[1] Too long of a wait between signup -> getting to actually play in a game, attention spans are short and people trying to find a place to play mafia will just try a few places and stick with wherever they get to play sooner usually. if they're playing somewhere else they probably won't play here if they get a role pm two or three weeks after they "signup"
[2] Too Few/ Irregular Game Firing - this problem builds off issue[1] because it's hard to get a game started if you're waiting for newbies to pick up their role pms and sometimes they just don't because they're like gone somewhere else already.
[3] Difficulty with mentorship structure where players giving advice can be opposed to the interests of the players being mentored as alignments are unknown etc.
I think the best way to alleviate all of these issues is to make a dedicated newbie game that is radically different in approach and allows new players to
jump in right away to play
to eliminate the wait time issue and also provide mentorship that is definitely aligned with the player.I think a good approach for this would be if the newD3 game would fire with 9 experienced players in each player slot and as many newbies as sign up; for example a game could fire with nine veteran players and four newbies and each newbie would be paired in a hydra of sorts with a vet. Newbies signing up while the game is in progress can jump into any unpaired slot and be brought up to speed by whatever vet player is already playing in the slot.
I understand this might take a bit of work from the moderation team and be difficult to implement; another way to implement this on a micro-scale would be to place "new" newbies in "simple" setups that are already running such as mini normals or small open setups where the newbie would be paired with a willing slot already playing in the game and it would become something like a hydra. The key idea here is to shorten the time between a new player finding this site and getting to "play" and get a feel of how playing mafia here will work.