Ask an EVE Player
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I liked EVE, I did. But ultimately, it just didn't ring my bell either. It's like a relationship that looks great on paper, but just lacks chemistry.
Of course, this is coming from a guy who ate, slept and breathed WoW for like 3 years.
I want to say that I hated the grind in EvE, but that's like inviting God to strike me down with a swarm of angry fanbois.
If I did have to say one thing about the game though, was that it took a lot longer to get to the point where you could be competitive. I mean in WoW, anybody can go from zero to awesome in 60 days. For better or worse.
Of course, this is coming from a guy who ate, slept and breathed WoW for like 3 years.
I want to say that I hated the grind in EvE, but that's like inviting God to strike me down with a swarm of angry fanbois.
If I did have to say one thing about the game though, was that it took a lot longer to get to the point where you could be competitive. I mean in WoW, anybody can go from zero to awesome in 60 days. For better or worse.
Exactly what kind of game is EVE? Is it like, you make a character, and then level them up? -or is it like a star wars/ start trek space sim kind of thing? Me and my friend really wanted to know but we couldn't find any videos or details other than a vague synopsis ("EvE Online is an MMO") or vague gametrailers showing space ships and some lazers.
Hokay, lemme chime in here, because I'm what you might call a rarity- someone who plays EVE casually. (Yes, it IS possible!) I'll try to touch upon several relevant points.
- The game IS difficult. There have been major strides made in making the interface more fluid and the tutorial missions more understandable and followable, but there is a lot to take in, and once you finish the tutorial arc (series of missions) you are more or less told by the NPCs to go get a real job, running missions with the various NPC corporations available in the EVE universe. (Please note that unless otherwise stated, the word "corporations" in this section means those NPC corps, not the player-run ones.)
Here's what you're expected to do: Decide what kind of career you want to pursue. Agents (the EVE parallel to "questgivers") each work in a separate occupation and give missions (quests) based upon that. A guy working in Accounting or Manufacturing is much less likely to give you combat missions than someone working in Security. Missions give you a number of things: isk (money), agent standings (the more the agent likes you, the better rewards you get), company standings (the better a corporation likes you, the cheaper you can get services at their stations), and loyalty points, which you can trade in to that corporation along with certain other things (money, items picked up off certain types of enemies, etc.) for valuable items or even ships. If you want to be a miner and manufacturer, you're probably best off running missions for a mining corporation, so that you get better returns on processing all your mined ore and manufacturing costs; if you decide that running combat missions or even pirating other players is your gig, you should look for corporations that specialize in sending you out into hostile situations.
- You are only safe aboard a station. This is very important. You cannot and should not simply leave your ship sitting somewhere, even in "secure" space, and think that you can never be molested. "High-sec" space, rated between 1.0 and 0.5, means that law enforcement WILL show up and obliterate someone who decides to take a potshot at you- but they may come too late to keep your ship from being destroyed, along with most of what's inside it. "Low-sec" space, rated 0.4 to 0.1, tends to be the most dangerous space of all, because "911's a joke in this town", and pirates like to lie in wait by stargates ("portals" between different star systems) to catch unwary newbies. 0.0 space is ruled by whoever can control it- you may find absolutely no one in a 0.0 system, or a dozen ships belonging to the corporation who "owns" the system who will shoot first and ask questions never.
So why go where it's risky? Because the rewards are greater (though if they're worth the risk is up to the individual). There are ores to mine there that can't be found in high-sec space, and NPC pirates ("rats") with bounties far higher than their counterparts where it's safer. Also, missions that require you to head into low-sec space can pay quite a bit better than those that don't. You CAN survive a gatecamp (a group of player pirates waiting to grab ships that come through) if you're quick and prepared. But if you simply leave autopilot on and run to make a sandwich while your ship cruises on through the badlands, don't complain when you come back to find your ship and valuable cargo nothing more than dust.
- Training in EVE takes time. Lots of time. There are skills that take a real-life month to train. But a lot of the people who complain about it never started off with the right skills. You can buy and train up in learning skills like "Learning" (duh), "Logic", "Eclectic Memory", etc. which provide boosts to your ability to learn certain skills, and therefore cut down on the amount of time needed to train. Properly learning the basic skills early on can cut a week or two off the total time needed for the "big" ones.
Plus, this gives you an edge in other ways. In order to get better with lasers, you don't have to take your ship out and fire lasers at little enemy ships to get better. Just hit that training button, be sure to log in when the training time is up to start the next rank, and you'll be better with lasers in not a lot of time at all, without ever leaving the station. Of course, if you want the cash to buy the better lasers, that's an entirely different thing.
