. Clearly an orbit is default.
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There are some ships where it's better to point to your escape point and kite away. I'd never orbit in say for example a rokh or a Drake.
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True
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if you are kiting you don't manually pilot to get an advantage, you manually pilot because that's how you kite
if you are brawling you usually either orbit (pussy mode) or keep at range (*****maxdeeps*****) depending on the situation, and sometimes manual piloting may be needed to get out of a hairy situation
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I mean orbiting seems like a generally good idea to me, the more you move the less they can hit you, then just gotta get your guns tracking better so you can hit them while orbiting 😅
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If you're auto orbiting and holding point on something, they can do a 180 and slingshot you off out of point range to get away.
You counter this by manually piloting the ship and keeping track of where they're going, and flying unpredictably.
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Ah fair enough, you can tell I’m no PvPer 😂
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If you're auto-orbitting a ship with similar speed while holding point they often don't even have to do anything. If they just burn in a straight line, the auto-orbit will often just make you slingshot yourself.
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This is true of pvp but in all honesty the journalist will probably never get into consensual pvp and since most all rats fly straight at you, setting orbit is best bet 95% of time since in smaller ships you want transversal to lower damage taken. Plus most players who get into pvp will do so with a corp and its more likely the corp will teach their tactics/style so it makes sense for the tutorial to teach orbitting
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Most people don't even get to this genuine good though process. I had to explain in detail to smart friends how running circles around someone makes it harder to hit than sitting still. And I was only teaching them to rat. While manual piloting is something to be desired, it's something hard to do even by pilots who've been flying for years. There's even a whole class of fittings for ships that you don't even need manual piloting except for getting tackle or getting out of tackle, if you have someone screamed and double webbed with close range weapons I see no reason why you shouldn't orbit him.
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Should’ve just given them a ball of paper and run around them really fast while they tried to hit you 🤣
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Maybe he moved so fast that his guns couldn't track. Tho i suspect that isn't a problem on the ibis
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Some people like me don't orbit. Mwd on, hit approach, when in range scram, double web and unload Neutron blasters until someone dies.
Is this wrong? No, but it's not right either. It's actually very stupid, but I like my blasters.
Also, game journos are fuckwits.
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It's 'bad' in solo/small scale PVP because you can get slingshotted, either out of your tackle range so they can escape, or into scram range if you're trying to kite.
And in some rare circumstances you can out-track yourself with your own movement by orbiting.
It's fine as a starting point though tbh.
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Sure, but as a beginner, running a tutorial - orbiting is a good way to survive a little longer as opposed to approaching right toward that enemy who now has zero tracking to worry about.
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You would think his abject failure would teach him humility but the article has no humility, it has the tone of an angry Karen asking to see the manager because she refuses to read the instructions. Like if I failed so hard I died in the tutorial I wouldn't include my failure in the article I write and post online, or if I did, it would be captioned "lol I suck" or "learning curve's a bit steep lol" or "I didn't read the instructions lol." Something with "lol" in it. But no, dude is like BAD GAME GAME BAD IT GAME'S FAULT like a controller-throwing console neanderthal.
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Best part is it wasnt a tutorial mission lmao, the current tutorial (aura section) TELLS you to do the career agent missions (tutorial part 2: Electric Boogaloo) and they KNOWINGLY skipped 4/5th of the tutorial in a game they were expecting to be difficult.
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What's even more mind boggling is that if a game's hard you'd better pay extra attention to the tutorial, make sure you really understand how to play it and all. Looks like the guy just YOLO'd in and was rightfully wrecked.
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If my 13 year old cousin is more successful than you in eve, not only am I proud of him, but baffled at your unwillingness to improve.
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I just want to know how this sentence
...got some ISK, and even was able to competently fly some missions on my own.
...is compatible with this one
It was on my second ever mission, though, that it got bad.
How can you "competently fly some missions on my own" if you died on the "second ever mission"? Doesn't the word "some" here imply that they completed multiple missions? Second ever mission comes after first ever mission, so there couldn't be multiple missions before that...
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I thought this exact thing.
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i've said it many times. the biggest hurdle for new players is their own inability to read.
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Horde’s caretaker program (people who get paid isk to babysit new players) is literally 99% telling people over voice comms what is writen in front of them.
“Where do I sell ore?” -read MOTD “What ship do I bring?” -the ping in discord you read to get here says it “Where are we mining?” -read motd “What fit do I put on?” -mining fit channel linked in motd
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Horde provides a truly breathtaking array of resources for all players, new and veteran.
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where do i get human interaction? "read MOTD"
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It's hardly an either/or proposition like you're implying here; if I tell someone to check the MOTD, I'm telling them where to get the information they need, not denying them "human interaction".
