Poor game design centered on using new players as fodder for everyone else. Dont waste your time.
Now the bad. The game is open PVP at all times and greatly rewards players for killing other players. Sounds good right? Well there is a myriad of problems with it and here is just a small list.
- Horrendous leveling system completely favors old player regardless of player skill
- Imbalanced economy greatly favors old players which would not be a big deal if it were not for the next point
- Due to the economic imbalance, new players are limited to rocks/papers/scissors in their ship capability while old players dont have this limitation thus they are near impossible to fight against.
So now simply extrapolate what happens in a game that encourages high level folks to PVP given all the disadvantages to the new player and you see where this is a serious balance problem. This then translates to more problems. Due to the severe PVP gap between new players, and by new I mean anyone with less than 6 months of game time, the most profitable areas which can help new players are simply not available due to the fact the the minute you go into them you get destroyed by folks camping entrances.
In my 1st month of play this happened 100% of the time (at least 5 or 6 times at all sorts of times) when I went to no security zones. I go in hopping to do some mining so I can buy better gear, only to get blasted in less than 10 seconds flat with no way of escape. If you think that is bad wait till you try medium security. You see the no security areas are generally owned by large guilds who hold the area for as long as they want to. While they hold that area no one can enter or do anything there. This means that if you dont want to guild with others, then forget it, you simply have no access and no way of escape and no way to profit like them. What this does is push everyone to the next profitable areas, medium security. Here you will find every anarchist on the face of the planet. For the new player, you are faced with the same problem. You simply have no chance against someone who has been playing for years which is what most of these guys in medium security are. I did manage to go into these areas a few times but it was a 50/50 endeavor which means its much too costly so there is no point in doing it since the loss of a good mining ship is the equivalent of a few dozen hours of gameplay for a new player whereas its trivial to guys who have been there for years. This leaves only high security areas for new guys and even they are not safe. In many of these areas you can be minding your own business in a private quest only to have someone scan your position with an insane ship, then drop in on you and kill you in no time at all then get away before security can do anything. So again, you are at the mercy of older game players since you stand no chance at all at winning a battle with any of them no matter what you do.
So why is the imbalance so bad? The way you level in this game is by actual real time... not by playing the game. Its just time. For instance, to level a skill from level 1 to 2, you simply need to select the skill to train then sit for 20 minutes. Thats it. For top levels this time can be insane, 30 days or more to just increase a single level and there are tons of skills to improve and without these top tier skills, you will not be able to use powerful ships or weapons.So right off the bat, you have a huge disadvantage which, again, would be ok if you had a cold chance in hell at beating anyone with more time in game. The fact is you dont, because their ships will be so much more powerful that there is nothing you can do to fight back and most have played long enough to know how to stop you from escaping. You may be able to equip a ship to escape but such ship will be near useless for anything else thus again, making the point moot. At some point you need to take a real ship out to make money and do quests but those ships will not be able to withstand attack thus back to square 1.
Which brings us to economy. Like in real life, money makes more money. The rate at which a new player makes money is so low that they cannot afford to advance at any sort of reasonable pace. The game designers want you to pay for the game for at least a 6 months before you can start deploying medium quality ships at an affordable rate (at this point you can afford to die). But you still wont be able to put up any sort of fight in these as I discovered when I got killed in a few seconds flat at a gate camped by a single guy in medium security. To fly some of the ships these guys have, you will need about a year of just paid game time for your skill levels to allow you to use such ships then you need grind at making money in low security for at least that long to be able to afford buying them. Again, horrible design.
Overall this game is very bad and extremely unsatisfying. Remember this is supposed to be a game, not work. I found after playing for a month that I was not playing to have fun, I was playing to reach a certain point so I can have some fun. This is not good at all. Try the game for free. Do not pay anything for it unless you have a few veterans friends playing.
Side Note: DONT GET FOOLED BY THE SUBSCRIPTION NUMBERS. Many many of them are old players making new accounts and playing for free. You see they are able to buy monthly game time in game using game money. They make money so fast at high level that they can afford a free month every day or two of playing. Then they make a new free account and give it the free time. Almost everyone in that game has multiple accounts. Dont be fooled.