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Stepping Up to Solutions

I wandered across a decision based upon an idea today that had an unexpectedly sensible and comfortable solution for me.

There has been a steady trickle of interest in the corporation of late.  This is not a bad thing. It has been a mix of experienced players and inexperienced players.  Growth seems to be a thing but mixing new people into the group causes some shifting and resettlement.  A lot of what we are doing as a corporation has started to need definition.  Therefore I tasked myself with sending the boys a serious mail where I ask them to tell me what they wanted done.

So far it has been productive and it is helping me with the entire direction when it comes to recruiting people thing.  For some reason they trust me to make a certain amount of decisions   Why?  Who knows.  But, they have left me to run around and try to figure out the recruiting thing.

Recruiting people in general is not simple.  It's not just a 'okay join up and be a body'.  Small gang types need a lot of cohesion.  There is a lot of trust and reliance between the members of a group.  People who can't get along with each other just cause fraying and issues.  I want to enjoy that. I've watched corps die because people let drama get in the way.  The boys will kick when they need to but I'd prefer to smooth some of that out at the start.

There are a lot of pros and cons to having rookie corps.  We're really too small to support an entire secondary corp of that level.  What I've decided to do is case by case or group by group bases.  Experienced people the boys can work with.  Inexperienced people I will run around with for a bit and see if they pick up on the basics skills of survival.

PvP can be taught if the person is teachable.  However, one of the barriers for learning said PvP is that veterans can and do easily tire of hand holding the basics.  Yet, new players need to feel comfortable asking questions.  But, people tire of answering the same question over and over again.  The easy questions that become second nature are the problem.

Hence my idea to do little newbie fleets.  As much as I don't want to step in the role of being a FC in this I've convinced myself that running around doing survival skills does not count as real FC so it's okay.  This way, I can ship everyone into frigates (if I have more than one person) and run around the area teaching basic things like safe spots, pounces, relaxing enough not to fail jump, aligning, properly selection stations and belts, lingo, scanning, intel gathering and relaying and understanding, etc.  All of the things that you take for granted once you learn them has to be retaught over and over again.  With the core skills learned and the ability to make sensible decisions learned, then the new player will not have to have that early hand holding that can frustrate and slow down a fleet. Then we can die in a fire trying to randomly kill things.

At least, that is my hope in this project.  We can only absorb but so many super new characters at a time.  We, in general need people to be self sufficient  willing to learn, and willing to learn from their mistakes.  However, I don't want to turn new players away because they are new.  It is hard being new, it's hard not being able to fly fleet comps but it's not impossible nor will it be forever.

I may burn out on it and demand minimum skill points and abilities and all sorts of fantastic things.  But right now, I still very keenly feel the results of being new and being given a chance.  I don't look forward to those I will have to turn away.  It is certainly not a come one come all anyone is accepted type of thing.  It won't always be fun which is kind of funny because it's a free time relaxation game but Eve is Eve I guess.

But more people means more bodies to do interesting things.  The social aspect alone helps keep people interested in the game.  The balance of experienced vs non experienced has to be maintained so that neither side feels overly put upon or neglected.  I have no clue if this will work out or not but I shall see.  I figure if people don't like how I do things they can go elsewhere. I'm not here to take in everyone. I do get irritated with people as much as anyone else does.  But for the occasional one that clicks with me and the boys I'd like to have some sensible foundation in place.

Comments

  1. Good thing, lowsec needs more pilots. I am training new pilots myself in our corp, just FCed a roam yesterday. keep it up.

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  2. Just remember, this is a game and not a real job/profession, and you should do fine. Too many corps/groups in EvE think they are all of that and a bag of chips and their stuff don't stink. The main idea to inculcate, both in vets and the newbies, is that everyone is valuable. Doesn't matter if they only want to fly frigs as tackle/scout, doesn't matter if they suck at PvP but are wiling and eager to go out and fight. As long as the group makes them welcome, most people, in my experience, end up contributing back to the group.

    In short, be nice, be understanding, be fair, and I think you'll do well. Motivating through positive reinforcement is in finitely better than through negative reinforcement.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I know its not a job. I have no problems with putting projects down and walking away if they do not work or are not enjoyable. This project/problem/job is the solution to something I want. I am a believer in trying to solve my problems and sometimes that means I have to be the one to solve them.

      Delete
    2. Sorry, Sugar, I was unclear. What I meant to comment on - and warn you off from - was the tendency of many corps/alliances in EvE to think of themselves as 'professionals', right down to running their organizations as if they were RL jobs. I think too many players forget that this is just a game and more need to be reminded of it.

      Not saying that the game should be approached flippantly or anything, just that once newbies start feeling like logging in to their corp is just like going to their RL job, things have gone wrong.

      Somehow, the sense I get from your writing leads me to believe that you'll be able to keep things from being srs internet spaceships biz :) Good luck and have fun. Seriously :)

      Delete
  3. Ahoy, Sugar!
    I just wanted to thank you for the warm welcome.
    I'll read this post frequently, to remind myself that your teachings aren't a given - they're work that you're doing for us. Work that might not be fun for you.. So I'll put my all in becoming the damn best pirate pilot I can be.

    And I won't lose any more ships in Old Man Star. >.>;
    (And I'll try not to lose any more at all, although that may not be possible).

    Again: Thank you for giving me one of the rarest treasures in New Eden. I'll try not to fuck everything up! :3

    Corvus

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    Replies
    1. You will lose ships. Don't function off of 'not losing ships' because that will inhibit you. Just try to make good decisions. If you make bad ones make them because you made them not because you were stupid. No one is perfect, no one will ever not lose, derps happen. If people are giving just try to give back and then it works out nicely.

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  4. If you do get burnt out (and even if you don't), take a look into Agony Unleashed's PVP-BASIC class for the new folks. We generally cover all of the "moving in a fleet", "what's spiraling?", etc. topics and top it off with a nullsec roam in a massive ball of ewar-tanked frigatey death.
    If you want to check it out before you send your own over to us I'll happily sponsor your fee - just shoot me a PM on those forums or an eve-mail (Jysella Halcyon) and join the "Agony PVP Uni" Mailing list to get notification mails of upcoming classes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I direct people to Agony all of the time. Several have taken me up on it and learned a great deal. I may take it myself for something different. I'm normally quite shy and feel that I am quite terrible at this game and don't wish to embarrass myself in public :)

      We are at the point, as a corp, that we tend to have daily roams and fleets and activity up through our strongest time zone periods. This is a very good thing and the pewpew is pouring in.

      But for my recruits, I may start sponsoring the little ones for Agony and see how that goes. Thanks for the idea.

      Delete
    2. It's okay, we're all pretty terrible at this game too, we just like to get better and help others to do the same (better opponents leads to better PvP).

      In any case, the offer stands. :)

      Delete

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