The XMEN Clan Forums

I was on Penny Arcade yesterday, and they had a banner for a free 14 day trial of EVE Online.. Anyone play this game? It looks good, but rather complicated..

I was gonna make a new post, but then I saw this one. Rav, this one's especially for you, since you just grabbed the trial.

I jumped with the guys on Tribalwar and went for the 14-day trial. Now I'm pretty well hooked.

Do not, however, take that to mean that you should just jump right in and start becoming a capsule pilot. What follows is a review of EVE, written as my battlecruiser drifts among the wreckage of a recent mission and collects leftover cargo.

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What is EVE?

In a few short summations, EVE is: harsh, complex, player-run, full of vast information libraries, not very fast, as deep as you make it, and changing.

Harsh: EVE is very harsh. Die or make a wrong move on the market and you stand to lose anywhere from a few tens of thousands to a couple hundred million in cash. Lose several ships in a row and you'll be hurting for money, and money is what enables you to have fun in EVE.

Complex: Oh yes, very. Me, I'm just a combat pilot. I shoot things for money, I assist my alliance as an electronic warfare cruiser-pilot, I haul ore back to base for alliance mining ops, and I command a small army of drones when I get into my Vexor cruiser. Right now, those roles are about as far as I'm willing to go. There's a vast, player-driven market that I've not yet begun to dent, knowledge-wise, and there's plenty more besides. You can be what I am, or you can be a miner, a cargo hauler, a well-heeled trader, a shipbuilder, a research scientist, an arm of the police, or even an out-and-out shipping pirate, preying on other players.

Player-run: As I mentioned, there's a player-run economy. Oh sure, in controlled Empire space, there are NPC's that are part of the market too, but Empire space is only about a third of the systems you can go to. Head into non-Empire space and the entire economy out there is player-run and -controlled. This usually means that prices are higher out there... but there's a lot of risk there, too. There's no law to protect you out there save for player corporations. Some you can obtain passes from to ensure your safety, some shoot outsiders on sight, and then there's roaming pirates. Plus there's full-blown wars out there, too. Just the other night I was hauling the fruits of a lucrative mining operation back to the Empire to sell, and had to make a 30-system detour to avoid an incoming invasion fleet.

Vast information: You can spend literally hours reading up on the market and the items therein, not to mention figuring out what leads where and how to get there safely.

Not very fast: EVE is not a fast-paced game. You can spend a great deal of time just travelling, and some missions are so hard that they require several hours to a day or more to complete. There are ways around slow travel, but they take a lot of time to set up, along with plenty of research and map-looking.

As deep as you make it: This is really the big one for EVE. There isn't an end-game, there are no experience points, there are no levels. While there's plenty of NPC content in the form of missions, that isn't the primary focus of the game. To make the game exciting, you have to get involved in the community, by joining a corp or alliance and helping that group expand//control their territory and wallets. This is what I've done with Tribalwar. We joined up with an alliance, and since we're new to the game and news travels very quickly, groups from a hostile alliance have decided to make our lives a living hell by blockading our favored routes to and from Empire space, as well as coming and hunting us actively. We've helped clean up alliance space as much as possible with our weaker ships, and soon we'll have enough firepower to begin actively helping our alliance put some real hurt on those that have been hunting us. I hear rumours that sometime in the next month, a deep-strike alliance raid is planned to take out one of the hostile alliance's player-created space installations, which should set them back several billion credits and several weeks of time spent replacing it. Mind you, this isn't going to happen fast, we'll probably spend two or more days actually getting there unless we send someone to scout out and plan a fast route for us. Even so, the trip to that location will take several hours.

Changing: CCP, the EVE Devs, are making numerous changes to the game soon, by re-tasking a lot of ships and making changes to police behaviors. It should be exciting, and I like this dev team from what I've seen so far.

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That's a nice little summation. Here's some more details for those interested.

EVE doesn't have any XP or levels. How then does one advance in the game? Skills. You start out with a selection of skills determined at player creation (hint: always choose 'custom' for your player career and pick and choose accordingly). Further skills are obtained by purchasing skillbooks and reading them.

However, acquiring a new skill is not an instant process. All skills have a training time, anywhere from ten minutes to a month of training time as the skill rank goes up, and that's real-time, btw, not game-time. However, skills continue training even when you're not playing, so you can train a short-term skill while you're playing and then set a long-time skill to train just before you log off.

It is estimated that learning every skill in the game to max level would take approximately three years of real-time. Thus, even players that have been in the game since the beginning don't know everything.

But, doesn't this mean long-time players have an advantage over newer ones? Sure they do. However, new players are advised to specialize their skill learning, to pick a role and catch up in that role quickly, instead of learning everything.

