You’re actually an alt of Elena.
I’m not sure. Boredom is a potent killer of new Eve players.
I mean, of course you are right in the broader sense, but I can’t help but feel that the needle has been set too far towards ‘safe’ for far too long. Dying constantly for no obvious reason and with little feedback is an issue, but we haven’t been in that territory for years now and new player retention seems as atrocious as ever. Highsec is so damn safe for new players, that I find it implausible that anyone experiences repeated, early losses except for perhaps a few edge cases where communication or language is an issue.
The one exception was new corps who were indeed open to sometimes oppressive pressure from other groups. It isn’t how I would have done it, but CCP has finally addressed this issue and made space for player to opt-out of being picked on. But now the danger is that any corps that do form now have to deal with boredom and lack of objectives the current conflict-sanitized version of highsec offers.
There has been no sign that making highsec yet safer again as they did in December has changed activity metrics one iota. If anything, they are trending down even more. Safety isn’t going to save Eve - rather it is killing it. CCP needs to introduce new gameplay and purpose to play together competitively and cooperatively, not dither around tweaking game mechanics, stuffing the game with wealth and safety, or replacing existing systems with slightly better versions as they have for the last 6 years. This gambit to sacrifice the economy and flood the game with resources has run its course and they are out of runway. They ate the seed crops and bought a few more years, but now that everyone has everything, and new players are completely outclassed, a social corp isn’t going to be enough to stoke the game back up to former glory.
I don’t see evidence of the vision necessary to start to fix this, or even evidence that management fully comprehends the problem. I hope I am wrong, but I am more afraid that the conversation next year won’t be about what changes can retain new players better, but will be a more somber one focused on what desperate measures CCP can take to stem the bleeding of the long-term veterans as the chickens of the last years’ orgy of wealth and safety come home to roost.
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Despite the fairly frequent postings of people who think ‘new player predation’ is a key cause of lack of retention, I also do not believe this is an overly significant factor in new player retention. Certainly not among those players who bail even before completing 4 hours or so in game. (Note: it is a factor, at some points, I just don’t think it’s a big one.)
As you say, boredom is a much bigger factor. As is ‘lack of direction’. As is the massive divide between what people see in the videos, hear about on the news, and what they encounter once they enter the game.
There is really a total absence of ‘interesting flow’, in my opinion, to a new EVE player. And if they get past that, the first thing they notice is that no matter how much they play, they are still weeks and months and even years away from doing the things that got them interested in EVE.
The new player ‘experience’ (not just the scripted parts, but the total ‘first 20 hours in EVE’ process) is lame, boring, confusing, and doesn’t help a new player connect with the more meaningful parts of EVE.
‘Inception’ was a step in the right direction, but of course CCP has only been working on the NPE for 15 years or more, so it was expected that they haven’t really managed to get it working properly yet.
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CCP needs Apocrypha, the Resurrection; or its like.
Edit.
Dammit, did I just ask for the forbidden fruit, a Jesus expansion?
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I don’t think many would argue otherwise, but finding your own path is an important part of the Eve experience; that said CCP could do an awful lot more in the way of pointing out where to find groups that specialise in each potential career.
And if they get past that, the first thing they notice is that no matter how much they play, they are still weeks and months and even years away from doing the things that got them interested in EVE.
Such is the nature of the beast, in addition there’s two factors at play here.
SP is an alternative to grinding for skills, because the system runs 24/7 you “level up” without spending hours bashing wolves for their pelts; and the skill tree itself limits how much SP is effective in any given situation.
With a decent, specialised, skill plan and implants it doesn’t take much to be on an effective SP level with a vet in pretty much anything single race T2 up to cruisers and T1 up to battleships; especially now that, if you have the financial resources, you can literally buy unwanted SP from others that earned it the hard way.
Player skill takes far longer to acquire than SP, and is at least as important as the SP itself; as evidenced by many experienced players kicking arse in low SP characters.
Where a newbie with cash to burn loses out is player skill, honed by years of experience; only time can buy you that, and it is earned by making mistakes and learning from them.
In that Eve reflects many aspects of real life, time invested in a personal skill or skill-set, be it sport, music, your profession etc, is normally reflected by how well you do it.
The new player ‘experience’ (not just the scripted parts, but the total ‘first 20 hours in EVE’ process) is lame, boring, confusing, and doesn’t help a new player connect with the more meaningful parts of EVE.
TL;DR the overall NPE is shite, I agree; having recently gone through it with an alt I created in 2017 and promptly forgot about (1,000,000 SP and climbing).
