Old player lost with new stuff.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

I used to play EvE years ago, probably 05 or so... and wow, looks like a LOT has changed. Can someone feeling generous please fill me in. What is this new character creation stuff that looks so amazing and what else has changed?

[samroski]

Been playing for 3.5 years and Eve has gone through many changes. Some of recent ones were not well accepted unfortunately as CCP decided to introduce micro transactions. They even levied a $99 licence fee for fan sites! There was an emergency CCP-CSM meeting called a couple of months ago where there appeared to be unresolved issues. CSM, btw, is the Council of Stellar Management- an elected player body which is supposed to bridge the gap between CCP and players. The Mittani, CSM leader, recently released a blog which may indicate that more trouble is in the offing. Lots more to say on this but not enough time :)

 

The new character creator is probably an improvement. Certainly fun to play with- and you can change your portrait as many times as you like (though the basic facial features cannot be changed).

 

The BEST update to Eve imho was Apocrypha which introduced T3 ships and wormhole space. Since then it has been all the way down- but do not take my word for it :)

 

T3 cruisers and WH space alone are worth re-subbing for. There have been lots of other minor improvements, but I'm a typical Eve player who loves the game and loves even more to complain about minor issues.

 

Some other changes off the top of my head:

 

Scanning has been revamped.

Skill queue has made life MUCH easier.

Orca is the most amazing support ship.

There are Sansha incursions now in random systems which players have to team up and fight. No personal experience.

There is a dedicated ship for salvaging now.

Planetary interaction- much hyped and poorly implemented is now available as a mildly amusing and seriously tedious side game.

There is now Eve-Gate which helps you to stay in touch with Eve via a browser when you do not have the client installed.

There are new forums which actually work (were introduced and had to be recalled as they were hacked to bits).

Jita is now the (trade) centre of the universe and not Yuali :)_

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Thank you very much for the info! The updates since look very cool. As soon as I have internet again I think I might make a trial account to try them out.

 

Unfortunately my social networking skills in online games are abysmal and in EvE that seems to spell disaster (solo play).

 

Have they changed skill advancement at all to eleviate some of the tediousness of training a skill for days or a week?

[samroski]

The main change in skills has been removal of learning skills. If you had/have learning skills trained you get a reimbursement of skill points- which you can allocate to any skill you like. This was great as I had 5m SP on 2 characters and had great fun in instantly training up skills. CCP has also reimbursed players once or twice for crashes/server down situations by giving out SP. Other than this, skills remain as tedious as ever to train.

 

Removal of learning skills actually was beneficial to players with little SP in learning skills. For me, training is a little slower than before. Certainly a great move for newer players.

 

Have been playing solo for the last year or so. No doubt Eve is twice the fun with co-op play, but solo play has its place.

[Vindekarr]

I used to play EvE years ago, probably 05 or so... and wow, looks like a LOT has changed. Can someone feeling generous please fill me in. What is this new character creation stuff that looks so amazing and what else has changed?

 

Some ship, tactic, and rock-paper-scissors changes:

 

T-3 cruisers are now one of the be-all-end-all weapons, fitted well and flown well, they are death incarnate, especialy against larger craft, with their high DPS cruiser scale weaponry, extreme speed, and strong tank, with the Tengu and Loki being some of the strongest ships in the game.

 

Capitals can't enter highsec. With the dificulty in making them, the financial risk, their undockability and shear impracticality, capitals are slowly dying out, and are a rsare breed.

 

One totaly new ship you'll want to meet is the Noctis. Battleship sized but unarmed, and in the Industrial class/tree, the 55,000,000.00 Noctis is generaly considered the unmatched best salvager in EVE. Salvaging much faster and more efficiently than a destroyer, and with a huge cargohold about as good as an Iteron's, the Noctis was tailoured from the ground up as the ultimate solution to the need to salvage large L-4's quickly.

 

The Orca has entirely bucked the downward spiral in other capital ships. A reliable and strong foreman platform, it has become a very common sight, especialy in highsec. They are also, rarely, used as carrier for PVP hotdrops.

 

The other capital to buck the trend is the Supercarrier. Once known as Motherships, these were buffed a few years ago, and are now some of the fiercest DPS craft in the galaxy, and are one of, if not the strongest non-titan floating about in Nullsec.

 

One major trend has been towards microsizing-Battleships are now about the biggest hull you commonly see employed for combat, with Capitals banned from highsec and Marauders, Strategic Cruisers, Assault Frigates, Stealth Bombers, and Faction Battleships all able to do vast havoc on their own, let alone in groups, the trend has been to maximise groups of the above, rather than single or small groups of capitals.

 

One face you will see frequently is the Dramiel, lightning fast and frequently complained about, the much bemoaned Dramiel frigate is nonetheless, a deadly foe, and monumentaly fast. Likewise, the humble Drake. At 26,000,00.00 ISk, and flyable after a month, the humble Drake has become the mainstay of PVE missioning efforts in recent years. Cheap but astonishingly resilient, the simple, effective, easy to use Drake can be compared to the AK-47 Rifle, and has a similar reputation, as crude, but very effective, especialy defensively, as it's tanking abilities are absolutely outstanding for it's size and cost.

 

The other truly common newcomer is the Hurricane. A Minmattar battlecruiser, the sleek, clean-lined, javelin shaped Hurricane is probably the most versatile ship in the game at the moment. Fast and carrying an excellent arsenal, it can very easily close to autocannon range, at which point it can tear apart far more expensive equipment with relative ease. A very common sight in PVP, for which it is absolutely ideal. It can run mission strongly aswell, but as an active armour tank, is much more skill intensive than the Drake and is thus mainly used as a high mobility PVP skirmisher or a PVE sledgehammer in the hands of more experienced players. It is also by far the fastest ship in it's class, easily reaching 600 m/s.

