Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Nah. I don't see it providing any real benefit.

The attention from ISD and GM's would be nice, but new players already get that with the rookie help chat, plus a couple thousand other people who may be able to answer their questions. From my perspective, new player retention is always going to boil down to the type of veteran players they encounter early on. Hiding them from the vets doesn't change that encounter, it just makes a negative experience seem more negative while a positive experience stays relatively the same, since the new player will be more likely to feel that they've been cheated or misinformed on the true nature of the game if they lose more by getting ganked, scammed or whatever.

Currently two things have been on my mind that could really turn around the NPE...

1: The obvious. The tutorials are cancerous and need to be completely re-done. How they are recreated is important though. I feel that it's crucial that a new set of tutorials put a heavy emphasis on how the player's success is completely reliant on the player and how they choose to pursue their goals. They need to understand that they're not going to be put on a set of rails and pointed in the direction they need to go to reach some sort of "end game".

It is also vital that CCP find a clear way to communicate this to the new player outside of the game setting itself, and speak directly to the player, and not the player's character. Players filter all in-game in-character dialog through a perspective that has been numbed by the mostly lame and excessive dramatization of the situations and surroundings in the game. We have all been told a 1000 times that the world is splitting asunder and we're civilization's only hope at preventing the inhabitants of the nether-ether from consuming the physical plane, just to close the dialog window, go bop a couple goblins with our shillelagh and thwart the inevitable crisis of utter destruction. CCP can still keep the lore friendly explanation of capsuleers and their place in New Eden in the tutorials, but there has to be an effective way to express directly to the player that they are holding the ball, and it is entirely up to them not to drop it.

2: A truly official newbie corp. Eve Uni and Brave Newbies are nice and all, but they are still run by players and subject to all the problems that that can entail. If CCP had a bona-fide official noob corp that players could choose to join immediately and remain in until they were 3 months old, a lot of the problems with new players getting pulled in by sub-par corporations and having a bad experience with Eve from that perspective could be solved. A first impression often sets the standard for how we judge everything else, even our potential future experiences. Join a bad corp early and you're more likely to be soured on everything to do with corporation play, which cuts a huge chunk out of the amount of Eve a new player has available to them. A truly official newbie corp would have three immediate advantages over a player run corp that could be leveraged to improve the NPE.

A: Let's be honest. People are more likely to behave when something is "Official" and a GM has a lot more leverage than a standard CEO. I'm not talking about Awoxing, conning or anything like that but just the general smegma-brained social incompetents who have no social filter and immediately respond to any event in the most guttural and immature manner possible. I.E. "LOL! Look at that fail-fit killmail! WTF were you doing accepting a duel in dodixie anyways you nubtard? Plz go DIAF in your mom's basement." Does not need to be part of the NPE.

B: Consistent and frequent events could be held for all varieties of playstyle. A newbie corp with CCP's support could stay busy 23.5/7 with all kinds of different things going on and a rotating schedule, so that players with fixed playtime windows get an opportunity to experience several different varieties of gameplay. PvP, PvE, Exploration, Industry, Mining, everywhere from high sec to null and WH's. If a new player can consistently get a reimbursement on their losses experiencing all of the gameplay varieties of Eve while they're still learning the game, they will learn to be bold and take risks, and how to recover their losses more efficiently when they want to start taking ships larger or more expensive than what the event has set as the baseline. There is a lot of potential for CCP to build a structure that gives new players a taste of every part of Eve so that they can decide where they want to be and what their goals are.

C: An official and convenient platform for ISD, GM's and CCP employees to interact with new players on small and large scales. Nothing is going to give them a better idea of what it's like to currently be a noob in Eve than having them ship up and fleet up in a frigate roam and talk with the players over Eve's voice chat. Everyone involved with shaping the NPE will have the opportunity to inquire into what can be improved about it while having a standard that they know has influenced the new players' opinions to judge by. It's hard to determine if A, B and C really need to be prioritized if you don't know how the player experienced A, B and C, and a lot of guessing and miscommunication can result. If they know that A, B and C were part of an event that was going on a couple days ago they can immediately put that new players suggestions or complaints into a clearly defined context and have an accurate depiction of why the suggestions or complaints about A, B and C were made by that particular player. I don't imply that this should be something that CCP should be obligated to participate in. I am looking at it from the perspective of "We've been getting a lot of comments on the forums about this thing from the mining community... The noob corp is having a related event tomorrow, maybe I should drop in and get a fresh perspective and some firsthand opinions."

Zones like this should be for the tutorial only.

once eve has equipped you with what you need to play the game - show you how to fit a ship, how to fly around, how to warp, how to use a stargate etc - then you should be dumped in to the pond with the rest of us.

we also need to accept that the NPE shouldn't end with the tutorials, also. it's the new player experience, not the tutorial experience.

but that learning curve is also one of the high points of eve. Does this attract the same type of ppl as WoW or Perfect World? no but that is not a bad thing there are better ways out there to fix the NPE without doing this

Times have changed, this kind of experience might have been fine 10 years, when I started, but not today Yes, I'm a forum alt, you are probably a forum alt too. Anyway, games, like industries and businesses manage to stay afloat because they can adapt to the times, and the numbers are clear.

You can see blogs from Greedygoblin, Themittani and other sources all pointing out in the direction eve is losing players, even if subs are managing to stay above the real number of players as many have two accounts, if not more. What's worse, is this bloggers are not watching the game from the same point of view, but they are all coming to the same conclusion about the loss of players and the lack of new blood in eve.

Now you said that once the selling point of eve was that is actually a very hard and merciless game, at the fanfest CCP admitted that many people (a shocking amount actually) enter the game, level up their raven and leave once their "game" is over and another part simply quit after failing at EVE soon after the actual NPE. Let's be honest, losing your hard earned ship to a mechanic or a gameplay you are totally not aware of is not very pleasant.

If you truly love this game, and you are, along all those other posting with posting agreeing and disagreeing in this thread, you must face the reality, EVE need to change and adapt to the times, and if this mean that steep learning curve that you so much loved need to be made a bit less steep, so be it.

That would work too - anything that exposes newbies to the depth of this game and starts them down the sandbox path - think about the tutorial and it's nature, is it any wonder newbies end up missioning and mining and quit from boredom?!?!

It's all it teaches them!

They are a means to an end, not the game. Some players actively enjoy this aspect, but that's ok too.

yes i do agree but it needs to be dun in a way that brings them into the game not one that separates them from it. The Idea of an official newbie corp run by ISD and GMs would do this in a much better way then having the new players just sit at the kiddie table

That may be a chicken and egg situation. If people come out wanting to look for decent fights, odds of a high sec carebear corp appealing are low and they may look further afield. They come out only knowing missions and mining and no REAL battle, they're going to gravitate to wards those corps.

I'll freely admit this may not happen, but I'm somewhat optimistic about it.


@Kaerakh: I thought it was a given that all the assholes lived in high sec? Null/low is much more civilized.

it is differently some mix of both but i find the the community side is much more important then what you are doing with the people. People are willing to do something they may not find fun alone with ppl they like but crappy ppl can ruin a fun activity.

@ Dave: True.

Also, I should have added @Kaerakh: rookie help is waaaaaay worse than player corps in terms of prophesising instant death in low sec.

just because wow has a feature, doesn't mean the feature is bad or we should ignore glaring failures within eve.