I’m not talking about ease of use.
I am talking about ease of access. In my experience, the vast majority of new players never get to experience these 3rd party tools because they leave before they get a chance to.
So my argument is that a good chunk of them would stay if you could improve their gameplay experience by 20-40% which more likely would be the case if all tools were easily accessible in game.
If they were accessible in game they could also be part of the new player experience.
So you could for example have missions that learn you how to use the “Pyfa/fitting tool” in game.
You could have missions that teaches you how to use Evepraisal.
You could have new players missions where the goal is to get their first kill om “zkillboard in game”
You could have missions that let new players map out a wormhole chain on Tripewire in game.
I think all of these things would massively improve player retentions for those players that actually like the core gameplay but leave for other reasons.