Well, I don’t think you’ve established I have a personal bias or agenda, to then say I’m using this to further my point.
If I do have either of the above, it is that I want to see EVE thrive and to me, that isn’t done by reducing EVE to a elitist PvP game where we refine down the user base to those that fit your ideals of that the game is.
EVE is a PvP Sandbox, with high sec and low secs, predators, sheep and guard dogs.
But we need to actually stick fresh blood in the game, or we’re always going to be bleeding numbers and saying “Well get good” isn’t the answer, when there are already new bro corps and orgs seeking to make EVE more accessable.
One of the more dangerous gameplay loops in Eve is found by ignoring all UI warnings and clicking on that jump button to more dangerous parts of space. The game has enough instructions on security status available in the public domain, there is a giant warning right as the player jumps.
I’d argue CCP’s attempts to micro manage new players is actually counter productive if it doesn’t include this reality.
Elitist, no. But “well you died a few times, deal with it and pick yourself up” is hardly elitist. Had he come with a question on how to do better or why something specific happened and how to counter it the responses would have been different. He didn’t, he made a dramatic “I quit” thread on an alt that has no losses listed so this might very well be just another troll thread.
But it is. HOW to git gud is up for debate. I help a lot of newbies in various ways, lots of people do, some corps and alliances do a good job as well but at the same time it’s up to those newbies to actively seek out information, help and to actively put their brain to good use.
The dude played less than a month and somehow he had enough cash to lose ships in value of 200 mil, according to his own words. How was he doing badly?
Well, to me we want them to get thrashed but be able to recoil into their Org and be like “WTF was that.” and then be better onboarded with the dangers of the game, but from what I understand, a lot of people don’t go straight to other corps, they just quit.
Now if we say, well, we don’t want the quitters any way, that is a okay answer, keep the people who get EVE from the get go - but the game is going to financially suffer and that makes a worse experience for us all, both from less sheep in the game who can tolerate some loss, to the people who just need time to get eve and understand acceptable losses and might become PvP’ers or content generators.
But at the start of EVE, whilst their loosing their first tristian, to most that’s nothing, to them that’s everything and they don’t have wiggle room for “Don’t fly what you can’t afford.”
Just to inject some current information into the thread, this is what that new player graph looks like as of today:
It does not have the clear downward trend at this time.
If we look at the all time chart, things still don’t look so grim as the cherry picked graph would have us believe.
If we’re going to take these graphs as materially relevant to players willingness to play (which I think is a bit questionable, but giving the benefit of the doubt) , then judging from the current and overall graphs there doesn’t seem to be a problem.
You don’t make it clear what any of these ships actually were, or what you were doing…for example hauling stuff, PvE, or whatever.
A month into Eve I didn’t have any ships worth 120m ISK or 80m ISK. Even now…8 months into the game…90% of my ships are worth under 100m ISK. You can buy and fit a really good battlecruiser for 60m ISK or so.
I was gate camped on my very first trip to lowsec…but that was in a 2.7m ISK Tristan. Heck, at the time I think my most expensive ships were a 10m ISK Algos and a 40m ISK Procurer. I had lots of smaller ships…frigates…Condors, Slasher, etc.
So I’m a bit baffled that someone just a month into the game is losing 200m worth of ships in one go…and those ships are all they have. Doesn’t quite make sense.
Without being told what ships were lost, and what context, none of this actually makes sense.
It doesn’t have that 10k spike either, around the time CCP was paying streamers if I recall.
Yes it doesn’t have a downward trend… because that is the floor of the downward tend from the graph I linked and is the lowest point in some time looking at the overall graph. We can’t see mediocracy and say it’s okay because there is no fall in it.
Not only are new players not abandoning the game in droves…but in fact I know from my own experience that every single one of the noobs that joined around the same time as me ( and who I still see in Local when I return to the area of my starter system ) are still in the game. Loads of noobs have also joined Absolute Order and in 6 months I can only think of one case of ’ I’m bored of Eve…I’m off’. I think the real issue is that quitters are far more vocal…and you simply don’t hear about the far greater number who stick with the game.
I love EVE for it’s PvP features, I’m not saying they should be deminished at all, just that we need to help new players be more robust, to me it’s by providing better player interactions, helping them find their gang and those gangs being informative and having resources / enabling the new player.
Ok how, be specific please. Statements like “we should just solve world hunger” don’t solve anything.
Mind you, they have the forums, youtube, Wiki, rookie channels, corp channels etc etc. It’s up to the player to choose to actively seek out information, can’t (and won’t) force feed it.
Good fight culture - informing people where they messes up.
Better advertisement of useful new bro Corps as part of the NPE.
Affordable ships / payouts to match current inflation, as old content gives old money and creates a steeper curve into the “Buy, farm content, die, repeat.”
Better training through game play, IE, improve the RATS to do what players do.
Teach some core mechanics ingame, like D-scan often, use non-generic approach vectors onto gates to scout them out, setting up the overview / better default overview.
Maybe just don’t lead with “Get good, sounds like a skill issue.” that’s the baseline.
No real guidance?? What do you smoke? There’s literally tons of info on EVE, how to play in such and such ship, hundreds of videos with millions of hours showing how to do anything from exploring to mining to ganking. I’m sensitive to people’s plights but I refuse to waste my time with lazy gamers.
That means nothing whatsoever. Did you forget the point you were making?
Sometimes all the training in the world won’t do. I also started recently and also have lost some stuff to ganking… boohoo. Get over it and get smarter or admit EVE isn’t for you. Not everyone can do everything at anytime. Got to acknowledge that.
No need to come on the forum to cry about it.
That the game / CCP have created, there are materials on EVE made by the community, but they get lost to time and made incomplete by changes made to the game.
There is lots of third party research you can do… but that is for when the player is already interested and wanting to skill up in EVE… and this discussion is about player retention, where some section of the new players aren’t going to feel invested yet and instead will find something better to do with their time.
Many people do this, if some newbie gets nuked and doesn’t act like a baby then more often than not they will receive help, have their ship reimbursed (and then some). But it depends on the choices and actions of that newbie, if someone acts like a baby then good luck with that
Most “newbro” corps aren’t actually good for newbies. They’re really just their to feed the war machine, have bodies in fleets and to inject those newbies with that alliance’s revisionist history and EVE propaganda because if YOU get a newbie your adversaries can’t get them. Besides that I doubt it’s a good idea if CCP starts to take sides on what newbro corp is good or not.
T1 Frigates are cheap and insurable, where’s the problem? after a week of play newbies should be able to lose a cruiser or two. Now if they start flying nonsense ships that is their fault and had they talked to people about it those folks would probably have said it’s a bad idea.
You mean like Triglavians, abyssal, FOB’s and diamond rats? Yes normal NPC should/could be better but at the same time I doubt it would actually solve anything.
Read the wiki and go to youtube, search for “eve guide” or “how to survive in low sec/null/WH space”. Tons of good guides and generally far better than anything CCP could ever do.
The problem isn’t so much the availability of information and ways of learning, the problem is people just not bothering. The amount of times we get asked in Rookie “where’s the wiki” or something blatantly obvious is astounding, like “do you know how to google”. Actually what the ■■■■. Does it then still take time, will they mess up and is that going to hurt. YES, yes it does. And that’s fine.
But it starts with the person putting in brain effort, like OP (as said if it’s even true) who jumped into low sec 3 times and dying 3 times. Ignoring jump in warnings, not being bothered to ask around about what low sec actually means or asking in Rookie how and why he died the first time. If he had done ANY of that he’d probably had not done it 3 times.
You can’t teach nor help stupid/lazy/stubborn people and personally I see no reason to even try.
