I'm a habitual restarter when it comes to roleplaying games. I'm not entirely sure why I do so, but when playing something like Mass Effect, Baldur's Gate, the Elder Scrolls, or (yes) EVE, I tend to get only so far (several hours to several days) with a character before something catches my eye and the possibilities offered by another race/class/background jump out at me and beg that I start over from that perspective or with that skill set. I also tend to be overly particular about a character's appearance and stats. So for all the fun I have using them, character creators are the bane of my gaming existence.
In EVE, this has been incredibly destructive to my overall in-space abilities as skill point advancement is a more or less set progression. The characters that I've finally found a home in were rolled in May of this year, ten months after I first picked up the game. While I've learned a tremendous amount about gameplay and the backstory, my highest SP avatar just hit 10mil a couple weeks ago. Thankfully, I know I'll stick with this batch, but there are still times when a character concept gets into my head and I'm happy I can't login to the client right now for fear of what I might do.
Along the way I've left a lot of false starts in my own storylines that just didn't have the magnetism to keep me engaged when a new possibility sauntered by. I'm curious if any of you have had similar experiences. How long did it take you to find your footing in New Eden? Anybody else out there find it hard to stick with one character or was it love at first trial account? I'm most curious about those of you who have been playing one character since the early years. How has your approach to playing the character changed over time? I still see my characters basically as puppets that I use to tell a story. How do you view yours and how did you come to inhabit that paradigm?