I came to EVE in 2017 and in 2019

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Great community,

I would like to share with you my experience of having stared EVE online two times, first in 2017 but left quickly after feeling alone and un-immersed among NPC missions and other players who were only enemies and not a single team mates to cooperate with, and why I now absolutely is loving EVE when I came back for another try in 2019. I wish to do that to underline one thing in regards to the new player experience I learned that may help EVE in general.

I know I know, there are millions of these posts, but please hear me out if you have the time. In 2017 I left a game I had been playing for about 3 years. I had gotten interested in EVE after hearing the voice-coms from great EVE battles and the tales of the great stakes at play, unapologetic nature of the game rules, the hands of style by CCP, and all that good stuff. This all was very much the case in the game I left to come to EVE, but maybe a step up the ladder in EVE, which exited me! However, as it turned out there was one more big difference between the game I left and EVE which I did not anticipate and which eventually caused me to get “dragged” back to the old game. You my say its a contradiction, but I would like to argue that EVE is at the same time both extremely well and extremely poorly build around the “Friendship” and “Group” factor. Let me explain.

You hear people say things like “The friendship bonds you have to your EVE buddies are stronger than in any other games”. I can nether agree or disagree to such claim, I surely hope this is true though! However, after my first month of playing in 2017, the only friends I made were the NPC agents and the book marks in the asteroid belts, and I did not see any rate of change for the better on the horizon. Now you my say that it’s up to every man to take charge of his faith and go out and actively seek out a group or corp to play with. And I would maybe had pushed through a few more weeks of mining asteroids and speaking to NPCs until I found a corp if it was not for the strong friendship bonds that I (and likely others have felt this too) had already built in other games before, and the friends in that other game kept pleading me to come back to them. Arguable EVE was the much better game, and EVE people are renowned for their friendly, welcoming and helpful nature … but for a solo newcomer like me that aspect seemed lost in the void.

So now, what do I have to contribute? The other game I left to try EVE, and then eventually went back to in 2017 I believe have one mechanic that pulls in new solo newcomers like me imminently and do so hard already after the first two weeks. Member count are of crucial importance, and when a new serious player without former affiliation to the established powers enters the game you are not only head-hunted by very competent and convincing recruiters who want to convince you to come to their specific group, but you are also directly placed into one player team of about 20 - 100 members. You are directly faced with the leaderships directions, hits of what is expected of you, and the necessary guidance to learn the game. The question I have in my head, and that I cannot get over, is … why does not EVE do this?

So what was different now when I came back to EVE in 2019? Why do I love this game and have a very bright view on keep investing into EVE this time? The reason is simply that I joined an Corp before even logging back into my old account. And just like that, I traded lonely conversations with NPC agents and book marks in asteroid belts for real human interactions with corp members and learning and doing exploration.

So the question I have in my head still is, why do EVE let you pick between 4 NPC factions upon creation really? I guess we have all heard the saying “Join a corp as soon as you can”, or “The player retention rate is much higher among players who join a Corp”. Why is not EVE facilitate choosing a player led faction/corp upon start rather/besides the 4 NPC factions. If there is one thing I wish changed it was this … thank you for reading.

/Xiaoli

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I would like that post more, if I could.

You are absolutely correct. In the long run, in most MMOs, the game play itself becomes less interesting over time, and it’s your social group in-game that keeps you engaged and interested for the long term.

Many games have failed to capitalize and develop this aspect because they have difficulty creating ways for people to work together and group together and organize that are (almost) as convenient as solo play. Solo play is: log in, check your char, pick something to do, do it, log off; everything under your control and schedule.

Group play is often ‘Find the times other people are likely to log on, try to log in on those times. Check who’s around. Ask what’s going on. See if it’s something you can get in on. Grab what you need to do that thing, travel to where the other guys are, hope none of them goes AFK and holds up the process. Wait for everyone to get organized. Start the group activity. Wait again when one guy crashes on start. Continue activity. Wait again when one player suddenly stops moving. Wait 5 minutes, player comes back “Sorry my wife came home early gotta go guys see ya later!”.’ If none of your group are on, now you have to shift back to solo mode anyway.

For those and other reasons, many people never even undergo the effort to join up with other people into play groups, and simply play most content solo and PUG for group content.

EVE could, and should, do far more to inform and encourage corporate and group play, both during account creation and the startup/learning process (NPE).

CCP has poor design skills for a sandbox game. For about 10 years now, they have focused on “changing the game so that people who want to play at a higher level have to do the things that earn CCP more money” - sub multiple accounts, move to null, train for capitals, join larger alliances, buy skill injectors, buy plex. They’ve been focused on “make the most attractive content the things that cost real $$”.

