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New player experience. (help people find the right community)
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kidkoma
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#1 - 2014-09-23 02:35:11 UTC
One of the topics that is important to the continued success of eve is bringing in new blood. But its not just bringing in new players, its keeping them.

There's a lot to love in Eve, the complexity of this game is one of its crowning jewels, it also acts as a barrier to entry. The first days/weeks/months of a new player in eve is absolute confusion, I remember logging in for the first time and spending 5 minutes trying to figure out how to undock (insert renter/opposing faction joke here).

There was a point in me playing Eve, where enough of the pieces clicked together and I got that "ah ha!" moment. Where I was not totally lost, I was just a little bit lostBlink

So what keeps players logging in?

The community. I got involved with BNI, logging into comms, chatting, running kitchen sink frig roams, asking dumb questions. This is why people stay. Its not just Brave (or Hero for that matter) Goonwaffe takes newbies from Something Aweful. Newbmercs, Eve Uni, RvB and a ton of other corps and Alliances bring Newbies into their fold. But there's room for improvement on how we handle the important first week or two of a newbie in eve.

The most important part of keeping new players in the game in my opinion is getting them into a community. People have figured out how to play this game, or at lest they say they do, and doing stuff with your buddy's are far more conducive to learning about what's actually going on then clicking through a tutorial mission. Although the missions are important as well. Everything in the new player experience should funnel them into a newbie friendly corp.

Finding a corp getting into a newbie friendly corp is more then just a single tick mark "Newbie friendly" There's more to it then that. For example, will the corp be cool with women? Or will the members loose their ******* minds when a woman gets on comms? Are they a group that tolerates homophobic language/jokes? What about racist language/jokes? What do they do? Are they miners, missioners? Do they PvP exclusively? How often do they expect you to log in and contribute to corp/alliance/coalition objectives? Are they laid back? How seriously do they take their killboards? Do they have doctrines? If so, do they expect you to be able to fly them day one? Can you fly their doctrines? Do they speak your language? Do they fly in your timezone? A good portion of these questions can be found in the corp recruitment thing, but not as well as it should be.

It would be cool if, for example, I'm recruiting newbros, and I really want to get people who can fly my doctrines or are at least close to flying my doctrines, If I can upload fits to the recruitment tab, and looking at that, I can see from who's applied, can fly/almost fly the ships.

If I'm looking for a no holds bared, crude, rude corp that does mining. Can I find a group who does that?

What if there was a corp rating from members/former members, where people can comment on their experience with that group in the vein of yelp?

Right now, the corp ad thing doesn't quite cut it. Its confusing, and as far as I know, it only shows you corps that have payed to be up there.

The better you can get newbies plugged into groups that suit their playstyle and fit there social preferences. The more likely they are to stick around.

The other part is just better social tools. If eve built in private forums for corps/alliances, a big hurdle in regards to running a corp/alliance would be alleviated. Same with voice comms. Some of my favorite experiences in eve have been hanging out in comms chatting with people while not really doing anything.

TLDR Make finding a group of players with similar play styles/ social preferences easy and intuitive and provide more and better in game social platforms for players to interact with. The community is the best part of eve IMO and as a result, the new player experience should lead people to joining groups.
Ceawlin Cobon-Han
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#2 - 2014-09-23 12:40:26 UTC
Quote:
The better you can get newbies plugged into groups that suit their playstyle and fit there social preferences. The more likely they are to stick around.

The only playstyle in the game is that dictated by the game's long-term bullies. This is the major cause of new player loss, regardless of the advertisements stating playstyle is entirely "up to you!"
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#3 - 2014-09-23 12:46:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Ralph King-Griffin
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
Quote:
The better you can get newbies plugged into groups that suit their playstyle and fit there social preferences. The more likely they are to stick around.

