EVE on-line

[jaekat]

Like I said convince me that a total newcomer to this game will not get completely overwhelmed by what just about everybody say's is a Very Steep learning curve.

I love Sci-fi and this seems like a game I could get into but I'm still not convinced.

 

[neit]

My reason that I keep going back to it is that the game allows for in game politics to really work. Espionage, large scale wars, mercenaries, etc all go together to make for a wild west feeling.

I tend to enjoy doing my normal carebear activities when i know there are consequences of pissing off the wrong people =)

 

[Schadenfroh]

I did not like it, I played the 2 week free trial.... I fly around, blow a few things up, cant leave my damn ship.

There are plenty of people that like it, fine by me, just not the game for me.

 

[nsafreak]

Well I like it because of the large amount of freedom it allows you. You can do nothing more than make goods for other players and make a profit off that and even then get involved in politics. Like charge certain players more than others. You can be an outlaw and go hunting after people and ransom their ships with the threat of blowing it up. You can join a corp of mercanaries that take on contracts to protect other corporations or kill members in other corporations. You can be a bounty hunter and go after players with bounties on their heads. There's so much you can do in the game and I have just named a few of the many things possible. Hell you can even combine some of the options if you want. Personally my corp is into a variety of different things. We will steal from miners cans to build our own profits. We will target corporations that have either displeased us or we feel are a good target and declare war upon them with the only way the war will end will be either breakup of their corporation, a certain member leaving, or ransom. It really does not have too steep a learning curve. I will grant that the market system is one of the most involved among any MMO that I have ever played but it's not too bad. Feel free to hit me up in game with any questions. I play under the name Simon Monkoto.

 

[Busithoth]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
I did not like it, I played the 2 week free trial.... I fly around, blow a few things up, cant leave my damn ship.

There are plenty of people that like it, fine by me, just not the game for me.

I saw the old game in action, and thought it looked pretty, but really slow paced in early 'career'. I could totally see enjoying the game in later phases, especially if I knew someone on the game already who could collaborate in ambushes or whatever the frak you do in that universe.

I really keep at arm's length from MMMMMMMOOOMPRPGs. And Freespace2 still thrills me, and I get a lot of fun out of it to this day.

 

[hooflung]

I am not going to convince you. The learning curve is overly steep for some and a cake walk to others. WoW has a large lurning curve for many people and is a cake walk for others. That is the nature of an MMO.

However, if you want freeform, anything goes - with a twist, action in which you can personally shape the universe through your actions, inactions, politcal stances, popularity and prosperity... there is NO better game on the market. Not in WoW, not in SWG, not in City of Heroes, not in EverQuest, not in anything. Therse is no other game like it.... period. There is no comparison in game mechanics. Also, after all the MMOs I have played in 3 years CCP is the only development team hell bent on making it a better game and more enjoyable. They are honest, sincear and to the point.

This is a good read : http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm?fp=1280,1024,169041156,20060221020446

If you can respect the men and women that produce it, can catch their vission, and suck up any learning curve 'you' might have... it will be a game you will leave your girlfriend alone at night fore.

 

[Continuity28]

A couple of things I like to add:

CCP (developers of EVE) are probably the best of any MMORPG right now, they listen to the players when they need to, and they actually care about their product. They are constantly adding new features and fixing bugs with free expansions.

The population increased recently, with over 100,000 subscribers and usually around 20,000+ people on the world at once. (Most on one "server" in any MMO) Because of this, some areas have gotten very laggy - and CCP is taking action with brand new hardware from IBM/AMD to make new clusters. The hardware upgrade is taking place today, and hopefully everything will go smoothly.

The game is not a space simulator, so don't except that. It's really an MMORPG in space. There's a lot to do, and yes, there's a steep learning curve. You'll come to love the depth of the game later on though, even if it takes longer to get into in the beginning.

Do some research first, especially regarding player attributes and race. You don't want to remake your character months down the road, due to the way skills train in real time. Try and get it right early on.

 

[hooflung]

Aye... Once apon a time circa 2003 I loved EVE and hated CCP because there was so much change. I was new to MMOs in general and didn't understand why they kept taking my toys away, changing skills I had invested long weeks into, etc. I quit for all of a month. Went to back to FPSs and found they had little to no developer response to the player base. I went back to eve... rerolled a toon cause I had given my accounts to friends... and been there ever since. Even got 2 of my old characters back recently to add more depth to my game play.

