A New Player's Story: 2017

Communications Center General Discussion
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A New Player’s Story.

Originally posted to the EVE subreddit here. Please upvote for visibility if you were moved by this story, for good or worse! Thank you for reading my experience.

I’ve largely sat on the sidelines throughout my gaming career, almost avoiding actually starting a journey to EVE Online. The mystique about it was delicious: Headline gripping articles of fantastic exploits and wealth destruction apparently unhinged and unabated. A (dys)topia of space and specimen… a place one could actually exist as a space person.

I heard horrors of the ugly, spread-sheet & nerd rage underbelly of pilots who fled or were otherwise flung out of the fray… almost serving as evangelists to those who haven’t experienced the burn to shy away from it.

Despite my best intentions & strength, I started my Eve journey earlier this month. What I found was nothing short of expectations. In fact, the game has blown away my expectations - which likely is not a surprise - I’m a simple human of course…

One thing I immediately notice is how hopeless everything feels in New Eden. There is no magic. There is no tales of fantastical new horizons. Everything, even the shifting, shady spectrum of space under the wormhole anomaly is mapped out and bookmarked to a T.

People and organizations have effectively created an understanding of the game, so thoroughly and thoughtfully crafted, that it leads one to quickly realize there is no mystery anymore in Eve.

I was discouraged, encouraged, and discouraged again. In my first week, I was a part of a corporation where the person was a literal schizophrenic, who made alts and pretended to talk on them as if there were actual people in his corporation. It took me a few days to realize this… but after fleeing that corp to my own pursuits, I fled to wormhole space for the first time.

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The Flight from Fail Space

Ahhh… wormhole space. The MOMENT I pressed my “Enter the Wormhole” radial button, I was flung into something else entirely. Gone was local. Gone was the harassment of some of my critical sensor systems. As I pushed away the screens, something beautiful splashed across my vision: The WORLD of Eve was stunningly beautiful. I was so taken aback that I couldn’t imagine anyone not being in just as much awe as I was. Everywhere you looked, unknown anomalies and solar weather blooms… everywhere you felt the silence of space… only the thrum of your ship’s trusty (and infinitely fueled… kinda odd) propulsion system. The eerie music…

My Dscan still worked; amazing. Thank god. Throwing the spread out 360 degrees, to the farthest my little system can reach (a measly 15AU, or 2.244e+9 kilometers… measly)…

No ping backs. I was truly alone in space.

Thank ■■■■■■■ God.

I spent the better half of seven to eight hours diving through wormhole after wormhole, scanning down everything in my little Anathema, hoping for an unoccupied data or relic site that I could pilfer. Frustratingly, the sleepers seemed to be everywhere I went. Out of options, I hit the net to discover I was spending hours in a section of wormhole space where nothing BUT sleeper explor sites were. How foolish of me.

My heart would race every time I saw other sister probes in the region, or the odd derelict Raitaru. Sometimes I felt like a submariner. Often times, I felt like a true space explorer. EVE Online has been one of the rare moments where I did NOT investigate and pre-plan my every move. As a once-way-too-competitive cs player & hardcore Darkfall power politico, this was a significant and conscious break from my usual routine.

Yes. This was the EVE Online I had envisioned in my head!

Danger! Mystery! Shady associates whose backstory I had no idea of, and where trust meant something big.
Yes… This was the EVE Online I had so carefully constructed in my naive head, after almost decades of buildup. My wounds from the skitzophrenic corporation, of the sheer and humiliating, embarassing, ugly look at what this type of realm does to people… they started to heal in wormhole space.

Then I got blown up to a very well executed pipeline gatecamp coming back from my new sanctuary to sell some paltry wares when the reality of it all came flooding back to me: In EVE Online, nothing is mysterious anymore. I didn’t even attempt a burn back. A casual look at the map confirmed I naively stepped into a gatecamp that took the lives of hundreds before me in the past hour. Imagine that… my map is intelligent and omnipotent, it seems, to be able to update me with everything everyone is doing even when I was cut off from everyone in “wormhole space”.

… Yet Local doesn’t work. Okay, I see, makes much sense… ha ha! :wink:

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(Yet Another) Aside Before the Suggestion

This may seem like I’m complaining that the game isn’t what I thought it was. If that is the case, I wish to nip that right here. That is not the case. I came into the world to break my stereotypes and contrived, third person influenced understanding. I made minimal research a priority because I wished to see the world through new eyes. I tried my best to keep my clone here on Earth at the door as I stepped into New Eden.
At the end of the day, it bugs me that New Eden is much more like the real world than anything. Is that even rational or fair? After all, would we really be expected to act anything different if us players HAD actually been flung into a world like New Eden, left to defend for ourselves? There still would be people being human chasing honor, chaos, and currency and throwing romance out of the window… surely?

