EVE New Citizens Q&A

Where have I heard that age before...

Listen, I think it's great you think that you know enough about ship PvP to lecture me about it while simultaneously boasting your humility about how bad you are at it. It's what this forum is all about. You might want to swing by the Warfare & Tactics board though, because I brought up this very idea (~1M SP with Meta 1 Frigates) and was told on no uncertain terms that I was doomed to failure.*

If you don't like my thoughts about PvP go argue with the dozen or so people who automatically assumed anybody headed out to lowsec has the ISK and SP to start throwing fully T2 fits on the bonfire. They aren't quite as bullish as you about the ability of newbro pilots to make spaceships explode.

*Spoiler: They're right.

Just go Perception - Intelligence as a new player.

and find out what you like about this game, in my case it was something completely different than had expected.

and when you covered the basics start making specified trainings plans, the plan above is however extremely useful for a second character

I did not say that there was not a whole bunch of people that agree with you. What I said was that there are people that have proven you to be wrong. If you want to puss out and cry that it's hard so you won't even try then don't. I'm not saying that it's not challenging but this whole game is challenging. Go into low sec in a full faction and deadspace fit T3 and you'll still find a difficult time.

You seem to be living in some fantasy that this is some even up PvP game like other MMOs when it's not. In order to engage someone in this game you either have to catch them off guard (in which case it wont' be a challenge) or they have enough fire power or friends available that they think that they have a decent chance of winning. So you are not going to find any even up 1 v 1 or 3 v 3 etc... fights in low sec and in most cases not null either. If you want that stay in high sec and just duel other players with close the the same skill points and make rules about the ship and fittings.

However my point remains that you can be a successful PvPer with low skill points but you can not be a successful PvPer with low experience. i.e. a good PvPer can be successful on a low skill point alt but a ****** PvPer can not be successful on an all level 5 character.

Before you ask I define success in PvP in this game the way that I believe to be the default which is isk destroyed versus isk lost ratio. I don't have a good one myself but I'm told that you don't get a good ratio by rolling around low sec solo in T2 or T3 ship that are expensively fit. You get that ratio high by rolling around low sec in cheap ships, with friends near by looking for the guy running around in expensive ships solo. After all if your ship costs 30 times what the other's guys does he only has to beat you once out of 29 tries to have a better ratio than you do.

The other fact still remains that if you loose 30 cheap ships you'll gain 30 times the experience than what you like would have gotten loosing one expensive ship.

So if you want to sit with your thumb up your butt until you have high skill points and then only PvP when you can afford to loose expensive ships then go ahead. However that does not change the fact that the player that isn't afraid to go out and loose a lot of cheap ships while learning the game will wind up a much better PvPer than you. This is just fact that you really can't argue against.

I'm not so sure that would have been considered abuse or a bug by the earlier version of CCP. I think what happened is that they took on investors and investors like to find places to squeeze more money out of what they are investing in so they started looking and saw a chance for extra income or at the very least started looking at ghost training as lost income.

Or MAYBE, just MAAAAAYBEEEEEeeee they realized that letting people use a service without paying for it makes NO ******* SENSE! Now THAT would be TOTALLY silly to assume, right?

That's probably a big source of the difference. Your definition is "Join CODE. / get on a Titan KM and be set for life." Mine is... not as easy to do.

On the bright side, I've already become a PVP master apparently. According to my killboard I've got an ISK efficiency over 75%.

You're right. They could off-set the cost of ghost training by raising the price on players who are paying to play, but I don't think that's a better business model than simply requiring players to subscribe in order to keep their character training active.

If your argument is that ghost trainng was a good mechanic because it allowed players to get by long skills on the cheap and that caused better player retention stats, I can't argue with that because it would be difficult to evidence that claim one way or the others.

All I am pointing out is that ghost training does have a cost associated with it and that cost is passed on to we, the paying consumers, one way or the other. There is no such thing as a free lunch.

I understand that argument, I just think it's a free rider problem that had to go regardless. As I said, that cost could be otherwise dispersed to the paying customer base, but I assume CCP weighed the option of a higher subscription cost and ghost training vs. no ghost training and keeping subscription model as-is, and went with the latter.

What drugs are you on?

I'll tell you how the mass majority of people would handle this nowadays!

"Oh hey my sub's running out, gotta slap in battlecruiser V for free!"

It's only a small part of people who suffer through their lifes jiggling at numbers for unrealistic and completely useless efficiencies.

The great thing about EvE, is that there are plenty of paths to take. But consider this: Incursions were only PART of the whole picture, if you read into the SP you should know the following and how it doesn't simply apply to ONLY incursions:

PROS
1- You will have core-skills maxed out or at least to Level IV - should have them maxed anyway for ANY play style.
2- You will have a Cruiser ship skill maxed, opening the door for Recon, HAC, HIC, Logistics, and T3 cruisers -(SP that will transfer to all race-ships) not a bad deal.
3- You won't be flying ships with abysmal Skillpoints for them, like so many new players do, giving you the edge over other new players. You will be as efficient in cruiser-use (SP wise) as someone with 50 million more SP than you.
4- Income is slight risk, decent yield - not very discouraging for a new player who doesn't want to lose the first ship he pours isk into, if efficiency is his/her thing. I get it, some people like flying a ship in pvp with abysmal SP in the first month of playing- but others won't. I think he latter will last longer in EvE and be less frustrated with the game.
5- Having knowledge in the logistics play style makes you more valuable to any corporation/alliance.
6- You will already get a feel for the player base and what it means to be grouped in a decently-sized fleet. You will learn role-responsibility and interact with other players. You will learn common FC terms, at least... in theory. You will also learn to broadcast properly....in theory.
7- You don't have to do incursions off of this skillpoints path, and you will be able to rearrange the order of these skillpoints listed to better suit your play style.
8- Incursions is isk. Isk is sustained PvP. Sustained PvP makes EvE fun.
9- Even if you don't incursion, some cruisers are utilized for DED sites which can grant a hefty amount of isk. Slightly higher risk, but similar - if not more - income. These sites, however, are not as consistent with income as incursions are.
10- You will get more versatility out of this path than training into Frigs, BCs, or Battleships.

CONS
1- Incursions are redundant and boring. At least to me they are, It's not pvp.
2- Some known fleets require RIDICULOUS mods on their suggested fits that cost ten times the amount of t2 mods for only a slight boost in effectiveness, in my opinion it only offers a slight buffer for when derping is rampant that day.
3- You might learn to hull-tank in a shield incursion depending on what fleet you're running with. Not a fun time.
4- Unnecessarily overbearing FCs, depending on what group you run with.
5- New players will want to spend billions of isk as soon as they get it.
6- You will see what not to do at least a few times, arguably can be placed in the PROS list above.
7- Waiting for core skills to train first really makes you useless during that time, but in the end you will have 0 trouble fitting any ships, and your modules will run at maximum efficiency, meaning you will only need to train ship skills or specific weapon/drone platforms. If you jump into a ship first without these trained, you will find it highly ineffective.