I’m planning on getting into it. Read a few guides. How is it compared to other mmos? I played wow for many years, eve seems more open ended. How newbie/ casual friendly is it?
I love linking to this graph of MMO learning curves whenever the opportunity arises.
That’s hyperbolic and outdated, of course, but EVE is a very hardcore game. You have to like number crunching to get anywhere (although basic PvE combat is pretty forgiving), and you need to be able to accept that you can lose your ship and your stuff when you die; where some games like WoW only cost you a bit of time and money repairing your equipment, or games like City only enforce a small amount of XP debt on you, when your ship explodes in EVE, it’s gone.
That said, they have made some strides toward easing new players into the game. I haven’t done the newbie experience in EVE for many years, but my understanding is that they’ve done a thorough job of revamping the tutorials and starting skills to give newbies a fighting chance. If you like interpreting banks of numbers and working an economical game, it can be very fun. It’s really unlike any other MMO out there right now.
Mind your bank deposits is all I’m sayin’.
The most important to understand about EVE is that it is almost explicitly a game about risk management. There are a lot of rewards for people who are willing to take risks but there are also a lot of sucker bets, most of EVE’s reputation for brutality towards new players comes from people failing to grasp this.
If you are clear about what you can afford to risk and when you are risking it EVE isn’t actually that unforgiving, especially in high sec.
A pretty good rule of thumb for new players is to never undock with a ship that costs (hull+insurance+fittings) more than 1/3rd of your total assets.
It’s also notable for being the MMORPG with the most emphasis on user generated content, it really isn’t a particularly great solo game (although people still seem to enjoy playing it that way)
I am hard core null space indy pilot, I must be there driving the dozer in this =)
As it says in my bio in game, “As you play WoW it holds your hand and gives you a cookie even if you fail; in EVE-Online, the game not only takes your cookie but also laughs at you for bringing one”.
Yes, the new tutorials are great, but what works best is if you can hook up with a friendly player to help you with real time true advice. They do have several help chat channels, but many pranksters hang in there and can give bogus information.
There used to be a SDMB corp in game, but that has pretty much broken up, but I play under the name Aruvqan, Margali Falk and Saulius Falk most days, and hang out in a chat group [LEECH] (and yes the brackets are part of the name of the channel) and if I know the answer or can find out the answer I would be glad to help.
I just installed Eve myself, which in retrospect was a stupid time - I’m loaded in new games, the Christmas sale is coming up, and I bought the game for $2 just to see in the free month if it was worthwhile - I won’t have much time to play it.
Anyway, it sounds both incredibly cool and incredibly frustrating. The idea of a completely player driven world is what MMOs should all be about. I mean, when you take standard MMOs like wow… and the story is pretty much “oh you unique hero, you’re saving the world!” but you know the guy who was there 5 minutes before you did the same thing, and the next 50,000 people after you will do the same thing… you’re essentially just playing a normal RPG with a lot of other people around. The world doesn’t really meaningfully change.
But in Eve, as I understand it - how the world changes, who owns what and where, the very nature of the game is up to the players. Your ship was made from ore mined from one guy, transported to another guy, crafted by another guy into components, etc… the idea of the players making the world makes it so much more interesting than most MMOs.
But it sounds like they went overboard on the hardcore stuff, where you can have months of effort just wiped out. I don’t know how people would be able to tolerate that and keep going - I suspect that I’d quit at least for a few months out of frustration.
Seems like you could create a balance between player driven world and not be brutally hostile where you can lose everything at any time.
That, and it doesn’t seem very newbie friendly, both with the steep learning curve and with the great power of older players over new ones. Not sure how accessible it will be.
But it is probably the only (western) MMO that has steadily grown for the last 5 years (excepting wow maybe but I don’t trust their figures), so it must be pretty appealing to its player base.
LOL, you want to know how steep the learning curve can be?
I am an industrial player, so one of the things I do is mine asteroids for ore. So I spend around 75 million ISK to buy the skill books to train to fly a Hulk. I buy a hulk that cost me around 135 million ISK, and equip it for mining, another 30 million ISK. I get into a new corporation that is moving to null security space because they are living in a Mostly Harmless alliance system.