I don’t blame the EVE Online community for what has happened to their game. For better or worse, this is the reality of things: No mystery, no real conflicts as people become jaded or smart to the meta and limits of what this space has to offer. That, to me, is a natural consequence of games where real lives are not on the line. Sure, we lose our space ship and some of our pride (especially if podded)… but do we really die?

There are some mechanics of this game that prevent it from, ironically, ever becoming a true space frontier sim. This is a faction war game hands down. Everything is done to upset or to uphold one’s rule over the land. Despite some of the internet’s most brilliant minds, content has driveled down even in New Eden to the mundane. I spoke at length to the FC of the gatecamp in question, and he even admitted that New Eden of today is incredibly boring, predictable, and outright not FUN anymore.

People who are taking this more seriously than ever are the ones that are losing out, even. I’ve never seen the extent of some of these players carry on, who are depressed and plainly state so, but continue to exist and execute orders simply because they invested so much of their real life into this game.

All of this is in my view aligned to a textbook typical new-entrant-to-mature-MMO experience. Yet I don’t simply wish to share my experience… I wish to help, where ever I go. That brings me to a suggestion (which I picked up from someone further down this sub. It’s not my original thought, but one that piqued my interest as a once-PK in the great Asheron’s Call Darktide wars between BLOOD (PKs, or player killer) and Mindeater (anti’s, or anti-player killer) alliances. Perhaps the world’s first great good vs evil MMO faction war. Try to beat it. Not even UO had one to the extent of DT’s exploits. But I digress ~

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The Suggestion

What if we re-analyzed how CONCORD existed, and allowed the system to be much more dynamic based on what was happening in their space?

What if people could join CONCORD and help fight against the gatecamp - either as target painters or combatants able to fend off bumpers and tackle, or had the ability to try and prevent loot from being stolen? What if CONCORD became not so inept, and recognized when gatecamping groups were forming and thereby deployed increasingly sophisticated means to combat it?

Imagine if there was a new dynamic, of CONCORD sanctioned ‘anti-campers’, so to speak. Now, I am not suggesting to give people a “police” type of power over others, but it seems frustrating that this is the meta of a space sim… that there is no other plausible thing to do for freighters and others than to hope not to get bumped, or decloaked, or whathave you. Seriously, in my wormhole I can get updates to my world map but the creators of these technologies couldn’t prevent JFs from being bumped off warp? There’s so many disconnects and disputes I have with this world as a new player, and many of them probably are just due to that… but surely others are not feeling like all the magic is lost to these weird disconnects in technology and culture?

I don’t think gatecamping is what’s the true problem of EVE Online’s flight from fantastic to fanatic. It could very well be that people have discovered and are now living comfortably at the limit of this world, and that the mystery really is gone.
I see where the gate-camping group’s reasoning lies. Botting and a huge accumulation of wealth was a huge problem during the earlier decade, and it does not take a market-minded person to see the obvious and destructive inflation put onto the currency by the actions of the few. In a sense, those camping the gates are doing the little guys a favor by taking out some of these huge loot pinatas.

That was the angle the FC gave me, anyway. It seems people are more obsessed with having a good zkill scorecard than anything, though. Thats my personal opinion, is that it’s much less noble than people wish to make it sound.
This world feels crushingly small. It feels nothing like what I had contrived in my head. Is that fair? I don’t think it’s fair… I waited almost a decade after my initial interest to dive in, and even then I was hearing about many of the things I now see claimed as “game breaking” aspects, or ones that are being attributed to the rapid demise of this world.
I feel like the magic is gone. I wouldn’t be surprised if most newbies are so overwhelmed by the learning curve that they never got to be able to look past their ship and see how BEAUTIFUL and BIG New Eden was. I spent a week prior to my wormhole experience learning the UI, and it was shocking to me that I never once looked beyond my ship or UI to notice that.

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Conclusion & Call for Comms

Is this viewpoint simply a consequence of my niavity, or does my story resonate with anyone else here?

What are your thoughts on this world and its denizens?

What is the outlook for New Eden?

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Put a tank on your frieghter.

