Create A New Starting System

[Levenna]

To provide a point to the contrary, if a new player were to witness such an action occurring ingame, including all the relevant roleplay, play out right in front of them, couldn't that also be motivating for them to dive deeper into why things are happening? One of disco's biggest issues is new player retention; retention is in part generated by grabbing a player's attention early on. I don't think isolating new players in their own box outside of the wider gamespace is helping grab their attention and immerse them in the world, personally.

Thinking back to games that force you into an "oorp" space for a tutorial, I've always found it exceptionally boring and a lazy solution to learning the game. Games with a hidden tutorial where you can immerse yourself in the world while still learning the mechanics and how things work (see: Warframe as probably the perfect example here) are far more engaging and, in my opinion, much better for player retention and involvement.

With this in mind, and bearing in mind that disco is in dire need of a better new player experience, what I do think could help with that is having new characters start with an introductory "to-do" list guide in their cargo hold (similar to how you used to start with the server rules in your cargo hold) to start out, telling them where they can find Helium to mine, or giving them a simple trade route if they prefer that, and providing combat missions with bounty bonuses as another viable alternative. They can do these things while still watching events play out around them. This provides them an example of what they *could* do once they start progressing. Perhaps once they reach a specific threshold of credits earned, another oorp cargo item could appear in their cargo hold, giving them the gist of what they can do next in terms of roleplaying a faction, or working their way up ship classes to a 5ker or capital ship, just anything to give them more of a direction than they have now. This is just a basic idea that can be expanded upon, of course.

Edit: These guide items wouldn't even have to be OORP necessarily, they could equally be framed as communications from an instructor character of some sort guiding you through your first steps. Kind of like, uh, every space game ever including vanilla FL I guess.