So I was reading that other thread, and when I finally reached the end after a while (been slowly reading through it, 1 reply at a time, when I had the time), it was locked. Wonderful. You can count on one thing on these forums: If a topic is interesting, some troll will assassinate it.
Anyway, what I would have liked to add, because while I’m not a new player, I’ve started many times over, is this:
New players stop playing because of a lack of guidance.
So you do the tutorial and maybe (if the tutorial didn’t scare you shitless already), the career agents. Now what?
Now WHAT?
This is not something anyone here has to answer. There is no true answer anyway, but CCP sure should work on some more comprehensive newbie experience than the short introduction we have now. How about overhauling the SOS Epic Arc and making the career agent line lead directly into it? Just as an example. And add some newbie tips when the newbie dies in a mission, like “you fitted X, maybe try Y instead”… there’s only so many ways to not do it wrong.
Anyway, that’s the one biggest reason I see. The HUGE abyss of features in a dark, unforgiving universe, where you’re guaranteed to get screwed one way or the other, unless you belong to the 1% who stayed, then got lucky and really continued to play.
Oh yeah, for sure, but the CCP newbie hook has to come before a newbie bothers to look around for social ties.
If I just started a game’s free trial (Alpha account), I have zero commitment. I want to know if it’s worth committing to it before I bind myself to a corp, and newbies who reached that stage are already out of scope of my posting.
I meant those huge loss numbers, 10k newbies on day 1, 2k on day 2 (and 200 after 90 days).
There’s several things that pissed me off when I was on my first round here, one of them being that everything took forever, even undocking made me wait to the point I wanted to claw my eyeballs out. And then the endless travel times. All that can be tolerable, but there has to be a carrot, else a new player won’t follow through. They’ll go “the ■■■■ is this outdated ■■■■, not gonna bother, lol” and are gone.
CCP needs a proper introduction, step by step adding more features in the process, and it has to last longer than what they currently have - because newbies now sit there with all career options done, a hangar full of crappy ships and no clue what to do. To get into PVP requires you to be outgoing or masochist (suck it up as a newbie in 1vs1), to get into PVE requires you to be grind-loving (only 2342154325 level 1 missions to go, or google for 30 minutes and read through heaps of irrelevant info, to find out that you could just be OFFLINE for a week while learning a certain SKILL, and then you can do SOME progression - but still basically grind). That’s not fun.
Because everyone who’s here right now will quit, sooner or later, and without fresh people, it’s gonna be you, all alone, in your boat, paddling through the boundless void.
Well all I can say to that is that EvE isnt about that sort of stuff, but I guess Im old fashioned and like to experiment and explore, not be told what button to press for bacon.
I wish Id listened better to those I met and became friends with, as they were who taught me everything, not a website or NPE.
If it’s an opt-in thing you can just stop doing whenever, there’s no harm IMHO. Right now, the sudden break off and unlimited freedom didn’t really work for the 9.800 out of 10.000 who quit between day 1 and 90, is what I’m talking about
Make em feel like they’re wearing big boots. Don’t have to really be big. Like, design a mission campaign for them, all dramatic and immersive.
The whole mission system would have to be reworked to make that fly though, no newbie accepts a wall of text anymore in 2019. We’re just used to the way things were when we started, and developed until now. I had a break for several years and started new, but I kept remembering things while playing, so I’m not a real newbie anymore either, but if you look around at what industry standards are these days, with voice acted mission texts and so on… might be worth looking at some older features and bringing them up to snuff, and at the same time, make a proper introduction, that keeps a newbie a bit busy to the point they want to mingle with other players.
EVE only starts to be fun when you join a corp, that’s where CCP needs to lead new players.
Not all corps are created equal! Iam à bit of à lone wolf, started playing 10years ago. Always had good support from ccp, and other players, regarding npc. Iam sticking To thé size of boots))
They don’t stay because this generation of kids don’t have the patience to sit, learn, and improve at a game. They want immediate and instant satisfaction, and if they don’t get it, they leave.
I was new once. I stayed for almost a decade because of the simple tutorial: Here a ship; enjoy!
The themepark ride games arent my thing. It’s also why I’m not against CODE, miners, missioners, PvP-ers etc.
Play your own game, build your own castles and see what others do (or don’t).
I’m not a fan of all the NPC’s tho.
This probably the one of the worst ideas I have ever heard of when it comes to trying to get more newbies to play. You are effectively telling CCP to straight up LIE to all of the new players that are coming in.
They start off with some amazing “big boots” tutorial mission where they pull off some crazy Call of Duty cinematic style AMAZING thing (like the current NPE, where your frigate solo kills a Minokawa) and there are huge explosion and exciting music and everything is blowing up.
And then you plop them into the real universe of EVE Online. Where it’s entirely a sandbox and crazy cinematic things like that almost NEVER happen.
Now you have a bunch of newbros who are looking for that incredible “small frigate takes on a huge carrier” type of action, but in reality, that never happens in EVE Online. Then they get jaded and realize they’ve been sold some sham tutorial that’s nothing like the actual game itself.
I think Id rather play with a community of people who share a vision …like CCP used to …then pander to a bunch of here today gone tomorrow crowd. A company that takes a definitive stance against p2w is going to attract some real players who stick around.
Yeah, you do have a point. Maybe not the big boots then, but some logical mission paths toward features, that make you do several things and give you paths to follow. It doesn’t have to go on forever, but it should be more than there is right now, because new people stop after checking out the game for one day.
It’s not because the game and extortion industry has condition the contemporary players that way. However, I would argue that the contemporary player is more interested in grinding than ever before. Farmville, Angry Bird, Candy Crush, Mobcrusher, all these games require a metric dung ton of grinding that is waaay more repetitive than any EVE grind. Running always the same 10 missions is less grindy than those games.
What’s lacking is simply more activities. More agents in space in special locations like landmarks or natural phenomena. More special agents around special situations like Invasions, FOB, Incursions. More missions that you can just do idly without having to risk your ship all the time like in burners (which in turn leads to frustrating replacement procedures, which cost time and are in fact absolutely not enjoyable).
That is a huge issue as well, one that CCP keeps reinforcing with every new ad campaign centered around the boring null sec fights with huge ships. Miraculously they forget to mention how bad an experience this actually is, every time they advertise with these huge battles.
And this thread here is legitimate and constructive.