At the moment the game seems to be skewed towards either solo players or large corporations. I have been invited to join several corps that engage in exploration and high sec PVE for example. But when the person inviting you is themselves wanted and not welcome in high sec, new players can be forgiven for assuming this is simply another ruse to get you on your own and give grief. I don’t necessarily want to give my API key to Eve University and wait a month to join. There must be other options.
Take the Guardian’s Gala event for example. I was unable to take part because the objective is to kill the other participants - which in high sec is simply going to get me killed by CONCORD and banned from high sec. Once again the game seems to be skewed towards ganking others and getting banned so you cannot trade. I could attack other players in high sec without a Gala Event. How is this event adding value to the game.
Similarly Incursions do not seem to offer anything except an extra bar on the left showing two imaginary teams that might be winning or losing something. There does not appear to be any way to actually join in. The CCP web site suggests you have to follow the instructions of your FC, but if you are not in a large corp you don’t have an FC. Even if you get a couple of mates together and form a fleet yourself, how do you know which other players are on which teams? Is it expected that there will be a free-for-all where everyone just ganks everyone else? How is this different to just hanging around in space and trying to kill everything that moves - you are going to get banned from high sec anyway - being in a system which has an incursion running doesn’t change anything. It is not something you can actually join in with.
What is needed is some way in which new individual players can join in with the community and play together towards agreed objectives, fleet up with others from their own game-racial groups, get to know people, find out who they want to hang out with, and maybe join a corp / alliance that way.
After the initial tutorial there is a big void of isolation. For a community based game there seems to be very little sense of community. It is either a case of solo exploration, solo mining, solo missions, and avoiding getting podded by others who are equally lost and bored with flying round in circles.
Having a Guardian’s Gala event where solo players and / or small groups kill the other participants is setting players up to lose their security status. Getting banned from high sec isn’t adding any value. It is just more of the same - which is I guess why so many people sit in a gate camp in a stilletto with the intention to spoil someone’s day. There isn’t much else to do.
So can CCP be a bit more creative and make some real cooperative gameplay please.