Well, the title says story, but I am not planning to create game derived fiction. That would require way too much creativity. And I didn't really care that much about role-playing anyway. Not that the word "story" necessarily implies fiction anyway, story of the player is still a story. I just like disclaimers. So, another one, I write this forty-some days after I started playing, and my memory is, lets say, nonlinear. So if I say things which are clearly impossible, that is why. Although I suppose mostly it will result in lack of details. On that note, last disclaimer (of this paragraph): I am writing these posts as a stream of consciousness of sorts, and don't care enough to edit them much. Which is why I have no idea how much or what I will write while writing this introduction.
So, back in February one weekend I decided to try EVE Online trial. The client has something like 20GB which seems like a lot, considering there is no voice acting that I have seen other than limited number of computer notifications. Maybe I'm just old. I guess these days 20GB is nothing special. I guess textures are big. Especially if every star and every planet have their own backgrounds and textures… also moons. Maybe they are procedurally generated but baked into the client? Or maybe something else takes that space. In any case my Internet connection handled it fine. I feel like I need a bigger hard drive, but then, I always feel that.
After creating an account comes character creation. I have in the meantime looked at the wiki, and in fact multiple wikis, so at least I know that faction/bloodline choice mostly affects the starting system, since attribute differences were removed. Not entirely clear at that point what those do exactly, but good to know.
So I picked Gallente faction, Immigrants bloodline and Center for Advanced Studies as starting school. Partially because they look like the stereotypical 'good guys', and while as I said I don't care about role-playing that much, it saves on cognitive dissonance. Not that I did not expect for this to be subverted, since no doubt in the glorious space future of EvE everyone is more or less corrupt anyway. Other reasons were the color scheme and ship strengths. While I did get that you don't have to use those of the starting faction, I might just as well. And Gallente use green, railguns and drone ships, which seemed best. Well, blue I might have liked more, but I didn't pick Caldari for some reason. I don't even remember what their ships are supposed to be good at. Missiles, I think? In any case better, I like green and blue better than red and whatever colour Minmatar has.
Shallow reason, I know, but if faction choice matters little, then why not choose using factors that matter little too? The school I chose because it seemed the most science oriented, even if only symbolically, and I usually prefer playing science characters in sci-fi RPGs.
Character customization next. I heard things about that actually, even before paying much attention to EVE. At some point CCP planned to create a common area where player characters could meet outside spaceships. And apparently they added this elaborate character customization system before creating the station environment. And then added real money customization options for the characters. Still without common environment to actually see those other than on character portraits. And I note that that still doesn't exists. But the character exists and is fully animated, and you can walk around the so called "Captains Quarters", but there still is no common area. Not that it would make sense anyway, because it would still be purely cosmetic.
I was never very good at those character customization things. I am just bad at the sort of spatial reasoning required to know how changing one element would affect the final look. I don't remember any other game using the model itself as a control, rather than a set of sliders. Not sure if it makes things easier or not. Ended up with somewhat generic character by tweaking a randomly generated one.
Then, finally, the game. The tutorials were mostly fine. At a basic level at least. They were not very memorable, really. At least they gave a bunch of initial ships. Although I do remember that I actually bought a destroyer before finishing the tutorials, and then got another one in last Advanced Military mission, I think. It still sits in a hangar, never assembled. I could have sold it, but you never know. I do remember I sold an Iteron, replacing it with Iteron Mk III. Why are Gallente the only faction with industrial ship tiers?
I am trying to remember something more about tutorials, but nothing comes to mind. Is that a good or bad sign for a new player experience? I don't think I am very representative, considering that I like reading about complex game mechanics sometimes more than actually playing using them. So the tutorials were more of a semi-practical demonstration than a proper learning tool. But I am not sure how they could be improved, really.
After finishing the tutorials I decided to move away from the rookie systems. Not leaving highsec obviously, since that is pointless without already knowing someone in the game. Or I suppose being more aggressive with joining a preexisting corp. But in any case I didn't want to bother with PVP, just find somewhere quieter to learn the game more and collect more spaceships. Since I had no idea where anything in EVE is, I fell back on the mode of making decisions based on shallow factors, and started looking at the list of regions and decide which name I liked the most.
Finally settled on Everyshore. I liked the name, an it is mostly composed of lowish highsec with some lowsec pockets. Mostly Gallente territory and not very far from my starting location. Which was somewhat important, because I didn't want to sell all those ships you get from the tutorial. Even that one I never actually used, an EWAR frigate I think? Don't remember the name. Or a second Venture. Although maybe I sold that one. Anyway, I had about ten ships to move to my new base, once I chose an exact station.
I thought about Carirgnottin system. As I said, I prefer science based characters in sf RPGs, and Duvolle Laboratories NPC corporation is headquartered there. But further reading shown that science itself requires multiple level V skills, which would not be happening for some time. Especially considering I decided to ignore common advice and not actually focus my character. Which a bit scattershot approach to skills I still am nowhere near capability for research. And it doesn't really achieve anything, since it more or less generates passive income and hence the market is flooded with datacores. And invention has even higher requirements. And science lab NPC corps in EVE apparently have very few agents.
I pretty much decided to run missions at this point. At least as a fallback thing to do. Other options would be explored once I got some ISK, but spent some time looking at agent lists looking for a good missioning base. Finally I picked Federal Administration as main standings target, and the Jurlesel system, since it had a level I agent and was near higher level agents. And it was low population by both active players and jumps number, and had good mineral class for a highsec system. Not that it matters these days, with all minerals more or less equal in worth.
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