In essence you’re telling players to adjust and adapt, to make an effort. That’s fine, that’s what they should do, and it has been Eve’s mantra for two decades now. What I’m saying is that prospective players should be told what they’re getting into, up front (!), not when they’re going through the emotions of losing something they think is very hard to replace. That is a bad surprise for most players who are not used to open world, hard core pvp, perhaps even more so than 1 or 2 decades ago. CCP could facilitate this by adjusting their advertizing - what happened to the EvE is Hard stance ? If anything, I find the current videos misleading. And of course the NPE should include the reality of PvP, but we might as well ask ccp for a monthly donation of plex, lol.
Indeed, if the game is not “your” game, play something else. And being of the htfu or gtfo generation of eve players, my sympathy for rookies getting killed is limited to a donation of isk and a few pointers to prevent the next death. That’s how we roll. I’ve lost my share of ships, some stung pretty bad. Got over it, replaced them, as I should.
Made me chuckle, made me like your post. Probably true as well.
I think it is important for new players to realize that;
Losing things is okay. Especially losing things in pvp. It does not mean you are less than others, you just haven’t yet learned the proper skills.
Don’t internalize the loss. When you lose a retriever or what have you, be upset, breath in, breath out, move on. If you can’t replace that retriever to mine again, maybe try something else? something that normally you wouldn’t do? Steal, gate camp, factional warfare, grief miners like yourself in a pvp ship…there is so much out there.
In many other mmo’s when you are killed by a night elf or a troll, it feels different then when you stare into the eyes of the Eve avatars that many people create. They often look very violent and ominous. Especially when many Eve bio’s match the picture of the avatar. You have to realize, these are just people like yourself. The guy on the other end isn’t Jesse James or anything, he/she is most likely very similar to yourself.
You can’t control other people. If you want that, you have to play single player games, because you only control yourself. Instead if being upset by loss, or seeing violence; see diversity, see people of all different cultures, races an nationalities, come together to blow up digital ships…I mean…that is pretty amazing.
I am the only person that I have ever known in this game that actually won their first fight. I had died in a Merlin in FW when I had no idea what I was doing, and died to lowsec gatecamps and gating a Tayra through null before, but my first actual combat in a ship I wanted to fight players in, the 1.4M ISK Slasher and I won. The only reason I won is because the person I was fighting was also in their first fight, and also in a beam Tormentor, which I could orbit. It was like winning the lottery.
Everyone loses in this game, and I still have lost way more than I have won, but the adventure makes it fun. Out of my first 8 Merlin fights, I won 1 of them. I can’t remember those losses anymore, but that Astero kill will be with me forever. My station bait Magnate is by no means a strong ship, and it got dunked by an Atron. Okay. The fight I got later, after persisting with that fit, makes it all worth it. Soloing a Condor and Hecate together in a Magnate left me on 49 hull HP and shaking so hard it took me another full minute to align out and warp. I got no loot from that fight, and had to repair all my modules at a station afterwards, but the story is worth it.
If you read these comments, just know that the community is pulling for you, and you can always ask for help. There are activities in PvE that are cooperative instead of competitive, like Incursions. You could also do low-risk things like exploration or L4 missioning. EVE has so many things to do, you just gotta find something you like.