EVE New Citizens Q&A

1. How often do you play?
A few times a week, for 3-4 hours.

2. How much of your time is spent PVP vs PVE?
About 75% PvE, 25% PvP. This changes though based on what I feel like at the time; I haven't done much PvP lately, but I just stuck a character into Faction Warfare so there will be more PvP in the future. I was also in a mercenary corporation for 8 months, and it was All PvP, All The Time for a while.

3. Please list some of the things you like to do in game. ie ratting, pvp, mining
PvP (Piracy, Faction Warfare), L4 missions for some easy income, market trading for easy passive income, socializing with people, helping out new players, occasional exploration. I'm currently helping out a friend in Eve; he's doing a "Let's Play" series and we're running the Sisters of Eve mission arc together.

4. If you are at liberty to to do so, please list specifics about the things you chose from question 3.
More details on Piracy: I started piracy many, many years ago when low-sec space was more populated with high-sec types running missions, exploring, and in general poking around. The corporation I was with, The Blood Money Cartel, trained new people in the art of piracy. It was a lot of fun; we had a kill board of course, but our kill board tracked something that we felt was more interesting: Ransom.

We started every fight with the intent to ransom and we honored any ransom deals that were made. Occasionally I would grab a very new player and Yarrr! it up, asking for obscene amounts (Ten Billion Isk for your ship, matey!), and when they said they couldn't pay, I would let them off for a token amount (Let me check with my parrot... He says ye can go if you jettison your cargo!).

Tons of fun. Finding targets is harder these days for a variety of reasons, but getting that ransom (especially on the new players - they seem to enjoy it, actually) is still a rush.

I used to mine when I started Eve, but found out that there were far better ways to make money. My first big foray into playing the market started when another player decided to try an experiment: He created a new character, moved him directly to Jita, and tried to see if he could make a billion isk in one month using just the 5,000 starting isk and station trading. No scamming, no undocking, just sitting in station, buying, selling, and using contracts to move things around.

He was wildly successful. I decided to try that on my own, but in a less crowded system. For a while I was playing Eve for free just by putzing around on the market. I still do this, but not to the degree that I used to. Updating 200+ market orders on a regular basis burns you out! Still, it's a great way to earn some passive money. Set up market orders, update a few times a week, make money. Couldn't be easier.

Extra credit if you want to try market manipulation - and succeed.

Then there was some time that I spent in the mercenary line of work. Specifically, I joined Noir. and learned a lot there about tracking targets, null-sec tactics (up until now I had been mainly a low-sec resident), fleet composition, fleet commanding, harassing a larger target, etc. The pay wasn't great to be honest, but that wasn't why I was in that line of work. I was there to have fun (I did) and to learn (I did).

Sometimes mercenary work can be boring: You're paid to blow people up, but it's hard to do that if they're too scared to undock! Other times it can be very exciting. Edge of your seat, oh my god I hope I live, there's so many of them! And yet, somehow, we ended up on top nearly every time. I don't know if Noir. still trains new people (they had a training corporation for a while), but there's a lot of good pilots there that can teach you a lot.

It's time consuming though, and there are performance expectations. It was a great experience but Real Life has dictated that I not have the required play time for now. I might go back to it someday.

Exploration has changed a lot since I first started with it years ago. Each iteration of exploration has made it easier and easier to find sites. Consequently, more people are running sites and the value of the loot keeps dropping and dropping. The combat sites can sometimes be worth running but the relic and data sites... I don't bother anymore.

I dabbled in mining and production for a while but ultimately found it fulfilling and boring, not to mention not particularly profitable. There's so many people producing ships, ammunition, and modules that the profit margins aren't very large. The capital ship market is probably quite different but I've never bothered to try.

The best money I made with production is when I would set up wide buy orders in quiet areas of space for minerals. I was usually able to get a good deal on minerals and build under the cost of a lot of other people. That helped, but running L4 missions was less painful.

I ran a corporation for a good four years. It was a social group more than anything else, but we would mine / run missions / get into fights together and it was pretty cool. We found an isolated low-sec pocket, got some other people together, kicked out the previous inhabitants and took it over for a good long while until people moved on to other things. I still visit the old area from time to time just to see what's up. : >

I spent a bit of time in wormhole space but it didn't really interest me. Some people love it. It's worth trying out for yourself. There's tons of wormhole corporations that need members and will help you out!

Then there's various wars that I've gotten myself into (including a 100+ vs. 4 pilot war - I was part of the 4 - and we beat the snot out of those guys),drug production, scamming, moving freight, etc.

I think the only major thing I haven't done in Eve is join a major null-sec alliance. I like things on a smaller scale.

Anyway, that's my brief litany. Hope that helps!