Thank you for being honest. I feel the same way. o7
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Newbros don’t worry about the lore because EVE Online has stripped their exposure to it over time. In-game links to EVElopedia (and the site itself) were rendered defunct. Faction lore became summarized to one sentence descriptors. The fiction portal was scurried away on its own website. Newbros not worrying about lore is a myth made manifest. Ask new players, and quite often you’ll discover they don’t even realize they’re role-playing purely by way of being a capsuleer. This is not due to a lack of interest. This is due to a failure to explain implications and context. That myth is further perpetuated the more lax the views are to changes such as the topic of this thread.
What this change effectively does is further take away context from a new player’s decisions that they will retroactively have to work with. They will look like a Vherokior, but by all rights they will be Amarr. They will have to learn the context of that decision in retrospect, on their own, often with little to no guidance, and find a way to offer a backstory on a decision they were locked into months/years ago. Newbros don’t worry about the lore because that is the atmosphere that has been created for them.
A question I once asked CCP Burger: “From the moment a player creates their character, how long before they even realize there is a fiction portal?”
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I would argue that the problem there is that CCP no longer has “skin in the game”
Right now, barring anything absurdly illegal being done by Hilmar or the leads at PA, there isn’t anything that can happen to Eve that will affect them personally (this applies to PA specifically, but may also apply to Hilmar).
They could make green the only safety option for all of New Eden, let people multi-box as many alpha accounts a their computers would allow, etc. causing the game to collapse and die within a month… and none of those mentioned above would have to worry about anything in their lives changing financially. Gold parachutes for all the C-level folks.
They are living “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose”. In other words, Eve has become nothing but numbers to them*.
*again, I cannot apply this directly to Hilmar, but it’s possible that he’s tired, and that while he may care about some dream that this game represented, people do get worn out. The older you get, the better that retirement package looks in comparison to the product that got you to that point.
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Agreed. The game’s lore is already difficult enough to find without nerfing the character creator and removing even more of the game’s lore from within the game itself.
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This statement makes me want to run 
ing into a wall.
Arrendis warned me almost 2 yrs ago what he thought was going to happen to the game so I spent a yr packing up and finally unsubbing last Feb. So far, I’ve found him to be pretty much spot on.
Between the 2 of you, I don’t think I’m going to have a good game to play when I retire?
That depends on whether or not you can adapt to what the game may become.
With the road CCP is on atm, I just don’t have the faith I used to…
Edit; I subbed 3 acct’s for 8 yrs on faith.
There are some really decent people behind the creation of this game, and some of them I am sure are passionate about the game.
I would say that, for the vets who want things they way they were many years ago, the best way out may be through. I play City of Heroes regularly now, without NCSoft breathing down my neck to buy buy buy buy buy. I will not deny my hopes have included similar scenarios for Eve.
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But how many are left? I don’t want to bust the Dev’s butt more than I have to. Were you there for the 2 day downtime? lol, while everyone screamed and hollered, in a way, it became part of eve’s lore more than any rp lore. It affected everyone and in the end, most of us remember it as something we endured together. Bitter old vets like me still joke about it to this day. That’s community loyalty!
This used to be a nitch game with a player base loyal to CCP because CCP was loyal to the player base. Meh…
Edit; I’m embarrassed I packed up, but I don’t regret it.
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Yes it is. My Twitter thread about it, linked above, was done on TQ, on a new account. Others in the thread report it on TQ too. It’s not on TQ for all new accounts so we think A/B testing maybe.
You’re correct it’s not been announced at all anywhere, though. Apparently lore/character related things are not important enough to mention to the CSM, even?
EDIT: here’s the link again: https://twitter.com/RhiannonElse/status/1338079279490404352?s=19
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*Some critique on the side:
Those of us engaging in pve occasionally have already noticed a slight downward trend in the art work (see remove rock shards from mission sites) that goes a bit further than “de gustibus non disputandum est” (there’s no discussing taste) : plenty of flat colored ship skins on a repetitive and uncreative scheme, recycled armor suits (trig and edencom recently), space glare and omnipresent “space stink” in mission sites (fog and glare make for great backdrops to impair visibility of the module icons), not to mention the latest splash screen with its bright yellow tones - always a winner in a space game. Most of those aspects cannot be toggled via ye olde esc window options, so they stare you in the face constantly.
*Back on topic:
Taking out what little depth there is in character creation - and yes, we all know bloodlines don’t matter except for original home base - is a big step away from immersion. Even the newer generation of players expects immersion via the character. If the simplification is a necessary step for what follows - although the link is not apparent - it might be a first step to produce something worthwhile. The question is, is that what really lies ahead ? Btw, taking the portrait step out of the character creation sequence was a big mistake.
