EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm also very new so I could be way off on my two responses below (and I'm sure people will be here soon to smack me if so), but:

1) The tutorials have gotten much better (so I hear). I did them and the Sisters of EVE epic arc (50 or so missions). If you do those and read here, then you'll have all you need to know to dip your toe into the water. The next step would be to find a newb-friendly corp that will introduce you to the kind of gameplay you want to do. Eve-U and Red vs Blue are good starting corps, but there are many others out there as well.

2) It seems CCP is still regularly releasing new/updated content or changes to the game. I think this is a great time for new players, as it seems a lot of long-requested changes have either just dropped or will come soon. The best way to find out is to grab yourself a 21-day trial from a buddy invite (there's a forum here where good deals are offered) and play. You can always stop playing if/when you don't like it anymore :)

1. Learning curve can be high, however EVE has some great assets for learning and a *generally* supportive playerbase.

2. There's nothing more exciting than being a new player with less than half the Skill Points of your opponent blowing up his expensive ship in your cheap t1 ship. People will say that doesn't happen, but it really does, quite often. Don't worry what other people think about the games direction, and enjoy yourself, would be my advice.

As always, I highly encourage any new player to spend some time finding out what YOU enjoy doing in the game. Once you know what you like, find a corporation with like minded individuals who can help guide you down that path.

Enjoy, and fly dangerous!

This.

As an example, I fought and lost twice in a row against a Navy Slicer pilot today, we got to talking and ended up teaming up and chasing people up and down my neck of the woods for a while until my buddies showed up and we all roamed together for a while.

Shooting each other is a loving embrace in EVE.

Go love people. Hard.




Also, Shah killed me, now he gives me advice and I laugh at his Autocannon Brutix .

Still funny how you both showed up in a certain channel


And Shah...what...no monologue about skills going only to level 5 etc. etc. etc.

I'm disappointed in you

http://i.imgur.com/M1uCw.gif (sfw)


http://i.imgur.com/1uE3QvK.gif (sfw)


No remark was made about skills in the OP... but since it has been requested...



How does the skillpoint system work?

- All skills cap at level 5. No matter how many years you have played the game, you cannot exceed that limit. And lower tier skills (ex. [Racial] Frigate) are very quick to train relative to more advanced skills.


- (*this is the important one*) Only a limited number of skills affect any one ship, module, weapon system, and specialty at any given time.

Ex1: You are a newbie facing someone with about 20 million SP... but how much of that overall SP is actually combat related? He/she could be a HUGE industrial player with limited combat skills.
Ex2: A veteran player has just trained up the skill Large Hybrid Turret to level 5. That skill in no way affects the skill Small Hybrid Turret and thus the veteran will be no better or worse than before at the frigate level.


- Getting a skill from level 4 to level 5 only adds on an extra 2% here, 5% there (exceptions apply). If you simply train up all the skills within a specialty to level 4 (which takes ~20% of the amount of time it takes to get those skills to level 5), you will find yourself flying at about **80 to 90%** of the effectiveness of a multi-year veteran with those same skills in that specific specialty at level 5.


- Getting a skill to level 5 is supposed to be a painful train. Many players (yes, even veteran ones) opt to avoid doing it and instead train up other skills to level 4 (again, because it's faster).

Example: I personally have the T2 weapon specializations at level 4. That puts me at a 2% disadvantage in damage against someone who has the same skill(s) at level 5 (assuming we are both using the same ship with the same fit)


- Ships and weapons have been balanced against one another.

Example: A battleship can potentially instapop a frigate... but the frigate can fly very fast, making it difficult for the battleship's weapons to track, especially at very close range... then again, the battleship can deploy drones to deal with the frigate... and the frigate can shoot the drones down... however the battleship might have a Large Energy Neutralizer fitted to nuke the frigate's capacitor power every 24 seconds... in which case the frigate could use a Small Nosferatu that sucks out capacitor from the battleship every 3 seconds... etc. etc.


- High tech equipment (ex. T2, Faction, Officer, etc) will not give a player "I WIN" abilities. It simply gives a player a linear edge at an exponentially higher cost.

Ex1: A basic T1 Adaptive Armor Plating gives ~10% omni-resistance to damage for only ~100,000 ISK... a T2 Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~15% omni-resistance to damage for ~1,000,000 ISK... a "deadpsace" Armor Adaptive Plating gives ~19% omni-resistance to damage for ~20,000,000 ISK.

Ex2: A group of three or four T1-fit frigates that cost about 500 thousand to 1 million ISK CAN kill a faction frigate worth about 50 to 100 million ISK... provided they are using the right mods in the right configuration and know what they are doing.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/39793460/ (Condors caught me and ground me down... I only had time to kill one of them)
https://zkillboard.com/kill/38239838/ (all the Breechers in this KM were T1 fit... I could only kill two of them before being nuked)


What does this all mean?

- Having more skillpoints is not the "end all, be all" point of the game and there is more to most activities than "get enough skillpoints, open window, click, press F1- F9."
There are a plethora of factors that can decide success or failure and many of them are purely abstract in nature (see: planning, meta-gaming, friends, short-term allies, making deals, psychological warfare, etc).

- part of the idea behind the current SP system is that you can't "powergrind" to success. You MUST learn how to utilize what you have first... which requires you to use your head and be creative. This helps you later on when you can finally use "better" ships/equipment... because you have hopefully familiarized yourself with the underlying mechanics that most Tech 1 ships/equipment utilize.
Example: you may not be able to pilot that sexy Interceptor right away... but that doesn't mean you can't slap together a super fast frigate that does something similar.

- once you have your "universal" core and support skills near or at maximum (which takes about 2 or 3 months of mostly focused training) the gap between you and an older player begins to narrow quite significantly. You can find these skills in the "Engineering" section of your character skillsheet.

- Just because you are limited in what you can do (as a newbie) it does not mean that your contribution to a team is meaningless and/or without weight.
Being a "tackler" or cheapo Ewar-support in PvP might indeed be suicide if you have limited skills and knowledge... but even half-success can mean the difference between catching or losing a target... everyone escaping a bad situation or dying in a fire.

No. Not that.

Band together with your contemporaries. Kill vets, then befriend them and learn from them so you can love them harderer.

Fun almost...

Thats what irks me about EvE too. Most MMOs design to make sure many customers can use it. EvE doesn't but they blame the gameplay style on EvE on lower subs rather than the possibility that most people don't have "THE hardware" to run it. The only reason I'm able to play at all after they removed the dual version of EvE which consisted of a low GFX version and a high GFX version (which is what caused me to quit the first time), is that I got a card which could bump gameplay up from 20 FPS in SC2 to 55 FPS. And EvE still has to be set all to minimum.

He did ask about catching up, which is usually enough for you

Depends on what you wnat to build.

It can range from weeks up till months....


And you have to love spreadsheets...As in really love them so much you want to marry Excel if it would be possible.