Considering getting into EVE

[sinij]

I'm in need of new PvP mmog and heard nothing but good things about eve. I want to get into it but somewhat set back by skill point gain system that will leave me forever behing and unable to catch up to established players. So question is, should I buy old EVE account and start with it and if so what am I looking at to not a) mess it up b) have low-profile start

[Yegolev]

The problem with buying an EVE account is that you, yourself, won't have the PVP skill to succeed.  Many games are pretty brainless, but a hidden skill in EVE is Player Skill.  There is much more to being a good PVPer in EVE than just equipping purple items; there's more to being a good anything in EVE than just skill point totals, too.  Once you spend about four hours in the tutorial you'll see what I mean.  I would suggest at least trying it out as a new pilot until you get your head on straight, at which point you can either buy an account or roll up a new pilot and buy some ISK, or stick with the one you have.

There is a CCP-supported mechanism for ISK buying, so you can easily buy enough to cover losses, and you can do so with actual backing from the company.  They will go to bat for you if you are scammed, as long as you use the official route.

[Roac]

Because of the way the skill system works, it's true that you'll never catch up to someone who's a month older than you.  However, the way it works also means that people who specialize in skills see diminishing returns on their investment, so that the more they invest in, say, Missiles, the less actual gain they see from it.  For example, to get the best in a particular skill, the "level 5" tier, you may need to invest 10, 20, or even 30 days (starting from 4), while it may only take 1-3 days to get up to lv4.  That one level of difference may only net a 2-5% bonus.  It's nice to have, but won't break your PvP template.  It is a bit of a downside that there are multiple such bonuses, so you'll have 2-5% penalties all over.  You can also make up the difference with equipment if you like, although that means risking more money in combat.

You can go ahead and figure it will take you 3-4 months to get to a point where your PvP character (assuming you focus on those skills) is well established in terms of skills and bankroll.  Having said that, there are viable roles for anyone in group PvP even if only a week or two old.  There is something called a "tackler", which is a small, cheap electronic warfare (EW) platform, used to effectively lock down larger ships so that friendlies with more firepower can deal with them.  These ships are generally considered expendable, die frequently, but are exceptionally cheap and require few skills (regarding cost:  at 3 months, I can earn enough money to pull together a dozen such ships in under an hour easily).  More expensive ships tend to be more fun (IMO), but it doesn't mean you have to be excluded from combat.

[Merusk]

The other problem with buying accts is, any account with enough SP in it to be notable and viable right from the purchase (as in 9-months  or older) probably already has a rep to go with it.*  If it's a pvp-built char, you've probably just bought yourself a whole bunch of enemies.  They'll know you, but you won't know them until they destroy that nice expensive ship you don't know how to use. 


* Unless of course there exsists a group of folks buying accts, training up skills while never playing and selling chars as a way of making cash.  But they'd have to be selling a 9-month acct for at least $200 just to make $50. Doesn't seem profitable in the same vein as PLing accts in traditional MMOs.

[Yegolev]

If you join the corp as a tackler, F13 would have no problem keeping you in cheap frigates.  Assuming you were having trouble with cash-flow, that is.  I have a bit of an ulterior motive, however, in that having more combat pilots in F13 means more people for me to nag into flying cover for my mining barge.

The thing that is the most fun, to me, is the F13 crew.  Even mining ops are more fun when we are all slap-happy from lack of sleep.

[dwindlehop]

I would like to add that getting into some of the smaller T2 pvp ships is pretty fast if you don't bother going up the T1 tech tree first (i.e. you sell game cards for isk). Your damage will not be good, but a variety of cloaky, skirmishy, tacklery, bubbly, interceptory options are possible. Also debuff roles are easy to drop into, as a Blackbird or Merlin is reasonably effective at electronic warfare. As long as you have a gang member or three you can be extremely effective.

Solo pvp, though, you are at the mercy of the high SP chars.

