EVE Online

make sure you join FoH channel so you can talk to me and try to engage Kadm while he's on 45 accounts in his wormhole

One of the biggest challenges to playing the game as a noob is that if you don't pvp, the game can be very boring - but if you do pvp, it's hard to stay isk (money) positive without buying plexes. Personally, I'd just get a plex or two and join Brave Newbies or Eve-Uni (if your schedule allows it). I've heard faction warfare is a good way to learn frigate pvp, but haven't tried it. Eventually, if you really want to make isk you can move into wormhole space (which Kadm can elaborate on if he wants).

Brave Newbies is 0.0 blob warfare but there is steady improvement in the average pilot's ability to play the game over time. Brave's coalition currently owns the catch region (the magenta area that says H.E.R.O.). They spend most of their time fighting Clusterfuck/Goon fleets (from the west), Russian fleets, and N3 fleets (from the East)... You can get an idea of what the 0.0 landscape looks like with this map:

Coalition Sov map

The black areas are low-sec, hi-sec, or npc-null (corporations can't hold sovereignty in these systems). The CFC/Pandemic Legion/N3 space that envelopes the map is called the "blue donut" and the systems there-in are mostly used by renters - people who rent the space to make isk/money. The "blue donut" is a common complaint in 0.0 and refers to the idea that the big 3 cannot or are not willing to fight each other in major campaigns most of the time, so the landscape doesn't change too much. The providence area (north of Catch) is controlled by a group of corporations that sort-of roleplay.

Also in Brave. I tend to join as many fleets as I can to do PVP and given Brave's "fun first" attitude and not really caring about losing ships, I've learned quite a bit in a short time.

Probably a good time to point out that PLEX is on sale at the moment. Best deal is with GMG where you can use the 20% off coupon to drop it further.

So H.E.R.O. aren't friends with Northern Associates? Hmm.. could've fooled me Edit: blerhg

Slyminxy_sl said:

So H.E.R.O. aren't friends with Northern Associates? Hmm.. could've fooled me

Edit: blerhg

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nah, they might have helped HERO take Catch but it seems to have been a strategic move on their part

Wow I hadn't heard that World of Darkness went vaporware. Also, pretty badass deals for Eve on Steam right now:

Save 75% on EVE Online on Steam

Even if I don't like a game, I can't still usually understand why someone likes it. EVE, not so much. I have a few friends that play and they're always talking about how bad ass it will be when they learn this or can fly this, or they're telling me stories about this awesome battle they heard about, or some epic massive corporate deceit article I should read. They're never talking about how cool whatever they're currently doing is. It's all "Well I'm getting money to do this" or "Pretty soon I'll be ready to do this".

The game sounds like constant hurry up and wait. The times I have messed around with it and not liked it I get back "Well you have to play for like 6 months before it gets fun". I don't know how warped the mind of a gamer has to be to be able to say something like that with a straight face.

I've also never seen a game capable of fucking someone up mentally like EVE. A buddy lost his 2 main ships in the span of about 10 minutes once and for a good week you couldn't be around him, he just turned into a massive douche.

Salshun_sl said:

Even if I don't like a game, I can't still usually understand why someone likes it. EVE, not so much. I have a few friends that play and they're always talking about how bad ass it will be when they learn this or can fly this, or they're telling me stories about this awesome battle they heard about, or some epic massive corporate deceit article I should read. They're never talking about how cool whatever they're currently doing is. It's all "Well I'm getting money to do this" or "Pretty soon I'll be ready to do this".

The game sounds like constant hurry up and wait. The times I have messed around with it and not liked it I get back "Well you have to play for like 6 months before it gets fun". I don't know how warped the mind of a gamer has to be to be able to say something like that with a straight face.

I've also never seen a game capable of fucking someone up mentally like EVE. A buddy lost his 2 main ships in the span of about 10 minutes once and for a good week you couldn't be around him, he just turned into a massive douche.

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Don't forget it's possibly the most boring combat system ever. I came back at least 3 times desperately looking for something I was missing and literally fell asleep each time.

If most MMOs take a group of friends to really enjoy, EVE takes that requirement to a higher degree. The game just isn't designed for solo and casual players, it's meant to get you into packs of 20-100 which in turn feed into larger structures. The problem with their numbers these days is tied to exactly that where highsec isn't rewarding enough as a game for solo-20 people while nullsec requires hundreds or thousands in your group with large timezone presences and even then you're licking the boots of the established veterans.

Telling new and returning players that their only real shots at enjoyment are wormholes and FW aren't that appetizing.

