Originally posted by: ITPaladin
You sound like someone that didn't get deep into it and understand Eve for what it is.
You have some skill that is going to end at a time not convenient for you? Start another skill or suck it up. I have. I say oh well 5 hours lost no big deal.
Eve isn't about grinding your skills. It is about making your way, not CCP doing it for you. You can haul goods for people / NPC station goods.
You like to play the market? Create a business character and play the market board. Do R&D. Sell your goods.
Combat is more than hitting the auto orbit at xxx distance button. You have to learn and understand
transversal velocity, optimal & falloff range, target and your signature resolution,
Electronic Warfare (no battleship can hope to win against specialized EW ships when it has no help to take down those EW ships), etc.
You can also learn about
exploration, where you use special scan probes and astrometrics ships to find hidden asteroid belts you may not normally find in the security level
of the system your are in, or find archeological or 'hacking' sites where you use the appropriate skill to open containers that may have blueprint copies (BPC), datacores, etc, worth millions or billions.
Please get out of the habit of calling them 'quests' . They are 'missions'. They are not meant to be THE DEFACTO Eve Online experience. Some people love them for what they are,
and for what they offer. They are easy carebear ways of getting cash (salvaging level 3 and 4 missions after the fact). In a recent patch, they added more missions.
It is obvious from your post you have an outdated and ignorant view of Eve Online.
Lol no. I had two chars around 14 or 15 mil SP. One was a mini that I was actually working up both mini ships and gallente to use some of the special ops. I was already using a cruiser although I was only in a Typhoon. I was also using an Amarr for mining and hauling. I was in a good corp that was part of an alliance at the time which was only second in size to BoB and was visiting 0.0 sec with my char. I had a great setup and funny thing is, I actually only lost one rifter in battle at over a year of play time. I'm serious. Never lost another ship even in some big PVP fights. I knew at the time how to play and knew all about the transversals and othe crap. Sure, the last time I played was right after they did the Nos nerf, so it was a few years ago, but I knew and did just about everything there was to do in Eve really. Doesn't make my post any less valid then or now.
Yes, in Eve there is "some" minor differences in combat, but it breaks down to PVE versus PVP. PVP, it's all about tackling and then overwhelming the opposition. If you are new amd are actually a part of a big group doing PVP then you are a tackler. Which means your job is to fly in fast, and slow down the big targets. You basically get to do about 6 clicks of the mouse to "setup" your ship to complete your job in a PVP scenario as a new guy. It's really just sitting there and slowing them down, scramming them and rotating as fast around them as possible and hope you don't get blown to bits before your group can take them out. Yay, what fun. For a new player it's basically Space Ballet and I KNOW it's not any different today than it was back then.
As for others, sure some have some fun ships for "situations" like the dagger class spec op boats are interesting, but mostly it's about being at optimum range and pounding the target. With a few people mounting EWAR and sitting around hoping their jammers or whatever are doing enough. Yay.
As for PVE, it about have the defenses to survive anything you'll encounter and whittling away at everything thrown at you in a mission. In low level missions it's basically frigs and a couple destroyers. Maybe an occasional BC. The only "strat" involved with PVE is figuring out what defense to set up for whatever current ship you are using. For new players, this is a bit difficult as they usually don't know, but it doesn't take much to find. Ask the rookie channel and get about 3 dozen or so replies giving the same basic answer. Or you could read the forums and the plethora of stickies. But as I said, PVE is really simple because once you set up your boat defensively, every mission is fairly straight forward.
Basically, combat in Eve, whether PVE or PVP is very simple. You are limited to the boat you are using and the skills you have. But at least combat is more interesting than the other mind numbing things you can do. The only slightly fun thing to do in EVE is combat, everything else is ridiculously tedious.
Mining and hauling. Good for cash, but good gawd it's the basic concept of watching paint congeal. If you plan to mine, don't do it as a main char. Get a second account and either run multiple instances of the Eve game, or use another computer. Basically mining consists of sitting there staring at a "rock" and it doesn't matter what color or texture or whatever you are mining because they are really all the same. Then you click on the rock and wait a predetermined period of time and get a piece of candy, err mineral, for the long wait. Then you do that over and over. Spending hours on end clicking on a rock to fill a cargo hold is not exactly "fun" in any sense of the word.
Hauling is basically flying your ship constantly from point A to point B. Usually fairly long distances. So if you are hauling in this game, your play time consists of watching your ship "fly" across a pretty back drop. You don't really need to do anything. Very little interaction is required. Step one is to click warp to zero for the gate to go where you wait. Step two is to click on the gate to teleport in. Step three is to click warp to zero to the next gate. Step Four is to wait 3 to 10 minutes to reach that gate. Now constantly repeat those 4 steps. That's hauling in a nutshell. Oh what drudgerous fun.
As for the other suggestion of making stuff or playing the "market" that is pretty effing boring as well. Seriously, I don't understand how people can sit around for hours looking at the same screen of numbers and actually find that fun? I mean you literally stare the screen constantly checking numbers. It's plain stupid. Nothing more than watching an excel spreadsheet with a nice background image day in and day out. F*ck that.
Just to reiterate, the game is fun at the very beginning or at the very "end" but much of the middle is very boring. At the beginning it's fun because you are constantly getting new skills, learning new things, and doing new stuff. At the end, it's fun so long as you like PVP really and are constantly doing that while having other means of making tons of ISK to fund your PVP. Everything else in the middle is just boring.
Look, I'm not saying EVE doesn't have it's charm and good facets. I'm just brutally stating out all the flaws that existed before and still exist. You can make claims all you want that I am "out of date" but serious nothing has changed in that game except occasional graphical overhauls and tweaks to ships and equipment be they nerfs or buffs. Usually nerfs though. EVE isn't as big of a sandbox as everyone claims.