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Is it worth it?
americanchum
Member Posts: 5
in EVE Online
Is it worth it to start playing EvE?
(let me explain a bit, by what I mean.)
I have been playing MMO's since UO. I recently quit WoW, as it was by far the worst MMO I have ever played. I have made alot of friends in WoW, who want to play another MMO with me. Most of them have only ever played WoW, and dont realize that WoW is only a fraction of what MMO's are really about.
I tried EvE about a year ago, and LOVED it. But I stopped playing for various reasons.
I would like to start playing again, and bring over my friends as well. But I have one gripe with that situation:
Because skills are learned over-time, online or offline. Wouldn't this propose a large problem for new players? I mean, as far as combat for instance: Wouldn't we be going head to head with players who are literally 2 YEARS ahead of us in combat skills. Same could be said for other skills trees as well.
I've always told myself, "Man, if they ever started a fresh/new EvE server I would totally start playing, so the "playing field" would be leveled." But, of course, that would take away from one of the greatest aspects of this game, the one giant shard/realm/server.
My question isn't whether or not it would be possible for me and my friends to have fun in this game. I know we'd have fun and make the most of it.
But as a "hardcore" mmo player, is it worth it to start playing fresh? I would take a year just to catch up with some of the higher skill set players, and even then, they will always have a very very large edge on the new players.
Just looking for some advice, as I would very much like to start playing again and just as a general side note: As AMAZING as the way skill-ups are done in this game, it may be a reason why many MMO players who would like to start playing EVE, dont.
Thanks for taking the time to read my ramble!
(let me explain a bit, by what I mean.)
I have been playing MMO's since UO. I recently quit WoW, as it was by far the worst MMO I have ever played. I have made alot of friends in WoW, who want to play another MMO with me. Most of them have only ever played WoW, and dont realize that WoW is only a fraction of what MMO's are really about.
I tried EvE about a year ago, and LOVED it. But I stopped playing for various reasons.
I would like to start playing again, and bring over my friends as well. But I have one gripe with that situation:
Because skills are learned over-time, online or offline. Wouldn't this propose a large problem for new players? I mean, as far as combat for instance: Wouldn't we be going head to head with players who are literally 2 YEARS ahead of us in combat skills. Same could be said for other skills trees as well.
I've always told myself, "Man, if they ever started a fresh/new EvE server I would totally start playing, so the "playing field" would be leveled." But, of course, that would take away from one of the greatest aspects of this game, the one giant shard/realm/server.
My question isn't whether or not it would be possible for me and my friends to have fun in this game. I know we'd have fun and make the most of it.
But as a "hardcore" mmo player, is it worth it to start playing fresh? I would take a year just to catch up with some of the higher skill set players, and even then, they will always have a very very large edge on the new players.
Just looking for some advice, as I would very much like to start playing again and just as a general side note: As AMAZING as the way skill-ups are done in this game, it may be a reason why many MMO players who would like to start playing EVE, dont.
Thanks for taking the time to read my ramble!
Comments
Go play JumpGate I think they will enjoy it more. Eve has too many flaws and the major point you bring up will be a show stopper for most of your pals. The Training Model is hugely flawed in my opinion and is the major reason new players leave Eve. Yes I know the Fanbois will jump on that statement and use the party line of specialization, which total B.S.
Take your pals and go play something other than Eve.
Truthfully, if there were ANY other MMO's actually worth playing, I would play them. But as I said before, I have been playing MMO's since UO. I have played a total of 9 over the years, and EvE Online is the only decent one out right now. (That isn't outdated for various reasons, ie. UO, SWG, EQ, AO, etc.)
I am also, not too worried about any "flaws" in EvE. I have alot of faith in their devs.
Again, my ONLY concern is whether I will find my time in EVE rewarding, playing with/against people who have 2 years worth of skills higher than my own.
I'd like to say I could have a great time regardless, but even someone with a slight ego (me) might find it a little daunting and pointless if I could never be (or even have it possible to be), the best or one of the best at something in-game.
If you're looking to compete with battleship flying players in a few months it's not going to happen, but there other ways to play with and against those more experienced player. Within a couple of months you'll be able to fly a decent frigate or cruiser and kit them out for electronic warfare or tackling. With that you can join in PvP battles no problem, you will just be playing a different role.
I would seriously consider joining the EVE University. They're a corp that specialise in showing new players the ropes so they gave a better time in game. In fact, I'm considering wiping my 2yr+ char and putting a new one through EU to learn the game properly and have more fun.