Because of this, they are steadily losing subs and players and their best quality developers. If they focused on “make the things attractive that make players want to play, want to play more, and want to stay around and expand their social groupings in-game”, then EVE would be growing or at least holding fairly steady rather than dying on the vine.

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Thanks for that Kezrai Charzai :hearts:

As new to the game I guess I do not see the “negative” things people tend to say about CCP. I just see a very well polished game with huge potential! But I have to say that the game is almost completely inaccessible for a solo newcomer, and that is not very good. In that case the games survival relies on retention of old veterans or new players that enters as a group.

What’s missing I feel like is the understanding that with so many other options (games) out there to choose from, its not viable that a solo newcomer need to wait for months until he start to develop some real interactions and friendships with other players in the game. Let the existing corps fight for every new soul entering the game and reward the corp heavily for doing so… I think this is they key part that is missing to let EVE be something for a new generation of players. As it stand now I feel like EVE is something like a club for people who have been playing it for a long time, OR whom has friends who have done that.

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It wouldn’t make sense for CCP to effectively endorse a group over others.

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Yes true. The developers should not favor some group over others. But the game could have mechanics installed that caused most (if not all) corps to essentially rush to the table elbowing their way there trying to get the newcomer to have his clone wake to up in their corp’s cloning bay with their Corp’s barcode tattooed on the newcomers forearm (so to speak).

What I think is that if the Corp feel like every newcomer is great asset, a necessity to maintain its survival , and a resource to be fought over for the corps survival and power… that could lead the newcomer to get the feeling that he just entered a new family … I think this would be a viable way to have a new generation of players staying long enough in EVE to start appreciating its greatness.

That would require that the incentives were strong enough for a corp to heavily prioritize “Omega Member count”, and if the game facilitated a way for Corps to ‘advertise’ themselves to newcomers upon account or character creation. It needs to be worthwhile the effort teaching and guiding the newcomer … the rewards needs to outweigh the effort and the risks. Potentially the “Omega Member count” could be tied to how many structures a corp could own, or how many systems it could hold sov over. I don’t know enough to know precisely what the incentives should be.

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Most corporations don’t actually want this. Corps that are worth their salt will scan and filter through new players with a recruitment process. Just rushing to get any new player is a fantastic way to just develop useless bloat.

The only thing this would result in are predatory leech corporations that tax their new players excessive amounts and let their CEOs skim off isk.

You’re going to next suggest that CCP dedicate employees to filter through the predatory corporations and determine who is acceptable and who isn’t. But that just brings us back to the original issue of CCP passing judgment on what is and is not endorsed.

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Yes, and this is what I see as the problem. If most Corps worth their salt do that, then you get the feeling I got first time I tried EVE. You are stuck with NPC interactions and alone in the asteroid belts. The corps don’t want useless bloat. Its not worth the risk and the effort for them to take in and train. But it could, depending on the game mechanics.

Nope I would not suggest that at all. I would argue that if members who are willing to learn and take things seriously are a hot commodity for corps, then there is even less room for these types of predatory corps than there is today. If it is the “buyers market” so to speak, then the player will have an easier time to find substitutes for that predatory corp should be realize he ended up in such.

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As someone who actually does HR for their corporation for the last four years, this is not the case. Most of these people are trash and want nothing more than a place to rat and mine while contributing nothing to the Corp or alliance.

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Yes this is what I’m saying too. New players are not a hot commodity in EVE as the game mechanics are today. Hence, corps shy away from them. New players like myself don’t even know how to be useful to a corp. And thus we are are left mining in low-sec alone, or doing NPC missions. My point is just that, a new player is useless to a corp in most cases by today’s mechanics. And that confines new players to a long time of isolation and self-driven persistent learning before he can enjoy any type of relationship building with team mates willing to take him in.

My point is that if EVE would want to climb back up to the 60.000 concurrent users of the past, then one way to potentially reach there is to make the now “useless” newcomer actually valuable to the corp my the mechanics of the game… and eventually he may turn into a member that is actually useful in the sense you think if a useful member by today’s mechanics.

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You’re not getting what I’m saying. They’re not a hot commodity for a reason. The reason being that most of them are trash.

This is why only predatory highsec leech corporations take their time to spam invites to new players in starting systems.

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Because one of two things will happen:

  1. CCP designates particular corps to be “newbie corps” that you get to choose from, giving those corps an immense advantage over the competition and earning CCP entirely justified accusations of favoritism.

or

  1. Anyone who wants to be eligible to receive newbies can sign up for it. This will inevitably result in an overwhelming number of options to choose from, most of them useless scam corps trying to exploit their members as much as possible before they realize it and leave.

