None of what you said is necessarily tied to creating a new corp from the get-go. All of it can be acheived by joining an already established corp.
Thats the problem, isnt it. Players are leaving. Not just the corp, but the game itself. There are people who camp out in starter systems trying to recruit new players. There are people who lurk in rookie chat, copy and paste a bunch of names and send corp mails to recruit them. Now, you can say “Its up to them to find out how shitty the corp is”, but in many cases, they havent even found out if they like the game yet. Theres a reason why even CCP bans scamming and ganking of new players in starter systems.
It already costs isk to start a corporation. I think the point the OP is making is NPC corps play an important role as isk sinks, so why not up the costs of corporation creation to offset the potential deminishment of that isk sink.
Personally, I do not agree with the OP. From a design perspective people are more likely to keep playing the game if they develop social connections. This should be encouraged! I want new players to be able to afford to make their own corps for just this reason.
From an isk sink perspective, there are lots of other things that could be done… and I would start with Alliance fees.
Youre aware that CCP actually bans the extortion, scamming and ganking of new players in starter systems, right? You could always say to that, “Well, the onus is on a new player to develop his understanding of EVE online and about ganking and scamming. New players should be allowed to get scammed from the get-go so that they can learn from their mistakes”.
I assume you understand and agree with CCPs decision to prevent new players from being greifed/scammed from the get-go in starter systems, no?
And what about those who make mistakes at the expense of others? What about those who dont find it fun, but dont know any better? Should they just leave the game?
Its one thing to have a group of friends you want to play with, and join a corporation together and have fun and make mistakes and laugh.
But its a whole other thing to recruit new players who dont know any better, exploit them, make ISK off their taxes and buy their ore for dirt cheap, and do nothing in return while telling the corp to dock up during a war or offer poor advice when asking for how to play the game.
With the current method of creating corps, the number of crap corps designed to stroke the CEOs wallet and ego, far outnumbers those who just create corps who want to have fun.
People keep saying this, but when i ask, none have provided a response as to why this cant be achieved by players joining the same corporation, together, instead of creating a new corporation.
Why do new players need to create a new corporation in order to socialize, or be a part of a group?
The problem is the old wardec mechanics often led to wars that were so one sided it was causing people to leave their corp, and in-game social network, then quit the game altogether.
To be honest—as a former game designer who worked on an un-named MMO—I am kind of amazed it has taken CCP to make changes to the wardec system because it hurts their bottom line.
It also hurts us as players in this sandbox game because the more people who stick around, and the longer people stick around, the better the emergent gameplay.
That being said I really do understand your frustration, its kind of irritating to think of the ways the war dec changes can lead to abuse, particularly when it comes to sinking isk out of the economy.
Like I said I would add more to isk sinks elsewhere, but at the end of the day I would take more people sticking with the game over reduced in-game inflation all day long.
I did, and i responded. Thats how a discussion works.
But, like you, they stop responding, because they cant. What else is there to do? Its not like you can admit youre wrong, that would shatter your self-image after all.
I think you give too little credit to new players, scams exist beyond EvE, they can make their own judgement of things. Interaction with people is part of what you sign up for when joining an MMO, and there is always good people and bad people. If some leave because of a bad experience, maybe they would have left anyway, people react differently… there is no poll out there saying a huge amount of people left cause they joined a shitty corp, so why is it worth doing something about it in this weird way?
Raising the bar on who can create a corp will imo not be a solution to anything. You already mentioned yourself that extreme cases of new player scamming is already regulated by CCP, so thats already taken care of.
So raising the bar will at best limit some other obscure cases of scamming, but at worst it will limit people in their social interaction with each other and stop some potential good ideas of new corps.
Of course, also I like you using the same technique to argue your point. When I used the example of war deckers suggesting people throw themselves at their bling ships I was getting back to the heart of the game as in blowing pixels up.
The new player can jump in his ship and head to Jita and he has no protection, this is really to stop new player focussed scamming/griefing in the starter systems. If you told me that this block applied to the new player until he was three months old then I would think it was incorrect.
