Out of Pod Experience

Last night, after working very hard to learn for about 120 hours of login time into Eve, I decided to finish the tutorial mission, just for the hay of it. I was cautious, as always, and approached the Hive in the 2nd combat mission very cautiously with my 2.5M ISK Atron. After dealing with the NPC waves, I took the time to let my repairer do its work, and recharge my caps.

The next thing I did, in order to continue the story line, was lock target on the hive, as per instruction.

What happened next almost made me cry, moreso out of disbelief: I was watching my shield level. It didn't budge. Scans didn't show danger, so i just kept the fire power on. I was using doing a meager 40DPS, and the next thing I know... I'm a corpse, floating in space.

My lovely Atron, the fastest, most knifes edge -finely tuned beauty I ever knew... was gone. With it, went some difficult to get gear that gave me a balance of blistering speed, and tracking that would make you dizzy, and a self repairer, MWD, 10MN AB, fully rigged for cap, tracking, powergrid. This baby could really fly. What a pleasure!

I know that we have to be prepared to expect that every ship we fly, will die. I know that it is also just a game. The fact that I have taken my loss so hard attests to the effectiveness and depth of game-play in the game play and story line of Eve. But as much as I tell myself it was just a ship, or just a game, I can't help but mourn my little Atron. Up to this point, it seemed like nothing could harm her, as she outpaced everything to the point where the rest of Eve appeared to be time-locked -while we streaked by.

I wish there had of been some sort of warning. A warning that re-following the tutorial at this point will require use of specific equipment that the player has to be prepared to loose. I simply would have flown a different frigate for the mission. I'm not trying to be a poor sport, I know fair is fair, but when death is unavoidable, it makes the experience hard to swallow. The player should have an alternative presented to them, in my opinion.

Eve is a wonderful experience. I am not a gamer by any means, (I am 40 years old and have never so much as played those high score candy popping games that you see everyone on the bus or subway around you playing). but Eve is something very different. It feels like a shoe -you can just slip on and you are experiencing another reality if you choose. The vastness is amazing. I look forward to a lifetime in Eve, and this by no means sways my desire to remain immersed, I am just a bit shaken by the experience and loss of my favorite little ship that i was so careful to preserve.

Oh hey! I remember that tutorial mission!

Well, at least an offshoot of it since I'm Caldari. At least the Navy Admiral that I was taking orders from told me that I'd be staying behind to blow the station while they got out. It made sense, and the ship + fittings were free (Or really cheap), so I lost no money! :D

But yeah, don't let it get to you. Frigates are pretty cheap to replace, and the civilian equipment fitted into them are pennies on the dollar. You'll also get new ships and modules to work with for free once you start taking care of your tutorial agents when you reach the "school" you picked out.

And they're some decent starter ships too. I walked away with handful of my racial frigates, a few mining frigates, two industrials (Cargo Ship), and a destroyer.

(Or I could totally be referencing something different here. It also sounds similar to an Advanced Military mission where they gave me a missile frigate with no fittings and no budget to fit it. I ended up reading the mission brief to find out it was loaded with proximity explosives, so all I had to do was crash my ship into two suspiciously "tower" looking structures and go boom. I don't know if only that ship would blow up, or if any of my other ships would've blown up if I took them.)

I already had all of that in the starter kit (and then some) when I went omega. The ship can be replaced, but I didn't save my fit our and it was just perfect. I don't remember exactly all of the modules , but most of them. I'm over it now, I just didn't expect it. It was impossible to survive intact through this mission. Nothing fired on me. No explosion, yet, notta. I just floated out of my ship lol. I suppose I will have to get used to this hehe

Let the parts rust and put it back together.

It will be better then.

Nice that the game immersed you enough that you feel bad for your ship. I don't know about the new tutorials, but the ones in 2011 intentionally made sure your ship got killed and you got podded. (So I heard, I was a returning player, I didn't get that far into the tutorial). The idea was to get new players past any "afraid to lose a ship or pod" barrier, so they could get out in the sandbox and be free!

I despise my destroyer. Having played around a bit in it with NPC, it's can do a lotta dps but not a lot else. I am ditching the catalyst for now in favour of the tight quarters manuaverability of the nimble Atron. Takes longer to do the deed but when the going gets tough the Atron gets gone.