I told that EVE Online is just as easy to in the early game as WoW. I still hold it that it's not harder to do it good. However I faced what makes it hard for a social person: in EVE you must own up your mistakes or you can't progress and have fun. In WoW if you suck, even if you suck terribly, at the level of melee arcane mage, spirit cloth warrior and so on you'll "progress" (actually you don't increase your place on the ladder as everyone else "progresses"), and you can have fun. In EVE you lose ISK and if you are dumb enough to not upgrade your clone, skill points.
I have my first EVE kill mail, and no, I haven't kill anyone, I just lost my ship. How? I went to another (high security) system and the route contained one low sec jump. I died in like 2 seconds after leaving jump cloak.
I did nothing against the pilots who destroyed my ship and my pod. My cargo hold was empty. I posed no threat to them. I did not enter restricted area. They just camped that gate and killed anyone crossing it. They are mean, bad people, BOO! These are all true, but completely useless. However a social, who thinks on the ethical level can't ignore it. Bad people are not supposed to win. I did nothing ethically wrong, so I am not at fault, there is nothing I should do better. The game sucks for allowing such behavior.
An a-social person thinks on a practical level and believes that he is in control of his life, therefore his fate is the result of his actions. I did something wrong to end up with a destroyed ship. What were the mistakes?
What did I learn? At first to not enter low security systems (below 0.5). Secondly, if something is so lucrative that I just can't miss it, do the following:
Finally to avoid scaring anyone away from EVE, let me tell that the lost value was re-farmed in one and a half hour, semi-afk, all I had to do is press "jump" on the next yellow colored gate every minute, and pick up or sell the cargo in the stations once in 10 minutes. Players of "no-loss" games are used to think of game items as very hard to get. In EVE you can lose them but you can gain them much faster than an 379 piece in WoW.I have my first EVE kill mail, and no, I haven't kill anyone, I just lost my ship. How? I went to another (high security) system and the route contained one low sec jump. I died in like 2 seconds after leaving jump cloak.
I did nothing against the pilots who destroyed my ship and my pod. My cargo hold was empty. I posed no threat to them. I did not enter restricted area. They just camped that gate and killed anyone crossing it. They are mean, bad people, BOO! These are all true, but completely useless. However a social, who thinks on the ethical level can't ignore it. Bad people are not supposed to win. I did nothing ethically wrong, so I am not at fault, there is nothing I should do better. The game sucks for allowing such behavior.
An a-social person thinks on a practical level and believes that he is in control of his life, therefore his fate is the result of his actions. I did something wrong to end up with a destroyed ship. What were the mistakes?
- Ignoring that 0.4 security is worlds apart from 0.5. 0.5 isn't that different from 1.0. Attacks against you is responded by the NPC police who destroy the attacker, therefore you are only in danger if you carry something really valuable, or you rarely meet with some really obnoxious figure who is ready to waste currency to grief people. In 0.1-0.4 systems only the weak sentry guns responds to aggression and he loses some security standings (which will affect him only on the long run).
- I was unaware that an empty ship still drops valuable loot. According to the killshot 1M ISK booty was collected by the pirate. This mistake made me believe that only lolkids would attack me while this attack was a profitable adventure.
- I forgot that insurance covers the ship but not the modules. Those lost Cargohold Expander II modules cost 2x more than the ship!
What did I learn? At first to not enter low security systems (below 0.5). Secondly, if something is so lucrative that I just can't miss it, do the following:
- Have a frigate and 3x Expanded Cargohold I (not II) modules in my cargohold. These modules are dirt cheap.
- Dock at the station of the last safe system.
- Assemble the frigate and jump. If they are random griefers who shoot on anything, I lose a frigate only.
- If I'm not instant-killed, stay and watch. If red or yellow guys (pilots with low security standing) are standing near the gate, turn back and forget it.
- If no one is visible, return to the station, remove the Cargohold II modules, leave them on the station, put on Cargohold I and jump with the transport ship. Start turning the ship to random directions to give time even to the slowest pirate to open fire if he wants. If he does, I lost an empty, top insured ship with only cheap modules.
- If no one comes, go forward, pick up 1/4 of the cargo and carry back to the safe station. If they successfully attack now, I lose the naked ship and 1/4 cargo.
