The NPE in Dominion - A CCP Eris Discordia Interview

I recently had the opportunity to interview the developer responsible for the New Player Experience (NPE) in the upcoming Dominion Expansion at CCP Games, none other than CCP Eris Discordia. Below is the result of my interrogation. Please feel free to comment and ask additional questions!

Enjoy

What was the main goal of the changes you brought forth with the NPE?

While the NPE is continuously evolving, the goal of the Dominion changes is to teach skills to new players that should make them valuable to any corporation as talented recruits. Aside from that, we also wanted to gain a better understanding of how the NPE is experienced by new players. To do this we added a lot of data logging in the tutorials and career paths, to identify areas for improvement. These areas are indicated by red flags in data--for example, when thousands of people read one tutorial three times we see that spike and know that the there is an issue with the tutorial. It may simply be confusing or there may be a larger problem. Once we’ve identified an area, the idea is that we then focus on it to make it better.

Making the most of the EVE Online Free Trial

Massively multiplayer online games come in two distinct groups, and I'm not referring to genres here. At one end of the spectrum you've got the "theme park" flavor - WoW being a well known example - and at the other the "sand box" flavor - in this case EVE Online. Neither games can be fully understood in the first few weeks of playing, but in case of the latter, it's even more difficult to truly appreciate the possibilities and the fun that comes with this approach to MMOs.

EVE's always been the black sheep of the MMO world. Most of the EVE veterans have seen the EVE learning curve graphic and can testify to its accuracy. So what do you do if you're curious about EVE and want to have a look? Is the 2-weeks trial offer enough to give you a glimpse of the EVE we know. Where do you start? What skills do you train? What profession do you go for? The fact that you can be anything you want, change your career path at any given time is all fine and dandy, but to a new player it all means nothing.

Unless they can accomplish something rewarding early on, the thought of controlling a vast thousand-member alliance, or trading across vast regions of space, is nothing but that, just a dream. And it's very easy to get bogged down with the day-to-day operations familiar to capsuleers. Which is what @daniel_carvalho experienced when he gave EVE a try. Thanks to the quick intervention of @hi7ch, @Scopique and I we managed to get him to give it a 2nd chance. But what about the others?

What can be done to give the new capsuleers a glimpse of the action and thrill of EVE? Can that be done in under the 14-day trial?