1.) combat is boring - the only control you have is a dropdown menu selecting your orbit distance from your opponent. All steering, maneuvering, weapon firing, and combat is based on a random number system. You select your target and wait for it, or you, to blow up. That's the entire combat system.
Heh. They added a first person mode today, and manual piloting has been in the game for about a year now. Manual piloting is an essential skill in fleets, as it helps you receive less incoming damage.
2.) I don't have a problem with grinding. I played Final Fantasy 11 for seven years. Grinding can be fun, when it is done right. Spending months clicking on rocks in an asteroid field to drum up cash for soon-to-be-stolen equipment is not fun.
I've never done any grinding in EVE, but I've played almost every day for the past year and a half. There is no grind if you don't want one.
Skills train in real time, so if I want to grind skills, I just take a nap.
3.)The community is toxic - [snip] - Here is a video of The Mittani, a top-ranking player at the 2012 Eve Online fanfest urging the EO community (by means of a freaking Power Point Presentation) to harass a player into committing suicide in real life because it would be "funny".
Mittani is a bad example. EVE has, quite possibly, the best community of any game currently.
When I was depressed, I ran to my alliance, and they were very supportive. There are plenty of in-game channels offering help for everyone(broadcast4reps is a public channel specifically for people needing someone to talk to). I personally make it a point to call out anyone who's being an egregious asshole, and my experience (and hopoefully the experiences of others) in-game is better for it.
It should be mentioned that at the time of that video, The Mittani held a position as chairman of the player council, as CCP gave seats on the player council to high-ranking players. He was essentially an unpayed employee at the time. But that's just one person who is an asshole in real life. How about actual players? Would four examples do? Note: in-game currency is exchangeable for membership fees in Eve. This gives in-game currency a real-life value, as described below.
I'd just like to point something out.
ABSOLUTELY NOBODY WHO ACTUALLY PLAYS EVE DESCRIBES ISK'S REAL MONETARY VALUE. That's stupid. I don't say, "I just spent 160 billion ISK on jump freighters, that's the equivalent of $3500 USD/€3134.23 EUR/such and such." I say, "I spent 160b on jfs" and leave it.
Because, guess what, nobody gives a flying fuck. Except RMTing assholes who get banned.
-"Cally" - player who created a Ponzi scheme, stealing more than 790 billion currency from other players, just because he could. This is the equivalent of stealing 170,000 US Dollars from other players. -"Haargoth Agamar" - BoB director for one of the largest in-game corporations. Got bored, so he decided to disband the entire corporation. He then re-registered the corporation name, just to keep them from re-forming under the same name. -"Karttoon" - CEO of Goonswarm corporation. Disbanded the entire company, stealing all of its members' assets for himself. He then abandoned the game, leaving it all locked on his account, so nobody could ever reclaim any of it. -"FlumZ" - player who sits cloaked outside of space stations in low-security space. He waits for people to buy items that he placed for sale, and then pod-kills them when they leave the station. He then reclaims the contraband, and resells it. Notorious for having the highest bounty of any character in the history of the game.
This is bad? You make it sound like he just walked in and stole stuff (which I've done before). The only people who've had that happen to them are people who assume that everyone values their time as much as they personally do. The internet is home to a lot of ruthless people, so LOCK DOWN YOUR SHIT. If you take proper precautions, nothing will get stolen in 99% of cases.
Does that answer any of your questions? As for my experience of the game, you're right that I always stayed in high-sec space. Even going near low-sec space is just begging to be pod-killed and looted by pirate griefers. I ventured into low-sec space exactly once. Three guesses how that ended.
It's a video game. If you care so much about losing a ship, go play a game with respawns. By undocking in ANY space, you should expect not to redock (unless you take proper precautions, which you obviously didn't.)
Despite the fact that a large portion of players live in highsec space, I'd like to know how many of those "players" are trade and mission alts. Probably a decent slice.
Living in lowsec/nullsec/wormholes (ESPECIALLY WORMHOLES) forces you to learn how to make sure your ship won't die every time you undock. EVE gives you as much as you put into it. It is not a casual game.
a month before that, I was leveling
heh, leveling
in high-security space when a rival player appeared and pod-killed me. The CONCORD emplacements did nothing to defend me. Turns out that for a fee, a corporation can declare war on another corporation, allowing them to kill each other in high-security space without any repercussions. This corporation had declared war on my corporation completely at random because they were bored. My corporation did the logical thing and went into deep-cover for the next two weeks, hiding in maximum-security space and playing only on alt characters. When we returned, we found our inboxes inundated with complaints from the other corporation! They were mad at us for not fighting back, causing them to waste 50 million ISK on a declaration of war that we did not even know about until they started killing us.
Wardeccers are some of the worst players in EVE. If you put the effort in to learn how to shoot them back, you'll win 9 times out of 10.
My latest plan is baiting people into wardeccing me, then killing their ships because I actually know what I'm doing. It's financing my titan disturbingly fast.
In Eve Online, the bottom line is this. Nobody is safe. No place is safe. If somebody wants to ruin your gaming experience simply because they are dicks, there is nothing you can do to protect yourself.
This is correct, but I wouldn't word it that way. If you assume everyone is out to kill you, then you'll have a better time. Your best bet is to learn how to shoot them back.
The community feeds on itself like sharks devouring their own. I will never go back to Eve Online, and I will never understand why anyone else would.
I play EVE because I love the people I play with. If you just sit alone in an ice belt for hours a day, then you'll never have any fun.