Dear CCP and fellow Capsuleers,
This may be LONG overdue but, in my defense, I have been away for a little while. I have only recently come to realize what an insane group of people you all must be to deal with the Eve Online player base for any amount of time and not have suicide nets ringing every floor of your building, much less come back for more time after soul-crushing time.
That fact that you all manage to try to keep pushing the game forward, in any and every capacity, as well as actually INVOLVING the player base in any possible way, is utterly astonishing. When 99.5% of all new ideas or discussions for new ideas to improve or add to the game are overwhelmingly met with chimp-esque screams of “BUT MUH METUH” and/or “REEEEE! Change?! I DON’T LIKE CHANGE. Change scares me!” I can only imagine that your brainstorming meetings for new ideas and features are fully stocked with party bowls full of Zanax and coolers filled with over-caffeinated energy drinks.
One of the biggest problems with the Eve player base is the overwhelming unwillingness, or flat-out inability to converse and communicate about new ideas in a constructive and forward-thinking matter. We all want to be heard - namely, our complaints and frustrations - but very VERY few actually want to contribute to discussions in any meaningful way. We are all quick to shoot down a new idea or conversation starter as stupid and call the author “retarded” and start questioning the genetic relationship of their father and mother, whether in an attempt to seem edgy and funny in order to gain up-votes, or to compensate for our own inability to be creative and inventive. If an idea is bad, or flawed, or simply not 100% thought out, it’s perfectly fine to point that out, but do so with the goal to either (respectfully) educate the ignorant, work around a problem, or iron out the finer details that are necessary to make an otherwise decent idea work in a way that bring meaningful content and interaction to the game, therefore benefiting the player base.
On the other hand, if you give voice to an idea that is, well and truly bad, just own and learn from it. Believe me, I’ve had plenty. Simply try to understand how and why it is flawed and how it can be improved upon, if possible.
We, the Eve Community, are also astonishingly lazy for a group that religiously plays a games that requires so much time and effort that it occasionally rivals even the most demanding jobs. A vast majority of complex ideas simply cannot be compressed into a single paragraph, or two, resulting in far too many people simply disregarding meaningful discussions with an emotionless, “TL;DR.” How can you so self-righteously point out that an idea is lacking too many finer points when you’re admittedly too lazy to take the time to actually read those points in the first place?
When the age of the average gamer is somewhere in the mid-20s to 30s, and getting older, it is unfathomable to think that we are incapable of conversing and discussing new ideas like - wait for it… Adults. By shooting down ideas and refusing to add something meaningful to the conversation we do nothing to benefit ourselves as consumers or the game as a product and art form. Instead, we serve to only stifle creativity and innovation and doom ourselves (and the game) to an endless feedback-loop of negativity and stagnation. If your response to a new idea is riddled with ad hominems and provides little to nothing constructive toward the argument, you will do more good for the game to simply stay silent.
So, to the Devs and other members of CCP who so relentlessly come to the community with new ideas for discussion, only to be met with endless strings of abuse and take it all in stride with a, “Thank you, daddy, may I have some more?” mentality is truly quite admirable. We will not always agree with your ideas for new features and changes, some of them may truly be bad, but we cannot fault you for always trying to move the game, and our experience, forward. For that, We all owe you a very sincere “THANK YOU.”
And, lastly, to the community, this game depends upon us and our ability to communicate with one another. We all do it rather well in the greater political landscape of the game, so it should stand to reason that we can make it happen outside of it. In the end, if Eve dies, it will be because We killed it.
Thank you
**Commence Toxicity…
