What's it going to take to become a praying mantis?

[bhodi]

And yeah, I probably shouldn't get to mad about the stealth thing, since it is kind of a specific case (though I think they should make getting into covert ops ALOT easier than it currently is).  Its just that I've shot for similar goals (like a top end mining barge or freighter) and what I was going through to try and get those felt similar to that, so it feels more widespread to me.

I actually found that comment really interesting. The reason being that I planned out an imaginary mining career for myself that included a mining barge, and I could get into a retriever 18 days from now. That's really more like 22 days, since I leveled my miner character for 4 days before I created my second one. If you wanted to get the absolute best mining ship in the game (a hulk), it will take you no more than 4 months of training.

Another interesting thing about mining is that there are very few "auxiliary" skills that you need to train to make yourself more effective and are not included in the base skill training of the ship itself. There are a slew of helper skills for pvp, but almost all of the higher level mining ships already require the two or three mining-specific skills like astrogeology and mining 5. So that time estimate is pretty close to all you need, as opposed to say a battleship where you have probably half the time to be able to sit in the cockpit and the other half to be useful.

As for the ISK, We're talking 5 mil for the ship itself, and a generous additional 5 mil for the required modules. Assuming you could get a loan for 10 mil (I've been generously given that by two separate people here, just for random expenses and pew pew), you could actually pay off that loan in only two hours of mining in high-sec space with no risk of getting blow'd up.

I suppose this is a long winded post telling you that you're full of crap or, if you feel I'm misrepresenting you, to at least give better examples.

[Endie]

Unless you want to to fly hilarious, faction-fit awesome-mobiles, then as long as you insure you can replace any ship loss in a bunch of easy ways.  The insurance gap on a very flashy T2-fit battleship can be covered in three hours or so of 0.0 ratting or mining (if you get lucky with an officer drop then you're set for many, many ships).  The same amount of time will let you take a few nice drakes in and lose one in every battle, since they insure just great.

But there are other ways to make money.  I did trading for a few weeks, made over a billion (mainly in zydrine and T2 component speculation), but it was too time-consuming.  I've got five datacore alts, which took over a hundred and fifty hours to set up, but which bring in the equivalent of 8 or 9 tier 3 battleship hulls'worth of income per month between them (that's a carrier hull), even at the current depressed prices.  And all i have to do is fly around in my crane once a month or so to pick them up.

[Polysorbate80]

Yeah, I'm actually "poor" as far as people who own cap ships go.  There are folks with solo Motherships (something I've never aimed for, since I have no place to build one).

Plus, I haven't bothered to ever insure anything since about my second month of EVE.

[Teleku]

Bhodi, I was going for a Hulk (I believe it was a Hulk, what ever the best mining barge in the game or close to it was).  Each of those ships (back when I played, could obviously have changed now) cost several hundred million ISK each (not to mention the cost of the higher end skill books).  The skill training to be able to fly it, using tech 2 mining lasers, and skills needed to mine the top ore in the game (I believe you needed a hulk to do that as well?  I can't remember) was insane as I recall, and I had actually taken the time to train up all my learning skills to lvl 4 when I started my char.  4 months seems pretty generous (and thats still a fuck ton of time to master the mining profession) compared to what I recall it was going to take.  I had the top end normal barge already, and did ok with it, but I wanted to try for the high end: 1.) Because being able to mine top end ore well seemed like a highly marketable skill (and I dont think you could mine the best ore in game without top end ship and skills, right?). 2.) The amount you could pull in from it compared to t1 versions seemed like a ton more 3.) If I'm going to do something, I like to do it well ;)

I had already achieved the barges your talking about quite easily, and was making decent cash mining endlessly in 0.0 ore belts. 

I still got burnt out trying to take it to the next level.

[bhodi]

Well, the hulk as I said is the absolute best mining barge in the game; it takes 4 months of time to train for and yeah buying and fully outfitting it would cost several hundred million ISK. HOWEVER, as with any serious endeavor of that nature, you could probably find someone to finance it for you once you get the skills to fly it. Once financed, the time to actually make that cash back is only order of a few days or weeks at very most. The mining guide PDF lays out the actual prices and times involved with the payback. If you were to casually mine with the mining barge until you could actually fly a hulk, you should have the cash to buy it yourself.

