Eve Blog Banter #16: Relax

Welcome to the sixteenth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

The third Blog Banter of 2010 comes to us from ChainTrap of the Into the unknown with gun and camera EVE Blog. He asks us: “Eve University turns six years old on March 15th; six years spent helping the new pilots of New Eden gain experience and understanding in a supportive environment. Eve is clearly a complicated game, with a ton to learn, so much that you never stop learning. So, the question is; What do you wish that someone had taken the time to tell you when you were first starting out? Or what have you learned in the interim that you’d like to share with the wider Eve community?”

Relax. With all intensity of the Eve Universe; the learning curve, the stakes, the adrenaline rush of combat, it can be easy to lose track of what the point of a game is: having fun. And while Eve is by no means like any other game, the same holds true.

My year and a half in Eve by no means makes me an expert, but it has afforded me multiple times to fuck up and learn from my mistakes. So the list below is by no means “expert advice”, but it is tried advice based on my own experiences (just the same, take them with a grain of salt).

Its ok not to know:

I spent a lot of time when I first started having no idea what I was doing. I trained random skills that I didn’t still don’t need or use, for instance a brief period of identity crisis in which I cross-trained (half-assedly) for Gallente. Do this day, I’ve never used a blaster or flown a Thorax.

A lot of people will tell you to have a training schedule right off the bat and stick to it. While I agree that you probably should eventually, when you’re first starting off it doesn’t matter. Explore every facet Eve has to offer; mine some roids (and realize how insanely boring that is 😉 ), run a mission or two, explore, whatever. Find something that you really enjoy doing in this game and then start training specifically to get better at it.

Skills:

If you are a new player, and you’ve found yourself going through this recent batch of Eve Blog Banter and reading all of these, don’t think it coincidence that almost every single seasoned player has written something about their regret at not training learning skills. They are a pain, but DO IT. They’ll save you months (hell, years) of training down the line and they are immeasurably worth it.

Also, train up your core competency and fitting skills. These will also make a gigantic difference down the line. Getting to a point where you can fit up a ship as its supposed to be fitted without gimping it due to your own lack of PG and CPU fitting skills is a good feeling.

People:

One of the reason I do what I do in this game (mess with mission runners) is my confusion about some people’s insistence on making this massive multiplayer game a solo experience. To the new player: DO NOT play Eve alone! Find a player corp with great people that suit you and it will make the WORLD of difference  in your Eve experience.

A lot of people say “get out of the NPC corp as soon as possible”. While this is true, when you do, find a corp that suits you, your goals in this game, and your play-style. Coming out of my NPC corp, I joined up with a hardcore pvp/pve group with frequent and mandatory ops, a vent server, lists of agents you could and could not run missions for, etc. While this would be a great corp for some people, it really wasn’t for me. For me, it meant taking this game a bit too seriously, and it took the fun out of it.

I hated, HATED, running shitty level 1 missions, and I was literally just about to give up on Eve altogether and close my account when I came across Suddenly Ninjas. I found Tchell Dahhn’s Ninja Manifesto ™ and Kahega’s first ninja salvaging guide and I never looked back. No offense meant to the guys of Minmatar Training Associates, but it just wasn’t for me. Whereas the Ninjas are a perfect match. They’re fun, laid back enough yet mature, and they play the game with the same open-sandbox mentality that I do. You guys are the reason I play this game (/awkward dude-love).

HTFU:

The HTFU mantra actually bugs me, but at its core its true. Train “thick-skin”, “sarcasm”, and “sense of humor” to V as soon as possible. And don’t take things personally; that can flipper or pirate that got the better of you and popped your ship probably has nothing against you personally, they’re just out having fun. I lost my first cruiser and pod to Larkonis Trassler and the Neo Spartans when a shitty, shitty level 1 agent sent me into 0.3 space (is it any wonder I quit missions and found the Ninjas?). After a few minutes of being pissed off, I bought a new ship, learned some better fittings (cut all ties with the worst level 1 agent in Eve), and got one with things.

Also stay the hell out of Jita. Really, unless you have dire business there, just stay out. There are other trade hubs and other mission hubs that don’t invoke crippling lag and aren’t crawling with fail-scammers and trolls dual-screening Eve and 4chan. I learned very quickly that the worst, most irritating players who actually spend more time in station smack talking than out playing the game all live in Jita.

Don’t be afraid:

Don’t be afraid to die. Really. It actually took me a long time to get over this and just put it out of my head. I saw losing a fight as a personal failure on my part, and looking back, there are probably fights that I *could* have won except I was too busy trying to get away and save my skin to properly fight back. Go lose ships. I promise you it will be the best learning experience you have in this game.

Above all else, please remember to have FUN playing this game, because if you’re not doing that, you’re doing it wrong. Congrats to Eve Uni on 6 years.

o7,

-Aiden

1. CrazyKinux: The Three Pillars of Wisdom
2. The Elitist: Helping the new guy/gal
3. Hands Off, My Loots: Nothing Needed
4. Rantuket: Blog Banter 16
5. EVE Opportunist: Nooby Cluey
6. Into the Unknown With Gun and Camera: EVE University
7. Zero Kelvin: We’re the young ones!
8. I am Keith Neilson: Set Your Destination
9. Prano’s Journey: Just Like the Very First Time
10. A Merry Life and a Short One: No Seriously
11. Yarrbear Tales: Nublet 101
12. A Mule In EVE: If I only knew
13. The Planet Risk Show: Dared to be Bold
14. Diary of a Space Jockey: WTH did I get myself into?!
15. EVOGANDA: Why?
16. A Memoir From Space: 16th Blog Banter
17. Death’s Sweetest Kiss: Who What When Where Why How??
18. Freebooted: Beyond the Shortcuts
19. Learning to Fly: Noobing
20. Caldari Outcast: My First Blog Banter Post!
21. Finders and Keepers: Relax
22. More to come soon…

~ by Aiden Mourn on March 16, 2010.