EVE New Citizens Q&A

If I was in your position, I'd start applying to corps, like Brave Newbies or the venerable EVE University and their PvP division.

Faction warfare can also be interesting, and corps like FWeddit come to mind.

http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Educational_organizations

What to do next covers pretty much everything you can do in Eve, it all depends on your preferences.

Mission running while lucrative gets repetitive and boring after a while, miners are at the bottom of the foodchain, industry and trade can be extremely lucrative, but it takes a certain mindset to be successful at it.

PvP is something I think everybody should try for at least a month, it can be both challenging and fun, even if you don't enjoy it and decide to something else, you'll learn some valuable lessons about avoidance of it and game mechanics. Brave Newbies or Red vs Blue would probably be a good way to dip your toes into it on a small budget.

I second this.

Noobs eye view...

What should I do?

What do you want?

Distinguish wants from needs. (Hint: in EVE everything is a want until you make it a need. Making something a need through suspension of disbelief makes the game more immersive and evocative, but don't forget that you did that or why.)

Distinguishing wants and needs requires that you answer the question:

Who am I (in EVE)?

Why am I here?

You can do this explicitly, or implicitly. I recommend explicitly since implicitly usually means that the answers will be circumstantially dictated, often by other players. You might not like those answers.

To really answer all this you will either have to generate a narrative (story line) or choose to participate in an already existing narrative. This results in all your individual actions and transactions (such as the inclusive list in the post above this) being contextualized and so having self-generated or shared meaning, including 'fun', purpose, etc. This can take the form of a 'goal', a series of 'goals', an overarching vision or just a story form you like. Often you will need an 'enemy/antagonist'. Take some time in determining who they are and why, if you decide on that form. The missions give you a fixed 'enemy'. Less opportunity for narrative than player interaction. Some people may like that, for whatever reasons. Same with having ISK as the context for your game. Remember that such enmity in the context of something like EVE is actually a collaborative effort. You are the protagonist of your own story. You then have a dance between immersing in the story and remembering that you are authoring, or attemtping to author the story.

Maybe research 'monomyth' or 'The Hero With a Thousand Faces' for tips. You can find some basic heroic story structures if you look up those things. Application can range from the very humble to the flagrantly grandiose in EVE.

The only narrative I would steer away from is that of victim, in which you confuse wants and needs and fail to recognize that you are fully in control of your own narrative, within the structure of the EVErse. Some people may like this narrative, but it usually results in the game sucking for them, though it may contribute greatly to some other player's narrative. Usually you can recognize the victim narrative as someone blaming someone else for the quality of their game experience, coupled with no sense of their own agency in that matter or ability to do anything about it. Rage, tears, etc. Unless you are playing in order to have a place to be victimized, enraged and have other people relish your suffering and tears, dont do that narrative. This is distinct from narratives in which you have been wronged or are oppressed and actively participate in that, righting the wrong, etc.

I have made this a very explicit description. Making it explicit in this way is just un-fun for some people who may just want to play a game wherein the narrative is given to them in some way, or really want to ignore their own participation in the generation of narrative for whatever reason. I don't think EVE is the best game for people with those interests.

Thank you two, as well as everyone else for your helpful guidance.

I have a inkling of where I want my characters narrative to take me, now its just a matter of getting there.

I will happily be your mining slave. I will need... Let's see... Fitted ships, probably including an Orca, once i can fly it. Definitely need protection, since I am also just a slave, i.e. property and you can't really expect me to protect myself. I will definitely need more or less constant supervision and direction. "Master, would you prefer that I now mine this Veldspar asteroid or that one?" You can hardly expect me to make such difficult determinations on my own, can you? I won't take any of the ore that I mine... Cuz again... Slave and all. You have to feed and clothe slaves, so the ships are a must. Once you have given me the ships you will need to protect your own interests, since I will not. As a slave if I find that you do not protect your property (me, right?) of course I simply won't work, until I deem it safe or see that you are making some effort to do so. Of course you could attempt to force me to work, though given that i also happen to be an immortal slave that feels no pain, and cant be threatened it would be interesting to see how that would work. I am willing to give it a shot though. Since I am not actually an individual, but just another thing, I will need to be in your corp, so when I am war decced you are war decced. You can't war dec a thing after all...

True I might actually hunt for gankers... And be generally offensive in your name... That can happen in the whole property-human confusion.

My bio will probably read:

SLAVE. PROPERTY OF MALLAK AZARIA. (CORP NAME) ALL TRESSPASSERS WILL BE RELENTLESSLY PROSECUTED.

I think I will start by tooling around looking for NO Agents and harassing them. After that, before leaving high sec in my enslaved mining efforts I am likely to see if I can get some help from any BU's I can find. After that I might do an assessment of the places most dangerous to you to take your mining ships... Of course, since you or your representatives, foremen and such, will have to always be present when I am mining you could direct me to locations of your choosing. I might get lost though.