So my point of view stands, the onus is on the new player to find the right corp, just as it is on the older more experienced player and the more you move around the more of an understanding you get.
Picking good leaders and mentors is also experience based, my first real fun as Dracvlad was joining up with a chap called Aaron in Stain and he made a lot of mistakes, but a lot of content was created from it, I had a whale of a time.
Finding fun in this game is all relative, I like challenges, my most recent one was removing 3.5bn worth of P1 from asset security in Faspera which is camped by PHEW. I did it without losing a ship. You have to move out of your comfort zone and think it through.
That is what makes Eve for a lot of people.
I hope that people develop the understanding to work out that these corps are bad news and leave, my daughters boyfriend tried Eve, he is French, I suggested a French corp I had seen around, he joined them, it went well, he was an Alpha until they did a WH where he was salvaging and at the end of the op they said that they would not be giving out the proceeds, they had not told him before hand. And he found this a bit annoying, he decided he had better things to do with his time.
It is what it is.
People like to be on the same level so as not to feel less than another, or they like to learn together and make mistakes together.
We’ve always known wardecs hurt corps. Our advice was to tell people to stay in NPC corps and use chat channels to create a social organisation.
We’ve also been telling ccp to make social corps for maybe 5 years. And change wardecs for even longer than that.
It’s frustrating to be right, and then see ccp take a sledgehammer to a good mechanic because they reacted too slowly.
Anyways, that aside, corps ARE too easy to make. You can make over 10 corps for the price of a single wardec. I’d like that to change for sure. And nooblets can make social corps as much as they like for a meagre fee.
Yes, but I doubt high cost is going to help here. If someone feels exploited by taxes and whatever now it takes only few minutes to gather his friends and make their new corp free from exploitation. If the corp cost 1b+ instead they will have to either rejoin their NPC corps, or find another player run corp. But when the first impression is shitty, searching for a new corp isn’t pleasant - quitting the game is easier.
I would rather see corps costing money per month than high upfront costs. Say 1m+100k/player per week.
It takes minutes to train lvl1 skill to have a corp with 10 members. Few days to get 100 people. There is essentially no skill bar to make and run a corp. On the other hand, having all various corp goodies behind skill bars would require skilling up before actually running a corp that does something more than serve as a chat channel.
You can do that. There is not much point to do it though, and it isn’t a problem just with wars.
Yes, you gain organization and simplicity, that’s why people make corps instead of running just chat channels. If the corp cost 2b, I believe more would use that alternative if they knew about it (or quit, simpler). But most of the mentioned stuff doesn’t matter for a HS PVE corp (where these war changes matter). Mainly just hangars matter.
Somehow we were able to start without it. And some of us still here.
I mean it’s difficult to seriously think about need for this protection because “it is not big deal”. Feels like pure theoretical discussion with pure imagined arguments.
The game was also less complex, far fewer ships, the meta was not as evolved, people weren’t coming in and running into people with 15 years of accumulation of resources attacking them.
Pointing at ‘well we managed ok’ isn’t a good argument because the game has evolved since then as has the player base.
Yeah, but still all discussions are purely empirical.
Could newbees use some assistance and guidance? In theory, yes.
Do newbees need it? Possibly, yes. We have no evidences that famous NPE led to increased number of newbees settled in the game (my bad if i simply missed some blog or news with such information).
So we possibly should not use phrases like i have quoted.
I assume some subset of them will PvP eventually, whether that is because the ultimately gravitate towards a null sec alliance, operate partially out of low-sec, get suicide ganked, or their corp puts up a structure.
Worst case scenario for me is someone who sticks around for a year or more, and never pvps, but still ends up filling my buy orders, buying from my sell orders, etc.
And believe it or not just having them on the server makes New Eden feel more lived in, which in turn makes other people want to stick around longer.
And perhaps most importantly to everyone more active players means more active omega accounts, which means more money for CCP, and the longer we can keep EVE profitable for CCP the longer our ‘hobby’ survives in, what is now, a super competitive MMO market.
So CCP creating a rule against scamming or griefing new players in starter systems is wrong, in your opinion?
