EVE: How is this game?

[Bigfish]

Just moderately curious, what is EVE like? From what I've gathered, its mostly ship combat, with some skilling up you can do while off line. From what I've heard, the game is largely a PvP fest or a "mine Asteroids" thing, both of which sound good. I'm curious what a boxer generally does in the game. Do you have one ship and your alt characters act as gunners or repairs or what not, or a bunch of ships that act like a fleet? Also, how difficult is it to box? Are there follows and assists and the like?

[KvdM]

From what I've heard, the game is largely a PvP fest or a "mine Asteroids" That sums up the basics of the game. It becomes interesting when you get involved in corporate politics, get dragged into wars, etc.

[turbonapkin]

I've been playing Eve for five years with seven accounts, however I had never even considered it multiboxing until I started boxing wow. Key broadcasting is only helpful to a minor degree, there is no macro system and the equivalents to /follow are mouse-controlled and less useful to a multiboxer.

In PVP, Eve only shines when you come close to or break through the extremely high glass ceiling the game suffers from. Multiboxing PVP is more of a window management game where each of your ships are playing different roles. At one point I was PVPing with a carrier (drone ship), recon (cloaker - used for intelligence gathering, hunting out targets), and two DPS characters set up to complement one another. I was also flying a dreadnaught on another character in a completely different fight on the other side of the eve universe. As you essentially have to manage each client seperately, this becomes a real physical drain over time and the rewards do not meet the risk. Nowadays I stick to a cloaker and a dps, this is the setup that every successful Eve PVP'r uses. If you can break that glass ceiling you will find the most rewarding PVP of any game, be it solo, piracy, anti-piracy or alliance fleet based PVP. It is all fantastic and it will make your heart race every time.

PVE mission running is a real bore once you have gone through all of the content. There is nothing that comes close to the quality, challenge or diversity that you see in wow raiding and the rewards are almost offensive. However, this is one of the easiest areas to multibox as lightning fast reactions are not needed.

Industry and the financial markets are vast, complicated and dynamic - we could discuss them to death however there is no major multibox element here apart from mining and research.

Meta-gaming - scamming, griefing, sucide-ganking etc. are rife and accepted. I don't see a major boxer aspect here but if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them :)

RMT is accepted via the appropriate channels - you can sell store-bought game timecards ingame for ingame currency (ISK). Character purchasing (with ISK) is also accepted via the appropriate channels - this is a potential inroad for all the rich multiboxing miners out there looking for a higher skilled character.


The best advice I can give anyone who is open to getting the real experience of the game is to get yourself into a player alliance that holds its own space - experience the truely player-driven content - the politics, the wars, the fleet battles and you will start to see what Eve is about. Multiboxing miners are quite an attractive proposition to player alliances as they make a significant contribution to the alliance finances via taxes and what not, so get out of secure space and mine that crokite :)

Sorry for the wall of text, but I am rather passionate about this game as it is my first MMO :P

[Starbuck_Jones]

I didnt play eve very long, but to this date it is still one of the best looking games ive ever seen. I found it a little boring and mellow. The music was nice and put me to sleep after 6 beers w/o a problem.

[aNiMaL]

I only started a few days ago and I'm enjoying exploring the game atm,
I'm trying every aspect that is in reach for me.

2 nights ago I had a little mining operation going, I have to admit it got kinda boring tho,
but hey, it worked great combining the operation with an attempt to burn down 10-man Sarth3D without touching drakes.
In between wipes I had time to dump the cargo in secure containers and replace the containers with new ones as soon as they filled up.
I'm enjoying trying to maximize the efficiency by using modules on my ship and trying to fit MOAR MINELASERZ.

Went into a Deadspace last night just to check it out, (closest to an instance in other mmo's as far as I understood)
it was a bit of a dissapointment, went in with 2 ships to kill 2 rogue droid which died on the first hit,
jumped through 3 ancient gates and only found 2 empty containers at the end.
Might be my nubness and I just didn't understand what I was supposed to do.