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Skill spoints arent everything. A noob can beat a veteran, its all about tactics and knowing how to set up your ship correctly. Scine the OP stated he has friends who would join him hes in a much better position too. The idea is to band together and hunt in groups. Its not too farfetched to kill battleships with frigs people. The skill system in EvE isnt flawed. and heres why:
ALL skills only reach lv 5...thats it.
There are only a few select skils that are relevant to specific ships.
While there may be hundreds of skills you only need specific ones to make a certain ship perform optimally.
Therefore in no time you can be up a running smaller class ships with efficiency and having a lot of fun.
Yes the veteran has many lv 5 skills but so what!!!! he can only fly one damned ships thus making a large portion of his skills irrelevant.
My suggestion is to join a corp which suits your playing style and pursue a goal (whatever that may be). This game is about goals and teamwork imo, and the fact you have friends is a big plus. Like ive stated in other related threads, frim my 1st month ingame i have killed players much older than me, and now im nearing one year in game and i can kill many people older than me. At the same time i have been beaten by players who have played for less time than me. EVERY pvp scenario is different and tactics are more important that SP.
This game unlike other MMO's is easy to pick up and as the others have said a Vet has no clear advantage over another player if both of you are flying frigates/crusiers etc the only advantage is they have access to more ships or could posibly squeeze that little bit more out of their ship as they skills might be at 5 for something like electronic or shields but in 6 days you could get that same skill.
I've found it really easy to play with the Vets and still hold my own in combat against experienced players, and the secret really is to youse your brain! Don't fight when you can't win, don't get into a fight if you don't know what your enemy is flying in (use the scanner for this) and always be aligned to warp out incase of emergencies and lasty Stop Hitting the Orbit Button!
Lastly if you do decide to come back, look up Nasero or the NEURO corp if you want some help or a decent corp to help you get back up to speed and access to the nicer area's of 0.0.
First off yeah I love the game, it's one of my first MMORPG games and I started playing it back in february 2004 and played it on a daily basis up to last month.
I love the freedom in the game, I love the crafting and I where a miner/producer and missionrunner in the game my skills where good both in industrial/science and combat (40 million skillpoints).
The way the skilltraining goes is perfect for me as there is times I don't really have time to play alot and could only log in to do some CEO stuff and maybe some producing I remember I where in charge where we did let our members buy shares into a couple of battlecruisers bpo for the corp and we bought minerals on the market cheap and build alot, in one month we could be building and selling up to 70 battlecruisers (small scale) and that would bring us in some quite hefty surplus... that got split among the shareholders.
I probably could be called a fanboi but however with the recent T20 incident and how CCP did handle it... it just tiped the scale for me and I did cancel both my accounts where both where since early 2004.
Too bad because I really loved the game and I would have sticked to it to the end if CCP just could handle the things better... and lissen to the people and do the right thing.
Right now I went on to play World of Warcraft, it's not a great game... I don't advance fast as my playtime don't allow me to powerplay this very much ... and eventually I will try Age of Conan when it comes out.
Also I have been playing games like Battlefield 2142 ALOT these days instead of MMORPG's...
So is it worth it ? well I would not recomend it because of the way CCP did handle the T20 case (no not because they did not fire him but the aftermath). if you can look past that then yeah .. why not.
Don't confuse the game with the company you pay to play it. CCP is a shiny example on how a company should NOT behave.
If you know the whole story (don't trust the ccp censor happy forums for the info) and still want to give them your hard earned real life cash to be cheated in a game, then don't whine later when you and your buddies get screwed by ccp and their buddies in the game.
Sad, the game itself is good, but I can't see supporting a company like CCP. Not until they enforce the rules that were viollated by their buddies and employees.
ccp the "we cheat for our buddies and are proud of it" company...
Well I have to say if you can bring on some friends to lean with you this will make the long steep learning curve much easier especially if later on you all work together in your own corp. As for the old question of the Noob VET divide well thankfully skillpoints only make up about 40% of what makes a player victorius in eve the rest largly comes from Experience in ship fitting ship use taktics and of course a little luck,
I have to say tho that starting eve with friends you know WILL be a big help for you.
As for the Dev misdeed thing that went on some months ago well to simplyfie it basically 1 dev used his dev powers and knoledge to help advance his corp and alliance [which happened to be BoB]. Among the things he did was give the alliance in question severall tech 2 bluprints [all deleted now]. This was all exposed by a Eve player who happend to have some pretty interesting hacking skills [ he got banned as a result].
