f13.net

This topic is just a FYI for those of you that avoid the EVE Online forum because it shows new posts all the time but the plebians can't read them.  If any of you are or have been somewhat interested in EVE, or have tried it previously but found it distasteful, drop into the public EVE forum (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?board=50.0) and check out the massive changes to the game that were implemented yesterday.

Two highlights:

• New warp-to-zero function greatly streamlines space travel
• Revamped character creation provides a huge boost to newbies

The learning curve is still a bit steep, but you can find help pretty easily. The new 800k+ characters are great. The noob corp people answer questions pretty well, and you can do the tutorial or join the f13 channel. There is a 14 day trial, come make an account and join our Frigate swarm! :)

PM me if you need any help as well or a little starting isk for some fittings.

Does CCP still keep an extremely updated stats page for Eve? I looked for it the other day but I couldn't find it. It showed users online currently, hourly for the last 24 hours, daily, etc. CPU load, all kinds of stuff.

Is it possible to play as a solo pirate yet?  If it is, then I'll reopen my account. 

I am pretty sure that you will hit the same obstacles as before when it comes to soloing missions or being a lone-wolf pirate in lowsec space since numerical superiority is still A Big Deal, however there are large boosts to defensive capabilities across the board, and ammo now has half the bulk it once did.  There is a lot to read up on in the patch notes, and this is only part one of a three-part expansion.

There is also a new Exploration profession that is pretty much a one-pilot undertaking.  Investigating the things (complexes, resources) you find via Exploration would require the usual manpower, of course.

Thanks for the quick response.  As someone that enjoys solo or small-scale PvP, I've been pretty much stuck playing DAoC for this reason.  There just don't seem to be many options for those of us that enjoy playing solo/stealth classes in world-type pvp games.  Looks like I'll be playing DAoC until Warhammer comes out.

You could always sell off the information you find via Exploration, but as you say, EVE is not a solo game.  At least, not if you do combat.  I solo as an industrialist, and quite a few people do unless you consider interacting with the market a problem.  One of EVE's best-kept secrets is the economic PVP game, the one that has nothing to do with the newsmaking scams and which involves the quiet rulers of the game economy.  Not something the combat people find interesting, though, as long as they can keep buying ships, equipment and fuel.

Exploration sounds nifty, combined with the backing of a corp. Soloers can go do their thing and then the groupers can have more stuff to check out later.

To give you an idea of the scale of the economic game: I'm a mid-level player in that game.  I can make a billion anytime I'm ready to invest some heavy playtime, and I have various gimiicks I can work for a few hours a week and maintain a decent income stream ("decent" being 400-500M a week right now).  I have Tycoon 4 on both my main and my alt, and I'm seriously considering buying a character so I can get more order slots without opening a third account and waiting 3 months.  I've got just under a billion in cash, another billion tied up in Buy orders, and maybe 2B tied up in inventory.  I'm putting together a little "corp project", me and some other billionaires in my corp are thinking about building an outpost as a commercial endeavour.

I'm not bragging, I know guys who make me look like small potatoes, they push around T2 BPO's like poker chips.  They could build outposts on their own hook, at least one of them is building his own Titan, just because he can (he's talking about mounting mining lasers and Harvester drones on it just to piss people off).

My character is over a year old (both of them now, actually), and can't fly a BS.  But if I wanted to, I could aim a team of 30M sp+ hardcore PvP'ers at any target I chose, just by paying them.  I just don't find the ship PvP in Eve very interesting.  The economic PvP, and the political power that enough money lets you swing....

