I think I might be obsolete...

So some dude did in one fell swoop what I was hoping to do gradually over several months, which is to explain EVE to the uninitiated. His description is very condensed and doesn't go into a lot of detail, but he also takes on the daunting task of enumerating the stuff you can do in EVE. Like, all of it... Well not really; a comprehensive list would be quasi-infinite, but he does an impressive job. So check out this link:

Link-o-rama

Tongue-in-cheek warning: no I am not quitting the blog :) I still hope to go into some more detail on a lot of issues. This guy just saved me a lot of work is all!

The Zen of PvP Pt. 1

EVE is a huge game wherein you can be anything from an industrialist to an explorer to a prospector to a space pirate. In my opinion though, PvP is what is really great about EVE. It's not the only thing I like about EVE to be sure, but I don't think I'd play EVE if it didn't have its PvP system, and likewise I think I'd still play EVE if it had its PvP system but none of the other stuff.

Why do I like EVE PvP so much? Let me count the ways:

• Requires real skill. As in, real-life skill of the player. You have to know how to fit your ship, how to fly it, and probably how to fly everyone else's ship too, so you know how best to counter them.
• Real stakes. You die, you lose your ship. And that awesome complex module you paid 1 zillion ISK for? It's either blowed up or in the hands of the dude that killed you.
• Excellent game balance. Of course it's not perfect, but it's extremely rare for you to say "yeah that's just broken" about anything. And stuff that is broken, they usually fix, and often in a thoughtful way that makes the game better.
• Works on many levels. The same PvP system works for anything from solo piracy to small gang (5-20 ship) battles all the way up to fleets with capital ships and hundreds of support ships on each side. Myself, I stop short at the small gang level...but the cool thing is I don't feel like I'm missing out. Every aspect of the PvP experience seems rich and full.

So, PvP is awesome. Let's go do some. Well, not so fast. The challenge with EVE PvP is that it is all free form. There is no organized PvP of any kind (excepting the yearly alliance tournament, which I actually wish they had more stuff like, but let's ignore that for now). So how do you find PvP to get into? The lack of a good answer to this question is perhaps one of the most frustrating things about EVE, but can also be the most rewarding.

So let me first give some EVE PvP axioms to live by:

• Be patient! The art of finding fun PvP to participate in is at least as subtle and difficult to master as the art of PvP'ing itself.
• Since PvP has real stakes, you'll find that it's rare for people to commit to battles they don't think they can win (and in many cases, aren't sure they can win with a HUGE margin of error). So in many respects, the skill of finding PvP boils down to bluffing: convincing someone they're going to win a battle when they really aren't (or not caring that you'll lose...which also works).
• Start small. It's a lot easier to get people to fight you if they're risking an inexpensive ship. It's also easier to get people to fight you if you yourself are in an inexpensive ship (simply because expensive ships are intimidating).
• You will die a lot. Just accept this.

So how about some specific advice? Probably the best things you can do are:

• Join Faction Warfare. The game allows you to sign up for the militia of any of the 4 races. This gives you access to a militia channel that's a little like being in an alliance. They have regular fleets and usually experienced fleet commanders. You can take a frigate and at least contribute to something as part of a medium-sized fleet, plus learn the basics of PvP. You can even join Faction Warfare if you are not in a player corporation.
• Get in a PvP corp. Hopefully an established PvP corp will have their own "secret sauce" for getting into PvP. So tag along and learn.
• But most of all, get into PvP. Even if you go solo, get into low sec and start getting blown up. When you get blown up, research the ship that blew you up, figure out why, and try to get less blown up next time.
  

It can be frustrating, but know that it is possible to get into fun PvP early on. I chose to go iron-man style -- me and several friends started playing around the same time, and we formed our own corp. We tried to get into PvP by ourselves with no guidance. We got smoked liberally at first. When we had been playing the game a couple months, we decided to start declaring war on other corps we saw around our area. Our first targets had player ages in the 6 month range when we were about 2 months. And the war was pretty rough at first. But in the end, we bagged one of them in a ludicrously-fit faction battleship and pocketed almost 2 billion ISK (with a "b") in loot. When we had just been playing 2 months! It was a great fight, and I had over 10k damage on this battleship in my frigate. And, 2 billion ISK was more than any of us had ever seen in the game, combined.

So let me wrap up by saying that I'm the first person to say I wish it were easier to get into PvP in EVE. But at the same time the challenge (not only of winning at PvP but of getting into it to begin with) can be very rewarding. But most of all, PvP is really really fun, and as far as I'm concerned, the more you can get into it, the better.

Seriously, Get In A Corp

In EVE, Corporations are the in-game group, similar to "guilds" in fantasy-themed games. When you join the game, you are in an "NPC corporation," which is not created by players. These are the corporations you get PvE missions from, or that buy pirate tags from you. And they also serve as a sort of holding area for newbies. They also have a chat channel like a player corp does (typically with about a thousand people on it, none of whom know much).