Salshun_sl said:

Even if I don't like a game, I can't still usually understand why someone likes it. EVE, not so much. I have a few friends that play and they're always talking about how bad ass it will be when they learn this or can fly this, or they're telling me stories about this awesome battle they heard about, or some epic massive corporate deceit article I should read. They're never talking about how cool whatever they're currently doing is. It's all "Well I'm getting money to do this" or "Pretty soon I'll be ready to do this".

The game sounds like constant hurry up and wait. The times I have messed around with it and not liked it I get back "Well you have to play for like 6 months before it gets fun". I don't know how warped the mind of a gamer has to be to be able to say something like that with a straight face.

I've also never seen a game capable of fucking someone up mentally like EVE. A buddy lost his 2 main ships in the span of about 10 minutes once and for a good week you couldn't be around him, he just turned into a massive douche.

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This is pretty much 100% true. The only main difference is getting into a 0.0 corp right off the bat and participating in those giant battles that make headlines. The real problem there is that those awesome fights happen about 5% of the time you spent logged on. That maybe increases to 10% in the middle of a war. EVE itself is not really a fun game, but being in a fleet of people cracking jokes on ventrillo/TS helps pass the incredibly boring parts of the game. WHen you are new, everything seems deadly and just smashing your shitty noob ship into big expensive guns is fun, but any retention of bitter vets is because that constant treadmill of trying to get into a bigger and better ship. But the reality is, you will never have as much fun as flying around in an under equipped T1 tackler simply trying to not fuck up too badly.

Friend of mine is "active" in EVE atm, and he just gets alerts on his phone when fleets are forming up for big fights. So his in-game time is full of combat rather than waiting, and he plays something else.

Agraza_sl said:

Friend of mine is "active" in EVE atm, and he just gets alerts on his phone when fleets are forming up for big fights. So his in-game time is full of combat rather than waiting, and he plays something else.

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This is life in Brave when I'm busy. Get home from work, take care of shit, get a jabber ping about a fleet on my phone, log in and fight if I feel like it, turn jabber off before I go to bed.

This nullsec mentality, as the above poster described it, is probably not good for jspace or lowsec where you have to create content yourself.

The trainup times to be useful are not that bad. Suicide tackle and burst/scythe logi are pretty much always welcome and require a day or two to train into?

Train toward corp doctrine cruisers and hope they dont change doctrines before you finish, or if you like flying tackle train toward interceptors. If you like logi train into t2 logi.

I've gotten two jabber pings since I started writing this, time to get off the toilet/phone and log in

Fwiw small gang combat looks more fun than nullsec blobbing

Been doing some FW stuff with my friend who just started a cpl months ago. It's fun, the Huola campaign was great. I would strongly recommend Fweddit (j4lp) for newbies. Having been in that and brave, J4lp has every advantage of BNI + FW and not being a faceless 1 dude in thousands.

Also remember you can buy a character for isk. My friend bought a 25m sp char before his first 30 days were up by scamming a bunch of isk.

Edit: Also, being in a suicide tackle sucks. in FW a newbie in a merlin or burst or w/e can be seriously useful and fun.

Most fun I had in Eve was getting together with 5-12 other guys in ships we didn't give a shit about (depends on your wallet, but you can ALWAYS fly something that adds to the fight, no matter how poor you are) and going roaming for fun. The 150v150 (and larger) fleet fights were fun in a different way, but were far less common than simple roams.

Roaming around in a bunch of 6m isk, 175dps, 7k ehp, merlins is prob my favorite activity in eve, It's hilarious how effective taking a bunch of frigs and hitting "orbit at 500m" + F1 can be.

Our 10man Merlin gang knocked out a minnie fleet with 3 pirate frigs +. Then a Domi + 1.5b Orthus a few mins later. We lost 4 ships total.

For any newbies I would strongly suggest training Hybrids and drones. Because thats where it's at right now.

Shiz i am FC and kind of leaderish person in brave. We have constant activity for fighting we sometimes lose sometimes win either way brave is the most fun i had in eve cause stuff is always happening on and offline.

Faction warfare nerds have been sperging about this all day

Rumor: Curatores Veritatis Alliance joins Amarr faction warfare : Eve

It will at least shake up stuff if proviblob comes down to FW. My guess is they are sick of getting farmed in null and don't realize PL home system is 2 jumps from Amarr millitia staging.

I half expect J4lp to be kicked from millitia in a day or two for awoxing. Prob Winmitar and others also.