EVE New Citizens Q&A

As someone new not only to EVE but to MMORPG's in general, so far I haven't come across anything that's had me chucking the keyboard around in frustration. I would second this though:



It'd also be handy to know that although tutorial missions can be completed in any order, items given as rewards may need other non-earned skills or items before they can be used. Although I suppose it is a good way of making players learn how to use the market early on...

Question I would like answering is how long after buying 3 months subscription can I post on other forums? Or do I have to wait for my remaining 20 days free trial to expire?

Answer:- Few hours afterwards.

A lot fo good stuff in this thread. I'm kind of a wierd type of 'new' player in that I generally log into EVE once a year or so to see how things have changed. I've got a fairly good grasp of the basics, but mostly just enough to know what kind of questions to ask.

Here are some things I'd wished I'd known all along:

• How security status and standing works, and why they're important or not.


• The difference between Highsec, Lowsec, and Nullsec, and what generally goes on in each.


• That mission instances or 'rooms' are not private, and do not lock people out if they know how to find you inside them.


• That it is not necessary to train skills to level 5 to be effective.


• How attributes effect SP gains.


• The difference between autopilot and manually piloting to places.


• How to operate the galaxy/solar systme map and their respective settings.


• That Highsec =/= safe PVE zone.


• The difference between different level agents, and what to expect from a mission(still a little unclear on that, besides higher generally means more difficulty conditions and/or more specialized ships or groups to complete).


• That killing ships of the 4 major racial factions can significantly hurt your standing with them, even if it's a mission.


• How much ISK/hour is good at lower skill levels, and what some general ideas of how much ISK/hour can be made using different skill paths(Mining/exploring/trading/missions).


• What "Don't fly anything you can't afford to lose" really means. To me anything over a half of my total worth is too much. Anything more than 10% of my current ISK is a hard hit, but easily replaceable. Depends on the person I guess, but some guidelines for new players wouldn't hurt.

There's a lot more that I can't think of. EVE is a game that has such a broad number of things that are possible. And I think it's folly to try and include too much into tutorials. The tutorial missions should really only get a person to the point where they can start understanding the right questions to ask, and from there it should be a fairly simple matter to find things out using Google, Youtube, Rookie Help, and these forums.

To many people it is very important. ISK, along with skillpoints, can very often determine what a person can or can not do effectively. Just about EVERYTHING in EVE requires a fund of ISK. If you have no income, and no ISK, all you're doing is flying around space in a rookie ship or pod, or sitting in a station watching your SP accumulate. If that's fun for you, sure, knock yourself out. But everything else? Get some ISK to buy the ship/equipment/skills you need to do it.

ISK/hour is concrete and definable. FUN/hour is not, since fun is highly subjective.

Giving a new pilot a better idea of how self-sufficient they're going to be while playing their chosen specialization is something I think a lot of people would find valuable when first starting EVE. Keep in mind we're talking about pilots who have just started the game and have no real idea of what is possible. Having enough ISK to explore all their options could prove extremely useful.

However, the more I think about it, I suppose it wouldn't need to be an exact ISK/h figure. But more along the lines of letting newer players know what they're going to need in order to be successful in a given role. It's not enough to say 'It can be very profitable!" Because almost anything can be profitable with the right skills, the right corp, and the right player.

There are quite a few things I have noticed that could be explained better, or which would enhance the new player experience:

1) The very first tutorial mission does not allow one to right click and 'set destination' from the link location in the mission text while inside the station. That is a bad one - have confirmed it on 2 chars now. After reading that I could set a destination, I spent quite a while wondering what I was doing wrong the first time round. [Ed. Putting the ship a jump away so one can actually set a destination might also cause confusion, but getting Aura to intervene and say that a destination can be set if the location is more than a jump away, while for this location within the system the pilot should undock, right click the location and warp there; would also work]


2) The ability to do multiple helpings of ME and PE research on BPOs in one research run is not explained. I am guilty of contributing to the clogged up research facilities in New Eden because I did not realise one could do more than 1 point of ME or PE at one time. It was only on the third use I noticed there was a drop down box... and that both ME and PE could be set to the required end level in one run. I think this might be a common rookie occurrence, because I checked with the friend who started with me and he also had made this mistake.


