EVE General Discussion

Well, this is overwhelming! I've played Eve before, many many years ago and I didn't really take it in anyway seriously so gave up within a few weeks. Following all the media hype after the B-R5B battle, I decided to sign up again and give it another go.

I downloaded the client and set up my character. Not knowing what race to choose (and since learning that it's largely unimportant) I chose Amarr because they seemed pretty cool and I was in a bit of a rush to get everything set up. Then I was dumped into Hedion University in Conoban and started "playing". I put playing in quotes because as yet I've barely done anything that constitutes playing a game. Most of my time has been spent googling things like how to search the map, how to fit a ship, what this item does, what that item does, what's planetary interaction?, cyno - wtf?, which skills do I need?. The rest of the time is spent trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be doing.

I understand the game is complicated and it's a long-term commitment rather than jumping straight in to the fun stuff but so far it's basically been online skill queue simulator for me. I don't have huge amounts of time to play so I've spent my time focusing on building my skills up. Annoyingly, one skill leads to another and before you know it, you're completely lost and it seems like it will take forever to even pilot a T2 frigate. The core skills themselves (CPU, Cap, etc) take forever to even get to level 4. In the mean time I find myself flying around in awful ships with terrible damage outputs, capacitor overload and weak defences. I barely made it through the tutorial missions.

Now I find myself approaching the SoE arc as recommended by just about every source I can find. This lead to me searching for an appropriate fit for my ship - easier said than done. Most of the recommended items require further training or jumping 25 systems to pick something up. Anyway, 2 hours later I've still got a 20 jump journey to even accept the mission arc. Jumping through highsec space is not fun - it's a case of clicking "jump" over and over while keeping my eye on rookie chat for anything interesting to talk about. I'd use autopilot but it's way slower. Despite paying for 3 months of game time I'm finding myself less and less enamoured with the game. All I really want to do is shoot stuff but the opportunities to do so seem very limited so far. If I head into low or nullsec, I will get podded with my current ability and equipment. If I do the missions, I'll spend most of my time shooting dumb NPCs and delivering pointless items. If I attack anyone in highsec I'll lose my ship anyway.

So you'll all say - join a corp, the game will be way more fun then! This is likely to be a valid suggestion but I just don't think I'm ready to actually contribute anything useful. I've amassed a load of items, which I can sell, then move to a corp location. Sounds easy enough but again it's more useless menu clicking, travelling around, spending ISK, figuring out how a jump clone works, etc. Then I've gotta install mumble, work out how fleets operate, figure out how to fight enemies without just orbiting and pressing the weapon button, obtain a new ship+fit... the list goes on.

It's not that I'm not willing to put the time in to get the rewards, but I just feel it's an endless grind so far. I've had more fun gambling on Somer Blink than actually playing the game so far. Luckily some kind people sent me some money (~50m, which I've turned into about 75m) which has helped with buying items for my ships and so on. I don't know what I would have done without this, short of buying a plex. I'd still be flying a rookie ship and getting my ass handed to me by rats. On top of the game time I've purchased this seems like a lot of money for something I may not even stick with...

What to do? Anyone else been in this kind of situation? Should I suck it up and join a corp or try to get the basic missions done first? Is there an alternative to jumping gates to get places?

TL;DR - Endless grind, not sure if I should continue, when does the fun start, will join a corp one day.

Join a corp.

The fastest way to burn out in this game (aside from a few weird corner cases who should be treated with suspicion) is to try to play this game alone.

One of the most important things in EVE is to find a good group of people with similar goals that you can enjoy blowing up spaceships together with.

The other thing you have to understand is that there is ALWAYS something to train for. It never stops. What that means is that you should be out in space doing this with what you are able to fly, rather than sitting in station waiting for "just that one more skill to finish training." If you fall into that trap, you'll never undock.

There are several newbie orientated corps out there, but the one I recommend is Brave Newbies. Why? Because they will get you out of hisec (which is an area that can breed bad habits if you stay there exclusively) and shooting people very very quickly. The sooner you blow someone up (and get blown up yourself) the more fun you'll have.

