EVE Online has No Problem Getting New Players, but Retaining them is an Issue

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Gdemami

The actually depressing is that "thing" that is supposed to be a tutorial...

Kyleran

Quite a statistic, and I definitely agree while EVE isn't for everyone likely it would appeal to more with a better starting experience.

Not everyone is willing to take my approach of downloading, printing and thoroughly reading about 10 game guides before even signing up for the tutorial. (pre video era) 

[Deleted User]

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OfficerFriendlyEQ2

Knowing you can set your skills for many months ahead without having to pay a subscription may be whats going on, therefore I am not convinced new folks or vets too, are leaving permanently.

filmoret

With the tutorial that EVE has.... Or the lack of a tutorial...  This isnt really hard to figure out.

goboygo

Darkfall was the same way, tons of people tried it MOST all of them quit.  But they decided to listen to the people that stayed and not talk to the people that left and find out why.

Gestankfaust

"EVE Online has No Problem Getting New Players"

BS....

Kyleran

Gestankfaust said:

"EVE Online has No Problem Getting New Players"

BS....

1.5M new players tried EVE last year.

Period.

Gestankfaust

Kyleran said:

Gestankfaust said:

"EVE Online has No Problem Getting New Players"

BS....

1.5M new players tried EVE last year.

Period.

lol...yeah..."New players"

fodell54

Gestankfaust said:

Kyleran said:

Gestankfaust said:

"EVE Online has No Problem Getting New Players"

BS....

1.5M new players tried EVE last year.

Period.

lol...yeah..."New players"

There is no point in arguing with Kyleran about Eve. It's like arguing with a brick wall. You're either with him or against him. To each their own though. I for one can't stand the game but we all have a game that we stand up for.

Fight the good fight Kyleran!

H0urg1ass

This is both a problem and a non-problem.

It's a problem because some of the players who we'd want to keep around are leaving before they "get it" or understand the game to a competent level.

It's a non-problem because EVE tends to scrape off the low-effort pond scum and shovel them to games where their whining and crying will be tolerated.

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0vergil0

OfficerFriendlyEQ2 said:

Knowing you can set your skills for many months ahead without having to pay a subscription may be whats going on, therefore I am not convinced new folks or vets too, are leaving permanently.

you can set up all you want beforehand ( to a max of 365 days of training )  but as soon you sub run out  training pause so you still need to either feed plex or stay subed

SBFord

Please be sure to cite the original link for off-site articles!  
http://www.destructoid.com/eve-online-has-no-problem-getting-new-players-but-retaining-them-is-a-hell-of-an-issue-358700.phtml

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Kyleran

0vergil0 said:

OfficerFriendlyEQ2 said:

Knowing you can set your skills for many months ahead without having to pay a subscription may be whats going on, therefore I am not convinced new folks or vets too, are leaving permanently.

you can set up all you want beforehand ( to a max of 365 days of training )  but as soon you sub run out  training pause so you still need to either feed plex or stay subed

It goes much higher than 365, one of my alts has 538 days queued.

Astropuyo

Haw I recently made a new account to stealth around on and let me tell you this..

If I were a new player I'd get the hell out of the game asap.

It's just not fun when you look around and realize..no matter what you do. No matter how much time you have invested.

Some asshole like me on my main account is one day going to make you question why you even bothered to learn what SP was. Because year near a decade and you get retarded.

Distopia

H0urg1ass said:

It's a non-problem because EVE tends to scrape off the low-effort pond scum and shovel them to games where their whining and crying will be tolerated.

I always felt this type of attitude was a big part in SWG's issues to keep new players around, especially at the height of the PRe-cu era. I saw quite a bit of this type of chest thumping aimed at new players in that game when folks would ask questions/seek help or just not get it. This isn't an issue with players, it's an issue with game design, complex game design is important to many. Yet it's all for naught if you don't offer fun ways to learn the mechanics of a game. 

