you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Just thought I’d chime in here as a new player who just decided to not resub after two attempts to enjoy this game.
The experience of flying digital spaceships in such a vast virtual galaxy the size of New Eden is simply breathtaking and the game design and combat/theorycraft is absolutely amazing, and the combination of both is like nothing that I have ever played before.
Now with that said, as a new player, I have to say that much of what Elena Laskova and Natocha Daisy have said here in this thread and some others that I have read echo exactly the feelings I’ve had while giving Eve a try. Upon downloading the client and starting up a 1-month sub, I did not realize that losing a ship was permanent, until I lost one and ended up having to fly back to station in a pod in one of the beginning missions. I thought to myself, okay fine, I’ll just use the Navitas or whatever the mission reward was that they gave. Re-armed/refitted and away we go to the next mission. I go to complete the SoE arc because thats what everyone says to do in Rookie Help. Super fun times flying around in space - I have a bunch of new ships, and all is well. After the epic arc, I guess it’s time to move on to enjoy the rest of the game as it’s meant to be enjoyed.
Little did I know even then, how much pvp is involved in this game and how that is pretty much how it’s meant to be enjoyed.
After some time losing frigates and destroyers while geting the lay of the land and figuring out doing missions and ‘ratting’ and exploration in high-sec, I realize that there is no way I’ll be able to afford better ships and all the gear to go with them, or even hope to afford anything bigger than a cruiser. That mode of play in high-sec just didn’t pay enough, because ‘krabbing’ (is that the correct term?) is rampant in high-sec. Combat sites disappear as soon as they appear. A quick scan of battlecruisers on up that are listed on the market startles me - I’m looking at ships in the tens to hundreds of millions of isk, and that’s not including the Level II equipment to go with them. And everywhere I’m reading and Youtube videos I’m watching to research Eve says to get out to null/wormhole space to make the real money to be able to generate income to be able to buy that stuff - and avoid low-sec altogether to minimize gank victimization.
Well, okay then, null or wormhole space I go - only to get my teeth kicked in again and again by someone (sometimes groups) whose got 5 or 8 years more than I do in this game. And while I’m busy spitting out my teeth, there is literally nothing I can do to make it stop - nothing, because they’ve probably got 80 million skill points to my 3-4 million. So what do I do, I cool off and smoke a cig and ask in Rookie Chat if this is normal, and what can I do to avoid it. They are indeed very helpful, and I hear all the advice that I’ve heard on Youtube and read in How-to’s already - constantly watch D-Scan, stay aligned to an exit/safe, etc. Very difficult to do as a newbie while trying not to die doing a combat site, or while trying not to get a relic/data box blown up in my face, for me (and I imagine many others) though.
The money is indeed much better though, and the few times that I was successful in sneaking in/out of high-sec to a quiet null system or WH to quietly farm some isk it was very rewarding. But rewarding as an accomplishment - not monetarily. Between those few successes were prisonrapings the likes of which I had never experienced in a video game, and the more I fought, it seemed the more Spaceship Bubbah enjoyed it. Oh, I forgot to mention the bubble nets that I’ve run into many times while in transit to null. Well, I guess I don’t have to mention how that ends. In the end for me, the losses just outweighed the isk gained, and I can no longer cope.
Just my experience/thoughts as a newish player. The isk is there, but it just seems a bit out of reach for the solo newbro (which the vast majority of new players will be for quite a while). And it appears clear to me, that this may be indirectly due to game design and veteran players trying their best to protect their territories and keep it that way. So, if this is the sandboxy way that it’s meant to be, I am fine with that, but all I wanted to do was fly big cool internet spaceships and not have a mental breakdown while doing so. I can’t imagine that alot of new players felt any different.
First of all nice detailed post of how you failed miserably and I congratulate you for your incompetence.
Now to bring a shocking revelation upon you-there are other players out there who you can team up with to share knowledge with,some are as old or older than the ones who kicked your spaceships into tiny little bits.
You can be the worst player ever but if you are part of some half decent group you’ll get better
Every time I read posts like these I feel super-tough and awesome.