Also; stay the hell away from Somer Blink.

1. Don't get blinded by high skill levels. If someone ever says anything approaching “train everything to V” or “don't do X until you have Y”, smack them hard over the mouth and call them nasty things because they are among the worst kinds of griefers you will ever come across.

2. You can always contribute. If you don't know how, others will be able to figure it out. Again, don't assume that you need high skills to do so, because it's simply not the case. If anything, not knowing how you can contribute is an even greater reason to join a corp: to learn how.

3. Yes, you will explode and even get podded. This is a good thing. Make sure you learn how to handle it now when the cost is minute rather than in a year or two “when you're ready” because it'll cost you several orders of magnitude more. The best way to learn to avoid losses (and eventually to turn losses into wins) is to lose a lot and figure out what went wrong. Also, getting blown up is curiously enough a fairly common way to find people who can teach you what you need to know.

4. See this.

5. See sig.

Join a player corp, having people to share the experience with makes the game much more enjoyable. Try not to rush for success it becomes a grind because you make it a grind. I recommend hanging out near Amarr or Jita or another trade hub and just trying different things, do some base missions, do some mining, some exploration. The more stuff you do the less grindy it feels. As your character matures (skill training) then you can look to become more specialized.

I personally think you should ignore the rush guides and crap like that. IMHO those are for players looking to crank out standings real fast and aren't really an emergent experience for newer people.

Try a bunch of stuff find what you like...don't do something just because the internet says its the best. best is entirely subjective. I haven't done SoE stuff and I have a blast every time I sit down and play, because I found what I liked, not what Google said I should like (if that makes sense.)

Edit.

Welcome to EVE where the faster you try to run up the hill the steeper and harder it gets.

Personally I skipped the tutorials, and I feel bad for anybody who spends several days on them. I know it's hard to not to feel inadequate to older players due to the SP gap, you feel like you're just not relevant. Many of the above posters are very right about how you should join a corp asap, don't ask what you can do for your corp, ask what your corp can do for you.

And to join the chorus... JOIN A CORP.

My corp loves newbies, I've trained a lot of people that went on to do lots of cool stuff.

Though i'm not recruiting atm, in hibernation, you could do eve University, Red Vs. Blue, Brave Newbies, and tons of others. A corp will give you people who know what the heck they are doing, people you can easily group with, and usually a much simpler to read corp chat (100 member corp chat is usually less flooded with useless crap then the 1k member or so noob chat)

Its good to set goals for yourself one at a time and enjoy ALL of EVE while your reaching those goals.Train for that one ship then train to fit that ship, train for a profession and if you don't like it after a while then do something else. Have one planet going all the time for PI while your making ammo close to a home station you picked out that you also mine and run missions at. Do exploration,industry,PVP,mission running talk in all the chat channels. Go to the recruitment channel and talk to some corps there. Look up EVE university videos on you tube on everything that is EVE online.Also look up pirate videos and see what they do maybe you will like that.

I think players in EVE that only do one thing seem to go threw ups and downs with EVE but if you start off being well rounding in activities until you find something you really like that way you will never be bored. Then when your ready look up a Wormhole corp that needs miners for ship construction or scouts these are all things a new player can do.

Eve is divided into three categories. Those that enjoy spreadsheets, those that enjoy working with other players to create new content, and guys that solo PVE content.

Joining a corp is not necessary. The transient nature of ships in EvE and the non-consensual pvp are really very interesting.

To new players, double clicking in space seems like the stupidiest mechanic in a flying game ever. The amount of tactical depth you can achieve with clever manuevering, fittings, and friends is unequaled in any game I have ever played.

In EvE everything takes a while to do. Travel, missions, industry, pvp. If you don't have patience - this game is rough.

If you live inside the boundaries of what the EvE tutorials teach you, this game will be crap. If you branch out and screw around it can be highly satisfying.

Join Brave Newbies.

Join a corp, or if you want to go at it solo, get a multiboxing program and more accounts. It's the only way to go.