EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hello, fellow forum frequenters!

I'm posting this here because:
a) I do not have access to the proper suggestions board.
b) I'm not sure I want to subscribe just yet.

The Suggestion

Alright, here's the deal, I think this is the third time I try EVE but can't seem to be convinced to buy. I've given the game a shot because of its sandbox-y gameplay, which is (in some way) reminiscent of what Star Wars Galaxies attempted to do. However, I just can't get into this game, because of how the skill system works. Whenever I try to get some of my friends to join me in trying EVE, all I get are menacing looks or faces of disgust. Every single one brings up the fact that there is too much waiting involved and not enough doing because of the skill system. I know, I'm just asking to get flamed by bringing this up, and I know long-time EVE players will be happy to yell at me for it. But, really, I don't want things handed to me immediately (like WoW seems to be doing with its patch 4.3) or see this game devolve into a grindfest--similar to how Rift's "Planar Attunement" works, though that's the only bad thing I can say about Rift.

I just feel that having the option to actually DO things to actually become better at doing those things would attract and/or keep a lot of people. This is one thing I loved about Galaxies or any Elder Scrolls game: you want to be great at doing x thing, go practice and eventually you will be. For example, let's say that a skill takes you about a month to learn with the current system. Why not give us the option to learn it in a week or two by logging in every day for two hours or so. It would be much more immersive to learn by doing, as opposed to your character growing as you watch Netflix or play another video game. Right now, I could just pay for six months of EVE, quickly make enough cash for months worth of ability training (not hard to do at all) and then do nothing but log on every day or two and queue up abilities for those six months.

How could this work? Simple, if you go out and fight, then you earn gunnery/ship control skill points; if you go mining or craft things, you get indrustry points; if you scan/explore, you get science points; if you repair your ship in combat or otherwise, you get mechanics points. These points could simply be allocated towards the skills you have in your queue, or put into an skill point reservoir--from which you can invest them on the skill of your choosing.

To summarize

• It would be great, and much more fun, to earn skill points by performing actions. The current system could be kept and have both progression systems supplement each other.


• This would make the game more immersive, and reward people who put more attention/effort into into the game.


• New players would not be indimidated by the ridiculous amount of time it can take to learn some skills.


• Other factors, such as ISK, player (real life, human) skill, and experience would sill determine a player's success.


• Veterans wouldn't be all that affected by this, and could be given bonuses to their skill progression as a reward for their remarkable patience.


• It'll attract more people, think of the Elder Scrolls crowd, who all love this kind of character growth. I mean, the success that Oblivion/Skyrim have had speaks for itself.

Lastly, I would like to thank anyone that took the time to read my humble suggestions. If anyone (developer or not) wants to ask me anything, please feel free to do so--I would be more than happy to offer my time/attention.

Yep, someone already sounds insulted. Like always.

I'm not sure how the Elder Scrolls series has anything in common with WoW, or how a game adopting ONE thing from the Elder Scrolls franchise would make it anything like WoW. It seems I'm just not enough of a genius to find that correlation, as it is quite elusive. My only mistake here was probably just using WoW as an example for anything--though I bet I would've gotten this response anyway. You have no idea how sick I am of seeing the term "WoW clone" in any discussion regarding an MMO. Seeing it repeated ad nauseum is one of the worst things I've ever come accross.

And people becoming "gods" and doing everything easily if they have more time to play? Really? The people who are already good and playing the game are pretty much that. New players would have to learn how to play regardless of how fast they get their skills--and debating that would mean that you are contradicting yourself. I suppose it comes down to this: training skills over time alone doesn't create a level playing field, because makes it harder for newer players to catch up. The choice is whether to penalize every single new player that joins the game, or people who don't devote a lot of time to it.

Also...Galaxies didn't die because of its system of progressing by doing, it was because of the combat update and NGE, which did try to emulate games like Everquest or that other game that I won't mention again. Interestingly enough, that type of character progression is non-existent in that game that everyone hates so very much.

Keno, I really like you.

