I’m making this topic to help new players learn some things that other people frequently leave out of their "how to"s or explanations. Feel free to jump in and add some things you wish someone would have explained to you as a newbro.
Sniping. Particularly with Rails. The biggest problem with a starting gallente player is how underexplained their faction specific turrets are. Blasters have the lowest range of all turrets while rails have a very high range. Two extremes. When I first started off using Rails I wish someone would tell me how sniping works. You CAN and should engage outside of optimal range with Rails. If you are combating your own turrets tracking limitations on top of smaller ships high speed, you VERY rarely hit your targets. The solution is sniping. Engage far far outside your optimal range. Use MJDs effectively (or MWDs on smaller ships). Stay far enough away from your enemy that they HAVE to run directly at you and lose their transversal bonus. As a battleship with rails, feel free to just stand still and snipe and then MJD when enemies get too close. This particular problem is what prompted making this topic. I WISH I knew how to snipe effectively when starting out. Because those Rails can’t hit anything up close.
The magic 14. The list of skills that miraculously make the game 10x easier that are often overlooked. Most notably starship command and defensive upgrades (whatever gives you the upgraded shield extenders is a game changer), and especially targeting.
You DONT need to max out all skills right away. Most of the time 4 levels in a skill is plenty. Sometimes it’s best to leave it at 3. And SOME skills only warrant a single level to make incredible differences (take thermodynamics). Some skills that only warrant a single skill point are most trade skills, most weapon specializations, most drone specializations, and most advanced spaceship command skills. The specialization skills only require a single point to unlock a T2 module for the corresponding module, just make sure you skill the right one, since skilling “small turret spec” isn’t the same as “large turret spec”.
Mining isn’t necessarily free money. TIME is money in all activities in EVE and if you spend more time mining to get the same payout you would running missions in less time, then in terms of making ISK, you have wasted time and therefore money. If you spend more time mining minerals for your industrial needs than it would have taken you to buy them with mission profits, you are losing money. HOWEVER, READ MY NEXT POINT.
It doesn’t matter if you play EVE wrong so long as you’re having run. To add onto my statement about mining before, I love mining with a passion but objectively will never make as much money as I would running L4s. I love mining because I love adding to the overall industrial heart of New Eden. My profit isn’t entering into that particular equation. The fact that I can procure the materials needed for someone else to create their battleships or titans is quite humbling, and it makes me feel important (and indeed it is important, SOMEONE needs to bring those minerals in). Fun should always trump profits. This is a GAME.
Corporations aren’t needed. But damn are they good to have. Having a good community to reach out to for support when you don’t know something is imperative.
Is being explained in the Academy and has been explained for a very long time in the EVE Wiki aka EVE Uni Wiki (after CCP shut EVE Wiki down) for hilarious reasons: The Magic 14 - EVE University Wiki (exists since at least 2016 on EUniWiki)
This is something some people will never understand, no point in trying.
Run? You mean run from evil pilots in your Railgun PVE ship?
That has been explained and been a focus since pretty much forever. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08hmqyejCYU - There has even been a trailer exactly about this since 2009.
You know what your and many newbies’ problems really is? See all these links that I posted? The answers to (almost) all their questions are already there. These people just don’t want to look for answers. They want answers given to them and get annoyed if no one does that.
This is a lie and an exaggeration. while you will train many of these to around 4 they are not this be all and end all of early skills. I think it was almost 3 years on this toon before i completed all of them and that was because I was taking a break and my queue chewed through to them.
This “magic 14” idea is harmful to new players particularly when they are encouraged to train up these skills before anything else essentially pausing their advancement.
That’s why I’m making this thread. Things I wish someone told me that otherwise no one did, because they didn’t know how to communicate it with newbros or, more likely, didn’t want to. It sounds like you, and a lot of others like you, view this information as yet another commodity of eve and are trying to keep it to yourself. Once again, further justification for this thread, things I wish people like you didn’t keep to yourselves or just expect others to find out on their own through all these varying avenues you’ve listed. Because yes, there are guides (that you’ve linked), but they are all so spread out and hard to comprehend to new players that it’s simply not useful.
The information is readily available in public services like YouTube or EVE Uni Wiki. I found these links by using a search website and querried for the things I wanted to know. Please explain to me how I am trying to keep “this information” to myself?
That depends on your mindset. I have started out 10 years ago and 10 years ago there was much less information available. However, when I wanted to know something I searched for it. If I could not find conclusive information, I asked in my starter corp chat (and later my player corps) and they always answered my questions there. What I don’t like are people that don’t do at least a tiny little bit of research themselves before they come crying for help from other people. Nor do I like people that are too lazy to join available training corps like EVE Uni who teach you all the things you want to know.
EVE is a hobby, a serious pastime, about learning things. If you are not willing to do that and expect to be bedded on roses, you should think hard about whether EVE is really the right pastime for you.
You actively said that you believe people just want the answers handed to them, as if that was something you weren’t willing to do, being a veteran elitist who no longer remembers the frustrating times when you had to learn things on your own because the information wasn’t available or clear. That is you actively choosing not to give your broad knowledge on the game to people who need it because in your mind they haven’t yet done enough to deserve the answer. It’s the generational curse. “I had it this rough and so everyone else should too.”
