Why newbies don't stay

[Avaelica_Kuershin]

@Yonna_Leczarovitz

It was a Megathron.

That makes a lot more sense (unless you had been a ‘whale’)

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Scoots_Choco]

@Ellison_Onizuka

A guy may join today that would be the best FC in the game. But in two months that it takes to train skills to be competitive in a frigate or destroyer, He is told to be tackle and he gets locked in as that or quits because he never got to do what he would be best at.

If a player doesn’t have the drive and persistence to survive 2 months, they were never destined to be an FC in the game, let alone “the best”.

[Karak_Terrel]

It is exactly part of the game to figure all that out. EVE is pretty boring if it hands everything to you from the start. Part of the game is to be thrown into a universe full of possibilities to explore and figure out.

If you have to be max efficient in a new game from the first hour, then maybe you are the problem and not the game.

[Karak_Terrel]

I don’t believe that player retention has improved by adding the NPE and early missions. When I started I had like a 10min cheap intro mission about how to fly the ship and that’s it. There is no more guidance needed.

I don’t care if people think “young people of today” are different. If they are then the reason is mainly because we try to hand them everything on a silver platter. Sometimes you have to learn figuring stuff out on your own and in my opinion that is more interesting and challenging than getting everything handet and makes for a better game.

One other thing: players are not children, they are gamers looking for an interesting game to play.

Look at for example games like Rust, there is IMHO no NPE, you are just starting naked with a stone or something and then figure out what to do. They probably have more players right now than EVE and probably a lot of them would have be interested in EVE instead if it wasn’t so completely destroyed over the last years by more stupid hand holding, removal of challenge, danger and every last bit of mistery (agency) etc.

In the end what do you want, a game for children or a game for gamers?

Just my opinion

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Karak_Terrel]

What wolfs are you talking about?

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Dracvlad]

Karak Terrel is on my blocked list for that reason. A lot of people troll the forums and look for any slight error on which to focus on and take out of context to make themselves look better or superior, they also delight in telling you what you think and then saying you are bad for it.

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Fennel_Thau]

Do you guys have any perspective, EVE is an mmo. On ranking of hardcore games, mmos would be dead last (mmos are casual games). You don’t get paid millions to play mmos professionally like other games. The funny thing is that WOW which you all disparage probably had more competitive PvP due to the real money tournaments.

There is an argument that Eve takes 200iq to play, but EVE is not a thinking mans game. There is so much downtime between meaningful decisions its ridiculous.

MMos are on the decline as they don’t value the players time.

[DeMichael_Crimson]

@Chan_aar

CCP will not do any more agent missions, this has been said by devs on stage at several events.

CCP always says one thing and then does the exact opposite.

@Jeremiah_Saken

People are leaving because CCP changing sandbox for worse, not because people don’t know what to do in it. I logged last time maybe a month ago? They destroyed my sandbox gameplay to chase “mythical new player retention” by dumbing down in game instruments. The sole reason that retention exist is: EvE is sandbox, people who asks " what to do next?" haveno place here. Sadly CCP went into themepark route and keep losing and losing.

I agree but would replace the term ‘instruments’ with ‘careers’.

@Jeremiah_Saken

Skills system was flush down the toilet with SP trading. You have to be dedicated player to fly supers, now you just buy SP for supers. CCP just monetize whole thing. This whole “but players need tools to catch up” is pure nonsense. System was exploited, economy in ruin, change irreversible because it’s making them money, in the same time destroying cluster internally.

Exactly, couldn’t have said it any better myself.

@Darth_Schweinebacke

What is getting in the way, is the gradual removal of the actual sandbox.
Adding more and more safety nets and adding features that restrict player freedom. That is what is getting in the way. Not just for new players, but for everyone.

I definitely agree with the first part. The second part not so much.

The safety nets that you reference isn’t a problem, it’s CCP restricting player freedom of choice that’s the problem. Constantly trying to force people to play this game a certain way is definitely a problem.

@dewk

Main issue with new players, especially the younger ones is lack of patience, everything has to be instant gratification for them. Older players it’s getting ganked while they try to get started by CODE and similar Highsec noobe gankers.

Agree 100%. Very well said.

@Mega_Face

There’s so many contributing factors to why player retention for this company is becoming a perilous task. I won’t pretend to be a game designer and I could sympathize with the efforts of managing so many moving parts within a gaming department (as i’m sure we all can… as that’s how the majority of businesses in the universe operate ).

However there still seems to be this stinging sensation of neglect or maybe it’s just complacency on their end, but it’s definitely noticeable.

CCP is by no means the size of Blizzard or EA, but they’re much larger and much more well funded than other smaller studios out at the moment that have demonstrated much more competence, and a much more intimate connection to their communities issues.

I think you hit the nail on the head with that, especially with the part I bolded.

@Kezrai_Charzai

CCP has spent years wasting their development budget on side projects that fail, games they can’t actualize, content nobody wanted or uses, and game updates that steer the game away from its core and off into some weird “everybody wants to be a cog in a huge corp” vision.

It’s time they spent a few million and a years development effort making sure that the first 5 hours of game time for a new user is accessible, interesting, and engaging . After that a little work on the cash shop (well OK a lot ) and player progression paths, and the game will take care of itself.

Ouch… and oh so true.

@Kristina_Yassavi

The biggest problem I see in noobs playing is they rush to get into bigger ships before they have the skills and the knowledge how to fit and fly them.

And the reason they do that is due to CCP dumbing down the game into easy mode…

@Yonna_Leczarovitz

But the reason noobs use Skill Injectors to shoot for that battlecruiser is because they know they have no chance in hell of surviving an attack from a seasoned veteran in a real fight so they automatically think ( erroneously ) that a battlecruiser will give them at least a chance to fire once or twice before getting blown up or, at the very least, have a chance to warp out.

Which is due to CCP trying to force everyone into playing this game a certain way.

@Avaelica_Kuershin

The career agents help out a bit but I learned more from reading the wikis, and I know they were written by players who had to figure it all out themselves. Is it even possible to distill that knowledge into an NPE?

That’s another big part of the problem, CCP had a wiki but didn’t want to update it themselves. They wanted the playerbase community to do it. ISD Star and various community members tried to do it but thanks to CCP constantly making changes in-game with little to no info being released made keeping Evelopedia updated an overwhelming impossible task to do.

@Yonna_Leczarovitz

I’ve been with an NPC corp, Perkone, since then and have played solo since then and gained more by reading wikis than joining a corp.

Wow, that pretty much describes me. I also viewed Vids, browsed forums and talked to other players in-game. I think the biggest problem for new players is there’s no ‘Official’ documented info available in-game that they can easily access when needed.

@Dracvlad

A lot of people troll the forums and look for any slight error on which to focus on and take out of context to make themselves look better or superior, they also delight in telling you what you think and then saying you are bad for it.

That’s also a major part of the retention problem, the constant HTFU and GTFO mentality shoved into players faces in the forums has hurt the games reputation as well as the log-in numbers.

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Octavech_Raholan]

Elitism and superiority notions held by players.
That is my answer.

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Octavech_Raholan]

So called ‘tear drinking’ sadism-culture exists among those people.
I find it repulsive myself.
So I decided to build my PVP habits as a ‘vigilante bear.’

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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[Octavech_Raholan]

Let them call me a white knight, go ahead.
I just want to see the defenseless defended, the weak protected and upheld.
If your heart does not bleed, I am afraid it seems like you are not even biologically alive.

[Digits_Kho]

Best fleet and voice chats happen during mining, imo. And forum has always been about collecting tears and items, even during eves prime

[Yonna_Leczarovitz]

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