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First Impressions– A Newbie Perspective of EvE Online

Published on 11. Jun, 2009 ... written by Deibos, Tags: Articles

As of this writing I’ve been playing EvE for a whopping three weeks and I love it. Yes, I’m a complete newbie and I have no idea what’s going on most of the time but I am really enjoying the hell out of it.

EVEMag was one of the websites I found in my search for information regarding the optimization my character playing. Honestly, it wasn’t that much help. In fact, a lot of websites aren’t all that much help for the new player. You veteran players take for granted a lot of the stuff we really have no idea about, but that’s ok, this makes the game more realistic.

I like to think of myself as a reasonably intelligent guy. I’m an engineer by training and a teacher by trade; I’m no stranger to learning or to hard work. I’ve been playing Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) for well over 10 years; Ultima Online and World of Warcraft being the two most significant chapters. So why am I having so much trouble learning the ropes in EvE Online?

This game takes the “Massively” in MMORPG to another level. As the great Nigel Tufnel would say, “it goes to 11.” I honestly can’t believe the expanse of New Eden, the online activity, or the options presented to the player.

Now don’t get me wrong, the basic mechanics of the game are not super difficult to learn. The new player tutorials and three career agents at the beginning are really great and I strongly recommend them to anybody new to the game. I went ahead and did all three career agents since they were basically giving away free stuff and ISK. This gave me a lot of practice with moving from one system to another, NPC combat, the basics of mining, and the basics of industry. However, this isn’t what EvE is all about, these are just the tools used to play the game. It’s a big galaxy out there and it’s filled with a lot of different options.

The size of the galaxy and the freeform nature of the game make choosing a path a little bit overwhelming to the new player. It’s pretty difficult to pick a career when you don’t know which skills you need to be successful in said career. For example, in my first week I was just training whatever fit my fancy at the moment. Typical of a former WoW player I wanted results fast. I was generally picking skills that would train in under an hour so I could put another “skill complete” notch in my belt. All this resulted in was a waste of about 25% of my newbie training bonus. If you want to be a good player it’s really important to do a little research and find a career path you can focus on early. You can knock a lot of hard skills out of the way with that double training speed bonus in the beginning.

With all that said, you still have to be careful with that training! A career isn’t “I’m a dude who flies battlecruisers.” It’s really “I’m a dude who is good at flying battlecruisers.” I’ve found that EvE has a lot of “secondary skills” that support whatever your primary role in the game is. Being well trained in secondary skills separates the good players from the average players. How did I find this out? Well, after I determined that I could make decent money through mining or ratting and salvaging I started looking at the things I was going to be able to afford in the market. Specifically I looked at ships and I started at the top. Obviously Titan’s were out of the question but maybe a battlecruiser wasn’t. If I could grind up 30 million ISK I could afford a Hurricane and I’d be all set, right? Again my experience from previous games gave me the confidence that I could grind the cash by the time I was done training the prerequisites but I didn’t appreciate that those minimum prerequisites on the info tab were just that, the bare minimum skills needed! Sure, I might own a Hurricane but the first serious tangle I get in and *poof* all that work is for nothing.

Discovering this was a hard and nearly expensive lesson for me. It all started with something that I thought was a ship most newbies couldn’t afford or weren’t smart enough to get into quickly, a Minmatar Stabber. I took my awesome new ship to lowsec and started doing a little ratting on pirates with 500,000 ISK bounties. I knew they were my ticket to my battlecruiser. I had already calculated that I only needed 60 of them for the ship and maybe 20 more for the armaments, mostly guesswork but I’d sort out the details later. Anyway, I’m minding my own business working the pirates when all of a sudden the lights start flashing and my shields and armor start going into the red. Enter the first Player Pirate I’ve ever seen…. He “snuck” up on me, probably by flying in from 100 km when I wasn’t smart enough to keep an eye on the overview. By the time I knew he was there I had just enough time to try and warp away and I learned my second lesson for the day, this one was about warp scramblers. Needless to say I died a quick and noisy death.

This is the part where I know a lot of new players can get frustrated and sometimes quit. If you’re new and you’re reading this you should realize that player pirates are part of the danger of lowsec. People can and will kill you there for no reason other than the fun of it. This is called “risk vs. reward.” The reward for you is more bounty from better pirates or more money for better minerals. The risk is from bigger pirate NPCs and even pirate PCs who will kill you and probably take your stuff.

I ended up starting a conversation with the fellow that killed me and he turned out to be a really cool guy. I gave him some respect for the quick kill and for not podding me and he thanked me for not being a smack talking douche from highsec. He was the first other player I ever talked to and the 10 minute conversation we had cleared up a bunch of my questions. He even ended up giving me my stuff back AND more stuff on top of that without me even asking. Guess what, Pirates are people to!

His biggest piece of advice for me is the same I’m still following and the same I want any other newbies that end up reading this to take; join a player run corporation designed to help newbies. There are some pretty well established ones that are pretty big like Eve University or you can go to the eve-online.com forums and find groups in the recruitment forum.

I have to tell you, joining a player corporation has made all the difference in the world. They’ve helped me figure out the fittings that work on my ship, the type of career I’m best suited for based on what I wanted from the game, more efficient methods of earning ISK, and how to survive and thrive in lowsec.

Here is a summary of my advice to all the newbies that read this:

1. Do the new player career missions, yes all 3 agents. Hit F12 to get to the help and the select “Show Career Agents” near the bottom. This is going to give you a good handle on the basic mechanics of the game and give you a bunch of free skill books and ships.
2. Join a player run corporation as soon as you can. Find one that suits your personality and has members which are active in the game when you are. If you’re not engaged with them in conversation then you’re not going to learn much.
3. Try to focus on a particular career path. Learn the secondary (or support) skills needed to supplement that path so you’re good at what you do.
4. Have fun and don’t be afraid to talk to other players, even the ones that kill you. In my short few weeks of this game I’ve found the player base to be exceptionally mature and respectful. Maybe I’ve just been lucky or maybe the Barrens Chat in WoW has just really lowered the bar for me.

Until next time, keep on learning and have fun playing.

Deibos
Ultra Newb

Tags: advice, Articles, Deibos, newbie, starting