All Posts by x_rast_x

Originally posted by Kurush

Originally posted by sgtboz

You can easily tell which cans are yours vs. which are a players that is not in your corp or fleet.  Your cans have a white Icon.  Cans that will cause you to get "flagged" have yellow icons.

There is a lockable can, but the capacity is 3.9k vs the 27k of a jet can. 

 

So it's a win-win for the flipper?  Either they get some ore, or they get the miner?

Unless the miner has some high-powered friends in the area or something?

Then again, from what I'm hearing, this technique is mostly used on the most inexperienced players.

Not really.

Jetcan mining was originally classed as something that needed to be fixed as jetcans weren't originally intended to be used this way, but CCP allowed it to remain as the ability to stockpile (temporarily) a large amount of ore on-station was balanced by the risk of theft.

Miners can easily reduce their risk to ore thieves / can flippers.

• Have a buddy (or an alt) in a hauler 500m away from your can.  Keep a single low-value item (bookmarks are popular, personally I use a unit of Metal Scraps) in the can to hold it open, have the hauler continually empty the can and return to station when full.  This is the most common option you see for people belt mining, and people mining in groups with their corps, and is what I do (I dual-box)
• Mine off-grid.  Many low-level mission sites spawn large mineable asteroid fields.  While it's not unheard of for mission probers to find such sites and flip the cans, it certainly is very rare.
• Pack a warp scram and a group of combat drones.  You see this on Hulks sometimes since they can shred T1 frigs (which are the most commonly used ships for can games) without much trouble and without giving up any mining abilitiy.
• Fit your ship with cargo expanders / cargo rigs and just run back and forth to the station.  Expensive and eats into your profits, but it's nearly foolproof.
• If a miner is being harassed by a can flipper, they can warp out, switch to a low-value, insured combat ship, warp back, and fight it out.  If they win, they win, if they lose, they lose, either way the miner spends fifteen minutes in the station afterword cooling their heels (to wait out the aggression timer) but I've found that this option actually gets you bothered *less* by pirates in the long run as they'll generally pick a fight once in a while 'cause they know you'll fight back if they annoy you enough, but will leave you alone the rest of the time because they respect you.

Can flippers face risk too, the main risk being that they'll run into a bait ship.  A good bait miner is nearly indistinguishable from a genuine noob (only his corp affiliation will give him away, and even then he's still generally taken to be a rookie who joined an established corp) and since most can flipping ships are the bare minimum that they think will get the job done (so as to encourage miners to aggress them) they stand little chance when that rookie pilot warp scrams them and the miner's friends suddenly warp into the belt to have a good time at the would-be pirate's expense.

Risk in Eve always works both ways - don't forget that.

My time in Eve has finally passed my time in WoW, enough said there.

Originally posted by n00bit

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)?

In overall SP, no.. in specialized areas, yes.  Think of specializations as being kind of like 'classes' that overlap to varying degrees.   Some specs you can max quickly (such as tackling, a common rookie pvp specialization), some take over a year to do from scratch (cap ship pilots), most take 4-6 months or so.

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

A mix.  Honestly, pvp combat in Eve is much more about preparation, recon, and execution of a plan than anything you do once the shooting starts.  PvP fights in Eve are, as a general, very one-sided - in a sense most fights are over before they start as the steep (but realistic) death penalty encourages people to only engage in fights they know they can win.  People only fight if they're prevented from fleeing an unfavorable encounter, or they're defending a stationary objective as part of a fleet (generally a POS) that's worth losing ships over.

All that said PvP in Eve is very fun, especially with the new factional warfare expansion.  PvP in Eve isn't about duels, honor, or fair fights - it's war and piracy - treat it like such you'll be successful, whether you're in a 0.0 fleet fight or just keeping ore thieves away from your can in highsec.

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

You earn skill points in real time whether you're logged in or not, at a rate that is determined by your characters attributes - not all of them though, just the two used by the skill.  This is also the only thing your character's attributes do, so don't sweat them too much.

Because of this, most people will suggest you prioritize training learning skills (which raise your attributes) as early as possible, as well as getting a good implant set to further increase your learning speed.

