EVE General Discussion

The simple answer is that most newbies are a liability and generally do not bring anything of value to a 0.0 corp. This does not apply to all newbies of course, just 99% of them. Combine that with the fact that we have an over abundance of players with established PVP backgrounds applying (and getting turned down) everyday, and it does not make much sense for us to take on the job of training new players.

We often recruit newer players, but only the ones who have shown that they can bring something to the table. Even then, it is a long and frustrating process getting them up to the level of proficiency needed to be competent in even the simplest of fleet roles. In our Alliance, we generally only recruit 2-3 newbies at a time and then quickly narrow them down to the one that we want to keep.

One of the biggest obstacles that new players face in contributing to a 0.0 fleet, is that the least skill point intensive roles in a fleet (scouting, dictoring, ect...) are some of the most critical and pilot skill demanding.

Hate to disagree, New pilots are simply new, not stupid. Some may have a few misconceptions about the game, but the fact of it is that Eve Online has been around a long time, and has earned a reputation for being "Hardcore" and "A Thinking Man's Game" with a "Learning Cliff" instead of a learning curve.

Having said that, the new players the game is getting already know to expect losses, etc. I have found that the new players I have mentored over the years tend to listen when advised and don't stay "newbs" for very long. With a little guidance and a little assistance, the new players that stay in Eve tend to stay for a long time, becoming an asset to their corps instead of a liability.

TL:DR Be Nice to the newbs they're your next FC, director, etc

Newbies are awsome. Goonswarm is very geared to newbies, from our free frigate program(now with Destroyers too), mentors, WIKI, and finally a 60 day plan that touches on all aspects of combat out in 0.0 space, plus ways to make ISK out in 0.0 from day one.

A unicorn hunt it is not, but it is difficult. E-Uni, or RvB kinda do what you are asking, and kind of teach you about PvP. I've heard about 99%, but don't know about them much. Really the best advice I can give is find a corp/alliance that has a strong, active community, that welcomes new players, and wants to see everyone in the community do well. "It takes a village, to raise a child." is pretty accurate.

To be fair the only ones' who've said that here are in terrible alliances.

I think you two are missing his point and Dradius is also missing out on something.

The noobies are not useful to his corp/alliance for the gangs they want to fly. So when he says liability he means they aren't going to fit in well with the rest of the guys they fly with because they don't have the SP's to fly in those gangs and will typically be the guy getting caught on a gate and killed, which can sometimes drag more guys trying to save them down as well.

However, what Dradius is missing, is that noobs are not always a liability in general as they can easily be taught how to be effective and are often more interested in undocking than those many bitter vets that have 100mil SPs'. The deal is you have to figure out a way to make the new players valuable asset to your corp/alliance and work your corp alliance around that idea, if you intend to actively recruit new low skill point players.

Groups like Goons & Test have done this well and I'll be honest enough to say that my new corp is somewhat modeled on that same principle. Personally, I'd rather have a lot of low SP players whom are active to fly with than high SP players that never undock.

Not to mention it's so much easier to get fights when your gang is made up with 2011 chars than when made up with 2006 guys.

I like the part were RK members said newbs were a liability.

I don't see why there is so much hate toward his comment. Overall what he said is very true, the roles the noobs could fill in their gangs are typically roles that you need experienced players flying. Even though I run a PVP corp open to new players I still don't have them scouting or dictoring when we go to null.

I'll be straight up and say it, that when forming up our new corp and deciding to actively recruit new players it's been quite a challenge to figure out a way to make it interesting for our high SP guys as well as the lower SP guys. I've also personally taken a lot of ship losses while taking guys out training that I wouldn't have lost had I not been taking out new guys.

The simple fact is a lot of corps/alliances are not interested in doing that, nor do they need to if they have a lot of higher SP players applying. You can't blame anyone for doing things the way they want to do them or flying how they like to fly.

To be fair, most pvp is this way. You're just reiterating what everyone already knows (player skill > character skills).

That said I don't think null is a good place for noobs that don't already have established out-of-game connections to the alliances they want to move in with. There's plenty of well-established and reputable empire corps you can learn the ropes on without having to simultaneously master nullsec's metagame. And without some kind of record it's going to be nearly impossible to prove to the recruiting officer that you don't know that you're not going to ragequit the game after your ratter gets blown up the first time, that you won't ragequit the game the first time you jump into a roaming gang that wasn't there 30 seconds ago on your way to some exploration site and get podded, that you can use voice, that you'll listen to voice, that you'll follow the FCs directions on voice even if you think it's a really, really bad idea, that you won't be That Annoying Guy Who Never Shuts Up on voice, that you aren't a spy, that you'll show up to at least some CTAs, etc.

Noob players are the ones who need to see the game up front and personal. 0.0 space is a great place to do this IMO. No rules, sovreignty wars, big fleets and of course small gang roams. All it takes is like 3 or 5 expierenced individuals to create the nucleus of a otherwise t1 fleet. The rest of the small gang can be any t1 ship. As long as the t2 ships are focused on their strengths and play to them, the t1 fleet can only be an asset.

Sure they are sometimes considered throw away ships but players that do this are usually flying frigs and destroyers. Cheap ships that are able to provide a decent amount of dps efficiently. The collective experienced players then doll out the mill or two that it took to buy it.

Noobs are useful and cost effective. To us, people that want to learn how to play how they want is important. We do not command people to fly a certain ship or a certain way. I feel this is the best way to learn and the best place to learn it is in 0.0.

It's how I started about a year ago and I chose to stay with the alliance. We recruit people and place no holds on them. If they want to leave, they can leave. The key is freedom. There are CTA's and other things that require organization, with that, a quick facist speech on why we are doing what we are doing is all it takes to get the noobs curious and come along.

Noobs are the future. If you want to repopulate 0.0 you need new players that learned to play there. Don't shelter them to much. The lessons learned in 0.0 have no security blanket making them think they are safe. As long as they want to survive they will learn how to react to situations quickly and correctly (few exceptions).

BTW: If you think as a noob your choices are limited to test and goons, you are dead wrong my friend.

EDIT: In 0.0 noobs also learn about politics. I think this is very important to Eve.

There is no experience quite like being in the shark tank learning to swim.