- Combat is simple in its complexity. Those who play "tank" classes will understand these basic tactics: To survive combat in EVE, you must minimize incoming damage while maximizing outgoing damage. Now, how you do this is a bit more complicated than "equip a bigger shield". If you are flying a small, nimble ship against a big behemoth, you are going to want to get in close and circle your target, so that the big ship's guns can't keep up with you. Think of it like trying to swat a mosquito with a sledgehammer. If you're flying the bigger ship, you'll want to make sure you pick off smaller targets as they're flying straight towards you and then turn all your guns on the biggest threat on the field.
Also, every weapon in EVE does at least one of four types of damage: EM (electromagnetic), kinetic, thermal and explosive. Since ships can only be upgraded in so many ways, it is nearly impossible to protect one significantly against all four types without making it otherwise useless in battle, so the smart pilot "kits out" the ship to best resist the type of damage it is most likely to be subject to in a battle, and to deal the damage that the enemies to be encountered will be weakest against. With NPC ships this is an easy task- they will deal the same sort of damage they're weakest against- but with player-owned ships this is a lot harder to guess, so there is some luck involved.
There's a lot more to it than that- I could talk about how to make a living in any of the major career choices, how immobilizing or disrupting enemy ships comes into play, all the politics of corporations work- but it's late and I'm tired.
- The game IS difficult. There have been major strides made in making the interface more fluid and the tutorial missions more understandable and followable, but there is a lot to take in, and once you finish the tutorial arc (series of missions) you are more or less told by the NPCs to go get a real job, running missions with the various NPC corporations available in the EVE universe. (Please note that unless otherwise stated, the word "corporations" in this section means those NPC corps, not the player-run ones.)
Here's what you're expected to do: Decide what kind of career you want to pursue. Agents (the EVE parallel to "questgivers") each work in a separate occupation and give missions (quests) based upon that. A guy working in Accounting or Manufacturing is much less likely to give you combat missions than someone working in Security. Missions give you a number of things: isk (money), agent standings (the more the agent likes you, the better rewards you get), company standings (the better a corporation likes you, the cheaper you can get services at their stations), and loyalty points, which you can trade in to that corporation along with certain other things (money, items picked up off certain types of enemies, etc.) for valuable items or even ships. If you want to be a miner and manufacturer, you're probably best off running missions for a mining corporation, so that you get better returns on processing all your mined ore and manufacturing costs; if you decide that running combat missions or even pirating other players is your gig, you should look for corporations that specialize in sending you out into hostile situations.
- You are only safe aboard a station. This is very important. You cannot and should not simply leave your ship sitting somewhere, even in "secure" space, and think that you can never be molested. "High-sec" space, rated between 1.0 and 0.5, means that law enforcement WILL show up and obliterate someone who decides to take a potshot at you- but they may come too late to keep your ship from being destroyed, along with most of what's inside it. "Low-sec" space, rated 0.4 to 0.1, tends to be the most dangerous space of all, because "911's a joke in this town", and pirates like to lie in wait by stargates ("portals" between different star systems) to catch unwary newbies. 0.0 space is ruled by whoever can control it- you may find absolutely no one in a 0.0 system, or a dozen ships belonging to the corporation who "owns" the system who will shoot first and ask questions never.
So why go where it's risky? Because the rewards are greater (though if they're worth the risk is up to the individual). There are ores to mine there that can't be found in high-sec space, and NPC pirates ("rats") with bounties far higher than their counterparts where it's safer. Also, missions that require you to head into low-sec space can pay quite a bit better than those that don't. You CAN survive a gatecamp (a group of player pirates waiting to grab ships that come through) if you're quick and prepared. But if you simply leave autopilot on and run to make a sandwich while your ship cruises on through the badlands, don't complain when you come back to find your ship and valuable cargo nothing more than dust.
- Training in EVE takes time. Lots of time. There are skills that take a real-life month to train. But a lot of the people who complain about it never started off with the right skills. You can buy and train up in learning skills like "Learning" (duh), "Logic", "Eclectic Memory", etc. which provide boosts to your ability to learn certain skills, and therefore cut down on the amount of time needed to train. Properly learning the basic skills early on can cut a week or two off the total time needed for the "big" ones.
Plus, this gives you an edge in other ways. In order to get better with lasers, you don't have to take your ship out and fire lasers at little enemy ships to get better. Just hit that training button, be sure to log in when the training time is up to start the next rank, and you'll be better with lasers in not a lot of time at all, without ever leaving the station. Of course, if you want the cash to buy the better lasers, that's an entirely different thing.
