Joshua Aivoras wrote:Or you could just, you know, let him do what he finds fun.
Don't lie to him, of course. But if mining what he wants to do, by all means let him do it. In fact, the unavailability of mining barges/exhumers at a trial level could be an extra incentive to actually get a sub.
If he is interested in mining, the Caldari Osprey is the best he could do on a trial account.
Statistically speaking, the overwhelmingly vast majority of people that genuinely enjoy mining are either those that play EVE mostly while doing something else (and they don't really enjoy the mining itself so much but rather the fact they can make some ISK while being semi-idle or chatting with other people while doing it) or those that are regularly part of a mining op where 99% of the fun is the chat channel. They could be doing anything else and they'd still find it fun, but they don't have the time for anything else.
The problem with newcomers is that they THINK mining MIGHT be a good idea just because they don't know better (ESPECIALLY people that want to do it solo or in a very small group). They THINK they like mining, but in reality, they're merely afraid of doing anything else. And yes, after getting their skill-less ass whooped in one of the few harder L1 missions or failing to follow the tutorial or career funnel instructions (if they even finished the tutorial or funnel missions), mining might LOOK like a vaguely reasonable idea, but it seldom is.
Almost every second freaking newbie (if not more than that) thinks at some point in the first few days that mining is sort of nice, especially if they don't bother running the career funnel missions.
Heck, back in the days I started, there was only a brief tutorial and then it was "do whatever", and I did (very briefly) consider mining myself.
Thankfully, I tried some other stuff soon enough, and then in comparison, mining seemed junk quite fast.
Mining is a McJob.
It's slow, it's boring, it's low-skills and low-pay.
If they TRULY want a McJob, then they can have it.
But if they THINK they want a McJob because they're afraid to try anything else (because they're afraid they'll fail at it) then it's your responsibility to point out the error of their way and slap them into EVE-reality.