People either love or hate this feature - personally I love it since I have a demanding IRL job and I can't game for 12 hours a day, every day, just to keep up with my friends.  Others dislike it since they can't grind skills - no power leveling in Eve.  You can, however, grind all the ISK you like and in this game you need ISK since nothing you own has any permanancy and you'll need to be able to replace it all.

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

There is no practical way to ever max your character's skills - with the game's current skill set it would take over twenty years to train them all to lv. 5.  Even the oldest, most trained player in Eve (who's over 5 years old, he was mentioned on a dev blog recently) can not possibly have more than 20% of max skills.

And the Ambulation expansion due out late this year (maybe eaprly next year, but probably this year) will add in a lot of new skills, which everyone will have to start from nothing if they want to participate in any meaningful way to the new content.

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

Eve is really good about this - people in Eve are segregated by what they do, not by their SPs or how much ISK they have.   So if you decide to pvp, you can jump in a tackle frig on your first day (after you train Propulsion Jamming to level I) and fight right alongside battle-hardened, multi-year vets.  Same goes for mining, or trading, or even missioning.

Getting in a good corp that matches your playstyle is probably the most important thing you can do early on, after that you'll find that the fact that you might lack SPs won't really hold you back from contributing to the group.

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

There was one incidient a couple years ago, and the corporation involved has since fallen from power and is a mere shadow of their former selves.  And unless you participate in 0.0 stuff it's unlikely to have affected you even if you were there at the time.

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 =).

The biggest things in Eve that people have a hard time adjusting to.. I know I did..

1. There is no 'progression' in Eve.  There is only a bunch of people doing what they think is fun.  There is no right way to play Eve - if you stay in highsec and run missions and that's what you do, that's fine.  If you decide to rob miners and steal mission salvage, that's fine.  If you band together with your friends and strike out to deep space to forge your own empire, that's fine, if you sit on gates in lowsec waiting to snipe solo faction warfare pilots, that's fine too.  Eve is about freedom - do the tutorial missions but don't become a slave to a talking NPC head or you'll miss 99% of what the game is about.
   
2. In relation to #1, Eve is all about competition.  If you mine, someone will eventually try to steal your ore.  If you steal ore, someone will try to bait you into a fight you can't win so they can loot your wreck and stroke their KB e-peen.  If you trade, others will try to outbid you, if you go hauling cargo through dangerous space, people will relieve you of it.  If you pirate, other pirates, or anti-pirates will come after you.  If you form a massive ISK-farming mining collective some pirate corp will see a bunch of soft targets and wardec you.  But you might hire some mercs and put them in the worse position.  Never forget that in Eve you will be opposed at every turn, even in the relative safety of highsec and even if there's no shooting involved.
   
3. In relation to #2, your ship will go kaboom sooner or later, so don't get attached to it, and don't 'pimp' it out unless you're loaded and have nothing better to blow your ISK on.  That said pimp ships are fun
   
4. If you get burned out, join a new corp, go somewhere new, do something else, or just quit for a while but keep your account active and your skills training.  Eve doesn't force you into any particular role and there's nothing stopping you from training for something new.
   
5. Always have a backup plan - no matter how careful you are you'll take it on the chin once in a while and having a fallback plan will make the difference between shrugging off a massive loss or scrambling to figure out what the hell you're going to do.
   
6. Anything allowed under game mechanics is legal - which means that if you trust the wrong people you can lose your shirt in a hurry.  Player politics is huge - from little stuff like, "Will this guy honor a 1v1?" to bigger things like "Is this guy going to scam me? " or "Can I trust this guy enough to let him in my corp?" or "Is this guy trustworthy enough to grant high-level privilages in my corp?  Or even make him a director?".   Your reputation is the most valueable thing your character will ever own - make sure you don't blemish it with something you don't want.

Last but not least, download Eve Fitting Tool and Evemon (google 'em) - EFT is a ship fitter and Evemon lets you see your skill training progress when you're not logged in (among many other things), both are considered must-have utilities by most of the community.

Have fun, and fly safe :)

Not officially, from what I understand.

