EVE General Discussion

I regret more and more buying the EvE CE. sighs

Well, here are the words of another bitter carebear.

I once started playing EVE because it remindered me somewhat of Elite II: Frontier and Privateer games which I used to miss school for. The "unforgiving and harsh nature", "Nigeria online", "tear harvesting" etc. aspects of EVE were okay as I found my little corner in the sandbox and a few people that more or less supported my bubble of suspended disbelief and kept playing and even PvPing, on and off.

But post-Incarna (as epic fail as it was. No, really, Incarna was beyond epic fail. It was a ******** **** **** of whale-like proportions) the bitter reality had to settle in.

1. CCP, no doubt, considers the existence of the thousand-account nullsec alliances as the epitome of the social function of their game and the subscribers of those accounts as the core player base of EVE.

2. The "content" generated by players in the sandbox (which basically has minimal differences with your average high school yard with some street gang flavour thrown in, complete with ASCII phalluses in local and Jita chat) is of primary value.

3. Whatever NPC content there is serves three basic functions: A. Tutorial. B. Farming ISK. C. Providing barebones framework for the "sandbox" of EVE.

This is The Vision of CCP, and it won't change. Whatever changes will be enacted by the CCP after Incarna fiasco will be aimed to reinforce this vision and, where possible, reaffirm loyalty of the (perceived) core customer base. The Rubicon expansion just underlines this once more.

Аfter both SC and Elite IV hit (I backed both), EVE will be Goonswarm Spreadsheets online, and it will drag on (for quite a few years - Ultima and Everquest are still alive in some form!) and slowly die as such.

As for me, I applaud CCP for all they have done, and I've paid them enough subscription money to reward their effort.

But as soon as I could return to the cockpit of my Eagle among the pinkish ice fields of Ross 154 with Aster rising over horizon and Sirocco Station domes a few miles away, days of EVE for me will be over.

And no, no forum warrior will ever have my stuff. I'd rather contract it all to my alliance; they are mostly good guys/gals and there should be more like them.

fis crowd

And meanwhile CCP's old habits remain. Just a few days ago, CCP Affinity told a player that if he wanted the best Ghost Sites, he should leave his comfort zone, meaning that high security space will not get the best rewards for those new anomaly sites. i bit my tongue until my wishes to call her an arrogant b*** faded and i was able to write a indignant but civil reminder that hiseccers too pay the game, and later I exposed a sensible way to distribute the best drops between differerent spaces so everyone had a chance to hit jackpot, rather than tell players to F themselves if they want good rewards and can't or don't want to pay the price of leaving hisec. I wonder wether I'll get any response.

And this is good. No risk, no ISK. Having "good" sites in high security space would just lead to carebears in overpriced ships farming those sites without the risk of being shot to bits. In fact, it's not exploring the ruthless, 'space Somalia' side of EVE that would kill it - it's the opposite. Without conflict, ships wouldn't be destroyed. Without ships being destroyed, the market would slowly grind to a halt.

And does EVE really need a new direction? It already has its niche: it's a universe made by us, players. We're not pawns in an NPC game playing out roles of heroes that took down a boss in the new expansion. We're gods that roam the stars and build empires that span entire regions.

(...)

The only thing we really lack are ways to turn the pathetic piece of wasteland we stuck our banner into and claimed ours into actual, civilized space worth defending. The devs, if anything, need to look into giving us tools to do so.