EVE Online: the new player experience Comments by Eurogamer staff

Damn it, stop tempting me. :(

Eve is something I will never play, but I just like the fact that its out there, doing its thing

Even the basic ship designs are extremely cool.

Not if you're Minmatar, but then flying rubbish bins raped by a Terry's chocolate orange makes you special, right?

True, but they're rubbish bins that hit with the power of a dustcart :)

Funny thing is, this hasn't interested me to play EVE Online more dig up my copy of Freelancer.

The Minmatar starter ship looks like an enlarged rusted computer chip.

I only hope the user base continues to grow.

Also, Freelancer is epic win.

Started the trial a few weeks back when some of the other guys on here did - would love to carry it on but no time. :'o(

I started a trial of this and so far I'm enjoying it.

As a EVE noob, and being use to "traditional" mmo's, my thought's are similar to that of the latter portion of the article, at the moment It is alot less hands-on than I thought it would be (I knew It wasn't a arcady space sim mmo). The right-click context sensitive menu does seem to take alot of the 'work' out of doing things, making it seem alittle trivial.

I keep hearing about the need to specialise and so far I'm not feeling the game is letting me know how & in what way I should be specialising. I'm sure this is just from my very short time in the game, I'm just simply not aware of what the limits/weaknesses are of my current character. I'm willing to learn the ways of EVE, I'm in no rush to become a vertern player.

I have a feeling I'll be a long time running agent missions before I start to feel confident with exploring other parts of the game's space & features.

tried this on mac, it was pretty unstable, it kept crashing every hour. from what i did play tho it showed a lot of potential:D

Right clicking, contextual menus... They should make a game like this like Shenmue. If I had my own ship I'd want it to exist completely, and I'd be able to wander round it with Halo level graphics and soak up the atmosphere. I know this game's about strategy and statistics but man is that dull :p

Oli's comments about feeling as though you're in a bubble and the 'real' Eve online being out there somewhere are my experience of the game from the two 14 day trials i've attempted thus far. I've tried mission running, which was dull and tedious, mining which was well, sitting watching a ship fill up with ores, whilst drinking copious cups of tea. Thirdly i tried joining a PVP training academy, which mostly consisted of trying to trick people into stealing from you so your guild can swarm in and kill them for practice and being harrassed to go onto a Teamspeak channel, full of excitable enthusiasts/internet weirdos.

Im sure 0.4 space and below is more exciting, but i've never managed to stay interested in the game long enough to find out. I'll just stick with reading the crazy news stories that come from Eve in future.

I keep hearing about the need to specialise and so far I'm not feeling the game is letting me know how & in what way I should be specialising. I'm sure this is just from my very short time in the game, I'm just simply not aware of what the limits/weaknesses are of my current character. I'm willing to learn the ways of EVE, I'm in no rush to become a vertern player.

I have a feeling I'll be a long time running agent missions before I start to feel confident with exploring other parts of the game's space & features.

Specializing is easy. Pick a ship you would like to fly and train everything required. You should ask a veteran player for advice though cause it's not immidiately obvious to a new player what any ship is really good for. Before you start training for specific ships you might want to cover the basic competence certificates though.

It's also not terribly difficult to get started in almost anything be it PvP, doing missions, mining or running a successful trade empire. It does however take some effort, but fortunantely there are lots of guides out there that will get you started.

I strongly recommend joining a player corporation, however even though there are tons of corps out there that will accept a new player most of them are rubbish and worse than the NPC starter corp. If you do manage to join a good one you might find yourself in the middle of a fleet battle helping take down battleships with your worthless bucket-of-bolts frigate in just a matter of days.

Most importantly remember you can't in any way mess up your character with skill training because you can at any time begin training anythng you like. Your race doesn't matter and in no way limits what you can train or use.

I can't even bring myself to read the "Veteran" half of the article properly. There's no way I could ever play the game properly. But the "noob" half reinforces the impressions I got during my brief trial last year.

@Widge

Couldnt agree more

Freelancer needs a new number behind it.

These 14 days are nowhere enough to fully experience Eve, sadly. What I enjoy the most about Eve though is that it allows for diffirent type of playstyles. I could easily just spend my time doing something that takes awhile whilst having my full attention on TV. And then turn into some major battle in an NPC mission (intense battles, probably not something you'll experience in the first 14 days - perhaps there needs to be an active new player event).

I believe many MMOs should take up Eve Online's subscription system and the ease-of-access client.

Time to pimp Eve University again methinks - new players join us, we teach them with experienced members just because we can, right now we have over 1100 members (so there's always someone to answer a question) and thousands of alumni and tomorrow is our 5th anniversary.

Edit: fixed link.

Something all newbs should be aware of.

When you are travelling in Hisec, dont use your autopilot unless you are wandering off to make some tea.

Use the map to set a course but dont trigger the auto. This is because tghe auto pilot jumps to a point some distance away from the gate, it takes.... 20 30 seconds? to travel to the gate unless you have an afterburner or MWD and manually activate it. If you are around to MWD you might as well target the next gate and use WARP TO 0. Which will let you make an immediate manual jump when you exit warp.

You will get around in half the time eaaasy.


