Is EVE For Me?

[calapine]

Warning Slightly OFF-Topic!

Is EVE for me?/Shall I buy the game?

I have a question which I feel doesn't fully warrant an own discussion, and also has been spawned somewhat by this thread, so I'll bring it up here.
I have been considering playing eve for quite a while. At the moment my experience with it consists of spending 1 hour at the portrait creation screen and reading about 80 pages of this thread.
Currently suffering from MMO withdrawal symptoms, enjoy complex sandboxy games and like the sci-fi setting. So, seems fine, BUT:

1) The game seems to be all about big alliance PVP.
Big alliance PVP seems to be about masses of players in their Titans/Dreadnaughts-of-Doom whooshing around and destroying equipment worth billions of ISK and months of playtime. Regular or new players are never mentioned.
Newbies are told to "do the proper thing and buy and old account", except every 10 pages or so someone disagrees and says something like "No, no! You can be totally helpful even with a frigate! Just fly in circles around the enemy causing Lag and screen clutter letting real players win the fight meanwhile."

2) PVP is all about alliances and guilds, as obviously taking on the Goons solo does not work. Yet guilds don't allow in new players, because you could be a SPY!

3) How am I supposed to catch up with 6 years of skill point training?

At the moments my feelings are somewhere between fascinated/curious and scared/confused.  

Cala

FakeEdit: Yes, this is a serious post. I would be very appreciating of any helpful answer, even if it's just a one-liner or of the YES/NO type.

[Yoru]

Split. Don't post gratuitously offtopic questions in the war thread, particularly ones that will engender discussion.

[calapine]

Eeeek! sorry....

[Yoru]

No worries.

The only answer I have to your questions is for (3), and the answer is "you don't". Thing is, depending on what you're training for, you pretty much hit a point of severely diminishing returns after 2-6 months. For example, if you wanted to focus on ECM, you could get all IVs in the relevant ECM skills, plus Vs in the more basic ones, within about 2 months, plus another 2 weeks to train Caldari BS to 4 from scratch. Boom, you're a formidable scorpion pilot.

So, in short, if you're worried about going strictly toe-to-toe, DPS-for-DPS up against an older player, the answer is to specialize, and you'll be just as good as he is within 2-6 months, depending on field. You don't need to be that good to be effective in many fields; tech2 sniping is one of the few where you absolutely must do a 6-month skill grind to be viable. ECM, antisupport, and tackling all require far less SP.

If you really want to get involved in 0.0 PVP and feel needed/loved by your corp, train up for an Interdictor. Doesn't take terribly long and everyone's always short of interdictors. Granted, your life consists mostly of "activate bubble, die, get fresh ship, repeat".

[Merusk]

1) You're being told to 'cause lag' by morons.  The guys here started out in Frigs and such and were effective. Hell they had whole weekends dedicated to "Frigate Club" where the entire fleet consisted of people in the 'low class' ships.  They're effective for their roles, you just have to find a role you want to fit into. Jamming, Webbing, Sensor Sweeps, Stealth scouting, Interceptors, etc.   One of the frigate clubs I attended we nearly took out some hotshot's $500mil Battleship with our ten little $100k swarm ships.

2) Yeah, this will be a problem for you now.  F13 has moved on to be a part of a bigger alliance and doesn't run the new player stuff like they did. There's probably smaller corps out there that do similar stuff these days, but your problem will be finding a crew that isn't a random bunch of assholes and scammers.  Good luck there.

3) By focusing on a role and filling it.   26million, 40 million or 100 million skill point characters may have years and tons of skill points on you, but that's spread across multiple disciplines.  A 100mil SP character may only be using 5 mil of their SP if they're in a ship-type or role that they're not optimally trained for.  Suddenly they're very killable by a noob pilot who knows what they're doing and has focused on doing it well.    You branch out after you've learned how to do that thing well.

Also, you don't need max-rank in a skill to be effective, and that's where the bulk of a veteran pilot's skill time is spent.  Going from rank 4 to rank 5 is a huge step of training for only a 1% to 5% increase in effectiveness.  You typically only do it because you need that R5 for another skill/ ship or simply have run out of new things to train for (not likely.)


The best thing to do is download the trial and give it a shot. I'm sure the guys are still running the F13 channel and may even look at it often enough to answer questions.

[Phildo]

To add to what Yoru said, after those 2-6 months most skills can only be improved by 2 or 5% which is a difference that can be compensated for by fitting your ship smartly and out-flying your enemy.

