Why do people look back? Why do people think the past was better than the present.
Eve players in general always seem to look back through rose tinted glasses. But why do we do it? That question activated me profoundly. It spurred me into writing a piece, this piece about eve online and eve online player behavior.
What makes us look back at our time in eve with so much fondness that we keep saying to ourselves, that it was actually better back then. I think it has something to do with seeing the positive within the negative. Eve players can be a very passionate lot and a fair share of players is very vocal about it. That is what makes our community fairly unique. But within every human being, there is an inherent resistance to change. I believe it is that resistance to change that makes us act this way. Makes us vocal, makes us look back at the past with those rose tinted glasses.
Let us take a look at eve through the years. And take a look at one of the more obvious ones people talk about. For instance; people say the content was easier to find before the Phoebe expansion and that it was easier to go to fights and deploy to hotzones. Yet a lot of those people back then complained content was stifled and held back because of the NC./PL supercap fleet that could pop up anywhere in a matter of minutes. Think of Providence region that pretty much abstained from using any sort of capital for years because of it. Or the famed crystal fleet, the dread fleet of the now reborn black legion… that made many alliances think twice to deploy any capitals anywhere in range of it. The benefits between pre phoebe and post phoebe mechanics are undeniable. Going from 14 light year to 5 light year at the time was much needed for carriers. And even the added and much-maligned jump fatigue mechanic that ensured fast travel of capitals was a thing of the past, played its part.
Yet because the players are still adversely affected by this gameplay change because they can no longer speedily move their capitals. They would rather look back with rose-tinted glasses and complain about the current mechanics. Instead of looking at the positives of the current mechanics. We can argue that the mechanics are broken and incentivize to log-of instead of stay online. And even CCP acknowledged that the mechanic needs to be looked at. And has been tweaking it. But that does not take away the fact we as eve players complain about a mechanic so openly and sometimes with so much passion that we forget the good it also did. It opened up large portions of previously unused space back to fledgling alliances. And for a time provided a beautiful change in what we know as null sec.
Another but far older example that people complain about is tidi also known by its full name time dilation. This should not be confused with lag since lag can be caused by a whole host of things. Tidi is a build in mechanic to ensure the server keeps running under extreme loads. Tidi was implemented as a solution to the server crashes under heavy load. It slows down time for the server so it can handle the computations. For example pre tidi a 200 man fight would render the server inoperable. Very weird things would happen, ships disappearing, ships dying but not really, black screens and the more than occasional total server crash. Fights would be determined by who was already on grid and not who had the better doctrine or skill. Now the server can handle fights upwards of 6000 players. Please remember that these are still industry records and no other game has accomplished that. Players old and new till this day complain about tidi. They complain their modules act up. The server responds slowly, it’s unplayable. All these comments might hold some truth to it. But if you have to choose between crashes and a module not turning off the exact second you wanted it to. I’ll take the module any day. Can ccp look into making the tidi experience more pleasurable, sure. But again it is something that was a lot worse years ago. And with the coming 64bit client certain cases of clients dying during tidi fights should disappear as well.
There are many more examples to be found, but I don’t wanna go on a rant. I would just like to remind everyone and myself. That yes we can look back with rose tinted glasses. But remember there were a lot of negatives back then. Try and look at present-day eve with those same glasses, appreciate what we have while we have it.
And focus on the negative constructively. Make posts on the forums. Make reddit threads. Talk to the CSM they have a discord server just for that. If we keep saying eve is dying or keep saying the game was better back when, potential new players might not wanna pick up the game because they think they are too late.
It is only too late if we make it so.
