Free to grab:EVE Online: Starter Pack free on Steam

#5785779 Posted on: 05/06/2020 09:23 AM

---

... and be ready to pay $18 or €16 per month for the rest of your life.

Maybe more, because you need those ISKIES and with pirates blowing up your stuff, you'll need to use your RL wallet to recover the loss.
Or use 2, 3, 4+ accounts (multiply the monthly pay, of course) because those damn ALTS are so useful !

Please don't ask me how much *cough*over 1000*cough* euros I spend on this game already... I will not answer !

--
p.s. For those that will inevitably say: "but... but... but... the game is free-to-play !"

NO, it is NOT. That's a Lie with big bold L
99.8% of the content that exists in that game requires a subscription.

#5785790 Posted on: 05/06/2020 10:02 AM

---

I played from 2008 to 2016 religiously. Did everything I wanted to set out to do in the game. Even helped manage, by accident, the most organised LGBTQ alliance in Wicked Creek.

But as Wavetrex said above, the game is a drain on your financial resources. Also, it took too much of my time to keep up. In the end I dropped it and haven't looked back. Now I play Final Fantasy 14 and I've been enjoying it since.

#5785811 Posted on: 05/06/2020 10:43 AM

---

... and be ready to pay $18 or €16 per month for the rest of your life.

Maybe more, because you need those ISKIES and with pirates blowing up your stuff, you'll need to use your RL wallet to recover the loss.
Or use 2, 3, 4+ accounts (multiply the monthly pay, of course) because those damn ALTS are so useful !

Please don't ask me how much *cough*over 1000*cough* euros I spend on this game already... I will not answer !

--
p.s. For those that will inevitably say: "but... but... but... the game is free-to-play !"

NO, it is NOT. That's a Lie with big bold L
99.8% of the content that exists in that game requires a subscription.

Sad but true.

I actually worked for CCP over ten years ago (contracted/out-sourced) and I can tell you that they had no clues as to how they should move their company forward positively. At all.

The main focus was to continuously pacify their customer-base by releasing 'flashy videos' and 'content', which typically involved bigger/better ships and/or, more skills for existing content.

This philosophy was the reason why instead of fixing bugs, they would push push push, for more ships and gameplay, like dreads, titans, planetary interaction and ambulation (2007).

CCP's ultimate failure was the inability to understand that for each new piece of content you introduce, you then increase the quantity of staff required to manage the content, which will inevitably lead to a break-point in your revenue.

The cost of running EVE would be greater than the revenue it generated, but that was not the only non-forward-thinking problem.

The long-long-long term problem they always faced was the skill training, as the likelihood of getting new players, kept getting lower, as the free-trial period would reveal that (on the exit interview) new players felt overwhelmed by the fact that there are players who had been playing ten years and had skill-training of the same level, and therefore, had access to ships and weapons that a new player did not.

A new player would undock for the first time, see another player in a tech2 BS, for example, look up the cost, the skills required, then the skills required for the t2 weapons and just say...."OMFG that's two years of skills!!!".

This, killed the game.

These two intractable points of skill training, and deliberate and intentional increasing of the skill gap through pacification of existing players, are unforgivable.

I did enjoy working with them, and I did get access to a 'dev' account, with all of the backslash commands like, say, if you wanted to insta-teleport to another point in new eden, well, that was a simple: TRplayernamesolarsystem. "TR" simply meant "transfer" and you could perform the command on yourself.

So, if I wanted to move you to Jita, that would be:

"TR wavetrex Jita". fun stuff, and yes...

I did go to Jove space.

#5785840 Posted on: 05/06/2020 12:54 PM

---

I have played EVE a lot from about 2010 to 2011, not very long but I did spend many many hours in the EVE Universe. Then I decided to quit and focus on other things. I still have fond memories about the game and sometimes look at the patch notes to see what's new.
All three post above are very negative and even contain some errors, while there is a lot to like about EVE so even while I haven't played in a while I still wanted to correct some errors and add some positive points about EVE.

EVE has some things going for it and it has some things against but at least it is a very unique and in depth game which is something nice in a world with so many repetitive games with almost no improvement being released each year like Fifa, Call of Duty and Assassin Creed for example.
That's no to say the other games are bad but EVE is special.

