hmmm you’re right, when someone gives a new bro a ship and says fly that, you clearly make effort to train into it, however at this point the new player already knows how to navigate the neocomm, operate the markets, manage skill queue etc.
my thought is more targeted towards the new player who’s gone through the NPE but are not at the point where they’re talking to other players, its been my experience with people in gaming that people will want to learn how to do things themselves and then look for a larger group, as with basically every online game, there is a limit as to what you can do as a solo player and thus you need a larger group for more rewarding challenges, however the user interface of the game is ultimately not user friendly.
consider EVE as a table top game for a moment.
everything works on a simple mechanic (point and click)
however each window that opens acts as like a sub mechanic within the game.
an example of which is Shadowrun, the mechanics run on a d6 system where you count successes, but depending on what you’re doing depends on the threshold and difficulty set vs your characters skill level which means almost everything you do has its own ruleset and sub mechanic.
so in my opinion what CCP should do specifically for the benefit of new players is simplify the process of how new people access the information window specifically and then from there have options available, brand new players who have no idea about the game are going to think to open the skill tree, click simulate fit and then look for a yellow skill book icon where they can buy the skills from, it just seems like a lot of extra work for the new player who doesn’t know anything about the game.
the tweaks I propose would help ease that learning curve and i would hope cause a natural increase player retention, even tough there is stuff there for us as players to use, i think the premise of using it is built on the premise of that we already know how to interact with the game.
getting into the ship is one thing, learning how to fly it is another, that’s where other players come in, passing on that Experience to the newer players. at least that’s my opinion on it.