[dwindlehop]

If you do decide to buy an account, I'd personally look for a damage dealer build. Something like Battleship IV or V and Large <Foozle> Specialization IV or V. Battleships are more forgiving than other PvP ships, and having tech 2 large guns means you will do good damage in any ship. Plus they are fairly insurable. A HAC, in comparison, requires more player skill to fit and fly (and greater character skill). And you can't help but risk a lot of isk when you fly it.

But what you want to look out for depends on what kind of char you want to play. I.e. long range versus short range, dps versus EW, speed versus hp, etc.

[Krakrok]

EVE pvp pretty much sucks IMHO. You're better off playing Planetside.

[Viin]

EVE pvp pretty much sucks IMHO. You're better off playing Planetside.

Different kind of PvP. I happen to enjoy both Planetside and EVE, but it's like playing laser tag and then playing Chess (with expensive pieces that you lose for good!).

[sinij]

It is given that I won't know a thing about EVE to start with, but this is my Nth mmog, so I don't need to spend time figuring out how to group or bother with 'kill ten rats'. The only reason I'm considering purchasing EVE account is not to be left behind when I'm ready to get into PvP. In two weeks when I learn EVE and ready to start polishing my PvP skills I want tol have an ability to PvP and not 'uphill both ways', in a month when I will become competetive I don't want to keep losing due to seniority damage modifiers.

So plan is - buy established account, preferably a crafter/merchant with money, skill point but no PvP rep. Is retraining possible, I don't plan mining or doing anything remotely grind-like. Fly newbie ship and learn the game, skip the grind and get into PvP guild and start killing.

Would you say this plan feasible or should I just get new account and backburner it for 2-3 month until it has enough skill points to PvP?

[sinij]

EVE pvp pretty much sucks IMHO. You're better off playing Planetside.

I'm considering Planetside... FPS always appealed to me, how skill-driven is PvP in it compared in CS in twitch/teamwork?

[Engels]

Depends on what sort of skills you mean. If you are in a 'serious' outift, aka guild, they all use teamspeak and have coordinated platoon-like manouvers and strategies. From a military strategy standpoint, it is in an entirely different league than CS, simply because leaders have to think about various battle field factors that aren't present in small maps like CS has.

That said, chaos reigns supreme in Planetside, and its actually fairly rare to see an empire working in coordinated fashion towards some goal. Mostly its high command levels screaming, 3 people actually obeying, and 80 people doing whatever gets them shot at the most.

[Krakrok]

In Planetside you can spend 99% of the time shooting at other people. In EVE you spend 99% of the time trying to nail someone down long enough to shoot at them. It's really tough to make someone fight you in EVE unless they outnumber you or think they outgun you. Territory gains in Planetside are near real time. Territory gains in EVE are day and month long snoozefests.

I guess I'm just done with warping around for 3 hours and never finding anyone to shoot at.

[Yegolev]

So plan is - buy established account, preferably a crafter/merchant with money, skill point but no PvP rep. Is retraining possible, I don't plan mining or doing anything remotely grind-like. Fly newbie ship and learn the game, skip the grind and get into PvP guild and start killing.

Would you say this plan feasible or should I just get new account and backburner it for 2-3 month until it has enough skill points to PvP?

No retraining, so buy a combat character and then buy ISK with cash via the time-card mechanism.  You can convert about $45US into 270 million ISK, if the going rate has not changed.

If you get an industrialist or merchant with six million sp, most of those sp will be in industrial or trade skills.  My pilot has over five million sp but can't shoot anything larger than small guns and a n00b missile, for example.  Other than that, good plan.  The best way to learn EVE PVP is to just do it.  I'd suggest finding a pirate corp, actually.

I'd hate you to drop real money on an account and find out that you don't like EVE PVP, though, so take Krakrok's comments into consideration.  Like it or not, it is undeniably more of a cat-and-mouse situation, except the mouse can log off to escape you.  Or have eleven of his buddies log/warp in on top of you.  Also, CCP is going to make combat even more defense-oriented in an upcoming patch with the intent of having encounters last more than a few seconds.  Personally, I just think it will give opponents more time to warp away, dock in a station, or consider logging out rather than being assploded.

