I think there is a huge misconception of how eve works. It's not really necessary to fly one of the big ships nor train them. But then I started 2 years ago and have 2 super carriers and a titan. It's about getting into the right corporations find the right source of ISK and play the game the way you want it. If you want to fly a titan, you can do it within two years (or less) if you are smart about it.
However what makes EVE every unique is that a new player is valuable as a 10 year old veteran if they are willing to learn. A small ship can hold a carrier or super carrier in place till reinforcements arrive. It takes you 2 weeks to train into that. Hauling for your corporation in a 1 months old character can be as valuable as having a 100million skillpoint character. It's a sandbox after all and only you decide which route you want to go and how mcuh time you want to spend doing it.
> However what makes EVE every unique is that a new player is valuable as a 10 year old veteran if they are willing to learn.
This is one of the most important bits, and people coming from other games might think it's hyperbole.
For mostly every other game out there, there's always some upgrade to be had until you've hit the very highest level of gear. In EVE, there's a larger set of roles than the Tank/Healer/DPS holy trinity, and while some roles can be quite cash/skill intensive (like piloting capital ships), there are other important roles (like tackling) where you can have near-optimal gear and skills within a very short while.
There is no linear progression of ships in EVE PvP. You don't need, or want, a capital ship for tackling. You want a small, fast, ship capable of literally flying circles around the big ships, fast enough that the big guns can't really hit it. If you focus your skills on it, you can get to the point where you're an effective tackler within a few weeks at most, and within a couple of months you'll have a character that's tackling with the best of them. At that point, it's really up to whether _you_ are up to snuff.
Yeah, this pretty much. A misconception when one looks at the game from outside is that "bigger = better", i.e. a Titan is the best ship in the game and one should strive towards it, just like someone should strive to the max level in WoW or any other MMO because that is the goal of the game.
Not so in eve. Usually, big ships can't hit smaller ships, or do effective damage. A Titan on its own is pretty useless, and it needs a support fleet of all kinds of ships to be effective (or survive).
This trickles down the ship class tree, all the way down to the lowly Frigate-sized ships, which cost a thousandth of what a titan cost, or even less.
Fact! Tackling is my favorite part of fleet combat. I've pulled out battleships when necessary, but buzzing between the huge ships in a Vigil at 4.5km/s and fucking their warp drives is so much fun.
Exactly. When I was in TEST, we enjoyed having newbies, and were happy to shower them in ISK and ships, just as I was when I joined. In the end, it became like a second full time job for me, as I basically just started developing systems for TEST and not actually playing the game.
In retrospect, I would probably have enjoyed a smaller corporation with scrappy gang fights.
There are literally people who will invest months of their time to infiltrate an alliance, gain trust, rise in the ranks to then inflict the maximum amount of damage possible (a practice known as 'awoxing' after a character who made it popular a long time ago). This has lead to a level of paranoia among certain people that it would probably be easier to get a job at a Fortune 500 company than one of those groups.
Furthermore, the biggest coalitions [of alliances] consist of thousands and tens of thousands of players. Some of those operations could be considered at least semi-professional with extensive IT infrastructure and dedicated HR and financial teams.
They also have implemented anti-spying features into the communication channels such as hiding watermarks on forum pages that identify the user account of the person logged in. That way if you took a screenshot and distributed it then they could identify who the leaker is.
Goonswarm six or so years ago would raise 20-30k a year from donations to pay for colo and bandwidth. All hardware was donated from corporate IT takeouts.
I know, right! I can't even be bothered to play a game for 2 months consistently.
The game I've played the longest is GW2, but that's only because I play it semi-socially and casually. Not to mention the very frequent update rate keeps me interested!
EVE seems amazing, and I'm sure I'd love it (never bothered to download it for some reason), but I don't think I could provide that much commitment to a game.
And GW2 is free. That's also the only game I play, because I can play twice a month and I won't feel bad about wasting my money on monthly subscriptions.
(I know there are ways to play EVE for free, but there is no way a casual player could make it.)
However what makes EVE every unique is that a new player is valuable as a 10 year old veteran if they are willing to learn. A small ship can hold a carrier or super carrier in place till reinforcements arrive. It takes you 2 weeks to train into that. Hauling for your corporation in a 1 months old character can be as valuable as having a 100million skillpoint character. It's a sandbox after all and only you decide which route you want to go and how mcuh time you want to spend doing it.