Listen mate, any call to make EVE safer, especially for AFK gameplay, will only be met with resistance. You’re right! It is a pain that people will try to take your stuff! There is always a way around it. You should never be safe in New Eden.

I don’t know what your task force is meant to do, but especially going through lowsec and nullsec the best thing you can have to deal with gatecamps is a fleet. A fleet and smartbombs. You have a different idea of what EVE should be in your head, but honestly I don’t think you’ve spent enough time here to fully understand what you can achieve and do in EVE. This game isn’t very interesting flying solo, it’s much more built around completing projects as a corporation and flying with other people. It’s hard to see why this game might be fun if you’re just making isk. Maybe if you really hate being preyed upon, try flying with predators?

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@Koa_Skoomasha

For once I don’t have the time to type an over long winded essay
Which your long and well reasoned post surely deserves!

I did not read the OP as a straightforward ‘make eve safer’ post…

I think you are right about some points, in as much as this is an old game and so much is known, it is also very highly populated compared to the ‘old’ days-

Ironically there was a thread in here not so long ago asking for space to be made smaller!
As the player felt there was not enough content- but as you discovered this is a game where you and other players have to make the content- and less people can be a more immersive experience for some.

I would not worry too much about your first corp experience, eVe has bad corps and bad CEOs with lots of alts they like to talk to, also far more good folks to meet, though they will usually shoot you before speaking.

My guess is eVe did not make that guy, or anyone, anything they were not already-

eVe for sure, can be a mirror for the ‘Real’ (mandatory Zizek at this point), understanding that I put ‘Real’ in ‘scare quotes’.

It sounds to me like you have had a bad experience, and then a good experience that ended badly.

Before you give up on us, why not try and join a wormhole corp who make content, or a small null corp, or just join a huge null corp and make some contacts, and then start making your own content with your new friendst-

But if you speak to bitter vets you will get a bitter vet response, if you speak to green newbeans you will get a green newbean response.

SOME people and corps are obsessed with killboard stats, others don’t care, some just want to camp a gate all night and watch explosions, others actively hunt and seek targets for surprise explosions (including covert BLOPS cyno fun and hotdropping of dreads at entirely inopportune moments).

Gate camping will always happen, has always happened, and will always happen as long as we have gates (which we might be able to explode soon).

They are the best way to control Space, and no one knows if the rookie jumping through is really a rookie or a cyno alt for the big bads etc.

It also stops the TRUE ELITE pvpers of eVe, the traders and especially the arbitrage traders who rely on getting products through and around these camps, from having an unfair advantage over those who engage in less profitable PVP- it balances their huge rewards with risk.

Some of your comments about Concord and bumping freighters do demonstrate a certain naivety about the game and mechanics.

If others jump all over them and get defensive, it is because there are enough threads here were people go over the costs and reasons for and against bumping- and as you said you came to share not complain, so thank you for doing so.

(The Anti-Gankers are AG/ag, join anti-gank channel- some there might agree with you about your ideas I don’t know- but players DO have a police power over others, already, they just need to organise which some do, successfully on occasion, though of course their enemies will tell you otherwise).

Also- when you got exploded in that camp YOU were doing PVP, even if you had no guns fitted, and were carrying ‘paltry wares’: as resource collection for sale on the Market is a PVP activity, as is exploration generally.

Yes, eve is ‘like the real world’ as it is really a social economic simulator, built around a 4xRTS, where you ‘generally’ only control one unit so it looks like an MMO.

My Advice-

Join another corp, don’t like that join another, if you meet jaded people who tell you they only play this ■■■■ game because they played it for ten years, find another group.

OR make your own corp, make all your own content, but if you do this and stay in highsec you might find you only end up talking to your alts.

(PS. If you feel that CEO really was a ‘bad sort’ and feel wronged, unlike real life, you can have revenge, of any sort within the EULA you can imagine. But this also, will be more fun with friends rather than on your lonesome).

TLDR:
Always good to get new player feedback where someone tries to get their head round what eve is and give a reasoned analysis, thank you…
BUT JOIN ANOTHER CORP DOOOD

TLDR 2: YES, another essay and I even said I wouldn’t.

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Eve has a player driven economy. Your Anathema was built by another player as were the advanced components and the materials to make those components was harvested from moons. The Anathema will never wear out or go obsolete - you’ll only need to buy another one if it blows up. That cycle of production and destruction is essential for Eve to work.

