I played Eve for a few years and had plenty of fun without a corp, although I think it steepened the learning curve because there were too many competing interests.
I landed on a number of fun activities that I enjoyed and felt an adrenaline rush while doing solo, like stealing loot from pvpers and, especially, gate campers, disguising myself in a Venture and killing other miners, killing MTUs, and hauling through dangerous places (especially Pochven).
Overall, I think the game became more fun for me solo when I started putting myself into danger and hanging out around pvpers. I had to get accustomed to dying in cheap, replaceable frigates to get a sense of what was safe to fly and not get angry and ragequit the game because of some loss.
I think corporations alleviate a lot of that by having generous buyback programs and, often, free ships for members. Definitely still possible to forego all of that if you’re so introverted you don’t even want to join some corp’s comms.
Some of the spreadsheet guys just need bodies flying stuff so they can spend more time on the spreadsheets.
During my peak Eve time around 10 years ago (I no longer play), I had left spreadsheets behind and was using full on databases to keep track of things and identify opportunities in the market and manufacturing.
Nah, just by being a body available to fleet up and fly. I was in a UK corp which didn't take itself too seriously and had a hilarious time ganking other fleets run by less fun oriented higher ups. We also had spies in other corps and could tap into their TeamSpeaks...good times.