Within the first week I have 2 hulks and a Mackinaw [an ice mining ship that costs roughly the same overall] shot out from under me while I learn to survive in 0.0 space. I lose implants, and as I am also participating in PVP to help defend the system, I have 3 or 4 frigates shot out from under me as well. I think I blew through around 600 million ISK in that week. In that same week, a couple other newbies to 0.0 in my corp threw whiny shit fits at losing ships and made a spectacle of themselves enough that they got kicked out of the corporation. I didn’t whine as to me it was the cost of learning. It is all electrons anyway.
Of course, the risks are high, and the benefits can be very profitable. I was making 10 million ISK in rat bounties from the NPC attackers out in the asteroid belts, and around 100 million ISK a week selling off the loot from the rats, and ore and ice that I mined. I know people in my corp who can make 100 million running through a good long involved plex. We have one guy who lives down a wormhole and only comes out to sell and resupply when he scans a wormhole that leads out to where he can get out and back in safely. He is considered a bit odd sometimes =)
I have survived living down a wormhole for 3 months, learning to live in null sec, a plot to assassinate me [and a specific ship that I fly] and am reasonably happy living in null sec. I am my corporations Director of Planetary Interaction, and part of the Cap Ship manufacturing crew. I am not the richest person in game, but I am having a lot of fun. And I plan on attending the Northern Coalition Blob party in Germany if they have it again next summer to meet up with more people from my corp. mrAru and I had a fun vacation with a Romanian guy in my corp last summer, and several of the guys are also planning on going to the blob party as well.
I’ve been playing Spreadsheets Online since 2006 and I love it. As enigmatic said it is really all about risk management. Although you could get blow to hell at any moment, most of the time the chances of that happening are very, very, very small. If you are doing it right then when the chances of being killed go up, so do the chances to make big Internet Space Bux.
IMO you will know if EVE is for you after the first month. If it is, stick around. If it isn’t don’t bother; if you can’t see the potential for fun after the first month, it probably isn’t there for you.
I started out mining, tried out missioning, bought a freighter and hauled courier contracts, moved out to null sec, moved back to high sec after the CoW/ GC implosion. Now I’m moving on to check out manufacturing. It is really all about number crunching, work out what’s fun for you, and what makes you the most ISK per hour, and find a balance between the two.
I go by Jay Wareth in game, I’d be happy to answer questions and throw a few million ISK your way.
You can play almost (yeah, yeah, but most players will never personally experience a high-sec ganking outside of Jita, and probably not in Jita) completely without risk, if you so choose, but the rewards are a lot smaller if you do so. Personally, I think the best way to get over the risk is to remove the fear of dying and the best way to do that is to die. A lot. When I was still in the starter corp channel, I would tell new players to take their freebie ship, open up the map, and plot a course for a distant red dot on the far reaches of the universe. You probably won’t make it, but it costs you nothing, and if you do, you get to see just how vast this thing is. On my second day, I went 27 jumps deep into 0.0, the most dangerous portion of that journey being the access point between high-sec and null-sec. With warp to 0 in place now, it might actually take less luck than I had.
To those who want to start PvPing after a while, I usually tell them to buy stacks of frigates and stock gear, then go lose a lot. When you start to learn how to survive more than a few seconds in those battles, then you can start thinking of upgrades. If you are worried about having a worse win-loss record than the L.A. Clippers, then stick to high-sec. 
it’s worth pointing out that EVE pvp is not like other games.
Fights tend to be short, brutal and one sided, basically if it’s a fair fight then someone has screwed up, and tactics, strategy, logistics and scouting are all at least as important as player skill. If you take a whole bunch of cheap frigates in to low sec you will die, but you will learn a lot too. If you buy a single expensive ship with time cards and go into low sec you will still die (it’s actually even more likely, because the expensive loot opportunity will be noticed), and you won’t have time to learn anything before you rage quit.
To put this into context, I am a pretty experienced fleet pilot in a major 0.0 alliance (currently enjoying a hiatus) I’ve got over 600 kills, with 172 billion damage done and have just dropped below a 99% efficiency rating (remember though that EVE killboards give a kill to anyone firing on the target so this is all much less impressive than it sounds). My only real solo kill came from a brief flirtation with low sec piracy and was a dude trying to mine in a dual tanked Vexor (which I felt guilty about for weeks, something that pretty much convinced me I’d be a crappy pirate). I’m about to embark on a campaign to work on my small group skills and you can better believe that I will be doing it in rifters and ruptures and dying a lot.
