EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hi friends,

I have vast experience experience in MMOs -- 15 years across a dozen or so games. People spoke of Eve (and Eve certainly has a reputation all its own well and beyond the gaming community) but I never got around to trying this game until last month. I created a trial account and while I really like the game, I'm dumbfounded by the community.

I've been ganked my fair share, either because I was stupid, where I shouldn't have been, or simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. I have never complained. I have always reached out my killer and congratulated them. Some have tried to turn it into a protracted griefing session (one guy tried invited me to a channel with his corpmates and tried to goad me into throwing a tantrum for their amusement, which didn't work), others have given me poor advice based on an inaccurate recollection of the situation, and others others still have given me brilliant advice. I've been stalked, camped, attacked, people have attempted to con me, and I've taken all that with humor (Risk may = ISK, but I don't intend to find out).

I have reached out to E-Uni and researched their application process. While I applaud the efforts of E-Uni as a whole, I was quickly dissuaded from applying given the abundance of people begging, complaining and crying about application times (read: my future classmates), the lack of Uni staff outreach, and the impersonal nature of their program, the 'bittervets' complaining about running with E-uni newbies, and the intellectual bullying and ranting going on in the channel.

I have tried to interact with Brave Newbies. They do not let passersby interact in their public 'corp' channel, and their 'recruitment' channel was desolate and my attempts to interact went ignored.

I have interacted with certain corps advertising on the forum. I was entertained as a new member, but, after a 30 minute lecture on what would be expected of me, I had the audacity to ask what support they offered to new members. I was told that self-sufficiency was key and that I would be expected to progress on my own while contributing to the corp's interests, but should not expect much interaction with the corp or its members until I 'caught up.'

Despite what made read as haughtiness, I have at all times been friendly and pleasant, willing to learn, interested in the community and the gaming environment. I don't know what other new players are like, but at no point have I ever asked anyone for a handout. You will never catch me begging on any channel.

All that said, I seem to be missing out. I'm not sure if it's because I'm new, and not worth dealing with yet, my expectations are unfair, or I have simply had a run of bad luck.

I would appreciate any input you care to provide. Where I should look? Based on what I've set forth, exactly what am I doing wrong? I really do like this game. I want to continue playing. But I have yet to find an active, engaging, mature community who actually wants to deal with a new player. When I say "deal with a new player" I mean interact with period. While I am sure that there are numerous wonderful people who play this game, I'm not encountering them. I seem to only encounter people who want everything handed to them, vets who are jaded by those types of newbies, and griefers or exploitative people who just want to have fun at a newbie's expense.

My thanks for your input, should you care to provide it.

I am reasonably new but if you need help and advice forums is good place to ask away most of the pros give sound advice ,since you have lost some ships I can help a little just bring the mats needed to build any tier 1 frigate destroyer and some haulage and mining barges and I make them for you so it just cost you the mats .
I am from the uk/England on from 6.00 Greenwich time look me up will try to help you lost a ship myself to a ganker well I like to call them seal clubbers take the easy option

many thanks wish you well

bob

Not to be rude but a lot of older players don't want to waste their time on someone who might be gone a few weeks down the line. EVE is notorious for the amount of players that drop out after playing for only a short period of time, never to return.

The best advice I can give you is to just keep learning about the game on your own, read some of the many guides out there, continue asking and researching things on the forum for example.

If you were looking for players to join your corp, you'd only want those that look like a potential long term investment to join. So by doing the things mentioned above you prove to a recruiter that you have potential.

EVE is a strictly non hand-holding game/community. You have to do and learn things for yourself before you find willing people wanting to invest time and effort to help you progress further.

When I first started playing EVE, I wanted to know everything about the game. I read for hours and hours, asked questions when I couldn't find an answer myself, I did all this not because it was expected but because I wanted to.

When It came time to look for my own Corp I knew what I wanted and what I'd get out of it before joining, didn't need to ask "what are you going to do for me" because that's not how it works. I wanted to be a part of something bigger, I wanted to be the guy that people came to for help or advice. To be part of a team.

Also you will tend to find that the larger a corp gets the less "personal" the atmosphere becomes. If a corp has ten thousand members and you're number ten thousand and one, it's unlikely that you will find the camaraderie that you'd experience in a corp of say 20 or so people.

That's too bad because it's not at all true.

such bad advice and most of that is not true whatsoever.

I joined faction warfare very young, around 900k sp, and it was great people helped me do stuff, fc's were understanding that there was noobs in fleets. i had great fun, then i moved to null and joined a pirate corp of around 40 players or so, cant really complain i enjoy the game and whenever i need help there is always someone to tell me what to do.

you dont need to give up based on that advice

Thing is that unlike in most other MMO's suddenly losing a warm body to RL from your fleet can have a significant impact on your gaming experience.
This leads to most of vets considering anyone under 6months to be still on their training wheels and sometimes that shows up on recruitment as well and truth to be told 6 month really is the minimum time to have support skills and ships trained to a level where you can be realistically called as self sufficient and personally I feel that 40mil SP (that is around 2 years solid) is somewhat optimal to have a decent skills for any activity in EVE; once you get there the rest is just gravy.


So EVE is isn't a fast game hardest thing is to find a group that has activities that don't require heavy investments in skillpoints.
Usually the thing is that the smaller the group is the more they have to multitask meaning they need more SP per character to compete with larger groups.
As for brave newbies they are based on reddit and as a general rule such groups usually shun recruits directly from the game (goons for instance never ever recruit without you being a member of something awful and recruit in game only to scam you).

