A few questions about EVE

[Knight of Pi]

Hi everyone. I've been looking at this game recently as I saw it was on sale, and the homeworld-ish look pulled me in.

Anyway, I have a few questions about it:
1) Firstly, regarding the demo system. I see that there is a demo from steam, which you register on the eve site for 14 days game time. However, the buddy system gives 21 days game time. Can you only get one of them? Or do they stack? And if you go the buddy route, is it true that a steam purchase won't give them the finder reward?

2)What exactly is the combat like? I've watched a few videos on youtube but I couldn't really see what was happening. From what I can tell you give different commands to your ship, like orbiting range and how to attack?

3) How hard is it to purchase game time with the in-game currency?

4)How pay-to-win is it? I know you can buy stuff with real world money, but I've also heard people saying its not pay to win.

5)How time consuming is the game?

6)What's your favorite part about the game?

Feel free to only answer a question or two: everything helps, and thanks for your time.

[Worstluck]

I don't believe you can use both the 14 day and 21 day trial. One or the other. I don't know how the Steam works with trials or anything like that sorry, someone surely does though. I do know that if you have a trial and upgrade the account, you still get the free time.

Combat can be complicated, but it looks simple. You have to account for a lot of things and have good situational awareness to be successful. I know it's looks boring on youtube of whatever, but there is more going on than what you see. Best best to try it out for yourself (that's a complicated question that is beyond the scope of this post lol)

Easy to purchase in game time, you do it right off the market. You buy it with isk which you earn in game. If you mean how easy is it get to that point, depends on what you do. Starting out you will find it difficult to make isk, it will get easier over time of course. Depends on what you do in game. It's easy say for me, but I have an easier time making isk than a new player.

Not pay to win at all. You can't buy modules or anything that effects your performance. You can buy plex with dollars, sell plex in game and get isk. Isk you can use to buy ships or whatever, still not pay to win though, just easier to get expensive ships. If you don't know how to use the ship or don't have the skillpoints, it's a waste anyways.

Very time consuming, or can be. It does not have to to be though. Skills train passively so put in however much time you want to get out of it.

Best part of the game? Do whatever you want. No really, you can do whatever you want.

[TigerXtrm]

Originally Posted by Knight of Pi

Hi everyone. I've been looking at this game recently as I saw it was on sale, and the homeworld-ish look pulled me in.

Anyway, I have a few questions about it:
1) Firstly, regarding the demo system. I see that there is a demo from steam, which you register on the eve site for 14 days game time. However, the buddy system gives 21 days game time. Can you only get one of them? Or do they stack? And if you go the buddy route, is it true that a steam purchase won't give them the finder reward?

2)What exactly is the combat like? I've watched a few videos on youtube but I couldn't really see what was happening. From what I can tell you give different commands to your ship, like orbiting range and how to attack?

3) How hard is it to purchase game time with the in-game currency?

4)How pay-to-win is it? I know you can buy stuff with real world money, but I've also heard people saying its not pay to win.

5)How time consuming is the game?

6)What's your favorite part about the game?

Feel free to only answer a question or two: everything helps, and thanks for your time.

1. They don't stach as far as I know. If you're unsure if Eve is the game for you then do a 14 day trial first with a test account and if you like it, use the 21 day trial from a friend so you can both benefit when you decide to get a sub.

2. Combat is both slow and extremely chaotic compared to other games. Because you can't directly influence the movement of your ship you are dependant on a lot of numbers like distance to your target, damage you are doing, speed of your ship, stuff like that. Locking on an enemy is done manually, firing your weapons is automated. The tricky thing about combat in Eve is knowing when you're beat (and that's not always obvious) and keeping an eye on all the different numbers and variables.

3. Don't expect to be able to fund your account with in-game cash at first. They cost about 450 million isk on the market which would take a new player a LOT of time to gather. Given that the average beginner missions pay no more than 1 million at most and you have a lot of other stuff to spend money on, like skills and new ships.

4. As time consuming as you want it to be, that's the nice thing about Eve. The skill system allows you to level even when you are not logged in. So you can play a few hours a day or every single minute you can. It's up to you. The more you play the more money you make, obviously.

