TL;DR;
I started playing EVE in 2021 after years of following the stories. I wanted to find my own stories but quickly found myself lost as a new player. After struggling through early missions and slow ISK generation, I ventured into PvP, got destroyed, and had no idea what to do next. A new player corporation reached out to me and I was able to learn PVP, fleet content and more. I eventually joined Goonswarm and became an Alliance Director in charge of Gooniversity, where I now help educate thousands of players.
As a candidate for CSM, I want to improve the New Player Experience (NPE) by focusing on community-driven support. I believe CCP doesn’t need to create an extensive tutorial, but rather enable new players to connect with the communities that will teach them.
If I find myself on the CSM, I will champion:
- Improve insurance to soften the blow of ship losses for new players.
- Create better ISK generation opportunities for low-SP players.
- Introduce more accessible Epic Arcs.
- Enhance visibility for new player-friendly corporations.
Communities like EVE University, Spectre Fleet, Brave Newbies and Gooniversity are what keep new players engaged, and I want to make sure CCP makes it easier for new players to find these groups.
My story through EVE
I started playing EVE after reading articles about it for years. The earliest one I remember reading was about Chribba brokering Titan sales. The one that pushed me over the edge and made me join was reading about M2-, it was that story that made me download the game so I could pursue a role in future stories.
And like many new players, I was rapidly lost, both in the depth of the game and the complexity. I finished the SoE Epic Arc and was bouncing around level 1 and 2 missions with no real idea of what I should be doing next. Isk was slow, enjoyable content was even slower. I had no clue what I was doing, where I should be going; I didn’t even know what I didn’t know.
Then one night, I got drunk and decided to venture into low sec to look for my first PVP fight. I didn’t last long (Stabber | Ankh Lai | Killmail | zKillboard enjoy the fit on that one :P), and once again found myself with no clue what to do next.
For many new players, this marks the end of their EVE journey. Not because of a lack of interest, but because of a lack of direction.
Fortunately, direction came in the form of an EVE mail. I was invited to a new player training corp, running EVE University-style PVP classes. It was there that I learnt the basics of the game, started to gain insight into the wider politics of EVE. Where I was introduced to Spectre Fleet and got hook on fleet content. It was there that I first started FCing, taking my fellow students out on drunken roams in Hurricanes and Drakes (and dying a lot).
After a while, a friend and I decided we were done being students, we felt ready to enter the real world. We left the new player corp to join Goonswarm, and rapidly realised we still had no idea what we were doing, but now we were doing it in nullsec. I still remember the first time I took a Titan bridge, I had Youtube open with a tutorial video to work out how to do it.
It was here I found Gooniversity, where my education continued. The basics I had learned were converted into the context of nullsec, and there were many more lessons beyond that to be taught; but I am a the kind of person who learns the military way – “See one, do one, teach one”. So at less than six months into the game I started teaching basic tackle and EWAR classes to help better my own knowledge.
Fast forward about a year, and I was made an Alliance Director for Goonswarm in charge of Gooniversity where I have built a team of people to provide the experience and handholding that I only recently received myself. Over the last two years as the “Director of Education”, I have often had those moments of imposter syndrome.
“I’ve only been playing for three years myself, what the hell am I doing sat at the table with the likes of Asher and Kazanir.”
But the reason I have been able to find myself where I am today (and ultimately still playing the game instead of quitting after my 100th level 1 mission), is because someone extended the hand to me after my first PVP loss.
So what would I bring to the CSM?
As a recent addition to the game myself, I was fortunate to find the “ideal path” towards what I originally started playing for. Since then, I have help thousands of players find their own paths. I receive a couple dozen DMs a day from players new and old asking for help, simple questions like “how to I file for SRP?” all the way up to “I’m a Corp CEO and I want to get my corp more active, what can I do?”.
Through trial and error, with a bit of guesswork sprinkled in, I’ve seen where the New Player Experience is failing, and where it is succeeding. It is the community that hooks players, not the game – I had a hand extended to me, but I want to see more hands enabled. The NPE can’t be a standalone thing that spits players out after the intro missions, leaving them to figure things out on their own. It needs to signpost people to the fantastic communities with a record of helping new players succeed.
EVE University, Spectre Fleet, Karmafleet, Pandemic Horde’s NBI, Brave Newbies; fantastic player-driven community built around enabling New Players.
That is why I am running for CSM – CCP doesn’t need to create an extensive new player experience to drive retention in the game – they need to enable new players to succeed by learning on the very thing that makes this game succeed. It is the communities that enable new players.
Sure there are plenty of mechanic changes that CCP could introduce, and some of the ones I would look to push forward would be:
- An improved insurance system for new players – New players shouldn’t feel the sting of a ship loss they do now, insurance needs rebalancing to allow new players the opportunity to lose ships and learn.
- Better isk generation opportunities for new players – Equinox has provided a fantastic opportunity to create better isk making opportunities for new players and low SP alts, but they have missed the mark. The Minor Threat arrays don’t provide new player content, they just provide sub-par content – I would see new sites optimised for cruiser and below ratting that still pay a respectable amount. I don’t want to see new players making 100mil and hour straight away, but nor should they be stuck making 10mil an hour.
- New Epic Arcs that are new player accessible – The SoE Epic Arc is great, but once it is done all the others are locked behind steep standings requirements. We need a collection of new player Epic Arcs that gradually introduce players to as many aspects of the game as possible, be that piracy in low sec or exploring in wormholes.
But ultimately, the biggest thing I want to champion is better visibility for New Player-Friendly Corporations and Alliances . CCP needs to create an organic yet clear way to direct new players into those communities that will teach them the content they want to be a part of. We need improvements to the corporation finder to make it easier for corporations that focus on training new players to be more visible, with some form of review or rating system to weed out the mass recruiter corps – and we need a CCP-sponsored pathway, where players are purposefully directed towards specific groups depending on their interests in the game.
So I do ask you to vote for me, so that I can join the likes of Mike Azariah and others to champion the New Player Experience with CCP.
CCP has a fantastic marketing team to attract people into the game, but retaining them is where we all suffer. The more people who STAY in the game, the better the game becomes for all of us.