Its not simply about scamming, its about taking advantage of new players.
The thing about wardecs was that they were a great way to demonstrate to the new players how crappy a corp they were in. It definately wasnt always an ideal method, but it certainly worked. It was a good litmus test for us to determine if a CEO actually knew what he was doing and had the knowledge and wealth to back up his corpmates.
Now, what do we have? Whats the best way for new players to realize his corp sucks? Whose going to tell him his corp sucks? How will he know what his options are?
On the one hand, you seem to agree with CCP that rules set in place to prevent the scamming/greifing of new players in starter systems, which are mostly indicative of new players who just started the game, is a good thing.
On the other hand, youre saying its up to the responsibility of the player himself to be able to experience and possibly even quit the game over joining stupid crappy corps, and getting a bad impression of the game because of it.
The impression that we got from CCP and the CSM regarding wardecs against smaller corporations, was that the new players who were caught up in this, didnt simply realize they were just in a crappy corp and decided to move to another, better corp. Instead, the CEO they were trusting to lead them, probably sent them a mass evemail saying “just dock up and dont play the game for a week”.
I see no difference between this, and a new player who logs on for the first time and is shot at and killed in a starter system and camped inside by a veteran. If this was allowed, will there be some people who get angry and motivated to get out of that system to try and enjoy the game? Sure. But for a lot, maybe even most, will just see this as a stupid mechanic and never play again.
Sure. Looking back at it, im sure you have fond memories. But not everyone makes it into the latter category. Not everyone moves on to new corporations. And while you may have had a good time, its completely possible that a corpmate of yours didnt. Atleast your CEO wanted to move out to Nullsec, which is a lot more than what most hisec corps are willing to do.
I dont think you read my comment. I understand that fun is all relative, but i think youd agree with me that most people will have to try out a lot of things in order to find something that they consider fun. A crappy experience in a crappy corp because of a crappy CEO who couldnt lead you to water if you were thrown off a boat, isnt going to get you to that point.
That corp sounds like its a lot better than some, or most of the hisec corps lying around that are recruiting people.
When you create a new corp, one person is going to be the CEO so that alone necessitates you being on a higher level than other people. Do you know what does put everyone on the same level? Joining the same corp. Same goes for learning and making mistakes.
But I feel like this conversation is a little surreal, because most new players dont want to make mistakes. Its only fun for most people to make mistakes, when they look back on it and learned from it. But chances are, mistakes will only frustrate new players, and many will want to avoid it, especially those that cost progress/isk.
If you ask a new player running missions who just lost his ship to a ninja salvaging baiter, what do you think his opinion will be? WIll he be glad he made a mistake and learned from it? If given the option, would you think he wouldve preferred not to make the mistake, and had been told by others whats going on beforehand so that he didnt have to lose his 200 mill ship?
Why wouldnt it? It seems to work on other aspects of the game. Players are more careful and take less risks on ships that are expensive, as they do with cheaper ships. They tend to be more protective of something if it costs more.
But the real positive upside to this is, it will help weed out the two different positions on isk. The people who arent as worried about isk, will not be so worried about collecting it from their corpmates. The greedy people who only think about accumulating ISK, will in turn have their wallets hurt more because of this short sighted greed.
Also, what is this notion that people have, that new players will start new corps if they find out the current corp is crap?
The number one selling point of corporations that recruiters bring to players, is listing a bunch of things they do, as well as the infastructure to do it with. No one wants to join a corp that says “Hey, we just wanna tax you. We offer nothing because were mostly afk. You will not get advice. No SRP. No free ships or modules or skillbooks. Youre free to do anything you want. Just know that youre being taxed and we make isk off you for no effort on our part. Come join our corporation today!”
If corps were only capable of being chat channels, i would agree with you. But all corporations have the ability to do a lot more.
And im fine with different levels of corporations. Ive been an advocate of making mandatory NPC taxes that do not go to the corporation, on alt corps. Seems a lot more relevant today with the advent of non-wardeccable, tax haven corps now.
Sure. In which case, an established corp will have a better track record and better ability to provide actual stuff inside the hangar, than a corp created by new players.