The videos/uni you linked didn’t explain that you actually have a higher chance to hit certain targets with certain weapons outside of your optimal/falloff range. They do the basics. They explain what optimal and falloff are, their effects, they explain the effect of velocity, and they explain kiting. It literally doesn’t include the fact that rails are more effective outside of these ranges, which is not a point you’d ever pick up from what they said (“engaging within optimal range is where range is no longer a factor in whether you land a shot” sounds a lot like “engage within optimal range”).
So it’s certainly, 100%, information I wish someone told me, and I didn’t find regardless of searching.
Maybe I should just say I’m glad that your elitist mindset no longer registers what it was like to get started in arguably one of the hardest to learn games on the planet but your opinion on what is or isn’t hard really doesn’t change the fact that I wish someone else had told me these things. If you don’t want to add things you learned that you find helpful then please just move on and stop being negative to new players. This obviously isn’t for you.
I cannot read minds. I do not know what you want to know or need to know. I expect you to do some basic research yourself and then come to me with more in-depth questions about specifics. I expect you to do do half the leg work and not take it for granted that, just because I am a veteran, should service you like a pampered prince.
This paragraph demonstrates exactly what I mean. You get angry if someone tells you to do some work of your own. And you lash out to people telling you things and accuse them of “keeping it to themselves” and “that they don’t want to add things you learned or find helpful”.
This has nothing to do with negativity towards new players. This is actually being very positive to new players because it encourages you to research what you want to know, get some basics yourself and then ask more experienced players about certain details that are really not easily understandable or findable on the internet. That shows that you put some work into learning more about EVE and that you are willing to put some effort into EVE and it shows to the people you are asking for help that their help won’t fall on (completely) deaf ears or will be in vain outright.
This paragraph is very literally me telling you congrats on doing the hard work yourself 10 years ago. But if you have nothing better to do than come on to a thread that is just about today’s new players talking about what they wish was better explained, and start berating people’s abilities to learn the way you did, then please don’t say anything at all.
All you did this entire time was say that the things I had a hard time learning were a result of me not looking hard enough (and I did look hard enough, else I wouldn’t be able to say I know how to do it now, and it certainly wouldn’t be on this list) and talking about how your avenues of learning, that you have established over 10 years, are as obvious to others as they were to you. If it was that obvious I wouldn’t have had a hard time finding the info I needed. Once again, in some cases, i found the info simply by playing the game. Info that I thought was otherwise critical to the experience. Info that I think should definitely be better explained to new players to avoid them leaving the game.
I’m not accusing you of keeping anything to yourself, in your first reply (and indeed in that last reply as well) you actively say that you wouldn’t help someone unless they’ve done some of the leg work themselves. In otherwords, withholding information. In other words, the prompt for this entire thread. Things I would have liked someone to explain to me as a new player. Things that you have admitted you wouldn’t tell me if you didn’t think I did enough looking on my own, by your veteran standards.
Again. Please. If all you can do is berate peoples abilities to learn a VERY complex game, don’t come onto this thread. It really. Really. Is not for you.
Pretty sure all he’s done is explain to any new player that comes across this thread how easily accessible information is and how to find what you need to know.
If you didn’t immediately get defensive that’s where it would end.
Normally i can’t stand Zhay, but he’s right in this instance… 18 years of information dumped into the interwebz, there really isn’t much you couldn’t search and not find. All your questions about fall off/optimal etc… can be found just by searching…
When i started to dip into PI, before i dipped back out of it, I asked about it, and I was led to some videos to watch… informational videos that helped me understand PI, but for me at the moment in time, too much work for me to deal with, and i didn’t find it fun.
anything can be argued about, but you are essentially saying you want someone to give you every bit of info about the game, instead of searching, and reading and taking it all in…
id rather someone lead me to the info, so i know in the future where to look it up easily in case i forget something.
I have only said that I would be reluctant to help you if you came to me and asked me “Explain everything about rails for me”. If you came along and asked something like “Which weapon do I use best for this or that on this or that ship? Are rails a better choice or blasters?” it would show me that you looked some things up yourself and only need some guidance in properly applying your gained knowledge in practice.
What you are completely right about, however, is that all these things could and should be explained more easily and more importantly yet, collected in one place again. In the past we had the EVE Wiki for that. Now CCP has a new opportunity with the Academy to collect all that information in one place and make it accessible for all users via the Agency’s Academy interface ingame, similar to things like the Civlopedia in Civilization games. It would be a monumental task because EVE is such a complex game – especially when it comes to creative use of mechanics --, and every tiny little last detail could probably not be explained in that Academy library either. However, many more details could be explained there so that new players could find them there more easily than having to sift through the internet, and they could link to third party websites that contain even more information to expand upon the subjects explained in the Academy. Remains to be seen if CCP does that eventually.
did we? the eve wiki was always lacking and quickly outdated itself. Thats why it was ultimately shut down It was more misleading than helpful. And at least from the videos I have seen im pretty sure the academy will go the same way, There videos are built far more like advertisements than tutorials.