Me, for instance. I've specialized in combat drones and electronic warfare since I started. I'm not a battleship-driving bruiser, and I don't put out a lot of damage, but my drones make attacking me a bad idea and my EW modules can turn a battleship from a beast hurling 1400mm shells over 200km into a mewling kitten that couldn't throw a spitball ten metres.

Highly useful skills in the right time and place.

What else can you do? Well, if you want to make lots of money and friends, you can be a miner. Those who specialize in mining and refining of ores can rake in gargantuan amounts of cash, but the work is fairly dull when done solo.

Or you can trade. You can directly haul goods from place to place (this has its own dangers, as the good deals are in systems where player pirates roam), or you can be an executive type trader, using various skills to place buy and sell orders across an entire region and raking in the profits without ever leaving a station.

Be a researcher/builder and learn how to make ships and items, which you can sell for profit. It's a hard job, but a good researcher is worth his weight in zydrine for his alliance, as he can supply them with ships and ship modules for only the cost of minerals the corp miners bring in and the cost of buying or finding blueprints from which to work.

Be an agent runner, someone that's specifically designed to do combat and package courier missions. The best items in the game (blueprints and implants) are given from agent missions, and can be literally worth billions to the right buyer.

Be a combat-type (pirate or protector) and destroy one's enemies, protect one's corp-mates from the bad guys, and earn rare items from powerful players or NPC baddies.

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Myself, I'd suggest that anyone trying the trial go for combat missions for agents during the trial. You don't make money terribly fast, but you do get to shoot things, which is better than kicking back and watching your cargo hold fill up mining. Trading takes more skill-time training than two weeks easily allows, and some money to get started to boot.

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If you're going to give the game a try, finish the entire tutorial. Yes, all six hours of it. Trust me. You'll need it.

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In EVE, you need money to do things that are really fun and exciting. Making money is, at first, a grind. Miners have a good means of getting cash, but it's not the most exciting way. Hauling traders have to deal with a lot of travel time and pirates. Combat types get to shoot things for their agents, but don't make money terribly fast unless they get an exceptionally lucky item drop they can sell.

However, once you get some cash in your wallet and join up with a corp, things start getting more exciting. Once you and your corp start working with or against other players, the game gets more unpredictable, as you have to deal with other people horning in on your space or outright trying to kill you.

Overall, I really like EVE. Combat is tense, but not a click-fest. If I'm feeling particularly slow, I can go haul things for money, or mine in a secure system while I read a book. If I'm feeling up to a tense session, I head back to alliance space and help them hunt down invading player pirates and protect our non-combat folks from the bad guys.

This game isn't for everyone, but when it gets you, it gets you good. [/b]

AB, SH - I love space stuff. So does this game interest me? You betcha. I want to be a shipbuilder/researcher to give my buds the best stuff going. I just wanted to be sure some of you would be playing it as well. I have some friends that play, but I really like hanging out with fellow XMEN whenever I can.

Looking forward to seeing you!

*edit* Covert Ops

Designed for commando and espionage operation, the main strength of a covert ops vessel is the ability to travel unseen through enemy territory and avoid unfavorable encounters.

As a researcher, I can also branch into espionage. I think that would be a LOT of fun, and it would also allow me to do blueprint delivery.

Smuggler, Spy, and Researcher sounds like a great way to explore space.

Can you give me more information about Researchers and what they can develop? When they design new ships are they just a remix of current ship parts or can they actually design something completely unique?

Also, how much a month?

I beta tested EVE from the first month till the near the end of beta. I was one of the brains behind what WAS the biggest beta corporation, Endless Corp. The game is pretty much as was described above, VERY deep, VERY complex, and a little slow for some people's tastes. That having been said, learning the game and developing your persona in this single massive world (no clusters/servers like in WoW or DAoC or Matrix) is a very exciting thing. Hook up with the right corporation and you could be flying high fast. Hook up with the wrong corp and you could find your corp funds stolen and your entire fleet of ships wiped out in a few hours. Fighting is fun, but there is a big difference in the haves and have nots. The game has in the past been a playground for griefers, but that fluctuates.

Hey TW _ Here's your info.

http://www.eve-online.com/guide/en/g13.asp

It costs 20 bucks a month.

$20! I could play PlanetSide for about $13 a month! Ouch, that would be $240 a year compaired to $160. I would probably consider it if the software was free. I think I will stick with X2: The Threat.

Will my G2 handle this ?

Wow, this game looks like a real fun time.

I think your G2 could, but while there is a 14 day free trial, you can definitely find out Sharpster.

I think I am going to get addicted to it. How do I find you after I am done with the tutorial?

This is what I am hoping for:

Gallente Scientist (Engineer/Research) using a Helios Frigate.

The Helios has a 100 drone capacity, so I can carry scouting drones! Woot.

