Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
A Few Questions
diaboyos
Member Posts: 209
Been trying to find a good mmorpg again and the other "top" games just aren't doing it for me so I got a few questions bout Eve if I may to all the people who know.
1. Is this a purely PVP environment?
2. What are the death penalties? (regular/pvp)
3. Is it on a ship only or can you walk around too?
4. How's the storage/bank limits? Or is alot of storage not a matter in Eve?
5. Is there player housing?
6. Heard ALOT of bad talk about downtime. Is it really that big of an issue?
7. Is there a free trial?
Thanks to anyone who may shed some light!
====================
Remember man that passes by,
as you are now so once was I.
And as I am so must you be,
prepare yourself to follow me.
Comments
2. No difference. You lose your ship, its cargo and modules fitted. If you have been podded (killed in "escape capsuse") you lose you clone (a small additional sum of ISK), and - if you were too lazy to buy a good clone - a percentage of skills you've trained up to the moment.
3. Ships only
4. Ship cargo is limited (depending on the ship type - battle ships do not take too much cargo, while haulers do). "Hangar" size is not limited.
5. Players may build POS (Player-owned structures) and stattions. It takes a lot of resources, though, so most probably you'll need to join a powerful corporation to do this.
6. 1 hour scheduled downtimes every day; scheduled downtimes when hardware is being upgraded or new patches are applied. Personally, I've never had trobled with logging in to the game; I'm not hardcore 23/7 player, though, so your mileage may vary.
... As far as I see, most bad talk is caused by recent big hardware upgrade when Mr. Merphy gave a visit to CCP, so the upgrade took about 1.5 days instead of expected 1. Still, I haven't heard of any _unscheduled_ downtimes...
7. 14 days free trial. You will be limited to frigates and cruisers, as far as I remember; trials may be upgraded to "normal" accounts at any time without any penalties.
1.) Mainly yes. Theoretically you can initiate aggression against players anywhere, but the NPC police will kill you in the more secure systems. It may be worthwhile to attack players nonetheless. Also in lower security areas and if your corp/allaince has declared war on your targets corp/allaince anything goes anywhere, without NPC police interference.
2.) In both PvE and PvP you ship creates a container when it is destroyed. All the stuff surviving the explosion (determined randomly) can be found there. Yo you can either go back and get it or it gets picked up by the enemy qas spoils of war. In any case it is advisable to insure ships, to minimize the loss. In PvP You are also additionally threatened by getting Podkilled. If the opponent(s) succeed then you lose your current clone (you have to buy a new one as to nto lose Skill points) and all implants you had are destroyed. So all in all death penatly in EVE is surely among the harshest in MMOs, but it is what keeps the game interesting, and there are ways to reuce your loss
3.) Most of the time you see a 3rd person view of your ship.
4.) Storage in stations is not a matter in EVE. Storage in your ship is limited, usually by its size /role. So a frigate has a smaller cargo bay than a battelship, which in turn has a smaller cargo bay than a hauler.
5.) Player owned stations could be viewed as such. They do have a practical use and are not so much for decoration, since their upkeep needs resources. Additionally there are Outpost, though they are far beyond the scope of a single person to build, upkeep and defend.
6.) What you heard may be the daily on hour downtime, which I will assume now. Aside from that there are downtimes when a hardware change is done, or if the database is maintanainced. Counted all together not much or less thant other MMOs. The daily downtime, btw, is needed to optimize database acces and to apply the occassional hotfix.
7.) Yes, a 14 day free trial
------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Mandolin
Designers need to move away from the old D&D level-based model which was never designed for player vs player combat in the first place.
As a player edging on to his fourth year of eve online I think i can answer your questions and try to stay ovjective in doing so.
1. Is this a purely PVP environment?
No, but the environment is developed giving pvp in a braod sense (competition, not just combat but economical and political too) most attention. Don't expect much better then average PVE combat in this game. Do expect player competition and cooperation on unprecedented levels but not limited to combat at all.
2. What are the death penalties? (regular/pvp)
Death penalties are loss of your ship minus the insurance payout as well as loss of all modules fitted on the ship and all cargo in its hold. You can also consequetively get podded wich leads to another financial loss (altho neglible for newer players) and the possible loss of installed implants. All in all, the penalty is prety damn harsh compared to any other game i can think of. But with the amount of teamplay encoutnered in Eve the harsh penalties get offset easily, for new players too.
3. Is it on a ship only or can you walk around too?
Your person is an avatar thats only represented by a picture. When in space you can only see the ship thats holding teh avatar, but you are not your ship. You can't however walk around nor should you expect to be able to in the next couple of years.
4. How's the storage/bank limits? Or is alot of storage not a matter in Eve?
None whatsoever. Unlimited monetary storage, next to unlimited item storage in any location.
