Well here I am in the tutorial every new player gets dropped into.
This is already a vast improvement over the tutorial I got when I started. You get dropped into what I understand is a deadspace complex with a few asteroids and a single rat which orbits around. This is good because it gets people right into the game without being shocked by the menus and everything else you get when docked in a station. This part of the tutorial takes you through the core movement and combat skills. After that's done it gets you to dock up at the only station in system. This is interesting as they get you to use the dock order which warps you to zero automatically instead of getting you to warp to zero first and then dock. I can understand using just the dock as it leaves the explicit warp-to instruction till later. As a 0.0 veteran I'm more used to warping to zero before doing any action so the straight up dock seems a bit odd.
Another interesting addition to the tutorial is this big white box that floats around when the tutorial wants you to do something with the UI. I think this is awesome as it gives new players this big "LOOK HERE" thing to speed up their initial learning instead of the hunting for the 10px x 10px that might have been flashing back when I started. Another really nice feature of this is that if you have a window over the button or item then the overlapping window will become transparent so you can see the button or item the big white box is pointing to.
The way the tutorial only spawns items as you need them for a specific step in the tutorial is nice. Instead of flooding the new user with a million items you start off with nothing but a Civilian Damage Control and the first ship you destroy has the classic 1 piece of Trit waiting for you as loot.
The tutorial also links to EVElopedia pages on subjects that the space and time of the tut doesn't really allow.
The explicit tutorial steps for joining a player corp are great compared to when I started. Mainly because the tutorial now covers them.
The career missions are an interesting addition. I went and bought a combat frig before finding out that the next mission gave you one as a reward. So I'm going to follow the mission arc until finished so I don't jump ahead and waste any more ISK. Especially as I'm not going to help myself to my main's stash.
Well that was an interesting evening. Will continue to work at this and see what happens.
Hmmm... Forgot to post screenshots of what I meant about the white boxes and transparency. So here they are even if a little late. Click them to get them in fullsize.
