EVE General Discussion

They just fixed new player retention, updated Rookie ship graphics. All is well!

On a more serious note, with an extremely crowded market and more games going F2P for people to download and play, it must not be easy to compete. EVE is well known for it's complex gameplay, harsh game environment with a pretty serious death penalty compared to other MMO's, but that is the draw and one of the things that sets EVE apart.

I really don't know if the course CCP is on is going to be good overall. On one hand you could help existing player retention by revisiting old game mechanics but on the other hand, lack of new content could slow new players trying EVE. Let's face it, players like the new shiny stuff. The other problem I see is CCP breaking these old systems, AKA fixing that which is not broken, and angering veteran players and causing some account cancellations.

It would be really interesting to see the playing patterns of a new player. I would think the problem is trying to separate actual new players and ALT accounts but maybe CCP has a method. Do these constant NPE revisits have any real impact on new player retention? Does it really come down to getting new players into friendly corporations and that is the true silver bullet to keeping these new players? I wouldn't even rule out that a true multiplayer avatar environment (WiS) being a big negative for new players.

I think Inferno should really be a good indicator but if it flops the veterans will just show up and yell, "it's Summer everything is down right now." So we might not really have any good indicators until the next Winter expansion.

Eve is before anything else, a game. It needs to be fun!

Fun does not always translate into winning, so long as the loss doesn't appear as though it was due to an insurmountable obstacle. Jimmy NewDude and his friends have zip chance against OldFart TearLicker and his gang of epeen goombas. Loosing in such a case is not fun, it's predictable, boring and pointless.

But What if JimmyNewDude and his friends can only be challenged by a group of similar or smaller ability? Now there is a chance at winning.

Here's what I would propose to wake up Eve. Take the total number of skill points of a corp or alliance divided by the total number of players in a corp to come up with a rating. This would be the corp/alliance "ability quotient".

Then, a corp/alliance can not wardec any other group that has a lower ability greater than five percent. they can war dec anyone above them that they want, but no one below that five percent difference.

This will allow young and/or small corps the ability, and protection, to face challenges they can handle. If it is something they can have a chance at dealing with, they just might have fun in loosing. As things are now, there's simply no point so they stay docked or go running for the hills.

PVP should be fun for newbies, not something to dread.

IMO the #1 reason new players quit = Bordom.

Not because of eve itself, but because they join small boring corps who might have one or two ops every week. Corps who have maybe 2 people online at any given moment. Players join this corp and then end up playing by themselves. They get bored and quit.

If you look at other MMO's its far easier to join a large group of people and play with them. This group-play is what most people play MMOs for. In eve, 90% of the corps are tiny and barely active

I say this from experience. I used to run a highsec corp and was directly responsible for several people quitting because we never did anything.

My solution would be to limit the number of corps a player can create each year, and require FACTION standing to create new corps. OR just vastly increase Corp and Alliance creation fees.

Why? Because limiting/preventing small boring corporations from forming would greatly reduce the chance of new players joining small boring corps. It would limit corp creation to players who have really thought it out, and are willing to give that corp the dedication to create it. The corps that ARE created are more likely to be successful.

I understand people enjoy 'getting in on the ground floor' and thats commendable, but its not very practical if we all do it.

I totally agree with the reason, but I think your solution wouldn't be particularly effective. Even if you'd only be able to create one corp a year, it would make hardly a dent in the number of useless, newbie-devouring corporation in the game.

Eigther - depending on the whim. I usually sent mine after turning them into space dust or sent them as part of my ransom attempt.

-Liang

Terminal Insanity,

only problem I see with your suggestion is that nobody wants corp members who don't have any initiative. Of course EVE is best served with purple dots around you, but if all you can do is spin ships and bore to death when nobody else is on, you are not an asset to a corp, you are a liability.

Wouldnt work. Easy workaround. Few vets... TONS of alt accounts with 900K SP. Brings down the overall quotient to be able to dec anything given enough low SP alts.

Are you going to pay for those alts, or are they free? Nothing stopping the noob corp from adding in their two alts as well.

Certainly could be some additional parameters, only chracters with an active training queue are added into the calculation, that eleminates the alt problem.

This is very true, some corps seem to think that inviting people to join and talk to them in corp chat once and awhile is enough to retain them.



A lot of guilds in other games are tiny and have the same problem as corps in EVE with retaining people. But EVE has one other factor a lot of the larger corps in EVE are paranoid about spies for example, or put too many restrictions on joining.




Limiting corps won't make any difference and in my case would be kind of inconvenient (single player corp). Most players will look to join the bigger corps anyway (players attract players as long as they're not soloists) but if the bigger corps reject the newer players then they end up in NPC corps or smaller corps and we've already talked about what happens if they end up in a bad small corp.



Simple fact is if you want to retain people in your corp you need to do more than just talk to them on occasions. Because if it's just talking NPC starter corps (in most cases, not all) generally do it better and if that fails there's always the help channel.

If they are not counted in the forumla, for not having an active training cycle, then why not? How many people are going to pay an extra 15 a month just to move the number so they can gank noobs?