EVE online questions

The Game Room
1

My curiousity was piqued by this thread about a heist in EVE online. I know practically nothing about the game, so I’d like to ask some questions. I’m all for trying new games out. I enjoy WoW ands CoX but from what I understand EVE is very very different. I might give it a try to see if I like it. Anyway, my questions:

[ol]
[li]Are there characters in EVE? No one mentions “their Character” when I see a thread about it, so I don’t think there is. [/li][li]What is the general concept in the game? In other MMORPGS its pretty basic. Fight battles, win loot, get your character to a high level. If theres PvP go out and beat on other players. [/li][li]EVE seems to revolve around ships…are there space battles? Aliens?[/li][li]What is the play experience like? Since I don’t understand the game, I can’t really guess. For instance in WoW or CoX I have certain friends ingame I look forward to seeing from time to time. I usually have a goal of finishing this mission or that mission, or at least getting a cool new loot thing. In WoW I particular enjoy auctioning things and hope to get my characters crafting to a high level. [/li][li]How much does EVE cost subscription wise?[/li][/ol]

I’ll have to look more at the website. It looks like it is available for download, but that usually involves a long period of time, so it may not be for a few days before I can devote that much PC time to doing it. Thank you in advance for any answers.

One more question: Are there guilds/teams/corporations one can join in EVE?

2

[quote=“Jolly_Roger, post:1, topic:485465”]

My curiousity was piqued by this thread about a heist in EVE online. I know practically nothing about the game, so I’d like to ask some questions. I’m all for trying new games out. I enjoy WoW ands CoX but from what I understand EVE is very very different. I might give it a try to see if I like it. Anyway, my questions:

[LIST=1]
[li]Are there characters in EVE? No one mentions “their Character” when I see a thread about it, so I don’t think there is. [/li][/quote]

Yes, there are. Generally they are referred to as ‘toon’.

[QUOTE]
[li]What is the general concept in the game? In other MMORPGS its pretty basic. Fight battles, win loot, get your character to a high level. If theres PvP go out and beat on other players. [/li][/QUOTE]

All that is there too, but it follows more of a GURPS/White Wolf model than a Dungeons and Dragons model. IE, you don’t level up, you incrementally over time improve attributes and skills.

There is all of what you described and more. There is PVP, there is PVE, and there is a whole sophisticated structure of market/industrial/logistics functions that allow for a wider career path than any other MMO allows for.

[QUOTE]
[li]EVE seems to revolve around ships…are there space battles? Aliens?[/li][/QUOTE]

No Aliens, just different races of humans that are somewhat alien to one another but still recognizably human. Yes, there are space battles.

[QUOTE]
[li]What is the play experience like? Since I don’t understand the game, I can’t really guess. For instance in WoW or CoX I have certain friends ingame I look forward to seeing from time to time. I usually have a goal of finishing this mission or that mission, or at least getting a cool new loot thing. In WoW I particular enjoy auctioning things and hope to get my characters crafting to a high level. [/li][li]How much does EVE cost subscription wise?[/li][/QUOTE]

There is all of that, it’s just more complex. Instead of just trying to complete a quest to get an item, you might organize a mining fleet with battleship and cruiser support to go to lo-security space to mine a rare ore you need to build the battleship whose blueprint you acquired from the Federation Navy or Republic Fleet by doing jobs for them.

It’s about 800 megs. The subscription fee is roughly $ 15 a month, and two weeks for the trial are free.

Yes, the corporation system is highly complex. The heist you were reading about was all about corporate espionage and was based around shareholder ownership of the corporation.

3

Here are my impressions based on a whopping 4 days of play. If I’m wrong about something, I hope someone will come along and correct me.

[quote=“Jolly_Roger, post:1, topic:485465”]

[li]Are there characters in EVE? No one mentions “their Character” when I see a thread about it, so I don’t think there is. [/li][/quote]

Yes, though not the way you’re used to thinking of them. They don’t get out and walk around. All you see of others’ characters are their ships and a static image of them. Your character is what gains skills.

[quote]
[li]What is the general concept in the game? In other MMORPGS its pretty basic. Fight battles, win loot, get your character to a high level. If theres PvP go out and beat on other players. [/li][/quote]

It’s pretty open-ended, from what I’ve been able to tell. You can choose to run missions (quests), do PvP, make money, explore, etc.

[quote]
[li]EVE seems to revolve around ships…are there space battles? Aliens?[/li][/quote]

Definitely space battles. Don’t know about aliens. It’s ship-to-ship combat, though you don’t have to worry about things like steering (which is good, because I get terrible vertigo in games like Wing Commander).

