Eve Online....

My faffing about in Eve Online with both my old main's and new alpha's has brought about an interesting intersection this Christmas season. Specifically regarding new players. So I'm gonna waffle.

Before I begin let me define a real genuine new player to the Eve Online universe. A brand new player with no friend or previous eve online experience is best seen as the character Hei Hei (the rooster) from the film Moana(great film btw). Therefore a 'newbro' member or ceo starting up a corp acts a lot like this(active, eager, clueless, haplessly lucky at times):

So with that imagery in mind.....

First up I moved my newer PvE Alpha to a new corp. A real 'new' corp, owned and run by brand new players to the game. I like joining corps like this and helping out.

Second I moved an alt of that PvE Alpha into that main's previous PvE alpha's corp(yea I have a lot of alts). Just to keep in touch and again to be an experienced voice to help out as they expanded.

Third an old newbro corp ceo contacted one of my old Omega alts to restart his newbro corp. I'd had that alt in the corp way back in 2015 so was surprised.

So overall this chrimbo season has seen a lot of new and returning players to the game. I've never been involved with so many starter corp's all at once before.

Besides this there is one more overriding coincidence. Ganker and griefer proliferation around these newbro corp's. The pic above may be a good meme for bacon but it's also a good reference for Eve's newbro players. New players that are not getting that chance to "grow up" in game anymore.

Now I'm all for Eve being harsh and painful. I went through it when I started and new players today should do the same(to a degree). For my part with the new corp's I'll offer advice and try and be the old grizzled veteran to help ease it, but it's getting harder.

*** Profanity incoming.....

Fuck is it hard to get a group of newbro's off the ground in hi-sec. Wardec's are the least of your problems. The bigger your recruiting corp becomes, the more you get infiltrated and psi-ops/propaganda/mind fucks are played out in a hardcore way. More so this year than previously. There seems to be a vast web of alts(from large alliances) backstabbing new ceo's and new corp operations.

These alts say that newbro's are better off moving and to abandon this new ceo in favour of experienced big alliances bla bla bla, insert corp add link...
Not to mention that they pounce on any negatives and hammer it all home that a move to a much 'better' corp would be wise etc... rinse and repeat.
All this from inside and outside starter corp's, bounty and war dec harassment adds up; Newbro's are Newbro's (guy's and gal's) and fall for this crap.
With a fake newbro gathering as many players as they can via bad mouthing, they then perform a coup migration saying they were talking to an alliance that will take them.

e.g:

I have no quick fix, players are free to do as they will. This is a greater overall (game design?) community problem. That's CCP's to fix. CCP seem to trip over themselves celebrating the loudest 10% of the game population(size). Celebrating how cool they are while the rest are left as wandering fodder or "content". CCP has to always do a CCP version of common sense that turns out to be the least common sense option. So many game systems can be seen in other games, could be implemented in Eve to help but CCP can't even properly fix the bounty or war dec systems.

Waffle, waffle waffle, rant, rant, rant.

I may be a whingey solo PvE carebearing fitly casual but I'm seeing newbro's leave the game in droves. I dont' get how CCP in their financial lust to milk players of every cent they can, can't see past themselves to make Eve a better experience. More players = more money. Think of an Eve with a WoW population. Eve is a good game but it could be greater. Seeing so many potential players leave is provocative in so many way's(frustration).

Anyway, this all makes the old day's of recruitment seem really quaint by comparison...