Helicity Boson had a great comment on the TEST newbro story today.

I love newbies, I’ve just adopted one I caught streaming a mining op the other day. I tripled his wallet and am monitoring his inevitable fall from miner to scumbag pirate. Which is totally not going to be my fault.

This is the best kind of recruiting, whether for EvE Online in general, or your own PvP group. Recruiting is something I am not very good at. I rarely find people who are interested in joining Fancy Hats through forums, or ads, or even the blog. I DO find people by shooting at them. It seems counter-intuitive, but it works rather well. By pewing someone you force them to react to other players intruding into their game. They can react in one of several ways, and a clever person learns from their reaction.

Lose their shit publicly. Funny, entertaining. Pretty useless. Be silent. Smart. Low risk play. Engages their aggressor in conversation in an effort to learn more about what happened.

I fucking LOVE #3. Despite how much of a hard-ass I am here, I love seeing new players attempt to overcome hardship and find a way to get ahead in EvE. EvE is a hard game, and I’m not going to go out of my way to change a playstyle I’ve invested a lot of time in to making fun and effective for someone who hasn’t put in the time and effort to get better. I will give credit to people who fight back successfully and to people who get blowed up I will give them considerable help and advice if they communicate intelligently with me.

Eventually Bad Things will happen to each and every single EvE player. Whether it is a prized ship being destroyed, losing a mint on a market investment, a hauler full of goods being ganked, or being betrayed and stolen from by “trusted” corp-mates, EvE is a game that seems to turn heavily on tragedy. You can’t really control that other than by limiting your exposure. You CAN control your reaction. I am going to go WAY out on a limb and guess that this guy talked to Helicity like a reasonable adult who had merely lost a ship in a game, probably laughed about it and displayed the maturity and intelligence that marks a good EvE player. Helicity most likely responded to it by encouraging him with advice, isk, and probably an invite to a pub room where he could learn more, and find people to push him even futher down the road to “ebbil piwat!” He might turn into the next Helicity Boson, driving content for THOUSANDS of people in EvE, inspiring mayhem and shenanigans across New Eden. That wouldn’t have happened without A: the nooblets reaction, and B: Helicity taking interest in the guy.

How do I know that this works? THIS led to me chatting things up with Th3rm, a couple months later, after hanging around in the Sons of 0din chat room (they are probably recruiting and Rico Minali is a great guy) I joined them, and Cult of War. This led to me having a BLAST in nullsec, including taking over for a guy named Mukkbarovian when he kept getting primaried off the field, and calling targets for 3 or 4 glorious minutes in a furious (losing) battle in J2-PZ6. Had I lost my shit about the loss, getting warp scrammed by a Proteus at nearly 35 kilometers and hacked down, there is no way I’d have been invited to join the party later. I would have denied myself the chance to have a LOT of fun and take place in something amazing. The fault would have been mine. I laughed about it with Th3rm, earned money for another ship, and Th3rm recognized my attitude and my eagerness to learn and brought me along, until I finally took the plunge. THAT is recruiting. THAT is responding maturely to adversity and giving yourself opportunity.

Fly Dangerous. Score Kills. If you get killed, don’t lose your shit. Learn and have fun, it’s pixels in a game.