As a new player who played with my brother for like a day, years ago (until i was baited in in high sec to lawfully attack someone, before they of course docked and came back out with a much better ship wiping me “for the lols”) who just found another intriguing video on the game on Youtube, i was thinking about maybe trying it out again. Maybe this time just not interacting with other players even in high sec at the start.
And i’ve briefly thought about trying the game again a couple times over the years, but the dealbreaker every time that stops me from even checking the game out - is the real-time character progression, the 3 week real-time training to unlock the ability to wipe your own ass, let alone anything beyond.
Feels like a very archaic, unfun, needless and counter-intuitive system. I’ve finally managed to at least go so far as to inquire about it, so - Is this still in the game? I don’t fancy waiting AFK for weeks/months/years to progress*
Shouldn’t character progression be tied to, you know, playing the game and achieving things in it?
Feel free as a vet to criticize, troll and otherwise invalidate this just because it no longer personally affects you and also “for the lols”
in fact, this is arguably one of the biggest selling points of the game. no matter how busy you are, or how much time you have to play, you still “gain xp” at more or less the same speed as everyone else (or half speed if you are an alpha, but hey its free)
Yeah there are ways to min-max it for “the most optimal ever” but after a year or two of playing, it really doesn’t matter much anymore.
As for a new player, day 1 you can be flying a tackle ship and making a difference in a fight. within a week you could be flying destroyers, 1-2 months and you can be flying at least basic fits for just about any subcap. (and despite what people might constantly scream about, sub-caps still get much more use than capitals do. so its hardly REQUIRED to fly a cap)
sure it can take years to max everything out, but you don’t need to max out every single skill for every single system for every single ship. 4’s are generally “good enough” for most things, and that takes a fraction of the time that getting to 5 does.
There aren’t many other mmo’s where you can go from lvl 1 to max level end game content in a month or less without some SERIOUS grinding. with eve, you can spend that time playing as much or as little as you want.
Progression speed is directly tied to your ability to make ISK in game and buying injectors, or selling your valuables for PLEX from CCP and then selling it on game market for ISK and then buying injectors.
Either way, it will cost you when you want it faster.
Skill points only matter that much in EvE. More important are knowledge, expierience and skill. These you only get by playing. If you are clever you learn faster, as everywhere.
If you are impatient you can swipe your credit card and sit in a shiny veteran toy on day 1, but only to die or being frustrated on day 2 because you have no clue about how EvE works.
EvE is for the strategic thinker, and we are all here for the long haul.
stop your training queue when you log off: no more AFK training!
start your training queue when you log in: you are progressing when you play!
spend ISK you make on skill injectors: your activity affects your SP collection!
Even better idea: never engage your training queue and only distribute SP you got from SP injectors! Now you got rid of dreaded and outdated EvE training system altogether!
If you learn to play with limited SP when you get to the point you have a lot of SP you’ll be better then those that just afk for skills or inject them. Skills after only go to V, knowledge and being clever have no real limit.
OK look at it this way. In other MMOs you play the game, level up, then grind endlessly for gear. Then they come out with an expansion for you to so it all again. Which means every expansion you become weaker and essentially a noob. In Eve once you get a skill up, you will never become weaker. They don’t add skill levels making it a race to the top again. Eventually players all start to platue at a certain range which means it’s not a race any more even with new expansions. Do they add more ships, yes but outside of the triglavian ships the old skills have been used for those ships.
You can fly almost any ship in under 3 days. You can use almost any type of weapon or module in under 3 days.
All without spending hours and hours grinding.
But you have it wrong. The “character progression” you talk of, isn’t really the same character progression in other games. There are no levels, and veterans can and do, frequently, fly the same ships as new players.
In other games like WoW, you can have a hundred level 10 players against a fully equipped level 80 or 90 or whatever the skillcap is right now player, and the 100 players wouldn’t stand a chance, irrespective of if they are new or old. In eve, you can have ninety nine new players lead by a somewhat experienced leader, kill a veteran in a ship worth many times more than all 100 ships combined. What other game allows you to do this?
The archaic, old view of mmorpgs is that you need to grind, endlessly for items. Those items are bound to you and can never be sold again to someone else. You need to grind for gold. You need to grind for levels. Killing the same mob over and over. Now that’s archaic.
Then you are just incompetent and can stay away from EVE. Tying progression to using EVE is the worst possible progression method, as tons and tons of other games show where you have to grind millions of things just to get one level up. In other games, you must play in order to progress. In EVE you can play and you progress regardless whether you do or not.
You can also increase progression speed nowadays with skill injectors, which is the same P2W or P2C, whatever you want to call it, that other games use to rip money out of your wallet. Since you did not see these options and are a pure grind slave, you can just play another game and don’t bother EVE.
And just to clarify your misconception: You have it in reverse. EVE’s progression is the modern, future-oriented method of progression, where you can do whatever you want and you still progress. All these progression-methods that require you to play and grind in order to progress at all, those are the archaic methods because those turn you into a slave to the program like a slave in the medieval, feudal ages. Learn some basics before you spout useless complaints.
In other games you grind your XP because that’s all the game has for you. In this game the grinding of XP happens by itself so you can actually play the game without caring about levelling up.
Grinding for XP and levelling up are a way of getting people addicted to a game, without actually having much of a game beyond grinding. While EVE ONLINE offers you the ability to grind for stuff, in no way or form are you forced to grind, unlike all the other games were you basically have no other choice if you want to progress in some way or form.