EVE has been balanced. And while I think there is an elitest vocal minority that call for certain nerfs on their forums... in general CCP hasn't bowed to them unless its was a glaring hole that needed to be plugged. I used to heral Cryptic Studios for their development on CoH. Well... Issue 3, 5, 6 and soon to be 7 has destroyed my faith in their vision. I have 8 level 50s, of which span all architypes, and can point out every single flaw in their whole vision.

I can take a defender, who is a buffer/debuffer, and do better than a tanker at managing aggro. They don't quite understand the game mechanics of their own game or that of an MMO. Damage Mitigation is a form of tanking. Economy is a form of PvP. Cryptic can't seem to realize that giving uber debuffage to a defender can have insane damage mitigation that even a damage mitigation class such as the tank cannot outperform in its role. CCP, with EVE, understand as they mentioned in that article link i posted earlier, see every aspect of EVE as PvP. PvE content only adds to the PvP nature of the game and they balance for that. Its a beautiful thing when the DEVS undstand the world they create and the tools they hand to players.

 

[Czar]

The difference with eve is like others have said are the devs and the depth. The devs have their own vision of the game but they shape the game just as much as the players themselves do. The devs are on the eve online forums asking the players for what changes they want to see and then listen to it and later on explain to the players why the decision was made to go in whatever direction they took.

The depth is obvios when you have played the game but because of the depth its hard for new players to get started. Its not like other games where you create your character and the only road ahead is doing quests and then maybe join a guild when things get tough so you can continue to do the quests. With eve you have that but its all linked to the player driven part of the game.

 

[Malak]

It is only good if you are patient, real patient, and are interested in getting involved in the game. If you don't ever join a major corporation or take the time to mine whole asteroid fields, then you just won't get very far. Sure it can be fun to go chase down pirates and blow them up, but that won't get you far.

 

[dighn]

Originally posted by: Malak
It is only good if you are patient, real patient, and are interested in getting involved in the game. If you don't ever join a major corporation or take the time to mine whole asteroid fields, then you just won't get very far. Sure it can be fun to go chase down pirates and blow them up, but that won't get you far.

Yep. It's a really slow game that can be rewarding if you really want to put the time in. Like somebody said here before, you have to treat it as a hobby not a game. Definitely not for me.

 

[Busithoth]

Originally posted by: Malak
It is only good if you are patient, real patient, and are interested in getting involved in the game. If you don't ever join a major corporation or take the time to mine whole asteroid fields, then you just won't get very far. Sure it can be fun to go chase down pirates and blow them up, but that won't get you far.

The funny thing to me is, I obviously don't have the patience to play this, but shouldn't they just offer a package where you pay them more money and get more resources? I understand that by pacing the game slow, it keeps more people online paying their dues and all, but damn, don't they fear losing people who don't enjoy mining an asteroid belt for 4 months to get the supplies together to upgrade something on their ship? I'm not talking about buying someone else's account, either (which I imagine is frowned on). Just saying, since you're already paying money, why not allow people to buy in at a 'quickstart' position of the game.

There must be something to this game, though, considering the number of people that give it such props. They should release spectator accounts or something.

 

[lozina]

I tried it twice. I must have played altogether for over a year by now. Even had two accounts at one time. the learning curve was not an issue for me, the main problems to me was the skill system and travelling.

Travelling around was really tedious. Approaching gates and/or creating insta bookmarks just drove me insane. I seriously spent a significant protion of my playtime just staring at my screen twiddling my thumbs as I approached some gate or was in warp.

The skill system is time based. You can shoot pirates all day long but you won't gain any skill in using your weapons whatsoever. Instead you click on the skill you want to learn and then you do something else or even log off and go sleep while your character builds his skill. So you can be learning something like 'Small Laser Specialization' and then go spend your whole day mining asteroids. You won't get any better at mining, but you are learning how to use a small laser better!!! The other beef I have with this system is it gives too much power to people who have merely been around longer than you. You'll never catch up to these 'vets' in terms of skills, so you'll always be at a disadvantage when competing against them. In most games the vets are better than you because they have more experience playing the game, but in EVE you really have the odds stacked against you because those vets also have an enormous amount of skills to give them an even greater edge.

