One of his latest posts, and his upcoming post series, looks to be about the culture of Eve Online, the toxicity and griefing found in the player base and, well, to quote:
So over the next few weeks I'm going to do some writing about what I think got us here...
In an earlier post, and in the follow up, he outright points the finger of shame at a few scammers and trolls, calling them horrible people and asking how they can live with themselves. Clearly, this is an issue that has caught hold of Reppard's passion and I agree that it is something especially important for new player recruitment and retention.
I suppose at this point it would be prudent to illustrate my perspective of Eve Online, and it's culture, so that people have an idea where I am coming from.
I started playing Eve on Halloween, 2013. As you might imagine, this was unfortunate timing for a newbie to hop into the game: I have lost track of the number of times people have accused me of being a nullsec spy or some bittervet's alt. I also know that it isn't going to help when I say that I started playing Eve because of The Mittani, but that's part of the story and sometimes I just can't resist teasing people like that. ;)
For the past half year or so one of my MMO's of choice was MechWarrior Online. I have always been a fan of the Battletech universe, had a company of mechs in my younger years, and enjoyed stomping around in forests and hills firing lasers and missiles at people and making things explode. There was, however, a rather acute lack of decent MWO fan sites with decent, useful content. In my quest for metagame content, I ran into a series of articles by Fil5000, TankBoyKen, and MintFrog over at themittani.com and began following the website; there was even one nice one by some person called The Mittani, and I wondered why the site was named after this guy if he wrote so little.
The Eve articles rolled pas as well, and I ignored them for the most part: ALOD's, battle reports, null sec updates and stories about big things with lasers and missiles blowing up. Eventually, I started reading the Eve articles.
Eve Online came out back while I was in college. I knew about it - I was a savvy gamer girl who liked her starships. I was also extremely broke, so I couldn't get into any of the subscription based games. News about Eve, and stories from people who played Eve, popped up now ad then over the years: eventually, I had a picture of my mind of what Eve Online was, formed through rumor and hearsay. Eve was a game about space ships. Eve was a game with drunk miners. Eve was a game where people enjoyed griefing and collecting tears. Eve was a game where anything went, and I would never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
In short, it sounded like a nice premise that appealed to my libertarian values of freedom, choice, and personal responsibility... but that was marred by a toxic culture, and unless I enjoyed trolling and griefing (and being trolled and griefed) I probably wouldn't have fun.
The articles at themittani.com changed that. There was plenty of gloating over the Awful Losses, and enough garbage in the comments that I quickly stopped reading them entirely, but there was enough interesting content in the articles that on Halloween night when I was sitting at home bored, alone, and not feeling up to dealing with any lame crappy Halloween parties, I made an account and installed Eve.
I am one of those gamers that is obsessed with... well, not precisely optimization and min/maxing, but I want to get a decent return of 'fun' for my effort invested. While Eve downloaded and installed and I began putzing about with making a character and flying the career missions, I was on the 'net on my second screen doing research. I browsed the E-Uni wiki, I dug up blogs on Eve, I looked up guides and tutorials and how-to's. By the time I jumped through my first stargate out of the newbie system I knew that Jita was the closest major trade hub (I had rolled Caldari because I liked the way the Rohk looked and was infatuated with the idea of a railgun battleship - although today I have a rail fit Navy Megathron to indulge myself with), I knew the importance of planning out my skill training, not to pack everything I owned into that one badger and the general idea of cargo+mod value v. EHP. I also still expected to be greifed just because for the luls, and I knew that if I took that candy from that space-stranger, it would be drugged. And that I would end up in a dirt pit in someone's basement, with them screaming "IT PUTS THE NANITE PASTE ON ITS SKIN OR IT GETS THE HOSE AGAIN!!"
As they say, though, forewarned is forearmed - by expecting everything to be a scam, and everyone to be out to get me, I've managed to defend my self from those players quite well. When I was tooling around Hek and helping other newbies in the help channel and a random player opened a conversation with me, I happily chatted away but waited to hear the scam hook; when Smex proved to be a chill guy and invited me to join Sin Factory, I still took a moment to inventory my assets and made a mental note to not fly anything expensive around people in my new corp before I got to know them.
For players like me who self-educate, and for players who know people in game who will provide them with those basics and initial expectations, the new player experience isn't that bad at all. The tutorials and career missions do a fine job of teaching players how those basic functions work, and I have been having fun from the first time I hopped in an Ibis. I have met a lot of cool, fun people that I enjoy knowing and working with, both in my corp and outside of it - even if the people outside of my corp are going to shoot me if they catch me somewhere. :)
For a new player who doesn't expect every person she meets to try to stab her in the back (or in the face if the stabber is just bored and doesn't want to put in the time to be sneaky), I can see how it's frustrating, and I can see why the negative impression of Eve as a game full of horrible people spreads so easily. There is nothing in game that warns a person about other players running scams. There is nothing in game that explains how suicide ganks turn a profit, how suspect flags work, or, really, anything else like that to put a new, impressionable, gullible pilot on their guard. Many of them expect a game like WoW where the worst scam they might run into is the gold farmers trying to sell them money, and they never have to worry about another player mugging them for their gear. This expectation is a weak spot, and their biggest danger.
New players are given very little guidance on what risks they are taking, and losing assets to previously unfathomable risks is frustrating. Frustrated players are not having fun, and might not remain players.
I do not think high sec needs to be made safer. One of the best things about Eve is that players are free to do what they want.
I do not think Eve needs more hand holding. Players have choices in what they do, and those choices have consequences. The first time I jumped a stargate into low sec, I clicked away a warning about not having Concord and landed right in the middle of a gate camp. Whoops.
I do think that the game needs to do a better job of explaining those consequences and managing the new player expectations.
This post has turned into a monster-sized piece, so I am going to end it here for now; part 2 is on the way.
This post has turned into a monster-sized piece, so I am going to end it here for now; part 2 is on the way.
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