EVE General Discussion

Hoo boy…

First of all, forget everything you know about MMOs, and most of the things you know about RPGs. It's far quicker that way that trying to match how things work here with how you are used to them working (because that will most likely just trip you up and make you come to completely the wrong conclusions). EVE does not have levels; it does not have any XP; it does not have any classes; it does not have any ability trees; hell, technically speaking, it doesn't even have any PvE. If you spot something you think looks like any of those things, then trust me: it won't work that way.

That last part is particularly important, and it is a common stumbling block for new players, so it's better you learn it ASAP — while there are situations where you'll find yourself shooting at NPCs (colloquially called “rats”), you are doing so in competition with other players, and those other players will have a myriad of ways of stopping you and generally screw you over… some of which you definitely will not like.

The reason people have the knee-jerk reaction of calling you a WoW troll is because it's so common to see people come here from a WoW:ish background and assume that things will be the same as back in their old game, and then they get all huffy when it turns out that no, EVE does not work that way. At all. In particular when they falsely assume that they are safe in space and that they are entitled to “just doing their thing”, things will get really funny. So learn that lesson now: EVE does not support that gameplay. It doesn't exist. If you do not like PvP in its many incarnations (only some of which come in the form of combat), then EVE will have very little to offer you. If you expect to be able to play this game, and think the same way you do in WoW, you are up for never-ending disappointment. Nor should you expect much support for any sentiment that things should work like they do in WoW, because, again, it's a completely different game built on vastly different foundations, and 99 percent [random number] of the WoW:ish “improvements” people bring to these boards are fundamentally incompatible with how EVE works (one of the reasons the patience for the aforementioned WoW trolls is particularly worn thin is because they tend to get horribly upset when anyone tries to explain this fact to them).

So what is there to do then? Well, a hell of a lot, and for most of it, you can pick and choose your way of doing it. There are some basic philosophies along the lines of what works well and what does not (and what is downright stupid), but other than that, there is no “best” way of doing things. Neither is there any particular route or progression you need to follow — and this is the important bit: the game will not give you any direction. It is all up to you.

There is no end-game beyond what you set up for yourself. Conversely, there is precious little “new-game” except what you want to limit yourself to in order to not to get overwhelmed and/or not risk too much, but it's all your choice. If you want to run lower-end missions and highsec explorations as a group, you can do that. If you want to run them on your own, you can do that. If you want to gang up and try some intermediary missions or low-sec exploration, you can do that. If you want to go off and blow up a titan (the most expensive normal ship in the game), you can do that… although you'll probably need some help with that one. There are no limits to what you can do except the ones you set up for yourself, but as mentioned that freedom also comes at the cost of you having to create your own gameplay, because the game will not provide any.


So, while your question has largely been answered, let's dissect it:

“What's the best ship”… None. There is no best ship. Any ship you find will have strengths and weaknesses that makes it better than some and worse than others. There are some ships that are the top of the heap for one particular purpose or one specific situation, but as soon as you take them outside of that comfort zone, they're horrid.

”Most like a warrior?”… None. EVE doesn't have classes. What it does have is loosely defined roles. There might be some mapping between the two because of how broad or general those roles are (“repping” ↔ healing, for instance), but the complexity of the system and the subjectivity and contextuality of those uses mean that any such mapping will be very imprecise and prove to be false half the time.

So the question you need to ask is “I want to do X in situations Y and Z, what are my options?”, and then expect roughly 85 bajillion different answers — all of them legitimate.