The Anathema is a covert ops frigate. With reasonable character and player skill it is one of the safer ships in Eve. It can be caught in bubbles and a very alert, well organized gate camp but you can align and cloak within 1 server tick. You will still get caught occasionally but need to think of ships as consumables - a cost of doing business. If you took away the risk the market would be saturated with exploration loot and it would be worthless.

Thousands of freighters traverse the ganking choke points of New Eden and arrive safely at their destination every day - some of them travelling by autopilot! I spent a summer flying for Red Frog - risk can’t be eliminated but it can be mitigated - this is player skill, not character skill.

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After reading that I am still not sure what your suggestion or problem is. I get the vague sense you have a problem with players practicing piracy thinking is base or unimaginative, and expect some greater or noble purpose to everything in the game.

Well, like life there are many levels to Eve to aspire to from being a materialistic criminal or trader, to being the charismatic leader that carves out a territory for their group. You can play the game however you choose, from a dastardly criminal, to a stats-obsessed PvP jockey or ISK-obsessed industrialist, to a builder of empires and leader of others. Eve is all these things simultaneously, and while no one will claim the game is perfect and everything is possible or easy, it is a relatively open sandbox where you can make your own story, not some scripted game where you are the hero of the universe.

As for your gate camp busting idea, just go make it happen. You don’t need the developers to bless or organize such an endeavour. Just gather some like-minded people and learn how to clear gate camps. That’s how things in this game work. Make a name for yourself.

If you just want the developers to change the game and take away the freedom of others so you can grind resources more efficiently and in safety, well then you don’t really have a deep understanding of this game and how it works. Don’t expect much sympathy, here or on Reddit.

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I stopped reading when OP started to whine about gankers and gate camps … what a waste of words and time.

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Agree!

I stopped reading after the first paragraph!

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THIS!

I’m sorry your first corp experience was a bizarre and challenging one. What you witnessed there is one facet of the thing that makes this game unique. The game’s greatest genius is also what makes it challenging and gives rise to the “learning cliff.” No attempt is made to whitewash human brokenness, therefore no shackles constrain human brilliance. The bad is a necessary condition of the great.

This is a social game. Don’t try to go it alone. And don’t give up on corps wholesale because of your first bad experience.

Also, I’m thrilled to read your experience in the glorious realm of Anoikis! Join a wormhole corp!

Bob smile on your journey friend.

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Didn’t know I was recruiting… I’ll have to talk with my alts about that…

Yup, that’s the risk-adverse type that somehow find fun in padding their killboard with blob warfare kills. It’s sad. Just sad. I personally always had the most fun when I did something completely and utterly stupid and had my expensive ship (I don’t fly cheap. Ever. :stuck_out_tongue: ) blown to pieces.
Killboards took a lot of fun out of the game. Made the players care more about their dumb killboard numbers than having a fun fight they could possibly lose.

EVE is not a simulator. It’s a multiplayer sandbox. If it were a single player game, you could do your exploration without any other players interfering with your playstyle, but that’s just not how EVE works or was ever intended to work. EVE is all about conflict. If ships in space don’t blow up, EVE’s economy breaks apart.

OP, to me this reads like you want to play a game like EVE, but as a single player game. The first sort that comes to mind in that regard is Egosoft’s X series. I think those are going to suit you more than EVE ever will.
There just isn’t any amount of exploring in a multiplayer game for any prolonged amount of time. Players will always strive to figure it out to game the system and EVE players are really notorious for that. EVE used to appeal to people of higher intellect (that’s also why the UI works for us) and we’re just playing on a level that the average person could never compete on. I wrote used to, because over recent years CCP has been more and more catering to the dumb average person at the cost of the health of the community.

Your post was a refreshing read from the usual illiterate drivel, which is why I wrote a more thorough post than a simple “HTFU or leave”, but I’m not sure that EVE is the game you’re looking for. Give X3 a try.

Or perhaps X: Rebirth. It’s gameplay-wise still not as good as X3, despite Egosoft’s great efforts at patching the game up to a enjoyable level, but it looks graphically much better if you value that more than deep, complex gameplay.

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It sounds like either

REMOVE LOCAL

or

Stop using the map

I dunno what you mean about there being no mystery, unless you mean that because of NullSov theres no fun in k space.

Why not keep exploring WHs?

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ALWAYS try

The only person you can trust is you.

