EVE New Citizens Q&A

I'm a new player who has been really excited by the game thus far. The game itself is everything I've ever wanted in a space sim and the universe of New Eden is just awesome.

I wanted to roll an alt to play with the character creator again and have the fun of watching new skills rapidly finish training up. I made my new character, added some skills to the queue and was then told by system message that only one character could train at a time.

I hope there's some way around it that will let multiple characters have skills in training, but I haven't found it yet. This really makes me wonder if I'm going to stick with EVE now.

EVE Online is fun and addictive, at least as much as any other MMO I've played and more than most, but what made it exciting for me was it's reputation for being the wild west and also for being huge in terms of population. I genuinely thought that there were several hundred thousand active players, but I guess it's more likely that it's tens of thousands of active players most of whom have multiple accounts.

I'm not bashing EVE, it's just my first disappointment point with the game and academically I think it probably costs CCP a lot of players. There's no way I'm paying more than $15 a month to play, although I would buy PLEX on occasion, but without the ability to play an alt I'm now writing a forum post before seeing what's on Netflix.

If I could fully play another character, I'd be logged in until an ungodly hour strengthening my EVE addiction.

Yup the only way around this is to buy a second account.

The basic reason for this is cause no other big time games on the market allow you to progress two characters at once.

Sure other MMOs let you have multiple characters but most other MMOs base their character progression on you doing things, so you have to actually be there doing some activity to progress. Since you can't do this with two characters at once you therefore cannot progress two characters at once in a way equivalent to how you would in EVE if both characters were training.

If you want to use all three slots of your EVE account just pause one of the other characters and then use the new one.

Some people consider the logic that "Well if it's gonna take the same time collectively to train my alt then I might as well train every thing on my main", and they do.

But you'll also find that the true EVE addicts will pony up the cash for a second account or even several accounts., but you'll find that there are still a large percentage of us that use only one character and a single account (like myself).

Since this game started in 2003 it's seen constant steady growth (thought he fiasco this last summer put a bump in it) but rest assured that EVE has a very large community that has in fact won "Community of the Decade" on some prestigious gaming website that I can't remember the name to right now.

Believe me it's worth staying. Get in with the greater half of the community (as the other half is trolls, as with any community) and you'll start having some fun. Try coming to Fanfest 2012 and join the EVE players and the developers in the party on top of the world. Cause you see if anything the biggest reason for letting you only train one character is cause you can team up with other people to fill in the holes for you. Get things done that you never would have alone. EVE takes the concept of MMO and shoves it down your throat. You don't play a game that happens to be in a setting with other players doing the same. You play WITH them and against them actively all the time, even if you don't realize it.

I'd also like to recommend getting into EVE's backstory more. I have a feeling it'll increase your fascination with the sci-fi universe CCP has created. http://www.eveonline.com/background/

Later on skills will take much longer than 8 days to reach level 5, if you are motivated only by watching your skills improve you might grow bored of EvE after a while. Definitely find people to fly with and explore several aspects of the game before you comit yourself. Contact me if i'm online and fleet up for some missions or something.

Solid advice in here.

Don't forget that later on you can also buy an alt in the "Character Bazaar" near the bottom of these forums and have it transferred to your single account. It can be a bit pricey but it might be worth thinking about later on if you continue to play.

Good luck and fly safe!

Just one more thing: if what you have in mind for your alt is a limited skill training (eg. make him the perfect trader), you should be able to transfer him to your main account after your training is done. It will cost you a few bucks but it's cheaper than continuously paying for another account.

There are two issues with training everything on one character as someone has mentioned above.

1. You can only remap your attributes once every 12 months (after 2 remaps at startup). This makes it more efficient to make an industrial alt mapped appropriately, than train skills on your main that you are not mapped for.

2. When you are podded it gets increasingly more expensive to 'Upgrade your Clone' the more skill points you have. So you really don't want to sink millions of non PvP related skill points into your PvP character.

While not being able to train skill on all 3 character slots at the same time, may initially seem irritating and even a scam on the part of CCP to encourage extra accounts, it is such a vital aspect of the game that it really shouldn't be given away so easily. To be able to train 3 characters at once on the same account would significantly lessen the satisfaction I feel when my main completes a long skill train. Additionally, it would significantly increase the competition in every niche area that I choose to specialise in, every vet would have an alt trained in every aspect by now.

Therefore, I view the situation like this: When you pay for one account, you pay for one skill queue. Being able to use that skill queue on three characters is a flexible benefit CCP have provided. If you want two or more skill queues you have to pay for them.

Yup. It's just about revenue: 3 characters per account = 2 less accounts.


Well by the same logic they may put 9 character slots on every account and only enable you to train 3 of them

This about sums it up.

Very early I realised it would be of great benefit to have more than one skill training at a time so once I decided to stick with the game after a few weeks I added two more accounts. That was nearly six years ago and I have yet to regret that decision.

You're thinking of "The Most Farcical MMOG Award of the Decade"... to which EVE was granted "Community of the Decade".

Further reading...