EVE New Citizens Q&A

Lowsec is the hardest space.

Easy to get kills in high sec, with all the PVE people that you can prey on, and relatively easy to get kills in null, because again PVE renters that expect others to protect them or overestimate how fast the cavalry will arrive.

Lowsec, it's all small gang PVP'ers / pirates / FW looking for a fight from the moment they undock.

You're not grinding XP or levels in this game, but it IS an MMO, so newbies do need time to start with less challenging targets and slowly gain skill at combat and move up from there. My advice to a newbie would typically be: stay in high sec for a while, or join a corp or alliance that can babysit you a little bit in null or wormhole space. I don't advise going to lowsec, esp. unescorted, to newbies.

I would agree that many of us vets have forgotten what it's like to be a new player in this game. I also admit to having very little PvP experience. However my personal experience that I relate to my comments comes not from my days as a new player but from when I started a fresh alt after having played the game for years.

I had a really rough time in this game for my first year. I spent the first 6 months pretty much just training, training skills. Meaning back then we had to train skills to increase how fast we trained skills, so I trained for months and months with very little improvement to any skills that I used in game.

When I finally did get around to training skills that improved my ship piloting, it seemed like it was a year and a half before I felt like I had enough skill points to do what I wanted to do without feeling like my skill points were holding me back.

Then somewhere around the 2 year to 2.5 year mark I made an alt to run pirate missions in null sec. I figured it would be a year before I could do anything on that character. I was amazed at how well I did on that character even with very low skill points.

What it taught me was that all that I spend blaming my skills points for my hardship it was my player skill that was holding me back.

I think that another thing to keep in mind is that Ship loss in Eve is more poignant than deaths in other games with run-back mechanics. In other games I think it's much easier to delude yourself or at least take more joy in small victories. Eve's losses have more of a sting and therefore I think go a longer way to making one feel underskilled.

Of course all of this is just my two cents. You might see things differently.

Achura females were ok, the males were just "I'll take the shittier attribs, because fck that". Chiming in with the above, I'd urge newbies to not spend money buying injectors (or plex to convert to isk, for that matter). Of course skill points are important but what's REALLY holding back a newbie is a lack of knowledge and experience, generally by the time a newbie learned how to do something properly his SP will have caught up.

The start is so much easier these days: no learning skills, they start with a week's worth of training, overpowered Venture, T1 frigate/cruiser rebalance means they have a myriad of ships to choose from that are actually good. They get good money from the opportunities and career missions, simplified game mechanics like scanning, simplified module names.

There are so many things a newbie can do that are interesting, very worthwhile and not at all boring or grindy silliness, it's a shame that most just flock to the obvious mining or mission running. None of those things require some massive amount of SP, what they DO require is the initiative to try something out of the box, to learn about it and (from our side) CCP and us players telling them about it.

Don't use skill injectors, don't sell plex for isk.

Sorry, I didn't read your post until after I had posted mine. But in fact I was talking about the video made in about 2007 which featured two 2 day old alts in Rifters that went off to Provi and ganked carebears.

I hadn't seen the video you linked before and have since watched it carefully. I believe I know the pilot in question and have fought him twice on another character, certainly a streamer with a similar voice. He is a very good PvPers, but I have to query how he got those kills, I have raided or roamed parts of null solo myself and those experiences just aren't that regular. How many times did he get ganked down that he doesn't show to get those kills? I also wonder if he asked for 1v1s explaining that he was creating this video and people delibrately went easy on him.

In particular the first fight was against a Torpedo armed Nemesis. The Nemesis initiated the fight too. I could understand it if he had decloaking to launch a bomb at the Rifter and then got caught, but he delibrately came in to brawl at close range with Torpedoes! Absolute suicide on the part of the Nemesis and yet it happens not once but twice during that video. There is also the Comet, not launching his Drones until he was in half structure. WTF? Yes there are idiots out there, but they just don't come that regularly. Where were the Cynabals, Garmurs, Dramiels, Svipuls and Otharus' that are so rife?

Frankly I don't think it is helpful to link videos like that, suggesting that a new player can start in high sec and just set his destination somewhere in null. Burn out 40 odd jumps and have a good chance of getting some good solo fights along the way. There is more going on there than is being told, at the very least a very good knowledge of the area and a selective showing of mostly winning fights.

Player experience is important and there is nothing wrong with losing ships. But raising a new player's expectations that he has a good chance and new characters are winning fights against vets every day is only going to lead to crushing disappointment when all they experience, is getting their asses handed to them.

If you're watching for what they're doing and how they're fitting their ships, you can:
1: Try to copy. You end up with a DPS race.
2: Look through the tools your opponent(s) used against you, and try to come up with a counter through deduction and trial and error. Expect to make a lot of errors, but if you get good at it, you're useful to have around.