General Discussion

I've heard a lot about it over the past years, both good and bad. I tried out the trial a while back and cried a little when my first quest was to mine some ore. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy gathering resources and crafting, but it just didn't seem like the first thing I wanted to do when I floated out into space. I uninstalled it after that quest, deciding that the quest had personally insulted me. Anyways, here I am again thinking about trying it out and actually giving it a decent shot this time. Before I do, I've come to he forums to ask if its worth starting at this point. A few things I'd like to ask:

At this point in the game, is it possible to catch up to other players in terms of upgrade and level(do they even have levels)?

How does the PvP work...turn based, twitch, a mix?

I've heard a lot about being able to train abilities offline, how does that work?

Once I reach the max level, or the peak of my upgrading, what is there to do?

How long will I have to play before I can start contributing to the community through PvP or crafting?

Is it true that the GMs are corrupt and favor certain guilds?

That's all I can really think of at the moment; I'd appreciate any input from honest players. I'd rather not have a fanboi come into the thread and tell me that god himself created the game =).

I just want to say if you play it for about a month with patient ,you will like this game,

I've tried EVE twice, and just didn't have the patience for it. Also, the interface made me feel like I was going to have to take a course or two on it to understand it... Wasn't interested in that. My cousins played eve for a while, and I'm pretty sure they both had several accounts going at once, so they could do interesting stuff on one account while doing boring stuff on the other :)

But from what I can tell it really is great, but it can be slow. Combat is not turn-based, but I wouldn't call it twitch either. To me it felt like an rts.

Originally posted by n00bit

I've heard a lot about it over the past years, both good and bad. I tried out the trial a while back and cried a little when my first quest was to mine some ore. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy gathering resources and crafting, but it just didn't seem like the first thing I wanted to do when I floated out into space. I uninstalled it after that quest, deciding that the quest had personally insulted me. Anyways, here I am again thinking about trying it out and actually giving it a decent shot this time. Before I do, I've come to he forums to ask if its worth starting at this point. A few things I'd like to ask:

 

At this point in the game, is it possible to catch up to other players in terms of upgrade and level(do they even have levels)?

How does the PvP work...turn based, twitch, a mix?

I've heard a lot about being able to train abilities offline, how does that work?

Once I reach the max level, or the peak of my upgrading, what is there to do?

How long will I have to play before I can start contributing to the community through PvP or crafting?

Is it true that the GMs are corrupt and favor certain guilds?

That's all I can really think of at the moment; I'd appreciate any input from honest players. I'd rather not have a fanboi come into the thread and tell me that god himself created the game =).

I played EVE for about 2 1/2 years. It was fun overall. I'm definitely not a fanboi of the game. One thing that I disliked over time was flying a ship 24/7, without any Avatar.  CCP is addressing that, so I may return to check it out.

To your specific concerns:

1). EVE has a lot of breadth as well as depth. As a new player, you can typically catch up and compete if you focus on one ship type for about three to six months. What Veteran players will have over you is a breadth of ship choices.

2). The PvP is a well-disguised turn-based system. The only twitch would be that experienced in other MMOs, namely targeting and identifying threats. Having said that, I never PvP'd in my 2 1/2 years. Still had fun though. The rumors of EVE's hardcore PvP are greatly exagerated.

3).  Training offline is a feature I really liked. You simply select the skill you want to  train, and the game tells you how long until the training is completed in real time. If you have to log, make note somewhere of how long the skill takes to train (either by memory or I've heard people using alarm clocks), and then return to the game at that time to switch to a different skill. If you don't care to be hyper-effecient, simply check your skill training the next time  you log in.

4). There is no 'reaching max level'. You can always train skills for another ship type, or train skills for crafting, or train skills for mining, or train skills to be a galactic trader...and you can always try exploring the vast systems.

5). Corrupt GMs? Yes there have been. Has CCP solved the problem? Maybe. We won't know until the next one is caught.

I played for a while, never really got into it though.  It didn't take long before I was bored out of my skull.

PvP:  I detest PvP with a passion so that's probably why I hated the game.  The system ratings seem to be pretty randomly laid out, if you're going a long way, you have no way to decide to fly only through 0.5+ systems if you don't want to get shot at, in fact the navigation system really sucks.  You hit that 0.0 system and get blown up by the PvP losers who are just waiting for the next person to come along they can gank.  The entire economy is based around you dying regularly and having to rebuy a ship.

Things to do:  Well, you can mine.  Or mine.  Or mine.  Or occasionally shoot at a few pirates.  And then mine some more.  Boring as hell.  Plus the fact that the systems are really shallow and generic.  They look beautiful until you realize they're all screensavers and have no substance.  Planets?  Not really, you can't ever go to any.  Moons?  Same.  Endless asteroid fields, a couple of generic bases and that's all you've got.

It just never impressed me that I'd be able to do anything I wanted to do in time.  It's just mining more ore so I can buy bigger ships so I can shoot more stupid pirates so I can die when the PvP losers decide I'm a convenient target.

Screw that.

Actually, training is one of the features I really hated about EvE as well.  If you're going to train, it should have something to do with what you're actually doing.  You can spend 30 hours flying around asteroids and be training in something completely unrelated.  What the hell?  Why waste the time "training" when it makes no sense?

There is an attractive science fiction element about it that really can suck you in sometimes, but after a few tries in it I really became bored.  It needs more content.  If they allowed landing on various planets where you have a separate shooter game or space stations with a separate quest game engine with bars/casinos/clubs, etc, this game could really cook.  But flying around all the time doing the same 3 or 4 type of missions... yaawwwn

Briefly I'll try to add a few things without being too big of a fanboi, while leaving out some things that others have already touched on.

First, the idea that you can't catch up with older players is false. As someone else pointed out, what veterans have over you is breadth of ship choice. Given about a year or training one specific racial type you can compete with any vet out there. Additionally its not possible to reach "max level." I've read (and beleve) that it would take someone over 50 years to get all the skills in eve to 5.

The game is very sandboxy. There is only one server, with 30,00 or more people logged onto it at once. That said, the universe is huge. Over 5000 systems.

The game is very sandboxy. Everyone's end game is different. By in large most of the older players hang out in 0.0 space (lawlass areas) in alliances of corps (guilds) putting up player owned stations and outposts and fighting over resources.

Originally posted by Revthought 

The game is very sandboxy. There is only one server, with 30,00 or more people logged onto it at once. That said, the universe is huge. Over 5000 systems.

The game is very sandboxy. Everyone's end game is different. By in large most of the older players hang out in 0.0 space (lawlass areas) in alliances of corps (guilds) putting up player owned stations and outposts and fighting over resources.

The problem, however, is that those 5,000 systems are all essentially the same.  It's a screensaver with a few asteroid belts and a couple of generic stations.  That's it.  There's really nothing that differentiates one system from another.

The endgame that you suggest is boring, why would anyone look forward to that?  If there are really thousands of systems and potentially many, many more, why wouldn't everyone want to take over their own system?  Heck, if EvE was really thinking, why not have everyone be able to BUILD their own system when they get to that level?

Oh wait, it would just be another screensaver, wouldn't it?

I've tried Eve at least 6 times. I've always failed to feel immersed though. Though it's nice an all, it just felt a little empty. Yes duh, it's space, but it feels like there's a lack of substance. You warp from jumpgate to jumpgate and everything inbetween is empty space really. Stations all tend to look the same too.

The pretty colours get a little old after a while. I don't know...I guess it just isn't for me.