Stuff like this never even slowed me down.
I will admit ISK/hour never meant anything to me either.
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Well, this is all good and well but looking at zkill for only 5 seconds already shows me that you have been going at this totally wrong to make it profitable.
If you would have used cheaper ships, you easily could have made the whole thing very profitable. You simply did a very bad job at managing your finances.
Let´s have a look at the losses…
Navy Vexor, 3xMyrmidon and an Astero… that is 100s of millions of ISK you did not have to spend in order to make profit. So to me it seems you have been able to make quite decent amounts of money and if you would just stick to cheap and disposable, but effective ships you would have more than enough money for lot´s of advendtures at this point.
A Myrmidon in the hands of a new player of course is an easy mark. Those things are so slow and easy to catch… even though I could buy 100s of those I would not use something that slow and easy to catch in a potential hostile environment. And let´s not even start talking about the fittings on those… those alone show me that you have no business flying a battlecruiser as you even lack the very basics of how to properly fit ships.
Then the astero… there is absolutly no need for a new player to invest that kind of money into a frigatte. Instead you should have chosen a regular t1 exploration frig with which a single successfull run would have been enough to buy 30+ replacements.
As for bubbles… have you tried using wormholes to get from high sec to 0.0… they are the best way to get into 0.0 and grab some data / relic sites or whatever you are looking for and allow you to completly bypass the entry systems which are bubbled fairly regular.
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You can do the same in a 10M T1 exploration frigate. You instead chose to go for an expensive faction hull with a Sisters Core Probe Launcher. No wonder all your profit is getting eaten up. Most of my profits have come from exploration and you make more than enough diving into wormholes with a T1 frigate to do hacking.
I think this is a player skill issue, not a game balance issue.
Even 10 million is way overpriced. A cheap and good enough for the job t1 frig will most likely be more in the area or 2-3 million. It´s nothing fancy but it does get the job done.
However I am really thankfull for that post, because this example just proofs that the whole “income starvation” thing is nonsense.
You can always find cheaper stuff. However, in order to avoid people coming in claiming a ship is too cheap, I just went with an overly expensive estimate.
3M or 10M doesn’t matter in this context. It is still much cheaper than the above fit and spreads out risk enough to realistically provide some decent returns.
I did not want to disagree with the general statement, in the end it goes hand in hand with what I said before already. Still 100 million buys you easily 40 cheap explo frigs at a price of 2.5million(ish)… compared 10 ten replacements that still makes a huge difference… 10 is still plenty if you learn from your mistakes… but going as cheap as possible gives you a lot more room for more mistakes :).
IM A NEW PLAYER (omega account) AND I MUST SAY HIGH SEC IS WAY TOO SAFE!!
if they make highsec more and more safe or even add non pvp zones, i gonna quit this game faster than lightspeed (no more money from me)
one of the most awesome features for me in eve is to attack anyone everywhere and no im not a ganker! the freedom in eve is the reason i joind this game!! i miss this in most of todays mmos!
if u ask me ccp could remove concord from the game and let players handel space security, this would be awesome fun but thats just my opinion.
concord is a nice security system but making highsec even more safe is just stupid and boring!
dont let eve die the casual/carebear death!! i saw too many awesome mmos die because of carebear changes, i dont wanna see eve die!
for real eve is one of the last real mmorpgs, pls ccp dont take it away from us!
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True.
Again, I just went with an overly expensive estimate to avoid any potential challenges on the price.
Doesn’t matter. The point we both are trying to make is the same. The Astero was a bad ship for the job, especially since the guy cares a lot about ISK returns.
Find the proper ships for the job, instead of just going for the biggest ship available. Seems @Brock_Crendraven is in the camp of thinking bigger is better, given the statement “but all I wanted to do was fly big cool internet spaceships”.
How did you expect rookies would learn PvP just from receiving one free ship?
A rookie can figure out PvE combat by playing. I have my doubts about PvP though. Perhaps if “balanced combat” was natural in EVE, but it’s not - the “sandbox” promotes one-sided PvP combat (and the fabled “gankers with a heart of gold” are exceptionally rare in the wild).