Edit: Merusk beat me to it.  But yeah, we're always keeping an eye on the F13 channel in-game.  Or at least I am.

[calapine]

1) You're being told to 'cause lag' by morons.  The guys here started out in Frigs and such and were effective. Hell they had whole weekends dedicated to "Frigate Club" where the entire fleet consisted of people in the 'low class' ships.  They're effective for their roles, you just have to find a role you want to fit into. Jamming, Webbing, Sensor Sweeps, Stealth scouting, Interceptors, etc.   One of the frigate clubs I attended we nearly took out some hotshot's $500mil Battleship with our ten little $100k swarm ships.

2) Yeah, this will be a problem for you now.  F13 has moved on to be a part of a bigger alliance and doesn't run the new player stuff like they did. There's probably smaller corps out there that do similar stuff these days, but your problem will be finding a crew that isn't a random bunch of assholes and scammers.  Good luck there.

3) By focusing on a role and filling it.   26million, 40 million or 100 million skill point characters may have years and tons of skill points on you, but that's spread across multiple disciplines.  A 100mil SP character may only be using 5 mil of their SP if they're in a ship-type or role that they're not optimally trained for.  Suddenly they're very killable by a noob pilot who knows what they're doing and has focused on doing it well.    You branch out after you've learned how to do that thing well.

Also, you don't need max-rank in a skill to be effective, and that's where the bulk of a veteran pilot's skill time is spent.  Going from rank 4 to rank 5 is a huge step of training for only a 1% to 5% increase in effectiveness.  You typically only do it because you need that R5 for another skill/ ship or simply have run out of new things to train for (not likely.)


The best thing to do is download the trial and give it a shot. I'm sure the guys are still running the F13 channel and may even look at it often enough to answer questions.

Thanks for the reply. 
My post was a bit flippant, so it might not have been clear, but I don't expect to jump into a 6 year old game and receive insta-grats or mess with the big boys. The War-thread mainly talks about this alliance vs. alliance epic-battle and it's not really clear for me if there is anything else happening on the sidelines. As long/If(?) there is some small pvp-gameplay niche to reach to I'll be happy to work towards that.

*waits for client download to finish*

Cala

[MahrinSkel]

It's also worth noting that I was playing in the Big Game of inter-alliance politics within 6 months (having come in 3 years late) by virtue of just being really good at making money in the markets.  Character skill is only a part of the equation.

--Dave

[Nerf]

Also, not all alliances are quite as worried about spies, it's shockingly easy to get a spy into most of them.

Easy as in:
"hey, I'd like to you join you!"
"well, you don't look like a spy!"
"I know rite, so we're good?"
"Yeah, welcome!"

[calapine]

Well, I sure don't look like a spy!



Day 1

Managed to fly in a circle, mine an asteroid, queue some skills and dock the ship! All withouth getting killed or scammed. Now it's 4:45 AM and I need some sleep. This can only get better!

[Numtini]

On the big alliances, they're great, but Eve is still a sandbox and you can make your own game. My Eve is cat and mouse tactics in little packs of cheap ships in lowsec for ransom or salvage and occasionally cleaning out the local anti-pirate corlp that continues to pay to wardec and provide us with easy targets. I think the biggest thing we've done in our corp since I joined was join a bunch of other 'rats and take out a carrier from some idiot who didn't know what he was doing.

So you don't really need to be in one of those big alliances to have fun in the game.

However, you do need to find the right people that match your interests and who match with you socially. For me that meant joining and quitting Eve four or five times before I finally found a corp that I liked and that was e from a friend who joined them and dragged me back in. That's the real game in Eve, the social game. It makes and breaks how good a time you have and it can also make or break your success in game terms. Social connections are a lot bigger than SP. (Though it will take about eight weeks to do more than tackle something and get blown up.)

The standard advice is join Eve Uni and fly with them until you know what you're doing then start to apply to corps.

[Slayerik]

Eve rules. I dont play any MMO's these days due to RL shit, but when I come back....its all about the Eve

[VainEldritch]

2) PVP is all about alliances and guilds, as obviously taking on the Goons solo does not work. Yet guilds don't allow in new players, because you could be a SPY!

Well, I'm now a 5-day Eve vet... and apparently I'm a spy to be "de-bagged and raddished" on sight because I had the audacity to post here asking to join the Goons as a total newb. Silly me. That was day one. 

