What are some good goals to set?

New Citizens Q&A
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Hey Everyone,

So I’ve played the game on and off for around a month now, I’ve done the tutorial, career missions, sisters of eve, joined a corp and done some fleet activities, done exploration, mining and a glimpse of PvP.

The game is starting to feel a bit stale for me now and I believe it’s because I got no meaningful goals to aim for. I understand that there’s so much to do, but I don’t know how to approach and do these things.

The last main sandbox game I played was Runescape, but it was easy to set goals in that game because of the levelling system. Eve Online’s levelling system is passive, meaning that it’s not exactly a good thing to aim to get a certain amount of skills. I’ve thought about setting ISK goals, but I’m not sure how much ISK I should set a goal.

I’m really enjoying the game, but I need some help here picking out some initial goals to work towards.

Lets do this, answer the question: “What were your first 5 initial goals once you finished all the basic tasks in the game.”

(Btw, I believe Eve Online would benefit greatly from an achievement system, it’d give new and even old players goals to constantly aim for. Even better, once an achievement is achieved, it could be displayed on their in game profile.)

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An oldie but a goodie. I hope the resolution is okay.

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If you aim for having 300 skills, or having 50 million skill points, for example, those are just random numbers that don’t really make much sense.

You CAN, however, aim for “I want to fly cov-ops ships, I want to have maxed-out probing skills so I can find prey in under 30 seconds, I want to fly recons, T3 cruisers, logistics (healer) ships well enough to be renown for it in my fleet, I want to fly a carrier capital ship, I want to have a freighter to trade with, I want to have 300 market slots and the ability to change my orders from anywhere within the region, so I don’t have to dock at Jita,” and so on. More meaningful than 50 million skillpoints, though ultimately the skills that you need to train to unlock each of these ships will add up to some number of skillpoints.

But these are just goals to build your character / alts.

You can have “performance” goals instead. Be the top ranked on the killboards, or at least be “in the green” (more kills than deaths). Make x amount of ISK, or control the market for some region of space, or for some ship or gun or whatever niche you find. Manufacture enough ships to support a small corp or a large alliance.

Or you can have social goals, either for yourself or for your corp. Make a name for yourself, be nice to the newbies in some grand way, join EVE University and teach some classes, or write some guides. Form your own corp, and do something with it; take it to WH space or 0.0, take an area for yourself, build some citadels there, get into some wars, be a leader. Help your corp leaders move ships and gear around to the various bases of operations so they’re all ready for everyone to enjoy. Become the most successful spy / secret agent / nastiest pirate / most loathed awoxer or suicide ganker. Scam someone out of trillions of ISK.

EDIT: my goals over the years were:

  • train for cov-ops, recons, ewar, and then logistic ships, because I like support roles. Make a skill plan and get it going, figure out approx. how long it would take

  • try exploration, missions, do missions enough to get standings with a couple opposite corps, to get access to level 4 agents and locator agents

  • find a corp out in 0.0, join them, move to their space, participate in their ops. Ended up helping out with moving fuel to their POSes and helping others move their loot to/from high-sec, and also participating in various fights / wars (that was fun).

  • help others out by answering Newbie Q/A questions whenever possible.

Keep in mind that I started and abandoned multiple characters. Took year-long breaks from the game. Played on and off. It’s a long term game, and it’s a game, you can’t get more involved in it than RL allows (family, work, etc.).

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What do you think is a good ISK goal?

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ISK is more about what you can get as a continuous income, rather than a total sum in your wallet. People go for the sum, of course, your first 100 million, 1 billion, but after that bigger numbers just take up more space. Ultimately you want to be able to replace your ships that you lost this weekend, by next weekend, and with the current game being about frigates and cruisers, that varies depending on the ships you use and lose, but it’s pretty cheap.

ISK-making can be a grind, and it’s extremely mind-numbing. Plenty of people focus on it and get burned out. I no longer grind, because $20 I can get at my job = 500 PLEX = 1.6 billion ISK = more ships that I can lose in a weekend. But I fly cruisers, not carriers / capital ships, so there’s that.

You have to stay within your RL constraints / time limits. This game doesn’t have level caps, it just takes exponentially more time to get next level or next bigger amount of ISK until you learn the hard way to stop YOURSELF at “good enough for now / for me”. You don’t stop because you’ve reached level 80, you stop because you’re a reasonable person who treats this game as a game, and for fun not as a second job.

EDIT: and sometimes it’s fun to start over, be limited by the newbie-level lack of skills, no access to ships, but still be able to achieve amazing things with veteran knowledge about the game. Take a T1 frigate with T1 guns and modules, and rat in 0.0 space, get 100 million in an hour. Or kill some clueless bling-fitted ship and experience a nice adrenaline high + some nice killboard comments.

Game gets boring if you just bring a bigger ship or a bigger blob, win by overpowering. Being the underdog is often more fun.

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Oh man, my first five goals?