- Jump again and this time carry the other 3/4. Unless a pirate just arrived or he was so smart to not attack before, I'll make the transport.
- Dock in the station, put the Cargohold II modules back, pick up the other 1/4 cargo and the repackaged frigate and go home.
PS: could anyone tell me what the hell are they building in Jita? 90% of my transports are going there.
32 comments:
Jita is just a trade hub, everyone buys/sells from there and then hauls it somewhere else.
Jita is basically the trade hub of the galaxy; I can't name the exact reason but it's got something to do with Calderi being popular at one point and it being a convenient site. Long story short it's become the Wall Street of EVE...except you can kill the the other traders if you do it right. A great deal of manufacturing goes on there, plus players will pick up goods there and haul them to other places.
When I played many years ago I knew some people who would buy materials there and carrier-jump them to 0.0.
Jita is the main trade hub of New Eden, it's not really an industry hub per se. Whatever you want, it's probably for sale there at great quantities. Sure, you could occasionally get things cheaper from other systems, but getting everything you need from the same station (Jita 4-4) is very convenient, especially if you deal with volumes that require the use of a freighter. Even PvP pilots like to shop there, because they can buy the ship and the fitting at the same time.
getting 1M from your ship, trust me, wasn't much at all. That's about 30 gold in wow terms.
Nice read as always. I find your inability to comprehend senseless violence, killing for it’s own sake and the joy of hurting your fellow man disturbing.... As I said in the prior post, PvP and blowing up ships in this game is not the means, it’s the end goal. People will shoot on sight anything that isn’t blue, just for the sake of having pvp, ‘gudfites’, and getting killmails. It’s primordial. And if you are in low/null sec, it is implicitly assumed you are there to pvp, to blow up stuff and to be blown up. Either you understand and accept this at a fundamental level, or you will quit the game shortly. This game was essentially made by a bunch of drunk Ultima Online playing Icelanders who got pissed when UO added a PVE zone…
I remember a few months back, we were on strategic deployment next to Geminate I think, we moved all our stuff to some staging system in preparation for some war. On one evening, being bored and not having anything to do we (a gang of about 6-10) went camping a lowsec gate just for the sake of it. We killed anything that passed through, empty freighters, battleships, scouts, cyno frigates, everything. And this is just a legitimate form of pvp…
Required reading:
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/68
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/65
http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/spymaster/55
Now, technical details:
- you can set your autopilot to avoid certain systems – obviously this can lead you on looong detours. Risk v reward friend
- Aunenen is a major chokepoint for freighters on some major trade routes. And where there’s chokepoints, there’s pirates, criminals, and pvp
- you don’t need to cart a frigate with you. Every time you dock at any station where you don’t have a ship in a capsule, you get a free noobship (Ibis), so you can use that to scout. So leave your industrial at a station, get in a capsule at another station, get free ibis.
- you will soon learn why most people have two accounts, and join corporations. EVE is the worst single player game ever made. You were warned.
- learn to use d-scan. There are a lot of tactics to camp gates – like campers can be offgrid pre-aligned to the gate, they can have cloaked scouts on the other side, tacklers with logis to tank the gate guns. Much to learn you still have…
- I doubt they even bothered with your cargo expanders, or given you even a second thought. A Cynabal costs some 250mil, people who pvp in cynas are filthy rich (and l33t). You were killed simply for being in the wrong place, in the wrong ship.
- Learn to wiki: http://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Jita_%28System%29. You will spend more time reading about the game than playing the game…
- moving stuff between markets to sell is just one way to make money (I would be bored to death in 2 minutes). There are infinite possibilities. Find them…
And for a Goblin, Jita 4-4 has the smallest Bid-Ask spreads on the widest variety of items, typically in volume. Depending on the kind of trading you do, that's either very good or very bad.
Finally to avoid scaring anyone away from EVE [...]"
So to recover from the gank, you had to spend 1.5 hours of your time playing an MMO "semi-AFK." But now you are totally back to where you were, and will avoid future losses of 1.5 hours of your time by making 3+ trips transporting goods any time you make one 0.4 jump? And that is suppose to not scare people away?
EVE is EVE, it caters to its own group of players and that's fine. But there really isn't much overlap at all in the Venn Diagram of WoW comparisons. Even if you are grinding heroics, at least you are playing your character, which you presumably find entertaining.