[sinij]

Thanks for all advice, I think I will just pick up new box and go from there. If I decide that I like it I will look into posibility of buying account.

[Megrim]

There is a free 14 day trial.

* edit, because Megrim is a special child;

It can be found on google, or here.

[Leon]

If you're looking for a pirate corp that'll accept new people I can refer you to Sanguine Legion, I know some of the people and BI used to work together with them. Most of them started off at 60k SP when they formed.

If mining/manufacturing is your thing, then buying an industrial char *may* serve some use, but i'll be completely newbish for PvP, so if you want PvP you might as well buy a PvP char (eh, not too hot of an option, either they cost a lot or they come with a reputation), so scratch-building one may work. Alternatively, you can look into buying a char with learning skills trained up, which will save you about 1-2 months depending.

Planetside PvP and EVE PvP are totally different. In planetside you know who's your friend, who's your enemy. In EVE, no such thing. Anyone can be your friend, but they can also be your enemy depending on the situation. Losses are real investments which also means you rely a lot on teamwork. You can pretty much rambo it up on planetside, but if you try that on EVE, your wallet is going to shrink very fast.

I suppose if you compare planetside and EVE, planet side offers only the combat involved in the war (be it actual fighting or troop transport). EVE not only include that, but also requires a fully working logistical support for not only training, recruitment, and mining, but equipment/ship procurement through manufacturing and selling. Its just a different scale, which is why you might spend "99% looking for people to shoot" as opposed to planetside's "99% of the time spent shooting", only because in EVE the times you dont go around shooting are the most important. Although, you can easily spend 99% of the time in EVE shooting other people if you go piwate :D

But piracy is a double-edged sword. You can PvP as much as you want, so long as you have the means to. And oh, you'll get critisized a lot for being a griefer because you go around ruining people's day due to them not wanting to fight.

Anti-piracy works, and is definately one of the hardest career-paths, and you'll also need to know the 'spots' where the pirates hangout.

[Sparky]

You don't need uber skills to get into PVP.  A newbie character can serve well in vital tackling or electronic warfare roles while your higher skillled friends lay down the DPS.  As an added benefit you'll be in cheap ships so dying a lot while learning the ropes won't hurt at all.  Buying a premade character and flying battleships into combat is a great way to get poor very quickly.

However you could buy a few months old character with learning and a few other basic skills finished that'll skip you right over the most boring training shit - many people train these specifically for sale so reputation and whatnot shouldn't be an issue.  That should set you back well under a billion isk.  Don't buy an account because CCP will transfer it back to the original owner if asked so it's extremely easy to get scammed, however characters purchased for isk via www.eve-online.com's sell order forums are protected.  So sell timecards for isk then use that to buy a character if you want to keep everything above board and risk free.  www.shatteredcrystal.com is a CCP approved supplier of timecards but there're many others.   

[MahrinSkel]

There's a regular trade in template characters with basic skills, figure that the more developed they are, the more ISK they are going to cost you.  A Capital Ship pilot is worth many billions, a basic combat character with maxed Learning and some kind of Interceptors runs around 500M.  The lower end characters are generally created specifically to be sold off, they have no history because they never left their training base.

And the ISK for GTC trade is going great guns, prices have actually risen slightly (30d codes now sell for 110M instead of 100, 90d codes for 285-300M from 270M.

--Dave

[Chenghiz]

There's a regular trade in template characters with basic skills, figure that the more developed they are, the more ISK they are going to cost you.  A Capital Ship pilot is worth many billions, a basic combat character with maxed Learning and some kind of Interceptors runs around 500M.  The lower end characters are generally created specifically to be sold off, they have no history because they never left their training base.

Something about this just brought to mind a picture of rows upon rows of people in cryogenic pods with serial numbers tattooed into thier foreheads, waiting to be sold into slavery.