EVE New Citizens Q&A

I've introduced a few friends to EVE and they all had the same problem... once they've trained all the recommended certificates for a ship or project, they don't really know where to go next. After finishing the skill plan I created a few months ago I can kinda relate to that too.

So I started thinking, what if I wanted to hire a skill planner who would take a look at my skills and make a list of skills to train to make things more efficient. Does such a thing exist? If not, would it be a feasible venture to look into?

There's EVEmon for free, which can tell you which skills to train in order to be able to fly any particular ship or use a particular module.

What you're talking about sounds more like a career advisor to help people figure out what element of game play they might be most interested in. In real life, people have tried answering the "what should I do" question using personality inventories (e.g.: the mistaken assumption that Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator has any impact on the career that you are most suited for, such as INTP folks being programmers, while ESFP are obviously better suited to politics).

While I do believe that there is a market for career counselling in EVE (there's always going to be someone who will pay you to tell them what to do), I expect the greatest success will be obtained by exploring all the facets of EVE gameplay as a group and figuring out individually which aspects are most entertaining.

EVEMon is great for making skill plans, but not necessarily for knowing what type of plan to make. I think Mara is right, and it's definitely supported by spending any time at all in rookie chat, that the part people struggle with most is not making the actual plan itself but deciding what to aim for in the first place.

I do think a lot of newcomers to the game would be happy to pay SMALL (since that's all they have) amounts of ISK to someone who could give them one-to-one guidance. A lot of the people turning up in rookie asking "so I've done the career mission, now what?" is huge because a lot of them start playing without friends and have nobody helping them out.

Maybe you could convince non total beginners to use such a service, but realistically it seems like a mostly rookie thing and as such probably wouldn't be a huge earner. Plus there are plenty of us who get our kicks from helping them for free, so you'd be up against that too ;)

Anyway, if you decide to go for it, just market it well and make sure you're giving people the right advice and I wish you luck!