I watched a friend play eve once. He went out to mine an asteroid, with his hand hovering over his jump hotkey. He was wired up like a vietnam combat vet watching saving private ryans opening sequence. He sat like that tense as heck for 20 mins and just as I thought he would relax, another ship appeared and moved towards him. The tension grew as it came closer for ten minutes (real time) then its course diverged away and it started mining its own asteroid. they watched each other warily until I got so bored I eventually nagged my friend to log and come to the pub for beer. For 2 hours he had sat their his hand hovering over his escape key, unable to risk going to the bathroom it seemed. I knew then the game wasnt for me.
Tell me Gevlon if every ganker caused you to lose 1.5hrs/play of experience in wow, how long ago would you have quit?
@Anonymous: your friend did not understand the situation so he couldn't relax. The point of the post is exactly to LEARN.
I won't be low-sec ganked again as I won't go there until I'm ready.
@Anon - my soul died a little inside when I read your story. You make me want to clone jump my Catalyst alt to hisec right now and liberate some poor miner(bot) from his eternal suffering. Mining is horrible, don't ever do it.
It is a few years are since I played EVE but I remember some things: There is an option on the in game map that colours systems by pod kills in the last hour. This is useful for judging how dangerous a region is before you enter it.
I also remember that you can get surprisingly far in a cheap fast frigate. I used to do a regular run between Jita and Rens (two major trading hubs) which passed through a pirate infested black spot called Rancer. I hit gate camps almost every time but always got through thanks to the magic of warp to zero.
Did I mention warp to zero? When you arrive in a new system you are invisible for a few seconds. You need to use that time to find your exit gate and warp to 0m from it. You will still have a scary few moments if there is a camp on the exit gate but a fast frigate can usually make it.
None of the above works in 0.0 by the way because gate camps use bubbles which stop any ship from warping. However the most dangerous part of 0.0 is the entrance from high security space. Once you get through that (by picking a lucky time of day) then you can fly through many systems without seeing a soul. It is very hard for a solo player to make money in 0.0 though because of the lack of friendly stations.
Congratulations, you've just discovered scouting. If you have a second account and you are multiboxing, you can do it faster. Oh and btw, if someone is not visible, that doesn't mean that there is nobody there. I learned that the hard way when a ship with a cloak field snatched my last kill in a DED complex.
"I won't be low-sec ganked again as I won't go there until I'm ready. "
Define ready, please.
The method is OK, but not 100% reliable. In the time you take to jump back and fly back in your (I am guessing Badger II), the gate could be camped again. Also, try to build a waypoint system. A set of random points in the low-sec regions for you to warp to. If you warp gate-to-gate during a chase, you will eventually lose.
For example, when you warp to a gate, you warp within 10KM of it (from what I remember). Keep flying and go 10KM further past where you came out of warp. Bookmark this spot. Next time when you warp to this spot, you will warp DIRECTLY into the gate, and thus be able to jump immediately.
@Bronte - those warp mechanics are ancient and have been changed years ago. These days, there is warp to zero - your ship will warp directly at zero KM to whatever you are warping to, so those sets of 10k bookmarks are totally obsolete.
Let's not confuse the man with too much information about bubbles and tacticals and what not. All in good time... Right now the most important thing is to 1) get into the proper mindset after years of being trapped in cozy instanced battlegrounds and 2) read, read read a lot.
a few notes on this:
one of the most valued 'drops' when killing someone is the killmail, also there is allways the hope for collecting some delicious tears
looking at your fit, such lossmails are entertaining the guys shooting you and therefor you provided additional value to the kill, try at least having the modules in the right size for the ship (a badger is considered medium (cruiser/bc) size.
the strategy you are proposing might work in single cases, but you might simply run into timing problems.
security status means nothing - i shoot at what i can see, and im +4.1 atm.
when new to the game, the best way is to avoid low-sec space.
1 - join Eve University chat channel "E-UNI" iirc. ask questions. some of the most helpful players in a notoriously unfriendly universe.
2 - haul trading(especially in a badger) <<<< station trading.
3 - Jita is the biggest trade hub. Amarr, Rens, Hek, Dodixie are the next biggest (in order of volume)
This is why i said EVE is completely different than WoW.
As for Jita, it is the main trade hub of EVE 5,000+ systems mainly because from Jita its kinda in the middle of other 5-6 big (but not as big as Jita) trade hubs.