Again, grinding skills by playing, the worst possible suggestion I've seen on the forum so far. Why should new players be rewarded for their impatience while older players actually were patient enough to skill stuff. Actually I like the return of the non-skillqueue EVE, where you couldn't queue you skills and as soon as one finished you actually manually had to start the next one.

And on new players not being able to catch up to older players, that is total BS (and not meaning the Battleship here).
I've seen couple of new players in frigates take down millions of SP characters in expensive fitted ships. It all comes to what you fly and more importantly how you fly it.

My alt of 2 months is actually already better at flying ships below cruiser size then my 1.5 year character is, just cause she is being specialized in small ships. I know someone that if you put him in a sub-capital, he won't even hit a stationary ship as his character is specialized in capital ships and an alliance member rushed into a large ship and then undocked it, it didn't last more then 2 days before he lost it as he wasn't capable to fly it properly. So new players shouldn't whine about catching up, you will never catch up with older characters skillpoints in a long time, but you can actually do stuff and kill older characters if you do it right. Again bigger isn't always better, frigates are quite a solid good way to start learning EVE and can do a lot of stuff. Personally I rather go on a Frigate PvP roam then a major fleet battle with everything ranging from frigates up to titans, for 1 reason only, Frig roams usually are decided on pilot skills while large fleets are more decided who fields the most people and has the most reinforcements.

Define your top, there is no end game in EVE besides what you make of it. And the only good thing about EVE is that it takes time to get there and you progress while you work towards it.

And EVE Player's don't like the status quo as there is none. The whole skill training stuff is actually a well thought process in which CCP did a great job. If they change it to the general Grinding SP like WoW, expect EVE to be flooded by emo raging teenagers and expect all decent mature players to leave game as it ends up in just another teenager grind-fest MMO.

And when you start, most skills you train aren't even longer then 1.5 weeks, so how in the hell can you say training is slow. My newly started alts have to be updated every 2 days cause they are on the basic training skills and if those alts were actual new players they have to learn a lot every day as every day they learn the ability to use new modules and ships.

EDIT:

My suggestion, subscribe to EVE for just 1 month. You will find out that the skilling way EVE now uses actually isn't bad and let's you do stuff very quickly as long as you want to do it.

And I totally see your point. Like my edit in previous post, I suggest you try EVE at least for 1 month, you will find that skilling as the way it is now is actually not that bad.

And btw, I hardly fly any Tech 2 ships (only some T2 frigates) and I stopped at Battlecruisers with this character as I rather fly 1 type of ship good then a lot of ships at average quality. One of my other characters is working towards a carrier but is still months away from it.

And on your goal of carrier, yes it take couple of months to get there. But don't think all those months skilling is a wast of time. A carrier with fits and set of drones/fighters easily approach 1 billion ISK and you actually need to have skills to fly them properly (know how game mechanics work, what to do and specially what not to do to keep your carrier alive) and the funds to aquire the ship and fittings. Those things you will learn/gain while training towards a ship, if people are able to grind to a ship faster this means they will loose learning time to make effective use of any ship, which in terms means they are more likely to loose that ship and be angry on the game that they lost it.

Due to current skill system you have a good time to learn stuff while working to your goal, once you get there you should be able to make the most out of the ship you went for. True sometimes training skills can be a B***h, like said, currently I'm skilling a skill that takes almost 2 months and yes I would love that some skills are shorter but in that 2 months I can learn plenty of other things, plan future skills and do loads of stuff I like so I take the skilling times for granted and just have fun in EVE in the meanwhile.

EDIT:

And like I tell a lot of newer players, take it slow in EVE. Start small with frigates and destroyers, while you can fly them pretty good move on to cruisers and battlecruisers. Once you have a good feel of how they work go to Battleships and eventually you end up at the capital ships. Bigger doesn't mean better in EVE, and specially capital ships are quite a specialized shipclass due to restrictions (Low-sec, null-sec and W-space only) and are best used with backup from other players and less good at solo play. And to be honost, I rather loose a ship worth 50 - 200mil over a carrier that approaches 1bil ISK at all times, so when I get into my carrier it won't be in space at all times, it will be specialized ship for certain duties and not my standard ship I take out for a trip through space.