The only playstyle in the game is that dictated by the game's long-term bullies. This is the major cause of new player loss, regardless of the advertisements stating playstyle is entirely "up to you!"

that's because we are the only ones talking to the newbies and offering advice "in the wild" that isnt "don't go to lowsec",
"dont pvp til you have 20m sp", "grr griefers and bullies and lions and tigers oh my".

you want a newbies to stick around,get off your soap box, get out of that god awfull npc corp and go talk to them **** with them first so you have their attention and then get them involved.

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#4 - 2014-09-23 15:30:40 UTC
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
Quote:
The better you can get newbies plugged into groups that suit their playstyle and fit there social preferences. The more likely they are to stick around.

The only playstyle in the game is that dictated by the game's long-term bullies. This is the major cause of new player loss, regardless of the advertisements stating playstyle is entirely "up to you!"


Its this toxic nonsense that makes new players afraid to reach out to others and want to quit when they get attacked. You talk of bullies when they are the ones playing the game as a game.

Do the game a favour and NEVER talk to noobs until you've grown up, realise what a sandbox is and understand what 'upto you!' really means.

@OP

i agree that the community is key for retaining new players. But its easier said than done. You can already put up a corp description as well as a body of text in the corp advert where you can put all the information you're talking about (and some players do).

However, Its natural that many corps will try to make themselves seem better than (or completely different to what) they actually are. Loads of corps say they do casual PvP, but never do, or ore buy back, but dont really. Have 50 odd members active over 24 hours, but only 7 are active and only at certain times. All you can do is to tell noobs to do some research and engage with the corp they want to join in conversations, fly with them and see what they do before committing. I have no idea how to make any mechanical changes to remedy this.

Unless there is someway of the server logging the average hours that a corp is active and how many are online at whatever items and putting that in the advert, but that could also be considered easy intel for enemies.

I'll plug the idea for corp-lite/sub corps here as well. At the moment if a group of players want to do their own thing and have their own place to socialise they commonly choose to start a corp to do so. This however exposes them to AWOXers and war decs which can be a demoralising experience, especially for the uninitiated. So something that gives them there own chat room, mailing list and a badge they can put their groups name on may go a long way to letting players be more sociable but without putting them in the cross-hairs of other capsuleers.

Other than that i feel too many corps are started by people who dont know what they are doing and/or dont bother engaging their members. Noobs are spoken to in NPC corp chat by ignorants like the above, teaching them to stay away from others and trust no one.

Moron corps should be changed into corp-lites or destroyed and noob NPC could maybe eject players of a certain age into another NPC corp.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs
kidkoma
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#5 - 2014-09-23 20:59:34 UTC
Quote:
However, Its natural that many corps will try to make themselves seem better than (or completely different to what) they actually are. Loads of corps say they do casual PvP, but never do, or ore buy back, but dont really. Have 50 odd members active over 24 hours, but only 7 are active and only at certain times. All you can do is to tell noobs to do some research and engage with the corp they want to join in conversations, fly with them and see what they do before committing. I have no idea how to make any mechanical changes to remedy this.


I had hit on this in my post.

Quote:
What if there was a corp rating from members/former members, where people can comment on their experience with that group in the vein of yelp?


So lets say I was looking for a corp, that is a chill newbro friendly orginisation and I found something that fit the bill, I join up, but find out they are all afk. I could leave that corp to find another one, and review it so people after me would know... Something like "2 stars, nice guys, they just don't do anything." That should help people find the corp they are looking for.

As for wardecs, Brave has been basically perma wardecked since day one. Its tough for newbies, we basically tell them to avoid highsec, set their clone to GE- and pod express themselves over. Its the only way to do it.
Nariya Kentaya
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#6 - 2014-09-23 21:42:14 UTC
kidkoma wrote:
Quote:
However, Its natural that many corps will try to make themselves seem better than (or completely different to what) they actually are. Loads of corps say they do casual PvP, but never do, or ore buy back, but dont really. Have 50 odd members active over 24 hours, but only 7 are active and only at certain times. All you can do is to tell noobs to do some research and engage with the corp they want to join in conversations, fly with them and see what they do before committing. I have no idea how to make any mechanical changes to remedy this.


