(09-30-2013, 10:26 PM)Coin Wrote: then maybe the factions that are low on players should sponsor new players to join them
Sure, if factions were handing out substantial benefits like that for joining, that'd be great. I know a few do, or did - I got a free Vache when I signed up for IDF a couple of years ago - but the fact is, the cost of even a basic VHF is a lot for a new player to foot the bill for. Armour upgrades should be sunk already, at least for snubs.
In any case, you won't see me handing free stuff out to people on a regular basis. Making money on Discovery, to me, is an absolute chore. Trading is mind-numbingly repetitive and boring, and mining only marginally less so. I can barely stomach making enough credits to keep my own characters ticking over, let alone sponsoring new GRN| recruits, for example.
The point is, new players come here having heard good things about the quality of roleplay, or whatever it is that brought them here (I advertised it as roleplay-centric, given that the gameplay is nothing to write home about) but there is no way to really start roleplaying right off the bat. Yes, in theory all you need is any ship at all and a keyboard, but it's hard to RP a military pilot/bloodthirsty pirate/whatever if you don't have the ooRP cash to kick the character into gear. To get that cash, you need to make a character completely unrelated to what you actually want to do, and spend hours upon hours clicking on things and pressing F3.
I'm only speaking from personal experience here, mind. All 5ish people I tried to introduce to Discovery fell out with it because of the somewhat grindy nature of funding new characters, even with me giving them a wad of cash to go buy a BWT or something with for the purposes of kickstarting their "funds character". That, and they found the community "elitist", but that's something too deep-rooted to have a go at fixing, eh?
i never had the trouble of recruiting people, and the only player i had to continaully fund characters for was biskit (hugs). i made the new guys get into transports+fighters (loan repayable), and then rocked a trade+escort mission to the other side of the map. see some space, see some action, find out who flies into their own mines (usu me). by giving a sense of community and joint effort, you retain peeps. attracting them is not enough. the grindy nature of getting cash is not the reason they leave, its because they were not entertained whilst grinding. tell jokes, answer their questions, give them hints and tips... in other words lead them. its not hard, but you do have to be consistent.
step one of the adversity discobelly campaign should be closely followed by a series of events - perhaps one in each area of sirius, and at different time zones (cos 19gmt is 3am for me). official factions need to consider the last event they did that had an objective - capture or kill a player, break a player out of prison - rather than just a pewfest. new players coming here will not be able to fly worth spit, and facing someone who has ten years experience will be painful for them. giving them a taste of the furball, and they will more readily accept a defeat later.