SandyRavage

I remember trying the game twice, the first time I got blown up in some corporation war so i quit because i didnt have much money to replace what i lost. The second time I was in low sec trying to figure out the exploration mechanics and someone blew me up, again, not much isk so i gave up.

Thomas2006

I love the depth of eve and the varity of things it offers you to do. But I also hate the ship movement, control scheme of the game. It feels litterly like you are playing a spreadsheet and not playing a game. I honestly think that is the largest problem with the game. You play the interface and not the visuals of the game. Where if you log into other space games you feel you are controling the ship and playing the ship as opposed to watching a interface all the time.

If they could somehow capture the ship combat and movement of say Dreadnought then they would have zero issues getting new players into and sticking with the game. 

The reworking on the new player tutorial over and over is not going to get people to stay around. A drastic change to how the game plays would get people to stay around. I have played with 50+ people over the years trying eve out and almost all of them say the exact same thing. They hate the ship controls and how movement is handled. It feels like you play more with the interface then enjoying the beauty of the game.

rodingo

Weird.  I never felt it was Eve's tutorial that was the issue for player retention.  I made it through through two or three of their iterations of the "tutorial" just fine.  If they feel fixing that will fix the underlying issue then more power to them.

H0urg1ass

Distopia said:

H0urg1ass said:

It's a non-problem because EVE tends to scrape off the low-effort pond scum and shovel them to games where their whining and crying will be tolerated.

I always felt this type of attitude was a big part in SWG's issues to keep new players around, especially at the height of the PRe-cu era. I saw quite a bit of this type of chest thumping aimed at new players in that game when folks would ask questions/seek help or just not get it. This isn't an issue with players, it's an issue with game design, complex game design is important to many. Yet it's all for naught if you don't offer fun ways to learn the mechanics of a game. 

EVE is one of the friendliest games I've ever seen when it comes to legitimately helping new players who don't come in the front door bitching about the difficulty.  Come in with a good attitude and willingness to learn and you'll get scooped up by a helpful corporation faster than you can blink.  There's several groups of people who have made teaching new players their entire profession, such as EVE University and the now-defunct Red vs. Blue.

Distopia said:

 This isn't an issue with players, it's an issue with game design, complex game design is important to many. Yet it's all for naught if you don't offer fun ways to learn the mechanics of a game. 

This part is true enough.  EVE is an extremely difficult game with a lot of concepts to memorize early on and the tutorial is absolutely terrible at imparting any of this knowledge.  There is currently a think-tank group within CCP who are working on this very situation as we speak.  They know that it sucks, we know that it sucks and we've been providing a lot of help and ideas on Reddit which is heavily trafficked by the CCP dev team.

Gruug

I haven't played EVE for a while. It was fun while I played it several years ago. But, I did not play at the beginning and I did not join a "clan". I played with friends and we all enjoyed to the game together. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of things to do as a small group. None of use could seem to find any clan (corp) that wanted us. So over time we just drifted away from EVE to other games. EVE's problem (to us) was that it was not very welcoming to new players/groups.

Octagon7711

I had few problems with Eve but I did a lot of home work.  Reading the general forums that offered advice and even the pirate web site forums to know how they operated, and down loading the software that setup your training builds and timed them for you.

The problem is, after the tutorial people want to explore so they head out into the wild wild west and die rather quickly, then they get laughed at.  I've seen it a lot in chat.  That's not much of an incentive to stay with the game and most players don't care that CCP is losing a potential income source everytime that happens.

The best thing I saw in Eve were training corps that actively prepared players for Eve before they went off on there own.  Problem is few players look for these corps or even know they exist.  

Hrimnir

It's extremely simple.  Getting blown up and losing all your shit is not player friendly.  This is the main reason why FFA PVP games have such small playerbases.  Eve's playerbase looks high but the reality is it's a ton of people with multiple accounts.  That's not to downplay it's success, it is definitely a good model for it's style of game, but it's never going to achieve mainstream success while it is that punishing.

BTW I say this as a player with around 25mil sp, I though I quit several years ago (shortly after the wormhole expansion, can't remember which one).