EVE New Citizens Q&A

This is my third trial of Eve Online, and I have to share the one thing that has stopped me in my tracks every time, the game breaking character advancement system that seems to turn the whole game into an illusion. One of this games major ideas - visions - that players put most of their time into is that of the whole character advancement system, where as you put time into the game you will become better, more capable, and more and more viable. However, in Eve Online, this is not a reality, and is nothing but an illusion in the game, where the player is put in a cage with a prison sentence from the start.

lets go to another Dimension to view what I see in Eve from another angle, in the World of Warcraft. Lets say in place of World of Warcraft's current leveling system, you now gain 1 Level each day on your main character, this is on a preset timer, that has no player involvement, after 84 days, you would reach level 85. You are limited to only the quests, abilities, skills, professions up to the level that you are currently on, and regardless if you take part in any of that, or decide to not even play for that day, week, or month, you will continue leveling up, with everything you've done the day before being completely pointless to your characters advancement. As far as content goes, all the quests and professions serve the purpose of earning gold, but gold earned from such things, exponentially increases by level. Today you can make 1 gold per quest, and in a week you can make 10 gold per quest, and two weeks you can make 100 gold per quest, but you don't have to play today, and you don't have to play next week. You don't even have to play this month, you can wait a month without playing and make 1000 gold a quest, why does the level where you only earn 1 gold, or 10 gold even exist in the game? The game starts you out in a cage with a long prison sentence to give you the illusion of "character advancement".

There isn't much of anything to do in this prison, If I want to be free and play in the world, I might as well go afk and wait out my prison sentence, put absolutely no time into the game until its day 84, and iv paid for 3 months of subscription time, then I can play the real game. This is purely a content related review you could say, and I know this is a social game with a vision that I would love to support, but I cannot look past this, what I see as a completely game-breaking, undesirable, pointless system.

It has nothing to do with any complex learning curve or any kind of grind at all, this games character advancement is a Prison, where every new player starts with a very long sentence. This is what keeps players from playing, they think there is a grind, they think it takes a lot of time to play, but there actually is no grind at all but an illusion set up by this prison character advancement system.

Eve has no Grind
Eve is not Hard
Its just an Illusion and is not nearly as vast and complex as you have been tricked to think it is.

I came back to Eve Twice because it is the vision of Eve that is Great, its what Eve wants to be that I would love to support, I say this later in the post... now, can you tell me why exactly you stopped reading there so I tear you apart for thinking that I'm comparing anything to World of Warcraft with that paragraph? It is simply a metaphor to attempt to show others what I see.

Like any other game, EVE is what YOU make of it. It always has been, and that doesn't appear to be changing any time soon.

Unlike the "theme park" style MMO's, like the one you mentioned and others that came before it and after, I am not bound to a specific role or task for my entire game life. My character has the ability to be whatever I want, perform any task I want, go anywhere I want. The only thing that stops me is that my character may not have the capability to do so in an effective manner, which is constrained by the skill system, but that skill system does not stop me from making the attempt. if I want to take my character to a null-sec station, I can attempt to do so, but I will most likely have player-created barriers in my way to attempt to stop me, but I'm not absolutely prevented from making the trip (except my own common sense.) In your mentioned WoW, to take a level 1 character to, let's say, Icecrown Citadel, there are a huge number of artificial, insurmountable barriers in my way, rendering that attempt absolutely impossible. In EVE, every barrier that could be placed in my way is avoidable, if I have sufficient personal skill, ISK or reputation to get past it. In WOW and other games like it, no amount of personal skill, gold or reputation is going to permit me to be able to travel anywhere in the game world I so desire.

I kind of agree.

It´s just that some people seem to like it. personally I also never understood that "months of subscription paid" should determine your possibilities and flexibility. I've also never seen a game with so many people doing nothing and just waiting for their skillqueues to finish. Where the self-entitlement of veteran players (and the dependency on them to fly supercaps) was so strong.

Yes EVE is more complex than other games - but it's not so much difficulty, there's just a lot to know and learn. And to those who say in-game experience is more important than SP: well give everyone max SP and see how much difference it really makes?! And there's not a lot of veterans that biomass their characters because they know that their experience will make up for everything.

Oh well ...