I kind of fail to see how it's unreasonable or completely unattainable unless, that is, you're trying to solo-grind up. There's no reason for it really. Most people will pay attention if you do a tiny bit of research and give a payback timeline -- and just like anything else, a loan really speeds things up and there are hundreds of more than willing people to finance reasonably intelligent plans such as that.

[Teleku]

Eh, mainly solo grinding.  That's just my nature.  Never tried actually getting a loan to fund it, seems kind of awkward and weird...  In any event, I got tired of spending weeks training mining skills up while I couldn't raise my combat skills any higher at the same time, and so couldn't really go rat or pew pew for "fun" as effectively, and thus burned out (would have been bad if I was under pressure to repay a loan when that happened...).

This is all getting rather side tracked though.  Really didn't mean for it to be another thread about me complaining about my personal quibbles with the game.  I still enjoyed the game, and still appreciate what it does differently from everybody else, and all that Eve has accomplished. 

But in regards to the original question about why this thread made me realize why it was best that I make myself not resub again, I probably should have simply responded with:  A game that actually has a 1 year or even half year flat training time to fly any particular ship, no matter the reason, simply has an incompatible philosophy (a very bad one, IMO of course) in regards to game design and myself.  I end up forgetting this and get slapped in the face with it almost every single time (of the many) that I resub.

[ajax34i]

A game that actually has a 1 year or even half year flat training time to fly any particular ship.

WoW-equivalent statement is 4-6 months, so yeah, the expectancy has changed somewhat.

[dwindlehop]

They should publish some sort of statistics to advertise the game a little more.  Number of gangs formed per day, number of gangs seeing action per day, etc etc.  I know that the map shows ships killed and all that, but really, you see dots and don't really pay attention.  And then only the big wars are advertised.

You guys are saying that "small gang warfare" happens every day and is the majority of the game, but I've NEVER seen numbers to back that up, just personal experience talking.  And granted, yours is really extensive, so I'll believe it, but it would do good things for the game if they released some stats like that.

Cruise public killboards. There's plenty of good fights out there, and sometimes the commentary gives you even more clue.

When I google any almost Eve corp or alliance and the word "killboard", Google comes up with their killboard as first link. Some to try (without tooting any horns I currently have a stake in): Malicious Intentions, Team Americas, Infinitus Odium, Mutually Assured Distraction, Pandemic Legion, Celtic Anarchy, Burn Eden, Athanasius Inc. Compare, if you like, with the killboards of corps/alliances in the War thread. You'll quickly distinguish between the corps that fly fleet actions and the corps that skirmish. Usually it's the more pirate-identifying corps that fight in small gangs, but not always.

[Teleku]

A game that actually has a 1 year or even half year flat training time to fly any particular ship.

WoW-equivalent statement is 4-6 months, so yeah, the expectancy has changed somewhat.

Not even that really.  Its not hard for a casual player to get up to 70 within 3 months.  Alot faster if your actually trying.  I don't even know what it is now with the leveling buff they just implemented...

[Reg]

You're not just wanting level 70 in EVE though, you're wanting level 70 with all of the best stuff. And you want it playing casually all by yourself.

It's fine if you don't like the game, EVE isn't for everyone but the expectations you seem to have are pretty unrealistic.

[ajax34i]

3 months to 70 + 3 months to Tier 5-6 gear is what I meant.  End-game.

Yes, Blizzard is making it a lot easier to level up every time they up the level cap and re-define what "end-game" is. 

CCP did a little of that too, when they revamped the character creation process to give newbies 800k skill points, saving them a month of training, but they would have to keep giving free skillpoints or accellerating the skill training time every time they add more ship classes. 

T2 is entry-level now, really, equivalent to blue items in WoW.  Capital ships - purples.  Everyone wants the shiny, the "cool" ships, nobody wants to be stuck in a T1 frigate doing tackling.  The good and the bad about all ships being made from the same base minerals, by the players, is that old tech doesn't depreciate like old items in WoW do.   They're allowing an inflation to combat that; players finding it easy to accumulate and throw around billion-ISK numbers, soon to be trillions, and so on, depreciates the cheaper ships.

But anyway, giving newbies another free million (or 2) skill points at character creation (and advertising that) would bring in even more players than their current growth rate.  They should milk this visual update they've done for all it's worth, then announce another revamp of the character creation process, and make a big publicity fuss about it.