The EVE communities attitude to new players is exceedingly Darwinian, sometimes unpleasantly so, but it generally comes from a lot of experience with new players and a reasonably well founded impression that a large percentage of the people who try to play EVE will genuinely be happier playing something else 
. Watch out for scams, and make sure you read up on the circumstances in which you can be attacked by another player in high sec Remember that someone who is trying to help you will not be asking you to do something that could put you in danger, no experienced EVE player would ever join a high sec gang with someone that they didn’t trust for example or take something randomly offered in a can, so they aren’t going to expect you to do the same. Remember that if it looks too good to be true, it is.
Basically if you complain about what happens to you, you will meet very little sympathy from other players, if you approach a problem with a willingness to learn and ask for advice as to avoid the same problem in future you will often be surprised by the lengths that other players will go to help you.
Word. Three years ago I scrimped and saved until I got the money together for a Ferox. I gleefully took it out into 0.4 space because, hey, I’m a badass now, right? I was happily shooting up rats in asteroid fields when someone warped in, locked me down, and blew me up before I had time to respond. Since that ship represented a good 90% of my current wealth, I got so despondent I stopped playing the game since then.
I started back up again in the past few months, and while I did splurge on getting a Drake, I’ve been sticking to high-sec while feeling out my skills, and I understand now just how much skills make a difference and how ill-prepared I actually was before.
Eve is not like any other MMO that I am aware of. The basic structure of Everquest, World of Warcraft, and other monster-fighting games is completely absent. Your training occurs in real time continuously, even after logging off. Its speed can be improved in a couple of ways, but you don’t train faster by killing stuff. There’s no “max level”; it would take decades to train every skill. There’s no “level” at all, just what skills you have trained. There’s no differences between the races besides what skills your start with; everyone can learn to do everything. Although players that have been playing for more time will always have a skill point lead on you, if you focus on doing one thing well you can get to the top somewhat quickly.
Beware of scams. Almost everything advertised in local chat in a trade hub (Jita, Amarr, Rens, Dodixie, Hek) is a scam. You’ll see people advertise 100000 Megacyte for 20% off the local price, but the contract’s actually only for 10000. You’ll see people offering to buy a somewhat useless item for a large amount of money, but the contract is actually them selling it to you for that amount. You’ll see people offering to trade you special ships like a Raven Navy Issue, when it’s actually a regular Raven whose name is “Raven Navy Issue” (someone in my corp fell for that one). There will be courier contracts requiring a large amount of collateral for attempting to transport something to a player-owned station that you can’t dock at; you’ll be unable to get the collateral back and the item being transported is worthless (you can’t tell what it is, only how big it is, until you accept the contract). In any other game you might get suspended or banned for pulling such stunts, but there are no rules against scamming in Eve - it’s part of the environment.
Although Eve is definitely not for everyone, but there are a ton of different things you can do. For pvp, there are absolutely massive fleet battles that cause significant server strain, where sometimes tactics are chosen based on what works well in conditions of high latency, but there are also plenty of small scale fleets along with some people out roaming by themselves. There’s all sorts of PvE activity out there as well: peaceful stuff like mining, trading, and industry, and combat stuff involving shooting NPCs in Missions, wormholes, and complexes. The best PvE encounters are out in the wilds of null-sec, where player-run alliances control vast tracts of space. Even if you stay in the safety of high security space, the police (Concord) only destroy the ships of people who make unauthorized attacks on others players, they don’t prevent them from doing it in the first place nor do they go after their friends who pick up your loot. This makes transporting expensive goods a risky proposition regardless of where you’re going.
I spend most of my time as an industrialist, making ships and modules, and I handle some of my corporation’s industrial pursuits. It’s a lot of spreadsheet work and number crunching, but it’s the kind of thing that I actually somewhat enjoy doing; I prefer being productive rather than destructive anyway. I also enjoy not having to actually pay for my subscription, as players can trade game time on the market in-game.
Wow, pvp soedunds pretty brutal! How is mining? I know the skills train in real time, can they be queued so you can learn many skills over a long period of time? How does dying work in the game? How tedious does it get making money our running missions?
The “everyone else is too powerful” thing really does not fly in EVE although it is a common refrain.
