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EVE New Citizens Q&A

 
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Realtime or Gametime?
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Cristian Marquee
Doomheim
#1 - 2012-02-23 13:09:24 UTC
Hey guys, I've been playing this game quite a bit now, and I think the game is really charming. But the thing is, I'm only available to play every alternate week, and I'm afraid that if I subscribe for a month, I'd only be getting half the possible gameplay time with my one month subscription. So the thing that is stopping me from actually subscribing is the question on whether the game charges based on the time you spend in game only (game time) or real time, which means the subscription ticks off when I'm unavailable.

Thanks very much for any response. ( This will be my first time subscribing to any game, if I actually go ahead with it)
J'Poll
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#2 - 2012-02-23 13:13:36 UTC
Cristian Marquee wrote:
Hey guys, I've been playing this game quite a bit now, and I think the game is really charming. But the thing is, I'm only available to play every alternate week, and I'm afraid that if I subscribe for a month, I'd only be getting half the possible gameplay time with my one month subscription. So the thing that is stopping me from actually subscribing is the question on whether the game charges based on the time you spend in game only (game time) or real time, which means the subscription ticks off when I'm unavailable.

Thanks very much for any response. ( This will be my first time subscribing to any game, if I actually go ahead with it)


The payments regarding your account are based on real time. So a 30 day subscription lasts 30 actual days. (e.g 30 day game time means from 1 January till 30 January)

Keep in mind that you can keep your skills running even when you are not online, this means you can train while being offline. Actually a lot of EVE online use real time as orientation:
- Time left on subscription
- Training times of skills
- Contract durations and Auction timers
- Market orders (can be fulfilled by others while you are not online)
- Ingame timers like for POS and SOV continue even when offline

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Petrus Blackshell
Rifterlings
#3 - 2012-02-23 17:31:25 UTC
Pretty much what J'Poll said. The world (and your character) keeps changing and going even when you're offline, so it makes no sense for you to pay for only online time. In fact, I can't even think of any game that does that.

For an example, I make hundreds of millions of ISK a month on an alt character of mine, and I only log on for maybe 10 minutes every few days. If it were on its own account (it's not) that would be enormously broken.

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Salpad
Carebears with Attitude
#4 - 2012-03-02 02:41:20 UTC
If you are able to log in a few times a month, with no more than 8 or 9 days between log-ins, then you can play EVE. Easy skillz typically take about a week to train from 4 to 5, so that may be a problem for you, but most skillz take 2 or 3 or even many more weeks to train from level 4 to level 5.

Still, some of those rank 1 (super easy) skillz are really useful to have at 5, so make sure you don't postpone them. It' worth sacrificing a few days of missed train time, to get these to 5 quickly. Ones like Engineering and Electronics.

The most important thing for you, though, is to train a lot of skillz to level 3 and others to 4, so that you always have something long to set to train when you anticipate not being able to log in for a long period of time.
Jouron
Hadon Shipping
#5 - 2012-03-02 17:57:05 UTC
I know it must be disappointing knowing you pay for a subscription you can only play half the time. But if you have alot of time on the off weeks theres a myriad of ways you could make up isk and buy plex then you wont be paying for your subscription at all.

Its also comes down to enjoyment. Some weeks I cant log into eve more then 5 hours in a week maybe less. But most of that time Im doing indy stuff or cracking skullz with my pvp account. That enjoyment I get is worth sub I pay.