The Newbro situation is something that concerns me greatly since I believe that new blood is vital for this game to keep surviving. There have been too many stories about new players who begin playing the game only for the miners to instantly be shot down by gankers or CODE, the traders being targets of scams, the missioners being tricked into suicide by CONCORD, the hopeful explorers being murdered the second they leave Highsec, and they put the game down to never touch it again and warn all their friends away from it.
What are your thoughts on how CCP could craft a better experience for new players to ensure that theyāll keep playing EVE, or at least properly prepare the Newbro for the rather brutal experience that EVE can be.
Well, Iāll start by saying that I fully believe 60% of that starts with us and our recruitment, training, and community-building ventures. You canāt correct for a bad culture with clever code. Hereās the things we can do:
Invest in growing our training curriculum and reach as corporations and players. Corporations and alliances that donāt have training groups are encouraged to learn to teach and mentor newbros, and stop looking at them either as a security risk or as a burden. Even if you have separate training corps for day-zero newbros and those who are after advanced concepts (where you introduce ESI screening for potentials for your main corp) at least youāre doing something.
Host public fleets and invite people in newbro systems. Hell, as much as Iām against structure spam, drop Mobile Depots outside of newbro systems advertising them until CCP gives us a better broadcast/LFG system.
Spend time in the newbro chats and forums helping people and answering questions; become a helper in the Newbro section of the unofficial EVE Online Discord hosted by @Jibrish.
Create instructional content for YouTube - yes, Iām encouraging you to compete with me on YouTube; any new content for EVE Online that shows how awesome this game is will benefit the greater community.
Stream on Twitch, get your face, your name, and this game out there. Talk about how great it is. Interact with the community.
Write for INN, Eve News 24, and other game outlets to talk about your game style, your experiences with this game, and the good it brings you and your friends.
Actively help newbros and support initiatives like @Mike_Azariahās Project Magic Schoolbus.
Now, to answer your initial question, what can CCP do to help us? Hereās a few ideas:
Cleanup the dirt, the spiderwebs, and the clutter in the corners of this game:
Remove COSMOS missions - they go nowhere
Remove Player Owned Starbases - ā ā ā ā or get off the pot; even if itāll create problems, fix the problems, just warn us first so we know to expect bugs
Weed the level-one missions (reduce their number) and increase the income payouts for level 3s so newbros running them are more profitable/self-sufficient
Increase the profitability/lower the threshold or cost of entry for newbros and alphas to encourage people to stick with the game:
Make the skillbook for gas huffing not be 45 million ISK; itās one of the most lucrative ways for newbros to make money and get interested in wormhole space, reward that
Mention wormholes in the new player experience - at all
Spread the NPE out over the first 10,000,000-40,000,000 skill points of experience; introduce triggers on skill training events that prompt new NPE content as they reach milestones like first training into battleships or subscribing and training the cloaking skill or when someone first trains into carriers - make the content engaging, fun, and objective-based teaching.
Give us content creators and content producers high-res, scalable images, short video stings, animations, and new high-quality DRM and copyright free music to use for creating promotional and propaganda content for this game. Start relying on our expertise to recruit and grow interest in the game - arguably weāre better at it than you are.
Hire a good ghost writer, or more than one, and give us three new EVE Novels and deepen the Triglavian and Drifter lore - tell us more about what the Sisters of EVE are up to.
Stop sucking at listening to your own people. (Read your own Glassdoor.com reviews to see what I mean.) Iām certain your own team has good ideas on newbro retention if you listen to them.
Radical transparency, inside and externally to CCP - give us more stats, more insights, and more details on the roadmap. Give us the information we need more quickly, to be able to tell if our initiatives are helping grow retention and attraction; let us know when there are big positive shifts; and give us long-term future plans to build hype and excitement over.