Missions are kind of boring indeed, but a great way to learn basic combat and navigation,
I usually do one mission when I start playing and hope it's space is full of asteroids,
so I can warp in secure containers with my main and return with a miner while my second char salvages the wrecks,
and joins with a miner after that.
I read something about keeping a mission in your log when you find it's space is full of roids,
the roids would repop the day after, but they didn't for me so I guess they patched that.

Market is something I'm still struggling with,
I guess it only gets interesting to haul goods to another station once you can haul enough.
The 20k m3 veldspar I dragged 10 jumps around to sell for a bit more wasn't that much more,
so in the end I would've earned more if I would've kept on mining and just sold it in the same place I mined it.

Just some new player experience I wanted to share ;)
Reading people their comments talking about "imba ship which I only found out after looking the item up in Evemon, and noticing i still have to train ~2 months to be able to fly one" can be quite confusing,
but I'm starting to understand more and more daily.
I guess this is what co-workers feel like when the 3 wow players we have talk about their experiences :P

[Souca]

Meta-gaming - scamming, griefing, sucide-ganking etc. are rife and accepted. I don't see a major boxer aspect here but if anyone has any ideas I would love to hear them :)Well, mulitboxing for suicide runs would let you take out Hulks and other expensive ships in 0.5 space, which could yield some nice ISK once the word gets out that you can kill a miner before CONCORD does you in. Yuo'd want to have 3-5 characters able to fly destroyers, I'm thinking Catalyst fitted with Regulated Light Ion blasters, Magnetic Field Stabilizers and a warp scrambler. The scrambler is optional, since you shoudl be able to down the hulk before he can align, but the scrambler would also let you get people that are smart enough to pre align. Add in an extra character as a salvager and maybe a looter (will CONCORD kill you if you loot illegally or will you just get an aggression timer?). The upside for multiboxing is that you could form your own gank squad. Destroyers are cheap enough that you could lose 4-5 of them, and you will in 0.5, and you would only need a 15 mil ransom to turn a profit. Also, if you have a character that hands around, but doesn't attack, you would be able to pod the player as well, offering even more potential for profit. I'm of the opinion that if a player turns down a ransom for his ship, you should charge him more for his pod. The cheapest outcome for the victim should always be the one that doesn't require you any risk.

Since suicide ganks are pretty easy to control, I don't think you'd lose anything by multiboxing them. Target. Fire. CONCORDED. Rinse. Repeat.

Market is something I'm still struggling with,
I guess it only gets interesting to haul goods to another station once you can haul enough.
The 20k m3 veldspar I dragged 10 jumps around to sell for a bit more wasn't that much more,
so in the end I would've earned more if I would've kept on mining and just sold it in the same place I mined it.Unless you are refining the ore, you're better off selling it local from a time perspective. If you have good refining you can make som extra profit by moving the minerals since they only take up 0.01m3 per. Once you get a little bit of money set aside, you will also be able to wait for a price you like before you sell. Tritanium varies from 3.90 to 4.50 in some regions. If I can't get more than 4.00 for it I'll generally sit on it and just sell when someone puts in a more attractive buy order in a day or two. The nice thing about mining is you will always convert time into ISK. The real skill is figuring out how to minimize the time and maximize the ISK.

Edit: Be sure to sign up on the Eve Multiboxers thread ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/index.php?page=Thread&threadID=20399') so we can get in touch in game. If you need isk or something, chances are I can help you out.

- Souca -

[PyrostasisTDK]

Market is something I'm still struggling with,
I guess it only gets interesting to haul goods to another station once you can haul enough.
The 20k m3 veldspar I dragged 10 jumps around to sell for a bit more wasn't that much more,
so in the end I would've earned more if I would've kept on mining and just sold it in the same place I mined it.
The market is one of those things thats rather complicated for folks with out either an economics degree or massive amounts of patience. Once someone shows you the basics... you kind of hit yourself over the head and are like...wtf didnt I ever notice this. Someone showed me a few tips a few months back, and with in a few weeks I was going from 50mil isk a week casually, to 400 - 500 million isk a week casually.

There are a 100 million different methods for making isk on the market. Jita is your main hub. Think of it as walmart. Its usually good to have a character logged there. Then you can do a few different things.

