So, I’ve been on and off in terms of playing Eve over the years. I usually come back when I feel bored with other games and game genres and play for a while, then leave again. Over ten years so far. This time I feel like I’m either doing things wrong or maybe the game changed - and bizarrely also stayed the same - a bit too much for my taste.
I chose to stay alpha after the last time I was getting back into Eve and CCP tried to pull a mean trick and for some reason, after reading about ganking very often, I decided to test it and see how it actually is. I took a shuttle and set autopilot to Jita. After all, who would gank an empty shuttle, eh? Of course I forgot about the implant drop even chance and was promptly ganked. Not a lot lost, just a couple of tens of millions in cheap implants - I totally got what I was asking for, I guess.
What I found annoying about the situation is that while the crime works flawlessly, the punishment is really not doing well, IMO. To take revenge, I’d have to kill the guy who killed me way more than 10 times because the ship he flies is just about 3,7 mil worth. To have a chance at the kill, I’ll need to invest at least 100 mil to have a chance to catch and kill the ganker. Looking at successful crime punishers, that would be more like 400 million in ship + fitting(+ Omega for cloak).
That’s quite a disbalance compared to a 3,7 mil ship eh? Simply annoying. Not even considering that these are mostly not exactly the main accounts and can log off at the whiff of your presence and continue on any of the other 20 accounts x 3 characters, if needed.
The other thing what really bothers me about this situation is that an entire ship class, which is made specifically for cheap and fast travel, is simply unviable. I actually would expect that the shuttles would be a perfect category to introduce some new eye-candy for each expansion without upsetting any pvp/pve balance, but I guess this isn’t on the table now. After we can’t fly Leopard in high sec, despite it being a really perfect ship for a quick Jita travel to inject some skins, because said 3,7 mil Trasher will kill it out of spite for no other reason and not care about consequences, the same happens to regular shuttles. Pretty grotesque, tbh.
I also remember the times when you could just set an autopilot to Jita and go take a ■■■■ without someone being entitled and fully enabled to ■■■■ on you in your absence in the meantime. Those were good times, tbh.
Well, after that I decided to follow the usual advice and look for a nice quiet corner of high sec to do some missions, just to chill a bit. But I needed a proper ship for that, which I already have and what’s left is to fly it from A to B. But… the route is like 20 jumps and goes through - you may have guessed it - ganker territory.
So after looking at how I need to handle the loadout to not get ganked(the implant drop event is still on and even though I won’t equip any implant those will be counted in as a potential loot, adding to the“safe” threshold), I notice that what should be a 15 minute trip becomes either 45 minutes or even longer than 1 hour.
And this is where I am beginning to nope out. Because just staring at my screen for an hour - after I had to spend 15 minutes checking out zkillboard and looking at the ingame map that does’t offer enough info - and doing absolutely nothing other than pressing a single button every 20 seconds or so isn’t my definition of fun. I know that some of the resident autists will disagree, especially the wormohole dwellers. I respect your opinion, dudes, but this isn’t fun for me.
So, I then remembered an advice the noobs get, when the talk is about getting money in a cheap ship. Exploration. Yeah, I probably will get blown up - but the priiiizeeeee! Countless millions in lucky loot await me. So, being a Gallente-inclined player right from the moment I started this game back in - well, definitely more than 10 years ago - I think I’ll buy me the basic Gallente exploration frigate and go explore some and
THE FUGG IS THIS!?
After all the amazing remodels over the years this is still in the game unchanged? After all the past years of having no proper PC able to run Eve at full detail, I finally have been enjoing all the pretty graphics in full detail on my laptop during the few short sessions in the last weeks, now this is what I have to put up with on my screen?
In all seriousness, this is a joy killer. When you log in and see your ship you should be motivated to take it out for a ride - this one does the opposite. And after what I’ve decribed above in terms of rather demotivating game experience I feel like I had enough for a day or two or maybe longer.