Out of the MMOs I've played, Eve is the only one that has the potential to continue indefinitely as long as the devs make smart decisions.  The game doesn't really discriminate against rookie pilots (player skills and know-how count for much more than SPs), the skill system encourages lateral expansion where new content exists alongside old content (with everyone starting from scratch or close to it with respect to the new stuff), rather than directly superseding it, and since it's not level based there's not an issue with huge regions of abandoned 'old' content.

You know, instead of making long replies to threads like that that always crop, I'll just start advising the OPs to jump in with the trial and get their feet wet.  Their either like it and stay or they won't.

Eve has never been about appealing to the mass market - it's no secret most people don't finish their trials.  But those that do generally find Eve to be a very deep and open-ended game that supports a variety of play styles - some casual, some less so.

I'd hold off on training PE until you decide (if you decide) you want to go into the production side of Eve.  Good money in production requires a sizable capital investment, POS lab access, a slew of skills aside from PE (mostly science & trade skills), and a working knowledge of how trade in Eve actually works, which no amount of SPs will help with (like where the hubs are, how to haul without getting ganked, how to sell a reasonable profit, etc).

If you do want to go into industry I'd start off working on mining (frigate -> cruiser -> barge -> exhumer), by the time you're flying a Hulk you'll have a clue and go from there.

Eve is a game where player skills and know-how make a much bigger contribution to how good you perform than SPs.

Give the OP 10M SPs and a ship of his choice, and a 5-year old vet in a 700K SP alt, have them go head to head, and I'd put my money on the alt to at least stalemate.

Maybe give Eve a shot?  It's pretty much the only non-level-based game out there right now that's any good.

It's a little rough the first week or so though.  Leave everything you think you know about MMOs behind ('cause the odds are much better than not that it won't apply), and join up with Eve University as soon as you can and they'll help you learn the game.

Originally posted by batolemaeus

Is this some kind of combined trollpost, bringing together the most common beat-a-dead-horse-posts?

You already said you don't like eve, so what's this post supposed to achieve?

He's pointing out the fact that he can't deal with not being led by the nose and think of something to do other than what the game has directly told him he can do.

Which isn't a bad thing - Eve is a niche game for a reason and I think it would fail (hard) if it ever tried to appeal to a mass market (see NGE - oh look, I made an NGE reference!  Can I has a cookie?)

Originally posted by GormandY

Eh, wrong game buddy. EVE is all about ganking and what not. Like it, or leave.

The game has an incrediable (unrivaled?) amount of depth and if you don't like ganking you don't have to do it , though you still need to be prepared for those that do.

Originally posted by swifty08

Hey all, Im a former WOW player

Me too!  Welcome aboard :)

who got sick of the ridiculous grind aspect and have been looking for a deeper more player driven MMO for a while now and EVE online has definately caught my attention, especially with the offline levelling. Basically i have a few questions.

1. How the hell can i  purshase the game ?? Ive looked at a few big outlets where i live here in England but i havent seen it for sale anywhere, is there any way i can purshase it off the internet ?? Ive seen "expansion" packs aswell advertisied online so im really unsure what im going to actually need to play the latest version of the game !

Eve is 'sold' via a digitial download - basically it's free - you pay a one-time fee to activate your account (you don't have to pay this again even if you let your sub lapse).  Expansion packs in Eve are free and bundled with the client.  Just download it, you got the latest version.  The only difference between trial and full is a few restrictions on your account.

2. If the game's been running since 2003 how am i a player starting 5 years too late ever going to be able to compete with higher players and not get killed all the time (which sounds very very nasty death penalty). I mean how long will it be before i can become a member of a corp. and contribute in a meaningful way ?

Eve doesn't work like that.  The closest analogy would be the 'lateral advancement' concept.  A 5-year old player with a bazillion SPs can do a whole lot of things and fly a lot of ships, but he can't do all of them (or even the majority of them) at the same time.  You can max out (or come close) in any given area with moderate effort.