- Combat is simple in its complexity. Those who play "tank" classes will understand these basic tactics: To survive combat in EVE, you must minimize incoming damage while maximizing outgoing damage. Now, how you do this is a bit more complicated than "equip a bigger shield". If you are flying a small, nimble ship against a big behemoth, you are going to want to get in close and circle your target, so that the big ship's guns can't keep up with you. Think of it like trying to swat a mosquito with a sledgehammer. If you're flying the bigger ship, you'll want to make sure you pick off smaller targets as they're flying straight towards you and then turn all your guns on the biggest threat on the field.
Also, every weapon in EVE does at least one of four types of damage: EM (electromagnetic), kinetic, thermal and explosive. Since ships can only be upgraded in so many ways, it is nearly impossible to protect one significantly against all four types without making it otherwise useless in battle, so the smart pilot "kits out" the ship to best resist the type of damage it is most likely to be subject to in a battle, and to deal the damage that the enemies to be encountered will be weakest against. With NPC ships this is an easy task- they will deal the same sort of damage they're weakest against- but with player-owned ships this is a lot harder to guess, so there is some luck involved.
There's a lot more to it than that- I could talk about how to make a living in any of the major career choices, how immobilizing or disrupting enemy ships comes into play, all the politics of corporations work- but it's late and I'm tired.
Three questions that will influence my purchasing decision.
1)How the HELL does it actually play? As in, is it a flight simulator? A detailed, one-shipped kind of Homeworld? A card game? Rock paper scissors? Other? I get that it's a MMORPG with a wide, wide range of possibilities- what really confuses me is how the ship-to-ship combat works.
2)What kind of connection speed will I need to play adequately? Not sensationally; adequately.
3)How important are these eight expansions to my experience in EVE, and how much will they cost?
1)How the HELL does it actually play? As in, is it a flight simulator? A detailed, one-shipped kind of Homeworld? A card game? Rock paper scissors? Other? I get that it's a MMORPG with a wide, wide range of possibilities- what really confuses me is how the ship-to-ship combat works.
2)What kind of connection speed will I need to play adequately? Not sensationally; adequately.
3)How important are these eight expansions to my experience in EVE, and how much will they cost?
1) It's a combination of "click twice here to move in that direction" and "right-click what you want to approach/orbit around/crash into and select how to do so". (Don't worry, there's no damage from crashing.) It's not too hard to learn.Saskwach said:
2) Depending on where you are, this might vary a bit- but unless you're in Jita (major trade hub) you'll probably need no more bandwidth than any other MMO uses.
3) The expansions are all one continuous line of upgrades and come free with the game. You'll always be able to play the most recent version.
Why aren't I in bed yet?
Surprised, I was like I can take this npc, and then i got hit by 5 missles and ship was a crater.EittilDratsab said:How does it feel when you lose your first ship?
i used to play the game myself but eventually i got bored because im not a huge war person and our alliance got involved in 1 that nearly crippled all of the 2 year old chars while the 4 year old chars blaze about blowing shit up anything under 2 years was destroyed. i also used to dj on the unofficial fan radio site but eventually that got kicked in the nuts when i moved to germany and my internet was severly cut down and couldnt run a show nemore.
it was fun for a while but if ur not a huge pvper i wouldnt play it because it is a majority pvp based, unless your 1 of those gits who rules over markets.
it was fun for a while but if ur not a huge pvper i wouldnt play it because it is a majority pvp based, unless your 1 of those gits who rules over markets.
Its a very bizzare game. You fly your ship (only 1 ship) around by setting speed any making your ship face the direction you want to go. You lock onto things and fire away with your weapons. Weapons take energy to fire that drains your capitor and your capitory slowly recharges/drains as you use items. You have to burn through an enemys, shield, armor and then hull to blow up their ship. You only control 1 ship, but can learn to control masses of drones and eventually little baby ships(at high lvls).ElArabDeMagnifico said:
The leveling up is VERY bizzare, it takes real time. I.E. you select 1 skill and it says it will be done in 5minutes. The 5 minutes is the same if you are in game or logged out, its like setting an alarm clock. Some skills can take months of real time to train. The good thing being, older players stay older. The bad being that nothing you do has an effect on your skills (aside from buying implants).
That being said, it is the deepest mmorpg that I have ever played. Crime is allowed, you can ransom, people are bought and sold in wars. The economy is dam close to real. Real supply and demand, real values changing, not this "sell an item and it disappears" crap. People make a great amount of money transporting items from sectors with low demand to high. The crafting system is actual crafting ie. you take all the raw metals and build a ship you can fly, and it takes minutes to monthes. Mining is profitable and dangerous with corporations often supplying defense ships to the weak mining vessels. Corporations act like real business's some supplying others fighting.