As for going in low sec when you will be "ready"...You can be ready now, just use a damn scout, or go to next step of trading : trade SMALL but VALUABLE items, like rig mats , expensive minerals, etc.
Fit a frigate (pref one with good inertia NOT with cargohold expanders but with inertial stabilizers) and you can have a 90% probability to not even get targeted before you warp off.
You need to know that an interceptor or assault frigate can target you BEFORE you warp...but they will be obliterated by sentry guns.
Only some cruisers and all battlecruiser and above can sustain sentry guns fire, BUT they cannot target you BEFORE you warpout.
There is also the disco battleship...well, this will kill anything from a frig to indy mark I transporters, but hey, its EVE :D, shit happends EVEN IF YOU THINK YOU READY.
My sincere advise : if you need to make your isk traveling thru low sec systems, try get along with those low sec pirates.They will allow you safe passage for a fee.
I guess in low security systems it is also more efficient for the pirates to open fire without determining your cargo first. Doing so would only give you time for an escape.
You can configure the market window to hide orders in low security systems. This does of course not mean that you don't have to pass through them. I found it a good habit to check the course before I would spend larger sums at stations I haven't traded before.
I'm also pretty new to the game, started about 3 weeks ago and doing only trading too. So far I'm doing pretty well and have switched the last few days from hauling myself to giving out more and more courier contracts. While this means that I have to share some of my earnings I do so happily as I save a lot of my time, can move far more cargo this way and can completely divert my risk of the transport onto the courier.
"I did nothing against the pilots who destroyed my ship and my pod. My cargo hold was empty. I posed no threat to them. I did not enter restricted area."
Sounds like the first time Tobold went exploring :)
And you did so something against them: you violated their space.
In addition to their being mean people, people also don't know the difference between a harmless n00b and an alt account scout. They shoot first and don't ask a thing.
> I find your inability to comprehend senseless violence, killing for it’s own sake and the joy of hurting your fellow man disturbing....
This is why I have trouble playing EVE. It's not about some social idea that you shouldn't get hurt unless you do something wrong, it's that EVE has developed this painfully anti-social crowd of players. People who act _against_ their own self-interest merely to be annoying to some random player they don't even know. Even ignoring the trolls, the whole 'not blue, shoot it' crowd are disturbingly violent.
Most games restrain players from such horrible behavior. In real life there are severe consequences that deter this behavior. In EVE it's encouraged.
I'd love a better opportunity for players to police the community, such as by enhancing the bounty system. Instead of a one time shot you can just get your alt to handle, make it a ratio, where say if you do 10million isk damage to a pilot with a bounty, you'll get 1million isk as a reward and his bounty will go down by 1m isk. Make it so you can aggress against someone with a bounty above a threshold even in high sec. Players can have a profession of just running around high sec beating the crap out of the gankers and pirates.
Your scouting strategy will still get you killed and ganked: you're spending too many jumps in choke point low sec systems and giving the pirates your most valuable EVE asset: your pay time.
EVE if really goodabout teaching you the time value of money. Often a good deal now is far more valuable than the best deal that takes 45 minutes to pick up and assemble. The most time condemning post of loosing a ship if having to find everything you need to refit it.
I suspect a 10 jump detour around your low sec system would save you time and ISK.
'In EVE you can lose them but you can gain them much faster than an 379 piece in WoW'
Remember though you lost a cheap ship and a few modules worth very little that Wow equivalent is more like a repair than a loss.
I was wondering what lo-sec was like. After playing for a few weeks now there is so much to learn/consume in hi-sec so there is no real need to go there anytime soon. I was thinking of training the trading skills in order to generate additional cash while doing some mining.
@Michael
Not all players are bad in Eve. I have been given 8.5 Million isk so far by players but then again you may think I am being set up for a sting.
Wow, the carebears have so many tears to shed, they're now depositing them on blogs as well as in game.
> This is why I have trouble playing EVE. It's not about some social idea that you shouldn't get hurt unless you do something wrong, it's that EVE has developed this painfully anti-social crowd of players. People who act _against_ their own self-interest merely to be annoying to some random player they don't even know. Even ignoring the trolls, the whole 'not blue, shoot it' crowd are disturbingly violent.
