EVE General Discussion

Thank god Veers and Basil are in Rolling corps aye? =P

Thanks for the demonstration that this is again a social issue. Nothing about the corps themselves is the issue, it's people. The resolution is equally social. Without dec immunity you create a fish in a barrel scenario and without the ability for veterans to remain you have a sea of total new players without any social contact from veterans.

This the issue is again social with the best mechanical compromise I can think of. But I'm not that creative, and fully open to the idea of something better. What rules allow for veteran interaction without exposing people to aggression they can't yet understand? And what keeps veterans from creating characters to counter the supposed carebear influence?

All I can think of is consolidating the corps and allowing more vets to join at least in being in the channels.

That would also expand the issue of wardec responses of docking up which as I recall was already acknowledged as problematic. If we're willing to disregard this as a possible driver for players leaving the game or of the opinion that we don't care if those people leave then i suppose that is a solution.

Okay, so how does forcing / incenting them to leave their NPC corp drive up retention? You describe them as "people who do not want to engage in any PvP or player interaction in general," so what do you think they'll do once out of their NPC corp? Join CFC and respond to CTAs? Join a small corp and start chatting with a handful of strangers they've never met before? No, I doubt it. I suspect they'll form a one-person corp and continue like they had been. And get bored even more quickly if they're deced and decid to wait out the war in station or not even bother logging on.

And how do these newbies see the interaction-avoiding veterans if the veterans never interact? Presumably those vets are off leveling their Raven in L4 missions, not hanging out in NPC corp chat or starter system local chat...

No, what newbies see when they start is an NPE that shows them how to mine, how to mission, how to build ammo, and how to rat. No change that CCP can make to NPC corps will change that.

What the newbies need is a better NPE and veteran-led fieldtrips. Older Raven-leveling players in danger of getting bored and quitting could stand to be offered the opportunity to go on some fieldtrips as well.

The thing we're trying to solve is the 40% of players who don't socialize, get bored, and quit the game - 50% NPC corp tax will certainly dissuade players from staying in an NPC corp, but I don't see how it'll help player retention at all. Isn't it more likely the 40%ers will simply form single-person corps with 0% taxation, or just quit the game that much sooner?

The only aspect of this that is an issue, if even that, is the wardec immunity, and even that has a justification. So you can either exclude vets and further isolate new players or remove the immunity and throw new players into a conflict they have no way of understanding. Which of those is a positive?

Actually no, you could use heavy taxing, but that again creates an issue with veteran presence as anytime you are making isk you aren't engaging with new players and still not doing so when wanting wardec PvP. Since you didn't even acknowledge the idea of vets not needing to join to be in the chat channel I'll asume it was either ignored or found undesirable.

On a side note you can PvP without ganking in most of space from an NPC corp. It's only highsec that's limited and then suspects are free targets. As you said, 100% of space is available for PvP.

We can't? (scratches head in confusion) Then what's all this PvP I and my fleet have been engaging in? While at the same time welcoming newbies who stop by, even chatting in NPC corp chat? Stop by Syndicate a week from Saturday, you'll see a sizeable fleet of NPC corp members, newbies and veterans alike, engaging in a ton of PvP, blowing stuff up and being blown up and having a great time at it.



Definitely.



Not at all.

Um, I'm not sure about you but I don't think a dissertation on aggression mechanics before I undock is a good idea, nor do I think undocking to find one guy can shoot me but I can only shoot members of his corp back, not everyone is something I can digest in the first 5 min of play in which the game should DEFINITELY have me in space.

Unless we're throwing out the idea that new players are going to run through that first, which again I think is a failure, they won't know how it works.

You may call them however you like, my point is, without the "fleet" or other medium carrying them over SP wall as a part of an order-of-magnitude-difference-creating SP blobbing mechanic, they are useless, have been useless, and will remain useless.

They may feel like they matter, like they are important, the bait and feed is important in fishing, the truth is, the medium who carried them over SP wall could operate exactly the same without them (save maybe the fact that new characters make more attractive baits) just as successfully. This brings us to the point - you feel like you participated, like your contribution matters, but the fact is, with or without you, the "fleet" would still operate the same, with nearly the same success rate. So, your weight is net zero, your contribution is net zero, you matter nothing for a "fleet", unless you contribute meaningfully to the SP blob of it, which newbros cannot do.

They are only good as the bait and no amount of wordplay will change that.

Actually, it's our vets in tanky ships that are most often our bait. A newbie in a Atron that gets alphaed by a Thrasher is very poor bait indeed for a fleet looking to get in a fight.

A newbie who can get web and scram on a target first because they're in a Atron can mean, and has meant, all the difference in getting a kill or not. I've been that Atron pilot. Yes, I've lost a lot of Atrons. But I've often been the first one to get tackle on a target, and that's important.

One of the pilots on my first killmail has been playing for nearly 9 years. He's got a silly amount of SP. 150 million or so, probably. You know what? If he wasn't in fleet that day, our fleet STILL would "operate the same, with nearly the same success rate." Does that make 150 million SP pilots "matter nothing?"

I mean, it's not like we drop dreads on TCUs all the time, which yes is the realm of high-SP characters - we're a small-gang NPSI NPC-null PvP org. Where yes, newbros in Atrons do make the difference between a kill and a miss.