You'll never be turned down for a (good) corp just because you don't have many SPs.  A lot of roles are traditionally taken on by newbies because they don't require a lot of SPs to accomplish and are ideal for new players - things like tackling (in pvp), or salvaging/mission clean-up for pve-oriented players, if you go into mining you'll likely end up hauling for a while.  The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

Also, bigger ships are not always better ships.  larger ships are slower and have difficulty hitting or even locking onto smaller ships.  Packs of frigates can and do take down battleships, cap ships without support fleets are also highly vulnerable.  Due to these mechanics there are actually a lot of very experienced Eve'rs who still prefer to fly frigates (and other small ships) in PvP actions.  Granted their ships will perform better than yours but getting high frigate skills takes little time, especially if you focus on it.

PvP in this game tends to be very one-sided.  Nobody wants to lose their ship so pvp tactics tend to favor surprise, overwhelming force, deceptive placement of forces, hit-and-run tactics, etc.  It's not very glorious but it is a lot more realistic feeling.  Pitched battles tend to only take place over objectives that are worth more than all the ships going boom (POS wars, system sovereignty battles in 0.0)

3. Wont playing at the start be incredably boring seen as no players will be in the starting areas and thus the first few weeks be rather lonely ?

As was said above, Eve doesn't work like that.  Starting systems aren't any different from any other highsec system, in fact, they tend to be minor market hubs due to all the new players spawning there.

Generally im just after a sense of what the game actually entails, you know the typical day to day stuff while playin the game.

This is what makes Eve truly different - day to day play is totally up to you.  Get into the game, learn the mechanics, find out what appeals to you and what you want to do.  There are so many ways to advance yourself (even to the point where you have to decide what advacement is - is it getting rich?  Becoming a powerful warlord in player-controlled space?  Blowing up anyone you can get away with?  Skilling up and getting enough ISK to play with that shiny new toy?) that trying to list everything would be totally moot.

Like, right now, I'm sitting in a belt in my combat-fit Hulk (an advanced mining vessel) waiting on some pirate scum in a ship I know I can beat (since I'm not risking a 100M+ ship on lolz) looking for an easy mark.  One might come, one might not.  Later I'll do some RL stuff, then I'll log back in and return to my normal base of operations, re-fit my Hulk for mining, strip a belt, then maybe do some missions as I'm trying to get standings up with my alt so I don't have to pay so much in taxes and fees when I sell all my minerals.  If I get bored I might jump in a cheap throwaway ship on my main, have my alt in a hauler with a tractor beam equipped, and go steal ore (I view this as pvp mining since it reduces mineral sources that aren't mine, thus helping to keep prices up :P).  The point is you're not limited ever to one course of action or artifically restricted in what you can do because you're not class "X".

Any help is much appreciated !!!

1) Anything labeled 'Free' isn't.
2) If it's yellow don't take it unless you're ready to fight over it.
3) If you want to PvP, join a pirate corp and go to lowsec on your first day.  If you hide in highsec because you think you don't have enough SPs to survive you'll never leave.
4) There is no such thing as griefing in Eve.  If someone is being a jerk they're allowed.  There's ways to deal with it.
5) In relation to #4, anything allowed by game mechanics is legal.  It may not be nice, or ethical, but it's legal.
6) Don't get locked into one mode of thinking or gameplay.  If you're bored you're not obligated to continue doing whatever is boring you.  You can go somewhere else, learn some new skills, get a new corp, whatever it takes.
7) There's a big learning curve right at the beginning.  Join up with Eve University if you don't have a set type of corp in mind you want to join right away, they'll help show you the ropes.  Or you can do what I did and just bumble around for about a week figuring stuff out.  On the plus side, once you master the interface and flying your ship everything else you need to learn is pretty straightforward.
8) Never fly what you can't afford to replace.  Your ship will get blown up eventually no matter how careful you are with it.  Just this week I lost a very expensive year-old hauling ship that never left highsec because I wasn't paying attention and looted a yellow wreck.  Even though it was a major loss (about 200M - Mammoth with 3x Cargohold Opt. rigs) I was able to recover from it quickly because I knew better than to put all my eggs in one basket.  Keep spare ships around and enough of an ISK pad so you can continue to operate if something unexpected happens.

Unlike most MMOs (all that I've tried actually) that start out about as good as they're going to get and then steadily go downhill, Eve is designed for the long haul and just keeps getting better and better.  I think the dev's general attitude of deliberately appealing to a niche that will be loyal instead of the mass market has a lot to do with it.