[quote]
[li]What is the play experience like? Since I don’t understand the game, I can’t really guess. For instance in WoW or CoX I have certain friends ingame I look forward to seeing from time to time. I usually have a goal of finishing this mission or that mission, or at least getting a cool new loot thing. In WoW I particular enjoy auctioning things and hope to get my characters crafting to a high level. [/li][/quote]

It’s definitely a slower gaming experience overall compared to WoW (or LOTRO, my two main MMO experiences). It’s extremely complex in that there are about a bajillion skills you could learn, things you can craft, ships you can buy and outfit, and so on. If you love playing the auction house, you’ll probably love the market. I love crafting, so I’ve been really enjoying buying blueprints and making things. I’ve done a lot of mining, a bit of fighting, some missions that include everything from crafting, fighting, courier, and trading. My husband and I spent the last hour or so mining. He mined, I orbited the area watching for enemies (and potential PC thieves), then I, with my larger cargo capacity, would take his ore back to a local station to refine.

I think it’s $15/month, but I haven’t actually enabled an account yet to be sure.

I think it took me less than 2 hours to download the high graphics version.

I know there are a couple of Doper corporations. I haven’t joined one yet, but I plan to check into it before my trial is over.

So far, I’m liking the game a lot. It’s like nothing I’ve played before. I’ve been reading players guides and wikis in my free time to learn all I can. I still intend to give it my full two weeks before I make a decision.

4

EVE Online’s big hook is that it’s a truly massive universe- since there’s only two servers, there’s usually tens of thousands of players at any given time (I seem to remember about 50k being usual).

Yes, there’s a lot of space battles, if you choose to go that route. Or, you can take an asteroid miner/ industrialist approach and hardly fight if you want.

There are corporations you can join, you can create your own, etc… pretty much unlimited.

I played for about 4 months- the problem that I kept running into was that there was very, very little in the way of game parity- if you’ve played for 6 months, you’re pretty well going to hand someone whose played for 4 months their ass, all else being equal.

I couldn’t help but feel ripped off because while I could generally fight way above my weight class against NPC rats, the few players I ran into generally would hand me my ass every time.

I got tired of getting a ship fitted out well, going into low-sec space, and eventually getting my ship destroyed, and then having to start over. My buddies were newbies as well, so we didn’t have any real contacts or resources to draw on, so we were stuck. We all ended up quitting at about the same time, because we were paying $15 per month to spin our wheels.

5

To be clear, your character is a square profile picture, although one that is quite customizable. You have way to move around, and the only way your body could ever get outside a ship or escape pod is if said escape pod is blown up, leaving your frozen corpse to be retrieved.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

ETA: Oh, and I have a question of my own: when I first played, they had the “Red Moon Rising” background theme, from the expansion pack (FYI, EVE expansion packs are quite expansive and also free), available, and it looked really good, but when I started playing again after a long break, it was no longer available, and all they had was a lousy grey one from the latest pack. Is it possible to access the old ones (or at least find out what the color values were to type them in manually)? Just a random and insignificant question in the scheme of things, but still.

6

That’s one thing that’s always deterred me from spending much time in online games-the servers of most games are chock full of uber-players who know every in and out, and on top of that of course their characters are virtual demigods (tho in a few games I’ve been said uberplayer). I’ll bet that the EO players here will suggest you join a guild or something to get some early help.

7

You can also play for ‘free’ if you pay for game time using in-game currency.

Actually, like much of EVE you can make it as deep and tactical as you want. For someone starting out, the approach and orbit functions are just fine. But veterans can dogfight.

There’s only one ‘server’. That’s where all the play for everybody in the world (but the Chinese) occurs. There’s also a test server and the Chinese server. But the test server isn’t somewhere you go other than to test something. So, essentially, all the people in the free world use the same single server.

Not necessarily true.

Well, rats are stupid, that’s their job. They have virtually no AI other than simple aggro mechanics, and they generally fly in a straight line to you or away from you, while using little to no capacitor/electronic warfare. A real player, especially a real PvP’er, will be much more of a problematic opponent than any rat.

But all that means is that any new player should get used to PvP. Ideally after being able to afford throwaway frigates or if a new corp will help keep them in interceptors, or something.

Well, dayum, don’t go into lowsec. :wink:
If you’ve got a reasonable setup, lowsec travel should be doable. If you want to do anything there other than travel, you should bring a gang or not take out anything that you’re prepared to lose.

8

Ambulation is coming. You’ll be able to see a fully rendered, full body avatar walk around a station as if it was an FPS/action game. Unfortunately, no shooting people in stations.

But yes, if you want to undock you have to be in your pod.

9

I am just now getting into this. I’ve noticed it. You can kind of pull off the strafe by hitting approach and then orbit at the right time. I am playing on a trackpad up to this point. I’ll have to change my setup here shortly.

Bump I beat a 5 month old toon yesterday with a 5 day old toon.

