EVE New Citizens Q&A

Don't sell yourself short with regards to joining a corporation.
Yes... you kinda have to invest some time into it initially... but some corps are pretty easy going and won't "mandate" you be on all the time or earn a certain quota.
Some corps are not even organized in a traditional sense. They are more or less "clubs" where you can chat and desseminate knowledge with other like-minded people while doing your own thing (unless something pressing comes up like a war).

With regards to earning money... what do you LIKE to do?
Missions?
Harvesting?
Hauling/trading?
Building?
Finding stuff?
Being hired to do stuff? (support/mercenary work)
Blackmail/ransom other people? (ask other people for money "or else")
Being solicited for your abilities/trade? (it is "okay-ish" to earn ISK by doing out-of-game art and other crafts for people)
Asking people for money? (certain ganker and PvP organizations literally live and thrive on donations from other players)

The list is endless.
Granted... some of the above activities have more earnin potential than others. But at the end of ghe day this is a game and if you are not enjoying yourself doing and/or protecting something you care a out... you are not really playing.

Right now I'm having fun doing missions, that's for sure. I'm not sure how tough of missions my Cara can handle, and I know I can't afford anything bigger (yet).

I know it may sound weird, but the Exploration Career Missions were fun and I did watch some YT videos on Exploration, so I may be doing a bit of that, at least until it gets old.

I'll probably stay PvE-only for a long, long time. It's not that I don't like PvP, it's that I don't like LOSING and I know I'm way too green to even look into it now. :D

It's a pretty common misconception that you need to have a lot of SP before you can start thinking about PVP. I jumped straight into faction warfare with this character and got my first kill when he was 2 weeks old. The best part about faction warfare is that it's very accessible, very conducive to solo pvp, and best of all, makes pvp into a sustainable, if not profitable activity.

If you're set on doing PVE though, exploring is a pretty solitary activity, and doesn't require a lot of sp to get started on doing as well.

The best loot will be found in relic sites in null sec. Wormhole relic sites would offer similar pay-outs but most of them are guarded by NPCs, while null sec sites aren't.

You'll want a cloak before venturing into Null sec, however, if you want to jump right in, you can also fit modules that increase your signal strength to make you harder to scan down by combat probes. The end goal is to keep you safe (well, safe-ish) while you're scanning down signatures.

Run the SOE Epic Arc if you haven't already done so http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/The_Blood-Stained_Stars

Look for a corp that fits your play style - there are a lot of "real life first" corporations - check the ads in the recruitment section of the forums.

A good way to build wealth is run level 4 missions with an experienced corp mate - Orbit their battleship at high speed in a fast frigate and kill the small stuff while they take care of the rest.

So Eve is a game that very much supports people who can not commit to playtimes. Other MMOs with raiding schedules tend to get some players into that frame of mind and it just has no place in Eve. You having an active out of game life in no way prevents or even holds you back in anyway from taking part in "Corp gameplay".

This is a game about relationships and what you do with other people. There are some players that have found ways to network and interact with other players outside the corp structure but they wind up putting way more time into it than someone that just joins a corp. I'm not saying that you have to join a corp I'm just saying that for most players it's the simplest and easiest way to get together with a group of like minded individuals that you can do things with. To me your busy out of game schedule seems like more of a reason to join a corp not less of one.

Eve is intentionally not a very deep PvE game. If you are looking for deep and engaging solo PvE gameplay then you need to find a different game. I can think of one off the top of my head but I feel I mention that other game in this forum too much already. Seriously though Eve is by design a PvP game and the PvE is just there to help you make isk to PvP and to give a reason to PvP and to provide carebears for the ruthless pirate types to blow up.

In all seriousness if you want to not join a corp and only PvE in this game I can save you the isk and time by telling you to not bother to re-sub. I say this not as a hardcore PvPer but as the softest most mushy fluffy carebear Sally type in the game. This not wanting to join a corp and only looking to solo PvE is why you keep leaving this game and why you will leave again if you keep doing what has not been working.

I read somewhere once that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome.