CCP could easily set up an environment for rookies to fight each other. But will they? Probably not as long as vets keep believing that it’s always the rookies’ fault that they leave the game /lol.
Progress in some directions in EVE, the game where you learn early not to trust anyone ever, requires social contact with people you can trust /lol.
Everyone is out of touch with the newby experience EXCEPT elena. Even newby’s are out of touch with their own experience unless they agree with what elena says.
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I never said they can become experts with a single free ship and if they would have used them to actually try out PvP I gladly would have given them more. The point is… even if they get handed a free ship, players who have no interest in PvP won´t be using them for PvP.
It has nothing to do with the ability to replace ships. As that recent post shows, its quite possible to make 100s of millions of ISK as a new player, which is more than enough to learn.
edit: the whole “Do not trust anyone mantra”, you and your ilk are preaching is nonsense anyway… There is nothing wrong with generally trusting people in eve, as long as you don´t trust them with assets you can not afford to lose or expose them to be easily destroyed, getting backstabbed barely has any consequence. Short: Trusting people is fine, being stupid is not.
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Newbys are given several free ships from the career agents. And at least 10mil isk which will give them a good meta fit dessie (again you get a free one) to get them started on pve.
Any new player that reaches out to a vet or plays under a vet will likely get as many free ships as they dare to lose. And they will be taught how to pvp and make a stable income on the side.
Doesn’t fit with your ‘bittervet’ narrative though does it.
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QFT
No No No, we treat them as consumables and discard them when we’re done. We’re not interested in new player retention, we’re interested in making them the butt of our malice.
/s
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and with all those teeth kickings, did you ever try reaching out to the people on the other end of the boot? I see you reached out to rookie help, and kudos for that at least. but next time you get your ass handed to you, try asking some questions of the people who caught you, learn from them, cuz they are the ones with first hand experience in what you did wrong.
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Make new career agent bringing it all together with new type intelligent npc but with weak ships. Mission would range from camping gate to scanning asteroid belts and finding miners quickly enough. Also listing in mission description what is needed and leaving fitting to players.
These could be made to new career system and under new npc corp, something like yulai combat academy. Could be multitiered system even for different hull sizes.
To keep this lower risk make special insurance so that ship gets 95% reimbursement when destroyed by academy enemies. And profit should be lowish since knowledge would be main reward.
I see the usual band of “POPEs” (Self-appointed “Protectors of the Purity of EVE”) is here now, missing the point as ever.
Too many new players leave EVE, too few stay. There are two directions for possible explanations:
- The POPEs’ position: the “startup process” filters out only players who would never have stayed with EVE anyway
- The voice of reason: EVE isn’t an exceptionally difficult game, but there are huge gaps in the structured part of the startup process. If they were identified, prioritized, and addressed (in a sensible, time-efficient. cost-effective fashion), so the initial startup threshold became more interesting and fun, you’d expect the retention rate to improve.
If EVE is fun to play in its present form, the second approach is clearly better, and suggestions and comments related to it should be discussed.
If not, perhaps the POPEs are doing everyone a favor, generously spending their time to save misinformed gamers and prospective CCP customers from wasting theirs.
And here we go, as usually when you run out of arguments, you make an attempt to discredit the people who do not share your point of view and lie about what has been said.
Nowhere in this thread, have I or anyone else claimed that the NPE is perfect as it is. This thread so far has been focussed on the financial side of things and your claim of newbies suffering from “income starvation” which has been disproven unvoluntarily by the example of one of those newbies who only struggles, because of constantly making bad decisions and not the ability to make ISK as you have claimed.
The points made in this context which clearly go against what you were trying to claim are being completly ignored by you and as you have zero chance to say anything reasonable against it, you start lying and fall back to your usual tactics of discrediting the posters.
But just keep going, as you clearly show once again that you are not interested in a serious discussion, from here onwards I am just going to ignore further nonsense you are going to post.
At this point the discussion is pretty much done anyway.