Other than that is a beautiful game 🙂

 

[hooflung]

Originally posted by: Busithoth

Originally posted by: Malak
It is only good if you are patient, real patient, and are interested in getting involved in the game. If you don't ever join a major corporation or take the time to mine whole asteroid fields, then you just won't get very far. Sure it can be fun to go chase down pirates and blow them up, but that won't get you far.

The funny thing to me is, I obviously don't have the patience to play this, but shouldn't they just offer a package where you pay them more money and get more resources? I understand that by pacing the game slow, it keeps more people online paying their dues and all, but damn, don't they fear losing people who don't enjoy mining an asteroid belt for 4 months to get the supplies together to upgrade something on their ship? I'm not talking about buying someone else's account, either (which I imagine is frowned on). Just saying, since you're already paying money, why not allow people to buy in at a 'quickstart' position of the game.

There must be something to this game, though, considering the number of people that give it such props. They should release spectator accounts or something.

You have been horribly misinformed about this game. New players on their own with a bit of a bump in going out and getting the info from teh website, from players, from help channels can find a really nice niche right off within the first week. EVE 2003 isn't EVE 2006. There ins't a rat race to get a big, bad, expensive battleship anymore. Infact, tier 3 frigates are good enough for several months of play. And for your quickstart idea... its totally against the competetive nature of EVE. If you want a quickstart you can get another account to make twice as much money. Anything else... you need to use your social skills, such as conning a corp to help you out or finding a corporation that is willing to help you.

Way I see it is most people are lazy bones and want the eyecandy and loot without any sort of investment.

 

[Fingolfin269]

I have a friend who has played this for a very long time and keeps trying to get me to play. You guys have done a better selling job so I'm going to give it a try.

Is there still a free trial floating around?

 

[hooflung]

Originally posted by: lozina
I tried it twice. I must have played altogether for over a year by now. Even had two accounts at one time. the learning curve was not an issue for me, the main problems to me was the skill system and travelling.

Travelling around was really tedious. Approaching gates and/or creating insta bookmarks just drove me insane. I seriously spent a significant protion of my playtime just staring at my screen twiddling my thumbs as I approached some gate or was in warp.

The skill system is time based. You can shoot pirates all day long but you won't gain any skill in using your weapons whatsoever. Instead you click on the skill you want to learn and then you do something else or even log off and go sleep while your character builds his skill. So you can be learning something like 'Small Laser Specialization' and then go spend your whole day mining asteroids. You won't get any better at mining, but you are learning how to use a small laser better!!! The other beef I have with this system is it gives too much power to people who have merely been around longer than you. You'll never catch up to these 'vets' in terms of skills, so you'll always be at a disadvantage when competing against them. In most games the vets are better than you because they have more experience playing the game, but in EVE you really have the odds stacked against you because those vets also have an enormous amount of skills to give them an even greater edge.

Other than that is a beautiful game 🙂

Yet again another misinformed player with little understanding of the skill system. When I started in 2003 I had no specialization... no profession direction... and little skills to learn. I spent years developing my skills with each new content upgrade came new skills and new skills etc. Specialization skills came out.

First off... a new player now can pick the direction they want to go in and get er' done. I had to 'wing it' so to speak. My battleship level 5 of 2 years is not any better than a 6 month old players battleship level 5. My special gunnery isn't different than anyone elses. While I spent time trainign other races battleships and cruisers and tech 2 gear... people have come along and just went right for their area of expertise. I might be able to fly a ship they can't but the ships we can both fly, if we both have similar skills, doesn't mean I will own them. Quite the contrary.

There is in my corp right now a 6 month old industrial character that can out mine both my mining battleships, 2 Apocs X 8 miner IIs, that I need two accounts for IF I feel like miningl. He can out mine them BOTH in one ship with his skills and expertise. I have 10mil skill points invested into Space Ship Command and I still can't fly an interceptor which is usually a new players first tech 2 ship. There are plenty of things us players from 2003 cannot do bette than newer ones. Lets not even talk about him hopping into a Battlecruiser and being able to do missions as good as me in the same ship since I trained for guns ( 7.5mil SP ) and he has the same missile skills as I do ( 1mil ). He isn't complaining about the rift... why should you?

