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Can a casual PvPer find a place in EVE?
Talthanys
Member Posts: 458
So I've nearly bitten on EVE a couple times now. It seems interesting and new and its player base is testament to how successfully these things have played out. I don't know what will make me take the leap into fully trying it out. In part, that's what my questions will help me with. Questions only you can answer.
I might have maybe 2-3 hours an evening to play, but I wouldn't play every evening. More hours and reliability on the weekends, of course, but I'm in that Wife/Kids/Work statistic where my priorities, and thereby the bulk of my time, is spent elsewhere.
That being said, can a person with my timetable have fun with PvP in EVE? Are there Corps that will take on someone like me, and perhaps guide me along the intricacies of EVE PvP? Is it feasible for me to be a pirate eventually (I mean, once all the basic skills have been trained up) or will it simply not work with the limited play time I'd have?
Thanks for any help!
-tal
Comments
My entire alliance consists mostly of weekend warriors. I highly doubt others are much different, at least not the successful ones.
Absolutely, today all alliances care about is how many people they can put on a battlefield. To do this, many alliances really don't care how often you login, as long as you log in. Personally, I have been in a null sec corp for awhile, but I haven't played in months. In the beginning (with them), I was very active and played every day for at least a couple hours a day. Now, I simply log in every few days/weeks to change my skills and immediately log back out. I haven't moved in about 6 months. My corp weeds out those who don't play anymore, but they only check when you log in and not the kill boards. If you go over a month or so of not logging in, you're removed. Since I've been logging in consistently, even though I'm not playing, I'm still in the corp. **knock on wood**
Be aware though, Pirates are basically people who camp gates in low sec or just roam low sec, looking for easy targets and run at anything that can potentially hurt them, even if they have slightly more power than their opponent, but still run the risk being hurt. They have no more values than a normal null sec or wormhole player. The only difference between the 2 are that in null sec, you don't lose Sec status and because of that, you can still freely move around in High Sec. Pirates cannot, they must use alts or pods to move around in High Sec . Low Sec Status sucks, I have been a pirate before and got down to -7.x sec status. It took months of grinding Rats in null to get my status above -1 so I can freely move around in High sec. But, I was a pirate back in the days when small scale PVP still existed in the normal universe and it was a much different game. Camping gates for hours on end, is not exactly fun.
There are also High Sec Pirates, who lose no security status, like the 0rphanage. What they do, is camp major trade hubs and declare wars against lots of large corps/alliances. They make pretty good profits from this, but to the rest of the game they are really nothing more than a nuisance.
If you're looking for small scale PVP, I've heard Wormholes are good for that, but they seperate you from everyone else in the game completely. It gets pretty lonely in Wormholes and it's not my thing, but it's the only place to find good small scale PVP. The rest of small scale PVP consists of running around in cheap ships on a Jump Clone and seeing how many targets you can pop, before you get popped. To me, this is nothing more exciting than Carebear game PVP, because it doesn't matter if you win or lose, because you're not really losing out on much.
If you don't understand what I mean by small scale PVP and large scale PVP, then look no further than Starcraft. Small scale is akin to something you see in other games (WoW, Darkfall, even CoD, etc.), large scale PVP is basically like playing 1 Zerg Unit. You may have heard of people using Zerg Tactics in other MMOs, but trust me, it's nothing like how they are used in EVE.
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Once you have got over the learning curve, yes its entirly possible to do what you say.
In fact I have an account dedicated just for that purpose, Its got loads of cheap pvp ships dotted around (about 50) and I just roam about or look for a fleet to join.
But of course I have long ago made plenty of money and learnt a lot about the game from those days when I had far more time on my hands.
Im in about the same situation as the OP. I recently started the trial (about 2 days left) and have decided to buy EVE and give it a go casually. I plan to play about 2-4 hours a night to get my feet wet but down the road I expect to reduce my playtime once I get married here soon and have kids.
The thing I really do like about EVE is that I can decide to not play for days or even weeks and know that my character will still be skilling up as long as I keep my training ques updated. Not many MMOs are like this, most forcing players to play as much as possible to comepte. The only thing your missing out on not playing everyday is making ISK, which is very important in EVE but better skills = more ISK in the long run as well
I would hell ya! Give EVE a go casually...I know I plan to. Last night I found my first gravemetric scanned site (still getting the hang of exploration) and about shite my pants with excitement. If you do play casual make sure you set yourself goals ingame so you know which direction your player skills are headed. The nice thing about playing EVE casually is you won't burn yourself out and can logoff knowing that your character will be better at your particular focus the next time you login. :-)
"I play Tera for the gameplay"
CCP's forward thinking use of time based skill increase is the catalyst for casual players. I go for weeks w/o playing or sometimes months..and I'm right on schedule with my skill plan/options. I don't know of a game that is more casual-friendly. You WILL run into trouble if you are in 0.0/WH space as POS's require fuel, sov issues, etc. If you are an empire/lo sec player, casual play is an absolute possiblity.
I would be leery of committing to a group of people and agreeing to mobilize/attack/defend null sec space being a casual player. It requires alot of time and cooperation.
However, casual play is well within your reach. Good luck.
Playing: BF4/BF:Hardline, Subnautica 7 days to die
Hiatus: EvE
Waiting on: World of Darkness(sigh)
Interested in: better games in general
Eve online PVP = GANKFEST, nothing more.
I'm sure there are plenty of Corps around that will gladly accept someone who only plays a few hours a few nights a week. I'm still raiding in WoW 3 nights a week and having fun in Faction Warfare the other nights. With the time-based skill system, I can keep training on those nights I raid and not feel like I'm falling behind or hurting my progress.
EVE PVP is fun when you train up for fun ships, and learn how to make cash to fund those ships. you can make good isk casually. red vs blue and faction warfare are casual pvp scenes. you also need a good active corp that organizes roams often.
2-3 hours a few evenings a week and a few more at the weekends is a pretty normal amount for most players.
I'd say it's more a limitting factor ( though not impossible ) if you can't play for sustained ( 2-3 hours ) periods of time since that's how long the average roam lasts. Eventually you tend to end up somewhere that suits the way you play.
As someone else said the isk making side is a pain, though you can buy gametime and sell that for isk, which is more than feasible for keeping yourself in cheaper stuff. As you develop in the game you should find it takes less and less effort to make more and more isk. Hence the old Eve addage 'fly what you can afford to lose'.