Subsequent conversations in the F13 channel have helped me understand, at least in some small way, where this paranoia comes from. Some corps are just very closed for their own protection. This was a new experience for me coming as I do from games like UO, SWG and AoC where joining a big raiding guild - even a "famous" one - was really no problem at all. So now I respect the Goons for their caution and don't expect to get in any time soon so I'm just doing the tutorials and getting my skills up so that if I can get in I'll be "useful".

Eve really is a great sandbox-in-space and I love it for that. The freedom is wonderful - mademe realise just how limited and "on rails" games like AoC are.

The F13 channel still gets a few players and they are very helpful. I'm usually in it (character name: Vain Eldritch) and if you like we can help each other out as needed. I'm only running a few tutorial missions per week atm (RL's a byotch!) but I am of course training all the time and fiddling with EveMon to get a one-year/three-year plan up and I'd be happy to talk skills and learning with you. I'm alsoi starting to play with frig outfits - it's been good so far to see how the different modules work and combine.

Anyhoo, good luck and enjoy Eve - as I said before in my "raddished" thread about "Da Claw!", I've fallen i love with Eve and I intend to be around for a very long time.


 

[Sir T]

1) The game seems to be all about big alliance PVP.

The fact is that the vast majority of the players are not in 0.0, and have no interest in the big alliance warfare. I think they would say that their play is just as valid as the loudmouths in 0.0, and they would be right.

2) PVP is all about alliances and guilds, as obviously taking on the Goons solo does not work. Yet guilds don't allow in new players, because you could be a SPY!

Spies can cause a lot of damage. The thing is though that certain entities can become totally dependent on spies, to the point that they cannot fight without them. So the desperate efforts they go through to get spies into their enemies is literally unbelievable. One guy spent a lot of money setting up proxy servers so his real IP could not be traced looking onto their forums. So the counterspy efforts can get a little over the top too.

3) How am I supposed to catch up with 6 years of skill point training?

You cant. Where the real advantage of the old players comes is in the support skills. Making your ships turn faster, the fittings costing less, your ships being tougher, them having more capacitor, etc. Simply saying "well you could be as good as a 6 year old in 2 - 3 months" is ignoring a lot of subtle issues, and tbh if I got my hands on the game I'd pull a lot of stupid "time sink" skills. The learning skills would be ontop of my list.

[Yoru]

To elaborate on something else, the reason all you read about in the War! thread is big alliance PVP is because that thread is about... big alliance PVP. It's the big "elder game" draw that generates a lot of the buzz and player politics that make EVE relatively unique among MMOs.

There have been threads here and there about smaller-scale PVP, but those tend not to result in 100+ page threads as they don't lead to massive space drama. Doesn't mean it's not there, doesn't mean it's not fun for the participants.

[Amarr HM]

1) The game seems to be all about big alliance PVP.

You can PvP at smaller levels and still be useful or just not PvP at all, there are other trades that might suit you.

2) PVP is all about alliances and guilds, as obviously taking on the Goons solo does not work. Yet guilds don't allow in new players, because you could be a SPY!

There are many levels to the game, Goons are at the highest level along with other alliances but it doesn't mean to say you can't have fun joining a smaller corp and helping them out on whatever level they are working and pay no attention to the great war.

3) How am I supposed to catch up with 6 years of skill point training?

You can't but then you don't have to either each ship has a time sink limit, you could probably be as good as you are gonna get in a particular frigate in a couple of months.  You can catch up vets skillwise easily within the year if you focus training from the start and heed the advice of people who have been down that line. Again at the risk of sounding braggardish I was soloing three+ year old vets with only over a years training under my belt, mainly cause I trained my skills very inline.

On the flip side to max out carriers & other cap ships might take a couple of years. This pertains to your other question but you can be useful in a frigate very early on and not just causing lag, newbie tacklers are always wanted. If you're interested in that aim to get in an interceptor after you have some experience.

[Murgos]

90% of the character in Eve never leave hi-sec.

The Big War gets a lot of attention but it's not the norm.

[Predator Irl]

90% of the character in Eve never leave hi-sec.

The Big War gets a lot of attention but it's not the norm.

This is very true. Most epic battles don't see the numbers Jita (Eve's trade hub) alone has to contend with on a constant daily basis. Its just one of 3 major trade hubs and of hundreds of empire systems. (Anyone know the actual count of empire systems?).

I think its fair to say also that a lot of mission runners and wormhole dwellers in empire are bringing in more ISK than 0.0 ratters and miners at the moment, especially those involved in the war as their time is tied up fighting rather than making the dough.