@Brisc_Rubal and @Mike_Azariah, here is some context to make the contrast and the underlying question very clear, from the EvE Vegas 2019 Art team presentation: EvE Vegas 2019 Art of EvE 30:09. Yes, he opens the sequence with “no promises and all that stuff” but what OP demonstrated is diametrically away from what the future exploration was reported to be. Without any Vegas, or FanFest, or anything else for updates we’ll have to ask you kind gentlemen to park your Magic Buses and send your Querious Georges to ccp central and query what is going on, please CSMmmm ?
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Irrelevant point. EVE is 18 years old, you can inform yourself. If you don’t or don’t care and you still get overwhelmed by the simple char creator – even when it tells you that none of these things have any consequences --, you have no place in EVE. Period.
They were not incompetent enough to fall under my described category because they managed to get through the char creator just fine by the looks of it. Irrelevant point.
The char creator has nothing at all to do with role-playing. It is a tool to create your avatar for the game you are playing. Nothing else. What you make of this afterwards or for what purposes you create your avatar has nothing to do with the functionality of the char creator itself.
Are you blind?
Wait, don’t answer. This was a rhetoric question. 
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This is the key thing for me. Remember way back when the character decisions you made had an effect upon what skills you started with and that in turn had a longer reaching effect on where you went.
The is so much . . . .promise . . . in this game. So many chances to be great that have been squandered along the way. And yes, I agree that the Lore meant something to me. I CHOSE to be Gallente for a reason, for lore. It has flavoured my blog for a long time.
You have no idea how much that fact ticks me off. I cannot force CCP to communicate and I and the rest of the CSM signed papers to keep us from saying too much at any given time but damn I wish that CCP said a bit more in the forums here.
I will readily admit to being the starry eyed optimist. I still talk to the devs and some of them still tend to answer. Not all the devs love us but then they were hired to develop a game and I doubt their training included dealing with the likes of us. We talk to all levels, from the coders and artists and bug hunters up to the guys who decide what will fly and what will die on the drawing board. At times? Yeah it gets frustrating trying to get a point across of convincing them that what they are doing is a bad idea cough drones cough Or asking for the umteenth time about red dot @Brisc_Rubal or fixing the NPE (me) or work on faction and lowsec (others on this years council).
And so here I am, collecting the feedback so when they asked what we thought I will have notes. For that I thank all of you.
m
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There was a time when this choice was on the table. CCP could have been brave, and bucked the microtransaction trend and present Eve as the… ‘ethical’ or maybe ‘adult’ MMO with a completely transparent and non-predatory business model. They could have doubled down on the pure subscription + PLEX gets you everything model, and make being anti-microstransaction a core aspect of the brand.
But they didn’t, they just followed the industry trend and now it’s too late to be positioned as such as consumers start to push back against such predatory business models. Maybe they still made the most profitable choice - I’m no game industry business person - but from the outside, Eve sadly looks pretty tarnished, just another game saddled with cash-stop ads, and worse, game development decisions that target the whales. Any gamer with self-awareness, looking for a real competitive experience is going to be turned off, or even give Eve a complete pass because of the monetization model now.
But that is kinda off topic. We’ve known a new NPE is in the cards and it doesn’t seem especially a big deal if they revamp and simplify the character creator some. This clearly is an early test and seems like it needs some work, but it’s pretty easy to retcon some reason for the new, blended scheme: “EDENCOM has started a new academy and is now taking recruits from across all the Empires and training them together to take the fight to the Triglavians!”. This new default path could even exist in parallel to the classic character generator which could be used by more veteran players looking to make a “true” bloodline character.
It’s fine. I just hope they perhaps add a few new customizations while they are messing with this. Some of those poses and hairstyles feel a little dated or overused now.
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It would have been fine already if they had limited MT to Alphas only. Except for greed, which is the well-established and proven reason for why CCP did this in the first place, there is no sane logical reason for why someone who already pays subscription should pay even more.
That would be something awesome and fun, even if Edencom is an intentionally stillborn thing. CCP yet again wastes away so many opportunities to make a better game with it. In light of all of this, one cannot be blamed of being overly negative against CCP when you keep seeing so much wasted potential from a company that has literally 1 single product to manage.
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Just noting once again in a strongly opinioned threat, no company personnel showing up to explain, or excuse, or answer the questions.
I got no skin on this as I think the lore is super weak and dull, but thats just my opinion, Im more concerned that yet again CCP are simply unwilling to have any direct communication with players who clearly do care about it.
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Related to this: bloodline info on the character info window (old and new accounts) has vanished. I just happened to like to be a True Amarrian …
Time to call upon the gods (@CCP_Dopamine) and goddesses (@CCP_Aurora) for some clarification on this identity crisis ?
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This is like the GONG, the red dot, the font changes. Seems to be smol change for CCP, but big for players, especially important how its implemented. It is why people think CCP is removed from its playerbase.
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I think it’s a bit too early to make that call. It has only been slightly less than a day, a healthy portion of which has been Sunday. It won’t shock me if nothing changes, though.