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EVE casual players!?
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Citizen Smif
Pator Tech School
Minmatar Republic
#1 - 2011-10-13 14:54:23 UTC
Hello,

Recently due to a change in my job I've found I can barely play the game for more than an hour or two and I've got to say - it really does change my experience of EVE! To be honest I'm finding the transition of having enough time to balance making ISK and PvP to barely having enough time for 1 fleet op extremely difficult. I don't understand how anybody plays this game casually? There's just too much to juggle at once!! Oops

Are there any casual EVE players out there? If so, what do you do? I've been RvBing for a while now but I'm consdering taking a bit of a change now.. Any recommendations for a casual combat pilot?

Thanks,

Smif
Weaselior
GoonWaffe
Goonswarm Federation
#2 - 2011-10-13 14:55:06 UTC
be stupendously rich

Head of the Goonswarm Economic Warfare Cabal Pubbie Management and Exploitation Division.
Jiska Ensa
Estrale Frontiers
#3 - 2011-10-13 15:06:15 UTC
Being rich helps, yes, becuase you'll want to be spending your sporadic eve time pew-pewing not making iskies.

It helps if you join a corp or alliance that is very active in the timezone that you are mostly available. Otherwise you'll find you log-in and have nothing to do 9 times out of 10.
Mr Epeen
It's All About Me
#4 - 2011-10-13 15:12:47 UTC
You could always just bite the bullet and train up your other two slots as data core alts.

In the end you have a passive income source that allows you to PVP with your main and not worry so much about getting your ships blown up. It's not a huge income, but better than nothing.

Mr Epeen Cool
Morganta
The Greater Goon
#5 - 2011-10-13 15:15:33 UTC
Cash + PLEX = time for casual play

can also be

sugar daddy = time for casual play
March rabbit
Aliastra
Gallente Federation
#6 - 2011-10-13 15:32:00 UTC
me is casual player. being from start of playing. Well, TBH i used to grind lvl4's for hours first 2 or 3 months....
But now, when i know how to make money and have good enough wallet i can spend my time in Eve to chatting....

The Mittani: "the inappropriate drunked joke"
Zoe Alarhun
The Proactive Reappropriation Corporation
#7 - 2011-10-13 15:36:02 UTC  |  Edited by: Zoe Alarhun
I spend very little time playing eve (about 4-6 hours a week in total, someitmes less). I do piracy. it's pretty easy to for me personally to balance isk and pew pew. I explore so I normally find something decent in a hour or so. The rest of the time I spend blowing things up. I mean I don't really fly T2 ships due to the cost but T1 frigs - battlecruisers are very capable and fulfill my needs nicely.

I suppose I'm also unusual in that I find just flying around space looking at the scenery very relaxing and I don't really get pissed off doing scanning since I enjoy doing it. Chatting in corp while flying around is half the fun.
Tetragammatron Prime
Pink Sockers
#8 - 2011-10-13 15:37:57 UTC
Looking at your killboard you fly t1 stuff and you have few monthly losses so I can't help but wonder how you struggle to make the isk to cover it. Your last months losses would be covered in less than 1 hour of doing lvl4 missions I think.
Mirime Nolwe
Mantra of Pain
#9 - 2011-10-13 15:43:11 UTC
I play for 2 hours max a week, because i'm studying again (at night), since my play time reduced my alt account went inactive (Researcher/Builder/Trader) that i can only have time and patience to play the market and do some pvp at weekend (very rare atm).

Playing the market have been very fun and easy thing to do, you only need to set some buy orders and manage your sell orders (5mins max), i only do that one time a day (normally before going to work). With this i have more ISK that i had when my Alt went inactive and i pay this account with Plexes, even with that i can save some isk. Basically in 6 months with this play time i do enough isk to buy 6 Plexes and have around 200/500mil profit.

Well, to do this you need to have some fund to invest, at least 1/2bil but the more isk you invest more you get..

It's not the best way of playing the game (if playing 2 hours is considered playing at all) but at least you can keep the account active until you have the time to play more often.
Kirith Vespira
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#10 - 2011-10-13 15:45:26 UTC
Sitting at work I can get a good 4 hours of industry, selling, & PI in nicely. Once I get home I have a couple hours for invention, playing around in low, or whatever. Doing stuff at work takes care of the tedious maintenance part of my Eve gameplay. Cool
Christine Peeveepeeski
Low Sec Concepts
#11 - 2011-10-13 15:47:03 UTC
I'm a casual player, I get more hours than you but not much more. I use my wages to buy plex in the odd month I need to but mostly I am lucky that before my new job I spent time building a character that can make me decent ISK on trade and industry. I could very easily pay for all 3 accounts and a few billion isk a month on my wages and not give 2 ***** but I don't because I don't have to (I also do not fly bling of cap ships).

So what do I do?

