I have a suggestion to help with the newbie retention. This is something I have been doing for a couple of years and about 75% end up signing up for omega or stay in the game or stay after considering quitting.
The idea is a mentoring system. Pair up a veteran with a rookie to explain the game and help with mission, mining, indy, picking ships, fitting ships. This develops a dialog with the newbie and the vet and other corp members who usually love to help out a new player.
The problem with this is finding the rookie in the first place. They have to be on around the same time the vet is and a reasonable distance to the vet . The way to fix this is to create a mentor database of vets willing to help and rookies. If one could search for rookies meeting that are on and a reasonable distance or inversely the rookie could search for a mentor. All you need is both to sign up for the database inclusion.
I do this because I really enjoy helping new guys out and realized that if someone didn’t help me out when I was a rookie I would have probably have quit to. So I now find necessary to pay it forward.
I would do this for free but I realize that most will not, so a modest reward for every rookie helped per week and maybe a larger one if the rookie signs up for omega.
I typically have to spend a week just trying to find a rookie to help. There is always people wanting help, but its hard to find one within 10 jumps and on the same time you are.
Just a suggestion for something I already do, but I would appreciate a reply from a DEV on their thinking and how I could help.