EVE General Discussion

To bring this back closer to the topic

I spent my first month mining and reading. My head was exploding from information overload, even as an experienced gamer. After a bit over a month I joined a small corp. I guess I got really lucky, they're good guys that come from various walks of EvE. Whatever I wanted to try to do, there was someone who had experience with it and was willing to give me advice (tainted by their personal experience) and support in getting started. But corps like this are rare from what I see. EvE is so complex in so many ways, it's the blind leading the blind.

But the key point here is I got most of the information myself through google fu. Corps just give you people, to do stuff you want to do, with. Expecting strange people to hold your hand through EvE in a random corp is just asking to get scammed.


The damage they can do can be easily avoided, or at least severely mitigated with proper screening and careful role management. The reason they can and do massive damage is lazy and inexperienced CEO's/Directors. That invite them and give them starbase config and access to everything in corp offices two hours in.

The problem isn't pretend noobs griefing. It's legitimate noob CEO's letting it happen. The more I think about it, the more I agree that founding and running a corp should be a privilege, not a right. Though I don't know that arbitrary Corp Management skill points should necessarily be the method of determining that.

The fact a new member can turn on and blow up the FC, or reveal the fleet location is hardly the big roadblock to a noob finding PvP. Worst that can happen is someone hotdrops your fleet, of ships that you were ready and willing to loose anyway. PvP corps are not as concerned about a random noob they brought along in a frig engaging in friendly fire. That's for the bears to worry about when the new recruit starts shooting their Orca in a belt or a 4 Bil Mach in a mission.



This I can mostly agree with. It's easy to pick up the game and start carebearing. More aggressive play styles require you getting a foothold with some people to join up with. Because skill points and lack of experience hold you back from solo work. But is it really that hard to find RvB, Brave Newbies or faction warfare or a willing null corp as a noob looking to shoot people? Is it the reason for the low retention rate? Or are so many of the people who try this game simply not interested in what it has to offer? Or are they simply overwhelmed by the learning curve and give up before they find the aspect they would have enjoyed?

Do they join a corp that helps them explore one aspect they find out they don't enjoy? Then get stifled, feeling too obliged to leave the corp and try something new? This last point takes us back to where this all started a few threads ago. Bear corps that falsely advertise they PvP on their recruitment poster. Then convince a player who joined looking to PvP that he can't. Because (Skill Points / Money / Boogeyman / Blobs / Slavedriver Overlords).

Somehow, I don't think you've thought out these suggestions from an EvE point of view.

Situation A:
I get someone in corp and shoot at them, make them want to shoot at me. Then I dock and change the rules while they are too mad to pay attention, undock and watch them get concorded. Collect loot salvage and tears. Make sure to give them roles so they can't drop corp.

Situation B:
I make Corp A and Corp B. Set Corp B to blue. Get targets into corp A, Combat alt to Corp B. Set the rules so members of Corp A can't shoot Corp B. Now they can't even defend themselves while I gank them.

As Monk said earlier in the thread,

Maybe I'm naive, but I just haven't seen that much.

I have seen.. we'd rather not have you in our combat fleet until you've spent some time training, so meet us back here Wednesday night at 8PM and we'll do some fleet op, session change mechanic, and aggression timer training. Once we're sure you have the basics, then you can join the roam....


Heck, I've even seen corps that expect you to do these training sessions 3-4 times, just to give them time to judge activity level to judge whether or not they think you are just an alt.

And I've seen, the people that war dec'ed us this time are just too big and well skilled for us. We're going to have to stay docked up this week, but let's jump on the test server and get some practice.

Fair enough. But how long was the guy in corp before it happened? Wasn't the pilot at least a little suspicious of a new guy in local when he went solo ratting in a carrier? Doesn't your alliance have a holding corp for new recruits to help identify them and avoid such things?

nvm

As a very slight tangent:

OP, I'm a gamer that enjoys the interaction of complex systems, treating the obstacles in my path as a puzzle, winning or losing in unexpected ways and playing competitively in a way that includes tangible loss.

It was my understanding that this was essentially the only game that met my wants, and I and many players like me have come here to play in this way. We have good evidence that the game was built with this in mind and design with this in mind has increased subscriptions slowly but steadily over the course of the one of the longest lifetimes of any game in the MMO landscape.

If I am wrong and this game should be for everyone, what game should I be playing and how long will it be before you come demanding that game be changed to suit everyone, too?

Just like IRL where you get two extremes claiming either "Only the rich get richer" and "Getting rich is easy if you just work hard/follow steps 1-3", the truth usually lies somewhere in between.