I ran the tutorial and the SoE epic arc, which was such a struggle. I found that whole arc very boring and I even failed to finish it with my first trial account but I wanted to ‘out do’ my first character so that was the early goal. After that big slogfest, I was where you are at now.

It was suggested to me to learn to fly the Vexor. So my second goal was to train that but I didn’t wanna wait for skills to finish in the meantime so I set out to learn how the cosmic signatures and anomalies work and escalate. Eventually I was doing DED 3/10’s solo and it felt like an accomplishment.

I really wanted to dress my Vexor up with the Quafe SKIN. Since my SP was so low and couldn’t really fly anything anyway I spent more than I could afford to lose on it lol. Was like 280m ISK I think? Huge for a new player.

I wanted to try starting my own corporation. Ended up being supported by my then renter alliance and had to recruit players. Trying to convince bitter vets why they should follow a clueless 4 month old noob into nullsec was an exercise in failure but I did have an event happen which led to a big series of events - I guess I better not get into that. Titans died.

The fifth goal… maybe I never had a fifth. I still play nearly everyday and mostly do whatever I want

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Player corporations can give titles and medals with self-made text and design. If you are proud of something because you have put effort in it or overcame a special challenge, you can make it a visible achievement for yourself.
Faction warfare also gives you official ranks.
Sometimes you reach a specific level of fame in the community and you don’t even need to log in anymore to be known because you made some extremely good/bad things to others.
Sometimes a few friendships worth more than any fame in the big community.
Sometimes flying a big or special ship is an achievement on its own because it takes months (or years) to get the skills required for flying them (effectively).
Sometimes flying a cheap ship in a risky situation and reach your goal is more exciting than flying a big ship in a big fleet. Maybe only you saw it, only you know it, but it feels better to remember it than any visible achievement for anything. But you can always screenshot it and make it visible too in your Bio :slight_smile:
So titles, medals, ranks, ships, killboard or screenshot links are visible and there is fame and friendship that can be visible too for example in the local chat when you salute or you are saluted.
There are achievements and you create them.

About burning out:
If you are omega, try out a new activity in game. You can train any skills, fly any ships.
If you need an aim, try to reach specific standings with specific factions or corporations. (Even alphas can do it.)
Or aim a big ship to fly effectively.
Or join pvp fights in a pvp corp and/or faction warfare.
If you are in a player corporation, try to find out a common goal together. Build a base somewhere. Fly together for pve/pvp. Join an alliance, invade a system, or just make raids, risky missions and explorations in enemy territories. Specialize your activities and help each other to make bigger profit together. Whatever you find exciting.

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My first goals iirc …

… standing with a corp to install a jump clone (8.0 was necessary by that time, obsolete today), “leveling up my Raven” finally running lvl4 missions
… complete the Angel Epic arc, and building the reward from scratch
… win my first fight in solo PvP
… fly essential ships: ceptor, covops, haulers, main line DPS of all races
… learn to scan, hack, wormhole gas huffing
… live from solo PvP, mainly by killing FW mission runners in my lovely Taranis (does not work anymore)

There is so many more to try … things I did: Incursions, living in Thera, setting up and operating a PI farm in nullsec, join every public fleet for a week and weekend (had many weeks break from EvE after that …), make ISK from being ganked (killrights), own the market of one item, do everything with one char, …

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My aims after finishing the basics:

  • still understand what the heck am I doing there - learn game mechanics and interactions.
  • Get of course every type of T1 Frig, Dessie, and Cruiser into my garage, preferably self built.
  • find out how to survive PvP bubbles and scrams.
  • Get a PvP Routine; don’t think - win!
  • learn how to earn ISK in a decent way.
  • Know the map by heart. Start with highsec Gallente space, add Minmatar, some nullsec, step by step.

None of that accomplished yet, but the trick is to set keystones. They keep you motivated because they can be achieved within hours/days.

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I went to Curse.

After I finished the tutorials, and the SOE arc, like you I was casting about for a goal, and I decided I’d do what lots of “graduates” do upon emancipation from academic rule; I’d go on a road trip, :slight_smile:

So, I opened the in game map and started looking at names. I saw the word “Curse”, and that was it.

My goal. In five letters.

I’d go to Curse, in nullsec. Scary!

So, I posted a thread in New Citizens asking for advice, waded through the replies, and formed a plan. Sort of a there and back again “plan”.

I had a great time, had all sorts of adventures along the way, and never looked back.

EVE is what you make of it. You can be the good guy, the bad guy, the CEO maker or CEO breaker, or the third spear carrier from the left, if that floats your boat. All it takes is time, imagination, and a little bit of luck, (that can be translated into preparation meets opportunity.)

It’s all up to you, :wink:

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Plan long term goals in the game, short term jumps and needs.

When I first started, I was wanting to lean towards a bomber. But started leaning twords mining and and exploring.

Short term, I’m planning to get my medium guns and drones to T2 and max my core skills for my vexor.

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