5. Is there player housing?
Not as in the traditional sense no. No decorating in Eve, no personalisation of looks. However, making your own personal corporation can be seen as comparable in alot of ways.
6. Heard ALOT of bad talk about downtime. Is it really that big of an issue?
No. There's one hour (or less) of downtime per day for server maintenance (requred due the immense single-shard database), but aside from that the actual server downtime is neglible overall. If you refer to downtime as periods of gameplay spent not doing something specifically very actively then yes, Eve knows alot of downtime. But that's where you will later find the time to do your micro or macro management once you assume roles beyond your personal responsibility for jusst yourself.
7. Is there a free trial?
Yes, see sticky in this forum
A few clarifications:
1. Is this a purely PVP environment?
The star systems in the game world can be divided into categories - '0.0' (zero-zero), 'low-security', and 'high-security'. While you are never restricted as to the type of actions you can take against other players and things in the game world, there are lots of potential consequences dependant on the zone.
If you were to take a hostile action against another player in a high-security zone, the NPC police (CONCORD) will arrive and will turn you to scrap, but it is possible to survive long enough to complete the deed.
A hostile action in low-security space will no cause CONCORD to dispatch you, however, any NPC controlled sentry guns will fire at you, and you are flagged as a criminal to all other players. This means they are free to open fire at you (but not pod) for the next 15 minutes regardless of where you go. Technically, this also happens in high-sec, but you never last long enough for it to make a difference. If you venture into high-sec while criminally flagged, players may and sentries will fire at you, but I think CONCORD won't as they didn't see the act. There are a few other ways to get criminally flagged you will find.
In 0.0 space, the only "law enforcement" you will find is that which is provided by the players themselves. 0.0 space is considered lawless, and a lot of it is controlled by larger player Alliances. Don't expect to be able to settle down in player-sovereign territory without a sizable group of your own, and a bit of political negotiation. 0.0 space is were most combat PVP takes place, typically in groups of ~15, though large 100+ vs 100+ battles are not uncommon.
4. How's the storage/bank limits? Or is alot of storage not a matter in Eve?
Recently, for DB reasons, there was a game wide limit imposed on inventories (whether in hangers or ship cargo holds) of 1000 stacks of items. A stack is a bunch of items of the same type, um.. stacked together. The stack, however, can be as large as you need.
As for banking money wise, all money is handled "electronically". Its not something you have to physically carry around or can be stolen or dropped. Recently, there have been a few Investment Banks set up by players that provide accounts and interest and such.
6. Heard ALOT of bad talk about downtime. Is it really that big of an issue?
As for as announced downtimes, there is the daily 1 hour downtime at 11am GMT and the patches/upgrades. When patches/upgrade are scheduled, the are usually on Tuesdays, starting a 10am GMT and go for about 3 hours. Though, as complex as the EVE server is, sometimes the downtime for patching/upgrades takes longer than expected. Over the past few months, the entire EVE cluster has undergone a complete overhaul to better support the sometimes 25,000+ daily players. The first upgrade took a few hours shorter that was planned. However, Mr. Murphy got his revenge last week when the DB was upgraded, taking over a day to get everything back in working order.
That said, the EVE Devs has always been quick to inform the players about the problems they are facing and what it takes to fix them.
7. Is there a free trial?
You can get a 14 day free trial by following this link.
====================
Remember man that passes by,
as you are now so once was I.
And as I am so must you be,
prepare yourself to follow me.
The only time you should find yourself traveling that many jumps (sounds like between multiple regions) is if you are doing trade runs or relocating for a few days or more to work with a new agent.
Another issue that some people have is that they leave the "Stay Away From Pod Kill Zones" option in the autopilot on. This really doesn't work that well because there is pod killing all the time in Empire through the legal Corp Wars. As a result, it will route you all over the place (or even say the destination is unreachable) because there 'were' people there killing pods who couldn't legally attack you anyway. I recommend turning this off, using the map and your best judgement as to what to do. If its in high sec, you can pretty much bet it was through a corp war, though there are pirates who make suicide kills on player convoys in certain trade systems.
Some really bad agents will have you running all over the place. For an agent, the higher the quality (level is different), the better payout and standing increases you get, in addition to having the mission take place closer to HQ. Move up your agents as fast as possible (look for better quality until the next level is available). But keep in mind that working with an agent long enough will raise their effective quality, and there are some skills that help too.
1) use "normal" jumps
2) use "instajump" bookmarks
While you're using first method, you appear 15 km away from the jumpgate; slow ships may take ages travelling these 15km , while light frigates and shuttles fly over this distance in no time.