--Dave

Just so people understand: the boost to new players isn't just a little thing. It's massive. Not only is the character creation ten times as intuitive now (everything is explained to you as you create a character and what is affected by what and how is far easier to understand now), but... you start off with a pair of maxed out skills now, and those vary depending on your profession. Most newbies started out with 30,000 or so SP. One specific combination could get 300,000 SP. Now all characters, ever, will start out with 800,000. Two maxed skills plus a slew of ones at level 3 or 4. My new Amarr character, for example, can fly all the basic frigates, can immediately train for industrials, can use all the armor defense modules, has a fair amount of Learning skills completed, and is some twelve hours away from being able to use Tech 2 frigate lasers, having started out with Gunnery and Small Energy Weapons maxed out. All out of the box. I only need to spend an afternoon training some Electronic skills for tackling and I'll be PvP-ready with a vengeance.

Oh, and you no longer need to max out the basic learning skills to get the advanced learning skills. The "learning grind" has been cut from a month and a half to under a week (two weeks, if you feel like getting Advanced Learning to 4, but sod that). If the character creation was holding you back before, rejoice: all your prayers have been answered.

I wish they'd retroactively give existing toons that sort of boost. I'd consider subscribing again if I knew I didn't have a mountain of crud to train still on my toon.

The executive summary is: you pre-Trammel UO assholes need to check it out.

Engels, it ir retroactive to chars with less than 800k SP, and if that isn't appealing, you might consider a reroll that can come out ahead.
I can also persopnally vouch for the benefits of going through the tutorial more than once. But of course I am a UNIX specialist.

Can't edit on the Blackberry.  Please interpret amongst yourselves.

They did - anyone with less than 800k skillpoints has been boosted up to that level. Or did you mean give it to all the older characters as well?

They should give us  few skills to choose from and let us boost one to level 5...it took me weeks to get to 800k, and I trained all my lernin' skilz to 5 too. I got SCRAWED!

Additional highlights:

• The tutorial explains more. I think the idea behind the tutorial is to use it as a reference when you have a question. Don't try to slog through the whole thing in one sitting. It is organized by topic, so take advantage of that.
• Hit point totals have been increased, with bigger bonuses going to ships new players fly. This makes combat take slightly more time and gives you more opportunities to be creative during a fight, in addition to reducing the advantage veteran players have due to skillpoints.
• Rigs make ship setups even less cookie-cutter, in a system that already supported a lot of variety.
• Scanning changes and warp core stabilizer nerfs makes finding people to shoot and engaging them in combat easier.

Try making a military Gallente character and heading into Seyllin for some solo piracy. Seyllin is a lowsec system that was packed with new players when I flew there about a month ago, and I expect it still is. With the drone specialization career and some isk in your pocket, you could run a nasty solo pirate setup with a Vexor cruiser and Nosferatus/Energy Neutralizers on a trial account.  Of course, Punishers (Amarr) or Rifters (Minmater) are the best solo pirate T1 frigates, but you'd have to fly for a while to get to Seyllin if you made an Amarr or Minmater character because Seyllin is in Gallente space. I'm sure there must be analogous systems in Amarr or Minmater space, but I don't know them off the top of my head.

I for one am very excited about the boosts to new players as I think it will encourage my friends to subscribe.

So if I started today, how long would it take me to become proficient enough and wealthy enough so that I can at least get some PVP in each week?  How quickly could I become competitive against people who've been playing for 2 years?

As someone who's never played Eve before, those two questions would make or break a subscription decision from me.

I'll probably be returning to EVE, at the very least to check out the new changes.


Based on past experience from about a year ago: a month.  Less if you join a good corp immediately, start making money faster, and practice PVP with corpmates.  Your initial issue ususally isn't skill points, but money and practice. 

Post Patch EDIT: the new character creation changes things a great deal.  Now, the only challenge you face initially is raising money and learning the interface.  Joining a corporation with real friends is still highly recommended.

Obligatory link to the 14-day free trial, no credit card required. (http://www.eve-db.com/link.php?id=2)

My take on the changes introduced on Tuesday is that month's training from a year ago has been eliminated, because you start with a month's worth of skills. Your time to effective PvP is limited by the the time it takes you to learn to fly, not the time it takes your character to train skills.

We had a whole thread about how PvP is balanced in Eve (http://forums.f13.net/index.php?topic=8035.0). Most of the arguments in that thread still hold water, though the changes in Revelations shift the balance of power slightly more in favor of the new player.

