Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Questions for new player
Milky
Member Posts: 339
I am interested in the game to try out.
My question is, since the game has been around for a whlie, as I understand a new player would be at a severe disadvantage against established players. Are there any mechanisms to help a new player succeed? Also I think gaining skills is based on real time, so would I ever be able to catch up in terms of skills against someone that has been around for years? Will I always be behind the curve as a new player starting so late? I assume I'm going to get blown up a lot, and its probably not very fun getting blown up a lot. Does a new player face any chance at all against established players? If a new player is strategic, can that overcome an established player?
I'm kinda thinking in terms of Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon getting away from a Star Destroyer, or Serentiy (Firefly) getting away from an Alliance ship.
Comments
I concur with the previous statement except:
Can-flippers are (mostly) not what I'd call a 'vet'. A veteran player doesn't bother can-flipping a newbie veldspar miner in high-sec, because a) it's no challenge at all, even if they decide to fight, and b) because the profit is such small-time peanuts he can make better ISK just scratching his scrotum.
Most of the can-flippers I've encountered are 'lowbies', just barely into the game enough to have some grasp of the combat system and how to work it against people who do not have that clue. Get out of the most populated areas and they almost certainly disappear (and if not, it becomes easier to spot them and you can practice avoidance).
As for competitiveness: Specialize. Specialize, specialize and specialize. Find a nice, and until you get everything you can out of that niche, do not come out of it. Then find another niche to fill. Soon, you'll be a vet, be it a veteran miner, tackler, sniper or pirate.
The "point" of EVE is this: You cannot use all your skillpoints when you're in any particular ship. The more advanced player you are, the more skillpoints you are wasting in any possible ship. What this means? You can be just as good at flying a frigate at three months as a vet is at flying their battleship at three years. Sure, they can also fly a frigate as well as you can, but no better. And a battleship doesn't really do much against a frigate. That is the way of the noob.
EVE also follows 'law of diminishing returns'. Each consecutive skill level takes exponentially longer to train, and every more advanced skill takes more time to train then the early ones, and gives less benefits (usually goes 10% per level - 5% per level - 3% per level), and you can train the next 'tier' of benefits before training the highest level of the previous tier, meaning you can get up to 80% of the same advantage as the vet has a LOT faster then they.
So, in the beginning, the gap between 'noobs' and vets is large, but it gets smaller in a hurry. Six months in, you'll be doing several things well enough to get by, and if you've followed the advice about specialization, you'll be on your way to becoming a great pilot.
One other thing: Set yourself a goal. And sub-goals. Download EVE-Mon and make a training plan. EVE doesn't give you a goal to strive towards, you have to decide what it is you want to do.
True, there are ways to compensate, and going solo frig vs. battleship usually means you're in trouble (there are also ways to get rid of drones etc). However, the basic idea is as I stated, and new players can find themselves in a position to defeat an older, more established, veteran player.
I'd say it's more important to aquire the mind-set of aggressive proactivity rather then worry about losing yet another low-cost frigate/industrial or even a cruiser. It happens.
OP, remember one other thing. If you do mess up and get killed, it's life. It happens. Happened to me (lost my first battlecruiser to a gate camp once), happened to everyone. Don't smacktalk the people, be polite and ask what went wrong, and you might find yourself in a surprisingly good conversation.
And for the love of Zeus, remember the Rule #1: Never fly what you cannot afford to replace!
Yes, it means you might have to stick to that cruiser a bit longer with the shiny battleship gathering dust in the hangar, but it also means you'll enjoy that battleship a lot longer.
I haven’t been playing long, and still consider myself a total noob, so here’re my thoughts.
- My question is, since the game has been around for a while, as I understand a new player would be at a severe disadvantage against established players.
Not really, at least not for very long. There are some core skills that you will need to train up, which will probably take you a few months. Once you get to that point, an established player might still have some advantage over you, but it’s not nearly as pronounced as some would have you believe. After you get those core skills trained up, the the only significant advantage they will retain is their experience, and the only way to overcome that is to get your own.
-Are there any mechanisms to help a new player succeed?
From my point of view, this question doesn’t really have any meaning in Eve. Most of the horror stories you might have heard about the game are probably true, but from the start, and unless you do something you shouldn’t, you generally aren’t worth a gankers time. If you sit in high sec space, run some missions or do some mining, and don’t bring attention to yourself by smack taking or taking things that don’t belong to you, there should be very few if any problems. That will give you a chance to get some skills trained up and figure out what you want to do, and you move on from there.
-Also I think gaining skills is based on real time, so would I ever be able to catch up in terms of skills against someone that has been around for years? Will I always be behind the curve as a new player starting so late?
You will never catch up, and for the most part it doesn’t matter. You can train each skill set only so high (to level 5), and once you do that’s that. The long time players will have more skill sets trained, and so will be able to do more different things then you, but the skills you have trained will be just as high as theirs.
-I assume I'm going to get blown up a lot
Complely depends on what you do, and where you do it. You are never completely safe, but in three or so months I’ve been blown up twice by players and around three times in missions. The two times players got me are when I choose to enter low security space, so I knew what I was risking, and just got caught at it. The three PvE deaths were just me moving along the learning curve.
-and its probably not very fun getting blown up a lot.
It can be
, depends on you and the situations you put yourself in.
-Does a new player face any chance at all against established players? If a new player is strategic, can that overcome an established player? I'm kinda thinking in terms of Han Solo and the Millenium Falcon getting away from a Star Destroyer, or Serentiy (Firefly) getting away from an Alliance ship.
Absolutely, but that can depend on what you consider new. You will not be a PvP monster after a week no matter how strategic you are, but after as little as a few weeks you can be effective in a fleet, and then in a few months you can more then hold your own in certain situations if you train properly and take the time to learn what to do.
The big thing to realize is that EVE is not a Single player MMO unlike most of the games out thier. What I mean about that is that in most of the current MMOs what your character is in most cases the most important thing. In EVE what you can do usually comes second to what your gang as a whole can do. A group of players with a good solid combination of EWAR, Damage, Tackling and logistics is far more powerful then the sum of its parts. Don't try and strike out on your own. Try and find a group of people with similiar mind sets and work with them. I do suggest if you find a group you don't like stick with them for a week or 2 just so you don't have a lot of Corp switching real quick it looks real bad on your employment record.