Welcome to the continuing monthly EVE Blog Banters and our 57th edition! For more details about what the blog banters are visit the Blog Banter page.
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“Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” ― Albert Einstein
Drackarn pointed this killmail to me recently and proposed the following for a blog banter:
Obviously that is a not just a bad fit, its horrific. But the guy might not know any better. We get these all the time circulating social media and corp/alliance chat. How do we educate players on fitting? This guy has been playing four months and can fly a BC, but has no idea how to fit one. What could be done to help bro's like this?
Furthermore, what (if any) responsibility do veterans players have in finding these players and instructing them on the finer arts of ship fitting? If it exists, does it extend beyond them into teaching PvP skills, ISK making skills, market skills, social skills, life skills...
And another question you can think about is this: do purposely wrong fits, aka comedy fits or experimental fits or off-meta fits, offend you or your corp? Would you, like Rixx Javix when he was in Tuskers, face expulsion for fitting your ships differently than the accepted standard?
"Its the difference between streaking and getting caught with your pants down." - Kirith Kodach
-o0o-
Ah my own topic!
I made my post on the original Navy Drake of Doom last week. Then a few days later TMDC posts this.
Two different fits, two very different fails. However, in the end it falls back to one thing. These guys had no idea how to fit a ship. At all. Not. Even. Close. OK we all fit comedy/YOLO fits from time to time. I myself lost a Maelstrom at the weekend I'd fitted like a massive Cockbag Thrasher to piss about with on the undock (I know, I'm bored and frustrated with Eve currently, more on that soon). However, these fits are just plain wrong.
Now the question I posed in my original post was how do we educate players on how to fit ships? The comments I got on that post were mostly "EFT!", the popular 3rd party fitting tool. My question is, how does your average player even know about EFT? Do WoW players have fitting tools? Do other games have fitting tools? Why would a new bro or someone who has played for 6 months who doesn't have anything to do with the community in-game or out, even known about fitting tools?
OK, lets say for the sake of arguement some how they find EFT. Then how do they know what's a good fit? Their Caracal has 75 DPS and 8k EHP (I don't know if this is possible! I'm just making a point OK). Is that a good fit? Of course not, but how do they know?
Lets have a look at The Mitanni dot Coms bingo sheet for their ALOD feature:-
Lots of lessons here players need to learn. However, the game does not teach any of these. How are they supposed to know that only real men hull-tank (yes, there is the in-game certificate, and yes, in a very few very limited cases hull-tanking can be a good idea). So how do we stop these fits?
I don't think CCP can point players in the direction of one single 3rd party application. It would be showing too much favouritism. If they listed every fitting website and app that would get silly as the list would have to be maintained to ensure any new ones are included and out of date ones removed.
Is there a fitting tutorial? Last time I did the tutorials was nearly 6 years ago and they have been seriously revamped since then. However, do new players go through the entire tutorial?
The only thing I can think of is a warning box like the one you get for rigs. If you try and fit unbonused guns, undersized launchers, a small shield booster on a battlecruiser or a civilian anything you get a pop up warning. Of course they will have a "Don't show this message again" option for those who know, but at least you can inform the player its probably a bad idea. Its the only way I can think that does it quick and easy. Something like this:-
OK the two 'examples' above are me just joking. But they could have a serious message!
Drackarn pointed this killmail to me recently and proposed the following for a blog banter:
Obviously that is a not just a bad fit, its horrific. But the guy might not know any better. We get these all the time circulating social media and corp/alliance chat. How do we educate players on fitting? This guy has been playing four months and can fly a BC, but has no idea how to fit one. What could be done to help bro's like this?
Furthermore, what (if any) responsibility do veterans players have in finding these players and instructing them on the finer arts of ship fitting? If it exists, does it extend beyond them into teaching PvP skills, ISK making skills, market skills, social skills, life skills...
And another question you can think about is this: do purposely wrong fits, aka comedy fits or experimental fits or off-meta fits, offend you or your corp? Would you, like Rixx Javix when he was in Tuskers, face expulsion for fitting your ships differently than the accepted standard?
"Its the difference between streaking and getting caught with your pants down." - Kirith Kodach
-o0o-
Ah my own topic!
I made my post on the original Navy Drake of Doom last week. Then a few days later TMDC posts this.
Two different fits, two very different fails. However, in the end it falls back to one thing. These guys had no idea how to fit a ship. At all. Not. Even. Close. OK we all fit comedy/YOLO fits from time to time. I myself lost a Maelstrom at the weekend I'd fitted like a massive Cockbag Thrasher to piss about with on the undock (I know, I'm bored and frustrated with Eve currently, more on that soon). However, these fits are just plain wrong.
Now the question I posed in my original post was how do we educate players on how to fit ships? The comments I got on that post were mostly "EFT!", the popular 3rd party fitting tool. My question is, how does your average player even know about EFT? Do WoW players have fitting tools? Do other games have fitting tools? Why would a new bro or someone who has played for 6 months who doesn't have anything to do with the community in-game or out, even known about fitting tools?
Lets have a look at The Mitanni dot Coms bingo sheet for their ALOD feature:-
I don't think CCP can point players in the direction of one single 3rd party application. It would be showing too much favouritism. If they listed every fitting website and app that would get silly as the list would have to be maintained to ensure any new ones are included and out of date ones removed.