A ten minute old alt can hit a two year old character in a battleship for full damage. It is difficult for the battleship to hit the ten minute old frigate. Furthermore, the battleship costs 100M isk, but the frigate costs 300k isk. Ten frigates properly piloted by new characters could easily destroy a competently flown battleship. One on one, you would be unable to beat a competent player with two years head start on you in skillpoints if he flies the best ship he can. It only takes a month maybe to be as skilled in flying frigates as anyone else, though, so if you engage a two-year-old character in an equivalent ship class after a month's hard training for that ship class I think the result would be largely due to player skill, not character skillpoints.

Put it another way, some PvPers train for interceptors only and never fly anything else. Flying an interceptor is mostly about player skill and less about character skillpoints. They're cheap, fast, and frigate-sized. A lone interceptor can't take down a battleship, but a handful of interceptors can take on a gang of battleships, kill one, and then run away to fight another day.

Its an ambitous game that actually has a vision beyond moneyhats and sticks to it.  Anyone who wants to even pretend they care about "good" games should be able to say that gave EvE's trial a legit shot.

Thats my 2 cents.

On the other hand, if you wish to avoid some of the post-expansion bugs and annoyances, maybe wait until next Tue. for them to patch some bugs away.

And, it should be noted that the core gameplay is still there, this is NOT a brand new game.  Improved some, maybe, but for some people, resubscribing will just result in remembering what they hated about EVE.

True, but the biggest killer for me in EVE was the bookmark silliness.  That doesn't exist any more. 

To misquote the Tauren Brothers, Warp to Zero is like Kaiser Soze.  It not only fixed my main gripe with the game, it also fixed a lot of the game's worst timesinks and bugs associated with warping. 

Cant't get it right: Aren't bookmarks available anymore?

And what about the wrecks? From what I heard as much as they are a good idea on paper, it's silly to be surrounded by multiple wrecks without a clue about which you already looted and which you should have to take a look at. Any official word about that?

They're going to make it so that you can at least tell what wreck you've looted in the overview on Tuesday. People are pressing them to give us a way to distinguish empty wrecks from loot containing wrecks without having to open them but there's no word yet on whether that's going to happen.

Looting was already mind-bogglingly tedious and unless you're really into salvaging it's not worthwhile at all currently.

From the fourms, Salvagling is quite profitable, IF you don't mind being bored out of you're mind. Think mining, but you only have a chanc e at getting any ore every time you spend a few minutes firing your mining laser.

Oh, and rigs won't cost anything under 200 million, so forget about ever seeing them.

Oveur has said they're monitoring the drop rate. I would expect prices to go down over time as more people attempt salvaging and the devs tweak the numbers.

There's also a ceiling of sorts on the price, because if rigs cost enough people will insurance scam ships to get the components.

Daammmmmmn.

There was a recent bump in the cost of "lows", Pyerite and Tritanium.  Partly caused by building for the new ships, and it's suspected that there is a massive wave of outposts being planned for the new regions (which have no stations of their own).  So some of the guys in my corp were buying ships in large lots, turning around and scrapping the ships and selling the minerals for 25%+ more than they paid for the ships.

--Dave

As someone who is not willing to devote more than 30 minutes to 1 hr (absolute max) to ANY MMO anymore, is it worth it for me to check it out?  Would I honestly be in any way competitive?  I'm not looking to be the next Howard Hughes of EVE, just something I can jump into briefly and jump out with a sense of feeling of accomplishment and fun.  Is the PvP like chess (which I could totally dig)?

What I know about EvE is extremely limited: mining, mining, some PvP over territories, mining, mining, mining, some PvP over territory.

School meh.

I think I can say that surgically applied time will matter. Raw materials in EVE have always mattered. Some times more some times less but I have never heard of supply not finding demand at some price.

It is trivial to play through the PvE content in 30 minute to 1 hour long chunks. Almost the entire game is designed to support this.

