EVE's planetary graphics kicked up yet another notch for Dominion expansion

This is a step in the right direction and can't wait for it to go live. I have not had a chance to log into the test server but what happens when you warp? Do you still go through planets? And will stations be moved closer tot he planets?

It looks beautiful.

@Firebreak
Again, though, you are making a backwards comparison. Yeah, a HAC is great against a battleship, but that's because it's a class up, you're comparing tech 2 to tech 1 again, and because of the multiplicative way the numbers in the game work, a battleship will have a hard time with a HAC (and, well, fully outfitted they are similar in cost, but the battleship can be put to many more uses in fleet ops).

For training purposes, focus on one class of ship at a time is generally solid advice, like you said, but, remember, you're still asking that someone lend a lot of patience and money to a game system that will have them stuck on the bottom rungs for a year or more.

Even after you get that battleship up to speed, you still have more to learn, and while some people see this as a good thing, it's really just carrot-on-a-stick, and, only REAL TIME spent subscribing can improve your qualifications. I quit the game when I added a training course to my character that was going to take about 2 and a half months to fly the next ship up from what I was in...

I had waited my year+, and I didn't think them asking me for yet another $30 so I could STILL be in the chump-rung was fair. Plus, the fun part of EVE for me, was learning all the little systems, manufacturing, exploring, science, etc... and to progress in those was to immediately add more and more time and money onto my path of ship upgrades. Even a change as small as separating ship progression from industrial/science/market progression would help the game a lot. I feel like I learned everything, tried everything a few times, and it was a dry experience.

I'm not saying I want to be the best, but, I want to be able to contend with the best, as other MMOs responsibly allow within a few months of gametime. EVE is a longer-term investment, and, there's no REAL payoff you can't get in some other game.

You don't really understand the game until you get out to 0.0 for a while, whether by yourself or in a medium-large corp. It's a definite in-crowd vs. out-crowd kind of game, and redoubles upon itself with elitism abound.

All this not to mention PROVEN CCP cheating on behalf of some players, and various other parts of the game that expect far, far too much time input for far far too little payout (exploration, for instance, will have you sitting in a system for upwards of 2 hours, scanning and moving, to find an outpost worth 500k ISK, which you could have earned in 5 minutes running a mission, or if you get lucky you might earn a hundred mil, but, after how many tries? Not worth it.)

It's not a terrible game, don't get me wrong... just, it isn't outwardly honest about the time investment it will require of new players before they'll get to the "meat" of the game, and there's really no sense in requiring people to put in a year before they matter.

stick to the topic perhaps?

Ehh, let's not pretend like others don't understand how the game really works.

The flaw in Chromeballz logic is that he is presuming that someone who flies Amarr frigate would have 8 million skillpoints in drones, or that someone with 8 million skill points in drones would ever fly ANY frigate.

If you want to make a character with 15 million wasted skillpoint (read: you literally trained him for 12+ months in things that you aren't really going to use), then by all means, go ahead... but please don't use that character in some kind of argument supporting a claim that "skillpoints don't matter".


Here's what you do. Hook Evemon into your character. Choose a ship/class of ship you want to eventually fly. Now, get EVE Quickfit.

Now, to prove to yourself the amount of time you need to spend to fly that ship (let's assume you chose HAC), pick all the BARE MINIMUM skills needed to fly that HAC. BAM, you're in the multiple month zone... and you think to yourself, "Wow, that's really not too bad!" ... but hold on, we're not done...

Jump back over to EFT... in order to fit any of the templates you might have found, or make a good fit yourself, you're going to need a lot of level V skills... Engineering, Electronics, Shield stuff, etc. Add those skills. BAM, a few more months.

Jump back over to EFT, write down your DPS and shield regen rate with whatever T1 ammo you have selected... Now, in EFT, fit some T2 weapons and ammo, and look at the skills required to train. Add those skills to EVEMon.

BAM, you just added like 3 months. And, note that your DPS and Shield regen have AT A MINIMUM DOUBLED.

That's right, the gulf between "able to fly" and "has any business flying a ship that expensive" is a gulf of months of real time. Okay, you can live with that, but... wait, there's more!

After you've spent a year of playtime (read: $180 dollars to look at spaceships, menus, and spreadsheets for one year with the very occasional battle that's any fun), you are still just a HAC pilot. In other MMOs (pick one)... that year affords you top-tier play with a class of your choice, which is on par with all other classes. EVE asks you for several YEARS of real game time ($500+) to REALLY be in the top tier of gameplay. (It sounds cool and epic, doesn't it? It kinda is in a way, we all want an MMO we're sure we can play for a long, long time, but, EVE takes a GODLY amount of patience)

This is a fact that community veterans (see chromeballz post) want to hide from you for a couple of reasons: They want your ISK, they want you to work for them as grunts, and they want people to continue playing EVE so the game doesn't die. It's pretty much a pyramid scheme. You either see through it, or you don't.