5. I like how open it is and that pretty much everything in the game is player driven. Every ship, every module and every piece of material in the game has been built or mined by a player at some point, not generated by the game itself.

[Boe-Os]

Originally Posted by Knight of Pi

Hi everyone. I've been looking at this game recently as I saw it was on sale, and the homeworld-ish look pulled me in.

Anyway, I have a few questions about it:
1) Firstly, regarding the demo system. I see that there is a demo from steam, which you register on the eve site for 14 days game time. However, the buddy system gives 21 days game time. Can you only get one of them? Or do they stack? And if you go the buddy route, is it true that a steam purchase won't give them the finder reward?

Both are considered trial versions, one is a default 14 day from the website. The buddy one is given 21days because it's only gained from a existing buddy within the game. No they do not stack.

2)What exactly is the combat like? I've watched a few videos on youtube but I couldn't really see what was happening. From what I can tell you give different commands to your ship, like orbiting range and how to attack?

Firstly you have a Hull(ship), you attach different modules; guns, propulsion systems, some form of repair etc to your ship. The modules will then appear on your UI, which you can then activate with the use of hotkeys, or mouse clicking. You can also give commands to your ship such as, Approach target, Keep at X amount of range, orbit at X amount of distance etc, with the UI system. Your ship will act accordingly, You can manually pilot in the way of, if you double click in a direction, your ship will turn in said direction. You can also manually set the speed by mouse clicking the speedometer at the bottom of your UI. However the manual stuff outside of activating modules, I would consider advanced PVP orientated gameplay.

3) How hard is it to purchase game time with the in-game currency?

Fairly easy, although can depend on what route you decide to go to accumulate money, also how much time you put into the game. How fast you can reach that point to afford to buy game time, will take an initial setup time, and again subjective to your personal input.

One example that may help put into perspective, in about 3months of gameplay, if you focused on mission running, you could be doing Level 4 missions in a Battleship. If you did an hour or two of missioning a day, doing Level 4 missions you could easily afford 30days of sub time with ingame currency, although do take note, you dont want to turn the game into a job, as this may actually start to become a chore, and not fun.

4)How pay-to-win is it? I know you can buy stuff with real world money, but I've also heard people saying its not pay to win.

You can say it's pay to win, in some forms, if you were to measure success by ingame currency, and try to brute force things with currency. However it's not incredibly efficient, nor guaranteed. I would say its no where near as effective as having lots of friends.

Also just because you can purchase ingame money with real money, does not really influence winning, because the ammount of ingame currency needed to reach said "pay to win" would require a boat load of IRL money, it wouldnt be worth it. So If you were a millionaire, you could literally pay to win, but you have to realise there are players ingame who make that much ingame currency, just playing the game.

In short paying IRL money helps, but doesnt equal win.

5)How time consuming is the game?

As much or as little as you wish, Eve is one of the few games that faciliates an adult lifestyle, time spent playng the game, is actually spent playing; Pvping, money earning ventures etc, Not xp grinding 10million bunny rabbits, to reach carrot number 2. People who put alot of time ingame, can gain more money, have more fun, or more oppotunities to socialise with other gamers.

However even some of those points arent 100% true, only rules of thumb. e.g. a Mission Runner to earn money, needs to be ingame actively running missions to earn money. Meanwhile Mr Industrialist can be managing buy/sell orders in the little time he does play, while his order get bought up whilst he offline. He could can also have a manufacturing line churning out items, while hes asleep ready for him to put up for sale the next time he logs in.

So as you can see Eve isnt really that black and white, and its all apples n' oranges really.

6)What's your favorite part about the game?

My favourite part of the game is the community, hands down.

Feel free to only answer a question or two: everything helps, and thanks for your time.

Answered your questions in yellow. <- had to type this, as forums wouldnt let me post, as all text I had written was inside the quotations, and thought I hadn't written anything! ARRRGG!

[Knight of Pi]

Thanks for the replies everyone (& +rep). I've decided I'm going to purchase the game while its on sale as a gift, and activate it later when I have more time and have tried the demo. Thanks again for all of the responses.