My advice is to find a player corporation and get into it as soon as possible. There is just so much to learn in EVE that it's unrealistic to expect you'll be able to do it on your own. Even asking questions in local or rookie chat is not very effective, because no one in EVE (at least no good player) likes to give anything away for free, even advice.

A common reason new players never "click" with EVE is that they feel like there's nothing to do, apart from the PvE missions that the tutorial guides you into. Fair enough...IMHO EVE should provide more guidance into the 5 gazillion things there are to do in it other than missions. But right now, it doesn't. The only place to get that guidance is from other players, and the quickest way to get access to the guidance of other players is to join a corporation.

So how do you join a corporation? Well here's my handy dandy guide:

• First, prefer to join a corporation of real-life friends already playing EVE, if such exists. Due to the back-stabby nature of EVE, I have found that playing with all people I actually know is a tremendous advantage. Plus, you can count on them to be roughly aligned to your interests straight away.
• Failing that, online (non-real-life) friends work too. I have seen many EVE corporations that spring up from guilds or clans in other games, and they seem to work well. So like, does your BF 2142 clan have an EVE corp already? If so, join that.
• Failing that, look for a corp that does what you think you want to do. If you're interested in mining, join a mining corp. If you're interested in space piracy, join a pirate corp (even experienced pirate corps with skill-point requirements often have "farm league" sister corps for new players).

If you are looking for a corporation to join, there are several ways you can go:

• There is an in-game recruitment interface. I do not recommend it. It's very difficult to pare down the results to what you need.
• The official forums have a corporation recruitment section. This is probably your best shot. First, browse it for corporations that sound like something you might be interested in. Then, if you like, post saying "I am a newbie looking for XYZ kind of corp." The responses are usually friendly and helpful.
• Finally, several corps advertise in game through a variety of means. The most common is to jettison a cargo container near a busy gate, then change its name to "XYZ Corp is looking for members. Convo ABC player for more info!" (Convo means "send a private conversation) That can work too, but be warned -- when a space pirate reads cargo containers like this, he sees "XYZ Corp is a juicy target. Please declare war against us now!" Not that wars are a bad thing...just know what you are geting into!

EVE is full of crazy stuff you can do. Some of it was intended by the developers, and some of it players just made up. I'll try to blog on some specific activities soon. Almost all of them are difficult to learn how to do well, and nigh-impossible to learn by yourself. So join a corporation you can learn from. Don't be afraid to switch corporations as your interests change either. Then one day you may have enough under your belt to start a corp of your own!

Flavor Text Leaves Bad Taste In Mouth

Every item in EVE has a "description" which is where rookie pilots tend to look to learn something about the item. However, this will often lead pilots astray, since the developers in their Icelandic wisdom have chosen to make the item names and descriptions heavy on sci-fi mumbo-jumbo -- "flavor text" -- and light on useful information. Learning how to dig through the cryptic terminology to glean useful information is an important early lesson in EVE. We'll try to give you some shortcuts.

Almost all ship equipment (a.k.a. modules) come in several variations. You can see all the variations of each item in-game, in the "variations" tab in the information window. Some items have many variations, but all fall into a few categories:

Tech 1: the base model. This is named something like "[type of module] I". In the attributes tab each variation shows a "meta level". The base model is meta level 0. Higher is (almost always) better and more expensive. These items commonly drop from NPCs and can also be made by players, and can be traded on the market.

"Named": many items have (up to 4) "named" variations. These offer some combination of easier fit (less powergrid and/or CPU) and more effectiveness than base tech 1. Meta levels 1-4 are the "named" variations and also considered tech 1. Each increase in meta level is an increase in the benefit, rarity, and cost on the market. They are called "named" because their names are especially heavy on flavor text ("Phased Monopropellant Hydrazine Boosters" is a named microwarp drive) and often have no obvious relationship to what they actually do. The description is exactly the same as the description of the base tech 1 item. These items only drop from NPCs and cannot be manufactured, but they can still be traded on the market. They have the same skill requirements as the base tech 1.

Tech 2: most items have a "tech 2" variation. This is named something like "[type of module] II". These are usually more difficult to fit but significantly more effective than the tech 1 variation -- sometimes even more effective than the best (meta level 4) named variation. They are shown as meta level 5. In some cases the tech 2 variation is worse than the best named variation despite being higher meta level, but it is often (not always) cheaper. Tech 2 items are manufactured by other players and do not drop from NPCs, and can be traded on the market. Tech 2 items have higher skill requirements than tech 1.

Faction: some items have "faction" variants which can be purchased from NPC factions such as the Caldari Navy in exchange for loyalty points earned from missions, or manufactured by players who purchase blueprints from the factions. These items are like named items, but the benefits are even better, better than tech 2 in most cases. They are only available on contract or through the faction store (not on the regular market) and are very expensive. It is common to try to scam buyers for these modules who don't understand the contract system, so be careful. These have the same skill requirements as tech 1, so they can be quite appealing if you haven't trained enough for tech 2.

Complex/Commander: certain items have additional variants which are dropped by hidden NPC combat complexes and the bosses inside the complexes, or in some cases by rare-spawn NPCs in 0-security asteroid belts. These are like faction modules, but yet another level of goodness (and cost).

