Member of the EVE Tweet Fleet

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

Just in case you guys didn't clue in

I've decide to take a pretty significant break from EVE.  I will still skill flip my main account and work on my alt accounts until their subscriptions run out.  But for all intents and purposes I'm not active.

My reasons are, naturally, complex after 4 years in game.  But a good part of it is the dis-enchantment due to the supposed direction CCP has been hinting EVE will be going.  The problem with EVE is that because of it's support of greifing (I'm not talking about PvP - I'm talking pure griefing here) mechanics, most players develop a love hate relationship with EVE.  The problem CCP has got is that it is very easy through miss-management, to tip the balance from love to hate causing all sorts of problems.  There are features of EVE that make it totally unique.  These are very desirable features amongst the player base.  There are aslo plenty of features that detract from the game.  These we put up with in order to play a game with those desirable features.  A lot of these are also the reason that as popular as EVE is it will always remain a niche game and probably never crack the 1mil subscriber mark.  The desirable features are such that it could easily do so with if wasn't saddled down with the irritants.

For me personally it was the "out of touch with reality" indicators that the price of stuff on the noble exchange imply.  Also the evident desire to cut out EVE's industralists from new content.  As well as rublings that wormhole space is not considered 0.0 enough to allow for the ABC's to be located there (whut?).  All of this combined leads me to believe there's a chance EVE will start evolving in a direction I don't want to follow.  Which gets me down.  Which makes me dis-inclined to play EVE for now.

Don't get me wrong - the technical side of EVE keeps getting better and better.  But the game design side of things is looking more and more like it's going to be making some fundamental game breaking changes (from my point of view) down the road. 

We'll see.  For now I'm putting my main into a skill flipping mode and going to play some other games to clear my mind.  I'll probably re-examine the issue after the winter expansion and make a decision of whether it's worth continuing to skill flip or weather it'll be simply better to unsubscribe altogether.  The development timeline however indicate that it might only be worth coming back in a year or two.

In advance to any meme queries: No, you can't have my stuff or my characters (everyone I've met who sold off his main lived to regret it later).

6 comments:

Chi Nwi said...

I have leveled up a 45M sp player and my old main was at 49M and change. I no longer play eve. The systems became too clunky, too much change. In all honesty it started to feel like Everquest again. Release an expansion, wait till 20 pct master it, release another one, change the game more, wait till 20 pct master it, rinse and repeat.

5 years playing eve and I have pretty much stopped. I have not logged in since March. CCP has went downhill since they were acquired and became focused on recurring income and new income.

it may be perception, but the atmosphere of the game went down hill fast.

Marcus McTavish said...

In the wake of all that is currently going on in eve, I premptivly moved in to a wormhole where there still is some pvp and is Fun and infesting but does not have done of the problems that plague kspace

Benoit CozmikR5 Gauthier said...

I salute and approve of your decision. We need to do a debriefing soon :)

Kilted Warrior said...

I have been following your blog for only the last few months, but have been really surprised at how your opinions about EVE have mirrored my own. I have been playing this game for over 4 years and especially it seems in the last year to 18 months CCP has been going down hill. At least that is my perception. They have become even less responsive to their customer base. They really don't care it seems and this more than anything is disheartening. Thanks for your blog and I hope to talk to you some time.

Hasham said...

if you're leaving can i haz your accounts :P

im thinking of coming back to eve after a hiatus of a year....

Letrange said...

@Hasham no