The main reason its still an issue today is becasue some people still feel bitter and betrayed about what happened which is fare enough i was like that too to begine with. Netherless the important question you will no doubt ask is how does this affect me?
Well to put it simply not at all as when it was affecting people it really only affected alliance level polotics so of course to a newbie its a non issue really.
Netherless i advise you investigate this issue yourself if you really want to but my advice is to avoid KUG's server as ive met a few Trojans from that site [hence the reason i wont go there anymore].
I always grin when I see some one post "SP don't matter". I have seen a new player of 6 months in a HAC attack one of our mining opps (3 barges 2 indys) and loose his HAC in less to a min to our drones. Heck I have chased down crusers in my barge armed only with 5 drones but because of My SP my drones had a longer range than the cruse's weps. What they actualy means is if the Vet is in an unarmed ship such as an indy with a salavager and tractor then yes the Vets SPs will not save him as an unarmed vet is still unarmed. What is even funner is that the same ppl brag about bringing down the unarmed vet , well they also brag about popping a 1 day old noob in a starter ship but thats another discussion.
SP are actully the least of your probs, the real problem will be ISK. You will hear a lot of people tell you to join a 0.0 corp and that they will help you get into PVP this is true, there are a lot of corps out there that need meat sheilds or at the least bait and are willing to provide you the low lvl ships to gain these.
One thing to keep in mind is that eveything you use be it ships, modules, ammo etc must be bought, salvaged or manufactured by you and that takes ISK (money).
So if you want to play EVE then you can play 2 ways and have fun.
1. Now you say you have a group of ppl well then the fist way is to sell yourself to a low sec corp just keep in mind that they will support you only as long as you provide them what what they need. A blob is only a blob as long as you gave plenty of zerglings available.
2. Bring as many of your WOW friends as possable, create a corp and start investing in your future. Have all the players join the same race. This will help as you many ways I will not go into. Mine, Run missions, rat togather and use some of the drops to buy blueprints for the ships as well as weapon and ammo. Working as a group you can have lots of fun for at least a year and never have to PVP or go down to 0.0/low sec until your ready.
also, most vets for 2 or more years leave 0.0 as it actually does get boring. Keep in mind that though the word PVP is thown around a lot there is no real PVP in EVE. If your friends want PVP I suggest BF/COD/GW or any other FPSMMO. You will never get a "fair" fight or a Player Vrs Player fight in EVE even if you look for one but that's not necessarly a bad thing.
An so it begins
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.[/CENTER]
No no no! Everyone above has it wrong, because you are not being cynical enough!
You can be a 'power player' with time - but you may not like the reason! The numbers show most people play Eve Online for approx 10 months and then give up. Therefore, if you accrue more than 14 months of skill points, you'll have more than most.
Here is how the characters and skill points are distributed:
1 to 2 Million 38.371
2 to 3 Million 16.780
3 to 4 Million 10.302
1 to 5 Million 8.074
5 to 10 Million 30.110
10 to 15 Million 21.639
15 to 20 Million 12.833
20 to 25 Million 8.499
25 to 30 Million 6.624
30 to 35 Million 5.496
35 to 40 Million 4.342
40 to 45 Million 3.152
45 to 50 Million 1.892
50 to 55 Million 1.012
55 to 60 Million 311
60+ Million 40
Most players have 5 to 15 million skill points. Therefore, if you get more than this you are starting to be a 'power player'.
So the best way to be a 'power player' is to earn just enough to buy your skill manuals. Then just hone your skills for a year or so until people are walking in space stations. When this happens, start playing the game for real and you will give everyone a spanking!
How's that for being cynical! Have I not beaten you all for negative/cynical advice!
Here's the sad fact of that Jack, your absolutely correct. And that's one of the flaws of their skill system, your paying to do nothing for all that time. I'm not a big fan of hack and slash grinding for skills. But you gotta admit, at least your "doing" something .
Actually, I hope people play Eve Online for longer than the numbers suggest because I value a stable community over 'power playing'.
It's nice to think people would play for 2-years and keep going.
This is why I hope the avatars in space stations will make the game feel more personal.
If you want to win all the time, just join a powerful team.
Well if CCP wanted me to play for longer (februar 2004) then they just have to do the right thing, and so far they have not... infact they act like nothing have happend.
