Jita Park Speakers Corner

1: I'd say no. Not unless that implant is made freely available to all new accounts, rather than just the starter packs.
2: 20 million + a whole bunch of ships is plenty to get started with. Now, it's probably worth reworking things a bit, to make sure people actually go on the Blood Stained stars Arc. It's not that obvious.
3: I'd like to see things change wrt mining, to add a prospecting mechanism. That way, new players would have to compete less for the basic roids in the starter systems.
4: The ability to take a basic trial account, and 'upgrade' it to a buddy trial would be valuable. Restarting isn't good.
5: BNI and E-Uni do great work. They're not the only groups to do it, but they are good ones.
6: It's always a concern.

(yes, I know you expected us to pick just one. But it's more complicated than that)

Not your idea :p
(I really love it nonetheless and please push for it! :D)

EDIT:
Thinking some more about it..
It's really hard to settle for a suitable example to put the new player in. There's various sizes of battles and they appeal to different people. Go big because that is what players heard in the news? Or go medium because that portrays a more realistic future for the new pilot?

Which is kind of the point of a member of the CSM

1. No, but what they could do is give all "new players" (defined as accounts with less than a certain amount of SP trained) a flat training speed boost, and not allow them to remap, or make the boost lost on first remap. This would allow newbies to cross-train into all sorts of skills just to try them without having to waste remaps or even badly remap.

2. There could definitely be more goodies from the tutorials and blood-stained stars. I just ran through the newbie missions once, and i had about 5 million isk's worth of goods after one run-through. While it's a lot better than it used to be, it's not nearly as much purchasing power because of overall rise in income. The other point is the 21day invites, which can start a newbie off with up to 450-500 million isk after referral, the problem is lack of knowledge of this program in newbies.

3. As it stands, newbies can make incredible money farming FW complexes, a week old character can nab 50mil+/hour in FW with a bit of care. The problems is that it's the only newbie friendly activity that pays nearly as well, it restricts activity, and it's franking really bad game design.

4. The best thing to do to convert trial to subscriber is to get the trial character involved in a community, such as Brave and E-uni. The problem is that these communicates often require subs to even qualify. Frankly, even a 21 day eve trial is very very short, and the trial could stand to be a lot longer.

5. Continuing from 4, player communities can do far better than anything CCP creates. Eve uni does a great job of turning potential subs into long term subs. I've personally yet to see a goonswarm newbie quit the game after a month or so.

6. Of course newbies matter.

The fact of the matter is there are many interesting and lucrative opportunities available to a new player, right from the beginning. The problem is most of them aren't obvious. They don't come to the average newbro's mind, and the variety of hints dropped isn't enough to spark ideas and interest. Aura and the career agents lead a player down a basic PvE route of missioning & mining, point them to the market, ask them to build some ammo and a frigate, tell them about scanning probes and send them on their way.

Some newbros can't stand tutorials. Some cling to them. I don't think making the tutorials any shorter or longer will alleviate the problem. I think it's more about the content (which has improved somewhat). For those that actually stop and read the mission text (who does that?) there are a few hints about pirating, gate camping, scamming etc... but words are pixel scribbles on a screen. A new player's life should be about action.

The high security culture is something a new player is going to encounter, at least for a short time (because they have little control over their starting system). Most probably longer. Retrievers chewing on rocks, freighters carrying goods about, mission runners blowing up weak AI red crosses, et cetera are the norm there. Risk aversion pervades throughout the area, carebears are the common wildlife, but this is precisely the best time to take risks. No one knows who you are, you're in a dinky little rookie ship, you have a spit in the ocean worth of skill points... Tell me, what exactly do you have to lose in your first week?

If ideas like missioner ganking, ninja looting & salvaging, ransoming, suicide ganking, spying, aw0xing, safaris, corp theft, wardec extortion, contract scamming, can flipping, solo pvp, factional warfare, wormhole exploration, station trading, market manipulation, planetary interaction, poco control, et cetera, and let's not forget metagaming and making ISK on the outside... *inhales a sharp breath* ...if newbros were nudged in the direction of any of these many available opportunities, player retention would improve.

Eve is big, bad, dark and scary though. First thought to cross most newbro's minds is to join the rank and file of high sec, do their mining rite of passage or go through the motions of level 1, 2, 3 & 4 missions. When most MMORPGs on the market have been theme parks a lot of gamers don't even know what a sandbox is, let alone what they are immediately able to do in it... and when their first steps don't lead them in a sandbox-oriented direction I can't blame them for not noticing.

So what should CCP do to improve missions? Are missions interesting to you? Are they what you would show your friends if you were serious about keeping your friends around in Eve? They're necessary, they're a valid playstyle, some people like them, but if you're looking to knock your buddies out of the park and get them hooked long term I'd be introducing them to other activities.

That's literally where it starts too. With us. CCP has limited resources. They can only focus on so much at once. Meanwhile there are organizations out there like Eve University, Red vs Blue, Brave Newbies, Belligerent Undesirables, etc trying their best to show something different about the game. Showing that there are options, and they are plentiful. You could leave it to them, or we the individuals can encourage others to do similar on a smaller scale. Little differences add up over time. People take notice when you strike out from the norm. Some of them get an idea to do similar. So go ahead and push your little snowball down the snowy mountainside.