Oh... Of course I am an untrained slave. I have some basic mining and am willing to train up some more, but as a slave and all that might go kinda slowly.

I think this would be good fun. I am just attempting to start my EVE career and i think Slave would really fill out my long term resume. Please get back to me if you are interested.

I don't think so, though I understand the confusion. I think it may arise from the term 'mining slave.'

Indentured servitude implies debt. There is no debt here. I don't need or want anything you own or can give me, the reality or illusion of which is the basis for indentured servitude. Presumably you have some unmet need regarding mining, as well as whatever else might be involved for you. That is a common condition for enslavement.

There is always a cost associated with slavery, unless you plan on your slave dying from thirst, hunger, or elements within 3 days or so, which I would consider more of a condition of imprisonment, or perhaps the sort of Greek model of execution we see in Antigone. EVE is difficult because of course I am an immortal and judging by the lack of fast food joints surrounding popular gates, apparently I do not eat. I was then just trying to map the equivalent of such demands associated with slavery into the context of a 'mining slave' in EVE. I apparently I don't do so well in the short term when exposed to EVE's version of vacuum, for instance.

Another way I could have gone is to suggest that you pay my monthly sub, but that seems extravagant. So, short of you having to pay my sub as a proxy for the subsistence requirement, I translated to the 'needs' associated with the activity set you suggested, and I feel I was quite generous. As a slave I will own nothing, except perhaps my pod and basic clone. This would mean, taken seriously, that if you wanted to have me train a skill you would need to buy the skill book, etc. If you did not want me to lose that skill, you would need to upgrade my clone. I tacitly offere to handle those requirements. I merely suggested ships, and that it then might be wise for you to protect your investment, which at that point also includes me to some extent, though of course the ships, ore, etc. are more important. Of course such protection and direction would be up to you, but I would likely not serve my purpose very well, for very long in the absence of those.

The real difficulty is the immortality bit. Since you can't actually force me to do anything you will have to get creative about the terms of my enslavement. I am wired by the game structure to be a stoic slave as we see in the case of Epictetus.

If for instance, you were to insist that I provide my own ships, you are then thinking of some sort of business venture, in which I make an investment. With what? As a slave I own nothing. Slavery as an institution in the ancient and modern world are quite different. In the ancient world your status as a slave was considered fate, and was not generally considered a statement having anything at all to do with your 'humanity'', though there are some notable exceptions. Mostly this had to do with 'fortunes' of war, such as we see in the failed Sicilian campaign by the Athenians. The primary distinction had to do with citizenship, not humanity. Slavery in the modern world became something else altogether.

It would be hard to emulate the ancient version, though possible maybe. Probably easier at the level of factions who have territorial 'subsistence needs' with which they are identified. The modern version is 'easier' to emulate at the level of individual, since it reduces the human being to an object, having market value. Usually a whole host of other attributions are made, presumably to justify the action, though probably believed.

The slavery meme is already included in the game in the Amarr isn't it? Or maybe... You know, a narrative where noobies join and everything, including purpose is provided for them by some larger more established entity, say an individual or even a coalition, in a way that requires investment from the entity to maintain and serves its interests. It would be possible to build all sorts of rhetoric surrounding such an exchange so the people involved did not realize their enslavement, I suppose, and maybe even fought to keep it that way. Personally I think it would be more fun to just go around branded as slave, generating much enjoyable player content.

You could probably enslave a PvP pilot to protect your enslaved mining investment, or hire a foreman if you can't be bothered to do it yourself. More risk and investment of course. Maybe greater return, maybe not.

You said 'miming slave.' I thought, 'what would be needed for that'? I like my proposal and think it would be great fun for everyone involved. I doubt it would be very profitable from an ISK point of view. It might be highly profitable from the standpoint of 'fun'. Certainly for me, anything I might manage to do in EVE I will have started as a lowly slave. Can't beat that for narrative really. Clearly you have a different model in mind. Perhaps you could share your alternative model for how this would work? I am quite serious about the offer, btw, though the details need to be made clear. I should say, I am likely to be a troublesome slave. Might be better to get someone who is not aware of having chosen their condition all in all. I am not trying to argue with you about this. i am taking you up on your offer. Let me know.

Cocane. It's a helluva drug...

back to the topic at hand...


Is it possible, or rather, feasible to play a "Robbin Hood" type character?

i.e Pirate-ing / taking from the selfish richer players and using it to help out new players?

Or would it be too difficult to pirate the big boys right up front?

Thanks, this is pretty much exactly what I had in mind!

and worry not, I shan't sympathize with the targets.