Suggestion for new player acquisition and retention

Communications Center General Discussion
1

I’ve been talking to fellow players about potential changes that would benefit new players.

It takes a long time, or thousands of dollars in plex to get new players to be able to effectively participate in strat ops. Due to this, a lot of new blood can’t go gung ho on war or large battles. They’re limited to fast tackle for a significant amount of time.
For that reason, I would suggest bringing back the boosters from around christmas 2018, and make them for players with less than 100m sp only. (They were on par with Master-at-arms cerebral accelerators, but had limited time use.)
Second, I would make the effective falloff for injectors less strict prior to 100m sp.
Third, I would suggest making skilling spree available 365 days a year for players under 100m sp.
When new players are so limited in skill acquisition, they can’t spend their early bright eye days doing the things they might foolishly want to do. Top end ships are harder to get into, unless you’re a credit card warrior, thus they don’t die as often as they could.
It seems that the current push in changes is to produce more resource war, and sinking isk back into the game, as opposed to stockpiling.
These changes would make entry into the eve life easier. Right now, that is a major deterrent to player growth. You’ll mostly see people making alts rather than a lot of new players coming into and staying with eve.

I’d also suggest changes to alliances and coalitions. Right now, nearly all of nullsec is owned and operated by the same people that have had it for the last 10 years or more. We’re not seeing new systems introduced into the game, so we’re stuck with either renting from these major coalitions, or waiting long periods to join them. Mostly due to skills.
Limit the number of corporations in alliances, and give economic penalty to coalitions. Many dev’s play this game, so you’re well aware of who owns what. Make it harder for these people to work together. Give them a reason to war against each other.
The pending redistribution of minerals might help with that, but I think it needs to go further.
This could go to both players and developers. I see a lot of people whining about the game being stagnant, yet are unwilling to risk anything. If you want a better game, make it better.
*EDIT to add a valid suggestion.

1 Like
2

Can you explain why the end goal for new players of this should be “effectively participate in strat ops” first?
Also, I’m part of an alliance that can get players to “effectively participate in strat ops” within an hour (give or take depending on which starter faction they picked). Where are you getting that new players need to take a long time or “thousands of dollars in PLEX”?

5 Likes
3

New players come here because of various youtube videos depicting the legendary battles of old. Many of these videos are years old, and make this game seem epic. Large scale war is what makes the headlines. I’d be hard pressed to find any legendary battle within the last year or two.
As for getting people ready for large scale war within an hour, I refer to the bit about being stuck in tackle positions for a significant amount of time.
As for the thousands of dollars in plex, i refer to injector costs. 1 injector costs approx 820m isk, and to begin with gives 500k sp. For a new player to get to 30m sp, as an example, they’d need to purchase approx 50 injectors (going from 10m to 30m) which would be around 41b isk. 500 plex costs $20usd, and sells for approx 1.6b, which in usd is around $450.
That is just skill, not even cost of ships, implants, skill books etc.
To get an unfit titan would cost that same $450usd. (approx.)
If the object of the recent and pending changes is to create conflict, and we know that people come for the large battles, we can extrapolate that those big expensive ships would be used and lost. Afterall, new players want big explosions.

All you need to do is spend a few hours in rookie chat to understand what new players want. New, not just new alts.

1 Like
4

Hmmm, my alliance has not placed newbros into tackle positions since 2017. We have them in long range frigate Ewar positions.

This is mostly because:

  1. dictors are better tackle than newbros in frigates
  2. newbros survive longer and can participate in more kills in ewar
  3. they’re also a lot safer since hostiles do not waste time locking and firing at ewar frigs

So I’m not sure what you’re talking about since my experience for the last 3 years has been completely different from what you claim.

3 Likes
5

I’m sure CCP will continue to balance around this, but skillpoints are directly tied to CCP revenue.

Subscriptions are a significant part of their income stream and any time it’s made easier to obtain free skillpoints, that has a potential impact on CCP’s bottom line.

So not surprisingly, what we might want as a community of customers, won’t always align with what CCP wants as a business.

However hopefully they continue with efforts around that.

The game is about to turn 17. For most of that time, we all did just fine as new players, even without the ability to fast track our skilling like we can now with injectors.

Groups like Brave around 2013-2014 had no problem putting totally new players on grid in large numbers of low skilled ships and getting kills. Quantity has a quality all of it’s own (to quote a famous line).

As a community, there are always opportunities to step up and create the new Brave, or new Horde, or new Karmafleet, etc. and make it easy for new players to get into the game effectively, even at low skill.

This is, and should be, totally community driven. We don’t need CCP regulating how we can work at the group level.

However, Brave have been in null for quite some time after starting in lowsec and then internally fail cascading several times. They’ve survived.

Horde haven’t had the drama, and while originally backed by PL, they have always had independence and forged a life in nullsec from day 1 of existence.

It’s up to the community to drive this, not CCP.

