Funesta
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Posted - 2011.01.13 19:33:00 -
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1)
Well, you can make isk to buy ships in a lot of different ways. Missioning is a popular and fast way to raise isk, but you don't like it, so you should try something else. Planetary interaction makes some decent money for very minimal effort, and it doesn't require much training to get started in. You could also try mining, courier jobs,manufacturing, trading, exploration, ratting, or scamming to raise money. Or, you could simply buy a PLEX from CCP and sell it on the market to get some starter funds and decide whether there's anything in the game that you like at all.
You learn how to fly new ships by queuing up the correct skills and waiting. If you look at the ship's info, it'll have a tab of prerequisites that will tell you the bare minimum to start flying that ship. It also has a tab about certificates, which will give you a good hint on what skills will make you more effective at flying that ship. The certificates are a good starting point for choosing what skills to learn. Working through Core Competency Basic and Core Competency Standard is good for any ship at all, and it'll take enough time that you'll have a general idea of what's going on by the time you finish it.
Finding a corp is hard. I haven't managed it yet myself. Check the forum, talk in chat channels. I think you'll just have to try a few out until you find one. You really need to know what you want before you go poking around, or be willing to try new things somewhat randomly.
2) They'll argue against this, but yes, older players have a significant advantage over you in every aspect of the game. Eventually, you can catch up to them in terms of flying one specific ship (or doing one specific task) very well. There are lots of skills that don't apply to all situations: missile skills are irrelevant when you're flying a ship that shoots projectiles, for example. Thus, the old-timers will have lots of skills that they cannot use at any given moment in time, which is how you end up being able to compete with them. This catch-up time is pretty reasonable if you only want to fly one race's combat battlecruisers really well. The catch up time is very long if you want to fly all battlecruisers really well, or even just all frigates really well, or if you want to fly capital ships, etc. So, if you want to compete with the old timers, you really need to pick something and specialize into it. This can be very frustrating as a new player who wants to try out lots of different things, or a new player who can't find something he enjoys.
3) Yes. It's taken me a couple of months to get into the game. I've finally figured out a niche where I can make some decent isk, and I don't really feel worried about the old timers in the area of the game I am occupying. I haven't found anything that interests me beyond making isk, so far, though. It's still quite possible I'll quit if I can't find something more engaging about the game in the next two or three months.
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