I love the idea of the game. I love the mechanics of it, such as permanent loss of your ship. It means there's always a demand for crafting. I also really like the hands-off approach the devs/admins/etc take to what happens in game.
It can be. The beauty of Eve is you get to decide how to play the game, how much stress you want to take. You don't have to do it the way other one is. It's completely fine to mine in a Venture. The game is a fractal at every level of game play, the risks and rewards simply go up as you advance in the game and develop more ambitious personal goals.
You can decide what level to play at and grow as you like, as you get better.
It's with this approach that I'll probably always return to Eve, play it for a bit, stop and repeat.
If you stick to 1.0-sec space, it's not stressful at all. But instead, it's boring because there's next to zero risk, and also no reward. You can mine low-value ores while AFK, or go ratting and have boringly easy encounters.
It's never zero, though. Which is a far better situation compared to many MMO games where they really have zero risk areas (or the whole game is zero risk).
Depends on what you are doing. The first time you manage to escape with your ship intact after an incursion in low security or (specially) Null sec space, you get hooked. Or when you do the same, but in wormhole space.
If you are doing missions or participating in alliance shenanigans... yeah. Lots of mindless button pushing. At that point, trading in the market is more fun.
the modern counter to this would be juicy targets (freighters, starter ships full of plex etc) afk/unaware in 1.0 getting popped by jihad destroyer fleets. but it was a good meme people who didnt explore what the game offered liked to perpetuate
Honestly for me it was the emergent meta gaming that made it for me. Sitting on a gate at 4AM with someone (tolon) playing guitar over TeamSpeak and getting drunk af and despite having sixth form the next day.
Sneaking into another halls at uni to cover a BoB guy’s door with bees I’d cut out and printed (we became friends over this!)
The most fun I ever had in the game was alliance roams. 15 to 20 of us on voice chat, coordinating engagements.
Also fun:
- Running training exercises for new players. We'd train them how to fly in formation, how to align ships, how to scan. The final training exercise for the corp was a "Snipe Hunt" where I was the snipe. They had to catch me, but if they managed, they were allowed to blow up my ship.
- Hauling for a mining gang. Fifteen people in mining barges and me in a large transport moving rocks back to our Player-Owned Station. Posting nonsense and memes in chat, while having the craziest discussions. Every once in a while, we'd get jumped by raiders and call in the cavalry.
At least three of the corps I was part of got flipped and shredded from the inside. Players worked to earn trust, become officers in the corp, gain security clearances, only to steal everything. They had fun, I guess.
But the time investment became way too heavy to keep playing once I became a father.
Yep sat in my mate’s living room with several of us pretending to be completely random people that didn’t know each other and building trust that way and then rinsing a corp once we worked them enough was just an incredible moment. Also buying carrier jumps to 0.0 and blowing them to smithereens. Thing is the way evil and decent players were allowed to interact made for deeper and more exciting and I’d argue a more realistic and genuine interaction than other games that would ban people for being unsporting as the devs had some idea of what gameplay they wanted people to follow. With Eve it’s fucking anarchic and wonderful.