I highly recommend using the EVEMon item browser to help sort this out. You easily view the items grouped by category, search for a specific item, compare it to similar items, eliminate certain variations (like faction gear), and so on.

Ships themselves have the same concept of "variations", with slightly different meaning:

Tech 1: the standard ship types. There are multiple tech 1 ships for each race in each class of ship (i.e. Caldari Cruiser) which are not variations of each other. They can be made by players and are available on the market. Sometimes players sell fitted ships, and these are only available by contract or trade, not on the market; be careful as it is easy to scam these off-market trades.

Named: there is no concept of "named" (or "complex" or "commander") variations for ships.

Tech 2: specializations of the standard ship types. Unlike for modules, a single tech 1 ship can have multiple tech 2 variations. The tech 2 ships are highly specialized for a specific function and have much greater skill requirements than their tech 1 ancestors. They are made by players and available on the market.

Faction: some ships have faction variants which are to the base tech 1 ship what faction modules are to the base tech 1 module: better, but a lot more expensive, and only available from NPC faction stores or on contract. Be very careful buying a faction ship on contract as it is extremely easy to create a misleading contract that looks like a faction ship but is not.

In a future post we'll explain some of the other often-mystifying ways items are organized in EVE, including items designed for certain ship classes (a.k.a. what's the difference between "Y-S8 Hydrocarbon I Afterburners" and "Cold-Gas I Arcjet Thrusters"?), sub-groups of related items within each size (a.k.a. what's the difference between an "electron blaster" and a "neutron blaster"?), and common sub-types of ships (a.k.a. what's the difference between an e-war frigate and a mining frigate?).

The Mythical (Lack Of) Level Cap

Probably the most common objection I hear from people considering getting into EVE is its lack of level cap. "If there's no level cap," the objection goes, "how will I ever catch up with someone that's been playing for 4 years?" Problem is, that supposes levelling works like most other games, and it's really radically different.

In EVE almost everything has diminishing returns. Whether you're talking about spending 10x the ISK on a ship that's 20% better than the one you have, or spending 10x as long to train a skill to get 5% better at something than the previous 5% took, it's pervasive. It even applies to (most) stacking. Put on 2 modules of the same type into a ship, and the bonus is less than 2x that of a single module and so on.

Training time is no different. Older characters simply don't get as much out of N time training as a young character will. This is due to a few main factors:

• Skill training time is exponential, but the benefits are linear. Say a skill buffs something by 5%. If training it to level 1 takes an hour, level 2 will take about 6x that (6 hours), and level 3 another 6x that (1.5 days), and so on.
• Every skill caps at level 5. So in a real sense there is a "level cap" in that, at whatever thing a skill makes you better at, you'll never be better than a newbie by more than a "level 5's worth" of that skill. What's more, you can get to level 4 a lot easier than level 5, so it's pretty easy for a newbie to narrow the gap between himself and an old character by just one level's worth of a skill.
  
• Better skills have a higher "rank". Don't confuse level with rank. Rank just means it's a difficult skill and multiplies the training time. High-rank skills can take months to train to level 5, for only an incremental benefit.

When it comes to PvP, the "magic moment" comes when you can fly a couple hulls at close to the level of someone with all level 5 skills relevant to that particular hull could. For something like a cruiser, you could conceivably reach that in a couple months. Boom, in a couple months, you can hold your own in a 1v1 with a 4-year-old in the same hull. For a battleship that's probably more like 4-6 months depending on how focused you are. That time works about right for me, since I take 4-6 months to level cap in most traditional MMOs too. I know hard-core grinders will take less time, and as a result hard-core grinders are often put off by EVE's training system. I personally welcome the opportunity to go do something other than grinding with my spare time, like have a sex life.

Now let me not set expectations too high here. You do feel pretty gimped your first month or two playing EVE if you try to dive right into PvP. But that has at least as much to do with:

• Player skill (i.e., your personal, real-life skill playing the game). EVE PvP is hard, and experienced players will be a lot better at it than you.
• Metagame knowledge. Someone that's PvP'ed for 2 years will be able to take the same (seemingly crappy) frigate that your newbie pilot can fly, and fit it 10x better than you can. He'll also know what engagements to commit to and which to run away from with that frigate.
• Finding PvP in the first place. Since PvP is free-form in EVE, being able to find PvP that's likely to be fun is a skill unto itself. And it's harder when you can fly fewer ship types. And don't know your way around. And don't even really have a good sense what "fun" PvP is, etc...

My advice to a budding PvPer is to dive right in, and know you'll get worked over hard core for a long time. It helps if you can get in a gang with experienced PvPers that can give you pointers and reassure you that getting blown up constantly just means you're new, not that you suck. But it can work totally going it solo too, you just have to be patient and learn from all your mistakes. As you get more comfortable with the game, you'll get a better sense what you want to train, and eventually you'll hit that "magic moment" where you stop doing "Show Info" on every potential opponent to check their age...because you don't care anymore.