Been playing for a few days. Before I did that, I checked videos about the game, read a lot of content in Eve University.
I started with the small tutorial at first, that was quite good. The gradual UI discovery is a good thing.
Then, I started the career agents, with exploration first then I followed with military and advanced military.
While I did like the military, the advanced military seems a bit short to me, glancing over stuff too much. I would have preferred to experiment with each type of weapon to see what I like : lasers ? turrets ? missiles ?
After doing each career agent I did the sisters of eve first epic arc.
Moved from the basic ship to a Merlin, then a Cormorrant as was advised to do the epic arc.
I did ask and found help for the two last missions of the arc.
What helped me a lot was the in-game fitting recommandations for ships. There are a lot of modules and I had no idea how to fit things properly. I still don’t to it very well, but working on it.
Because I have to discover the game I thought using exploration would be a good idea. So I did a nice well-fitted Heron, with cloaking, etc.
And because I wanted good loot I went into Nullsec 
For a few days I have been able to go around in null to negative systems, learned to get to a safe spot, put out probes and cloak. Escaped twice players coming to me at gates so I got lucky.
How did I get killed ? I went into a -1 system and was pilfering data and relic sites. My cargo has 5 or 6 caches content. While I was moving from one cache to another I got attacked. At last it was quick : I got shot in about 2 seconds. Ended up in my pod, and died after a few seconds later.
At first I didnt knew what happened. Ship just exploded so… I was a bit lost in the UI trying to figure out what happened. I had to ask in the Rookie Help channel to find out a player has killed me with a very good ship. And my Heron carrying 0 weapons, I was toast.
I would have liked after dying to have a window open and explain me what happened. You ship got destsroyed because of X and you were killed by Y. I was totally at loss trying to find out what had just happened. So adding a “what just happened” window would help…
I won’t whine. I am a few days old player, and brought a 50M (I think ?) ship to -1 system and was looting cache to cache.
I was not using directional scanner. I should have cloaked and waited until the system was free of any player to hack caches. I should have been more cautious. I knew the risks, took them, and ship got blown.
My grief is insurance. Because I knew I was taking high risks (I wanted high benefits) I went for platinum insurance. So I was very, very unhappy when it game me about 300k for a ship that costed me around 50M to buy and fit. I knew insurances are basically legally-enforced scams IRL where you pay much more than you get when trouble happens, but in Eve this goes to a whole new level.
I am okay with the PVP. The risks. I am OK to take risks and as a noobie even go into null or negative rated systems. I do not fear doing this, and I will keep playing with fire and go there. I will be much, much more cautious though with the directional scanner, the local chat (I had both closed while looting caches).
But as a noobie we do not have billions of ISK. I lost a ship, it costed me quite a good amount to fit, and about as much to buy it again, and refit it again… I am not going to do that in loop because I will quickly end without any money and back to a very, very basic ship and won’t be able to get out of high-secure space.
As a new player I knew the rules, the risk, and died. Ok with that.
But the insurance is a joke. I was expecting I would be able to buy the ship back AND get the money for the modules inside. So if I died, I would be able to hop into a identical ship again and play with the devil again.
Seeing how shitty the insurance system is… I can’t see myself take those risks again until quite some time. For exploration I think I’m going to even stop doing it until I trained enough skills to jump into a blackops ship + get enough ISK so I can afford at least ONE full rebuy if I get killed.
The only thing I would like to see improved is the insurance stuff. If I pay platinum price, I would rather get back the money for the ship and the modules when I die. The loss would be the cargo.
We don’t have the resources as noobies to die too frequently if we are expected to take risks and venture where more experienced and powerful players are lurking.
I guess some players will tell me to stick to high security systems. My belief is the lower I got, the more I will learn even if it’s painful. But the insurance crappy returns make this a short term activity. If I die again twice I think I won’t be able to buy and refit my exploration ship and will have to grind ISK in high-security systems for some time.
I want to go into those nullsec areas. Play cat and mouse with better players.
But the loss/risk ratio is pretty bad for new players whose resources are not big at the start.