Anything I want when I'm in the mood for it. Right now it's piracy, low sec pew and pissing people off that take the game to seriously. Soon it'll be me heading out to null to see what the fuss is about. What I do not do is grind, even if I run missions in low sec it's in a pvp boat hoping people scan me down thinking I'm a mission bear lost in low sec.

What I'll never be able to do is join an alliance that expects me on certain times under certain conditions. I'd like to one day just to experience that player content but TBH I am not so interested in it that I'll give up my spare time at someone elses internet spaceship whim.
Mirime Nolwe
Mantra of Pain
#12 - 2011-10-13 15:48:36 UTC
Kirith Vespira wrote:
Sitting at work I can get a good 4 hours of industry, selling, & PI in nicely. Once I get home I have a couple hours for invention, playing around in low, or whatever. Doing stuff at work takes care of the tedious maintenance part of my Eve gameplay. Cool


You call 4 hours while "working" and a few hours at home of play time a Casual Player?
Trainwreck McGee
Doomheim
#13 - 2011-10-13 15:49:15 UTC
I live in a WH with a few other people. I play at most 1 hour a day (usually get PI done and 1 site done) and 4 hours on sunday (hauling or raiding other WH). Sure I don't make HUGE money but I make enough to PLEX.

This has been my EVE life for 6 months and i couldn't be happier. I am freaking busy but still get to play the only good (sad fact) MMO out there.

CCP Trainwreck - Weekend Custodial Engineer / CCP Necrogoats foot stool
Thelron
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#14 - 2011-10-13 15:54:14 UTC
*grumbles about the magic forum post vortex*

I've done 3 'stints' on EvE, all to varying degrees of "casual."

1. "Group o' Friends" corp works well because you likely all have similar availability/goals and a lot of the fun comes from meta-gaming in the breakroom or IM, and you can do a good mix of activities. Unfortunately, it requires a group of friends who like internet spaceships, and it *sounds* like things are rougher on the small-corp these days (I played w/ a dozen or so folks right around release when there weren't nearly as many ways for big groups to monopolize shinies and keep you out of regions. There were some power blocks you had to sneak around to get to parts of 0.0 but not so much 23/7 lockdown capabilities. Of course, there was also less to go do in deep 0.0 aside from take screenshots to show you were there, pick on some larger belt rats, and fill up a couple haulers with the spoils of mining high-end ores).

2. Embrace the noobcorp. Worked for me pretty well the last time around, working for me pretty well now. No "mining nights" when you want to blow things up, no wars when you just want to play the market, pretty much no pressure at all. Nice mix of people (always a couple regulars so there's some sense of not just being in "single-player" mode, newbies to help get started, and alts popping in and out with news of what's going on "out there" and/or scamming the newbies often with some form of hilarity to ensue). Downsides abound, of course, in that it's not terribly common to *have* a group event, there *are* no wars, there's no corp-based support if you do stuff in low/null/w-space, and the idiot CEO taxes the hell out of you to add to his collection of shiny Ibises. Still, "hop on, shoot the breeze for an hour or so, run a mission/sort out planets/do some trading" works pretty nicely.

YMMV, of course, and it doesn't solve the issue of running out of PvP funding somewhat quickly, but yes, you can still get a (somewhat) social experience + internet spaceship goodness even if you only have a short time to play at any one sitting. I'd imagine you can also find a player-corp that's fine with people who just pop in every so often and join in with whatever's going on at the time, just might take some hopping around to find a decent fit for what you like to do.
Barbelo Valentinian
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
#15 - 2011-10-13 15:58:50 UTC
It's probably easier to be a casual carebear than a casual PvP-er. As a carebear I can casually do L4s that give me enough for exploring New Eden, pottering about with builds, etc.

I think PvP (or meaningful PvP of the type one has a chance of "winning" at) requires a fair amount of commitment and preparation, and actually having numbers on your side, which means player corps, which means a bigger time commitment than I can give.

I'm really not much interested in in-game achievement, I'm more interested in just immersively pretending I'm in a spaceship doing whatever. I also like chatting in the NPC corp.

If I had more time I would definitely love to see more of what the game can offer - I would commit to a player corp, get heavily into PvP, 0.0 space, etc.

But I just can't, I've only got maybe an hour or two a night, but not every night, and not all weekends are free either (I sometimes work weekends).

And joining a player corp, making in-game friends, having to leave the game for a while, and coming back later when your friends have shared in-game experiences that you haven't, is just too sad for words, so better to leave it out.
Cipher Jones
The Thomas Edwards Taco Tuesday All Stars
#16 - 2011-10-13 16:01:05 UTC
Here's what I love about Eve;

In the beginning, I had to pay.

Then I got established and could pay for myself and some alts.

Then I could pay for everything 'easily'.