To avoid this issue EVE gives you a hint to join up with other players but doesn’t force you to do so at any particular time, giving you full choice and responsibility for making the right one.

What I think is that if the Corp feel like every newcomer is great asset, a necessity to maintain its survival , and a resource to be fought over for the corps survival and power…

The problem is that newcomers in EVE aren’t assets. They don’t have the SP or game knowledge or ISK resources to contribute much of value. A new player is an investment that you make in the hope that someday they become an asset, which means being selective in who you invite. Nobody is going to want to waste time on first-day newbies that are unlikely to stay with the game.

Also, remember that EVE is not like most games and spying/corp theft/etc are part of the game. Aggressively recruiting new members as soon as they activate their accounts is a great way to get your corp taken down.

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I do get what you are saying. But you don’t get what I’m saying :stuck_out_tongue: … in all friendliness. Let me clarify.

The reason why you say they are trash is because the game mechanics do not reward carrying around what you call “trash”. But game mechanics could reward it, to the point where the incompetency of the average or new player is worth the trouble of keeping them welcome enough to stick around. This is what is the case in the game I come from. You absolutely need the member count (And yes, it is mostly to much frustration to the leaders). The new, incompetent, un-driven, lazy members are not as valuable as the driven and skilled ones … but they are needed regardless for a few reasons that the game mechanics provides. Hence, you as an organisation need to grab every soul you can get your hands on before others do, motivate and train him, make him want to stay loyal to your organisation, make him feel at home and useful … and eventually if you are lucky he turns out to be one of those top contributes to the orgs power in the end … and if he does not, then at least he might be worth the “passive” benefit one paying player brings to the org as a member. Essentially it rewards the leaderships people management skills.

My point is that EVE does not reward corps for carrying around new and inexperienced player trough the first months or years of learning, or the general slacker, or the guy you constantly need to remind about XYZ, or the temperamental or egocentric trouble maker … but I think that it should … cause these are 90% of the potential players of a game. To deal with the majority of people is a frustrating prospect for one or many reasons, and should anyone take these players under their wing the rewards need to be huge to be worth it. That is just my take on it coming to EVE from a drastically different experience.

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A requirement to carry trash players to get some kind of benefit (ability to build stations, etc) is going to be abused with alts and is going to be a frustrating experience in general. Nobody wants to deal with having to devote time to training newbies, regardless of how well that aligns with their corp’s goals, just to meet some arbitrary quota that CCP has imposed as a condition of being able to continue playing.

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Ok, so your idea is actually worse than I originally thought it was.

You want “rewards” for recruiting new players? Congrats, you’ve now got shitty corporations that will flood themselves with alt characters to farm those “rewards”. Now new players will either be lost in the mess or treated like alts because so many of them will be used to collect “rewards”.

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Yes, nobody wants that. It’s frustrating as hell to have to deal with. That is the worst part of leading an Organisation in the game I come from, but also the best part for those new to the game. New players does from day one get a group, a leadership and training/guidance. And should the leadership not be up to pair with competing organisations they start loosing members quickly.

Well, I do not agree with that. This is not how it turned out in the game I have experience with. Rather the opposite. Since there is such a high competition for players, organisations really do their best to make sure the new members feel welcome and get the right guidance. And obviously its not enough to just have a lot of accounts yourself as members to gain an advantage… the activity by your members matters, and that is why the guidance, motivation and inspiration by the leadership towards the members matters a lot.

Yes, that newcomers in EVE aren’t assets is exactly my point, and they are certainly treated like that. That was very evident for me when I began EVE the first time. Hence the game is kind of force to count on that the solo content is engaging enough to keep the newcomers in it long enough until they learnt enough, or that the game grows by friends take in friends, or (that is the case from the game I come from) that newcomers are kind of an asset from the start … with the option of becoming really huge assets, acceptable contributors, or liabilities over time.

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News flash, kid. Not everyone is like you.

Also, you have no idea at this point. You first started with “Why doesn’t CCP tell people to join certain corporations” over to “Why not give rewards for recruiting” and now you’re just spewing vague nonsense.

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Well, I do in all honesty just want to share my experience as a new player in two different games and in two different situations as a new player in EVE, and how they differ a lot. Maybe it is nonsense to you … but no need to get arrogant or impolite.

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Which game?

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I probably would be flagged for advertising if I name it. So I prefer not. Also, this thread was only to contribute the way I could to EVE.

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No, you will not. What is the other game?