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[Ria Nieyli]

Well, to be honest, your character is a capsuleer. That's pretty overpowered in the general setting already. I mean, mine is just trying to make sense of the world and get by for the most part. And she can fly literal space cities at the same time. It does tend to skew the perspective a little bit.

Then, there's the part where your character is only as relevant as others think it os, and everyone else is a capsuleer too. It does get real messy real fast.

[Silas Vitalia]

[...]it's like everyone writes their characters as the one on the Heroic Journey which just creates an absurdity of everyone wanting to be that humble blacksmith who is secretly the bastard child of the King and who ends up slaying the Big Bad Evil to save the universe then goes off to bang the princess[...]

I'd love it if this were true; at least people would be doing something other than sniping at  each other on the IGS.

(Actually, I think part of the general craptitude is latent frustration about the ways in which EVE thwarts the level 1-20, stable hand to dragonslayer narrative conditioning that D&D inflicted on us all.)

Well, to be honest, your character is a capsuleer. That's pretty overpowered in the general setting already. I mean, mine is just trying to make sense of the world and get by for the most part. And she can fly literal space cities at the same time. It does tend to skew the perspective a little bit.

Then, there's the part where your character is only as relevant as others think it os, and everyone else is a capsuleer too. It does get real messy real fast.

Great points.  This is part of the central ??? of Eve RP, is that you are sort of by definition playing a Mary Sue from the minute you start character creation.  Every little bit of lore and the entire structure of the game is there to reinforce how SPECIAL and POWERFUL you are.  This was always hard for me because on a character/rp level I really, really enjoy the 'regular joe' capsuleer rp characters who are the lowlifes and the hustlers and the seedier side of things, but I've always had trouble squaring the circle there because even the most 'average joe' capsuleer is still Bill fucking Gates driving a wtfpowmobile of destruction on day one of their career with more money than god compared to 99% of New Eden baseliners.   

The setting has always been interesting but the gameplay and UI don't have the fidelity right now for it. 

I'd be incredibly interested in a BASELINER game set in the Eve universe, where you never ever deal with capsuleers except maybe as that impossible brick wall of death if you stray too far out of your lane.   Make it about the underworld on Gallente prime, or being a crew member on a bounty hunter ship, or an undercover MIO agent on Amarr looking for Heretics. There's a billion settings and a billion great stories to tell with a richness of characters that start at the bottom of the totem pole.

[Jev North]

The modern insight is that Mary Sues aren't strictly a problem of characterization as much as they are a problem of story structure; it's not that Mary Sue or Marty Stue are particularly powerful or good-looking, it's that the rest of the story bends its internal logic solely to showcase how cool and good they are. (Of course, you could argue that EVE isn't exactly innocent of this, with its new-NPE and constant harping about "immortal demigods," as opposed to "dangerous and insane mercenary types with cloning equipment.")

The main problem I'm seeing is that it's hard to find something that's relatable for a capsuleer to do with their lives. Most of the classic threats and motivations at personal scale either aren't a problem because clones, or fix themselves when you throw a bunch of money, mercenaries, or high-bore starship artillery at them. The answer to most personal moral conundrums is "rip out your plugs and retire on the money you've made so far, because there's nothing in the trade but shedding oceans of blood, no matter which side you're on." There's probably a literal hundred little factions to be a part of, and nothing to unify people identifying with them working towards some common goal. And so on.

There's always interpersonal drama, or taking the struggles in the actual game in-character, but that tends to get soap-operatic in a hurry, I've found; interpersonal stuff without further context is very hard to do right, and a lot of people are really poorly equipped to deal with conflict when playing for keeps.

(You're not alone in thinking that it might be cool to explore the setting from a baseliner point of view; until RL intervened, one of the MITG guys was working on a Storyteller-powered game set on the wormhole citadel.)

[Samira Kernher]

+1 to Jev's post.

