EVE New Citizens Q&A

So, i have seen the lock on the thread, was about to get pissed about it, just waiting for the reason for the lock... And then you come and make a post that's actually reasonable and fair. Kudos. You are right, there is not a clear cut "Yes or No" answer, only different ways to ease people into the game, some of them more or less narrow than others. I wanted to show the less narrow way because too many are being put on the rails into less openminded territories.

So, um... Thanks for not killing the thread. Despite getting derailed a bit i think it serves very well in demonstrating a couple of very important things to new guys.

I have played WoW (was a raid leader, led the guild to be a "top three" guild on the server, had a lot of fun) and, of course, I play EVE. I've also played a few other MMOs but they didn't stick.

Mission running is, in many ways, very similar to dungeons in WoW up to and including the predictability of what happens next. Mission sites (complexes) are scripted encounters. If you want to pursue that avenue in EVE it goes a little something like:

Tutorials, mission levels (1 to 4 in sequence), and then wormhole encounters.

For group play you can do any of the missions in a group but it is at level 5 that group play is "needed" (although you can overtank and overship if you're willing). Incursions are, in many regards, similar to raids in WoW. Then there are the higher rated wormhole systems that require group play to clear the NPCs.

Exploration is just another set of sites. Most of them (if not all of them) can be done solo. The Highsec sites are pretty much designed for solo play and one can argue that even null sec sites are solo play. Escalations from sites can be group play.

But, this is all just one kind of play style in EVE and there is way more in EVE to do.

I happen to like exploration. I like the randomness of it and the gambling element of it.

I like the 'feeling' of flying into deep space and finding stuff.

I encourage players to try out exploration 'cause I find it enjoyable. I also encourage them to try out all the other elements in EVE because exploration isn't for everyone nor should it be. Mission running is something I find boring and I encourage players to NOT get into the mission way of playing since it is extremely repetitive and can feel like 'grinding' (mindlessly killing NPCs over and over and over) but some people like to do stuff like that.

Still, the idea with EVE is to try everything out. When giving advice one should, in my opinion, always encourage new players to try out everything. The problem is once you get into details trying to compare EVE to WoW starts to fail significantly. Even when I was writing about the sequence of missions I started thinking, "Well, you can do group play with these and then there are smaller incursion sites oh and then there are Fleet Warfare sites.. oh and there are complexes" all of which muddy the comparison. EVE is EVE. WoW is WoW.

As for claiming that WoW is more complex than EVE... that's just chest thumping as is claiming the opposite. The moment someone goes that way in a post is the moment that everything that they have written is discredited in my view. Stay away from making such claims. All they succeed in doing is detracting from the point of the post and they make the poster look small. The other thing one should not do is claim that every WoW player plays the same way. That's really silly in my mind to claim that millions of people all go to the exact same websites (as an example) or play a certain way. The people that I know who still play WoW seriously don't do those things and they are raiders. So, yeah, that's another way to totally lessen the impact of advice. Stay away from making such claims.

Fixed an error in it.

Good to see that everything was still within the rules from an official moderators point of view.

Now, let's keep the discussion going.

Is there anything more to discuss? I think everyone has made their point.

This thread is now about your mammaries.

Unless, of course, there's another rebuttal by the WoW guys, in which case i will have to ask you to stash your twins away again.

You do know that character age doesn't mean you are a vet or not.

Someone could make a char in beta, play for 1 week and come back to EVE today...having an old character but still is newb.
Someone can be 1 year old, but a quick learner and thus knows a lot about the game.

Character age is NO degree of being a veteran.



And how is running missions in high-sec going to teach them how to survive in low-sec?

I know a personal friend that came to EVE about a year ago, after 2 weeks he was flying in low-sec and never left it. Sure he got killed a couple of times and he asked me a good couple of questions about how stuff worked. But Low-sec isn't insta-death, hell, there are plenty of low-sec systems that hardly see activity. Sure, trying to do exploration in Rancer, Amamake or OMS will killed within seconds, but not every low-sec is like that.

The best way in EVE, no matter what it's about, to learn something is just to try it out. Just be smart and start small and cheap and do as much research as you can. The internet and older players are full with information about how stuff works and what to avoid.



And that's why I always suggest to do ALL the tutorials and the Epic Arc first....then go do what you want to do.



As I said...Even when I started EVE, I've never ever found anything in EVE that I would class as a grind. I just did what I wanted to do, sure some things weren't effective or I sucked at them. But I did what I wanted, when I wanted and never ever felt like "I must grind more missions for ISK or I must mine "x" ore today".

And judging by Brave Newbies' growth, it's a prime example how new players can just do what they want...including Low/Null stuff and PvP.

This.

Sure...if a player decides that he wants high corp/faction standings with a corporation/faction...there will be a grind.
Sure...if a player decides he wants to corner the Trit market in his region by mining it himself...there will be a grind.
Sure...if a player decides that he must PLEX his accounts from day 1 by running missions...there will be a grind.

But noticed the 4th word in each sentence...it's a decision made by the player himself. Nobody is forcing him to do it.

I must be doing it wrong because I:

1: made ISK right from the start exploring
2: quickly moved into low and null
3: am allergic to grinding.

The hisec competition is for the big boss drops in 3/10 and 4/10 pirate sites. That leaves behind plenty of low-level stuff that's good ISK if you're willing to run it for the bounties and/or salvage. Drone sites are also worth running for bounties if you're short on ISK. Quite possibly it's better ISK than working your way up from Level 2s. And you might get lucky and find the radar before someone else does. Running hisec anomalies won't PLEX your account, they might just buy you another ship.

Lowsec profession sites can be run in a 10-million-ISK cruiser. Curiously, that's about the average payout I'm getting off of a single mag or radar site these days. I'm averaging about one ship loss a month so far operating in low and w-space, so I'm willing to splurge a bit on faction probes.

But I don't grind. If I don't feel like running a mission, I don't run one. If I don't feel like probing down signatures, I don't do it. If I don't feel like doing something in w-space, I don't do it. If I feel like it's a grind, I'll log off. Every now and then, I get the itch to see if I can make it to someplace mentioned in EVE Travel ( http://evetravel.wordpress.com/ ) in a shuttle.

:hifive:
CCP Falcon, best Falcon.


As a token of good will towards the WoW guys and as a measure to make this thread, which i intend to use as a resource when talking to newbs from now on, more accessible, i edited the OP. I cleaned it up, made it a little more neutral, included some points form the discussion ITT and removed some of the language that was born out of jagerbombing my brain. Also, i referred to the following discussion without being too abusive

Fair?




As for the discussion itself, i'd love to see some feedback from actual newbies here. That's still missing so far. Anyone? Anyone that's not an alt? (EDIT: Oh wait, i forgot about that great post by Shao Huang. I will try to find room for a link to that in the OP. But still, any more input is always welcome)

To me as a new player, the info provided in the first and second post is invaluable. I'm not going to blindly follow either of them, but I now have a couple of different paths to look at and choose between. Or choose aspects that I like out of them and discard the rest. The biggest problem with telling someone new to just go do whatever you feel like is that yeah, some of us would love to do that, but we don't even know what's possible to aim for. If I just go do what I feel like, I might miss out completely on exploration because I don't even realize it's an option, or I do some quick tutorials and then forget about it. I'd love more posts like these please!

This is the basic problem that all new players face.
There in no way to "do what ever you want'" if you do not know what is available.