EVE General Discussion

I think one of the biggest issues for new players and a sector of the high sec population is that their ability to connect with the wider community. Sure there is the forum but we know many people do not use the forum and it isn't an alternative to in-game communication and interaction. Its well known that new players are pretty much hopeless by themselves and to really experience the game (especially PvP) they need fleets and other players. Without it they will probably give up.

But they are given few options directly, the help channel, their starter corp and local. All of them lets be honest are not good ways to get pvp. Sure you might get a good person but your also equally likely to get a scammer, AWOXer or someone that will invite you into a corp and then disappear after a month leaving you with a dying corp. All of these things won't keep new player.

So where else can a person go outside of a corp and alliances? Incursions. No way a new player can engage in all that. NPSI organisations like Spectre Fleet or Bombers Bar. Possible but how would new players find out about such movements? Live Events. Given that every time they out of highsec it ends in a massacre it sends the wrong message. Anyway they're done too infrequently.

Ultimately I feel this is perhaps one of the biggest issues for new player and other people in high sec. Without already being part of it, its very hard to connect with the meta.

I actually agree with you. I used to spend some days sitting on an alt in one of the newbie zones, doing a hybrid of answering Q's and some recruiting, but it's a full time job trying to do that.

The tricky part is that anyone consolidating all the "player driven" content (Bombers Bar, etc) has to keep it current and relevant. Woof, that's two full time jobs.

Hm, maybe I should do that. SOMEONE HIRE ME TO DO THAT.

While I'm sure there are ways of making it easier for newbies to connect with more people (I have no suggestions), a new player also has to look for these things themselves. I'm not sure if Sibyyl was talking about me specifically, but that's how I started. I wasn't the only one either, while most NPC corp people scoffed at us newbies going into lowsec, a few fellow newbies liked the idea and we ended up having a ton of fun. We mostly died horribly, hence my Fleets being named "The Die in a Fire Fleet", but now we're in our own corp, still dying horribly, but we take people down kicking and screaming with us too .

This is another way I suppose this game isn't for everyone: you need to exercise a lot of personal initiative to get anything out of the game, otherwise it really does become "spreadsheets in space".

EDIT: grammar and spelling because hangover

That's true. If you won't engage first nobody will go out of their lengths to find you and give you a hug. Engaging can mean a lot of things:

Show up in local and say hello (obviously works best OUTSIDE of trade hubs)
Shoot somebody
Post some questions in newbie forums (DON'T RAGE over pixels but ask how to avoid it)
Drop into recruitment channels of various corps and talk to people there even if you don't intend to join them.
Follow Chribba on twitter and comment his every tweet :)

Just be active and put yourself out there and people will take notice and if they like what you are doing things can happen.
Things can happen if they don't like what you doing too, for example: whining about wardecs usually summons Cannibal Kane :)

shoot the newbies, they love it. seriously go try it.(not the brand newbies)
drop isk close to he ship value givem a bit of advice and about half of them will want to fleet up with you.

CCP really needs to add a ubiquitous link to the forums in the client. Honestly, I think I read somewhere from CCP that only about 10% of the player community reads the forums. For a lot of people the first time they ever come on the forums is when they whine how they just got suicide ganked...