Hi

a year ago or so i tried the free trial of eve and found it intresting. From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

In 14 days of more or less intense playing i havent seen one single other player... i saw some writing in various chat channels but when i asked if anyone wanted to group i got no replies. Since i am more a team player rather than a soloist (altho i enjoy solo gaming too sometimes) this was the reason why i never subscribed.

Did i do something wrong? Is it worth a second try? Maybe i was in the wrong chat channels or on the wrong server? Hmm but i think there  only was one?

Generally you wont find people grouping together who are not in the same allaince, or corp. Once in a while maybe, but your best bet is to get into a player corp. The game really opens up then. You are correct in there being only 1 server. Don't feel like you did something wrong, it's just not an easy game to start out in.

I think you're going to get a pretty standard reply on this and it will be that you should join a player corp. While you might find groups asking around in the NPC start corp, I have found that, even a small corp, has a much better success ratio. Additionally, you get the benefit of contributing to the team and leveraging the corp assetts (manufacturing, ships, training, etc).

That said, if you are still doing level 1-3 missions, you might not see many groups as those are generally soloable. Again though, in a corp, you could probably have a corp mate pull Level 4 missions that you could contribute on though you may have some training to do first.

the reason that nobody wanted to group up with you is because of something called a "lofty", a guy called lofty realised that the rules allowed you to fire on members of your fleet without concord, and grouped up with people and blew up their ships and took their loot, the rules have been changed recently, but people are still reluctant to fleet with unknowns as they fear a scam of some description.

find and join a player corp that suits you, make friends and join their fleets. thats how eve should be played, staying in the npc corp is not a good idea. if you want to see people chatting, join the eve radio chat channel.

Just work hard to find a good fit (corp) for you. Apply this to any MMO and you should have lots of fun.

But yeah in EVE guilds tend to be more tight nit and even still keep an eye on them. Hell this weekend I got podded by a blue that betrayed us dont trust anyone! haha, I keep forgetting that simple rule. I rarely ever lose pods but the enemy found a way to get us via spy or whatever during an event

Great game you never know what will happen next

Finding a good corp is crucial.  Make sure you find one that fits well with what you want to do in the game.

I have recently returned and am basically starting over and I am taking my time about finding a corp.   I know a corp is the way to go in the game, but I need to make sure they are a good group of people and hae been around for a bit.   Eventually I'll find a good fit.    So I can understand where the OP is coming from.   

I do however wonder how it is you (the OP) never see any other players.    I see literally hundreds of players scattered throughout the areas I frequent in game in fact I recently relocated my main so she isn't competing so much for asteroids.   OMG some places are mined out within a couple of hours where I use to mine.    I found a place though that allows me to mine and do a little ratting now and then without to much fear of being jumped.    It's awesome.

Originally posted by Snorf  

  From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

lol is so easy just R-click on other player face

Originally posted by cosy

Originally posted by Snorf  

  From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

 

lol is so easy just R-click on other player face

what do you mean player face? I have not seen any other player. All that made me believe i wasnt alone in the universe was the chat text.

Perhaps it is because i am european? is it only crowded during US times?

Also thanks for the advice with the player corp (guess thats guilds?) but ususally i group with people first and then i decide if i want in their guild, is it the other way around in eve?

Originally posted by Snorf

what do you mean player face? I have not seen any other player. All that made me believe i wasnt alone in the universe was the chat text.

Perhaps it is because i am european? is it only crowded during US times?

Also thanks for the advice with the player corp (guess thats guilds?) but ususally i group with people first and then i decide if i want in their guild, is it the other way around in eve?

 

It might be worth looking at corps that have offices in the systems you operate out of. They will typically have lobby channels that you can join and get to know them and decide if a particular corp is right for you. You can also look at the official boards and I believe there is a general recruitment channel in game, but maybe someone else can verify that.

Next you will complain there are no elves...

Originally posted by Snorf

Originally posted by cosy

Originally posted by Snorf  

  From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

 

lol is so easy just R-click on other player face

 

what do you mean player face? I have not seen any other player. All that made me believe i wasnt alone in the universe was the chat text.

Perhaps it is because i am european? is it only crowded during US times?

Also thanks for the advice with the player corp (guess thats guilds?) but ususally i group with people first and then i decide if i want in their guild, is it the other way around in eve?

 

What he means by player face is in the chat box. You can see who is in the same system as you. Yes corps. are what you can call guilds. Joining a corp in eve is not like other mmo's, a lot of them have a process you need to go through so they can check you out. There are many players who make alts to join rival corps to get intel on them. This causes many corps to be carful when getting in new people, specially new characters.

