Title pretty much says it all. Right now you have the tutorial, the career agents and the “Blood-Stained Stars” mission arc for SOE… then the “story” for eve kind of ends and you’re put in the sandbox.
While there are other things like COSMOS missions or the epic arcs that you can do at 5.0 standing… there’s kind of a big gap between the end of the SOE arc and those.
I know the goal is to get players into the sandbox… and I support that. But players coming from other MMO’s are used to having a long line of “story based” missions as they level up to cap before they do “endgame” content. That gets them comfortable with the mechanics of the game and the “lore” of the world the game is set in.
Eve frankly sucks at this.
So, the suggestion is to add a large number of epic arcs… like 50 or so. Have them span a large number of factions and required ships (from frigs to BS and covert ops to freighters). Have them require certain skills from scanning to mining to fighting fleets of small opponents to single large enemies. But most importantly… have them contain an interesting STORY. Possibly with voice acting but at least more connected mission text.
This will (hopefully) cause new players to hang around longer and build some sort of connection to the game (and their characters) as well as give them more time to be exposed to the sandbox that Eve really is.
And frankly it’s low hanging fruit. It’s not a new game mechanic. It’s just more of what already exists.
I’m not personally a big fan of the epic arcs. Too much travel, too much pretending the story actually matters.
I’m a big fan of COSMOS, or at least what COSMOS ought to be. A lot of “go to this nearby interesting risky area and find this rare thing” with story being bite sized 3-mission arcs. Even with the mediocre rewards, I find that content engaging.
The goal would be to ease in new players from other MMORPG’s who are used to this sort of play.
There is a big case of “what now” for players who run through the tutorial, career agents and SOE epic arc in a few days/weeks who then go “now what”? They’re used to following a series of “quests” that give them a story about the world they are playing in and then going on to end game. Instead… they get the equivalent (in their minds) of repeated “daily quests” or the directive of “go make your own content”.
Give them a few months worth of story at least. Have some of it take them to dangerous places. Give them a little more time doing what they’re used to in order to get a little acclimated. Maybe eve will keep 10% more of them.
Absolutely. But turning EVE into a theme park is the opposite of the answer. The “what now” should be “find a group of like minded individuals and work together towards a common goal, and by the way, here are all the tools you will need to evaluate potential corps and test out if they meet your needs.” No amount of theme park will improve retention to a level that matters.
And my problem with epic arcs still stands. There is more mindless travel than actual fun, the story so superficial that after having run it about 5 or more times I still have no idea what the story is.
I don’t disagree with you on the end game. But right now that point happens after a week or two of playing (if you play regularly). Simply put… that’s too early. It’s really easy to quit a game after 2-weeks when you hit a dead end. Eve had a huge alpha spike and retained very little of it. If you keep them through story based mission arcs for 3-4 months rather than a couple of weeks, I believe they’ll search for the real content a lot longer than they do now… simply due to time invested.
And frankly the epic arcs are 10 times more interesting to me than regular missions. The missions have no story value to them. The Arcs at least have some. I’d prefer they make it more like the tutorial with voice acting (or even cut scenes). This isn’t about how grindable they are for you, they’re about immersion and story for new players/alphas to spread their introduction over months rather than weeks.
New epic arcs targeted at new players would be alright i think. All epic arcs could use a re-hash (like missions).
Depth could be provided by voice acting and ui. 50 different epic arcs however is a LOT! It’s unnecessary when you realise how repetitive they will be. And if i were ccp i wouldn’t do them until I’ve figured out how i want pve/npc rats to work. Which seems a long way off.
They also wont do much for retention. The player will still play alone and finish the arc only to think ‘what now?’. It merely delays the point at which they need to start making their own content.
People were saying before, you can put gold armor and gold ammo into lowsec but nobody will go there to get it.
However if you put PLEX into the belt rats, hmm…
I agree that further immersion would greatly help retain new players. People do come from other MMOs and while Eve is not like any other it would be a good way to help transition players from their former games. Give them a grand story at the start and a sort of simplistic UI that step by step integrates into the game and teaches them, revealing what the true Eve is and sets them on a course for what eve actually has to offer for their play-style.