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What you are saying is that EVEN after pvp is banned in high and left alone the system would balance itself out again,which is exactly what i’m saying for months…people will adapt,the economy will adapt and the game will carry on after the ragequits and flames are over…
You only proof my words…
Solecist specified a natural environment, a combat free hisec is NOT a natural environment; it is an artificial constraint on the natural environment of somebody being able to ruin your day, hisec or not.
“Civilisation”, such as it is in Eve, is not a natural state of affairs; it isn’t in the real world either; humans only stopped killing their nearest neighbours so that they could team up to go kill someone else’s neighbour, and take their stuff.
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It’s not?
You really seem to live only in the “first” world where all is peacefull…in other parts of the “real” world things like this are normal…
But beside that…even a changed enviroment will balance itself out,it will not be the same enviroment because it was changed but who can judge if it wouldn’t be better if it was never tried?
This is the problem with absolutisms…they can be wrong…
Is that an agreement or a dismissal?
You really seem to live only in the “first” world where all is peacefull…in other parts of the “real” world things like this are normal…
You might want to reread what I wrote, it’s basically the history of mankind in a nutshell.
But beside that…even a changed enviroment will balance itself out,it will not be the same enviroment because it was changed but who can judge if it wouldn’t be better if it was never tried?
You keep saying it will be better, how are you qualified to state that?
- What are your areas of expertise within the game?
- What do you know about the way hisec predators work?
- Do you understand the potential effects of your proposal on the rest of the game?
- Do you accept that your suggestions would almost definitely affect players who are not hisec predators?
If you wish to make suggestions that alter the game in such a radical way you need to bring far more in the way of debate than your usual answers; which fail to show any form of credibility for taking you seriously.
You’ve had multiple people telling you, in detail, why your proposal sucks; you haven’t explained why it doesn’t suck beyond flippant dismissal. .
Hence, we make fun of you.
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Not exactly the case, but there is a chance it would. retention rates are linked to social interaction, which does not always denote what we call a good corp, as some of them may be heavily based on operational constructs, and not social ones.
one provides content, and another content and friends.
There are many reasons. I have had close friends i played wow with and it resulted in 15 minutes of eve before “na this game sucks im out!” even after saying “that sounds so cool” to various aspects of the game.
I believe the majority of people leave this game because of bad social interaction(corporations having a lack of purpose), followed by Griefing (was even more serious in the past), followed by other, more minor issues (like isk rates, etc).
Thats not actually true. the war dec system was abusive for almost 15 years before it got a fix.
This was a huge problem in the past, and forced many many people to leave. I promise an increase of population to this game the moment they post an email out to old players saying “high sec is now pvp optional, completely!” (by making criminal actions void, and war-dec eligible system) this is a huge step in the right direction.
another really big point is we have huge inefficiencies to our populations. We should look at playing with npc corporations in ways to make them more empire/role play related, and social interaction in them more encouraged. If not, we need to delete them. It might also be interesting to delete 2/3 of them and merge them into 1.
All i hear over and over again are proposed certainities,covered with conjectures over a change NOBODY could know how it will effect the game simply out of the fact it was NEVER tried…
You and all the others that deny it do not want it simply out of convinience reasons…it would be NOT conviniend to adapt to a change like this and (for you) this is enough of a reason to fight against it…
All those prophecies of what will happen are just advanced to give it the appearance of some kind of reason…
Again…NOBODY can foresee the effect something would have if this something was never tried…
And therefore all armageddon talks are to be ignored as a distraction from the real effort behind them…the unability and the unwill to adapt to changes…
Bittervets act like that,this is not the first game this happens…but it is funny everytime…
It’s entirely true.
Since 2012 or so, CCP has done almost nothing but make highsec safer. And I am not talking about minor tweaks to ships or mechanics that alter the predator:prey industrial/gank ship balance. They have introduced several major, features with the express purpose of making highsec safer or limit/restrict highsec PvP. Notably CrimeWatch 2.0 (deleted canflipping and other shenanigans), the addition of friendly fire mechanics (deleted highsec AWOXing), and now the wardec revamp. None of these features has increased in-game activity, although I will wait until the wardec changes are fully implemented and had time to settle before declaring that a failure even if the early metrics aren’t promising.
That only leaves suicide ganking as non-consensual PvP in highsec, but given how niche and easy to avoid it is, I don’t believe even patching that out would change any retention rates. But I still see no reason even if CCP did such a thing why magically a horde of players would flood the server. In the face of so many failed ‘increased safety’ projects that carebear apologists promised would increase activity, but did nothing but empty out highsec and make the game less active, this is just projection and wishful thinking.