For PvP, your ability to find a fight within 30 minutes might be sorely taxed. Some of the same mechanics that make playing through the PvE in small chunks come into play, but you have to find an opponent. I speculate that Stain might offer what you're looking for, SnakeCharmer, but I haven't hung out there. Possibly you'd also be fairly happy in a crowded lowsec system. Choosing which ship setup to bring to a fight has a lot of depth to it, but actually taking down your enemy generally doesn't. Check back next year after they implement heat for more tactical combat options.

Bookmarks are available, but travel bookmarks are unnecessary. The ones within 25km of an existing celestial object will be deleted on Tuesday. Anything slightly farther away will be unaffected. There won't be any restriction on creating new BMs near objects after the wipe.

Edits for grammar.

In addition to the earlier points, don't forget that skills train while offline in EVE so you don't need to be stuck at the keyboard to be getting better.

A month to get to "teh fun"?  Am I the only one that thinks that's still too much of a barrier?  One of the biggest knocks I have against DAoC is that the grind to 50 is prohibitive.  Still, in DAoC I can get to "teh fun" in  a week or less and can even PvP in the battlegrounds on the way there. 

I don't want to have to a) get into a corp and b) wait a month just to get to the interesting part of ANY game. 

You can have fun without getting into a corp or waiting a month - I actually like running missions and exploring ship setups, etc. But, for me at least, that's all just training for doing stuff with a corp (at some point) which is much more fun.

The patch notes I read said gates and stations.


Past experience with the newbie game is invalid now.  Newbies pop into the world with more than that month of skills now.  It's entirely possible to survive and have fun blowing up things immediately.

They need to start paying you.  Thanks again!

Eve is all about who you play with. You've been gaming for many years I bet, so I assume that you've met tons of people through games. Ask some of your old buddies if they or anyone they know plays Eve. Try to get in with some people you know/have known who will be more inclined to spend time answering the 800 questions that you will have.

The learning curve seems steep at first, but as you figure things out you realize it's even steeper. It's one of those games where you can be decent in a very short time, but you can't be excellent without a lot of experience. I'm not talking about having level 8 fireballs and fighting people who only have level 6 fireballs, I'm talking about actual combat experiences from which you will learn from.

But if you have a financial background you should be able to immediately jump into the trading game and make a killing. I thought I read somewhere a few months back where a school somewhere (community college maybe) had some type of economics course that used Eve extensively.

That would be sweet.  If you need some cash for a ship or something, I can help.  It truly is all about who you play with.  Friends and enemies have real meaning in EVE, and trust is a rare commodity.

mmm ore slaves  :-o

He is absolutely right: the only limitation new characters have now is money-based, and money is not hard for PvE/PvPers to get. 

I took a new character into ratting in the first ten minutes.  If not for lag, he would have had enough to buy his first new ship in two hours, less if he didn't have to learn the interface.

I know this might sound kooky, but is there a vid of combat in EvE?  I understand it's not a flight sim, I'm just trying to wrap my head around how it works.

YouTube is your friend.

ActiveX blockers/restrictions while at work, however, aren't.

The Eve homepage has some videos, I am sure.

Here's one, locknload5high.wmv (http://dl.eve-files.com/media/corp/damige/locknload5high.wmv) (383 MB) on eve-files.com.  It's got a few scenarios in it, gang fights, solo fights.  He doesn't explain the interface much, but basically you lock the targets (top center of the screen) and you activate modules (bottom center of the screen) - guns, jammers, whatever.   In the video, he zooms the camera around a little too much for my tastes, and sometimes he attaches the camera to the targets, but you'll get the idea.

Of course there is a huge difference between styles of fighting in different ships.  In my inty I am almost flight-sim flying: constantly double-clicking to keep the right angles on my opponents, doing 1300m/s and right inside rocket range.  In my Drake I'm usually just flying in the opposite direction, keeping them in range of my missiles and out of range of their weapons.