With a group like Horde that has literally thousands of active players, it would be Very Bad to not provide basic information in obvious places like the MOTD and in their forums and discord. Also, part of learning to be halfway competent in this game is learning to understand where such basic information can generally be found.
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Not just a problem in gaming sadly, it does annoy me at work when someone wastes 10 minutes of my time and breaks my focus when they could have read the document they already had (and I have to spend 10 minutes reading things out from it).
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Oh wow... Board Your Corvette is literally below the undock button thst he said he pressed. Jesus christ.
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I liked the part where he spent time and money buying a noobship instead of using the "get in free noobship" button in every station lol.
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lol imagine getting filtered by the tutorial
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"Game journalist bad at games"
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Anyone saying go for it is trolling you. continue with the tutorial, it's really really obvious. nothing wrong with it, just the facts.
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Good job, you gave them clicks, so now they are actually rewarded for putting up that garbage.
Is it too much to ask to use archive links? All you have to do is copy-paste and by doing that you don't reward that kind of clickbait.
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Fuckin too right. Can't agree enough.
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EVE may not be suitable for all layers. A triple digit IQ is advised
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you must have at least 2 folds in your brain to play his game.
unfortunately i only have 1 and a half so im only allowed to shitpost on reddit as per ben booley.
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Smooth as an egg, they say
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I've never actually heard that you're not supposed to orbit. What else are you supposed to do? Fly in a straight line and get hit more?
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Manually piloting can actually provide better results, getting you in and out of the ranges you need, better than orbiting. Your opponents can also predict your destination when you orbit and adjust accordingly (rubber-banding to either get you within web/scram range, or to get you out of point range).
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Orbitting is good if you are a siginificant amount faster/smaller than your enemy, or for MOST PVE (everything except Incursions, Invasions, Sleepers, and Officers/DED Sites) but terrible for PvP because if you orbit the other player will always know where you are going and can basically juke you, especially when in fleet engagements because your orbit path may put you in a position of having relativey 0 transversal against someone other than your orbit target
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I feel like the guy suffered from knowing basically nothing about EVE except just enough to get himself in a bunch of trouble.
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Everything significant and important I learned about playing EVE was taught to me be other players. First, the friend that introduced me to the game. Later, by friendly veteran players I ended up nearby. Finally, with the alliance leadership that I landed in.
It took me years to become even a little competent at EVE. And the game itself, it’s introduction process and tutorials, teach BAD BEHAVIORS and very little game sense skills. It doesn’t teach you how the social aspect of EVE is vastly different than every other MMO... where most PvP is “Horde or Alliance” or non-existent. PvP in EVE is every single player versus every other single player... it’s the wild west. And you cannot trust new people you meet off the bat like other games. It’s like traveling in the wild and coming across a stranger, he might be friendly... but can you risk him murdering you and robbing you? You may decide to murder him first to protect yourself because there is no law to save you.
In the last 3 years... the new player experience has had amazing good improvements made. But there are still huge skill gaps. Teaching how to fit a ship, how to configure your overview to be useful, and basic DScanning, are all absent.
Let’s not pretend this game is easy for new people.
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Yeah, and I am not pretending this. However, in my experience, those new players who actually pay attention to what’s going on around them and who bother to read their missions will have a much easier time. Those who expect everything to be handed to them, will have a more difficult time.
The author of the linked piece definitely belongs to the second group.
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Eve is a totally different game, but I hate this whole argument that everyone that struggles with this game is just mentally retarded and just wants things handed to them.
There is no CCP ad telling people that they need to read paragraphs of information to try and find the nugget of information that some of these missions are looking for. There is no warning that this game does not use a joystick for flying around, a lot of people see the adds and think your FLYING A SPACESHIP. The CCP ads for this game play up this idea.
When you get into the game, you now are just right clicking and orbit, you are pressing f1 and waiting a couple minutes.
Everyone shit on this guy for not finishing the tutorial, but he finished the FIRST tutorial, but not the SECOND tutorial.
This game, if it had no other players playing it, would be BORING AS FUCK. So yeah, they want to go play the actual game, but we shit on him for trying to do that. And where does it say "hey, don't try the first mission in an ibis." Its all trial and error for the first few days, and some people, you know, want the game to be pretty fun and not some ordeal that they have to get through.
I actually want the beginning aspects of this game to be accessible. Have some campaign with cutscenes and major story that people can learn some of the basics and then let them then explore the sandbox. Maybe if we had enough people joining new groups would form that would change the nullsec groups.
