Decided with all that had changed in Eve Online to try out the new tutorial. I remember when I first started playing learning the game could be hard. My first few days I had no idea what I was doing. I lost a ship to a pirate, got podded by an NPC I thought was a player. Lost a jetcan because I didn’t bookmark it and thought someone had stole my ore. It was a crazy time.

I also remember after I got started playing I tried to get my friends to play with me. Only ever convinced one person to try it. She logged in and I tried to walk her through her first couple hours of playing. She had a hell of a lot of trouble. Never really got it and stopped playing after a couple days. This girl is smart as a whip, just started law school. So the game obviously could do more to ease players back then.

So how about now? Well, so far it seems to be better. I honestly think it’s hard to say as I actually know the basics of how to play. But starting out with most of the UI disabled is definitely a good idea. This game is so UI heavy it gets a little crazy sometimes.

The new tutorial walks you through the basics of how to target and shoot. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t know the keyboard shortcuts for targeting, orbiting and firing. So that was good to learn. It also teaches how to jump through some jump gates. Guides you to tutorial career agents. That’s when it kind of falls apart.

I decided to try exploration. Now, probing is 100% easier than back in the day. 8 probes without skilling and preset probe spreads? Nice. But the tutorial kind of dumps you with the career agents. I accepted the mission, but couldn’t see what I needed to do. I ended up going into my journal and reading the mission details. That’s fine and dandy for me, a guy who knows that exists. But a newbie is going to just get frustrated. Overall, still got a ways to go to get there.