If I was starting off in the game right now, I wouldn't want to be involved in 0.0 shenanigans, I'd rather stay in empire in some small but useful corp and get filthy rich, then worry about where to go and who to join.
 

[VainEldritch]

90% of the character in Eve never leave hi-sec.

The Big War gets a lot of attention but it's not the norm.

If I was starting off in the game right now, I wouldn't want to be involved in 0.0 shenanigans, I'd rather stay in empire in some small but useful corp and get filthy rich, then worry about where to go and who to join.
 

My current plan exactly.

[IainC]

The important thing is to set yourself short term goals as well as a long term one. It's easy to get stuck in Eve if you don't have a basic roadmap of how you want to proceed. It doesn't have to be super detailed, just make sure that as well as the Grand Plan you also have an attainable short range goal on the boil in addition. This can be anything from being able to pilot a certain ship type, earning a certain amount of Isk, trying out a particular part of the game or whatever. Make sure you're not floundering around with no direction because otherwise you'll likely end up washed up and lost.

[MahrinSkel]

You cant. Where the real advantage of the old players comes is in the support skills. Making your ships turn faster, the fittings costing less, your ships being tougher, them having more capacitor, etc. Simply saying "well you could be as good as a 6 year old in 2 - 3 months" is ignoring a lot of subtle issues, and tbh if I got my hands on the game I'd pull a lot of stupid "time sink" skills. The learning skills would be ontop of my list.

I think they made a good move with changing the pre-reqs for the Advanced learning skills from 5 in the basic skills to 4, it cut more than a month off of the time to get into the same range as the established characters.  If they had followed that up with a lot of the other "cock-block" skill 5 Pre-Reqs, slowly phasing them in for things like the Racial Frigate skills for Assault Frigates and Interceptors, then Destroyers 5 and Racial Frig 5 for Interdictors, Astrometrics and Electronics 5 for Covert Ops (as well as Frig 5), working their way up to the really big ones like the half dozen or so Skill 5's you need to fly a wall of battle BS, or the dozen for a really functional Dread, and so on, it would have gone a long way.  Established characters would still have a small edge from their 5's (such as they still have a training advantage over everyone from after the Learning change), but newbies wouldn't be looking at 6-12 month waits to be more than chaff in a real battle.

But I already gave CCP's people that bits of advice in person, obviously it didn't get adopted.

--Dave

[Setanta]

I ran a character to Assault Frigates in the 2x bonus to 1.6mil SP. At just over 2mil it's very effective using named gear. I also tried it with another char for cov ops, training was good but named didn't slot in as easily. Freighter pilot also came in at under 1.6 mil so I think CCP is on the right track with level 4 and 5 skill development. AFs in under 14 days meant having to play the frigate which is a good thing, not a bad thing for a noob.

Re the cockblock, T2 weapons and level 5 skills benefits hurt the training post 1.6mil as I only ran lvl 3/4 learning skills as necessary (and +3 implants) but an AF is very nice in high sec and lo-sec and the skills I'm consolidating complement frigates for missions that block out the use of the AF.

What is missing is for noobs to have the importance of a focused build explained to them - because even if it wasn't AFs they went to, a good cruiser or destroyer build could be done in under 1.6mil.

Just my 2c really - I wish my 6 mill first toon was as effective as my 2 mil focused build - but she's getting there.

[MahrinSkel]

Setting aside the question of whether it is reasonable to expect newbies to create perfectly optimized training plans that spend the first two months doing nothing so they can do something very focused (it's not), what about 3 years from now, when Tech3 has become the best at everything?  Going to tell the newbs "only 6 months of training and you can fly one particular build of T2 almost well enough to be more than a speed-bump to T3 vets"?

--Dave

[gryeyes]

What exactly would a noob specialized in AF do that he couldn't do in with more effective SP not being wasted on AF piloting skills and for much less isk?

[calapine]

ohhhh, now the Pros are talking! *snickers*

Setting aside the question of whether it is reasonable to expect newbies to create perfectly optimized training plans that spend the first two months doing nothing so they can do something very focused (it's not), what about 3 years from now, when Tech3 has become the best at everything?  Going to tell the newbs "only 6 months of training and you can fly one particular build of T2 almost well enough to be more than a speed-bump to T3 vets"?

Going from the theoretical to the practical what would be a good starting path or training goal in terms of skill and ship class to aim at? I am aware it's all down to play style and personal preferences, but at this point you probably know what's good for me better than I do. 

