EVE New Citizens Q&A

Hey everybody,

I used to play EVE about 3 years ago or so on different accounts. Lately i've been playing Elite: Dangerous since it was B2P but with no sub required. However its gameplay is not as good as EVE's.

But anyways one thing that i wanted to try out in ED was exploration in completely uninhabited space. But i wanted to know is there that same kind of space in EVE online? can i head out in an unarmed frig or destroyer kitted out for scanning/probing (something that i did years ago but only in the tutorial) and find that same kind of uninhabited space? or will there always be some kind of NPC or player presence no matter where i go in EVE? In ED you can head really far away from civilized space. For those of you that havent played it, its supposed to be a 1:1 recreation of our own universe. And when you play it you can get so far away from civilized space that named systems with stations start turning into a series of numbered systems in the same cluster. Thats the kind of stuff i'm looking for in EVE that i want to explore in. But last time i played i just hung out in high sec and briefly did some PI stuff in mid and low sec until i stopped playing.

There are exploration sites in this game with no combat. They are hacking or archaeology sites. So yes exploration can be done in a ship not equipped for combat. There are exploration sites that have combat also so you will need to learn the difference

You can be PvPed anywhere in this game. The exploration ships typically have cloaks fit to help you avoid it but it is always a possibility.

There are sections of space that have very little activity and there are systems that you can be all alone in local for very long periods of time.

There is no where in this game that you are guaranteed to be left alone and nowhere that you are 100% safe from PvP.

Just as a heads-up - in Elite: Dangerous you have pretty much the whole milky way with accurate distances between the stars. So you have a trillion or so stars with a bajillion planets. By far most of them have not yet been seen by anyone, simply because nobody has gotten far enough yet. From what I understand, that's what OP was referring to.

Yeah EVE is different. Much smaller, 5000 solar systems + 2500 "wormhole space" systems (recently added). 36,000 concurrent players, we've explored everywhere. "Exploration" here involves probing down PVE sites and killing the pirates inside or hacking/analyzing archeological ruins, OR probing down wormholes so you can find entrances / exits. The regular solar systems are populated (and defended), and the wormhole spaces have, at the very least, roaming PVP fleets.

If they find you, they'll want to kill your ship and loot whatever they can from the wreck. They don't care about "exploration data." It's all been mapped; look up "staticmapper" if you want spoilers.

Basically, exploration is a PVE activity designed to give you some loot / cash, but with the risk of PVP happening.

Curious about ED: do they still have camera shake when you decelerate to dock at the internal bay stations? My eyes were hurting and I was forced to stop playing.

The star cluster New Eden is only about 100 ly in diameter and 25 ly thick. With the game being around for 13 years there is nothing left uncharted, unless CCP adds new systems/space. Since EvE has a player driven economy unlike E:D, population density and travel distances need to be reasonable high/short. There are already quiet regions with empty systems even at primetime, just adding more empty space does not make sense.

Not to mention that exploring new systems ain't that hard. Jump in and your system scan shows you all the planets etc.


It's comparing apples with oranges.

They are both fruit (space MMO) but that is more or less where it ends.

Two things that bother me about Eve are how crowded it is and the lack of exploration. Eve has the same amount of known systems it did way back when but a lot more players in the game. Space should feel vast, mostly empty and in most places uninhabited. W space helped some with the congestion. But not a lot of people use W space for anything more than shortcuts. I mean the risk vs difficulty( of sleepers) vs reward isnt very good.

The other are exploration sites. Sites you have to scan down. These are pretty basic in nature. The same few sites with faction name change all that type of space( high, low, null, W space). But for relic and data sites there isnt much difference between them even from faction to faction except the loot drops are slightly different.

So exploration is very "routine" in eve. Once you do a few of each site( by name) they become redundant. There are systems in null that are fairly uninhabited when compare to high sec. Most system have at least a few people pass through them an hour either scanning, managing POS, or just traveling through. There are few systems that you can actually sit in for even 2-3 hours and not see someone.

Ive heard through the grape vine that they are at least in the planning phases of changing exploration sites to be more dynamic with more variation instead of: all sites with "name" have the exactly same layout/setup.


I would like to see sites become a lot more varied and the ability for players to explore where no capsuleer has gone before. The ability to add new systems to known space via gate system. The ability to explore newly created systems( on the daily basis rather than all at once) that do not have a set list of what we will find in them( like W space was all sleepers with 6 classes. You would never find a W system without sleepers in it)


Space should feel like space mostly empty, uninhabited, and for players to be able to go where no one has been before literally( rather than since downtime).

You can be out alone in this MMO, but to be fair, being there and seeking for places where other players live to do stuff together or fight against each other is the purpose of the thing.

Can't comment on the lore, but mechanics-wise, if you just keep flying into one direction, nothing will happen. You will not leave the solar system and enter a different one. You will just be pretty far off the solar system map, but still technically in the solar system you started your journey in.