Well, new players are Alpha clones and not Omega right off the bat usually so they wouldn’t be in a position to fly HACs or Carriers/Capitals. New Players need to be able to quickly explore mining, pve, exploration, trading, industry, and pvp to find out what it is they enjoy the most. Also, in order to really retain new players they really need to be useful to corporations/alliances and so that means they should at least be able to fly cruisers/battlecruisers, logistics, and other tech1 semi-specialized ships (ecm, webbing, neuting, etc.). New players shouldn’t be flying ship classes above battleships or anything tech2 of course as that’s Omega territory.
New players need to be brought up to a state of semi-usefullness to corporations/alliances as soon as possible so they can be taken in and shown what EVE is all about by more experienced players. And as Hilmar showed this really needs to happen within the first 7 days of creating a new character so as to increase new player retention.
What needs to happen also, is the toxicity out of rookie help, and the bittervets who tell people to quit the game. we don’t need that happening. And with vets mostly living in null, and ccp planning on making it harder for null and easier on the new players, nullsec players are the last ones who should be trying to encourage new players to go straight to nullsec.
This is no assumption. Why do you think new players are given cerebral accelerators right off the bat? It’s because CCP recognized they needed faster training to help increase retention. It’s still not enough though as new players need to be brought up much faster than they currently are.
CCP could increase the effectiveness of new player cerebral accelerators, but lowering the skill cap and shrinking training times for all players helps new and old players alike.
I get your point, but I just dont think treating them like new starts in work is going to keep them that interested if they are channeled towards doing the work no one in the corp wants to do.
But then, I dont seem to look at EvE the way most people do either.
If the situation exists (Which Im giving to you here as I dont agree) that skilling into anything useful takes too long, then give the NPE a base line of 3 in everything and split 4 and 5 into new levels instead.
You can actually try almost everything in Eve with just a few hours of skill-training. Sure, you won’t be the best at it, but you can see if activity x is something you would like to do.
Because all skills are capped at 5, a new player can become just as effective as a veteran in a single activity relatively quickly as there is a limited number of skills that apply to each activity. People stare too much at the total number of skills and how long it takes to get there. Try looking at how long it takes to do activity x. It’s surprisingly short time to have all skills to 5 that affect that activity.
While no hard numbers have been published yet as to what’s working and what’s not as to increasing player retention getting new players into better ships/modules with greater variety of activity should help at least somewhat. CCP is currently experimenting with various ways of attracting new players and increasing retention and speeding up training time is most certainly one of them. Here is one example:
Except you’re forgetting there’s lot’s of other skills needing to be trained besides those for a specific Career, such as general ship fitting and support skills…
Also some career choices may require training skills in another career just to be competent in the first career choice. Like Tech 2 Production. To be competent in that career requires cross training into a few other careers.
It’s up to the corporations to get the new players doing something they like while being useful to the corp. And I’m sure CCP can help steer new players towards corporations with higher retention rates.
I’m more in the thought process of improving EVE as a whole and not just the NPE. By lowering the SP cap and shrinking training times as a result will speed things up for new and old players alike. Also, the reduced SP cap should result in current players being reimbursed with SP for us to either use ourselves, make injectors to sell for isk, or make injectors to help out newer players in their respective corporations.
Wouldnt it adversely affect extractor/injector sales to affect the market this way and encourage people out of making the most out of the easier to fly craft?
I mean if thats the objective, should we consider a far harsher Tiercide?
Im not sure quicker gratification will lead to retention. I fear the opposite would be true.
But thats just my thoughts on the matter. I recently started an Alpha and trained all his skills that were available to him to 3 and it didnt seem to take that long really.
New players shouldn’t be forced to specialize right off the bat and the best way to retain new players is to get them into corporations. However, in order for most corporations to see new players as useful and not a burden is for the new players to be able to fly a variety of half way decent ships before coming to the corporation. According to Hilmar this really needs to happen within the first 7 days of a new character’s creation. This requires a rather dramatic speed increase in training for new players.
By reducing the SP cap and shrinking training times it will result in faster skills for new and old players alike. This will prevent veteran players such as myself from being too salty about the shear speed at which new players will be in useful ships. Also, as a result of reducing the SP cap older players can be reimbursed with skill points to use themselves or used to make skill injectors towards selling or helping new players.
Quit it with the ad hominem attacks as it makes the community look bad.
Anything you do in-game that requires a ship will benefit from the general skills that affect EVERY ship.
The reasoning for simplifying skill-training is to allow new players to try different activities faster. I’m having difficulties stretching that to stuff like T2-production, capitals, etc. They are all things that are build upon the game basics that you can try out quickly. If someone doesn’t like manufacturing, how is T2-production so different that they just have to get to try that too?
The “think of the newbies” -defence doesn’t really stack up for everything.
I’m not advocating that new players should try out everything. However I do think that skill training time could be decreased and or the amount of skill points per level could be reduced.
My point is that it’s not just ship fitting and support skills, there’s a lot of other skills that need to be trained too, depending on the career choice. I used Tech 2 production as a career example because it’s a specialized career that usually involves cross training into Invention and trade.