What I would say is to look at the forums for corps who are recruiting. When you find 1 or more that you like, get ahold of some of the people in them. Chat with them when you can, try to get in squads with them if they will let you. Thats prolly the best way to meet people. Basically there is a lot of trust issues from my experiance. You never know who will stab you in the back.

I had the same problem after reading this I think I may give eve another try.

i downloaded it last night and will have a look at it again - this morning on first  log in it looked the same as i remembered it, lots of text flying by in the chat box but nowhere is another ship or player.

if you see me around Name is Snorfeus. I should be on around 8pm gmt

space is big. really big.

go sit at a gate for 5 minutes and watch all the players moving to and fro if you want to see other people.

Originally posted by Snorf

Originally posted by cosy

Originally posted by Snorf  

  From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.

 

lol is so easy just R-click on other player face

 

what do you mean player face? I have not seen any other player. All that made me believe i wasnt alone in the universe was the chat text.

there are some link on my signature plz check them all

Originally posted by PatchDay

Just work hard to find a good fit (corp) for you. Apply this to any MMO and you should have lots of fun.

But yeah in EVE guilds tend to be more tight nit and even still keep an eye on them. Hell this weekend I got podded by a blue that betrayed us dont trust anyone! haha, I keep forgetting that simple rule. I rarely ever lose pods but the enemy found a way to get us via spy or whatever during an event

 

Great game you never know what will happen next

To the OP: I highlighted two of the key "aspects" of this game for you because I get the impression you come from one of the more relaxed MMORPGs out there where you easily find groups and do stuff together. Eve is anything but, it is very unforgiving on new players and you can literally lose hours, if not days, of work (I do classify mining and doing repetetive NPC missions as work) in one single death.

Keep that in mind when/if you play this game again.

You guys are probably not seeing many ships due to the systems you are in. Depending on what you are doing, i.e. missions, mining. There are better systems for each, and thats where the people generally are. Also if you are still doing just level 1 and 2 missions you prolly wont see to many people around you.

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Originally posted by Snorf
 
Hi
a year ago or so i tried the free trial of eve and found it intresting. From 3rd day on i tried to find out if there are any group missions or if groups are ever formed. To be honest, i never found out.
In 14 days of more or less intense playing i havent seen one single other player... i saw some writing in various chat channels but when i asked if anyone wanted to group i got no replies. Since i am more a team player rather than a soloist (altho i enjoy solo gaming too sometimes) this was the reason why i never subscribed.
Did i do something wrong? Is it worth a second try? Maybe i was in the wrong chat channels or on the wrong server? Hmm but i think there  only was one?
 

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It's the game concept.
While in oher MMOs you generaly group up for faster XP gain or rare loot raid, none of those you find in EVE therefore there is no need for PVE grouping.

EVE is based on player intercation - some call it sandbox. So don't be worry about the game not being team orientated, it is just deeper and different cooperation than you are used to.

Originally posted by Snorf

i downloaded it last night and will have a look at it again - this morning on first  log in it looked the same as i remembered it, lots of text flying by in the chat box but nowhere is another ship or player.

if you see me around Name is Snorfeus. I should be on around 8pm gmt

Step one set autopilot to Jita
Step two once in Jita dock at Jita IV - Moon 4 - Caldari Navy Assembly Plant

Step three Undock

Step four Observe a crap ton of people

Step five Notice how thier ship icons look different from the NPCs you have seen.

I say this because more and likely you have seen several players and not realized it. A lot of ship traffic you see around gates are players just going along thier way. There is no name above thier ship to really pick them out as a player, Its just that we have Brackets instead of Pluses.

As Nicoli said, go to Jita. Is the "mall center" of eve.

Eve has a stable 30.000 players. In low hours about 15.000. Prime time can reach 40.000 or more.

There is a sole server and being european or USA time make not much difference, there is allways thousands of player out there. Remeber eve galaxy is huge, really huge. And space is vast.

In time you will want to find no player, I bet it. You will want to stay away from players/gankers.

Enjoy Eve, give it a try. It's a deep step learning game, but slowly you learn each day and I can assure this game gonna give you months or years of fun. There is allways something to do in eve, you never get bored. Exploring, missions, research, production, pvp, bounty hunter, deploying POS, helping a corp mate, roaming in low sec, minning, etc etc etc.

Rule one: Find a corp. There are hundreds of them recruiting. You just ask in local chat at Jita and surely they will spam you with private messages. See what they have, how many members, how they are. Afterall, if you don't like the newly joined corp you can allways quit and find another one.

The only 3 things I don't like of EVE:

1-The space is dark, systems got a sun and there is nebulaes brighting up but sometimes so much darkness bore me.