Also. If you are a Something Awful subscriber, join the goons. No better introduction than sacrificing your ship for the swarm in 0.0 security space.

(Contrary to popular belief, a day 2 newbie is not useless in PvP. this is because he can tackle as well as any fighter.Tackling is basically rooting in other games, you jam his engines and shut down his warp drive, and he cant get away. This has been many a battleship or even biggers downfall. Some corps wont let you fight or enter till you have Battleships with T2 fittings. These corps are doing it wrong, so find a PvP corp that wants newbs and play.

Now I really REALLY want to play... damn you Uni work : P

been there, done it, bought the HAC many times and died.

/no, I dont need a 2nd job in real ( game time cards ) or a virtual life to play eve, im enjoying the free time ( read my life ) since i gave it up.

Goonswarm is the worst step you could make. Why would you want to join an alliance that is sworn to wreck the game?

from the 'newb' article it sounds like the haven't discovered the overview?!

I installed EVE 2 days ago and did 2 of the tutorial lines (Military & Industrial) but so far I can only second the n00b part of the article. I have also the "in-the-bubble" feeling and the game seems to give no directions what so ever how to escape from it. Using chat channels seems like something you don't want to do, because w/ 50k players your chances to even notice you have been given an answer are really low, because of the never-ending stream of new questions (like 1msg/sec rate). The space I have been exploring was pretty uniform so far, w/ beautiful gfx but you can't really tell one system from another...

And the travel... Nearly every quest takes place in a system 6+ jumps away, which takes some serious time to go there and back. I miss the "spatial consistency" of other MMOs, where you first get familiar with your starting area, then its surroundings and after you create your virtual "solid point" where you often return you begin to explore the rest of game map. But it's maybe due to the uniformity of the universe I've been in so far... Every system is like 1 station, 4-8 asteroid belts, 4-8 planets and nothing more, every one of them looking exactly the same (well the shape of asteroids changes a little - 'Noise' mod from 3dsMAX I guess xDDD). I'd maybe prefer like 50 systems instead of the 1000+ they are advertising but with greater difference between them and with something you could actually explore...

On the other hand, the game feels like something BIG and the UI is pretty intuitive (exceptions allowed xD). Even with the overall negative feeling I have about it, there is still SOMETHING that makes me want to log this evening... I will play the 14 days of trial and then see. I really think it is NECESSARY to join a good guild (oops... corp.) to enjoy EVE, because the agent quests are really dull and boring (go there, kill 5 enemies, go back, go elsewhere, kill 3 enemies, go back, ...) so the only option would be to participate on PvP to have at least some fun :/

there's an EG corp started up again recently so anyone feeling they're in the bubble give us a shout. In game chat channel is eurogamer.net.

We've just been wardecced so it's fun and frolics for all the family at the minute :)

Wardecced by whom?

Clan Goliath Scorpion and Ghetto Tech - a couple of merc corps

Still, it's good practice for everyone but it'd be nice to know who we'd pissed off enough to spend money on killing us!

Yeah, now I remember. The point, click mechanics with no real interaction whatsoever. I wish someone would make a proper space MMO with a bit more action in it, the beginning of Eve is just such a turn off and I don't really see the merits of the skill system either.

Edit: Or actually scratch the MMO part and just make it a proper space exploration game.

I played the EVE trial a while back and thought it was pretty tedious and not really something I could justify forking out on monthly. Every time I read one of these articles I feel a twinge of, "should I be playing this after all"? But then I remember how dull it was ferrying frozen food through space while reading a book. It has its audience, its audience ain't me.

@ Ginger

I may need to sign up for that. Got a few harderned Vet characters itching for a fight.
and I can gaurentee you that those "Mercs" arent hired by anyone. There doing it for the giggles they'll tell you otherwise to put up that professional corporation facade.

How many in corp at the moment?

I fail to see where this "you'll get no help if you're a newbie" sentiment is coming from. Not only are there people in the NPC corps who've been there for ages and are perfectly willing to lend a hand, new characters are automatically joined with the New Player channel where there are designated volunteers who will answer any questions you may have to the best of their ability.

Eve Online is not an easy game; that is true. But then that's where part of its appeal lies. Early missions are not always six jumps away as someone stated; in fact I've yet to undertake a level 1 mission that is more than 3 jumps away and most of them are in-system or the next jump over.

You won't see the handholding you do in WoW, because it's not designed for the lowest common denominator. Instead, it's designed to give you a feeling of achievement the first time you make a load of ISK on the open market, or the first time you jump into a new ship. Frankly, I think most of the detractors are people who just don't want to sit in front of the computer and not be "super awesome" within ten minutes.

Also, I think Eve Online is the MMO with the most capacity to not become a second job. Yes, if you become embroiled with the nullsec alliance politics then it's likely to eat your time like any other endgame in any other MMO. However, just about everything you can do in Eve is done in real time meaning that when you log out, it continues to run. Want to produce a run of ships to sell on the market? Make sure there's enough materials in your items hangar and then run the factory run and log off and do something else. You don't have to stick around and do pointless things, unlike the endgame in WoW, for example, where a two hour long raid has to be prepared for by some unfortunate souls who have to craft pots, cook buff foods or simply grind cash so that they can buy the afore-mentioned on the market.