2 Likes
6

You made part of my point for me.
This game has been around for nearly 17 years. New players just coming to this game, as CCP would like, as nearly everyone would like, have 17 years of sp to catch up. The pace has improved somewhat, but there is a hard limit to character improvement that can only be circumvented with money.
Subscriptions going up because it’s easier to access mid to top end equipment benefits everyone, as does the content created by new players in big ships.

1 Like
7

New players can earn their SP just like every other player before them had to do. This reeks of “gimme gimme gotta have it now, it’s not fair that they are ahead of me” instant gratification…

4 Likes
8

Thank you for your comment.
I’d like to point out that nearly every other game has a catch up system for the very reasons I’ve mentioned. Due to those catch up systems, they continue to gain new players. Eve does not. At least, not in significant enough numbers to stimulate a somewhat stagnant community and economy.
Eve needs new players, or it will die like so many other games. 5 years ago, you’d see 70k on your launcher, while today we struggle to have 30k on a daily basis. There are reasons for that, including the uphill battle to be anywhere near viable compared to veteran players.

2 Likes
9

Oh well. That’s the way it works. Life isn’t fair, and neither is EVE. New players have no idea how good they have it compared to what it took those of us who have been playing for over a decade to get to where we are now. Your local bank isn’t going to give you a 10 million dollar loan at 0% interest just so you can catch up to people who are older than you who have more money.

3 Likes
10

There are plenty of groups out there that can provide non-skill intensive doctrines. Or the groups can do something to accommodate low sp players like noob roles.

(or we could balance ships better)

Just folding to instant gratification is a lazy option with poor results like hundreds of instant titan players.

3 Likes
11

I agree that players working together for long term is a great feature.
However, some of the mega coalitions face no viable enemy simply due to their size. That does not benefit the continuity of Eve as a game, or the storyline. Simply put, Goonswarm, Test and Pandemic Horde are all bigger than or equal to CONCORD, yet have no real impact on the story. Faction warfare has no impact and does not continue past a certain point. Other than LP grinding, of course.
There needs to be a hard cap so that they can’t survive purely based on how big they are. Yes, new players will gravitate towards bigger alliances. They do so for protection and easy access to whatever their goals are. You don’t see alliance growth like you did in years past, because there are easier paths.

1 Like
12

That analogy works in real life, however this is still a video game. The company that hosts this video game can’t survive without new players coming in and being able to enjoy enough content to keep them coming.

1 Like
13

That is true. However, it does not take into account anything past t1 ships and fits. 100m sp will get you into any ship and fit you desire. Hell, 50m would as well.
Having a slow workup to ships worked 17 years ago, when this game was unique. Today, we hemorrhage players to other games because they don’t want to spend years getting into something they saw and wanted the first week of play.
You may not like players that want instant gratification, and eve isnt built for them. I am not even asking for instant gratification. I am asking to speed up the time-gate so that new players do not have to spend years to be viable at their goals.

1 Like
14

That’s one perspective. The other is that it is on us as players to be patient (and not feel entitled to everything asap), and as a community, if you are concerned about players time getting into the game, go do something about it in game. others have before and people will in the future. The answer isn’t always "“CCP fix this”.

Every action has costs as well as benefits. One cost for example of the accelerated skilling has been the loss of attachment and value in characters. Prior to injectors, growing your character actually helped increase attachment to the game, because there was an emotional attachment to that in game progress.

So CCP are and have been adjusting this for several years now. Your commentary is about the balance around their approach.

We’ve seen this for years. When people were coming to the game after it had been in production for a decade, these feelings were there.

CCP has responded to that, but the balance needs to be where they see it, and as a community, or even as individuals acting to resolve that, get in game and create the next Brave for example.

Not everyone is capable of that. It’s just a game after all. However, it’s not just CCP’s responsibility to assist new players. It’s also ours as the community of players they join.

15

To put it simply, you can’t be the next brave without new players coming into eve. The mega coalitions are largely set in stone at this point. some people will flake off and join other groups, but for the most part, you do not see alliance growth because it’s the same player pool it has been for years.

1 Like
16

Instant gratification and “speed-ups” for new players are the death knell of any established MMO. Take Star Wars Galaxies, for instance. It was a niche game, just like EVE, with an established, extremely devoted player base. Then SOE went mucking around and changing the game due to WoW being released, and since WOW was easier and more new-player friendly, they dumbed down SWG in order to attract players that normally would have gravitated to the easier WoW. Then they added a cash shop, card game, in-game holiday events, and things went downhill from there extremely fast. It didn’t last but another year or so after that. The moral of the story is, don’t fix what isn’t broken…

6 Likes
17

Not that long ago, Hilmar showed how many still come to the game, as new players. It’s still in the thousands.

The issue of getting new players still to try EVE seems to be less than the issue of getting them to stay. That’s where the next Brave is important.

2 Likes
18

That’s not the case at all.

4 Likes
19

I spend hours a day in rookie chat and see people come, have lofty goals, and burn out. The overwhelming reasons are because of the time-gate, or the ui learning curve.

1 Like
20

Can you explain what this has to do with your proposed idea? How do you know the two are connected?

3 Likes