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"Advancement" time in EVE.
waHEI
Member Posts: 3
I'm looking for an MMO to play until around the next 4-5 months when I will start to get busy with other things and I won't have as much time to play games. I got interested in EVE and want to play it, but I noticed that EVE "takes time". To me there's two kind of "time", the short term and often overlooked "how many hours per day" kind of time and longterm "how many days/month" time. As for the former, I have time, perhaps more than the average gamer. So I can definitely be a potato couch and go at it for hours. What concern me though, is the latter. If I say, plan to only play for a few months, will I get anywhere? I've played for a bit on a trial account and my initial judgement says no, while I can definitely do have time, that time isn't indefinite or forever, it's only a few months, and with skills and other real-time things taking days, I don't really think I can get far. This is just my assumption. I would like to ask for the people who have played EVE if I really can "get anywhere" within a few months or not.
Comments
One of the great features of EVE Online is that skill training is passive. It occurs whether you are playing or not. Your reduced time in game when things get busy for you does not impact the rate at which you train.
Here's a link to more information on training and using the skill training queue:
http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Skill_training
There isn't a "right" or "wrong" way to play, if you want to use a screwdriver to put nails into wood, have at it, simply don't complain when the guy next to you with the hammer is doing it much better and easier. - Allein
"Graphics are often supplied by Engines that (some) MMORPG's are built in" - Spuffyre
I know that skill-training is in real-time and that whether I'm on or not it will still happen. That's not my concern though. I'll probably be playing for most of the day whenever I can but that doesn't matter if the time that takes to train skill or OTHER THINGS, like waiting in queue for and to manufacture, etc, takes several days, weeks, or even months to accomplish(And with said things considered as a mean or even the process of advancing up in the game, it would seem that even if you play 24 hours a day everyday of the week, it would take a year or so for you to get anywhere. I really haven't seen enough of EVE and its feature to point to anything specific, but it just seems like everything in the game takes time. Not the how many hours you can pour into this game a day kind of time because I pour in quite an amount, but the time of " how many years am I gonna play this game" sort of time) Whether I'm playing an hour or five a day doesn't matter, I have the time. But with only 5 months, is that enough longterm time to train relevant skills, and possibly do other necessary activities that I haven't experienced ingame yet, that is probably "real-time" as well so that I can enjoy a good deal of the game? From what I have seen so far from the game, it's a clear no, but before I give up I would like someone who has played the game to tell me if it really is so...
If all you're going to do is play for a few months, I would suggest making a b-line for some pvp ships and setups.
Im sure just about any pvp corp would be willing to give you some rifters, cuz one can never have enough cheap tackle.
Most important thing to watch out for, is keeping your clone upgraded, so you don't loose your skills when you get podded.
If you wanna dive right into the action, look no further than RvB. They are two corps who are constantly at war with eachother and are designed to help new players get experience in small gang pvp (with some restrictions),
I agree with the poster above. If you're only going to play 4-5 months, PvP is the way to go. In anything else your 4-5 months will be either a boring grind for ISK and Standings, and waiting for skills to train for bigger ships.
In PvP you can pretty much get "in the game" within a few weeks and be effective in your own role.
Well one really nice feature of EVE is the time based skilling. So your character will continue to advance even when you have very restricted play time. Queue up some long skills and then go do whatever stuff. You don't have to waste any of your free time on xp grinding. Every minute you play, you can be advancing your goals in the game.
And they're your goals. You decide what they are, how high they stand in your life priorities, and how much time you want to put in. The more you play EVE, the more opportunity you'll have to advance your goals, whatever they are. If you only plan to play for a few months, then you need to choose goals that can reasonably be achieved within that timescale. You won't be flying a Titan within 6 months, for instance. But if you just want to have a lot of fun in small/medium ship PvP, then you can certainly do that. Or become a trader. Or an inventor. You tell us - what would you like to do, do you think?
EVE is very friendly to the "play for a few months then go off for a few months then return for a while" mode. It's practically normal. I'll give you fair warning now though that a lot of long-time EVE players thought they'd only be playing for a month or two when they joined, but the game has a way of getting its hooks into you. I only started playing it because my roomie nagged me into giving it a go; I had no intention of wasting my money on a subscription game and spending my time talking to some strangers on the internet, so I started a trial just so that I could say I'd tried it to shut him up. I subscribed on day 4. That was almost 7 years ago.
Give me liberty or give me lasers
Loktofeit's point is that you won't have to abandon the game just because you get busy in RL.
And the "It takes a year to start playing" is a pernicious lie, spread by people who've become habituated to the "The game starts at level 80" model perpetuated by crappy themepark MMOs. There's no race to level cap in EVE. You start out with a relatively small number of viable options for things to do (but still a very large list compared to most MMOs), and you refine your skills at those options and open up new ones as your skills advance and diversify.
Here's a chart of the various activities in EVE. Pick some that you think you're interested in and we'll advise you.
http://swiftandbitter.com/eve/wtd/
Give me liberty or give me lasers