I guess in theory it's always good to have new players, but in reality it won't matter, in the case of cRPG that is.
It's not about the learning curve of the game, it's about almost everything else. It's about those 90% of the community who go for peasants first, just to get that easy kill, which is douchebaggery at its finest, and shouldn't grant any kill at all. But it's also because of the community, which is a bunch of trolls, griefers and abusers. People will get kicked and horsebumped all the time by their team"mates", and with their lack of armour they will probably even lose HP in that process.
The website itself doesn't explain any correlations between the skills and some mechanics, for example the connection of PD and WPF or WPF and armour weight. When they find out by ingame message it's usually too late for the moment.
I mean: the only thing which players get for their start is
cRPG is one of the most popular modifications for Mount&Blade Warband. It adds persistent multiplayer and an online campaign.
Wow. Really helpfull. You even missed to opportunity to change the expectations by saying something like "In this game it is important to play together with the other players in your team, to support and help each other to be able to win the round" or something like that, I am convinced the gameplay on the servers would benefit from it, but instead we have 90% of "autowalker-Rambo-lemmings" who constantly stay under the full potential of their class, making balancing the game really difficult, since players who do use the full potential become OP if you balance around those lemmings.
And yes, I also share the opinion that looms, at least in their current shape, are something which works actively AGAINST a steady influx of new players. A direct and moderate power gain is a really bad solution for looms.
Players should be taught the game while registering and creating their character, it's the right moment because everything is new and thus they will keep attention. If you want to influence the behaviour of players, you have to get them "young". Once they played the game for a while they create habits, and it's almost impossible to change them after that point. And no, nobody reads the beginner section in the forum. Don't come up with that.
TL;DR:
The introduction of the game is almost non existant, which is bad both for the new players (for obvious reasons) and for the community (because the opportunity was missed to influence new players the right way), and with the current state of the game (skill, generation and loom difference) and the community (trolls, griefers, abusers, assholes) you can be happy if the Steam summer sale will bring five new, constant players.