To get past ur prison sentence sell timecodes then buy a char. You can also scam and suicide gank with very low skills . In 24-25 days can be in a SB doing FW mission at like 100mil /h. Go low-sec in rifters and pvp.

I'll use your words.
You can see outside that "cage" of yours. Thats the point of a trial.....

Oh btw it looks like you are really inside a "cage", but the door of the "cage" is unlocked, you just refuse to step outside. You like to be in a "cage", you just want a "cage" that grows faster than you. Thats how you used to play in all those other games. Well welcome to a sandbox game. The "cage" here never grows. You have to open the door and go outside. Noone will open the door for you, not even the game.

The idea was to encourage players to bend together and specialise in different fields. Sadly the stacking penalties and respawns in NPC sites moved the game even more to cooky-cutter-setups then it used to be.



That's indeed a shame. It speaks more against those players then against the game, tho.



You mean players that did not just sit there to wait for skills to finish training?



Before the sechit nerf a mate and I started new chars. After 2 days of skilling we mounted rifters went into Basgerin. Three days later we where at -5 each. Some other dudes made a nice vid where they went into Providence with 3 day chars. They even managed to get an Orca into structure.

Quite in contrast to those SP-grind-MMOs you can actually be a bad player in EVE. You can fail to build an outpost. You can fail to kick some folk out of a region. You can fail to bait a scammer. You can lose you first BS in a mission. You can fail to lead your fleet to victory. You can fail to end an incursion before it's due. You can fail to understand falloff. You can fail to get sick rich. You can fail to be better of when a corp splits up.

It's not like you will be late to get your Uber-Set-of-Pwnage or to have your mount 2 weeks after your mates. You can actually fail to achieve anything in EVE. That's what gives winning a meaning.

in less then 2 weeks you can
be flying a destroyer in PVP or PVE ( frigs included)
become a miner and start training toward barges
be able to quickly run lvl 1 missions and start training for lvl 2 missions
become a market warrior
join a corp/alliance to help you do what you want to do.
sounds like you view eve as having an "end game" which it doesnt.

in eve what do you want to do? now train for it and do it. i wanted to have lots of isk, and be able to lose ships without fear, i never wanted to fly cap ships but wanted to be able to pvp, so, i do trading and run missions then i can pvp and lose some ships.

For the answer to this, we will use the What to do in EVE Online reference. Open it up and read along with me.

The items on that chart you cannot do within 30 days due to skill restrictions are:

• T2/T3/capital/drug manufacture
• Datacore farming from more than one agent
• Incursions PvE combat in other than Scout sites
• Harvesting ice in an exhumer

Everything else can be done by a month-old character in some form or another, and may require some friends to help out. You will not be able to fly battleships or most T2 craft. I think 30 days is enough to get into a covops frigate if you have a plan.

As has been said before, the only "prison" here is your own mind. EVE Online is a thinking game. You have to look at what opportunities are available to you and take action on them yourself.

If a comparison is to be made with those 'other' MMORPG's (not including name so post is fully read), my experiences with one of those 'other' MMORPG (not including name to save being branded a certain name in certain circles) is spend 4 weeks hard playing and grinding, getting to max level XX, hitting a brick wall (or getting locked into a cage to match the OP's terminology) and finding nothing new or interesting to do. Sure, expansions are released every 6 months or so.. but the conent is limiting, because the content is game-based. Eve content is mostly player-based. I only have to go into Jita and read some local spam and see new and interesting ways people have of ripping other players of, or being out mining and finding another way players have twisted the rules to legally gank my mining craft.

Sure, apart from buying a character with the skills set I am looking to attain, I cannot speed my skill training any faster than the next player (learning implants asside), but I feel that levels the playing field more than allowing players to grind 24 hours a day and 'Max a character to 80 in 40 hours', afterall, where is the fun in that?


- Edit to include the following -


Another comparision between the two is how much focus is put on to levelling in those 'other' games. I spent so much time worrying about what level I was, and where everyone else in my guild was at, and that I was not up to their same 'level' and couldn't contribute, that it made the whole focus about the game 'Your Level'.

Being a level 5 noob, you would have no hope against a level 80 vet, who could be completly naked and kill you just by tossing their head to the side. In EVE, After over 2 years, I can still be killed by a 2 month old pilot who uses his smarts or my stupidity to get the upper hand.