The game needs more things to do, places for newer players to interact, and attainable objectives, not yet more restrictions of interactions or activities. I promise you that this is the only path to a sustainable increase in player activity.
This isn’t rocket science - deleting game play results in less activity. This has proven out time and time again after CCP deletes some method of interaction to appease the whiners, carebears, and their sympathizers. In a game where interacting with the other players is the primary activity, restricting those interactions has an obvious and predictable outcome.
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All those changes are just half baken and not even close to be enough…
All your strange hobby “things to do” can happen in low with ease…a place you actually have to enter WILLINGLY and not,as today,have no choice to be…
I think you’re making some really great points here. When you start out, you’ve got a few things working against you to really get in:
To begin, the game and the interface are pretty freaking complex. So, to counter that you have a tutorial and NPE that introduces a player to the basic mechanics and then to some of the activities through the career agents. I think that’s a pretty good and logical progression, but the problem is that there is no structure to off-ramp the players from the NPE into regular play, so you generally have two things that happen:
- The players (logically) keep going with the things that they have already been exposed to (missions, mining, etc.)
- The really important things, like getting into different activities or basic things like finding a corp and community are left purely to chance.
That means that an unguided player is more likely to keep grinding what they understand and get frustrated or bored unless somebody gives them some guidance or they are tenacious enough to discover things on their own. This begins to add a level of predictability that sets the baseline expectations for the players.
Now, if you couple that with the added safety that has crept into HS, you get something really nasty when the player is suddenly aggressed or confronted by somebody trying to kill them.
“This is new and I don’t like it.”
They simply haven’t been properly introduced (or to put it another way, appropriately prepared and desensitized) to this part of the game. Most vets look at their ships like ammo- it’s just a tool and it’s expendable, but that mindset is not effectively set up for new players (and no, the suicide frigate career missions are not effective in this).
Because of the relative safety that has crept into HS in a lot of ways, jumping off that cliff into real danger can become even more of a radical shift and has the potential to turn people off. Simply put, I think players can go too long without experiencing some of the harshness of the game and the longer that goes, the worse and more out of place it feels when it finally shows up. To me, the progression from higher risk = higher reward needs to be more guided and introduced as part of the NPE. Perhaps the Career Agents could be extended to send people into LS/NS to expose them to those areas earlier on, offer higher rewards, and still provide something of a safety net to on-board people into that part of the game. Heck, maybe there’s even a career agent that sends two players against each other in a pocket so you have a relatively even match for the first PVP experience (I know, I know, arenas are evil, but…).
I would also love to see some improvement in the system to connect new players with corps other than the current system. Perhaps something of a corp matching system, or even a listing of some newbie-friendly corps (BRAVE, E-Uni, etc.) that pops up for the players in some way in an attempt to steer them into a supportive community where they can continue to learn, develop, and interact with others.
Just riffing…
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Everybody can have fights if they actually WANT to…but not giving a CHOICE is the problem here.
If there are people that don’t WANT PVP why the hell is it so complicated to actually GIVE them this opportunity and let them choose WILLINGLY by actually entering the KNOWN “danger zone 0.4 and down)”
What is this all about regarding PVP side?
Less prey i guess…
This is true, we can however predict that it won’t go well; many of your detractors are not overly biased towards combat; they are the people you claim would flourish in a combat free hisec; us non combat biased players, we have years of collective Eve experience behind us, we know that the economy would change massively, we know that there are nullsec cartels that would take advantage of such an opportunity.
You? You appeared on the forums with an alt that was biomassed and a troll agenda; you called us selfish and insulted us.
You’ve demonstrated no evidence of understanding the how and why the game working as it does, that what happens in hisec also affects the rest of the universe.
You don’t even recognise that your agenda and forum posting could be seen as troll behaviour.
And you expect to be taken seriously?
simply out of the fact it was NEVER tried…
And why do you think that is? Is it because it’s a bloody stupid idea in a game based around and well renowned for not having such a thing?
You and all the others that deny it do not want it simply out of convinience reasons…it would be NOT conviniend to adapt to a change like this and (for you) this is enough of a reason to fight against it…
We don’t want it because it’s madness, absolute farkin’ madness.
All those prophecies of what will happen are just advanced to give it the appearance of some kind of reason…
Again…NOBODY can foresee the effect something would have if this something waqs never tried…
And therefore all armageddon talks are to ignore as a distraction from the real effort behind them…the unability and the unwill to adapt to changes…
Our fortune teller is considerably better informed and experienced at Eve than yours, having survived Eve without asking for it to change.