Who cares if you can't ever catch up to someone who is at 25mil SP? If you can utilize your SP nearly as efficiently there is no problem.

 

[hooflung]

Originally posted by: Fingolfin269
I have a friend who has played this for a very long time and keeps trying to get me to play. You guys have done a better selling job so I'm going to give it a try.

Is there still a free trial floating around?

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/eveonlineexodus/download.html?sid=6121270

The servers are being upgraded... and tomorrow will be a big 'test' day to see if its stable. Its an interesting time to be new to EVE... if there are any server problems because of their Massive Overhaul... I would take that into consideration.

 

[Falloutboy]

the skill thing isn't a big deal it only takes 5M SP to be be an effective BS pilot (about 3 mounths of play and if your smart with your skills you can be in a BS in 1.5-2mounths and be able to make money in 0.0 rating) and another 5M ontop of that to be a very good BS pilot and be able to fly HAC. and thats attainable in 6 mounths or less. sure noobs aren't going to be flying dreads anytime soon, but they aren't all that great ethier.

I've been in the game only a year and I can fly 2 races of ships very well (all pre RMR tech 2 ships), and currently working toards getting into a dread (about 2 mounths off).

and I see people complaining about travel, just be smart about it and it isn't a big deal. my corp lives literally in the middle of nowhere (about 50 jumps to the nearest safe empire station) and its not a big deal, we make everything we need at our base and we make "dread runs" (dreadnaught retrofitted with cargo expanders to act as an indy) every few weeks to resupply stuff we can't build there (tech 2 stuff and certain minerals we don't have in abundance).

 

[Jimmah]

I'm rather new to eve, about 40 days old, and so far I'm really enjoying the skilltraining aspect. It would be nice if everytime you killed a NPC rat or whatnot that you got a point or something added to your skilltraining in whatever weapon type laid the final blow. Could make the training time slightly quicker and give us new players a slight advantage.

On ly big problem I've noticed is the macro mining. These buggers ae everywhere, usually 2 mining barges and one Iteron or Mammoth doing the ore runs. I used to mine with my corp in Mamenkhanar until the macroers moved in. I just hope they come out with a way to detect them to make the game a little more fair, its ridiculous to see a full belt of Kernite one day and the next its just someone's lone can without a roid to speak of, drives me freakin crazy.

I'm looking for a corp btw, somone's gotta be in a good one I can hook up with.

Osmodious, 1 mil sp, moving towards assault frigs and interdictors. 🙂

 

[Falloutboy]

Originally posted by: Jimmah
I'm rather new to eve, about 40 days old, and so far I'm really enjoying the skilltraining aspect. It would be nice if everytime you killed a NPC rat or whatnot that you got a point or something added to your skilltraining in whatever weapon type laid the final blow. Could make the training time slightly quicker and give us new players a slight advantage.

On ly big problem I've noticed is the macro mining. These buggers ae everywhere, usually 2 mining barges and one Iteron or Mammoth doing the ore runs. I used to mine with my corp in Mamenkhanar until the macroers moved in. I just hope they come out with a way to detect them to make the game a little more fair, its ridiculous to see a full belt of Kernite one day and the next its just someone's lone can without a roid to speak of, drives me freakin crazy.

I'm looking for a corp btw, somone's gotta be in a good one I can hook up with.

Osmodious, 1 mil sp, moving towards assault frigs and interdictors. 🙂

if you can fly a ship that you can rat in out here (any BS, Mim AFs also work, along with most hacs). and don't mind moving to 0.0 full time my corp would take you on. just hit me up ingame under Darpz we are a new as a corp but my co ceo and directors are all veterans and we welcome new people.

The ship requirement is mainly so you can make isk since our main income/mineral source is rating when were not pvping

 

[lozina]

Originally posted by: hooflung

...

Look if you wasted your time trying to be a jack of all trades that's a whole other issue separate problem! That has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

Now I'm not sure you even know how to play the game with the comments you made. So you reach level 5 battleship. Are you telling me you're going to go out now and fight other battleships with your new battleship 5 skill minus any other skills to back it up? You need the engineering skills and electornics skills so you can fit more or better equipment than someone else's battleship and to boost your shields/power recharging/etc. You need to train your gunnery skills with all its specializations (which takes A HELL of a long time mind you) so you can use tech 2 guns and gain even more damage bonuses. Then there's all those other gunnery skills which boost your range, damage, tracking, etc..