This is another question that tells me that your head is in all the wrong spots for this game. This game is not linear nor formulaic like other MMOs. There is no next thing that you should do nor is there a best way to do anything. You can make isk doing pretty much anything in game and there are a million ways to do everything. You need to figure out what you like to do and find your own piloting style and then you will know yourself what to do next.

I suggest that you try out various ships to get a feel for what you like. Try armor tanking, shield tanking speed / sig radius tanking etc... Try guns, try missiles, try drones. Try kitting, try brawling, Try Ewar, try logi. Play around with the game and try different stuff. Try exploration, try mission running, try belt ratting, try running anoms, try industry, and try playing the market.

After you've tried out various things you should have a better feel for what you enjoy and what your preferences are. Then you can come back here as someone with a better idea of what you'd like to accomplish and ask us for advice on how to best do that.

I can't say this enough if you are looking for a game where you can go to some website and find out what the next thing to do is you are playing the wrong game. There is no point to eve. There is no end game in Eve. There are no levels in Eve. This game provides you a structure to PLAY with others. It's kind of like the adult on-line version of a playground. This is a place where we all come together and figure out what we want to do.

Yes CCP provides some swings and slides and such but we can decide to play "man on woodchips" or "hide and seek" what ever we want. The point is that there is no point. We just play together and have fun. There is no end boss to the highest level current raid or anything even close to that.

Actually, as a combat pilot, and doing missions, your main concern is raising faction and standings, at least with Caldari as you are doing missions in Caldari space. The SP and ISK will come in time, combat pilots are top pay... well after marketing, but as a mission runner you'll likely do some of that too. Aye, sisters of eve epic mission arc, nice boost to faction. You're current ship will do very well there. If in time, you stick with missioning, you can always get into FW missioning or even later incursions, if you really worry about ISK.

I'm well aware of all the MMOs on the market. Or at least the ones that are marketed in the Western world. And I've played most of them. (I've been doing this since release day of Ultima Online back in 1997.)

Therein lies the problem - "grass is always greener syndrome." I've always been drawn away for another game, in turn to be drawn away to yet another... (Many times to follow my group of long-term gaming friends that formed back in EQ's infancy in 1999-2000. They're scattered to the four winds now, all in different games.)



True! But there's so damn many things to do that unless you ask around you may miss things!



This is good advice and I will.

Training for other weapons will be painful but oh well. I am heavily invested in missile skills!

Thank you for your honest and frank post, even if you did misjudge why I've left in the past.

this. always a helpful little pirate

Some excellent info in here but I want to address this before I go on.
Missions are not boring depending on your interests and how you approach them. In my years in the game the only people who find missions boring fall into to basic categories. They only fly them for max ISK / LP which means they always fly a max capability ship and never deviate from the quickest path from mission acceptance to mission completion. Or they are hardcore PvP players who find themselves in a position where they need ISK or to rebuild standings. In the former they are boring because nothing ever changes, in the latter they are boring because they are forced by game mechanics to be there doing something they do not want to do. Please folks let's leave the standings grind debate out of this topic, we all know CCP needs to address this issue and we all hope they will SOON.

Thinking as I write there is a third group of players that find missions boring, those are the indy players. In reality they are exactly like the hardcore PvP players, they hate the standings grind because it takes them away from what they want to do.

For the rest of us somewhere in the middle between these extremes missions can present some interesting puzzles to solve.
Change your fits, experiment does having that web really work better than the damage mod it replaced? and the list of possibilities goes on.
Change your tactics. A mission that can be a yawn fest when shooting from sniper range changes dramatically when you get up close using a brawler fit.
Try them in ships of different sizes. Hell try them in a dessie or an assault frig it can be fun, once or twice.
Fly them in a fleet using smaller ships, even just flying them in a fleet no matter what ships you use can be a lot of fun. After all EvE is supposed to have an integral social component and when fkying with a group of people you enjoy spending time with what you are doing just does not seem to matter as much.
I guess the bottom line is be creative, missions can be as boring or as fun and challenging as you want them to be.

I agree with one of the posters above there are many corps that are little more than a group of like minded players that gather together to enjoy a shared experience, talk and have some fun. OR they can be deadly serious with all manor of rules and regulations as well as requirements of what you must do for the corp.