EVE General Discussion

It may be easy to mock, but I spent probably my first 6-8 months in Eve completely convinced that PvP was simply suicide without another year worth of carebearing just to train up my skills...it's a very common notion and honestly I had heard that about Eve before starting and suffered thru endless mission running with uncommon patience based on that very notion.

The couple times I ventured out to try my hand at PvP I was facerolled so fast the only thing I learned was go back to carebearing, noob! (I see now that my 'testing out' PvP was attempts at solo work which kinda DOES take top skills/fittings and wasn't the right venue for learning combat)

Even when I got seriously into PvP in a null alliance, the other people at my SP were convinced they were useless until they could fly capitals and super caps. Like the alliance was doing them a favor letting them fly blob CTA;s with just 'lowly BC's' and BS's.
It's just a common belief all around Eve. We're a community with severe self-esteem issues.

Sometimes it's true though. Like my mistake of thinking 1v1 duels would get me anything but leet fighters confident enough to go 1 on 1.....in other cases I have heard FC's complain if anyone brings 'just' a frigate, regardless of their actual skill build. Almost all corp recruiting adverts list high SP and ungodly expensive ships as minimum skills required to apply. Others require a more detailed resume than a RL defense contractor.

I do understand the OP's feeling, and can't argue that with unrestricted PvP comes an arms race that favors those with MOAR. However, at least as important as any skill, any ship type, or any module- is the experience of actually doing it. I've never been in a fleet or even gaggle where I didn't learn something fairly critical to my survival.
There is just soooo much more to Eve, PvP especially, than raw numbers, skill points, uber fittings, etc- that all those numbers must be taken in perspective.
Lastly, once you get up into level V for many skills, you're looking at a long enough training time that the 'numbers' won't change very much during a period where what you learn out there in the vacuum overshadows the number crunching aspect of Eve.

Sorry if that was TL DR.

I see what you're saying Tippia, but let me propose that it's not level V that is worthless, but rather level 1 and 2.

The comparative weakness of the kinds of ships/modules you are restricted to at level 1 or 2 makes pretty them much a waste of time to pursue. In Eve it's pretty much Meta 4 or T2 and the rest is weak rat loot you melt down for sale.

Combined with very short training times for these levels, often a matter of minutes or hours at most, there is simply no reason to have level 1 or 2 in ANYTHING even just to 'dabble' in it. All but the very highest end of skills can be trained to 3 in little more than a lunch break.

It's especially pointless to have such short training for level 1 and 2 once a player staples a few implants to their noodle, further reducing training times to a point where level 1 and 2 are merely 'check the block' levels to 3 as a de facto minimum.

If I were to say any skill levels are 'worthless' it'd be 1 and 2 as simply inconsequential, even to all but the newest of newbies.

Odd, I was told something like 4 months and that was for Abaddon.

But then I got handed half a dozen rifters and told to get myself blown up or whatever. Much better advice.

Two couple of month old pilots against me (30,000sp) in losec. Its not hard to guess who got the upper hand, and if not for my Jamming (please god save my ass) drones, I would have been royally screwed and probably podded.
Numbers and real life playskills > Skillpoints

Cold hard universe, your in it...
I've heard it before, and I'll repeat it again....
Harden the f$&@ up, if you can't accept that there is a consequence for what you chose to do them maybe Solitaire is for you.

Tippia pretty much nails it.

I have 110 skills at V on my highest SP character and around 80 on the next one - and even though they often differ in skills that are applied to most fits (such as high speed maneuvering V or armor compensation skills V etc...), I honestly don't notice any difference when dualboxing them in the same ships.

Some exceptions of very useful skills aside, lvl V is a luxury.

double post

All it takes is a t1 warp disruptor to destroy a 40 billion isk battlship.

Tippia, this post...

******* excellent. I'm permalinking it and spamming the **** out of it.

I've been obsessing over my new training queue to a probably unhealthy level, falling into yet another new-player pit. This post genuinely helped calm down my haste/skill-obsession. Thanks.

Edit: And the follow-up is brilliant as well. Really. And the stuff you mentioned, training to Vs etc, is being circulated quite extensively in rookie help, E-Uni and several other rookie chats. I like that you referred to it as opportunity cost because...you're damn right, that's exactly what it is! So again, thank you. Thank you very much.

Because getting new players from other MMOs is bad.

Let me just field this by saying in other MMOs we were taught to min/max. We were taught to solo *everything possible* only grouping if we absolutely had to. We were taught to be perfect to incredibly minute detail, formulas for damage memorized, etc.

Roles are clearly defined by class. Here, our roles are defined by our skills and ships, only new players have little clue as to what roles they should fill/would enjoy. As skills take actual time and can't be powered through, the perceived importance of The Perfect SkillQueue to those of us with other-game end-game power-gaming experience is borderline obsessive. Many quit.

And I'm sorry, the perception that Eve is a hard-core game draws hard-core gamers. Hard-core gamers power-game, power-level, super-optimize their characters, etc. and this cycle of obsession/tweaking/not-really-sure-what-the-****-to-start-out-as-in-a-9-year-old-game will continue.

Frankly, I think most would stick around if they understood it was fine, the game is big and they don't have to do everything right away. The curious thing about the Eve community is they seem to think everyone knows that just by registering/completing the tutorial. You seem to have forgotten this game is very poorly documented/explained to a rookie, and that most sources of information come from other players, particularly in reference to optimization, Corps, Alliances, Fleets and "ship quality" and there are plenty of opportunities for poor, fun-ruining information.

Instead of bitching about it, you could help curb it by saying the rest of the stuff you said in your post in a more obvious location. Edit: And often.