Cala

[gryeyes]

I wasn't trying to be snarky i was curious. I haven't played EVE in a long while and was nothing beyond casual even when i played. Was there something specific you wanted an AF for? Or was it just the most accessible "cool ship" you could hop into? When i played AF were worthless for me, they very well may have been changed. I really cant address any of your original questions because i never got into a large corp and have minimal pvp experience.

I also was not smart enough to read about EVE before playing it so was unaware of the awesome training corps i could have joined. I focused on the generic noob path of caldari mission related skills. And then got into probing but they radically altered how it was done and i lost interest (when i played you had to triangulate between probes and it was pretty fucking hard). Id recommend joining one of the noob training organizations gear towards missions or whatever hi-sec isk generation activity you want to get into so you can support yourself. And adventure about. If you keep current on upcoming changes you can easily multiple a few million isk into billions with little to no risk or effort.

After i had 5-6 billion and a nice stable of ships i lost interest again and stopped playing. I should resub and try out all the new stuff like faction warfare,0.0 pvp stuff and the new probe related stuff.

PS. Gaming the system to take advantage of hi-sec mission runners was tons of fun. As was my brief stint in privateers.

[calapine]

I wasn't trying to be snarky i was curious. I haven't played EVE in a long while and was nothing beyond casual even when i played. Was there something specific you wanted an AF for? Or was it just the most accessible "cool ship" you could hop into? When i played AF were worthless for me, they very well may have been changed. I really cant address any of your original questions because i never got into a large corp and have minimal pvp experience.

If that was meant for me: I wasn't trying to be snarky with the "Pro" comment either. Sorry if it came across the wrong way! 

Re: Assault Frigates, it was Sentana using mentioning them. I  have some friends with ISK to burn who might help out, so being immediately viable isn't a priority. 3 months+ from now is were my focus is.

PS. Gaming the system to take advantage of hi-sec mission runners was tons of fun. As was my brief stint in privateers.

Pirating I'd very much like to dabble with! 

Cala

[IainC]

AFs are still pretty much worthless. Inties are a much better and more accessible T2 frigate choice for low SP characters. You'd still be better off in a random cruiser though than a T2 frigate for solo piracy. Much more effective for fewer SPs and with much less risk.

[Sir T]

Heh. I remember one time a pirate interceptor ran from my mining barge in half structure. 

[Slayerik]

AFs are still pretty much worthless. Inties are a much better and more accessible T2 frigate choice for low SP characters. You'd still be better off in a random cruiser though than a T2 frigate for solo piracy. Much more effective for fewer SPs and with much less risk.

Thorax!!! :)

[Predator Irl]

I think everyone made valid points about the gap between noobs and vets and optimizing training plans etc. But at the same time, its the skill building, the grinding and the want to fly the next best ship that keeps us all playing for years, rather than months.

Sure its a pain in the ass for new players to not stand a chance in PVP against someone with 40mill more SP than them, but then again, why should they? Its not a pick up and play shooter like Halo or Quake. A noob versus a vet in battle with same SP's, there will only ever be one outcome. There is a lot about PVP and 0.0 as a whole that has to be learned to make it a level playing field, even before taking skill points into the equation. The same can be applied to other areas like trade, production etc.

Its a game of long term goals, targets and constant learning; not just skills but also learning the game. IMO, part of the fun is training for that special something and getting to that stage is all the more satisfying when you get there. I don't see the mad panic for new players to get into 0.0 space. The only real difference between being there and doing factional warfare, or other areas of Eve, is politics.

If you know all you want to do is PVP, then specialize in a ship asap, but if you want to really explore the game, try and dabble in as many areas as you can before specializing.

[Fordel]

The only AF worth a damn is the little Drone Carrier one, the Ishkur, and only if you have a hard on for drones.

[Amarr HM]

You mix a bunch of assault frigs with some good scimitar pilots and a few EAS, the result is a lethal little gate gang so you're all wrong I'm afraid.

[gryeyes]

 You keep editing the configuration of the "gate gang".  Replace AF with a mix of Inty,cruiser or frigates and it would be just as viable. AF do not excel at any given role. They are not fast they do dick for dps a couple can fit a "decent" tank while being completely worthless in any other way. Anything you would use one for can be done better by a frig,inty or cruiser. All the while requiring less SP and isk.

[Slayerik]

Just curious, how does any t1 frig do something better than a t2? Besides cost less....

Anyway, I always enjoyed AF's...not cause they were really good, but because they can be fun in groups.