Your statements fall into the same tired old rut. Consider - You claim that new players "immediately" get blown up after venturing into space. You claim in definite terms that everyone will need to already have a leg up to be able to progress with regards to contacts/ISK. You further claim that "every single person" one meets most probably has bad intentions towards you. That's a self - defeating mindset if there ever was one. Even if it was just hyperbole, it does show that you assume that EVE is unbeatable/not worth it to try, right from the start. You do realize it's just as bad as some players straight out assuming that someone who made a mistake is "terrible".

So, with regards to the question of how challenging EVE should be - Here's the thing, what constitutes "challenging" for someone could be easy mode for someone else, and unbelievably hard for that guy over there. It's usually relative to individual player motivation/aptitude. Personal anecdote - I did can mining back when I first started - that was before the barge changes - and despite getting canflipped a couple times, it didn't have any serious effect on my progression towards my goals. Compare that to players like these:

http://zedrikcayne.blogspot.com/2012/05/grand-theft-navy-apoc.html

For whom a single canflip set them back a few hundred million. The circumstances were the same, but in one the effect was negligible whereas in the other the player lost a good portion of their wealth. The difference - One player read up on canflipping, knew the risk, made a conscious decision to accept loss of ore as occasional cost of doing business, didn't take the bait, and moved on. The other flipped out and ended up with a disproportionate lossmail.

Point being, the difference in challenge could differ from one person to the next for a reason as simple as how much background research was done before taking the plunge. Just because you insist that EVE in its current state makes it too hard for a newbie doesn't make it so for the majority of people who try the game. Just because someone else thinks EVE is easy doesn't make it so for the majority of newbies. However - Whatever the case may be, EVE occupies its own market niche, it caters to gamers who prefer a higher bar set for challenge, there's already a wide variety of games out there that cater to the mass market, casual crowd. And it's a strategy that has brought EVE through a decade of success where a lot of casual MMO clones have already fallen by the wayside.

Being loudly insistent on turning EVE away from its core competencies "to retain new players" of the kind with lower motivation/less inclination to do research/less commited over the long term to any one game is not good business sense no matter how you cut it. It's diworsification at its finest.

It was never my intention to suggest that CCP change EVE to increase new player retention. I was doing more a "descriptive" (explanation of what is) rather than "perscriptive" (assertion of what should be) analysis of the situation.


In the last few days, there were a couple threads on the topic. The first blamed the low retention on carebears that recruit new players, then only show them a boring play style that drives them out of game.

The second thread was from a new player. His thread didn't offer much insight.

In my opinion, the low retention rates are not because of carebears recruiting new players, then only show them the boring parts of the game. In my opinion, it has far more to do with:

* Difficulty in finding a good mentor, and difficulty in learning to play without a good mentor.
* Lack of trust of new players due to preponderance of alts looking to do harm, pretending to be new players.
* The great harm that a bad corp-mate can do to you, your corp, your alliance, that fuels the mistrust.
* The preponderance of immaturity, pointless griefing and general asshattery.



That said, I don't a few tweaks that would reduce the harm corp-mates can do to wach other, such as safeties preventing you from shooting, jamming, scrammin, etc, a corp/alliance blue would ruin the "complex systems, treating the obstacles in my path as a puzzle, winning or losing in unexpected ways and playing competitively in a way that includes tangible loss".

AGAIN, not suggesting this. Justing saying that I think it would make corps more willing to take on new players, and may increase the retention rates... or maybe not.

EXACTLY!

Well, maybe not exactly... instead of 50K players online, it would be like 5K players.

Remove local, nerf CONCORD, remove NPC corps, move L4s to low sec, remove the grind that is mining and mission running, remove NPC station slots (manufacturing, research)....

Great, now there are 5K super hard-core players online scattered across 5K solar systems. Most of them are cloaked up or flying a super fast interceptor looking for the occasional industrial player, but most of your time you find nothing, because the industrialists have long ago been driven from the game.

So, you are really just spending your time waiting for something that doesn't exist.

How is that fun?

Since I made both the post you are replying to, and the OP, that makes it convenient.





I always assumed the "can shoot corp mates" was done to help in training and such. That is how I have always sued it. Split the corp into two fleets and fight against each other for training.


If awoxing was truly the intent of the game designers when they created the ability to shoot corp mates without consequences, then they intentionally built into the game a reason for people to distrust corp mates, a reason for it to be hard to get into a good corp when you are newb, and a reason there is low new player retention.

Good job CCP, you designed in a revenue limiting mechanism.




I would think of it more as spades. You think the person across the table is trying to help you win, since you are team mates, but in reality, it is his intention to ensure you lose.


As I said, I don't rule out the possibility that this was CCP's intention all along, to make you distrustful of everyone, even your teammates that claim to be trying to help you. I just think that if this was their intention, then that design decision is a big part of the reason for low new player retention rates.

And, just to reiterate, because people are so quick to jump to conclusions. I'm not asserting that the backstabbing drives awa more people that it attracts. I'm simply saying that it drives away people.