Then while you're desperately trying to train these skills so you can be on even ground with other pilots statistically speaking - CPP comes out and releases another set of skills which provide even more bonuses. It's like a race but you're on a treadmill so you can run all you want but the finish line is not getting any closer!

All in all to be a competetive battleship pilot it takes a ridiculous amount of time to train not only to just be able to fly the thing but all the other support skills to make your flying count.

 

[Czar]

the skills only limit what you can do in the game, has very little to do with how well you do it

 

[fishbits]

Like I said convince me that a total newcomer to this game will not get completely overwhelmed by what just about everybody say's is a Very Steep learning curve.

It'll be up to you, and I don't mean by that your effort/ability as much as it suits your personality/ playstyle. It's a game above all, and if it's fun for you, super, if not, move on. Same as any other game.

To me the great thing is that where it is slower paced and more complicated in parts, this seems to keep the tard quotient much lower than in other games.

The most valuable asset in the game is pilots who can work well with others. Corporations all over are saying "We need more." In return, you get a mutual benefit going where it's in their interest to train/teach you and help you gear up while you skill.

For instance in my corp we're always looking for someone to haul from our mining gigs that won't take a mining barge out of action doing it. We have a noob in the corp that was making chump change solo while he was skilling up. Now all he has to do is haul for us, and he can easily earn tenfold what he was before, enough to buy a new cruiser in a matter of hours.

Anyhow, sure we haven't seen the last of these "Defend why you like EVE!" posts, dunno why that is though. There's just a lot you can do, a lot of different environments to operate in, a lot of styles you can play and you really can leave a mark on the game universe, or your little corner of it. I personally like that better than being the thirtieth guy standing in line waiting to talk to Gristlebeard so he can give me the "Bring back the Goblet of Gooble Gur quest," which I hear is found behind the second waterfall to the left on a kobold name Firgir.

 

[Malak]

I'd go back to EVE if I didn't think my account would be worthless. Besides, I blew up all 3 of my cruisers the last time I did that. I didn't have anything left to play with 🙁

 

[fishbits]

Then while you're desperately trying to train these skills so you can be on even ground with other pilots statistically speaking

This argument and its variants are made time and again with regard to EVE, but I don't personally buy it. I don't mind whatsoever that there are old hands out there who are better combat pilots skillpoint wise than me. And no, I'm not one of those folks who steers clear of fighting.

To me that way of thinking, conscious or otherwise, leads to a certain style of play we see in a lot of MMOs: The immediate and obsessive race to the level and gear cap, the whole rest of the game experience/community be damned. "No I don't want to go exploring around Finforsis, I'm at my max xp/hour right here at this spawn point farming giant bats. Plus that website says there's an extra 0.7% chance of getting a super item drop on this map." Or the good old "Power level me plz." The thought being "OK, once I'm completely leveled and have the gear I want, then I'll really start playing the game."

Except now you're finally maxed at lvl 80, and have obtained the sweet dps of the Hammer of Excellence (with agility bonus!) and the uber defense of Gurkuk's Shield. "OK, I'm ready now!" And look around and every other tool has the exact same level and the exact same gear as you. You're bored, they're bored. Everyone knows that 1v1 pvp is a 50-50 clickfest going in, and you've skipped all the content and can't go back. Well, at least you can stand in the public square in all your splendor and maybe impress some noobs. Except most of them are alts of capped players who've been there and done that, and all of them are too busy anyhow heading off to farm giant bats to get to lvl 80 😛

With EVE you can't powerlevel. You can't grind your skill in a new weapon up by hacking at some wolf pup over and over again. So, you're kinda forced into a situation where you might as well ... play the game now! And of course when things get hectic in real life and you can't be on as much, you're not left behind by your friends and enemies in the grind-race. Your time and money put in is just as valuable as theirs, so your skills progress even while you're away. An added benefit here is that the market isn't artifically whacked because people are basically buying skill-ups by buying raw goods to knit into items nobody wants. But you can be effective, be an asset, make a difference even if you're nowhere near the skill points of a way older character. It's only a matter of if you're willing to play in a world where you're not always going to be the baddest boy on the block.