And even then…

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Funny thing. If you play eve like No Man’s Sky, soon enough you’ll discover it’s just about as empty, boring and shallow. What makes EVE superior in this regard is that you don’t usually have to wallow in the emptiness and broken promises for very long. Soon enough a group of more socially inclined players will come along and rescue you with a friendly gank.

Trust is a big word, and the wrong word in this instance. The players manning the gate camp didn’t write each other into their wills. They just realized they could more effectively create content for themselves by working together.

I’m afraid nobody in eve can help you with your trust issues, or social phobias, or whatever is going on there. My advice to anyone who wonders why they aren’t having fun will always be the same. Join a corp. If that corp doesn’t work out, join another. Repeat until you find a group that suits you. Make friends. Make content for yourself and your friends by working together. Take sensible precautions like you would in real life. Let go of your expectation that the developers will spoon-feed your fun to you, and take ownership of the game yourself. Until you can do that, you’ll never realize eve’s potential.

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Why is this a reply to me?

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I neglected to quote it, but this is the relevant clip.

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Ah ok.

As far as I was aware, trust no one was one of the first guidelines provided to new players.

A little unfair to allude to it outside of game, to be honest.

Though I think it is a fair rule for there too.

And anyone who fully trusts themselves is clearly willfully oblivious to danger in general.

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yup. you’re correct, I don’t disagree with you there.

I disagree with the “trust no one” attitude and I disagree with this being the standard advice provided to new players. I understand this is not your original idea, and I don’t assume you agree with it entirely. If I may explain my objections to it:

  • On a more abstract level, trust is too weighty a concept to reasonably apply here. Eve is a unique game, but it is, after all, a game.
  • If we must use the word trust, then some level of trust is required to engage with the game. It is a social game. You do have to trust others to a certain extent.
  • It makes EVE seem far scarier and more dystopian to a new player than it really is. It discourages them from doing the single most important thing they can do: find a suitable corp (again, heavy emphasis on suitable)

I think it would be much more prudent to amend the traditional advice given to new players to something like “trust, but not blindly.” Find a group you like playing with, and cooperate/work together with them. Take reasonable precautions. (e.g., keep some of your assets in a HS empire station, enough to “start over” if it all goes pear shaped.) Be very wary of anything that seems like it might be a scam. Be prudent, but ffs join a corp.

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I see where you are coming from, and I understand your view.

But I think that not only does not trusting people make the game more fun for me (everything is a danger or something to hunt/gather), but it highlights opportunities I would have otherwise missed (ie What risk does he put himself at by trusting me?). ANd not including not getting stupidly killed because you believed someone and went to help them only to be in a trap.

Many people are drawn in by the taking down of alliances or corps from the inside. And speaking as someone who very much enjoyed that part of the game, I would have to say it cant happen without one person having trust and another having so little they know how to keep their cover when counter agents are looking for “the spai”.

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I can confidently tell you that small tigh-knit groups of cooperative players are a fantastic place to find your space family.

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That’s fascinating! :smiley: That’s definitely out of my wheel-house since I personally have never done large group geo-politicking or such. But it’s cool to hear the perspective of someone who has!

This is definitely where my experience (such as it is) lies. A small group of people you work with regularly and build actual relationships with can be a fantastic place to be.

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Is this viewpoint simply a consequence of my naivety, or does my story resonate with anyone else here?

I think you had a wonderfully spoken story about how an expansive universe was made small by the actions of players. Indeed this is a pretty large part of human nature and in that sense, a lot of the mystery has slowly ebbed away. Also, I still find it interesting much the same as you do, what with the endless possibilities of worlds.

What are your thoughts on this world and its denizens?

Sometimes it can feel overly dangerous in eve because of the whole gate camps or gang ganking make the game boring. The reason I say this is because you’re getting blown up in transit, not sitting out in a WH where you foolishly afked or to a relic site that happened to have a hidden surprise saber but literally in the most boring aspect of the game. It is a good application of reason on part of the pirates because in boring places there will always be somewhere for making a profit since people will want to avoid this one way or another. I won’t go into the mechanical problems of the game because I think I lack a full understanding of how it ‘takes a lot to gank.’ However, I am also a logistics pilot and would love nothing more than to play the good guy in space, so yippee ki yay.

What is the outlook for New Eden?

I really couldn’t tell you, new alphas…? Great… Build your own gates? Awesome, finally… my wish list includes atm Logistic Titan, mining gameplay overhaul to combat afk mining & bots, and a miner capitol of some sort. Yes, i know rorq’s but technically those are industrial ships.