3) Acceleration gates. I experienced confusion in my first multi gate deadspace because I thought I was seeing the acceleration gate that I had just passed thru from the 'other side' (and not using it) when I was in fact looking at the new gate that I had to use. More emphasis should placed on these gates as devices that fling you into your own remote pocket of space which is similar to an instance in other MMOs yet different in that other players can discover you with combat tools and also enter.


4) The exploration career missions. Overwhelmingly need a re-write, tho' the interaction with the agent in the field is good and should be kept. Scanner, overlay scanner, probe scanner, directional scanner, relic and data analyzers - all become a jumble to a first day rookie.

Suggest compartmentalise the scanner functions and do not introduce elements into each that do not occur in real in-game use.

Eg. a) Proof of Discovery: Anomalies - this is terrible. The rookie's first introduction conflates ordinary fly-along alt-d scanner-open use with opening a scatter can in data/relic analyzing. This blurs the later learning of what one has to do for data/relic sites. It should be simply presented as a tool for gathering information on the presence of anomalies and signatures in New Eden which replicates in an easy to browse format the green/red diamonds that the pilot sees in space when their full screen overlay scanner is on. For the actual mission, get rid of the scatter can and have the pilot do something that one actually does in an anomaly, like mine a piece of omber or kill an npc in a combat site - and check mark the location, rather than use Proof of Discovery.

b) Signatures. Scanning the data and relic sites. Needs to be clarified that you are using the same scanner tool but with the addition of probes and with the goal of refining the signatures in order to pinpoint their location and warp to them. Also, for goodness sake - please please - do something to make newly resolved signatures stand out (in the tutorial only eg. blink). The first time I did this I spent about 40 minutes trying to resolve a data signature because I did not notice that *I was* successfully resolving it and it was popping up the top with the slew of other green lines (training anomalies). It was not until I left it and came back that I realised I must've successfully resolved multiple data signatures the time before.


5) The salvage mission - salvaging a structure and getting something out of a can is a really really bad idea. You are conflating exploration concepts with salvage concepts. Make the salvage mission target look like a wreck and behave like a wreck when the salvaging is successful.

[Ed This is not an exhaustive list. But imo, some of the most egregious rookie stumbling blocks]

Not true, if you're risk adverse you can minimise your exposure to it seems to me that you didn't do anything or make an effort to. Yeah you can get ganked doing a L1, but I would suspect either your corp was a war or you'd gone suspect.

You failed to protect yourself!

You can trust people - to an extent. Just don't be dumb and give away all your assets or something you don't want to lose. Ask questions, why, how, where and learn how to protect yourself. "We will courier all your stuff?" - Sure, if you pay the collateral, and so on!

On Topic: The tutorial agent should scam you. Srs.

That a docking request might be refused....

I wish I had known about scanning probes:

A single scanning probe only knows the distance (not the bearing) to an anomaly.

With that in mind,

1 probe seeing an anomaly will produce a red sphere
2 probes seeing it will produce a red circle - (which is the intersection of 2 spheres)
3 probes seeing it will produce a pair of red dots - (which is the intersection of 2 circles) (the 2 dots will have the same name in the ID column of the Scan Results)
4 probes seeing it will produce a single dot (probably at a low percent, which requires tightening the cluster and shrinking it in size.)

That the game really isn't designed for solo players

Things I wish I knew in the beginning:

• how to deal with overview and how easy it is to f*** it,
• that I should not touch my remaps for the first few months(!),
• how market works and that it's not even close to what you could expect from a computer game,
• there are trade hubs and logistics is a (vary important) thing,
• contracts exist,
• that corpmates can shoot each other at will (can you even get this info in game?),
• how useful DScan is,
• how standings work and how easy it is to lose them (my trade alt is not able to enter Min/Gal space after grinding standings to anchor a POS in Amarr/Caldari space and I'm still not sure how it happened),
• what can happen with your standings and security status in low sec and in FW,
• scanning is much harder than it seems during tutorials (for low SP character),
• gate gun mechanics (were they designed to explode newbie pirates?),
• how to use in game map (I admit, I still cannot use it effectively, I rely on 2D maps on dotlan),
• RvB exists and is a lot of fun - I discovered them after seeing hundreds of kills on a star map in Poinen (probably FFA event),
• it is pointless to create fits in game, EFT is mandatory,
• it's quite easy to save a pod in high sec and low sec,
• bookmarks have many uses other than bookmarking stations.