EVE New Citizens Q&A

You have to tell us what kind of time you expect to put in and what you want to do with that time.

Saying that, old players can easily play in a casual state. They can do that because they have spent the time to learn the game and get them into a position to be able to play casual. While I feel new players can play in a casual way, it is a bit harder as you have so much to learn and grow.

In the end, it all depends on what you want to do. If you just want to log in once a week and run a few missions, yes, you can do that easily.

Thanks guys.

Other input would be much appreciated!

Eve is very casual friendly. You can even make it in nullsec as a casual player.

If you can afford to pay 15 USD/EUR month for gametime, and maybe buy PLEX* occasionally to get ISK, then playing casually will be a lot easier.

Players struggle with many things, be it learning EVE or finding a way to make enough ISK to either play for free or fund their ingame activities. If you don't mind using cash for that, you have one less thing to worry about.

Of course I am not saying you can't play casually AND make enough ISK ingame to fund whatever you want to do in EVE - but as new player that will be more difficult than for veterans.

As for myself, I like relaxing with EVE. Sometimes only using EVE as my chat client, chatting with people I know and helping other players in Help and Rookie Help channels. When I want to learn something new, I use my new PvP character since I'm currently trying to learn some PvP after avoiding it for a long time. I have also found my niche where I can play casually and get enough ISK ingame to play for free - but then I have played EVE over year.


*) You can buy PLEX with real money from account management and then sell it for ISK ingame. More information.

Yes, eve can be played casually.

Sure there are parts that might be harder to do when you play it casually, and some corps might not recruit you as a casual player. But there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of corps that will accept you as a casual player.

Same for what you can do in EVE as a casual player.

Yes, you might not get into some things that mean you have to play a bit more, but on the other hand there are a lot of things you can do as casual player.

For instance PvP, some of the the major alliances might want you to play a lot to help in large wars but on the other hand there is the Red vs Blue alliances. Those are at constant war with each other under a couple of rules and guidelines for 1 reason only, so casual players are able to PvP when ever they want and also usually with ships that don't cost a lot to replace.

For instance PvE, some missions might be hard for a casual player to complete in the limited game time, but there are plenty of missions you can do within the limited time you stated above.

For instance Industry / trading, some of the more serious traders / industrialists play eve more frequents and get a lot of income from it, but even as a casual player you can build / trade stuff for profit.

So in the end, like I tell a lot of new players, EVE is a sandbox and you can do what you want, whenever you want. True some things might be harder to do when on limited game time / as a 'new' pilot but NOTHING is impossible. In the end, EVE is what you make of it, and in my honest opinion there is only 1 thing that has to be your main priority when doing stuff and that is to have fun playing the game.

For reference, I consider myself a casual player. I'm a college student with part-time job and only play EVE when real life lets me play it. This can mean anything from 1 or 2 hours a day to more or sometimes not at all.

And to confirm Foxnod, I also live in nullsec as a casual player and like Malaire I also have my days where I don't even undock from station and just sit in EVE chatting with friends and helping new players out.
All depends on what I want to do and how long I can be on (if I can be on for just an hour I usually don't bother starting missions / mining / PvP but just hang around to help others).

How much I like to play EVE for free (using ingame money to buy PLEX) if needed I just pay with Real Life money, I see a lot of people make the mistake to want to play for free and all they end up doing is grinding ISK to pay for a PLEX ingame to add a month of gametime to be ending up doing the same for the next month (and over and over again).

Also my entire alliance is RL-first policy, we have seen Fleet Commanders passing duty on to others as they had kids needing attention etc. so yes there are corps that understand that your Real Life comes first, but there are also others who see EVE as a 2nd fulltime job.

Let's take EVE apart a bit and look at some of the pieces compared to other games - you decide if this sounds workable.

First - "real-time training"

You log in and place skills in a skill queue then log off. Total time spent: 5 minutes? Max?

So you queue up a skill for 5+ days. Log in, "insert" a shorter training time skill infront of that (less than 1 day) and it trains, with the longer skill still queued to continue incase you can't get online for a day or so.

When you CAN play - across your first year... EVERY time you log in you operate better than you did the last time you could actually play - skill wise.

Translation: You don't fall behind others for what you can do. A game like WoW or Rift or other MMO - if you can't keep up with the raiding, etc... You won't be able to keep going with your friends. That is *NOT* the case here.

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Next - "not a gear chase"

A player from 2006 has a carrier and tons of time to play EVE. Later that year, they find that work and other things in real-life take over and they drop their account. 2012 they restart their account and log in to the game, finding they still have their carrier and the like.

Can you show me another game where a "top end" item like that is still towards the "top end" 6 YEARS later and useful?