100 million skillpoints takes about 60 months to accrue in EVE, that's 5 years. 4 level 80 characters can easily, easily be done in a year. 1 year to explore several angles of the top tier of the game, or 5 years, your choice. (Play something other than WOW, please, it should stop being rewarded for its lack of innovation now).

Anyway, try it, play it, and if you survive the learning curve (most don't), you'll think of this post when you hit the depressing part of the game where you realize what a pyramid scheme it is.

@DrewIW:

You absolutely do need them to experience the game. Don't lie to people.

I chose a T2 fit battleship because it's useful in fleet ops in 0.0, but it isn't the top tier of the game.

The vast majority of worthwhile 0.0 corps will not let you in with under 10 million Skill Points. In other words, they pretty much only want year+ veterans.

Yeah, there are 0.0 corps that will let anyone in, but, another thing people need to understand is that a corp membership slot is a resource dependent on the corp management skills of the CEO. People don't want to waste one of X slots on a low SP character that can only bring 20 DPS to the table, when that same slot could have been used on someone who could either A) Mimic that 20 DPS (for some unknown reason, veterans of EVE want you to fly retardedly weak and underfit ships to your death over and over), or B) he can bring myriad ships to the table, or a powerhouse ship that can REALLY assist in taking down an enemy corp structure.

"Ohhh but you could run a cheap little tackler frigate"... *rolls eyes* because that's why people play an MMO, they want to be your lackey that stands behind the guy you're gonna push over.... for 18 months.

I didn't say you couldn't have any fun until you reached the top rank.

I DID say that there's not 3 years of fun to be had before getting there.

The problem is that the EARLIER you started playing EVE, the less hugely armed competition you had to play against. When there were 1000 players online, all of them had the same level of skill. Add the next thousand... these guys are slightly outmatched. etc etc until you hit 30-40 thousand people on.

The older the game gets, the harder it will be for new players to arrive and enjoy the game.

BTW, I also dislike WOW/WAR/EQ and most other MMOs. I played them, topped out in most of em, and they're just junk games with trite gameplay. I do give EVE a lot of credit for being the only real sandbox. I do ALSO believe that everyone should at least try EVE for a couple of months....

But, I really wish EVE players were a little more honest with newcomers. As a new player you will be a triviality for a very, very long time.

I wasn't condescending to you about how 0.0 corps operate. I know how they operate, I was an officer in a 0.0 corp that held about 8 systems consistently and I played the game for over a year and a half. Don't be silly.

@Firebreak
Again, like I said, it is dishonest to tell people that they are going to be "useful" to an alliance or be an asset after a week of training. You KNOW it isn't really true. What you are saying has merit in principle, but not in practice.

Also, like I said as well, telling new players they are useful as tacklers is misleading as well. To really run a solid tackling platform you need quite a few skills... many more than will be obtained in a couple of weeks. Also, being stuck in the role of tackler for years is a very bum deal.

For those of you who haven't played EVE, a tackler is a ship that operates low-level crowd control (you slow people down, and maybe slash their energy reserves, so your buddies can pound them)... It CAN be fun, but, you are usually the first to pop, because it is critical that people keep their mobility. You are a low-armor, low-shield, low-SP ship that will be targeted fast and first by enemies worth their salt.

You admit that you want more pilots in space, Firebreak, which is one of the things I listed as a reason for you to inflate new player's ideas of their usefulness.

I played the game a long time. I muscled through the hard parts of the game because I enjoyed the content and the people I was playing with. I ultimately quit because advancement became so slow with such a low payoff that I realized there was a direct, real monetary cost to simple in-game objectives, and when I realized that my friends would have to play this game for 2 years before we could *really* do much together (I was in a corp that only allowed 10+ mil SP chars, and needed me in 0.0. Bringing new friends in is hard in that scenario, but leaving it is also troublesome in many, many ways).

This is the case for a lot of people...

If you DO decide to play EVE, get all your friends on board with you from the outset... but, I really recommend just trying it out, learning a couple of the systems, and calling a spade a spade and finding a new game. I wish I'd stopped at 5 months.

hey jkjudgex,

i am looking for a new mmo to play now and just wanted to say thank you for all your posts thus far regarding eve's new player experience. i've never played eve online before but i have thought about it and will definitely remember this discussion if i ever decide to in the future. i also understand you're not trying to deter people from the game; just trying to make anyone who's considering playing more informed about the actual time sink, which is great for me because i have heard conflicting reports from both sides.

i'm partial to games that are more hardcore than WoW, but not as ridiculous as EVE.

Wow, i'm glad 80% of the comments to this article are not even close to being about what the author was saying.