There are a lot of logical flaws in this comment, but let me focus on one. If my desire is to blow up another person's ship, and I do so by popping someone mining in a belt, how is that "against my own self-interest"? My self-interest is blowing up internet spaceships. I have acted to carry out that interest.
Glad to see you giving EVE a try, Gevlon. I'll be interested to see where you go in the market space. Production? Planetary Interaction? Scamming? The opportunities are endless.
In a pinch, you can scout in your pod, and in hi-sec or low-sec you should never lose your pod. Pods warp virtually instantly.
The Eve University suggestion is a good one. Even if you don't join the UNI, their chat channels (open to the public) and website are a gold mine of information. For example, their "Overview Guide" wiki page on is a thorough introduction to setting up your interface. You'll soon tailor your overview to your own use, but it really covers all the necessary details, including a "pod saver" tab. :)
Out of curiosity, if you equate socials to ethical thinking, does that mean you consider a-socials to be unethical? What are the ramifications of an admission - a proud admission at that - of being unethical? Do you consider these solely to be game traits or do you believe the socials and a-socials take these traits into the wider world?
As in the past, I'm mostly curious about the philosophy underlying your gaming principles, not to start a pointless argument about the "right" way to play a game with you, as you've proven that your methods - despite how I may feel about them - are very successful. At any rate, if you'd indulge me, I'd be appreciative.
@Stubborn: yes, I think that being a-social means ethic-less. I also believe that such attitude brings success both ingame and real life.
Read Monday post for more details.
Stop conflating social with stupid. Socials are not necessarily concerned with ethics nor necessarily irrational.
If my desire is to blow up another person's ship, and I do so by popping someone mining in a belt, how is that "against my own self-interest"?
It's against your interest because presumably you have no interest in being destroyed yourself. Killing everything indiscriminately fosters a culture of everyone killing indiscriminately, which will include you at some point. Since you desire to not be destroyed, it is against your interest to support that culture.
That is how the logic works in enlightened self-interest, in any case.
Obviously a goblin can abuse the mechanism by killing indiscriminately in EVE (short term gains > an MMO culture you might not even be a part of 6 months from now), or not purchasing health insurance and relying on mandated free hospital care IRL.
At some point, the distinction between goblin behavior and M&S behavior becomes moot.
It's against your interest because presumably you have no interest in being destroyed yourself.
That's an assumption that is simply not true. It's not 'having no interest in losing my ship', it's 'I don't care, it's a 10m Catalyst to take out that 60m mining barge and get some tears too'.
Or stepping it up, using a Talos (60m+) to gank a Covetor in highsec, just because they can. Is it isk-inefficient? Sure. Then there's some other value that the ganker is getting from it to make the action worthwhile. It's simply a matter of finding what that payoff is. See: http://eve-fail.blogspot.com/2011/12/insightful-commentary-on-insurance.html
Well, to each his own.
Given the amount of cunning, knowledge, and time it appears to take to do anything in EVE, I suspect most of the hardcore players would be better off starting some kind of small business to run in their spare time. Not only would it be about as fun, but they'd actually make some money doing it.
Personally, while I like PVP more than most, I'm not particularly interested in paying to mess around in a game that appears to be 95% incredibly boring spreadsheet wrangling & traveling to various places and 5% the excitement of getting fending off bandits.
Perhaps the reason there are so many casuals in MMOs is because most of the people who like this sort of thing can go do it in their real life and actually accomplish something. To me it sure seems like EVE is methadone for people whose real lives are a bit too mundane for their tastes.
You might want to listen to the Eve University corp's lectures on the darker side of Eve.
Suicide Ganking is a business in Eve. If you are going to make money hauling, you need to learn about how it works before some gang nukes you while carrying a billion ISK worth of cargo.
There are also a bunch of scams that can be inflicted on contract haulers that you need to learn about ... the most common being the deposit scam ... requiring a large deposit, and then hunting down and killing the hauler before he can deliver a box full of worthless rocks.
Anon 20:07:
Using that Talos to blow up an ice miner is plenty ISK efficient ... when Goonswarm was paying bounties on dead Mackinaws, Covetors, Hulks, and Orcas in Gallente Ice belts.
Look up the Goonswarm ice blockade some time. Many botters were ganked, many gankers made serious cash, and Goonswarm was able to effect Gallente ice mining products pricing to their financial advantage.
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