First: Money.
EVE is a subscription based game, like World of Warcraft, unlike the money grabbers extraordinaire of WoWs with EVE you don't also have to pay for expansions, this is a good model in my opinion, you pay monthly and then get everything. That is a fair model.
Pricing for EVE is € 14.95 a month or 12.95 if you buy 3 months at once or € 11.95 if you buy 6 months at once. That is a lot of money but less then WoWs and not the € 16.- a month mentioned above.
Also you can put in more money to acquire extra in game money (via plex) of extra skill points to boost training of your character or you can pay extra subscriptions if you want to use and train multiple characters. This not needed, I have never payed for any of those extra's and never really wished I did or could.
I fact, I payed even less because you can buy your subscription with in game money. However I do not recommend doing this or planning to play for free with this system. I was pretty efficient in making money, doing missions in wormhole space and producing a long list of in game items, and it took me on average 3 evenings a week of in game earnings to play for free.
Now this means that in order to also acquire some things in game like a new ship I had to play more then 3 evenings a week.
Just be prepared to pay € 12.95 for every three months (the 3 month is a good way to not pin your future in the game too far ahead but still get a reasonable discount)

Second: Positive things about the game.
EVE is playable since 2003 that's a very long time, and the game has continuously improved and expanded, the amount of extra content since the beginning is enormous, the graphics have improved a lot, the UI is one of the best in any game as it is so customizable.
EVE is a game were you can opt for many different play styles. You can focus on being a mission runner, miner, producer, trader, and much more. And with each of these choices there is an reasonable to enormous amount of variation possible, the hardest thing is to choose what you want to do.
EVE is a game with an very large universe, which is teaming with life and adventure (in contrast to some games with procedural generated star systems which is larger but also very empty)
EVE has one of the best in game economies were almost anything in game is produced by players, there is real trading as it takes time for products to travel around the universe (also done by players) and the interface for selling and buying is so good, its still the best I have even seen in any game since. Every time I play a game with trading I think, EVE did this better.
EVE has one of the best character creators around, though when I played it you created a character in 3D and made a 2D photo of it to use in game, not sure if you now can walk around or that thing was cancelled. Still it was fun a good to see, even today I am still disappointed with the character creator of many new games and I think of EVE as the best one yet, already so many years ago.
EVE's big space battles are something unique and very cool too take part in.
EVE is around for so many years, and even if you start now with a new character you can influence the universe and be interesting to a corporation in a very short time due to the great way the skill system is designed. Some things in game will take quite some time to acquire but that makes it also more special. it does mean that as a new player you cannot get certain ships, you grow towards new ones over time, but the smart way the skills are designed meant you can really grow fast in the beginning. Most skills have five levels and those levels give you a certain bonus that slowly increases, however going from level 4 to 5 takes much more time than going from 3 to 4 etc. So you can start with a new skill reasonably quick while getting the most efficient takes a long time and is seldom a necessity.
EVE is a lot of fun, even more so with friends. I remember starting out with a very small ship, doing missions and upgrading my ship, getting a bigger one, upgrading it and deciding how I wanted to to play it and acquiring the necessary modules for it. Starting to produce, getting a large cargo ship. Making a ship for reclaiming all space loot after a battle, creating a gas harvester ship to mine gas clouds, getting a small stealth ships with scanner probes looking for wormholes. The sheer possibilities are incredible.

Last: Free play
It is good to know the free version of EVE is a very good way to see if you like the game, but the limitations of the free account are such that in order to keep growing you will need to pay the monthly fee. I don't think this is a problem but know in advance that the free version is like a limited but long trial. Its no free play like Apex Legends, Counter Strike, DOTA 2 etc etc where you can really keep on playing for free and enjoy the full game. So I highly recommend you get the free version with the extra stuff now for free on steam, try the game, while knowing that if you like it you will need to pay to enjoy the full experience. And unlike Wows where you need to pay monthly and pay for expansions, here everything is included, all expansions now and in the future will just be there for you for that monthly fee.

PS:
I quit playing because I spend too much time playing and I sometimes wanted to do something else, paying € 13 euro's a month for very little game time was not very interesting and I was in a wormhole corporation with many wonderful and mature people and keeping this running required some regular time investment. Going back to high-sec space with my own corp was not very interesting as I already had the largest mission ship possible (Apocalypse NI), largest transport ship (Providence) and there was little progress to be had.

#5785849 Posted on: 05/06/2020 01:19 PM

---

@AeroWB, the cost varies depending where you play from.

It's cheapest in US but goes up quite a lot in some Eastern-European countries, due to different taxes and conversion rates.
Also, there's variance on CCP itself, prices go up and down slightly... and then there's buying PLEX, which is more costly than the direct subscription.

My numbers were a sort of "base average", not an exact measure. But yes, as you said, this game is not free, and never was.