Outset
Furthermore I was pretty busy with work, moved a couple hundreds of kilometers to a new job and home and my 3rd child was born, so it was a pretty good time to call it quits.
Now my oldest kid has started playing Eve and my friend who originally brought me to Eve has motivated a couple friends to give it a try as well, so I updated my old installation and noticed why I fell in love with the game originally so I decided I‘d give it a try as well once more, so here I am again and will also resume posting updates on this site, unbiased by any coalition politics but heavily biased with my own opinions.
This will give me the chance to comment about the war that just had started and I feel like having a kind of deja-vu, it‘s like 2016 never ended.
I will also show how a returning bittervet and a new player look at this game when they fly side-by-side from the start.
The Start
Returning to the game when a large war just started should provide some willing meat shield and soldier of the line with lots of options to die and explode in space, right? Well, it proved to be a little more difficult, as my corp had left the old alliance in 2017 and appears to be exceptionless inactive in the last 12 months. A quick research, ending with some talking to imperial recruiters, proved quickly that the Imperium had closed recruiting as usual when the war started. While I of course understand the reasoning, as felt every third player in the blocs is a spy of the other side anyways, I was a bit disappointed that even returning veterans of several years and campaigns wouldn‘t be accepted. It also shows that new players that are drawn into the game to see the great war they read about won‘t have any action in it.
On the other hand my friend Rischwa Amatin reacts allergic to large power blocs as well as to blue donuts anyways and would tell all of our new recruits to the game not to join any major bloc anyways, so we decided we‘d for now start out in smallscale warfare and try to introduce the new players to all kinds of fun aspects of the game.
As there is currently nothing happening in the big war worth talking about (Fountain being slowly eaten up by Panfam, Querious not being seriously attacked by hesitating Legacy), I‘ll focus on detailing the first days of returning after such long a time.
Day 1
After a short introduction on Discord we met up with one of our new comrades in Jita to fit some ships and head out for some basic abyssal site-running. Reading up on changes in the trade-system led to my first big rant on discord about how damn stupid everyone working at CCP is and how they are still trying to get rid of every single decent old player. (Honestly, are you being paid by number of dumb & destructive nerfs there?)
Fortunately I found one of my capital alts with sufficient skills in frigs to join the fun on short notice so we‘d only spend some time reading up on changes, browsing through the items lists to find out what modules we‘d need to fit (first in pyfa, then in game) while asking ourselves the big question:
„Was there really any need to change the names of all kind of modules while keeping the modules themselves identical?“
As CCP supported us so heartily in our returning to the game by making the UIs worse, changing the names as well as some skills which had to be read up first, we decided to call it quits when the ships were fitted and ready to go and to meet up on the next evening again. GG CCP.
Sidenote: While flying through Lowsec I didn‘t encounter a single gatecamp and the only red I saw on my path to Jita was a bunch of Triglavians and a criminal at Jita undock, pretty sad...
Day 2
Having our three frigates ready for takeoff, we decide to head out for some quick deadspace experience, having a completely new player with only some days in the game at our side, we elect to start with Tier 1.
10 Minutes later we are finished and a bit bored, this was really way too easy even with my frig being fit for alpha-clone (was switched to omega already, but couldn‘t be bothered to fit a new one again) and the ship of our new buddy being fitted for a week old players skills. Probably could have run the site on my own with carrier alt as pilot and T1 weapons on a punisher. Nonetheless it was a good introduction into fleet works, coordinated movement, behaviour at gates, staying in motion to keep up transversal, no advancing on targets in a straight line etc., the basic 101s.
As we had a second entrypoint with us, after a short consultation with our young friend we decided to flash-run this one as well before calling it quits for the night as it was late already and 2 of the 3 of us had to get up at 5 respectively 6 am in the morning.
Lesson learned: Don‘t run Tier 1 even if you have new buddies and T1 ships if it‘s supposed to be entertaining (if you can say this about PvE at all).
Point of View as new player: Our Friend was busy memorizing everything told and being the first time in deadspace, fascinated by the loot consisting of filaments and a BPC and I had the impression he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
Outlook
Going to hold a class 101 for the whole bunch of 4 new players including my son to introduce all of them to basic survivability and fleet behaviour in the coming days and then introduce them to some more fun aspects of the game. Lowsec roams, exploration, maybe some higher tier abyssal sites, maybe form a bomber fleet once they have the skills.
