EVE New Citizens Q&A

Be patient.

I remember your frustration well. The first few weeks are a bit rough. There's all this cool stuff that you can't quite do, and you keep changing your mind about what to try so your SP ends up all over the place. I look back on it quite fondly now though. There was so much to test and explore, everything new and exciting. The anticipation of your next skill completing....these days I don't even know what I'm currently training.

It is hard, but it will pay off if you stick it out. The key is to find ways to have fun with very little SP. For most people this means getting involved with an active corp. Brave does all kinds of things that you can get involved with. Even mining (something I typically abhor) is more fun with people to chat with.

You say you don't want to fly fleet tackle. Why is that? Have you tried it? It's a great way to learn about various combat mechanics and how fleets operate - which is incredibly important knowledge when flying solo. You need to be able to deal with those tacklers quickly so you don't get pinned down by "the blob". Flying that role yourself is the best way to understand its limitations. Not to mention it will introduce you to other players and get you involved. The more time you spend doing anything, the less time you spend worrying about your skill queue.

Personally I love solo PVP and if that is your ultimate goal I would encourage you to get started sooner rather than later. Check out the "EVE is easy" videos on youtube which have some examples of low SP pilots doing work on their own. Of course these are experienced players using new characters, so they already have the game knowledge. But they prove that SP isn't everything.

Keep in mind that solo PVP is basically playing EVE on hard mode. Just because you are solo doesn't mean anyone else is. You'll often be fighting outnumbered and outgunned - and when starting out you'll be at an experience and SP disadvantage as well. However, all those things just make it that more rewarding when you succeed. Just be prepared for a rough go of it for a while - until you find your niche. And in the mean time, even for primarily solo oriented players, flying with groups is undoubtedly the fastest way to learn.

Edit: If for some reason it's just the "hero tackle" role that bothers you (suicide isn't for everyone) there are plenty of other low SP options which your FC would love for you to fill - EWAR and T1 logi are welcome in most all fleets

Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I didn't want to fly fleet tackle because it didn't sound challenging. My impression is that I would just end up being blaster fodder. Haha. Thanks for the suggestion on EWAR and T1 Logi. I will ask about that and see if that is something I can get into. I'll check out the "EVE is easy" videos as well.

I think rvb also as a t1 frig replacement program. I could be wrong.

It gets better after the first year or two.

I hope.

You've gotten into the habit of everything being handed to you, it's now very tough to get out of that mindset but you'll find that you become a much better gamer in general after you do

it can be very challenging staying alive vs some fleet comps. Sure many corps will put newbies into frigs and rely on numbers of newbs in fast ships zerging other players. sure 10x newbs in 4km/s atrons will probably land a scram on an orthrus, but will probably lose a few ships in the process, and the othrus always has the option to just warp out.

overall frig pvp is the most intense imo, just because it is so fast and ships have so little hp. There are also lots of pilots that make mistakes, or don't have a lot of SP in that area because they are trained into other stuff. There are also many ships/fits that can just beat other ships/fits depending on a huge number of factors, and many of them don't involve Skill points. Flying a battleship is a much bigger isk and SP investment but imo it isn't anywhere near as hard as you don't need to make as many split second decisions. And having that frig pvp experience and knowing what other ships can do makes flying bigger ships easier.

Chessur has a much better take on it that I can write: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yBTaqiMrX4
and another one, with some good diagrams on the whiteboard: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ke3ROIFB3Ms

The only other thing I really have to say is if you want to focus on combat, then focus on combat, ignore the mining skills for now. Combat becomes a better income source later on anyways. I'd rather do 20days of combat than 10 mining 10 combat. Plankton is my first character, and is nearly all combat. My first alt started with industry, but is nearly all combat now. I feel like when I started I always had stuff to do. A lot of it helped with my corp, we did a ton of t1 frig pvp with each other. and I did a lot of mission grinding.

How long does it actually take to sit in a procurers? Years since I have done it, but I don't remember it taking especially long.

What matters is what you enjoy. Do you enjoy flying a venture and mining? If not, a procurers won't no fun either.

Like others have said I was where you are now when I first started. I can tell you from experience that yes those other games have trained you in exactly the way that you have indicated.

You should not be sitting around waiting for skills to train. Eve is not a min / max game. It is a game about making and working with friends and making the most out of what you have. If you think that you can just jump into this game and pwn in solo PvP like in other games it almost certainly won't happen that way with only very few exceptions. This is a very deep game and it takes a long time to learn the ins and outs.

Learning i.e. becoming experienced at PvP in this game means loosing ships and learning from each loss. If you want to try and loose as few ships as possible or wait for skills or better ships before you PvP then you will never get good at PvP in this game.

I could give you an "all level 5" character and your success in PvP in your first few month probably would not change much if at all from what you will do with your current skill points. On the flip side of that is the eve is easy channel on youtube where the guy pwns in PvP on an alt that is about 2 weeks old.

You are correct that if you are looking for instant gratification then Eve is not the game for you. However if you are looking for a game that is and will remain challenging and engaging even years from now then Eve is pretty good at that.

Unless you are with a very good hardcore null sec or wormhole mining corp then mining will get boring fast. It is also ****** isk compared to pretty much anything else. So if you like mining stick with it, however if you are mining as a get rich quick scheme it's not going to work. But more important than making isk is having fun so find out what you like to do and make isk doing that. This is a game after all and it's supposed to be fun.

Rather than give my regular speech I am going to just tell you some things about eve that should give some perspective on the game and maybe help you manage your expectations.

Eve is a PvP game first, at it's core and by design. PvE is kind of a secondary after thought in this game. Also Eve is an MMO and by intent and design pushes towards interactions with others and de-emphasizes solo play. The devs have spoken on this repeatedly and they intentionally (I am hesitating to say force) push group efforts over solo and encourage player interaction over non-player interaction ( read that solo or PvE and especially solo PvE).

There is no structured PvP in Eve. The arena or battleground style of PvP that you find in games like WoW or Battlefield where you have even numbers of roughly equivalent characters going up against each other just does not exist here. Don't even bother to think about much less trying to get your character ideally set up with max skill points and best in slot gear. The key to success in this game is having more friends and / or playing dirtier than the next guy.

Probably the most followed PvP stat in or out of this game is isk destroyed versus isk lost. What that typically translates into is doing more with less. You don't want to be the guy in the blinged out expensive ship, you want to be the guy or guys in the cheaper ships that blew him up and looted his expensive drops.

The TL;dr version:
If you can open your mind and drop the expectation that other MMOs have taught you and come to Eve not expecting it to be like other MMOs but instead expecting it to be different and give Eve a chance to be Eve, I think there is a good chance that you will like it.

It's not everything but it certainly helps.