Bittervets act like that,this is nit the first game this happens…but it is funny everytime…
We know it’s not the first game to introduce a combat free zone on an established PvP game; which is why we don’t want the abomination that you propose.
PvP every is the entire point of Eve, the heart of the game; when you remove the heart, by changing that fundamental, you kill the patient, albeit slowly.
CCP used to play Ultima Online, they were gankers; they made a game for people like them.
Deal with it.
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I should probably explain that I’m not a PVPer- I’m pretty much pure PVE. I don’t go looking for fights, but I’m ready for them when they show up. If somebody blows me up in a WH or LS, then good on them, that’s part of the game.
I guess what I am saying is that you sort of have two options for how to deal with the issue of aversion to interaction with other people who are trying to kill you:
-
You make areas of the game completely safe. The problem there is that not only is this not true to the spirit of EVE, but it has impact on the economy as well. In order for that ore that might be mined in perfect safety to be worth anything, other things need to go boom and be replaced. Each source needs a sink.
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You normalize it. Make it feel less awful and unexpected when another player comes after you within the defined parameters of the game. Expose people to it early and properly set expectations.
To be clear, I am not at all suggesting that people be forced to do do roams or pick fights if they don’t want to. I love to live in my PVE world and chill with some mining or missions. But I’m also not advocating the the game be changed to completely alter it for those who are the pure PVPer or pirates.
There’s room for all of us here.
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Yep, dying to an NPC is an entirely different experience to that of dying at the hands of a fellow player.
Heck, maybe there’s even a career agent that sends two players against each other in a pocket so you have a relatively even match for the first PVP experience (I know, I know, arenas are evil, but…).
Stop stealing my ideas 
My variation is 2 players in opposing factions with the same deadspace objective, they’re each given ships and told that there will be someone else also trying to get the objective by any means possible; how they do that is up to them, whether it be diplomacy or combat.
I would also love to see some improvement in the system to connect new players with corps other than the current system. Perhaps something of a corp matching system, or even a listing of some newbie-friendly corps (BRAVE, E-Uni, etc.) that pops up for the players in some way in an attempt to steer them into a supportive community where they can continue to learn, develop, and interact with others.
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Every time I read a paragraph like this, I know I can go check the guys zKillboard and find out he’s a high sec PVPer. And if you ask them why they need to PvP in high sec, and they answer honestly, it’s mostly because they themselves want a safe and secure place to PvP in, where they won’t get dropped on by surprise by some hunter group in capitals, where they can carefully pick their targets and decide if they want to pull the trigger or not, and where they can choose to just cruise on by if the target is too tough.
Funnily enough, these guys pretty much all PvP in high sec exactly because it is the safer place to PvP, and what they are really complaining about is that CCP has made it harder for them to find easy, safe targets in high sec.
Frankly, what CCP has done has made null sec safer and more lucrative, then safer again, then more lucrative again… until the safest people in the game are in null sec, turning out 2/3 of all the ISK and production in the game. And where’s most of the destruction happening? In “super safe” high sec.
Please, get past your own personal preferences for easy/safe PVP, and take a look at the game as a whole.
More things to do, more ways to interact, more PvP and more destruction, yes. Does this all have to occur in high sec so the PvP wannabes can hunt in safety? No.
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I agree that a primary issue with retention is first, not meeting newbro expectations of what they think EVE is all about, and second, mismanaging their expectations after they complete portions of the NPE.
CCP really does need to focus on getting players into the groove of ‘use your ship to earn enough ISK to replace it 3x, then go risk it. If it gets blown up, you got 2 more waiting for you. Rinse, repeat. You’re an immortal clone, death is a minor inconvenience and ships are replaceable tools.’
When the game has virtually no ‘characterization’, I notice that people are more likely think of their ship as ‘them’… and get upset when it gets blown up. Vets get more desensitized to this over time, as they replace and adjust and lose ships. To a newer player his most recent ship, that he just skilled into, paid a lot (in relative terms) for, and spent an hour or so fitting up properly - he can get pretty attached to that.
Again, HS safety isn’t the key issue, although managing player expectations everywhere is. The issue is one of making clear to new players (and some old ones) that risking your ship, smartly, is a net gain and not a net loss.
It’s also about providing avenues where a new player can learn to, and practice with, risking and losing his ships - in an environment where he isn’t consistently going up against people he has virtually no chance against.
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