All you want to do is fly a carrier? Why not fly smaller drone boats and actually do something in the game rather than sit around dreaming about what you'll be doing in a year? I assure you flying a Vexor or a Myrmidon is just as much fun as a carrier, you still get to use drones, you won't cry when you get blown up, and it won't take you a year before people stop laughing at your loss mails.

I actually have a Vexor already, and can fly it (4 days into the trial) but since I'm one of those noobs that actually does the homework required to not suck TOO badly, I realize I can't just undock it and go do missions with it right away. I'm in the process of getting all the skills to pilot it effectively (a TON of drone skills and just as many fitting skills,) which is just a bit disappointing because I'd LOVE to just take it for a ride already. Instead, I'm doing missions in my destroyer waiting for those skills to finish.

EDIT: My research suggests that the Ishtar is an awesome drone ship, but being Tech II...well, suffice it to say it makes me feel kind of meh. Decided to get a Vexor so I could start using drones relatively soon.

If you're running missions in high sec I wouldn't worry too much about being tech 2 fit or having the best skills. This is the period where nobody is going to laugh at you for being underfit. You're only 4 days old. Take your Vexor out and use it. I used to get really hung up on waiting on skills to finish and I look back now and see how bored I was. You don't have to sit around waiting for the "real" game to start. Every EVE player eventually learns this, some more quickly than others.

That is actually quite accurate, just keep in mind Capital ships have restrictions to the space they can fly (not in high-sec) and can't jump using normal gates but have to rely on 2nd character lighting a cyno (or having a system in nullsec which has been upgraded and has a permanent cyno beacon in it).

Also capitals are more a fleet based ship. They work best in (larger) fleets as they are always a prey to be killed (A carrier kill will always look good on your killboard) and they need support from others to be kept alive while they support their fleet by their remote repair modules.

True, there are things carriers can do solo, like ratting in null-sec but that comes with a great risk, as you can be probed down and be attacked and ratting-carriers aren't good at PvP.

To give you an idea of what not to do with a carrier and how not to pimp it's fit too much:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12404589

And like said before, there is no pilot who will laugh at your fit if you loose it if your just 4 days old. People who do forgot that they were once new players too and also lost ships in a "stupid" way if they think back to it. There is no shame in loosing it in such way, every loss is a learning point if you can see what went wrong and how to prevent it the next time.

To give you an idea, I've lost 9 ships on one day when I first started playing. I was in a player corp and didn't know how high-sec wars worked, kept undocking the ships I had into a fleet of war targets. Eventually I ran out of ISK and ships and was about to rage quit EVE when one of the war targets contacted me and explained how wars worked, what to do and what not to do. Eventually seeing I was only couple of days (maybe 2 weeks) old he actually refunded my lost ships and some extra ISK as he felt sorry he made me having a really hard time as a new player. So yes, every single player in EVE (although they might not admit it) did some stupid things, were a newb once and had to learn everything themself and made mistakes on their way to where they are now.

Quite a good post here, only slightly disagree with the point that EVE isn't about getting somewhere. EVE becomes very boring very quickly if you don't have goals to work too. But totally agree that EVE isn't about achieving goals, flying biggest or most expensive stuff. Goals help you as a guideline through EVE, but you should just have fun playing at the same time.

And like Kata says, people who say I need xxx SP or xxx ship before I can do a certain thing are wrong, best example of this in my opinion is RvB (Red vs Blue) Alliances. They are constantly at war (within some rules of engagement) and most of the stuff they use are frigates and cruisers (so easily accesable). Skills will help you eventually but aren't a prerequirement to be good in PvP. Same counts with other professions like Mining, PvE, Industry, Trading etc. skills do help make you better at it, but you can start doing it when you start your account.

Good example someone once posted on the forum: Skills, Ships and ISK aren't end game things, they are just tools to help you do whatever you like to do.