So I left and I where a "veteran" player (not particular fund in that term really, some in my corp used to call me "First ones" from the TV-series Babylon 5).
Yeah, except the fact that it takes OVER A YEAR to get to that stage where you are now considered as being a STARTING power player. Most games don't hold peoples attention that long. Especially one as boring as EVE. I would know, I played it for over a year hoping things would get better...yeah, it didn't. The ships get slower, the skills take longer to train, everything slows even more as you progress through the game.
And for the guy who said skills only go to lvl 5. That's just a cover up sack of crap. A huge percentage of skills have the "advanced" version of that skill. Which essentially allows the 3 year vets to have lvl 10 skills. Which makes everyone saying "skills aren't everything" seem even more ridiculous. Those are the people who have stayed in empire space and have never entered a gate only to be 2-vollied by a sniping tempest/megathron. Older players rule the game with impunity.
Another previous poster said "killing battleships isn't that hard with a few friends in frigates". Which is another ridiculous statement as any older player with a good ship and t2 mods either does 10/10 deadspace complexes or solos lvl 4 missions. In case you don't know, either one of those requires you to withstand the fire of dozens of ships of all types at the same time, from frigates to cruisers to multiple battleships. So unless your little "gang" of buddies is the entirety of GoonSwarm, think again.
Well when i was 3 months old i used my Battlecruiser to beat up a raven. I had decent ECM skills so i jammed his sensors which worked about 80% of each cycle and i warp scrambled him then i just kiled him Slowly......My gunnery skills werent so hot then.
As for reaching 15 mil skillpoints in a year well thats largly true unless you know what you are doing. Of course as most newbs generally dont well it does take a while to reach such heights but as i illistrated earlier in this post it is possable to solo PvP battleships in a smaller ship.
Top tip: Have at least 3 medium slots for 2 ECM mods and one warp jammer and that is sometimes enough to jam the target [as long as your skills are good and there are only 2 you need to train]. Saying that tho even witht his setup it pays to be tactical in who you target and what ECM you fit.
The above was my personall opiion based on personall experience and is in no way a garantee of success.
Which is exactly why ECM mods have been nerfed to oblivion. Thank god. Come back later when you have a story that doesn't involve you surpassing incredible odds with the "abuse" of an (at the time) overpowered module set. I only say abuse is because anytime an item/module is used by every ship in the game with a spare mid slot because of it's overpowered chance based effects, it's now abuse. Nosferatus are next on the list for the nerfbat.
You using ECM to grind down a stranded low SP pilot flying his first BS isn't skill. I bet he didn't even have drones.
Just need to toss in my 2 cents..
500,000 skill points in EW can counter 20mill skill points of gunnery.thats about 2 weeks of training to counter 1 year or more in gunnery training.
you can see holes like this all over the skill system,4 months of training in navagation to make you fast can be pwntz by 3 hours of training to use a web.Its really how you look at it,.
Which is exactly why ECM mods have been nerfed to oblivion. Thank god. Come back later when you have a story that doesn't involve you surpassing incredible odds with the "abuse" of an (at the time) overpowered module set. I only say abuse is because anytime an item/module is used by every ship in the game with a spare mid slot because of it's overpowered chance based effects, it's now abuse. Nosferatus are next on the list for the nerfbat.
You using ECM to grind down a stranded low SP pilot flying his first BS isn't skill. I bet he didn't even have drones.
Quite a few assumptions there.
Ok well the Ecm system hasant changed since then. And the BS pilot was not a newb but the agressor who was part of a very small 3 man/or woman PvP Corp. Sadly i cant remember his age as it was a few months ago but he was at least 4 months greater than me.
Galllaid
Ideal
RONIN
1. Skillpoints do matter, but they aren't everything, the key here is specialization. If you have all the skills to fly say, a caracal at optimal power, even someone that is fifty years ahead of you in training time is going to be exactly on your level (as far as SP, he probably has more RL game skills, =P). But things like "HAC dies to drones" does happen because frankly you *don't* have optimal skills for an HAC in six months. Pick a goal, stick with it, and you'll be on the level of the vets, their advantage isn't that they're better, just that they have more options.
2. Some of the MMOs in your "outdated" list are no such thing. EQ in particular is still the best fantasy MMO I've ever played. EVE, as I'm sure you know, is a different type of game than the fantasy MMO genre, and is therefore incomparable. If you're interested in EVE, try it, if you want a fantasy game I wouldn't count out those ones on your list.