Is there a fitting tutorial? Last time I did the tutorials was nearly 6 years ago and they have been seriously revamped since then. However, do new players go through the entire tutorial?
The only thing I can think of is a warning box like the one you get for rigs. If you try and fit unbonused guns, undersized launchers, a small shield booster on a battlecruiser or a civilian anything you get a pop up warning. Of course they will have a "Don't show this message again" option for those who know, but at least you can inform the player its probably a bad idea. Its the only way I can think that does it quick and easy. Something like this:-
Now onto the next bit Kirith asked. What is my responsibility to these guys?
Nothing.
I'm British. We're far too polite to mention anything like this.
On some occasions I've had the other player convo me and asked how I killed him so quickly/easily. In those cases I've spent a fair amount of time advising what I think they did wrong and how they might fit their ship differently. I've even pulled links from killboards into the private convo to help them understand .
However, there is no way I'm going to convo one of these guys and say "Mate..... your fit......"
Nothing.
I'm British. We're far too polite to mention anything like this.
However, there is no way I'm going to convo one of these guys and say "Mate..... your fit......"
Come on CCP it's your job ;)
Is it their CCP's job though? I don't think so. A little anecdote:
ReplyDeleteA couple days ago, I scanned down an 1 month old player in an algos running a mission in low-sec. I warped my rapier on top of him, dropped his shields and armor, pulled drones then opened a convo with him. This turned into a 30-minute conversation where I explained how to use directional scan to look for combat probes and other ships nearby, how to customize his overview settings, how to fit his ship, and how to pick a direction to take his skill plan in. I let him warp away and decided to spend ~10 mil on an algo+rigs+fit to give to him. Not very much to me, but it's a lot to a new player who was fretting over forgetting to scoop his 3 T2 medium drones. I encouraged him to find a corp to join that could help him out and that the next time I saw him, I wouldn't hesitate to blow his ship up. After everything, he told me he told me he was thinking about quitting soon, but that experience had changed his mind.
Eve isn't about ships and modules and fittings and mechanics. It's about the people we interact with. PvP is so much more enjoyable than PvE simply because every experience is unique. Every fight is different. Sure, maybe CCP should provide some basic warnings and explanations the first time a new player tries to do something really stupid. But beyond that, the best kind of thing to do is to guide new players toward real human interaction. It's the responsibility of veteran players to guide new players. It benefits everyone.
I'm happy to catch and release the small fish, like my friendly algos pilot, so they can grow up to be larger and more well-prepared prey in the future.
There was luck on both sides of that encounter. the newb was lucky that you preferred catch and release of small fry so that you had to opportunity for better actions in the future, and you were lucky that said noob was willing to listen.
DeleteThe first one fails very often because humans in general aren't the best at delayed gratification. My rattler fit pre kronos needed a fitting implant (5% cpu) because the sentry drone rigs reduce CPU output. Post kornos changes meant that I no longer need the additional CPU, but the other solution would have been training lvl 5 in drones rigging. Didn't want to take the time so I paid for it (literally)
You have wisely taken the idea further than waiting on a skill to finish to get your fix. Forgoing the small immediate PVP victory against the noob in the hopes that he eventually provides some fun combat. Its a wonderful thing for the community, but I fear that too many are cynics to give that a chance.
That leads to the second part... how do we get more experienced players to catch and release, rather than just harvesting the easy ones early and as often as it takes them to leave? Unfortunately our general inability to forgo small immediate rewards for the possibility of a much bigger future reward means I don't have an answer to that.
Er apologies for above post, somehow my long post got deleted. Can you delete that and keep this in?
ReplyDeleteI think Dota 2 has a good system which Eve could use. In Dota 2, each player selects a Hero which is similar to a ship in Eve. You then subsequently choose how that Hero "trains" (similar to skillpoints in Eve) and what equipment he uses (equivalent to fitting modules in Eve).
When a player selects a Hero, a list of recommended skill plans and item builds come up, basically telling a newbie how they should build up their Hero. In Eve, I envision something similar, but with each role such as short range brawler, long range sniper having its own progression. This could tie in with the useless ISIS tool by showing that as your skills progress, "new" fits are "unlocked", either via fitting or via support skills improving.
Of course, the difficulty in this would be where to get the fits from and I think the CSM would be a good place to start, possibly along with some knowledgeable Eve PvPers.
P.S. Rixx was never threatened with being kicked or kicked for having a badly fit ship. After being asked to stop causing drama by antagonising people who were offering him advice, he decided it would be a good idea to declare other corp members spies for other entities, the leadership of being corrupt and for deliberately mis-representing other corp members.
Maybe modules could blink when they are the non-standard size.
ReplyDeleteFor that matter, I've always wanted to see S,M & L variants of things like webs, DCUs, fitting mods, and points. It would simplify balance woes at the trivial cost of database space.
I dunno, I've always thought it was kind of cool that those modules are 1-size-fits-all, which works well with their % bonus behavior.
ReplyDeleteAnd anyway, without some way of addressing the original problem, multiple sizes of things that are currently 1-size would just lead to new categories of failfits.