But I think people need to get off the whole, if you dont understand this game your a fucking idiot. Cause even really smart people who play a ton of games need a lot of help to get into this game. With all the other games that are much easier to get into out there and a lot more fun upfront, CCP needs to make a more compelling argument for people to stay in the game.
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but I hate this whole argument that everyone that struggles with this game is just mentally retarded and just wants things handed to them.
"Mentally retarded" is something I personally don't say, but in Rookie Help and elsewhere, you can easily spot the new players who quickly pick up on the fact that EVE requires patience and thought-- and are fine with that.
Everyone shit on this guy for not finishing the tutorial, but he finished the FIRST tutorial, but not the SECOND tutorial.
Actually I'm shitting on him for disregarding the resources offered to him, then writing an article about the whole thing.
And I disagree with the idea, put forward by some, that games shouldn't require some effort and some thought. There's being user-friendly and intuitive--two things that EVE could use more of for sure; and there's being dumbed-down so that it's impossible to make a real mistake, like what happened to World of Warcraft. Some people would like to see more of the former rather than the latter.
This game, if it had no other players playing it, would be BORING AS FUCK.
Well yeah, because it's not a story-driven, single-player game, and never was. I don't even see how this has anything to do with the reality here.
Its all trial and error for the first few days, and some people, you know, want the game to be pretty fun and not some ordeal that they have to get through.
...and some people make it more of an ordeal than it needs to be by not doing the tutorials and getting free stuff and knowledge. Some other people don't even want EVE to be a game that anyone can pick up the first second and win, because there are already a lot of games like that out there.
I actually want the beginning aspects of this game to be accessible.
At this point, a lot of you are going overboard by making it sound like the game is completely inaccessible, which is patently untrue. It is a niche game for a niche set of players-- and that is 100% fine.
Have some campaign with cutscenes
Sure, that'd be cool.
and major story that people can learn some of the basics and then let them then explore the sandbox.
That is already in place. The suggested path for new players is to complete the career missions, which provide a very basic overview of what is possible, then go run the Sisters of Eve epic arc to get an introduction into the major faction story and to practice with their combat skills.
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The beginning aspects of this game when you start playing, have almost nothing to do with what most of the veteran players are doing in this game. I think while yeah we are a niche game, there is a huge population of people that would enjoy the other aspects of this game that we all have learned to enjoy and love.
There is value in dumbing down the beginning part of the game where you cannot make mistakes and it on rails. Every other aspect of this game should be exactly how it is. But most people quite this game because it is completely inaccessible and not fun because they cant even get to a point where they get to play with other people and interact with them. They get stuck before they get to the real game.
When the tutorial needs a tutorial. There is a problem.
"The suggested path for new players is to complete the career missions, which provide a very basic overview of what is possible, then go run the Sisters of Eve epic arc to get an introduction into the major faction story and to practice with their combat skills."
Where is this suggested? How are people supposed to know that? And thats not a campain, that is a boring fucking block of text and warping to a field, locking onto triangles and pressing f1.
There are no choices, no cut scenes (Some visual instead of text) and no ramifications for any choices you make. We can make this game more exciting for the solo players who want to learn the game before they join a corp, where the actual game begins.
I run a new player corporation where we try and get new players into the game. Most AFK because they don't know how to participate in the content available to them. The authors experience is a lot like others and if the majority of people are quitting this game because of confusion about the choices that are available to them. I think it does not matter what you have done to explain it, or what resources are available because at the end of the day, everyone quits this game after they try it.
I wholeheartedly agree that this is a niche game, but I think we could have a shit ton more people playing this game if they could get past the beginning and join a corp and experience it.
2
What did you expect from a "Game Journalist"?
Those people are just some dudes who tried to have an actual carrier in the Video Games ecosystem and failed.
They are basically just like this business teacher you had in highschool, who keep pretending he dide some amazing business related things in his life, but somehow ended-up as a teacher for a shit salary instead of being an actual rich businessman.
It's the same thing I expect from any journalist tbh.
We all learn to write in the second grade. Most of us continue learning after that. Journalists don't.
F
Those who can, do. Those that can't, commentate.
[deleted]
He's not wrong.
Then you'd be wrong. Journalist can be a career choice from the beginning and it is for many. There is a lot of joy that can be found in talking with various people about various topics, doing the necessary research and presenting your work to the public. Arguably with all the hate you get just for doing your job, because someone doesnt like your conclusions or the facts how they present themselves makes it more something you got to live for, more so than most jobs. Also its a lot of stress and many (most) wont find a secured workplace for a long time on their career.
That's only half of them. The other half got into journalism to be the next Hunter S Thompson but they're not remotely interesting as people and their writing sucks so the only job they can get is writing for gaming sites. And they are very, very bitter about that.