Bug, I need some help with EVE Online

[ATF Ravok]

Hey man, I have been playing EVE for a few months now, but I am not really getting into the game. So far, I get where we solo stuff a lot, and group for mining missions, and even where we do covert courier missions. My problem is, and this is a big problem - I just keep falling asleep at the wheel with this game.

Basically, I am saying that I don't know if I want to continue paying for the game at this point.

So, can you give me some encouragement? What are you getting out of your EVE?

[Ambush Bug]

Well, I have to admit, EVE ain't the fastest thing out there.

Me and Danali finally nailed down what we want the corp to do as our 'trade'... namely high-stakes courier service. Someone way deep in the ass-end of unsecure space wants a few very hard to find modules, but can't be arsed to go get them himself? Our job will be to deliver them to him, even if there's an entire battlefleet in the way.

And there probably will be battlefleets in the way. During our discussions, Danali figured that if we were in the least successful in our first few deliveries, we would soon become a very large target.

Mind you, this is quite some time away. We've gotten the basics out of the way (people have settled on races, we've got target ships in mind, we've securied blueprints for our 'corp-issued war frigates), now it's mainly getting the name out, building trust, and most importantly, aquiring the ships and skills needed to get this off the ground.

That's the long-term stuff.

Short term, we will soon have another battleship pilot in our ranks (Danali's getting an Apocalypse), and with two of them handy, we should be able to start busting down L4 combat missions and tackling 5/10 complexes. Those should be very interesting, and possibly suicidal.

As for staying awake while in Empire space (trust me, being in 0.0 keeps one wiiiide awake!), I find it best to play in windowed mode. Then I keep something going in the background (browser, book, music, etc) that I can flip to while I travel or whatnot.

----Short Term Update----

Danali and I tested out one half of our L4 mission loadouts, namely taking the Aquitaine and stuffing it to the gills with large rails, damage modules, tracking computers, target painters, sensor boosters, and lots of heavy drones.

It was quite successful. Blew apart mercenary/Mordus cruisers in about 4 volleys apiece, and the drones handled everything else.

All we gotta do now is test out D's Apoc (one it's bought and fitted), and we might stand a good chance of being able to do L4 combat missions on a regular basis.

If that's the case, you can expect to come along for the action.

Unsure if this gets you revved up, but thought you'd like to know.

[ATF Ravok]

It definitely helps, Bug!

Between taking 13 jump trips to Masalle and my level 1 missions, the in-game music is simply killing me. It puts me to sleep! Literally!

I will put my time in for L1 missions, but wow are they totally grinding me down. I will put on some new tunes and see how it goes.

Thanks bro.

[Ambush Bug]

Bah. Can't take the grind any more, so I cancelled my sub to EVE.

Ah well, it was a glorious experiment.

[XMEN Gambit]

Well, didn't see THAT coming...

[XMEN Ashaman DTM]

Seriously!

Wow.

[Ambush Bug]

Ehhh, it wasn't that I didn't have a goal, it was that it would take literally three months to even start on that goal (the courier service), an amount of time I could do very little to shorten.

[TsN|Wildchild|xmen]

That is what I hatre about pay to play type games. They seem to take forever to reach what you inspire to do unless you have no life and can literally sit on it ten hours a day.

City of heros was like taht for me. I enjoyed it a lot when it first came out. But the fact it is more geared for groups to play instead of solo... made it hard to get into it when your stuck on levels 10 - 12 for three to four months. When you see other people going from level 1 to 15 in a weekend.

I feel your pain AB. I found X3 and now everythign seems ot be working out just fine. It is giving me something to do with a goal. I have two goals.

1) Be self sufficient. Means that I will literally not have to do anything to make money that my factories will do it for me.

2) Take over at least one sector and claim it as my own. By this I mean, wipe out everything in the sector and put up my own factories and stations.

3) Begin wiping out the rest of the universe. Sure this is very long term goal and I plan on doing it somewhat, but right now lets be realistic. I can only kill so many with nine ships. I did wipe out on sector of Xenon though who were trying to push through to Pirate Space... kicked their perverbial butts and stole one of their ships.

[XMEN Gambit]

WC, in X2 there are serious consequences for wiping out existing stations. Namely, your own factories don't use "secondary" resources like the AI ones do, and the economy tends to stall. Don't know if X3 is the same way.

Bug, never figured you for the instant-gratification type.

[TimberWolf]

I can understand the dounting wall of time needed to do anything in a game. Even though I enjoy X2 I also feel like I have lost some of the challange in creating my empire. Granted it takes a fraction of the time to do what I did in X2 than it would in Eve, but spending hours scouting locations for a new station, getting ships to supply it, then setting it up causes me to feel like I didn't completely enjoy my time.

[Ambush Bug]

Bug, never figured you for the instant-gratification type.

Funny thing is that I'm not the instant-gratification type. What blew my stack with EVE was that we had enough manufacturing resources, money, contacts, and so on to actually begin work on our courier plan... but what we were lacking was the skills to fly the ships necessary to make said plan work. Ships like Covert Ops, Blockade Runners, Interceptors, and Battlecruisers tough enough to do the job.

Battleships we could drown in--but battleships aren't very conducive for a high-speed couriering. BC's were our target 'brute' ships, being smaller and a bit faster than BS'es, but able to mount lots of cruiser-class weapons. Problem with BC's is that to make 'em tough requires a lot of skill invesment in the BC skill. All those other ships, save the Interceptors, were Tech 2 ships, and the minimum skill investment time on those (real life time, with a character with average stats) was something like 50 days just to fly 'em, plus a month or three to be able to fit the equipment to make 'em really fly well.

Basically, we were looking at only being able to begin work on our plan sometime near the end of February or March. If we wanted to speed that up via the purchase of high-grade cybernetics, we'd be sinking something like 250 million in cash per character. It could be done yes, but getting 250M in cash is a lot of grinding missions, mining, or trading, or plain old liquidating assets. And, quite frankly, EVE's mission system gets old quick, and mining older even faster. Trading is difficult (but rewarding if you get a good one) due the influx of Freighters (think something the size of, oh, a couple-three Superdomes stacked that can carry multiple battleships as cargo).

Again, all this could be overcome, but it would require massive amounts of time. Months. I'm willing to wait a couple of weeks RL to see a plan in a game come to fruition (I used to spend some time planning and mapping Medievia trade routes in great detail, if that's any indication), but months? No thanks.

The other thing that doesn't help EVE much, IMO, is the community. Alt-itis isn't just a descriptive noun, it's a way of life. Corps are in general very paranoid about recruiting new folks due to the risk of said newbie being an alt of someone that corp is competing with. Heck, folks in general are paranoid, period. Can't blame them, though, since the game does support multiple forms of skulduggery.

So, what it comes down to for me is that I LOVE the premise and basic execution of EVE. I've never in my gaming life had so much fun poring through the massive amounts of information the game throws at you, or figuring out how to do something slightly on the shady side of business. The skills training system, though, drives me up the wall more than it tickles my fancy. Being able to have one's character 'level up' while one is not playing is totally awesome, but the multiple-week waiting times on the truly high-end skills are a real bummer. The NPC content sure could use some work, too.