EVE New Citizens Q&A

This game has been out so long.
Would it be worth it to buy a better trained character, instead of spending months training newbie skills?

As a newbie myself I'd say it depends what you want the character for, and whether you have enough game knowledge to know what to buy for a character that will satisfy your goals.

Buying characters is usually better for making alts for specific purposes without wasting time away from training your main, but if you really know what you want and would rather pay to save the time, then go for it.

Not looking to skip ahead, just want to be able to do stuff. Like exploring. Probably stick with a new toon and upgrade later if needed.

Keep in mind that skills go up to level 5! That means if you specialize, you can more quickly match people that have been playing since 2003.

More skill points means more diversity, so more wasted skill points for whatever ship the pilot is currently in.

Veterans have the advantage of knowing the game better, so even identically matched you may lose to out-of-game skill.

Veterans also tend to have deeper pockets. If you join a good corp, you may find yourself showered with free stuff.

You can explore in highsec with 2 weeks of skills or less, you won't be able to run the most difficult combat sites, but you can run radars (usually good ISK) and the lower combat sites(random with possibility for good ISK)

Racial Frigate 4 (and the scanning-bonused frigate), Drones 3, Astrometrics 3 or 4, Astrometric pinpointing, Astrometric rangefinding and Astrometric acquisition at 2 or 3. That will get you most highsec radars and most highsec mag sites. You'll probably need a combat-fit frig or destroyer for the lower level combat sites.

No, you won't be as fast as a 5 year veteran, but a lot of that is player experience not character skills.

p.s. the belief that "I can't do anything without skill X" is a huge trap, avoid it.

SP does not equal fun. I found this out a number of years ago when I fell into the 'I can't really do anything until I skill up for a few months' trap myself. If you are bored doing level 2 missions, suddenly piloting a battleship and doing level 4 missions isn't really any more fun (just more lucrative).

Having said that, if there is one thing you know you would really like to do and know you would have fun doing (from experience), it may be worth it. So for example, if you love shipping items around in the industrial ship you are given in the tutorial and desperately want to fly a freighter, it may be worth it to you (if you have the means in RL) to just buy the freighter pilot.

Generally speaking, no.

IF you have a mentor who's been playing eve for a long time, preferably a friend/relative IRL... - Maybe. IF yes, and you buy one with some suggestions from an experienced player you trust, - keep training your newbie/main character in core skills. Keep it moderately focused. With guidance, use the bought character to try different game styles/activities. If possible, watch a friend IRL conduct the same activities. Figure out from those experiences if those careers/game play styles are something you enjoy. Then train your main (newbie) toward those play styles/ships etc.

Otherwise, if learning by yourself, without close support, the learning experiences of your newb months will be much better than skipping ahead to a (possibly) poorly trained higher SP char that you've purchased without fully appreciating eve's intricacies & training paths.

You mention that the game has been out so long. Yet it's not necessarily the case that you're years behind everyone. A good number of people take breaks (and unsub for a while) too. Sometimes several Months, for others several years and then return.

There's four things to consider in regards to this:

1) buying a starter character with the core support skills in place can make full sense, generally training those is boring as fck and more of a "rite of passage" than anything else. You can still decide on your own direction, the character will effectively be blank and have no history so you can make your own. The whole "people who buy characters are by definition useless" is a bunch of horse manure. You'll save yourself a few weeks or months of boring training and won't have to bother with cap or fitting issues because of it. You'll STILL have to decide and train for your playstyle, "allowing" you to learn to walk before you can run.

2) buying a character with much more SP, a history and which can fly "cool stuff" right away generally won't help you too much unless you really know what you're doing (in which case you wouldn't have made this thread). It'll be capable of flying (and losing) ships you can't hope to understand or make use of just yet. Apart from that you're generally buying someone else's crap, with a ****** name, possibly a dodgy history and whatever other skeletons might be hiding in the closet.

3) buying a character means you're effectively "cheating" your way past the start which might affect your feeling of accomplishment later on. You might perhaps not like the name, its history or it just doesn't sit well with you that it wasn't yours right from the start. I've bought and sold several characters over the years and to me it just feels "wrong" to buy a character and use it as a main (I've done it and generally I'll get rid of it a few months later, just doesn't feel right). As an alt with a very specific goal it can make sense but for a main I'd rather do it "right". You mileage may vary ofcourse.

4) EVE isn't about skill points or big ships, it's about what you know. So you having this cool 50 mil SP character will be just as useless as you having your own 1 mil SP character because your capabilities are limited by your knowledge. SP just gives you more options, not more "power".



Overall, if you plan to play this game for a long time, I'd say to create your own character and enjoy the journey rather than trying to "cheat" and rush to the end game (which doesn't exist btw, not in EVE).

It would be worth it if you don't mind having to stick with that character name. Also you can only trade characters from one account to another with money or two plex for isk.

You mean "character" instead of "account". Buying/Selling accounts is a BIG NO NO. Buying/Selling Characters is perfectly fine, though.

On the other hand, why anyone would want a character with a face he didn't sculpt and a name he didn't name is beyond me, SP be damned.

See, I like to have a certain connection with the character I'm playing (in pretty much any game). I'm strange like that.