Costs: The client download itself is free. From my trial account, I paid $19 for the first month, 14.95 for every month after once I activated it.

System requirements: EVE isn't that harsh on your system, provided you crank down the details. That's once of the nice things about it... it's low-power enough that you can run it in a window and swap back to other things. I surf all the time when I'm travelling between systems on autopilot.

Research/building: Not the easiest thing to get into, from what I understand. You can't whip up new ships out of thin air, you must use blueprints from which to build. Two kinds of blueprints--copies and originals (BPC and BPO, respectively). BPCs are limited-run affairs, you can only make X copies of the item. They are cheaper, though. BPOs let you make as many as you like, and you can, with work, make BPCs from them. Both kind of blueprints can be researched to make them more efficient.

It takes some time and investment (monetary and skillpoints) to effectively build ships and items on the market. However, I heard these industrial magnates are the richest guys in the game.

Covert Ops: It'll take a pretty decent amount of time to train up the skills needed to buy and use a covert ops ship, at least a good solid three-four weeks of training time, if you go straight for it.

Ah, a Gallente, eh? Same as me. Scout drones aren't, btw, 'scouts'. They shoot things, and they're wicked fast and tiny. You'll have to train up drone skills to use them--Drones, Scout Drone Operation, and Drone Interfacing are a good start.

Drones ups the number of drones you can have out at any one time. Training it to level V (max) will generally take about two weeks total.

Drone Interfacing also ups the number of drones you can have out, but requires that you have Drones at LV before you can train it.

Scout Drone Operation extends the range your drones can work from your ship, by 5km per level.

I went with Drones up to V, trained up Scout Drone Operation a couple levels to get more range out of mine, and have been working on Drone Interfacing as well as Heavy Drone and Mining Drone Operation. However, I also make heavy use of ships that give drone bonuses, like the Vexor cruiser.

Drones aren't the be-all and end-all of combat, though. They're a very handy tool to enable your ship to hit things that are too small/fast for your turrets to track, or to diversify the type of damage you do. Drones are fragile compared to ships, and rely on their speed to avoid being hit. I wouldn't worry about heavy drones just yet, were I you (they also require Drones V). Medium Drones, in large numbers, do a lot of damage. Plus they're much smaller (10m3 as opposed to 25m3 for heavies) so you can pack more into a ship.

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If you plan on specializing in a certain area of the game, find out what skills you need to fly the ship you want and equip it properly. Then find out what the most common primary and secondary attribute of those skills are (right-click>info the skills to see), and purchase learning skills that boost those attributes.

The 'uber-l33t' EVE guys recommend that all new players spend the first month or three solely focused on buying and training ALL the learning skills. While this certain cuts down on training time later, that's two-three months you aren't doing anything but training.

Me, I found the learning skills I needed to boost my area of specialty and I train those up every time there's a gap in my training schedule. Right now, for instance, I'm training up Hull Upgrades to level IV, so I can equip various armor hardening modules on my ships. After that, I'll be doing a cycle of my learning skills, then it on to drones and gunnery skills to make my missions easier to do.

I was interested untill I noticed the monthly fee...

Yeah, the fee is the only thing holding me back.

Personally, I've found that the monthly fee on an MMO is far outweighed by what my gaming budget would be were I not playing an MMO.

To wit: Before I got into MMO's, I'd easily buy one game a month, sometimes down to one every two if things were dry. Usually games were 30-50 dollars a pop, and doing the math, that's anywhere from $180 a year (6 $30 games a year) to $600 a year (12 $50 games a year).

Whereas, with most MMO's, you're paying $13-15 a month, $156-180 a year, not counting purchase price of the box. Tack on 25-45 dollars for that. That's if you pay straight-up month-to-month. Get a package deal, say 6 to 12 months purchased as a block, you can knock off a good percentage of that.

For me, it works out. I'll pick up an MMO, buy a month at first to try it, then buy six months if I like it and envision playing it for a while. The added content, constant multiplayer, and generally easier-on-my-reflexes gameplay suits me well, and my wallet thanks me too.

The trick is finding the right game. EVE is the first one since Planetside for me where I've been actively considering a PvP career, not to mention having a blast finding out what various people on Tribalwar happen to be good at (one of 'em is a RL accountant, so our corp money is very well-managed.)

EVE is a slow starter, but I like where it's going.

For me my budget looks like this:

I buy 1 or 2 games a year costing between $10 and $30. That is at most $60 with out tax or as little as $20 a year. Planetside was great but it got repetative and not as many friends were playing. It also didn't help that I went from a great connection to a crappy one.

I have a hard time as a college student justifying paying any more than $10 a month for a MMO game. As it stands right now I will only have a couple of hours a week to play. EVE sounds great and all but paying that much for so little time is not worth it. Maybe if it dropped below $10 a month then I can look at such games.