First, any game you are new to will see you at a disadvantage to long time players at the outset.
Second, in EVE, there are hard upper limits to a player’s skill in a given category. A new player, within a few months, can skill up to fly a Battlecruiser nearly as well (on paper) as someone who has been playing for six years. Yes, the player with six years might have a smidge of advantage on paper but not much and not nearly enough to trump player tactics and ship setup when the fight occurs.
Yes, older players may have really expensive uber modules but frankly few use them in PvP because they are bloody expensive and the risk of loss is very real. As such a long time player and a player of a few months can be remarkably on par in terms of paper skills to fly the ship. The older player may have an advantage knowing tactics better but then maybe not.
In general, with some focus on what you are training, a player can be pretty good in a couple months.
Where the older player has “advantage” is in having a broader base of skills. Not only can they fly the battlecruiser but they can also fly a battleship and capital ships and use different weapon systems, industry stuff and so on while, at first, you will be mostly glued to your battlecruiser and mining rocks for money.
I think the biggest draw to EVE, for me, is the remarkably cool playerbase. I really think they are a cut above any other MMO I have seen. Sure, there are asshats in EVE too but mostly they are a pretty great bunch.
ETA: Also, today EVE is getting rid of Learning Skills. The newbie experience just got LOTS better.
Mining is boring. It is sitting there for hours doing little more than emptying your cargo into waiting haulers and targeting new roids as old ones pop.
That said there are times I love it. If you read a book or pop up a video/movie on your screen while mining the time passes easily. I like reading anyway so making some money while doing it is just a bonus for me.
Mining in hi sec is brain dead work.
Mining in low sec is a death sentence. Just do not bother.
Mining in 0.0, if your alliance has it well protected, can be very lucrative and pretty safe although you need to pay closer attention.
Skills can queue. You can keep queuing skills till the time for all of them exceeds 24 hours. So, you can queue 5 skills that take 23 hours to train then queue a final skill that takes 30 days to train. If you train one skill that takes 25 hours to train you cannot queue anything else till the time remaining on that skill dips below 24 hours.
Dying can be brutal in EVE.
First, there is your ship and there is your Pod. If your ship blows up you pop out in your Pod. Your ship is gone but you are not dead. If your enemy blows up your Pod then you are dead (and players certainly try to pod you).
You have a “Medical Clone” in EVE. If you get podded (killed) you wake up in your medical clone. That can be in any station in EVE with a Medical Facility (not all or even most stations have these but they are all over the place). If you did not move your medical clone you may find yourself on the opposite side of the universe from where you just died which could be a good or bad thing depending on your situation.
You need to upgrade medical clones as your total skill points increase. They can get expensive at high levels. If you die without the clone covering enough points you lose those points, up to half of your most highly trained (most skillpoints) skill. So, it is possible to lose points in a way that you can no longer fly certain ships or use certain things till you retrain the skill (which could be several weeks).
If your clone has enough to cover your skillpoints you lose nothing except having to buy a new clone.
Also, if you have implants (which most people do and they can be very expensive), getting podded wipes those out and they must be re-purchased.
Mining is pretty boring. It’s good to do while mainly doing something else. It’s somewhat lucrative in null security space, but there’s danger from both NPCs and other players. I spent my early career doing it, but it was mainly to build up capital to do industry with.
You can queue skills such that the last one starts within 24 hours. That is, you can queue 23 hours worth of skills and then add a multi-day skill at the end.
When your ship is destroyed, you eject in your pod. Your pod is able to align for warp immediately (far faster than it can be targeted), so losing it generally requires not paying attention or being in a warp disruption bubble. If your pod is destroyed, your consciousness is transferred return to the location of your medical clone. You receive a basic clone for free, but once you get significant amounts of skill points you will need to upgrade the clone each time you get podded - if your clone isn’t upgraded enough, you will lose skill points. Not all of them, but a significant chunk.
Your wreck will contain some of your cargo and modules; I believe there is a 50% chance for an item to be destroyed when your ship blows up. The wreck can also be salvaged, the items from which are used to make fittings known as rigs.
Making money can be tedious regardless of method. There’s a finite amount of PvE content in the game. Some of it is harder to find than others, and just doing level 4 missions can get extremely tedious due to the lack of variety. Making money via industry is interesting if you consider developing and analyzing spreadsheets to be “interesting”.