[Ria Nieyli]

There's always interpersonal drama, or taking the struggles in the actual game in-character, but that tends to get soap-operatic in a hurry, I've found; interpersonal stuff without further context is very hard to do right, and a lot of people are really poorly equipped to deal with conflict when playing for keeps.

Interpersonal stuff tends be hard, period. A lot of people have been playing for a while and have had a considerable amount of character buildup. It gets pretty tricky to change something that well established. Hard to turn the rudder and change course when the present status quo of the character has been achieved over the span of years.

That of itself isn't a problem in isolation. However, given the aging population of EVE - yes! EVE has the same problem as Japan. A lot of the characters are old, new blood is scarce. Hell, I'm relatively new myself and I'm coming on four years in a couple of months. There's only so much meaningful interaction you can get with someone after several years.

Interestingly enough, it's the same reason the blue risk averse donut that op complains about formed. People have put in the time and effort into something, they'll make sure they have better chance to keep it.

So, how can CCP break that apart? They can't. Nobody can. The only way is for the older players to burn out, while a sufficient slew of new bloods comes in to replace us, striving to build anew. Until the cycle repeats itself. Problem is, the existing population is entrenched, and heavily at that. A new player entering is facing the daunting task of combatting the entire capsuleer population for relevance. Many don't make it. And we, collectively made it that way. EVE itself is no longer harsh. The danger comes from a bunch of old, increasingly powerful individuals that snuff out the very flame they depend on for life. Left alone, forever fighting in a dystopian future, living in the Twilight of the Gods.

[Jev North]

I'd not call the old guard "powerful" as much as "cynical."

Capital-R relevance wasn't something anyone was ever going to get, anyway.

[Ria Nieyli]

There's a literal metric fuckton of assets stockpiled already. Remember when CCP raised broker fees in stations to try and disperse trade hubs in favour of new citadel ones, and Jita just refused to move? Collectively, we're at the level that even devs struggle when facing off against the playerbase. Let that sink in for a moment and think about how that would look in the eyes of someone who's new and wants to have fun.

[Silas Vitalia]

CCP have set up a terrible relationship with the players wherein they are continually shown as weak and kowtowing to specific null elements of the playerbase and scared to change things in a meaningful way.  Or change things in a way that would ever significantly effect certain groups.

CCP needs to get Zorg Industries on the entire playerbase, smashing teacups and watching all the activity as players pick up the pieces.  The entrenched player power structures of this game have not been good for the game long term.

Jita should have been glassed years ago, the entrenched null sand castles forcibly relocated after a few years if they hadn't been by other players, entire drifter or empire armadas set upon anyone who gets too big for their britches.  Game design should also be adjusted to prevent static power structures.

[Ria Nieyli]

While I do agree to a certain extent, doing that now will make for a mass exodus of the current playerbase and essentially kill the game in one fell swoop.

On the other hand, I've always been drawn to the long game availability in EVE. This is my retirement game, and one of the major reasons I joined was because of the ability to establish yourself as a permament fixture in the universe. hardships be damned. Even so, I almost quit due to a certain shitstorm, but I got saved by a friend of mine.

[Veiki]

From a certain perspective, Eve and New Eden work fantastically as an anti-war narrative.

All your capsuleers keep on fighting and killing with increasing amount of blood on their hands and in the end the real winner is always the status quo. Ennui and cynicism sets in as the dichotomy of conflict establishes itself: all that fighting is just for the same old triptych Thucydides wrote about. Self-interest based on resources and wealth. Pride and prestige to be the winner. Fear and suspicion of the other sides.

Eve is an anti-war story the same way Game of Thrones is. You have a story about people going to war for the same old reasons and most of the time it was all just a lie to cover up the real reasons. After all the battles and people burned alive by dragons, all the betrayals and backstabbing, most everything turned out to be a lie in the end and the status quo is likely to win while all the fighting distracts everyone from the real threat.

We just need the Drifters to go ahead and break down the wall at last.

[Samira Kernher]

I wish you good fortune in the wars to come.