EVE General Discussion

Sure it works. He said "Hate" not "attack."

Judging by GD, bumping works really well at generating Hate. And Santa is apparently making a list. He's not going to do anything with it, but he's assured us that that list will be made.

I've run into the same issue you describe in the past. The sad truth is that EVE, being a sandbox-model MMO, comes with no guarantees that when you log in there will be anything readily available to do. There are ways around this that pretty much any player can exploit, but that a new player might not know much about.

First: Red vs Blue. They have been mentioned before, but let me go into a bit more detail for you: rvb prides itself on offering an extremely active, no-strings, no-elitism pvp playground. The red federation and blue republic are permanently wardecced, so if you want to go find a fight you usually can. Additionally, when there are both red and blue fleets spoiling for a fight, it's not uncommon for the FC's to coordinate with each other to make the sides more even and ensure a better battle - up to and including shipping down to give the other guys a fighting chance, if the opposing side can't meaningfully oppose an uber fleet. It's not about blobs or killboard padding, and they literally accept anyone (subject to being booted if you're a jerk or consistently violate the rules of engagement, of course), so it's a great place to start. If I sound like a fanboy, it's because I got my first real taste of eve pvp in rvb, and I still keep a low-skill alt there for tooling around and causing trouble in frigs or dessies. Totally positive experience, highly recommended.

Second: faction warfare. This one has gotten some hate over the years - for a long time it was reputed to be pointless and unbalanced, and now it gets a bit of hate for being filled with plex runners abusing the mechanics to make isk. However, CCP has succeeded at getting people into the FW scene and there are targets to be had in all militias (with varying frequencies, it's true. Caldari and Gallente are both relatively balanced, but Minmatar is bloated and Amarr is the underdog in terms of membership though by all accounts they are slowly turning things around). The newbie appeal here is that FW is basically a free, permanent wardec that lets you pvp in lowsec (and thus avoid the bubbles and alliance politics of null, btw) without sec status loss in a relatively target-rich environment. This one also allows you to come and go at will if you join one of the 4 npc militia corporations, but be warned people often assume that you're a spy if you're in the npc militias, so you will probably fly solo unless you get into a FW player corp. Also, be aware that killing enemy FW NPC's, doing FW missions and capturing plexes will result in a precipitous standing drop with the enemy empire, such that you one day may not be able to enter their space without being attacked even if you quit FW. This will NOT happen from tooling around and shooting enemy militia players - you lose standing with the enemy militia CORPORATION, but not with that corp's faction.

There is one big contrast between these 2 to be aware of: rvb is more likely to have pewpew and relatively fair fights at any given time, but they tend to be somewhat 'arranged' - certain ship types (ewar vessels, mostly) are banned from stock rvb fights to keep them fun, for example. FW definitely places you in hostile territory with an 'anything goes' ethos, but while you are more likely to run into an opponent than if you were just screwing around randomly, there's no guarantee you will actually find someone, or that when you do find someone it won't be a deathblob. I've had more than one roam where I didn't see anyone I could hope to take...and more than one roam where I blundered straight from a string of quiet systems into a gatecamp and got wiped out.

For my part, I did both for awhile: my aforementioned low skill alt lived in rvb, and my main was in an fw corp, and between the two I was rarely at a loss for something to do. I know that was rather long winded, OP, but it seemed like you were looking for a little more detail about what your options are, and these are the best ways I know of to get fights without griefing, ganking or being labeled a troll.

TLDR: red vs blue or faction warfare. Seriously.

Honestly the entire dynamic of eve changes when you are involved with either a motivated group who plays together and has goals, or at least a group with an interesting dynamic or culture that you share. Playing Eve solo sounds miserable frankly, and I don't understand how you have even been able to last four months in an NPC corp.

When people talk about "Content" in an MMO they are generally talking about narative, or mechanics, or interesting things to see and do. In Eve the PVP even at it's most difficult basically boils down to making little red +'s go away until another wave of little red +'s show up so you can make them go away too and then you get paid. CCP's idea of an interesting mechanic is making them change targets occasionally, or making one random ship neut really hard. Let's not even pretend that PVE in Eve is "Content". From the PVE narrative perspective eve doesn't have a "Point" you can drive towards, there isn't really much of a storyline. You aren't going to get to max level and start raiding.

Most of the "Content" that is available in eve is available in day one, that content of course being interaction with other players. If you are solo and staying solo frankly you are limiting by a fair bit the "Content" that is available to you in Eve. So I'm going to use a word again here that I think is important: Narrative. Ultimately everyone that continues to play eve has one. If you go into the crime and punishment forum you will see dozens of people who have given themselves the "Narrative" of pirate. So each night they and their friends log into eve and find juicy ships to ransom or kill.

The "Burn Jita" event that you spoke of is but one small part of my own alliances ongoing narrative, externally other people have their own viewpoints on who and what goons are but internally it's simple. It's Us Vs You. You being you. Miners? We're against you. PVE Pilots? We're against you. Elite PVP'ers? We're against you. A lot of people think that Burn Jita was in response to the entire Mittanigate scandal. What they don't realize is that Burn Jita actually got postponed because of the whole Mittanigate scandal and was actually supposed to be engaged shortly after he got to fanfest.

Burn Jita wasn't our revenge. It was our reward. We were promised an alliance funded orgy of explosions if we garnered over 10,000 votes for Mittens, which we did. The fact that he didn't retain the seat which we had won for him was of little import, and given our own internal mercurial nature if he didn't give us our reward there was an even up chance that we would have trolled him into disbanding the alliance (again).

And do you know what? Internally our narrative doesn't even show us as the bad guys. We're the heroes of this game.

Do you know why?

Because it's a video game and the average line member treats it like one. It's just like space pixels man.

Go to low sec and null sec and you'll find fights.

If you want to be ganked then fly around in ridiculously easy to kill stuff with over 1B isk.

Join a corp, noone (well almost) cares what your SP is, they want motivated pilots.

Your skill points don't matter and noone gives a ****, everyone needs fresh blood.

I think the main problem was that you were flying a BS through

When I started EVE way back in the day now (btw, I'm still a noob since I haven't played in an age) I went to 0.0 space within two weeks of making my character. Basically I finished up the tutorial missions, joined a 0.0 corp, and went out to join them.

I acted as tackle and salvager. I had a ton of fun, I learned a lot, and I made friends with whom I still talk to and play with to this day.

It was one of the best decisions I have ever made pertaining to MMOs.

I would suggest that you do the same thing. Find some people who seem like they are cool in that you'd want to spend a lot of time with them (think about it, you'll be spending a lot of your free hobby time chilling with these people in voice comms and flying around with them) and join up!

Don't listen to anyone who says you have to have X number of skill points. If you have the desire and the will to see it through you'll have a blast.

Its in the wrong hole

Just DOW a big corporation. First you have to make your own corp, though. Then just shoot away.

0.0 will give a healthy dose of paranoia depending where you are. Some low sec systems will be the same but most are, as you discovered, pretty quiet.

I believe Wormhole space would be similar but that's another kettle of tea that I haven't explored yet.

U wanna be ganked, fit a cheap Retriever and go mine Ice in Aydoteaux, Gallente space. I heard Goons were back at their Ice mining interdiction ops.