Also keep in mind that unlike in most other MMO's your corp largely dictates your daily activities in EVE hence finding that perfect group for you is essential to your gaming experience.
I for one was a bit sceptic on how this all Finnish WH group that I belong to would fare in the context of what I knew about most Finnish based corps in other MMO's and especially in EVE, however now after a year long membership I can say with a hindsight that I don't think I could had find a better group to play EVE with.

My advice is that don't give it up just yet because finding the right corp in EVE is like looking for job; you try and fill many positions until you find the one that suits you.

I think the biggest challenge in Eve is that early specialization is rewarded while trying out a bit of everything is made difficult. I like to try out everything but I had to realize that as a result I would also not enjoy anything because I would have a hard time earning moments of success.

For example: I enjoy exploration. The skills I need are those which help me scan, hack relic sites and cloak. But I would also like to run combat sites. Having to learn combat skills would severely delay skill development for the exploration skills. There are core skills which should be trained up regardless of your profession but overall you really have to make up your mind and some point as to what you want to achieve.

Once you have that you train towards it. Let's say, you want PvP: Find a ship with a fit which is well recommended and train towards it. Learn to handle it well. Once you reached that goal, look at where you can go from there (T2? T3? etc.) A corp can still be helpful you just have to realize that the big corps out there are not necessarily the ones you want to be in. Look in the corp advertisement forum, there are many specialized corps (PvP, PvE, Industry etc) which welcome new players. In addition, once you have a goal it is easier to learn about it: You simply ignore the stuff which is not related to it. This makes things a bit less overwhelming. For example, after I realized that I want to stay in exploration I tried to read up on everything wormhole. I skipped all the blogs and posts talking about trading or hauling. PvP/PvE will be necessary at a certain level but I'll cross that bridge once I get there.

Having said that I personally don't like to be spoon-fed every bit of information. You have to die a few times to learn certain lessons and I don't think there is anything wrong with that.

it's always amazing to me when I read such posts because the experience is completely different for me.

I tried that eve uni thing, but the interview process and everything was just too tedious and I didn't follow up. Instead I tried interacting on the forums, people contacted me, invited me into their channels, gave me advice and also I got a ship.

now I'm (my alt, actually) in a small corp which is piracy oriented right now. People in it are amazing, very helpful and friendly, and they don't take themselves very seriously (I really hate it when some people take MMOs as if it were their jobs, moaning and b*tching and whatnot, if it's not fun, quit playing it and move on ffs!)

skillwise I've done all the wrongs but who cares, I'm starting to be more specific (definitely towards exploration, most likely combat oriented exploration, cloaking etc...)

bought myself a second account (this one) because I also want to do other stuff in the game without compromising too much early on.

So far I'm having a blast.

most of the time, I do solo, I'm still learning the ropes and while I solo, people in the corp give me advices on fitting, strategy, skills etc... until I reach the point where I can hang out with them. They also offered pvp training (which has to be planned, for me, because I can not always use TS)

I don't worry too much about stuff I can't have right now, rather, worry about the task at hand, which is learning and practicing, creating a network of good friends to play with, maybe help build something bigger than me, be a part of something that may or may not be significant on the grand scheme of things.

About ganking, I don't worry about it, it did happen, it will happen again, which is why I chose piracy as a way to go, not to be the prey anymore, but rather, be the hunter.

it's not against people personally, it's just part of the game, like a good game of paintball, sometimes it hurts a little, costs a little money, but mostly, it's great fun and we're all still friends afterwards.

Vets from other MMOs often, I believe, take the game too seriously. it is a complicated game, it is somewhat" serious. But what I love about people I meet, is that most realize it's only a game, regardless of time/money spent, nothing in it really matters except for the fun you can have playing it.


What I will give you, is that as a rookie, it can be painful to watch general chat channels and it can take time until you find good people to play with.

I found that the forum is a good way to find those people, and this is how they found me as well (got invited in 2 or 3 corps through here, well, my alt anyway)

Now EVE isn't for everybody, and if you don't think it's for you, it's perfectly fine. Maybe if you give it another try later down the road, you may start to actually enjoy it. Other people do, so that means it is possible to actually enjoy it.

Third try was the charm for me

Hell, the OP didn't wait for someone to say it's not worth the effort. Someone said "there's effort involved" and OP decided that meant he would never have a chance.

I would imagine that something big like brave or eve uni will have a cookie cutter approach that is great for what they are but not so good if you are looking for personal interaction. In my personal opinion medium sized corps are where it's at. If they are too small you won't have many active players on and if they are too big you'll just be another number.

There are plenty of corps that are the proper size and willing to take on a limited number of new players. My main's corp is one of them and I know I see dozens of others every day. The problem with Eve is that there is no way to advertise that you are looking for new members and especially not advertise that you are new player friends without attracting a kind of attention that many people just don't want to deal with.

To me if you want to find a corp a good way is to hang out where people are doing what you are doing or would like to do and look at the corp's info of the people that are doing it. An example would be if you are interested in low sec faction warfare then hang out in an active low sec FW system and look at the show info UI on some of the characters. From there you can click on the corp logo and link to that and from there you can click on the Alliance logo and get Alliance UI. So if you look in the description of any corp or alliance many have recruitment info and some have public channels. You can join the public channels and talk with some of their members.

Also various groups have public channels. you can find many of these groups out of game. I'm not a big reddit user but I know many groups use it to connect. I don't think that I can mention any specific names without being reprimanded for recruiting in the wrong section of the forum but there are various groups with various interests doing this. Also many twitch streamers have public channels with many followers. Also you could try the NPSI roam channels as well. Or if you are interested in a specific null sec space or alliance you could try going there and doing what I said with the show info and then checking corp descriptions before.