Not sure of that. There are plenty of groups, especially around FW that are looking for pilots to join up. It’s totally in their interest to nurture and keep new players around and fighting on their side in their various forever wars.
I agree, it has to be done carefully, there is no reason a new player can’t have a fun and rewarding time in lowsec from day 1.
What in the heavens are you going on about. Getting players comfortable with loss is a major psychological hurdle that ends up boring a large fraction of players out of the game. They just build and horde stuff and train skills until they are “ready” to PvP, which of course never occurs and they just get bored and quit the game.
The current NPE makes a couple feeble attempts to desensitize players to loss by exploding their ships, but really new players should at least have the option of some lowsec experience where they lose a dozen or two ships to other players. I agree, you can’t just dump them alone and leave them at the mercy of hostile veterans, but it is totally reasonable to build some system, place or sites that put them on a team either play fighting each other, or even the other side of the faction war. Link these training sites in some way to faction war so the veterans have an incentive to train and defend them so they can later join their side.
Of course this should be optional like everything in the sandbox. If you just want to build widgets and not compete violently, then you can trundle off to highsec and set up your widget making operation bypassing this. But I think the game would benefit immensely if the default NPE had an element in lowsec, probably faction war, so they can interact with veterans and get really used to the paradigm that ships are disposable and that losing them to other players is perfectly normal and intended game play.
No, it is for you, but no necessarily for new players. For the new player, they start in the safest zone and are warned by a popup how dangerous lowsec is when they try to enter, so it is completely reasonable that most of them conclude they “aren’t ready” to leave highsec. Yet, as we established highsec isn’t the “new player zone”, just a zone with a different rule set that makes space for those who prefer to play alone or in small groups, or more casually. There is indeed no reason why they can have a fun and rewarding experience as a newer player in lowsec, and arguably, the more action-packed and social environment there might keep more players. We lose far too many to the traps of solo mining and solo missioning careers as CCP’s data tells.
I see no reason why you couldn’t invert the situation and put the players in lowsec in a controlled setting to get a taste for combat and lose some ships to get used to that, and gain exposure to social groups like fleets and corporations which are more necessary there. There would be no barrier for those that don’t like it to move back to highsec. I can see that having a better potential to retain new player then dropping them into a belt to compete with some silent multiboxing miner in highsec, or off to “level their Raven” by themselves for a month or two before they quit.
But yes, the OP is being provocative (or perhaps just silly) in calling for highsec removal. That is a non-starter of an idea. But I am with him that perhaps highsec isn’t the best place for all new players to end up, and there should be some more guided part of the NPE to get more new players into the dynamic environment of lowsec, at least for a time, to get a taste of more of the game.
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