From the outside looking in, EVE appears to be a terribly complex game, and in many ways it is. Something as simple as firing a turret at another ship has a lot of math behind it, and an almost countless set of variable that can affect said shot. That said, you certainly don’t need to understand all of the complexity to get by, and more importantly, the game allows you to expand your knowledge as you go, without a massive initial investment (well, perhaps massive when compared to other MMOs, but fairly limited when considering EVE itself).
My post about buying a BPO and entering the market somewhat touched on this (that venture is going well btw, thanks for asking), and today I want to further drive the point home, talking about my mission Rokh and my current thought process.
As of right now, my Rokh can solo most (all?) level 4 missions, and if simply completing a mission is the goal, it achieves that and I’m ‘done’. But this being EVE, simply completing one goal means progressing to the next, and in this case that means completing missions faster and further reducing the risk of something going wrong and the ship going boom. Long-term I play to switch over to a Caldari Navy Raven (200m ISK or so, plus fits), and ultimately to a Golem (800m+ ISK, plus fits), but short-term I’m trying to improve my Rokh’s fittings (currently seeing how T2 425s compare to T2 350s rails).
What’s really interesting is that, unlike so many other MMOs, there is not one ‘best in slot’ style fitting that I can just Google. Various individuals propose different fits, and the general reception to such fits is that they are solid, and that the results should be good. Which is ‘best’ comes down to play style, which mission we are talking about, pilot skills, and what kind of risk/reward ratio you are working with. This also means that I’m now playing around with a few different fits, and trying to see what works best for me, not just for solo missions, but also for when I have 2-4 other pilots with me.
Once I have mastered level 4 missions in a Caldari Battleship, I’ll expand into incursions and such. But that complexity will be tackled when I’m ready, and right now I’ve got enough on my plate.
Hardcore Casual 
I just found missions to be so boring, in my Drake anyway. I always tended to gravitate towards production and trading though.
I think that depends on the approach. If you are looking for the missions as content in the same way you look at an instance in WoW as content, then yes, they are pretty plain. If you look at them as a means to a greater end, or as a measuring stick for ship performance, or as background for Corp chatter, etc, I find they more than fit the bill.
It’s like most things in EVE; you need small and large goals. If the only goal you have is to run a mission, that gets boring real fast.
I’m sometimes tempted to play again, but most of my money is invested in my ship, which is lost within a wormhole (that exits to a wormhole) and I have no probes. So I don’t really want to self destruct 120+ million.
I love the Drake for wormholes. I can fit one to survive almost anything, and if I need to self-destruct I’m only out 30mil or so. Fitted well, it’s the safe choice for many situations – but its combination of huge tank and low dps gives running missions in one over and over all the excitement of mining Veldspar.
Flying one as your main mission runner is a case of optimizing yourself out of having fun.
Mine is all geared up to deal with Sleepers, so it has rigs and T2 equipment :-/
With rails I found boosting the turret tracking speed more useful then increasing the on-paper DPS – the increased ability to hit cruisers made a real difference. Still need a drone swarm for frigs, but that’s a given with battleship guns.
I used to have a massively tanked Dominix for lvl4’s, since I was paranoid about getting blown up. I’ve since cut the tank down, aiming for about 300-400dps tank for the mission specific damage types (via hardeners). Fitting damage and tracking mods and a full rack of guns has decreased mission time by about half, on average, over the drone swarm active tank fit I was using.
Why are you going from a Rokh to a CNR then a Golem, rather than from a Raven to a CNR then a Golem?
Just curious…
I already have the Rokh from long ago, fully trained and fitted. If I was starting from scratch I’d go directly to a Raven.
Damn you’re playing EVE too huh? I just got my nub ass asploded yesterday by some covert ops dick. ITS HARD BEIN A MINER!
Ok, so this comment is quite unrelated, but since you’re blogging about eve in particular and about ~sandbox experience~ in general i thought i’d share what happened to me just hours ago. Its a story of highs and lows in eve, impossible in any other modern MMO.
So everyone familiar with eve (even if just from blogs/newssites) knows about suicide ganking in highsec right?
If not – google it, evelopedia has an article, just need to read the first few sentences.
I thought i’d give it a chance for iskmaking. While i do have some PvE options on my main ( my alliance lives in an Angel agent hub in Curse with 10 lvl4 agents, and Angel LP still has good conversion value, despite being farmed badly) i just cant really stand grinding missions anymore. Suicide ganking on the other hand does have this fishing/lottery feel to it. Also its semi-afkable, something missioning in NPC 0.0 definitely isnt.
So i set it all up, and actually landed a few ganks in quite short amount of time last weekend. Nothing spectacular, but all in all nice few hundred mil ISK netto – beginner luck maybe :)
the next two evenings were much less eventful – didnt score at all, and missed some juicy targets due to various reasons (Orca BPO in a hauler, 3x Cynabal + 4x Dramiel BPC in a t1 frig, Core C-type LAR in a shuttle).
Then today i log in for a quick round of scanning before work, and after maybe 30 minutes?
JACKPOT:
http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=14539959
8 PLEX, all dropped, thats more than 3 bil isk!
Quickly i Alt-tab to my noob looting alt….
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=10929839
Ganker ganked. Didnt even noticed this guy really, as Ruppies are unusual choice for suiciding. Cant loot in a pod, and obviously i find an empty wreck after reshipping.
That was a painful lesson.
Ouch. But then, half the fun of Eve is knowing there could be a painful lesson with your name on it coming up in the next ten minutes.