To be honest mining is boring and not very profitable. One of the few things I really don’t like about EVE is that it has a bit of a problem with bots. Because bots can mine 23.5 hours per day, and they make up the vast majority of the characters mining, your profits from mining are going to look pretty meager unless you can keep it up all day every day yourself. (If I sound bitter, it’s because it took me two years to learn this myself.:mad:) If you find that you do like mining join a corp in null sec or wormhole space ASAP, you will make much better ISK than you can in high sec.
You can queue skills up to 24 hours. For example: If your current skill finishes in 12 hours you can queue another 11 hour 59 minute skill, and then you can throw in any other skill, but once the queue exceeds 24 hours you can’t add any more to it.
Dying is pretty simple. First off, if you lose your ship you simply spawn in place in your pod. NPCs will never pod you (i.e. destroy your pod), and if you are quick you can usually escape from PVP encounters. So if you just lose your ship you fly to a station in your pod and buy a new ship.
If you do get podded then you wake up in whatever station you clone is stored at, and you pretty much just buy a new ship and off you go.
Making ISK can be tough at first, but the more ISK you acquire, the easier it gets. Once you get into the billions of ISK you can invest it with other players and get interest payments. (Of course you can also get scammed and lose it all.) Like I said earlier, hit me up in came and I’ll send you a few mil to get you started. A million ISK is peanuts really, but when you’re new it seems like a million ISK is worth a million dollars.
ETA: One more thing: IIRC NPC corps charge 10% tax now, so unless you really like chatting with your corp mates you should find a player corp, or just start your own one man corp, ASAP.
In wow, there is a “hearthstone” which lets you warp back to a friendly town. Do they have a mechanic to get back to whatever “town” they have in eve? Do the ships use fuel? How much overhead is there simply using your ship? How do people mine in dangerous areas? Is it take what you can, then run like hell if in danger? What does “jetcanning” mean?
With some certain skills trained (not too hard to get) you can buy clones. These are different than your “medical clone” described above. Depending on your skill you can have up to five and they can be anywhere you place them. Once in place you can “clone jump” once every 24 hours. In this way you can cross the galaxy in a moment but can only do so once a day (on that 24 hour timer which starts ticking as soon as you clone jump).
Note it is only you that moves. Your ships and whatnot will all be wherever you left them so you may need to keep ships in each place to access.
Another advantage of the clones is you can implant each one differently. So, for example, one clone may have implants to help you mine, another may have PvP implants, another implanted to bonus a different kind of ship, a clone with no implants for PvP if you do not want to risk implants and so on. Lots and lots of room to tweak.
Ships in EVE do not use “fuel” inasmuch as you never need to refuel your ship. Each ship has a capacitor that holds energy and recharges. Doing various things drains the capacitor and when you are out of capacitor juice your ship cannot do anything except move on normal propulsion (caveat…some things can still be done such as use drones or fire some weapons that do not require cap…depends on the ship). Different ships have different amounts of cap and different requirements to run their systems. Some are hyper cap dependent, some almost not at all.
Also note that Capital ships use a sort of “fuel” when they go into their special modes. The special mode (siege/triage for dreanaughts/carriers) gives them special abilities but only run as long as you have the necessary fuel in your cargo.
“Jetcanning” is mining to a jet (short for jettison) can. Jet cans last in space a few hours and a mining ship can dump ore into the jet can which is much larger than their cargo hold. Then they come back in a hauler once it is filled and move it back to base. The problem here is people can steal from your jet can. Can and will. It is a good way to lose ore you have mined. In theory you can shoot the thief but when in a mining ship that is a bad idea and often what the thief really hopes for. Once you aggress them they can shoot back.
Mining in low security or null security space is dangerous because anyone can shoot you and miners are a favorite because they are mostly defenseless. You can ninja mine (run in, mine a tiny bit and bolt) but this is hugely inefficient. In dangerous space you need guards. In 0.0 areas your “claimed” space is most likely defended but bad guys can and do slip through. In low sec guarding is near impossible and never really happens. It requires so much effort and now bores not just you but numerous guards and is expensive to pay those guards for their time you are far, far, far better off mining in hi sec where it is safe. I have crunched numbers on this…been there, done that. Just a bad idea all around.