Anyone who has played EVE Online for any length of time knows the struggle of getting acclimated to this game of internet spaceships. The game has a very steep learning curve, and it’s very rewarding to finally reach a point of self-sufficiency in EVE Online, but it’s a long road nonetheless.
Luckily for new players, there’s plenty of established protocol and structure around how the community assists new players with their journey. From not hassling new players and always giving them help in-game, to the massive wealth of information that sites like EVEUniversity put together for free, there’s plenty of help out there. One issue is that many brand new pilots often have no idea where to start looking.
But now, CCP is introducing a tool to assist those geared towards helping new players in their task. The new Pointer Tool, headed to New Eden in the upcoming Invasion expansion, will allow those wishing to help new players to direct their charges right to the information they need.
If you’ve ever tried to explain the layout of various functions in-game, it’s probably sounded something like this:
“Ok, you know where you see the current solar system on the left hand side of the screen? Below that it says ‘Route’, and there is an ‘A’ icon next to it. Click on that and change the route to ‘Shortest’.”
“In the Station Services window, which is the window on the right when you are docked, below the Undock button there is a row of icons. One of the icons is a T-shirt. Click on that one to go into Customization to put on your Permaband shirt.”
This new tool eliminates that hassle by allowing players to link UI elements directly. This tool will then show the proper UI element on-screen for the player that clicks it. It looks something like this in action:
There’s a whole list of different UI elements and tools that players can share with this update. Go check out the Dev Blog on the CCP site for more details.
EVE Online is free-to-play right now with an Alpha Clone, which gives you plenty of access to the early parts of the game. These training wheels can expose you to shooting ships and blasting stations to bits if you’re into bloodshed. Or if you’re more industrial, you can get into mining moons and building fleets. There’s a huge living world out there in the stars, you just have to make that first leap.
If you want some help getting started, you should check out our trading guide for Alphas. We’re also working on a guide to introduce players to mining in EVE, be on the lookout for that as well.
If you want some free skill points to make training easier, take up our trial offer over here. There’s of course the millions upon millions of free ISK you can get with that offer too.
