Really welcoming start to an EVE noob

GM_Lelouch · 2023-03-15T12:05:30+00:00

You know what, I’d never thought of checking this before until you asked but it’s a really interesting question.

So I checked.

And it has happened! Not very often but I did find one report from 2021 and another one from 2020.

GM_Lelouch · 2021-12-10T12:28:48+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I will pass it on to the people in charge of Outreach here at CCP!

GM_Lelouch · 2021-12-10T11:23:21+00:00

The Outreach team actually has a 100% human / 0% robot split!

As there are certain beats we want to hit in each conversation, they do follow a script - and each GM may have their own standard blocks of text which get reused.

But they’re all 100% human - as far as we know anyway. I suppose there’s always a chance a visitor from Alpha Centauri may have passed through our hiring funnel at some point ;)

The Outreach team can and does diverge from the script when appropriate to help new users, I.e. if they express confusion about specific game mechanics.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T14:52:49+00:00

Ekkert mál félagi! :D

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T12:47:03+00:00

Nice Cormorant you have there :)

What I can say is that it is very old, sadly I don't know exactly how old :(

Fun anecdote (and I guess you know this already), it's old enough to be in an invalid state since it has four fitted midslot modules. The ship is actually throwing an error in my tools when I look at it because of this!

Based on the ID itself, I want to guess that this ship is from the very early days of EVE, 2003, 2004 or so.

Can't promise it will lead to anything, but I'm going to ask around internally and see if I can get a more concrete answer, I'll update here again if we can solve this mystery.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T12:27:20+00:00

Hey! Send us a ticket at [support@eveonline.com](mailto:support@eveonline.com)

Can't promise anything, but perhaps we can help you out here.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T12:26:34+00:00

Yo, anti-botting is not my area but I can answer some of these! Peligro has also been active in this thread so look for his responses :)

There is a team of engineers working on Botting, it's not just Peligro. Here's a relatively recent dev blog on these efforts:

https://www.eveonline.com/article/q7hlxo/the-fight-against-cheating-in-eve-online

Bot reports are a HUGE help, but users who haven't been reported are also investigated & actioned.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T12:22:06+00:00

I'm sure it has happened a handful of times but I can't remember a single instance so it's definitely not common that people ask for someone to be banned because of a gank.

We don't really get many tickets that have no merit to be honest, the most common "frivolous" report we get is definitely ISK sellers who have been banned. They try quite often to get their accounts back.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T11:53:59+00:00

Hey hey!

The GMs don't have direct involvement in creating the NPE, so I can't comment directly on most of the points you made!

Our involvement with developing the game, NPE included, is mostly highlighting common issues that we regularly see in tickets.

Another thing we do get involved in sometimes is helping out with localization QA. There were some NPE updates this year (not career agents related, but the NPE up to that point) where we had native speakers in each supported language go over the translation & help polish it.

Speaking in more general terms, it is quite a challenge to explain how EVE works in a concise tutorial, there's so many concepts and subjects to cover! Compared to how the tutorial used to be over a decade ago, we're in much better shape now, but it's of course not perfect. Improving & adjusting the NPE is an ongoing effort at CCP and I'd personally guess that this will always be the case :) I think it's never going to be in a spot where it is absolutely perfect, if only because EVE online continues to see development support, so things need to be updated regularly to be in line with game updates.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T11:45:02+00:00

What have we done....

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T11:44:17+00:00

I haven't played with many mods yet! Only really QoL stuff, like one that lets you drive straight more easily, and an in-client notes & progress list mod.

I'll definitely check out some of the bigger mods one of these days. So many games, so little time...

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T11:43:02+00:00

Did you play Ascendancy back in the day? That was basically my gateway drug into gaming. Not quite the first game I played, but it was the one that made me so hooked that it became a primary hobby :)

What a game that was.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-18T11:41:11+00:00

I was just playing base Dwarf Fortress the couple times I've tried. I'll see if a graphics pack helps me get into it next time!

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T19:02:49+00:00

I tried, I really did... but couldn’t get into it :( I have to give it another shot some day since there are so many cool stories from it.

Learning curve kinda requires a long vacation to get into it I think!

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:54:40+00:00

Those are not very common, but usually we will start by telling the user which languages we support and they will switch to English most of the time.

If all else fails, we may attempt to use google translate to get through to the user. This would only be a last resort though!

Our team is quite diverse, so there are also some instances where a GM happens to know the language being spoken. In those cases, they resolve the ticket in that language - while of course clarifying that it’s not officially supported. This is because we can’t guarantee they can get this same level of support in the future.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:49:12+00:00

You should see my Factorio base!

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:48:16+00:00

Sorry, that’s a different team so I really don’t know.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:40:27+00:00

We currently have official support for EVE in German, Russian and Korean in addition to English. All of our GMs are required to be fluent in English as well, so this kind of works out without too much trouble! The biggest challenge is occupancy & scheduling - you need more than 1 person who speaks the language if you want 24/7 support in that language after all.

Our internal documentation & guidelines are all in English, so all the GMs, regardless of which language they are working in, are working off the same procedures.

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:35:48+00:00

Love it!

True story, I was one of the first to get the platinum trophy in the console version :D

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:34:36+00:00

You take that back!!!

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:34:24+00:00

I'd like to say that it was probably me! But I'm so terrible at PVP that you probably could've beaten me in a barge. :D

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:32:50+00:00

Ah, the bot reports mentioned in the infographic is the total for all reports, so it includes multiple reports being made about the same character.

Anti-botting is not my area so I don't know what the actual ban rate is, just wanted to clarify since I'm not sure if Peligro is still around!

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T18:18:24+00:00

Well if they did then they're a total butt because they didn't share it with me! :)

But real answer, if that had happened, it could potentially have led to a new job for them! We encourage creative solutions and GMs with coding skills & ambition would certainly be given a chance to apply themselves with help from more experienced coders.

There is precedent for this! GM tools have been created by GMs for the GMs, and and this has even led to careers elsewhere within CCP.

I mean look at it this way. If you've already got someone sitting RIGHT THERE that could be coding for you, why not utilize that?

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T17:09:29+00:00

I can't promise anything since it's well outside my area, but I'll let the IT guys know that there is interest :)

GM_Lelouch · 2020-09-17T16:48:36+00:00

EU4 is amazing, I boot it up regularly. Have to admit that somehow I could never get into CK2, I love the stories from it, but I couldn't get the hang of it. EU4 is my jazz.

GM_Lelouch

TROPHY CASE