The skillpoint cap is way too high (New player retention/Quality of life)

[Nicolai_Serkanner]

@Elzon1

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:

And failing. New players don’t understand the concept of skill points. They invest a lot of money into a shiny new character, buy a blinged out ship and get blown up the very fist time they undock. Howling they leave the game. And that happens again and againd and again! Injectors probably causes new players to leave instead of keeping them

[Jonah_Gravenstein]

@ISD_Buldath

108 Off topic Posts have been removed. Topic Reopened.

Has to remove half of thread, reopens thread after doing so instead of the easy option which was to lock it.

[Elzon1]

@Jonah_Gravenstein

108 Off topic Posts have been removed. Topic Reopened.

Has to remove half of thread, reopens thread after doing so instead of the easy option which was to lock it.

I second that. Thank you for the hard work as things… got a little out of hand there…

[Elzon1]

@Nicolai_Serkanner

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:

And failing. New players don’t understand the concept of skill points. They invest a lot of money into a shiny new character, buy a blinged out ship and get blown up the very fist time they undock. Howling they leave the game. And that happens again and againd and again! Injectors probably causes new players to leave instead of keeping them

New players may not understand the concept of skill points, but so long as they make swift progress from one ship/module to the next they’ll stay fairly engaged. And I’m sure some people do invest a good amount of money upfront to make quick progress. However, I don’t see why someone would want to invest significant amounts of money into a game before truly understanding it. Also, I’m sure that’s not the case for the overwheliming majority of the lost player retention.

[Kezrai_Charzai]

@Jonah_Gravenstein

Naari_Naarian:

The metrics say that people leave up to 180 days after, which means they are half a year in. This is definitely over the alpha cap. This means ccp is losing people while they are subscribed.

I won’t comment on the metric itself, I haven’t looked at it. I’ll consider it to be representative, because it looks entirely feasible.

Is there any data available that shows related information that should be considered alongside this metric? Were they subscribed accounts or alpha accounts that now lay unused?

Keep in mind that you are debating with a guy who consistently pulls completely erroneous numbers out of the air, misunderstands basic English phrases, and never supports his own statements with facts or links.

Here is one of the slides CCP provided recently at EVE North:

As a quick breakdown, you can look at it as:
21,008 new accounts are created
51% of those make it to their first login
13.5% are still logging in after 1 day
7.6% after 3 days
5.2% after 7 days
1.1% are all that is still playing after 90 days/3 months

Unlike the numbers Naari makes up to toss around, these are not that far off from industry standards. The 7-day and especially the 90-day retention rates are a bit low.

I agree with much of what you said about the NPE. Frankly, CCP would have been far better off spending all the money and effort they put into WiS, Dust and 3D on designing an excellent NPE that actually takes players into the interactions they need to succeed at EVE. They needed to stop bleeding their cash cow to pursue projects they hadn’t the ability to handle, and make sure their cow was healthy and growing before starting other projects.

Retention rates in EVE aren’t a factor of skill caps, or even long training times - though those have an effect. They are due to a mismatch between what EVE is advertising/selling, what EVE offers when new players log in, and what they experience once they have a few weeks or months of game play under their belt.

In the longer run, it is also due to poor game design which does not align typical gamer motivations with in-game mechanics. EVE has always tended to attract only a very specific type of player because of those mismatches. They have been losing even those due to poor game design decisions.

A niche game is fine, if you design well for that niche. When you go niche, and then design badly… well eventually your niche becomes too small to be sustainable.

[Jonah_Gravenstein]

@Kezrai_Charzai

Here is one of the slides CCP provided recently at EVE North:

Thanks, I’d only glanced at it in passing.

I didn’t argue the point about 6 month old players leaving because it’s utterly irrelevant in a thread addressing new player retention when you consider how few make it to the end of the 1st week.

[Nicolai_Serkanner]

You can be sure as much as you want, it doesn’t make it true. Please tell me why is the retention level still abysmally ■■■■ since the introductioon of injectors?

[Elzon1]

I would presume most new players wouldn’t know what skill injectors were. Also, I think most new players would wait to see if they liked the game before investing any money into it.

[Ramona_McCandless]

What if, and stop me if Im crazy, CCP offered a pack of “30 day Omega” trials, applicable only to new accounts as an incentive for subscriptions or PLEX or whatever method of paying so that you specifically sponsor a new player?
i.e. You sub for a year, get ten of these one-use-per account deelies that can only be applied to new accounts?

OFC, theres no inherent alt-prevention in this, its just a quick idea.

[Bernie_Nator]

Could feasibly work if they also got flagged for not being able to remove sp.

[Ramona_McCandless]

Thats a good point!

[Abe_Rudder]

Eve is, and always has been, a long game strategy for progression. You build your character skills and experience as you build your player knowledge and experience.
The fact is that this game and your character(s) grow with you and becomes, to many, a part of their lives for many years.

There is no need for new players to become competitive in a short time with players who have been in the game for many years. The very soul of the game requires the current structure. Look on it as people growing up; a 20 year old will never ever catch up to a 30, 40 or 50 year old however in many respects they will be more than competitive with them in some fields. Eve is the same, your individual total SP do not make you either more or less competitive, but your interaction with other players of vastly varying SP levels does.

This type of thing makes financial sense to a company selling an MMO. What is a better advert for your game and its longevity than people, LOTS of people, who are still around after 1, 2, 5, 10 and 15+ years? It says they are committed to working with the player base and growing with them. If the new era of gamer just wants to hit max skills in every class then say, “that’s it, I’ve done it all”, then they do not understand the community that is a necessity to Eve’s survival. If you create a community that caps out the skill base quickly then you lose the longevity.

[Nevyn_Auscent]

1. Dust broke even money wise per some dust forum posts. If you have sources saying it lost money beyond “well everyone says that” please provide.

2. If people are only staying because they get lots of shinies, in this case skills, those people aren’t actually engaged in EVE.

3. The skill mechanic as it stands is 90% fine. Attributes and implants are an issue, the rest isn’t. Making active gameplay give skills turns EVE into a grind MMO. And if you look at the time needed to raid gear max every single class AND build in most MMOs EVEs time isn’t that silly. Since most people don’t play 100 hours a week.

[Oh-my_giddy_aunt]

@DeMichael_Crimson

When this game started years ago, the skill system was designed to promote long term play, which was great. However nowadays it doesn’t work so good at retaining players.

Personally, I don’t think CODE works very well at retaining players either with their extortion rackets.

After all what self respecting player would lower themselves to paying them. New players don’t have much invested into the game so easy for them to leave.

[Ramona_McCandless]

And thats the only choices you think there are?

Or thats all the credit you are giving new players?

[Oh-my_giddy_aunt]

Just over 4% retention that’s not much and that’s not all about sp.

I started years ago gave up mining before even Hulkaggedon.

I think if I was a new player now and came across CODE that would put me off of the game. Especially when they start asking for isk so that you can play the game in the way you want when you’ve already paid CCP for the same thing.

[Ramona_McCandless]

@Oh-my_giddy_aunt

I think if I was a new player now and came across CODE that would put me off of the game. Especially when they start asking for isk so that you can play the game in the way you want when you’ve already paid CCP for the same thing.

Im sorry that youve no spine

[Oh-my_giddy_aunt]

That’s a poor typical answer, still I shouldn’t have expected anything else.

[Ramona_McCandless]

Youre the one saying that when someone demands isk, you cave.

What else are you trying to say?

Are you saying new players are cowards with no brains?

[Oh-my_giddy_aunt]

LMAO you pulled that one out of your butt I see.