Immersed

"EVE Online is renowned for it's depth. Its backstory, gameplay and social aspects are all qualities that draw players in. What does immersion in EVE Online mean to you?"

Having spent so much time in TEST and Goon fleets, my idea of immersion with EVE is certainly warped.  I fully expect constant crazy links, bad trolls, and frontal assaults on local as part of any PVP activity.

I am one of the many multi account players who had to turn off Incarna to preserve performance, so my immersion is not related to identifying with a space Barbie or finding just the right pair of $75 virtual shoes.

For me, the reason I still play EVE is twofold.  Mainly, it is because I enjoy online hanging out with my corp.  Specifically, I enjoy the flow experience of PVP, from small gang to epic fleets.  When I am in the middle of a confrontation, my focus sharpens and I am in the zone monitoring the FC, yellow boxes, distance, tracking, asking for reps, and all the other battle minutia.  This mass PVP experience is so far not available in other games.  (Planetside 2 might really bring it.)  I greatly enjoy this intoxicating experience until I get distracted and my ship is exploded because of some silly mistake, or occasionally just bad luck.  Lag, of course, explains the vast majority of my losses.  When Time Dilation hits, I will hopefully develop a new excuse!

The side effect of playing multiple accounts is that you lose the identification with the individual characters.  The pilots exist only as vehicles to deliver an experience.  That experience is shooting at other ships.  The rest of the game is (fairly lame) filler that I have to slog through to keep ships fit and occasionally try to force myself to make some ISK so I can afford to fly and lose expensive ships.  I definitely never find PVE immersive, though I hear that incursions are a bit better in this regard.

I think for others like myself that play for PVP, CCP really hurt our feelings by dishing out Tyrannis and Incarna, while severely nerfing our ability to quickly farm up ISK in anomalies.  At this point I do not believe in CCP anymore, but they have me hanging around while I wait for something better to come along.  My sincere hope is that CCP can re-capture the vision before they destroy the game I have enjoyed for years.

Breaking news!

TEST and many members of the Clusterfuck Coalition are re-setting the NC. This should be great fun, most pilots agree there was too much NAP in 0.0 lately.

I think having the NC leave us blueballed with no communication over and over again when we tried to help them out in defense played a HUGE role in this decision. Having a huge fleet sit on a Titan ready to bridge for hours on multiple days without ever coordinating an attack is a lame way to treat your friends.

We will now get to shoot (ex-)Blues!

Happy Birthday, CCP!

Here's to the next 8 years of excellence interspersed with fail that is still better than any other game out there.

Nano gangs will enjoy the Quafe Zero, though it won't last long. Good thing I have a Vagabond ready to go!

Real life has been distracting and RMT mafia attacks on EVE News 24 have blocked my vicarious enjoyment of EVE drama. I think it will soon be time to jump back into things. My cap alt is only a week from crosstraining into a Revelation. Lazerz rock!

Fair is fair

In all fairness, after my last scathing complain-post, this does look pretty amazing:

Greyscale or Numskull?

CCP has smartly managed to reverse any positivity that might have been created by Fanfest by announcing CCP Greyscale's plan to ruin anomalies in huge tracts of nullsec so that there will be "more reasons to fight." Instead of the obvious path of boosting the better systems while leaving the current as baseline, CCP has decided to slash huge tracts of nullsec. They want to slice anomalies out of Providence and Cloud Ring, as well as many other regions. These examples are two regions with HUGE turnovers in occupation and serious war history since Dominion. The proposed reason for CCP's changes do not hold water.

This nerf, combined with the other recent anti-null sec rumblings from CCP have me very sad about the game. They somehow want us to play space barbie instead of shooting each other's spaceships. I have no problem with someone else playing space barbie all they want, but that is not why I log into EVE.

The proof will be in the end result. I think CCP realizes that the casual space barbie crowd will add subscriptions and make them more money. They are abandoning the soul of EVE, which is PVP. I could ramble on, but you can check the first few pages of the threadnaught for a good collection of reasons why a huge majority of us nullsec denizens hate this newest terrible move. (This probably was endorsed by the "excellent" current CSM who have already demonstrated their understanding and appreciation of nullsec life and PVP so clearly.)

I may sound mad, but I'm really not terribly upset because I have consulted the Oracle. She has given me a Black Prophecy about a Perpetuum of Knights from an Old Republic that exists a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Help us sensible Devs, you are our only hope.

Pandemic Contagion

Some of Pandemic Legion's spai alts have been published. If you are in a PVP corp, it would be worth checking the list to see if you have been infiltrated.

Here's a thread with more details and drama.

I am sure it will only take PL a few months to replicate their infiltration, but for the next few weeks they may have to engage on more uncertain terms.

Don't forget to vote for CSM! I am hoping to see more 0.0 representation in the next cycle, and voted correspondingly. TEST has endorsed White Tree. Goons are officially backing The Mittani and Vile Rat.

It looks like nullsec representation is good in candidates, but we will see if the voting blocks are successful at overpowering the uncoordinated masses. If you don't vote, you can't complain when the NC/CF gets all the seats and pushes onward to universal blue status with NAPS in every dimension and soul crushing carebear stares from every POS.

CSM spins around again.

CSM is back again. Between White Tree and The Mittani himself, I am delighted at the excellent choices. Here is a promo video of General Windypops railing against the NC in his CSM ticket entry:



A fun CSM quote from EVEDreddit:

This is how the CSM works:

Winners of a popularity contest get free holiday in Iceland.

These people who have no understanding of software development or running a business speak with devs, demand that everything wrong with the game be fixed immediately.

CCP nods, smiles, gives murmurs of encouragement and waves them goodbye.

CCP then tout the CSM as an example of their responsiveness and transparency with the playerbase, before going back to do whatever it was they were going to do anyway.

Repeat.