Help me with this:

[Karmotrine Dream]

Well, since you made this post, I believe I can be of some assistance.
Quoting myself from an informal report I've submitted to Jammi and a few other about the subject, only slightly edited to include more recent 'data'...

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It's been about ten days I've started this personal initiative of reaching out via direct in-game /tells to any name that realistically seemed like a newbie, and it's an initiative I'm glad to say seems to be having some degree of success.
More names seem to be reoccurring and staying, instead of vanishing into the aether.

The observations are as follows, based on about 20 interactions had so far:

- if you try to approach them in person, even with a freelancer ship, and talk to them IC they're not likely to respond
-- it could well be they're shy and don't know how to properly reply back without making "mistakes"; still, as it wasn't working, I opted for direct messaging, which is proving more successful

- most of those I contacted and replied (almost all of them, in fact; out of like 8 people, only 1 didn't and I'm not sure they even were new) weren't on the main Discord, and if they were, they'd never spoken before, not even to ask questions

- many of them were rather clueless, doing some classic blunders like going on missions alone and in a kestrel, or going on super long Helium routes also in a kestrel, or going for the Hegemonster

- most of them were not accompanied by friends and didn't know about the wiki or Darkstat, so they were more or less going in blind
-- although in more recent days I've noticed a not-insignificant number of duos and in one case a trio of players, as-yet uncontacted

- all of them had played Freelancer at some point in the past, more or less recent; not always Discovery Freelancer, but always Freelancer
nostalgia for FL and curiosity about a potential mod scene seems to have been the primary motivator for the arrival of old FL players; the Disco returnees came back of their own accord, so to speak, and in one case the YT 5.0 video was cited
- a good amount mentioned feeling somewhat overwhelmed by how different Discovery was, and that went for lapsed Discovery players as well

- none of them spoke about loneliness and I didn't ask about that directly; however I would think it unwise to discount this potentially being a problem, not seeing other players around in a multiplayer game cannot be encouraging
-- an interaction from today had the returnee say, upon my contacting and offering help, "btw its refreshing to see someone in chat! so far i've only come across "greetings" x24 and npc farmers"

- in all cases, I urged them to send me a friend request over Discord, so that I might be able to follow them more closely and offer assistance even when not ingame; this went over well, for the most part, barring 1 case in which the person (a 2020 player, apparently) preferred experimenting some more on his own after we ran some missions and I ran an overview of the many changes happened since then, and 1 other case in which the newbie assured me he was going to be fine
-- interestingly, this newbie appeared somewhat suspicious of my motives, asking what was in it for me to follow and help out people: I replied with the honest truth, namely that I want to make sure new players have someone to help them out and ask questions to, so they don't get overwhelmed and get frustrated

All this leads me to believe having people who keep an eye out for potential new players, to give them pointers and guidance, and also just to be around and make Pennsylvania more lively, could be a useful thing to have to increase new player retention.
It builds a degree of attachment to the place, and from there they might perhaps be gently nudged towards the main Discord and later a faction, so they have other players they can interact with regularly.
A better tutorial would definitely be warranted, given the (understandable) cluelessness I've observed among DIscovery first-timers or particularly lapsed players; the lack of direction right out of the gate, coupled with the many features of the game, risks adding further confusion to the place.

Adding a link to the wiki to the Discovery Freelancer main page and the forums seems wise, too.

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As mentioned, these were all people I contacted when I spotted them ingame.
How difficult is it to get to run is a matter I can't shed much light on, although I remember a friend having had significant trouble making it work after a botched installation.