2- There is not a player view. Only ships and structures, asteroids and such. You are allways inside a ship/pod (or floating dead frozen) thou in future they plan to make a expansion for "walking station".

3- Eve server is down 1 hour each day for manteniance.

The rest of Eve is amazing , a great game . And those who left eve for a while came back for good.

Thanks all for the infos.

To give you a brief update about my 2nd try to get into eve yesterday i had 2 houers to play and yes i saw 2 or 3 other player ships this time.

So if i get the infos from this thread correct you do not directly PvE group in EvE all PvE is solo here. No Group PvE content. No random grouping happening.

Joining a coorp i plan for next week to see what that changes.

This weekend im gona learn the game again (only did a few missions now and learning skills to get the ship upgraded some)

I have another noob question tho,

does combat change later in game? Does it get more "tactical" at this (extremely early) stage it is just like: My weapon is stronger than your shields, you loose.

Can a "weaker by the numbers" (weapon power and shields and all) player beat a stronger NPC or Player (just numbers, not playerskill) by using smart maneuvers tactics and surprise moves?

Low levels npcs are dumbs. Even lvl 4 missions npcs are.

The one "smart" are sleepers and you can find them inside a wormhole (need someone with probes to scan it thou). These are far away from your possibilities yet.

These pest are somekind "alive". They change targets in a middle of a fight, they kill your drones, weapon jamm, scramble, webbing, they hit you where it hurts more and make way more damage than the normal ones. It's a challenge but they are npcs afterall.

But if you ask if they warp out if they feel loosing the battle? No.

Things get better and interesting when you do next levels missions. There are named rats, hard to kill them alone sometimes but your skills and weapons normaly overwhealm the rats.

In next mission levels you will see diferent rats make different kind of damage (kin, thermal, explo, em) often mixing 2 or more kind of damages so you must change your armor/shield resistance and equip with different  ammo to hit them where it hurt.

Some advices: 

1- Stay at your optimal distance for you guns.

2- Kill scramblers rats first , just in case you need to warp out in emergency (lost several ships this way)

3- Don't drop drones untill alll of them have you tergeted, if not they will target your drones.

4- Align to a planet/station just in case you need to warp out.

5- Don't go low sec alone

6- Keep your clone updated! (thou rats won't kill your pod it is not funny loosing learned skills if a player pod you in low sec)

7- Your Capacitor is your life, No cap = no reparation/recharge = dead. Make sure your ship is cap stable before battle.

8- Don't stay fighting untill last breath. Warp out earlier because Murphy (and asteroids ) law is out there and you can stomp in any structure/roid making you unable to warp in time.

9- Tactical are reserved for pvp. There is not such tactical manouvres fighting ,npc except the above advices.

10- fly an inexpensive ship at first . Don't go after a uber ship untill you feel comfortable with your frigate.

theres loads of group pve stuff, but not until you get into a corp.

the combat does get far more complex as you gain more skills. at the moment you only have a gun and some shields, i however have cap boosters, neuts, nos, tracking computers, sensor damps, sensor boosters, ecm, eccm, ecm burst, shield boosters, shield boost amps, armour reppers, damage controls, tracking disruptors, missile launchers, defender missiles, smartbombs, railguns, blasters, webbifiers, scrams, warp disruptors, drones, ecm drones, ewar drones, remote reps, autocannons, microwarp drives, afterburners, etc etc.

things get even more complex when its not 1v1.

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Originally posted by Snorf
Thanks all for the infos.
 
To give you a brief update about my 2nd try to get into eve yesterday i had 2 houers to play and yes i saw 2 or 3 other player ships this time.
So if i get the infos from this thread correct you do not directly PvE group in EvE all PvE is solo here. No Group PvE content. No random grouping happening.
Joining a coorp i plan for next week to see what that changes.
This weekend im gona learn the game again (only did a few missions now and learning skills to get the ship upgraded some)
I have another noob question tho,
 
does combat change later in game? Does it get more "tactical" at this (extremely early) stage it is just like: My weapon is stronger than your shields, you loose.
Can a "weaker by the numbers" (weapon power and shields and all) player beat a stronger NPC or Player (just numbers, not playerskill) by using smart maneuvers tactics and surprise moves?
 

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There are some events when you have to group for some PVE content but it's only a few occasions - L5 missions, tough wormholes and exploration sites.
The amount of PVE grouping is negligable and specific.

Yes, EVE combat is very tactical. Of course the impact of tactical (dis)advantage is less significant in PVE but you can still outmaneuver larger NPC ships.
In PVP, tactics is essential. Every ship has some unique abilities and it is up to your player skills and your fitting to make those uniqueness work for you - player skills nor 'numbers' make you win a fight on their own, you will need both.