EVE New Citizens Q&A

Everything you do repeatably for a long time, eventually becomes boring. It's up to you then to leave your comfort zone and try something completely different. EvE is big enough to switch play style every couple of month or every year. Don't feel yourself obligated to do things you don't like or stay in the same space. But also don't underestimate the appeal of such a comfort zone, especially if you want to just relax after a stressful day at work.

The answer is yes and no.
Yes, if you do the same thing every time you log in eventually EvE will become boring whether you are in high, low, nul or worm holes. On the other hand you may be one of those who finds your time in nul so enjoyable that you never want to leave.

On various characters I spent years in high, low, nul and worm holes and they all got boring, I was about to hang up EvE forever when a low sec group I have a character in started experimenting with a different way to train new pilots. I was asked to move a character to high sec to run that program for them and it has been some of the most enjoyable time I have ever spent in EvE. The enthusiasm and excitement these new players have for the game is really quite infectious. It is quite fun and rewarding in many ways to work with these new players and then launch them off into the next chapter in their EvE adventure.

EVE is not so much a sandbox as a big toy box full of all sorts of cool things to play with. But it's not so much the toys as the people that you play with that make it an enduring experience.

Any activity will get tedious if it becomes repetitive. Even if the rewards are good, it will be the same rewards each time and eventually that gets boring. Even in a game world as vast and intricate as EVE, there's only so much you can do.

So don't focus on the toys. focus on the people who are there to play with them with you. People are endlessly varied and interesting, and you'll never run out of new people to meet and new experiences to have.

And the best antidote for a jaded attitude is to interact with someone who is new to the game. Like a new kitten exploring the world, they're experiencing every bit of wonder and excitement that you did when you first arrived, and it's extremely rewarding to go along on that journey. I think it's something that will never get old.

With my main toons my experience in null-sec has varied greatly. In small groups in areas where there are other small groups I had a blast, but my time spent in a huge corp with a huge alliance I was not very happy. A big part of it was timing (time zone) but also the sheer inertia of getting things going became a tedious job.

When i was with a large group I flew a lot of logistics or command boosting (before tthe recent changes) so I spent a lot of time chasing and covering the FC's tail or warping from safe spot to safe spot throwing boosts (oh boy, that was fun). The group I was with had doctrines for the kinds of ships you flew, which meant that everybody was in the same thing, but it kept it simple when warping around with 100+ ships at a time. Those doctrines meant there was no individuality, we were just too big. If you wanted to mine or explore you could so long as the doctrine rules allowed for it, although mining was handled mostly by a different corp in the alliance and you needed permission to join them. If you wanted to hunt a single red in your area you could fly whatever you wanted, but if there was an official fleet call-up you had to fly doctrine.

Large fleet would take an hour or more to form up at times, then we would warp around for hours hoping to catch people, chase them off, whatever. Most of the time I was just 'aligning to X'. We had a few rush moments (like when the entire group was bombed and only the logi and FC escaped or we got cut off from our bridge and we had to log out at a safe and wait on comms for the OK to log back in) Even when I was shooting at things, it literally was hoping you could even get your shot off before 30 other guys killed the target.

In small operations though, things were a lot looser and relaxed (but we died a lot more as well). I think if I go back again, I'll be going in to a WH as it does form some natural bottlenecks and reduces the massive fleet noise.