I have had to back off my playtime recently due to working a lot. I was ̶l̶u̶c̶k̶y̶ smart enough to have had plex saved up.

The awesomesauce factor is that even in the deep south minimum wage is 7 something an hour. A couple of hours work and you can buy a PLEX. So if you are working a lot, you can keep playing.

TBH 1 hour a day is kinda slim pickins tho, i would try to go for 2 hours every other day, and take that extra income and buy a PLEX.

internet spaceships

are serious business sir.

and don't forget it
Handsome Hussein
#17 - 2011-10-13 16:17:52 UTC
Barbelo Valentinian wrote:
It's probably easier to be a casual carebear than a casual PvP-er. As a carebear I can casually do L4s that give me enough for exploring New Eden, pottering about with builds, etc.

Was going to take issue with that until I saw:

Barbelo Valentinian wrote:
I think PvP (or meaningful PvP of the type one has a chance of "winning" at) requires a fair amount of commitment and preparation

This is very true. I will likely see only one of my alliance's roams in the next six months just because of schedule and timezone. Any other PvP is simply me flying around looking for gudfites in a frigate or coercing my wussy friend to fly a point in that expensive Arazu by convincing him that I'm the one who's doing the dying...

Barbelo Valentinian wrote:
But I just can't, I've only got maybe an hour or two a night, but not every night, and not all weekends are free either (I sometimes work weekends).

Same boat here. Sometimes I wonder why I even joined the corp/alliance, and then I remember that I have IRL friends here. That definitely helps.

Leaves only the fresh scent of pine.
Telegram Sam
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#18 - 2011-10-13 16:34:49 UTC
FW maybe? "Casual" PVP, in the sense you can just watch for a fleet forming up and hop in.
Famble
Three's a Crowd
#19 - 2011-10-13 17:13:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Famble
Barbelo Valentinian wrote:
It's probably easier to be a casual carebear than a casual PvP-er. As a carebear I can casually do L4s that give me enough for exploring New Eden, pottering about with builds, etc.

I think PvP (or meaningful PvP of the type one has a chance of "winning" at) requires a fair amount of commitment and preparation, and actually having numbers on your side, which means player corps, which means a bigger time commitment than I can give.

I'm really not much interested in in-game achievement, I'm more interested in just immersively pretending I'm in a spaceship doing whatever. I also like chatting in the NPC corp.

If I had more time I would definitely love to see more of what the game can offer - I would commit to a player corp, get heavily into PvP, 0.0 space, etc.

But I just can't, I've only got maybe an hour or two a night, but not every night, and not all weekends are free either (I sometimes work weekends).

And joining a player corp, making in-game friends, having to leave the game for a while, and coming back later when your friends have shared in-game experiences that you haven't, is just too sad for words, so better to leave it out.


This describes me almost to the letter. I've been off and on with Eve for many years, always casual since other MMO's had been my "hardcore" commitments. With this most recent stint into Eve I find myself with no other MMO but two new RL kids so I still can't make Eve the new "hardcore".

Which is too bad because I have finally learned most of the gotcha's (always painfully of course) that the tutorials simply don't or can't teach you and now know my way around Eve pretty well to the point that I could be be a very valuable member to any corp, of any size, doing anything. But I can't commit to a so-called "raid schedule" for lack of a better description these days so better not to even bother.

Eve is effectively a single player game for me and more often than not, that's just fine with me.

I run a one to two L4's a night, occasionally get the exploration bug and do that, manage a casual PI setup and if I absolutely want some ISK I'll RMT for a couple plex. Historically this pattern leads to burn out after a few months, I unsub my two toons only to return 6ish months later and do it all again.

If anyone ever looks at you and says,_ "Hold my beer, watch this,"_  you're probably going to want to pay attention.
Baaldor
Deaths Consortium
The Initiative.
#20 - 2011-10-13 17:22:34 UTC
Citizen Smif wrote:
Hello,

Recently due to a change in my job I've found I can barely play the game for more than an hour or two and I've got to say - it really does change my experience of EVE! To be honest I'm finding the transition of having enough time to balance making ISK and PvP to barely having enough time for 1 fleet op extremely difficult. I don't understand how anybody plays this game casually? There's just too much to juggle at once!! Oops

Are there any casual EVE players out there? If so, what do you do? I've been RvBing for a while now but I'm consdering taking a bit of a change now.. Any recommendations for a casual combat pilot?

Thanks,

Smif


First off, unlike other MMO's you are not gimped having to log in and grind up skills, it progresses like everyone else, whether you are a casual player or have no life and logged in 23.5 / 7.

Second, you should identify what you want to do on casual basis. Hell just troll lo-sec or null. Find a nice honey hole and live there. Log on from time to time and do whatever.

Based on what you want to do, find out how much the equipment is going to cost and how much time it will take you to replace that. Then you know how to balance your limited play time to keep you in the game.
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