Meaningful Content for Casual Player?

Communications Center General Discussion
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I am one among many pilots who continue to play Eve, get bored and leave, want to come back, do come back, get bored and leave, etc. I’m tired of the cycle and I really don’t want to hang up Eve forever. Of all the games I can think of out there, Eve has the most potential for MEANINGFUL content. But the reason I’ve bounced in and out of the game for so long is twofold. One, I previously held fast to the idea of avoiding PvP. Two, I just simply didn’t have much time on my hands to devote to this (or any) particular game.

In truth, I have even less time now (Wife, 3 kids, Job w/ a 45 minute commute, getting a master’s degree, church commitments, as well as real life friends who enjoy actually getting together, etc). But I’m letting go of the “no PvP” thing. But obviously time is still super tight, say an hour a night and variable on the weekends?

So the question is, can EvE hold meaningful content for me? Oh I can easily take my Stratios out and look for combat exploration sites but what’s the point? Isk? Why? To hopefully plex so I can keep doing more of the same without making an actual impact on the game universe?

So what I’m hoping is that you good people might let me know what options are open to me in this game as a truly casual player. Well, casual when it comes to time commitment. I’m more than wiling to learn and I’ll be anything BUT casual in actual PvP. But I just don’t think I can commit to being online for fleet operations at any given point of the day/night. My life is just too hectic and real world demands are just too unpredictable.

I’ve spent my Eve career (obviously off and on) so far exploring in an astero and doing level 4 combat sites (i.e. Phi Outpost) in a Stratios. Yeah, that makes some isk, cool, but in the end, what does it ACCOMPLISH? To be fair, I’ve had some fun times escaping from 0.0 defenders in the astero and that has given a little rush every once in a while, but simply ESCAPING doesn’t really provide the impact I’m looking for. Unfortunately, beyond those activities, in which I’m probably at an intermediate level of skill, I’m pretty much clueless about the rest of the game.

So what do you think? Does this game hold anything of impact, value and meaning to the person with significantly limited time on their hands? And yes, I know “impact, value and meaning” is highly subjective, but please work with me on this. Thanks!

o7

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your first problem your highlighting is being casual player and grinding for plex.

unless you do null sec/incursions/abyssal, everything else takes a good bit of play (something which you state you have little time for, ontop of not wanting to spend a good amount of time playing)

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Maybe Faction Warfare. Most likely to get you some PVP action in a limited time frame.

Basically every fight in null-sec now revolves around a timer of some sort. A lot of them happening outside your groups timezone, due to the crap TZ mechanics of citadels.

Could also try to find a WH group that does regular short roams at the time your online. Might get you some action.

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Pick one.

You have a job. Don’t be like those folks and pay for your sub.
It’ll improve your whole game.

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Take a few extra work hours each month and you’ve done your grinding for sub, now all you have to do is enjoy the game and do whatever you want. :wink:

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I agree with the others when they say to pay for the sub. It will really allow you to relax. Or do the alpha thing.

Also fw is a good place to run out in a cheap t1 frig and find a few good fights with someone. Or hunt bots and help the game! You can also make money whilst you roam if you join fw.

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I apologize, I apparently wrote more ambiguously than I intended. I have NO desire to plex my account with isk. I fully understand that was one of my problems before. That is why I’m looking for MEANINGFUL content. Meaningful content will make the $15/month worth it.

I’m not opposed to joining a Corp if they’ll have me, understanding my limitations.

Can anyone tell me more about faction warfare and/or ways to get PvP on a solo basis? I’ve heard of ways to provoke for PvP rather than simply roaming for it. Is that still a thing? I’m not looking to be a griefer and I definitely do not want to gank, but I have no problems with being an aggressor.

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What‘s fun and meaning for you in game, only you can define. We can only give you inspiration.

A typical Tipa evening could look like this: I login, check and update my market orders, then undock in my all-purpose Loki and scan for wormholes in neighbor system. If I don’t find anything useful to travel, I’m running some DENs in highsec until I get a 5/10 escalation to lowsec … which is then my target system for the evening. The point is then to kill everything I find killable on the way, update the orders in regions I cross, and finally run the site. Depending on time I scan for more wh connections to extend my journey.

On other days I’m doing industry stuff, haul materials to the engineering complex and final goods back to market, and doing all the profit calculations, and looking for opportunities. Monday’s I’m roaming lowsec with a public fleet.

There is a lot of other things I like doing, running event sites every month, killing MTUs, do relic sites, hunt clone soldiers (to keep my sec status up), post in help channel, …

EDIT: Regarding PvP, forget about fairness and “honor”. If you want to win and not always lose, you have to rig the battlefield in your favor. Most fights are decided before the first shot is fired, this is especially true when you are solo.

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Faction warfare offers some of the best opportunities in EVE for solo pvp. The semi-structured nature of it frames a lot of the pvp, and a large percentage of the fights tend to be solo. There are also fleet roams both within and outside of the FW zone that are often available when players choose to organize them.

All of the basic FW info is available at https://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Faction_warfare . If you join FW, however, you can get additional info from other players in the Militia channel that you automatically join as a member of the militia for your faction. A lot of the players are part of alliances associated with the militia, but there is no requirement that you join one of these. Both militia alliances and members of the basic FW NPC corp for a given faction have access to the Militia channel for their side.

The majority of FW pvp tends to be in frigs and dessies. You will sometimes see larger ships, but these tend to be used more in fleet actions. Mobility and avoiding getting tackled at stargates is key as you need to be able to move throughout the FW zone, hence the preference for smaller ships.

