EVE Online is a very difficult game to grasp, there’s just so much to it, to a fault at times. I think if there was a little more direction as to what new players could do and a little more new player protection, it would go a long way to help with new player retention.
Interesting thing- the Corp I’m in (which just had a 2.2 trillion isk theft from a director a week or so ago) had a player that I had seen wandering around the asteroid belts called Trent Reznor. I had named my Mackinaw “Not the Actual Event” but he never noticed or said anything about it.