This post is for new players, others please just skip it.
EVE doesn’t require a spreadsheet or third party software to play, at least not for most of the playerbase. Developers have simplified many things in EVE, and the new player experience is much less painful. Why am talking about this? A friend of mine refused to take the 60 day free trial from me and I asked him why. So he claimed that EVE is overly complicated and he doesn’t want to waste his time to learn how to play a game like that. He bought SW:TOR eventually.
I am here to tell you that EVE Online is much simpler than you were made to believe.
No learning skills anymore
There used to be a Learning group of skills that improve your character’s learning attributes. To train effectively, a new player had to learn the Learning skills first, having to stick to the rookie ship until learnings are done. CCP has decided this is unnecessary and removed the skills, granting every character attribute points they would get from maxed Learning skills.
New player can immediately start training for a better ship and weapons, so the fun literally starts on day one.
Tutorial and career missions are enough to learn the basics
EVE GUI can be initmidating at first: most games start with an empty action bar, but in EVE you get a NEOCOM filled with icons right away. Just let Aura guide you and follow the tutorial. You will quickly learn that EVE GUI is basically a few important things to remember:
– overview is your friend – alle you need is to customize filters and columns to suit your playstyle
– fitting window and a basic guideline of “follow the ships bonuses” for fitting ships
– under no circumstances don’t take “free” stuff from yellow cans in space
No third party software is needed to calculate tank or dealt damage
Thanks to Crucible, all you need is in the fitting window now. No Excel or EFT (a third party app: Eve Fitting Tool) is needed anymore.
What next? Just join a player run corporation. Other corpies will most likely answer all of your questions (unless they are new to the game as well). Academy corporations are specifically aimed at helping new players – click “People and Places” and search for “EVE University” (or E-UNI ticker).
Player-owned-station maintenance
Before Crucible one needed to buy 9 (sic! nine) different kinds of fuel for their own starbase (of course specific amount of every type). Crucible made it much easier by implementing fuel blocks – just one type of fuel. This makes spreadsheet obsolete again.
Do you need to use a spreadsheet to play EVE then?
I wouldn’t say that the industrial side of EVE is easy, copared to other MMOs. Crafting in EVE can take many steps, and the problems start when you want to see if you’re making profit or not. Production can be a single step for simple tech I ships and modules, or multiple steps for tech II and tech III. This requires an out of game tool to keep track of expenditures and calculate the profit margins.
If you are happy with just blowing stuff up, you will never make any use of spreadsheets for EVE.
RixxJavix said that “For some [EVE] it is [Excel in space], but I can honestly say I’ve never ever used a spreadsheet or tracked data in over three years of playing!“. He is a known Tusker pirate, so you can rest assured, he is good at what he is doing.
Now, if you’re ready for 21 days of adventure in New Eden, just contact me – I’ll get you an exclusive extended trial invitation!