Take 2 or 3 toons to different regions. They dont have to be far from Jita, just different regions. Open up Jita market, and the other 3 regions market. Sort Sell orders (top window) from cheapest to most expensive, then sort the bottom window from Most expensive to cheapest.

What this is basically telling you in laymans terms. The bottom are people buying the item, top are people selling it. If people are buying it for 5,000 isk, and then selling it for 20,000 isk. Then you can make 15k profit per item. Granted thats a 300% profit margin and most items wont have that good... and if they do, not for long.

However, over time you will find items that will usually have a decent margin. Buy those where they are cheap, and sell them were they are expensive. Pretty simple stuff... but... it takes a lot of research, and knowing what is used by who, where, and what for.

But how do I know what to buy and sell? There are millions of items!

Well, thats actually fairly simple. Run 3 or 4 missions take ALL your loot, and ship it to jita, then fire up your three alts, and start looking item by item. Will probably take you a few hours, but at the end of it, you should ahve a decent idea of whats good from your mission loot, and get started. Read the channels, Read the forums, and find the good deals.

Remember to start with cheap items. Its better to make a 10% profit that doesnt kill your wallet, than invest heavily for a large number. Remember prices can change at the drop of the hat. If you spend all your money on one item that has a massive trade range, and then get to your location only to find out someones beat you to it and you are now stuck with 5000m3 of something at half value... you will regret it. Start small, always keep some cash back just in case, and have fun.

[RobinGBrown]

Well, mulitboxing for suicide runs would let you take out Hulks and other expensive ships in 0.5 space, which could yield some nice ISK once the word gets out that you can kill a miner before CONCORD does you in. Yuo'd want to have 3-5 characters able to fly destroyers, I'm thinking Catalyst fitted with Regulated Light Ion blasters, Magnetic Field Stabilizers and a warp scrambler. The scrambler is optional, since you shoudl be able to down the hulk before he can align, but the scrambler would also let you get people that are smart enough to pre align. Add in an extra character as a salvager and maybe a looter (will CONCORD kill you if you loot illegally or will you just get an aggression timer?). The upside for multiboxing is that you could form your own gank squad. Destroyers are cheap enough that you could lose 4-5 of them, and you will in 0.5, and you would only need a 15 mil ransom to turn a profit. Also, if you have a character that hands around, but doesn't attack, you would be able to pod the player as well, offering even more potential for profit. I'm of the opinion that if a player turns down a ransom for his ship, you should charge him more for his pod. The cheapest outcome for the victim should always be the one that doesn't require you any risk.

Since suicide ganks are pretty easy to control, I don't think you'd lose anything by multiboxing them. Target. Fire. CONCORDED. Rinse. Repeat.
As a multiboxer you could use trial accounts for your suicide bombers - would need a separate PC to run the trial account though.

There's a heavy security rating hit for attacking ships in high sec meaning that any character doing more than a few attempts will no longer be able to play in high sec space

So using trial accounts and disposable charcters is probably the way to go - basic skills you need will cost you a few million and destroyers are about a million each so a disposable account will not set you back that much

Nuke some miners in a 0.5 sec system, get a rep, and then charge them 'protection' money on a regular basis - that way your investment will pay off with a minimum of work - you could alternatively use suicide ganks to keep miners out of a system that you want to mine for yourself.

And I'm pretty sure it all falls within the EVE 'hardcore PVP' rules - they've stated many times that suicide attacks are not an exploit (I can't verify this with a link though)

Edit - if people put a reward on your disposable gank toon remember to kill him with the next gank toon and claim the reward!

[Mukade]

Using trial accounts or freshly made (and soon to be deleted) characters to get around the security status penalty inherent in suicide ganking is considered an exploit (suicide ganking is fine, but you accept the consequences for doing it). Someone only has to make a petition saying they just got killed by a bunch of new characters.

You want to suicide gank repeatedly, you'll just have to farm your security status back up.


Sources:

http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=818978&page=2#43
http://www.eveonline.com/ingameboard.asp?a=topic&threadID=717899&page=1#4

(scroll down for GM response on the first one).