new player experience is indeed , completely **** in here, and it seems ccp gives no fucks about it , and would rather continue to get what bit of funding they can off those who are here.

Sorry to hear it.
Although my wife won't even touch this game (or this type of game) with a pair of tweezers, soo... It's not for everyone

Question: Did you and your fianc+¬ play as a squad?
If you did, did YOU play on your main?

Might be your problem right there...

Michael, what was her KDR when she was in the academy? Her mu score is determined by KDR, W/L, and WP per death. If her score was high from doing well in the academy then that might be why she is being put against vets in public contracts.

Not saying it's right, just offering an explanation.

We did play as a squad but I didn't play on my main...I made a brand new psn account to show her around and I spent my time getting killed lol I'd have her follow me to objectives, tell her to hack them and play an extra shield for her.

I ran around in the recon fit with the nova knives bc im terrible with those and I got killed so many times but it was fun just messing around while she was having fun.

Anyways, sorry to hear you couldn't connect your favorite person to your favorite game. :(

DAAAAYYYUUUM CCP. You gotta help this guy. You gotta extend academy. I think academy should be not only skill wise, but time wise. When I first began playing dust, it took me about 2 weeks to get settled into the game. I am a quick learner so I think that ALL JEW PLAYERS Shoild stay in the academy for a month.

So after two years or so of playing Dust 514, I've convinced my once-girlfriend-now-fiance to give this game a shot. (The pretty girl I ask to marry me in my signature)

So she does. She gets into the battle academy and plays a total of maybe 15 matches? She barely knows what is going on but she started to have fun. One night she came over and asked ME if we could play Dust! So I moved the den TV into the bedroom and the ps3 and set them side by side and was like yes ma'am!

She was getting killed a lot of course but she was learning the game. She would get 3-6 kills and get killed like 20-25 times or so....newbie stats, you know what they look like.

But here's the kicker....all of a sudden, she was out of the battle academy after maybe 15-20 matches or so. Why? I thought this crap got fixed.

Her very first match out of the battle academy, you know what she was met with? Protostompers. She played 2-3 more matches out of the battle academy and looked at me and said this isn't fun anymore. She asked me how is it fair that she has to play against people who are top tier (I saw some of you guys in that match) and have all the bells and whistles when she just started playing.

So CCP....I give you guys credit for things you deserve credit on and I give you guys crap for things you deserve crap on....but my fiance, who is the very most important person to me wanted to share a game I really enjoy with me until she was put up against insurmountable odds. Now she doesn't really want to play because she says its not fair to have barely any time to learn and I agree with her. She shouldn't have to come up the way I did and endure the hardship that myself and you and others in the playerbase had to endure.

But then again we all came from a time when no one had 60 million SP and double hardener proto tanks...soooooo

So yeah, you sorta ruined it for her with all the proto hmg's and viziam scrambler rifles and her tiny bit of SP that I told her to use to upgrade her core skills for later on.

Thanks a ton guys

The best way to get new players up to speed is to totally restructure the NPE so that it follows the EVE example of giving you tons of useful free gear whilst teaching you how, why and when to use that gear. By the time you've finished the combat tutorial you have a fully fitted racial frigate. It's about 3mil in ISK's worth of free stuff.

The Academy should be tied to the Daily Missions, which would be become Academy Missions for the duration of a player's NPE period. Each mission is tailored towards the race you chose at character creation, and each day focuses on a particular combat role, giving you missions that allow players to earn competitive (ADV) gear that will help them build competitive fits after the academy. Completing all ten missions gives you a massive SP dump as an additional reward. Completing the Academy, which can now only be done by completing all of the role-focused missions instead of an arbitrary score threshold, rewards you with an even bigger SP reward. Because let's face it, that's what really matters here. Teaching them the skill is one thing, but core skills + proto = unassailable advantage almost every time. If we want new player base growth, we need to boost them up to 10mil sp as quickly as possible and throw some decent guns at them so that they can actually have fun out in the wild with the rest of us.

It's not a perfect solution, but it's not bad either.

I've asked for a fix for a long time but idk something about my "tags" made it so people didn't listen or want to agree..they should seperate the academy 0-5m sp players fight 5-15 fight then 15-30m sp after you hit 31m sp you get out with the rest of us wankers..yes yes that's still not fair but I think it's a good start

Stopped reading thread once you started bragging about real life.

I feel your pain. I really do. Same story with several folks I've introduced to this game.

That said, balancing the new player experience with a lack of players and trying to limit load times is no easy task.

If you have any bright ideas, I'm sure CCP is all ears.

Bitching and complaining? Not so much.

.....and "wiggling" wasn't a thing.....

As a newish player myself I have the impression that Dev Rattati and the other devs could not care any less about the new player experience ...

It just really deeply pisses me off because my fiance is smart! She has a 4.0GPA, already a junior in only her 2nd year of college because she did so much so well she totally did two years worth of her four year college tenure in 2 and she's on her way to a new school to continue her major and she has added two minors.

Moral of the story...she's very busy. She's brilliant and she's not afraid to work HARD and she wanted to play MY favorite game with me and she ended up liking it until she was kicked from the battle academy and met with top tier protostompers.

She said its not fair and she's right. Its crap. I'm seriously pissed about it because not only does the NPE ruin the chance of growth for the game and for us to make new friends but its also jaded MY fiance from doing something I (and could have been WE) enjoy.

I tell her let the SP build, we'll come back at another time and try again when we can get her at least some advanced gear or so.

... thinking ...

We need a place for players to build Isk and SP without constantly getting their teeth kicked in. A solo newbro has near zero odds against veteran stompsquads or HAV pilots. If Low Mu / High Mu isn't working well enough on its own -- and PvE is a non-option -- what if we converted Ambush (or another mode) to a squad-free, vehicle-free queue? You could even put a meta cap on it. Having somewhere for casuals to play would likely help with the case of Michael's fiance and it just might help with headcount and daily logins as well.

Definitely not the case. NPE has come up often since Rattati's arrival, and the whole point of High Mu / Low Mu was to give newcomers somewhere safer to play. Many aren't happy with the present state of matchmaking, but we can't claim that the Devs aren't trying.

I miss those days. I hate the super strafing thing. The game was a lot better before that super strafing circular wiggling nonsense.

I worry about such things for my fiance too....how is she, a brand new player and never played a FPS before in her life going to have any sort of chance against guys that can move in a circle and blap you in a blink of an eye?

Its crap. Total crap. Absolute garbage.