I had hit on this in my post.

Quote:
What if there was a corp rating from members/former members, where people can comment on their experience with that group in the vein of yelp?


So lets say I was looking for a corp, that is a chill newbro friendly orginisation and I found something that fit the bill, I join up, but find out they are all afk. I could leave that corp to find another one, and review it so people after me would know... Something like "2 stars, nice guys, they just don't do anything." That should help people find the corp they are looking for.

As for wardecs, Brave has been basically perma wardecked since day one. Its tough for newbies, we basically tell them to avoid highsec, set their clone to GE- and pod express themselves over. Its the only way to do it.

have you ever even actually LOOKED at reviews for products on the internet? people troll, and even when they give their legitimate opinion, they very rarely actually clarify it, instead spouting thigns like "2/5 utter ****" without giving any reasons.

not to mention 90% of all reviews given would be by either trolls or butthurt dropouts, who both intentionally spam bad reviews for the "lulz"
kidkoma
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#7 - 2014-09-23 21:50:07 UTC
Quote:
have you ever even actually LOOKED at reviews for products on the internet? people troll, and even when they give their legitimate opinion, they very rarely actually clarify it, instead spouting thigns like "2/5 utter ****" without giving any reasons.

not to mention 90% of all reviews given would be by either trolls or butthurt dropouts, who both intentionally spam bad reviews for the "lulz"


I totally agree. It was just a thought I threw in there. Its by no means a perfect of elegant solution.
Veers Belvar
Swordmasters of New Eden
#8 - 2014-09-24 00:03:34 UTC
I don't think CCP should be steering people towards player corps. A lot of people are not looking for that experience in Eve, and are happy to live in highsec and socialize outside the confines of corporations. What I do think is missing is some kind of introduction to things beyond mining and mission running. I would love to see players steered, towards incursions, NPSI frig roams, solo wormhole play, FW stealth bomber play. You don't need a corp for this...you just need some more advanced tutorials once the player gets enough SP.

Personally I kind of ran into a brick wall after a month. Mining was a bore, missions got repetitive, and the tutorials hadn't steered me towards anything in particular. Thankfully I found incursions on my own, and started enjoying the game. But the lack of meaningful tutorials, and the bittervets in NPC corp land, certainly don't steer new players towards the exciting part of Eve.
Ralph King-Griffin
New Eden Tech Support
#9 - 2014-09-24 15:22:43 UTC  |  Edited by: Ralph King-Griffin
Veers Belvar wrote:
I don't think CCP should be steering people towards player corps. A lot of people are not looking for that experience in Eve, and are happy to live in highsec and socialize outside the confines of corporations. What I do think is missing is some kind of introduction to things beyond mining and mission running. I would love to see players steered, towards incursions, NPSI frig roams, solo wormhole play, FW stealth bomber play. You don't need a corp for this...you just need some more advanced tutorials once the player gets enough SP.

Personally I kind of ran into a brick wall after a month. Mining was a bore, missions got repetitive, and the tutorials hadn't steered me towards anything in particular. Thankfully I found incursions on my own, and started enjoying the game. But the lack of meaningful tutorials, and the bittervets in NPC corp land, certainly don't steer new players towards the exciting part of Eve.

the cognitive dissonance is strong with this one

Murderers of Negotiable Motivations

=]|[=
Malcom Vincent
Generic Alt Corporation 421
#10 - 2014-09-24 17:55:32 UTC
I believe new player retention can maintained by maintaining the local language channels and help new players being pointed towards these channels (as well as the rookie channel).

At current point we have nearly 100 in Danish, which is propably not alot compared to English or German channels, but we do our fair share of helping out newbies.

We do this by answering ground level questions, and pointing to well established learning institutions and newbie corps.

I am in no way a voice for our channel, this merely an observation. Seems counterproductive to close them down.