10

Awesome. I might just have to start playing again. By the way, what important stuff has been changed since Revelations and now, including this “Empyrean Age” thing they sent me emails about? Also, how bad is the pace of inflation, not that it matters, since I never made more than a million, anyway? And is Jita (the main trade hub, made that way entirely by emergent player action, which I think is massively cool) still as crowded and laggy as ever? I read on the homepage that they recently had 50,000 players on at the same time! (And if you’re reading this and not familiar with EVE, this is all on one “server”, no multiple worlds like in WoW, a benefit of it being set in space with an environment as huge as they like.)

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

ETA: And if they ever do implement actual out-of-pod killing, I’m going to start tithing to them. :wink: And on the darker side, bets on how long it takes before EVE gets a prostitution industry?

11

mswas:You can also choose a vector that takes you within sniping distance. A well fit Zealot should be able to destroy smaller support ships while doing 2000+ m/s at ranges of roughly 100 km.

Oh, and Vox, as for getting out of your pod and walking around: here’s a video of (IIRC) beta ambulation. It’s not being developed for EVE specifically. It’s a spillover of the fact that White Wolf purchased CCP and CCP is making the upcoming Vampire the Masquerade game with what we’ll know in EVE as the ambulation engine. Essentially, as they’re making the engine anyway for Vampire, they figured that it could be included in EVE fairly easily.

Although I still wish that stepping out of your pod meant FPS combat in the halls of a contested station or throwing grenades into the bar owned by a red corp.
Ah well.

12

Damn. Hrm… weapon grouping, nano-nerf, skill queuing is coming, so are T3 ships. Um… definitely some stuff that I’m missing. Hrm. Blockade runners now use covert ops cloak. Eagle is a nasty super-long range anti-support sniper. Amarr ships’ tracking advantage makes lasers awesome against slower targets as tracking is a factor again to a larger degree.
Nos nerf? Dunno if you were here for that. Neuts these days, Nos is next to useless. Overheating. You can overheat certain modules to make them do more damage or increase your speed or their range, or whatever.
Definitely more stuff I’m forgetting.

Truth be told, no idea. There was some mention of it on the most recent quarterly economic newsletter. Don’t remember what. For all I know we’ve got rampant deflation now.

Ah! That’s another new thing. Stackless Python was introduced, and it allows nodes to be reinforced in the server so that battles between 1000+ pilots/cap ships can be run. And Jita runs smoothly most of the time I’ve had the misfortune to set foot there.

13

FinnAgain The loss of Delve and Querious and the resulting battles that occurred have driven up the price of tritanium by about 30%. Based on what people have told me about the prices of things it seems like it’s a lot more common now to deal in hundreds of millions than it was in the past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that items are more expensive than before, only that people are more able to acquire isk.

14

Inflation, which is mainly caused in MMOs by having an imbalance between money paid out by NPCs (plus newbie starting money, which I remember for my first character was really 1000 ISK :D) and money obliterated by costs paid to no one in particular (like refining). I think the coolest thing ever would be to actually have banks that could take a certain amount of starting capital and loan more of than they actually have it out to people for interest. Especially because then you could have bank runs and failures to make the economy even more treacherous. And in real life, you don’t go work to physically save up enough money to buy a house (or a spaceship, in this case); you take out a loan from a bank. (I realize that there are loans in the game, but I don’t think they let you actually grow your capital.)

You say the cost of Trit went up by 30%? What does it typically go for these days? I seem to remember it being either about 1.30 ISK or 3 ISK a unit, but I can’t recall which it was. (I might be confusing the ore and the refined product.)

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

ETA: And does the phrase “Ambulation is coming” make anyone else feel like buying a dog? :stuck_out_tongue:

15

I’ve been selling tritanium for about 4.0 per unit and haven’t had any problems selling it at that price. I just put some up for 4.25 before I went to exercise 90 minutes ago. I’ve sold about half of the 12K I put up.

16

And if they wanted to be really hardcore about player-driven economics, they could only allow agent payments out of what goes into the system. (Like clone costs and such that essentially remove the currency from the game.) That, if implemented correctly, would be cool.

Valete,
Vox Imperatoris

17

That video is from 2007 and the sidebar mentions it’s coming in 2008. It’s not mentioned as coming up in the testing notes. Do you have an ETA of when it’s supposed to be implemented?

Also, I noticed there was another video from 2006 showing off atmospheric flying. Was that ever implemented, or is it still going to be?

18

Vox Well they have to simulate the idea of a galactic economy so your ideas wouldn’t really work I don’t think because the idea is that there is a whole civilian economy that the players don’t really interact with. That is represented by the trade goods which are required to run a POS.

The banks that exist are run by players and as someone I know said come in three types.

  1. Scams
  2. Partial Scams
  3. Potential Scams

Supposedly though they are going to implement a stock market. You can own stakes in companies you are not a member of as it is.

19

Nope. One of these days I’d assume.

It’s not officially in the works as far as I’m aware.

20

Tritanium is 4.0 isk in Sinq Laison was higher a couple of days ago and much lower about a week and a half ago.