Despite being one of the oldest games out there it's still worth it for newbies to join up, if you're looking for a sandbox in space.

So I took a three-month break, went back to WoW for a little while, tried out EQ2 and LOTRO, but after getting a 7mil SP char in Eve I just can't get into the other 'big' games so I guess I'm back to stay :).

Offline skill progression is a big thing for me (since my play schedule is erratic, I'm not hard-core by any means - reason I initially quit but I quit my 0.0 mining corp and I'm taking a different tack now, but I digress...), but Eve just has an atmosphere no other game out there has right now, IMO.  Despite the fact that people scream up and down Eve is a griefer's game and too unfriendly to be successful it's those very qualities that give it real staying power, IMO.  Dying sucks and should be avoided, the other side of the universe is a long way away, places that are 'dangerous' really are dangerous (and not merely high-level), all the player politics, an almost completely player-run economy, it gives Eve a life of its own, and makes it feel a bit more real, and not just an artifical grind with the devs continually pushing the bar further out.

Anyway, I'm done rambling :)... see you all in-game (maybe)

On a related note, I've never understood why a game's graphics can't degrade gracefully so as to still run on older hardware but can still take advantage of people who choose to go out and buy the latest and greatest graphics hardware.

Out of the MMO's I've played EQ2 is the only one to really attempt this kind of future-proofing.  I think if they'd have automated the process instead of having a hugely complicated video settings dialog that takes 20 minutes to set up (maybe instead a simple Performance <-------> Quality slider that tries to keep things running at a consistent framerate (higher on performance, lower for quality)) that aspect of it would have gone over a lot better.

I haven't read pro reviews for years and years - doubly so with game reviews simply because gaming magazines are notorious for giving the best reviews to the highest bidders.

I read peer reviews - the pages and pages of comments at Gamespot or on Amazon.  I generally find them to be much more informative.

Right now they tell me WAR is WoW 2.0 - looks like improved WoW, plays a lot like improved WoW, smells like improved WoW.  Given that they all said the same thing back in '04 about WoW being more like EQ2 than EQ2 was and the general grumbling unhappiness of WoW's current player base I take this to be a good thing for WAR.

I actually went back to WoW for a couple of months.

The magic's really gone out of it though - add a tired formula to the fact that the devs are trying to be all things to all people and failing everyone, and I'm even more certain now that WoW is ripe for a mass exodus if a decent alternative ever manages to come out and not have a horrible launch or be released half-done.

So right now I'm actually playing UT3.. shame nobody's made a UT2K4-style RPG invasion mod for it but I'm sure in time it will come :)

Originally posted by CujoSWAoA

Yeah, glad they're polishing up World of Warcraft 2.

Given that vanilla WoW more like EQ2 than EQ2 was, this can only mean you think WAR will be a runaway success!

Originally posted by Munki

Originally posted by Jimmy_Scythe

BTW, just found some videos of people playing WoW with various controllers. I don't see how your ability to play this game would be affected at all by using a controller.

Switchblade instructional video

WoW with a Wiimote

Not Quite sure what's going on in this one...

Rogue with a controller

And WoW on an iPhone

Okay... So playing WoW on an iPhone looks like a total pain in the ass. But a gamepad doesn't seem to change the experience at all.

I notice a lack of talking...
As well as a huge amount of clumsy movement and skill use.
Looks doable, but I cant see it being worth the effort.

Making it possible means nothing if the control scheme is inferior (in the sense that someone with a mouse and keyboard can do more things faster), and these examples clearly are.

If it feels, looks, or controls like a crappy port it won't sell well.  That's true for console to PC ports as well as PC to console ports.

Like I said earlier, I know it's possible to make a good MMO with current console systems (well, maybe not the Wii, with its lack of rewritable local mass storage), but they have to be designed from the ground up to support being played with a controller and voice chat.

Originally posted by CaesarsGhost

PKers would be on Death Row.

oh wait, in real life PKers DO go to death row!

I guess that's a way we can get Open PvP... if somebody is found guilty of PKing, their character is permanently lost.

That's only if you PK without being a member of your faction's RvR guild, or PK someone who's not a valid war target.

Even IRL, nobody likes open PvP.