 

One thing that hasn't changed is the niche of Assault Frigates. These upgraded war frigates, with their utopian combination of staying power, firepower, and raw speed, are still one of the nastiest things you can meet in the game. As useful as a swiss army knife, they're well suited to squadron roams, solo PVP, and keeping frigates off larger ships in fleet battles. They're also often seen as a frigate-killer in missions, and are still seen as one of the most fun ways to skin a battleship.

 

Finaly, Stealth Bombers have become the Yin to the Assault Frigate's Yang. Frigate shelled and equiped with a cloaking device, these fast craft carry either torpedoes, or bombs, and can wreak bloody havoc on battleships in mere moments. While they have a long and proud history of visiting Pearl Harbour-esque doom on large fleets, they are somewhat vulnerable to being hunted down by well flown Dramiels/Assault Frigates, especialy the lightning fast Jaguar.

 

Other things that have changed? the Scorpion used to be the ugly duckling of the whole game, but now it's the pin-up. Revitalised by a patch that gave it entirely new graphics and shape, it's sleek arachnid form had taken it from the "little battleship that just couldn't" to a monument to product packaging in advertising. Especialy the Rattlesnake variant, often credited as the most powerfuly tanked battleship in space.

 

Wormhole space has been opened up. You can now find Wormholes, dangerous gateways into W-space, a dangerous nullsec realm full of "Sleepers", highly advanced drones of a long dead race, which are crammed with hyper valuable Sleeper Bits. Incarna recenytly brought us the Ability to walk in stations, a feature that's so new it's not even done yet. the next major version is supposed to bring full station interactivity, lots of mingames, and the ability to yell at eachother in person.

 

And finaly, there's a bit of a Sansha invasion going on at the moment-Incursions it's called, sometimes Sansha makes a grab for one of our constellations and we've got to tell him where to shove his ugly ass ships, fly to them and you get logged into Incursion chat, at which point you can warp to the Sansha fleet with your fleet and get blasting. This awards a lot of ISK, rep, and so forth, but be careful, the are often low/nullsec, you only get your rewards if you finish them, and th enemy fleets are immense. Worst of all, they implement a new AI first seen in Sleepers, which can change target in combat and think to a whole new level.

 

If you need to ask anything feel free to contact me in game @ Arkio Vallarian.

Edited September 15, 2011 by Vindekarr

[samroski]

The Orca has entirely bucked the downward spiral in other capital ships. A reliable and strong foreman platform, it has become a very common sight, especialy in highsec. They are also, rarely, used as carrier for PVP hotdrops.

I used an Orca for level 4 mission support for a while, and it was most useful. Used to exchange the Tengu for a salvaging ship at the end of the mission, and could refit the Tengu right there for experimentation. The Orca was fit for a passive tank, with tractor beams and drones (set to guard the Tengu). Missioning was great fun, except where long travel to gates was required, for which I'd go with the Tengu alone. The tractor bonus on the Orca was phenomenal, though now matched by the Noctis.

 

I also use the Orca for transporting (very) valuable goods. The corporate hanger cannot be scanned. Plus great cargo capacity for medium sized hauls. With the MWD trick you can get it to align and warp in 5-10s. For someone who spends most of his time in freighters, an Orca feels more like a cruiser than a capital.

 

Needless to say, I'm a fan.

 

Other things that have changed? the Scorpion used to be the ugly duckling of the whole game, but now it's the pin-up. Revitalised by a patch that gave it entirely new graphics and shape, it's sleek arachnid form had taken it from the "little battleship that just couldn't" to a monument to product packaging in advertising. Especialy the Rattlesnake variant, often credited as the most powerfuly tanked battleship in space.

I beg to disagree about Scorpion looks. I loved the old model. Just a personal thing, as most of Eve player base likes the newer model. I had great fun jamming sleepers in a C4 WH using the Scorpion. Most amazing abilities.

 

Rattlesnake was my first real L4 mission BS, as I did not have the skills to tank a Raven. The RS was slow but I could tank everything and that was amazing for a relatively new player. Unfortunately they nerfed it further (imho and for my skills. It got the drones bonus and they took away a couple of launchers) in late 2009. I lost a couple of RSs in early 2010 trying L5 missions, which was a great lesson. I gave the ship one more try a year ago, when I trained up my drones skills and used a Tengu-RS combination for L4s. Unfortunately the RS would get left behind in many missions and I switched back to using the lethal 2 Tengu combo.

 

I submit the following images of the old Scorpion to support my case.

 

http://i39.tinypic.com/242ztbt.jpg

 

http://i43.tinypic.com/2cpanvm.jpg

 

Edit: Grammar, and (with apologies) this shot of my Scorpion getting away with 4% hull in w-space :)

 

http://i43.tinypic.com/258qx3s.jpg

Edited September 15, 2011 by samroski

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Thank you for all the detailed information, that is a lot of help. I hope I have a reliable internet connection soon so I can try out all the new stuff. Probably can't remember my old account information though. :/

[samroski]

Probably can't remember my old account information though. :/

If you remember the email address you used, or a character name, you can get customer support to help you. May be worth it for any skills trained, assets, and for older characters.

[Fatalmasterpiece]

Probably can't remember my old account information though. :/

If you remember the email address you used, or a character name, you can get customer support to help you. May be worth it for any skills trained, assets, and for older characters.

 

That would be great given they haven't deleted old accounts from years ago.

[Vindekarr]

They don't, I quit for a while when I didn't have time to play anymore, and when i came back(after a year) everything was waiting for me to reactivate.