From Seismic Stan’s Freebooted Blog:
“We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems.”
Firstly, I think we should take the time to recognize CCP with the changes they have made in the new player experience. Compared to the new player experience when I first started EVE Online it is night and day better. In 2004, my experience was best described as, “Here’s a spaceship, now go f*** yourself.” I dropped EVE Online shortly after that, being the type of idiot that couldn’t wrap his head around this style of MMO.
Earlier this summer I began a new character to experience the changes with the new tutorials. I was very impressed. I felt like a champion of the heavens when my ship was brought through a parade of Amarr warships – it evoked feelings of the award presentations at the end of the first “Star Wars” movie (the real first one not the garbage with the kid and slug-like Jamaican.)
CCP’s remaining work is still a long row to hoe. At the end of the starter tutorials and various career tutorials the most asked question is probably, “OK, what’s next?” And this is an area that CCP will likely have little ability to address. What happens next after learning the mandatory functions of flying an internet spaceship is what to do with the teeming mass of people who want to kill you and take away your lunch money.
This is an area where we, the community, have the most impact on whether a new player stays or returns to the themeparks. Unfortunately, our own reputation proceeds us. I can remember being advised in both forums and in the various help channels not to accept just any corporation invite; it was likely a scam. This air of paranoia pervades New Eden as a type of blanket smothering the life out of the new pilots crib before he can even cry out for help.
If you come to EVE Online from reading about it on somethingawful.com or reddit.com you have a self-made community that will take you after you complete your tutorials to the deepest parts of nulsec and into the great space battles that will make the news on various gaming websites. What more do you need to figure out how great is this game? This is why a newbie flying under the banner of Dreddit or CONDI are likely to be still playing six months or even a year later.
Obviously, we don’t want a universe of TEST or Goonswarm Federation only pilots. So, how do we improve the game for new pilots who just see an advert or remember hearing a friend talk about it? How do we retain them after they finished the tutorials?
Corporations are the only real concrete answer. CCP has made finding a corporation even easier with the corporation recruitment search function. It was not very long ago that the best way a small corp recruited players was through random convos and spamming gates with secure containers. Most highly traveled routes in New Eden reminded me of I-75 between Macon and Atlanta, Georgia. For those of you not blessed to live in the southern United States, that stretch of road is nothing but farmland and billboards. Quite an eyesore actually.
CCP can improve this search function even more. Recently, I started playing “Vanguard: Saga of Heros” which isn’t a bad MMO as far as themeparks go. One of the features I really liked was their guild search function. In the Vanguard guild search it gave you list of the guild’s recruiters and whether they were online. I found the guild I joined by using this function to weed out guilds that were obviously dead or whose members played in different time zones than me. With a set of recruiters I knew were online I was able to convo several and shortly I accepted a guild invite.
The key to retaining new players is getting them into our corporations. Getting them involved and feeling they have a stake in their corporation’s future and outcome. Ultimately, it is up to the veterans to mentor the newbies. There are no tutorials that will help you understand what it means to be in a sandbox.
Tweaks
CCP is redesigning the models for the rookie ships and this is a good thing. As a new player, I want to feel heroic. I hate sword and board games that make me start out in stained underwear fighting fluffy bunnies with a broken shovel handle. I think that’s partly why “Skyrim” was so successful – you killed a dragon in the first hour of gameplay. Likewise, I believe the rookie ships need an statistical overhaul. Or at least enough of a buff that a new player can complete level 1 missions without much effort when they lose everything after flying a ship they couldn’t afford to lose.
In the end, I think EVE Online is always going to create a very polarized reaction with new players. On one side, you retain the players that understand the importance of social interactions within the game and lose the players that expect to be pushed in a certain direction. We can stem the tide of the latter by getting them in our corporations and giving them purpose. Otherwise, sitting back and waiting for CCP to make magic sauce is causing us so many future targets and leaders.