I loved the hell out of it, but it is soooooo hard sometimes. Losing a ship can set you back days of playtime. And jumping into a gatecamp of people who have more money than you and kill you anyway is fucking lame.
I've started from scratch with eve about 3 times now since it first came out. It was always fun, but after a month or two I'd always get bored with it. The insane difficulty curve never helped, plus all the gate-camping retards and whatnot. Generally unless you stayed in the ultra safe places, you would die. And when I last left, gangs of ultra-powerful people were hanging around the safe places anyways, slaughtering everyone they could find.
Yaaaay.
Yaaaay.
I have a question
Are the waiting times really that bad
It sounds like automated grinding at the rate it is said to be, a bit like; "why take part in the point of MMO's when we can do it for you!?!"
also, if you get blown up enough can you really lose your entire character? if thats the case why not hunt some poor fool until he's a dead man for good?
Are the waiting times really that bad
It sounds like automated grinding at the rate it is said to be, a bit like; "why take part in the point of MMO's when we can do it for you!?!"
also, if you get blown up enough can you really lose your entire character? if thats the case why not hunt some poor fool until he's a dead man for good?
I'm no artist, sadly. However, I have posted a thread on the EVE Online forums asking for this. Once it gets some decent replies, I'll post the link.UpInSmoke said:
No, Yes.Ultrajoe said:
People over exaggerate. Anyone who claims you have to spend a year skilling up before you can do anything is talking out of their arse. I have quite happily reached a level of solo PvP on a free trial. The fact is, because it's time based, there will ALWAYS be someone who's just better than you. That doesn't mean you can't kill them. It means you should never get cocky, which in my mind is a good thing. Besides, its not like you're the only noob in the universe when you start out. If you wanna pvp, hunt other noobs!
And Yes, you can lose all your character's progress if you die. All of it. All those skills, gone! The character itself won't die, but you're a noob again. Basically, when you die, you inhabit a clone you've prepared at a medical bay. You always have a clone that can keep the noob amount of skill points, but you have to pay to upgrade the amount of skill points you'll keep when you die. It isn't that expensive though, it's just important to make sure your clone is at a station with a med bay so you can buy a new clone without having to undock.
Ok! And to clarify!
Ok, that's your UI ingame. The ship onscreen is yours, in this case a Punisher. On the left hand side is the NeoCom, where all your nifty buttons are, but I won't cover that here. The combat stuff is the overview on the right, and the Module interface at the bottom. The blue bar at the bottom of the circle is your speed. The yellows bars in the centre show your capacitor levels. The three white bars show, top to bottom, shields, armour, and hull. To the right are the modules. Top row are high power slots, your guns, tractor beams, remote shield repairers, and so on. Middle are shield devices and general toys- Afterburner, Warp Scrambler, Tracking Disruptor. Low slots are mostly armour tanking.
Combat:
The overview on the right hand side shows all objects in your vicinity. In combat hostiles will be shown in red. General combat procedure is to select a hostile from the overview, then lock on. What you do next depends on your ship, but I'll base it on a short-ranged frigate. You'd then send your ship into an orbit around your target, generally about 2km or less away. Once in range you click the weapon buttons at the bottom to set them firing. Each of these actions only requires one click, then your ship takes over. So on the surface, it's not massively engaging combat. But in a difficult fight, you're having to balance speed, transverse velocity in relation to your target, capacitor levels, Shield/armour levels and the amount of damage you're kicking out. In PvP you're also monitoring the overview for any new targets, as well as the local chat channel so you know how many people are in system. It's the most mentally testing combat I've known, honestly.
So in answer to your question Sask, somewhere between Flight Sim and Homeworld.
And incidentally, all those boxes with purple or blue stars are his team-mates. That's what we're talking for a corp-operation.
EDIT: hmmmn. The piccies broke. Assuming its a site kink and not the work of a mod, I'll try and fix it. Sorry in advance if a mod got rid of it!
Gotta get to work, but I can answer this.Ultrajoe said:
Your character sits in a "pod" inside the ship. If the ship is destroyed, the pod is ejected. It has no weapons and barely any armor, and can be destroyed; enemy NPCs won't bother, but players might (though this is somewhat frowned upon). If the pod is destroyed, your character dies and returns in a clone bay in whatever station you have a clone in. You lose whatever implants (they increase stats and skills) you had, and if you don't have a good enough clone, you can lose a number of skill points.
Fortunately clones are fairly inexpensive (in comparison to ships) and not at all difficult to acquire. The difficult part is remembering to upgrade it as you gain more skill points, as the cheaper clones can only "remember" so many.