FW can be very lucrative, but you need to manage your isk. A good initial goal is to make sure that you are breaking even on paying for ship losses. You are paid solely in loyalty points, so part of FW is learning how best to cash in LP for items to sell in the market.

There’s lots more to learn about FW, but joining in and talking with other players is the best way to learn these details. If you find it’s not for you, you can always leave.

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Ganking can be an interesting and amusing form of gameplay. You get what you put in, of course. Head over to the minerbumping blog!

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I’ve been in faction warfare for about a year and a half. I joined mostly or learn pvp and fight in fleets.

Now fleets are fun, but sometimes waiting for people to get organized and heading to the battle takes too long for me. This is just part of working with a large group of people. But flying with a good and funny FC is really a lot of fun.

Sometimes I want content and I want it now. So I usually head out in a t2 frig and look for solo fights. There are always alliance friendly guys who you can join up with and find stuff to do.

Learning pvp will be frustrating at first but it is a great experience. I still fly with fleets, we have weekly scheduled events. And nobody cares if you show up or don’t. My guys are really low key but fun to hang with.

FW is probably the easiest way to find content almost as soon as you login. I can get $15 worth of fun every month.

You never really quit EVE.

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The most rewarding and meaningful content is already listed friend.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.
Benjamin Franklin

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While I absolutely appreciate the sentiment in which you wrote that, none of the activities I listed concerning my normal life allow me to be a villain. At least not without MAJOR real life consequences! Haha. And I don’t know, it seems to me that a major part of “meaningful content” in Eve includes ruining someone else’s day. In the real world I strive to be pretty meek and mild, I try not to say hurtful things are cause others undue trouble . . . and that is a real hard thing to do sometimes! But now . . . I’m willing to cause some trouble, even if it is relegated to virtual spaceships. After all, I wouldn’t want to cause anyone real grief in actual life. And if people take their internet spaceships too serious and it causes them real life grief when they lose a ship, then I consider that on them rather than on me. But I suppose that’s big talk for someone who has yet to post a kill. I’ll get there, though!

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I don’t think you have to be morally compromised in real life to play a villain or bad guy in Eve Online. All you have to do is blow up another players ship and they instantly make you the villain.

Faction Warfare is a good choice, but again ganking is pretty laid back and it can be as involved or complicated as you desire… as is most things in this game.

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If you’re willing to go back to no PvP, I can highly recommend Signal Cartel. Meaningful game play on a casual schedule I what we’re all about!

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why? Why don’t you want to gank? Why reject that entirely? Or are you being imprecise?

My purpose in asking is, as I read up to this point in the thread, I thought perhaps you’d be in a position to help smaller/smallish industry corps and was intending to recommend that.

Under the (currently in flux) was dec rules in high sec, there is a growing discontent within the mining community with so called “ore thieves”. You can read current threads arguing what to do about this, right now on this forum.

These “ore thieves” can no longer be war decced, which leaves bumping and ganking as viable counter measures. However, if you are confronting an orca fleet, which some are, you need numbers of players to successfully gank, or multi-boxers.

So, you need to organize groups of players, as most smallish industry or mining corps don’t have the numbers to effectively deal with an orca fleet.

This is where someone such as yourself could come in and assist. You could help either with intel, or organization, but importantly…by helping a group gank their nemesis. You don’t have to make a permanent commitment to a corp…to help.

So, why reject ganking out of hand entirely?

In these situations, you are helping defend others, so why the blanket rejection of ganking?

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Excavator hunting with Lokis is meaningful, and it is quick, relatively speaking.

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I think @Tipa_Riot said it best- only you can define what "meaningful means, and that can take on a bunch of different elements of the game. Some potential examples for me, anyway.

I build things and enjoy working on production and industry chains and planning them
I like to help new player learn the game and help them get better where I can
I like killing time by popping pirates in PVE and WHs

Maybe you want to build a community, maybe you want to just zap some other players, maybe it’s all of the above.

That’s kind of the thing about EVE, there is no real story, arc, or narrative other than what you make for yourself (with or without other players), so having an idea of what you find to be enjoyable and meaningful in the game is very subjective.

One thing you might want to do is look at the Activity Tracker to get some inspiration for other elements of the game that you haven’t tried yet.

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I was probably being imprecise. What I really mean is that I have no interest in suicide ganking. It’s been a while and I forgot that there’s legitimately a variety of ganking. I would have no problem ambushing people, i.e. going into wormhole space in a bomber and trying to find miners, etc. Though when I DID try to do that (just a few times after watching wingspan content) I just couldn’t find any targets and got super bored. So actually “ganking” is fine if that’s what you call ambushing/provoking a target and blowing them up before they know what happens… but no, I don’t have any interest in the suicide version.

You describe an interesting situation . . . how do you go about doing that? It sounds quite long and involved . . . certainly fun, but perhaps involving more time than I have available. But I’m willing to accept any and all suggestions, especially suggestions that might give me a starting point.

For instance. I heard about scanning down mission runners and then taking their loot in the hopes they fire on you so you can “legally” fight back and since they’re fit for PvE and you’re fit for PvP you should be able to take them out. So I understand the theory but I have no idea about what ships would be good to fly for this, what ships to target, what modules to use, etc… Again, I’m willing to learn through trial and error and go out there and just experience things, but starting with absolutely NO information whatsoever is just like trying to learn how to swim by having someone drop you off in the middle of the ocean. You’re just going to drown.

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I would infer from this that “content” is, at least to you, synonymous with “PvP”. Which makes me wonder why people don’t just say “PvP” if that’s what they mean, and if they mean something else, say that. IAC, it seems there’s not much content in the word “content”. :slight_smile: