The New Player Experience - a Veterans review

Background

The NPE saw implementation in October 2016, by Team Genesis and was released with the Ascension expansion on November 8th that same year. Feedback thread here and here.
Since then we'd assume that they have had time to get rid of the child syndroms of any implementation so this research was done by end of January 2017, from the 21st to the 25th.

The NPE

After going through the new player
creation process for a Gallente character (Navy), I have to commemorate the team for an interesting storyline. Great job!

The NPE definately tones down the experience to somewhere around the knees, which is a great starting point for that steep incline we all have come to know and love. I mean, who doesn't love taking down drifter hives in newbie ships or Faxes, Am I Right?! Totally doable, and now that we live in an era of alternative facts, so very appropriate and amazing - I love it!

When coming from a veteran's viewpoint, and knowing what I know. There are things we can do better, and there are then things from the career agents we can also improve as well. I suggest once the Team has adjusted the NPE to what they are comfortable with, they move on to the Career agents and reconsider their approach.

The Overview

Some of the points that I remember from the experience is minor issues with the overview, that was not showing what I was expected to find (which collidable structure view fixed, but new players won't know how to flip that on/off). Could be a bug though. But - generally, we need to show new players how to handle the overview better, if we are asking for people to find specific items. At that point in time though, it is probably better to just make sure that all items that are mission critical are shown by default in the overview, instead of asking people to dive into that hornets nest and mess it up for themselves.

Running into new players

The NPE and generally when starting a new toon from scratch also means dealing with the new players that do pop up in these NPC corps. While people overall are great at helping these recruits with their questions, I found myself unable to explain on a very *VERY* dumbed down language, how one player I ran into could move items into or out of his cargo hold. Eventually I did help him though, but not the way I had imagined.
I remember some of the conversation as his fitting window was open, I pointed out that the cargo hold could be accessed by pressing the icon of a ship in the bottom left corner - except it wasn't an icon of a ship. It was an icon of a Rifter, which looked more like a fork in an alternative reality. So I reverted to asking him to hit ALT+C and going that route, which ended up fostering more questions. We got there in the end though.

Just one example, where we as vets - I think - I would simply encourage people to help new players and just listen to their problems in their own words. Remember, that these guys aren't the guys and girls you find in Eve Uni, but they are the many steps that goes before that experience. The guys and girls that can't figure out something simple that vets do 100 times a day and quit because they can't figure it out. I'm asking you to just listen instead.

Like: "Where is the data site I need to find, the description says I'm in the right system. But it's not here."

That question prompted me to retake the exploration career agent to find out what was going on. I think we can do better, both as players welcoming newbros and to Team Genesis, who need to do the work to make it transparent and playable.