EVE General Discussion

If you don't get new players into PvP quickly, they're going to leave. PvE in EVE just plain sucks.

Another problem is that too many corps want their members to already have 5 or 10 million SP before they'll even consider entry. No one wants to train up recruits, or act as mentors. Everybody wants to play their own game their own way -- for being an MMO, EVE is probably the most solo-driven MMO I can think of. Everybody has an alt or two (or three, or ten). Lots of those big fleet battles out in null are actually being fought by about ten people, all told.

For any player under a million skillpoints, PVP simply means dying. A lot. Constantly. Which wouldn't be so bad, but precious little help is offered to teach the noob how to fix what went wrong. Yes, we've all heard the stories about how the magnanimous victors will tutor the defeated noob after the explosion to tell him what he did wrong, but in practice this is pretty rare. What usually happens is that the clueless noob gets popped, podded, and laughed at for flying a s**t-fit ship.

It takes about two months of training in order to get to a place where a new player can be truly useful in most roles, and feel comfortable enough to really go out and play the bigger game. But this is an enormous hill for many players to climb, especially those with families, jobs, and social lives. Telling a new player "Hey, two months from now this game will be awesome!" is a great way to get that player to say "The hell with it, I can have fun with some other game right now!"

It's also a brutal comedown to see those awesome space-battles in CCP's ads and on YouTube, and then find that actual combat in most cases involves shooting little red X's far off in the distance.

EVE UNI, Agony, and a few other corps have done good work in training new players, but then seem at something of a loss as to how to kick the players "out of the nest" so they can join other corps (or start their own).

Quite an ironic post I think.

If new players insist upon "living in high-sec" for their first two months, I usually recommend they train up trading and buy and sell faction ammo and modules. My advice is usually to haul them in small batches via destroyer, completing a circuit through all four trade hubs. Without much understanding of Eve's various meta-systems, a competent player can rack up a small fortune in two months doing this (or variations of it).

In my opinion the arbitage is good for Eve's economy as well, though others may debate this. So in this way, rookie players have the option to get rookie-space-rich to the betterment of everyone.

If new players insist upon "living in high-sec" for their first two months, I usually recommend they train up trading and buy and sell faction ammo and modules. My advice is usually to haul them in small batches via destroyer, completing a circuit through all four trade hubs. Without much understanding of Eve's various meta-systems, a competent player can rack up a small fortune in two months doing this (or variations of it).

In my opinion the arbitage is good for Eve's economy as well, though others may debate this. So in this way, rookie players have the option to get rookie-space-rich to the betterment of everyone.

Particularly in light of the fact that even the e-peen population spends most of their time ratting, plexing, mining, exploring....in other words, doing PVE. They keep insisting that PVP is the whole point of the game, yet spend the bulk of their time doing something else. It's pretty funny.

Yeah, I've wondered about that myself. The Mighty Military Men who look down on Indy guys because we don't "fight" seem to me to spend most of their time doing everything but . And that includes the Space Warriors in nullsec who will actually complain they can't find anyone to fight while they're docked up and probably watching a movie on pay per view.

winks.

P

There is no panacea for curing new players of the "what the hell can I do at this point," problem. EVE is a game for self-motivated and entrepreneurial individuals. There are massive benefits from collective efforts, but the organic process of networking, trust building, and making one's own niche has to be undertaken alone. Some new players have the benefit of good friends who push them into one path or another. They are more swiftly introduced to one potential interest or another, but even these players are going to give the game up once they have wrung that small niche for all it is worth.

Enjoying the game and keeping it interesting over time comes entirely from the ability to adapt, learn, and synthesize many activities. This is simply the polar opposite of most people's approach to gaming, even in other mmo's and that's OK. Those of us who have stuck with the game and kept it going this long have done so for precisely the same reason most players leave. It is open-ended and won't force-feed anyone a play-style.

Revamp the NPC starter corps and we're good.

Contrary to what alot of the people in this thread are saying Eve didn't stick for me until I got to a point that I could solo L4s. It wasn't because of the L4s themselves, I do enjoy them, but because at around that level of skill points is when you really start to feel flexible in ship choices and play styles. That is how it felt to me.

I think a lot of keeping new players in a corp or in Eve in general is just to interact with them. Whether you're PvPing, PVEing, Mining, Exploring, etc. You need to make them feel like they have something to contribute. Give them a Dessie to come pop frigates in your L4, give them an Industrial to haul your minerals, give them a fast frigate to tackle or even just distract people in PvP, or any number of other things. These things aren't necessarily vital but when you feel useful it is only natural to want to know how you can be more useful. After they have a taste for something you can help them figure out how to reach their goals. Plus there are some very useful things that don't take much training and will always be useful.


Edit: Also, when it comes to PvP you have to make sure that losing ships is fun on some level; even a good laugh. If you yell and scream and curse and throw hissy fits every time something doesn't go your way you'll probably put off a lot of people very quickly. If I had been put right into PvP with someone like that I would have never stayed with Eve. Honestly, I am not a PvP type anyway but luckily my intro to PvP was with a group of people who just wanted to have fun and kill time. While I still don't PvP voluntarily very often I also do not connect negative emotions to it immediately. That helped me immensely when it came to sticking with Eve.