Upstarting Blogger: Ormehullet Guides and more is coming
Ceawlin Cobon-Han
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#11 - 2014-09-29 18:33:40 UTC
Ralph King-Griffin wrote:

the cognitive dissonance is strong with this one

You ARE a wag!
Ceawlin Cobon-Han
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#12 - 2014-09-29 18:40:08 UTC
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to
kidkoma
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#13 - 2014-09-30 23:52:01 UTC
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to


Everyone would be a noob corp then. Goonwaffe would be a noob corp. BNI would be a noob corp. Sniggerdly would be a noob corp.
Ceawlin Cobon-Han
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#14 - 2014-10-01 21:05:13 UTC
kidkoma wrote:
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to


Everyone would be a noob corp then. Goonwaffe would be a noob corp. BNI would be a noob corp. Sniggerdly would be a noob corp.

Have these corps told you this? Point out their posts to prove your allegations, else stop trying to appear clever (failing miserably).
kidkoma
Hedion University
Amarr Empire
#15 - 2014-10-01 21:35:28 UTC  |  Edited by: kidkoma
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
kidkoma wrote:
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to


Everyone would be a noob corp then. Goonwaffe would be a noob corp. BNI would be a noob corp. Sniggerdly would be a noob corp.

Have these corps told you this? Point out their posts to prove your allegations, else stop trying to appear clever (failing miserably).


If I had two options for your corp, one could be war decked, and the other could not be war decked, which would you choose? There would be only one choice. You don't need to be exceedingly clever to figure out that out, its so obvious thats the way things would go. There's no real point in this argument either...

You can have two dollars or you can have no dollars, the choice is yours.

What?

Really, why would anyone not go for the wardeck free corp set up?

Preez don't hurt my feelings, they're all i haz left.
Kaarous Aldurald
Black Hydra Consortium.
#16 - 2014-10-01 21:41:58 UTC
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to


As long as they literally are not allowed to make money or buy and sell things on the market, sure.

But if they can effect the market, that effects me and I should be able to wardec them.

"Verily, I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws."

One of ours, ten of theirs.

Best Meltdown Ever.
Angelique Duchemin
Team Evil
#17 - 2014-10-01 21:57:46 UTC
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
kidkoma wrote:
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to


Everyone would be a noob corp then. Goonwaffe would be a noob corp. BNI would be a noob corp. Sniggerdly would be a noob corp.

Have these corps told you this? Point out their posts to prove your allegations, else stop trying to appear clever (failing miserably).



kidkoma wrote:
Goonwaffe would be a noob corp.


Confirming that we're a noob corp.

The very sun of heaven seemed distorted when viewed through the polarising miasma welling out from this sea-soaked perversion, and twisted menace and suspense lurked leeringly in those crazily elusive angles of carven rock where a second glance shewed concavity after the first shewed convexity.

Ceawlin Cobon-Han
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#18 - 2014-10-02 20:50:55 UTC
Excellent! It would mean corps who wish to avoid PvP can do so. You would need to go into lo or nulsec for concord-free PvP, so corps who wish to avoid that can remain in hisec.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#19 - 2014-10-03 01:01:23 UTC
Ceawlin Cobon-Han wrote:
How about a modifier to a corporation, called Noob corp? The corporation functions in the same way as a normal corp, except it can't be wardec'd and it can't wardec. This would allow its members to pick and choose when to PvP, if at all. Naturally the hisec griefers wouldn't like this at all, but that's no concern. There will, after all, be plenty of corporations who would be more than happy to engage. Noob corp is for people who don't want to


no corp hangar, no corp market orders, fixed NPC corp tax, no corp wallet, no corp contracts, no POS, no POCO's
Only corp chat, corp mailing list, corp calender, a corp name and a corp logo.

then you can have immunity to war decs

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs
Ceawlin Cobon-Han
Garoun Investment Bank
Gallente Federation
#20 - 2014-10-03 11:09:39 UTC
I can tell this is a good idea by the appearance of the usual whining, masquerading as Oh-so-amusing comments. Must recommend it to the CSM.