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Earnings - very casual friendly and values hold well.

In a game like WoW, Rift or other such games, you can "see the market! ALL OF IT!!!" - and you can sell something over a few days, must be ONLINE to buy anything and delivery is instant to your mail - which you have 30 days to collect from or it goes "poof".

EVE - place buy -AND- sells for up to 90 days which run while you are off-line. If it times out, it goes into permanent storage at the location you were buying/selling it at.

Even if you are not selling for "the lowest in the universe" you can compete in local markets/outside of hubs where people "convenience shop" because it takes time to go to the hubs to buy things, and they can't just have it delivered to them anywhere in the game by hitting a mailbox - they have to go get it.

That "convenience" factor keeps this market very much alive and provides for "casual" style buying and selling.

Mining - "semi-AFK' activity.
Production - log on and check the status of your projects. When ready, collect "whenver" and go sell/buy, etc.
"Datacore farming" - get a research agent working for you and occasionally/rarely go visit them to collect the cores to sell.
etc...

All at your convenience.

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PvP - in any game you'll play, gear tends to be the "I win" factor yet here...

Within 2 weeks of starting, you can easily have the skills to be a tackler in a gang. This isn't "hiding in the back" but front-lines and an absolutely crucial role for combat to occur -- using a skill in PvP that will remain of value throughout your entire time playing. No it's not just a "fodder" role - you should see how often "they popped our big DPS ships... I got out alive" happens with newbie tacklers.

I've seen players with under 2 weeks in this game showing on carrier kill mails as active participants in it.

A 5 year vet in a HAC, facing ten 3 month old chars in a mix of cruisers and frigates is liable to run for it. A veteran PvP player in another game, facing 10 'gimps' is liable to laugh his butt off as he wastes them all without taking much damage.

Again, coupling that with the "real-time training" and every time you log on, you can fit the ships better and perform at PvP better -- mostly with others. "Soloing it!" in PvP is far more advanced but groups? "I hate blobs of noobs!!!" - yet that lets new players into PvP early and be competitive.

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Games like WoW, Rift and the like... They're kind of like "cramming for college exams".

If someone has blocks of time to invest, they are "easy". If they don't, nor have additional chunks of time they can guarantee as available to "keep advancing" -- they won't be able to keep up with their friends nor will their gear retain sufficient value to be of use in "higher end content". A HAC from 3 years ago is still a good ship to use but the same can't be said about equipment in those other games.

IMO - EVE is one of the most casual play-time friendly games on the market but this is my opinion, yours might be different.

Great question!

But yes you can, and you can do most things in eve.

I only play for about 2h ona given night because i play after my boys go to bed. The most important thing is to find a good corp that supports your play style. Some 0.0 alliance may be harder to make work as CTA(call to arms) require people on at certain times and the roams can be many jumps before and after a fight requiring a signifgant time investment.. But many small alliances run small scale pvp, local roams or industry in 0.0. There is also Empire activities such as missions, trading incursions. There is low sec PvP, and there are WH's.

So yes you can play eve casually but a good corp helps as it gives you people to do them with.

i suppose i am a casual player due to real life work shift patterns

i work 4 x 12 hours days have 4 days off then work 4 x 12 hour nights, during my working shifts i do not play, i may however login just to update my skill queue. at first i too was worried about falling behind, however i do not think its actually possible to fall behind in anything, it just takes slightly longer.

If I'm perfectly frank I'd say "no".

Yes you can do things - but a large part of EVE requires hours and hours that you won't have. Roaming for PvP, travel, it all takes so much time that I sometimes wonder if EVE is designed for just the few fanatics with too much time on their hands.

If you're casual I'd wait for guildwars 2 or something. Definitely not EVE.

It is definitely possible to play EvE casually, as it is with pretty much any MMO out there that supports solo play extensively. Just don't expect to be flying a titan anytime soon, or at all.

Playing so little means you will be able to train all your support skills, without getting ahead of yourself trying to fly a ship underskilled, which will make everything you do go faster. Only real issue I can see coming up is making ISK, which does take time. And no, PI probably won't cut it (also comes with an ISK and time investment itself), it's nice, but you can't use it to fund all kinds of ships and modules to mess around with. So you may want to sell the occasional PLEX, although I would stay away from that for the first couple of months to avoid unhealthy temptations ;) unless of course money is no object.

I am sort of in the same boat, playing sporadically, at random times, for random intervals, sometimes disappearing for a couple of days. Probably makes it hard to do corp activities, and would make me feel like an ass stiffing my corp and never showing up for scheduled things. Not tolerated in nullsec alliances, from what I gather, and I'm trying to imagine the logistics of living in a WH on a limited and unpredictable schedule.