The second method will require some effort (or ISK to buy someone else's bookmarks, or good corporation, etc), but you'll be able to jump from gate to gate almost instantly.
So, you may fly afk using autopilot (the flight wil take a lot of time) - or use "instas" to enjoy significiantly reduced travel time. Also, a good logistics will help; in normal circumstances, you have no neet to travel further than 5-6 jumps avay from your "base"
also you can have 1000 stacks of station containers each can have 1000 stacks inside them in any one location because each container is regarded as a seperate DB entry so your hanger can have 1 million stacks of 3 billion units of trit so i guese the challenge here is who can save 3 quadrillion units of trit in there hanger?
Edit: and yes i know each station vault has an upper storage limit way below that but a man can dream cant he?
well, dont know about tritanium, after doing some level 3 and 4 missions i get close to that number of miners I from the loot
1. pure PvP environment: yes and no. While everwhere is open to PvP there are some "checks and balances" to ensure there's no needles ganking of noobs who are leaving the space station for the first time. Be warned, stray too far in the wrong direction and your frozen corpse may find it's wat into another pilots cargo hold.
2. Death penalties: They are welcomely harsh! Loss has purpose to warrant gain. This is the only game I've ever seen which has an awesome balance between acquisistion and loss. There hasn't been a better design for deatlh penalty system by my knowledge. I would no play EVE Online if it were any less brutal.
3. Ship or Avatar: No charactre to walk about with. They, being CCP, are serious about implmenting a way for a player to actually walk around stations and enteract through their humanoid characters. This game is in a class of it's own and if one comes here looking for characters to run and jump around with they _will_ be dissapointed.
4. Storage limits? Practically none other then total icons in a station hangar is 1k. This means you can have millions of units of each item although as long as they are stacked and there's less then 1001 indivually different types stored.
5. Housing. Not really unless you include the hangar as houseing although it's not dynamic other then appearance of the ship you currently have activated. I would _LOVE_ to see dynamic settings within EVE for housing/hangar features. It would put those hundreds of EXOTIC DANCERS to good use!!
6. Downtime? Never been affected me; minor problems during optomization although it's welcomed and expected. There are schedualed downtimes. Skill development is done in realtime so you will have some warning and even recieve advice from CCP to "Set a long skill" if there's going to be downtime.
7. Free trial? ABSOLUTELY!!! 14 days and it's by far the BEST offering for a free trail across most MMO's.
EVE Online is _not_ an instant gratification game as more commonly found in "avatar" games. Think of EVE as a stellar conquest empire builder where logistics can become an asset or a severe liability.
EVE Online allows for an open environment with freedom of exploration and access to content. This is a double edged sword. Some people just lack the concept of what to do in EVE and get lost; easily done.
If you are traviling more then 4-5 jumps either you are lost or are intending to make the travel. If you find your self performing jumps above 6 with returning frequency you should ask for help and have your game play shared so someone can cut down this needless travel.
It's no worse then travling to-from any major city in any other MMO when you don't need to. The difference in EVE is the game _is_ that openly availble to everyone!!
What you need to understand is that eve consists of 5,000 starsystems now when you arrive at a stargate in one of those systems you will arive at the minimum arrival distance of 15 km. Now it can take upto 3 minuites for most slow ships to travel to within jump distance which is 2.5 km. So as you can see eve is trully vast. For example i once needed to travel 40 starsystems in a industial hauler [a cargo carrier] took me 6 hours then i had to return another 6 hours.
However generally you dont need to travel far as there are several market hubs meaning you dont have to travel too far to get what you need [all hubs are player made as is the economy we set the prices too]. As for aids to help travel faster there are some to begine with you have bookmarks which are hard to amke for a newbie. We also ahve afterburners and micro warp drives.
Also frigates can be fast with nanofibre modules fitted.
1. No its not its also a manufacturing enviroment where some people mine ore from asteroids, some people buy the ore to make stuff too. Also some people trade goods like you could in the old elite games.
Soon salvaging will be a valid profesion too when next patch releases the new module.
Smuggling is possable but hard [as it should be].
2.Death penalties well if a PvP person blew up your ship you will eject into a escape pod, you lose your ship and any modules on it [unless some modules are spawned in your ships wreckage]. If your pod gets killed you DIE and get respawned in your station clone. If however that clone is of a low grade then you could lose some skillpoints.
3.you can oly fly around in your ship as its your avitar [ basically in this game the ship literly is you, you are the guy cybaneticly connected to it and yes you do get a crew].
4.unlimited
5. Not exactly you can now build outposts but these are basically stations and cost 100's of billions eacha nd take a month or so to build so far there are 6 i know off ingame.
6. Its only an hour each day and its needed to clean up the servers to keep thing running smoothly.
7.Yep