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[Jace]

Anyone ever get the impulse to start over OOCly? Many have had it with characters - get tired of their faction, direction of their arcs, whatever. But do you ever get it for the game as a whole? Get tired of knowing certain people, want to meet new people, live in peace? [insert cliché about being yourself here]

Just a thought.

[Dessau]

I've considered selling Dessau in the past. Even considered not starting over at all, just dropping the game altogether. I at least want to finish training him up to Mastery V in all non-Amarr Frig through BC hulls. No desire to fly anything bigger than that, ever.

There are interesting nuances to the factions that seem worthwhile to explore, but the problem for me is that the EVE client looks less and less like the vehicle best suited to exploring those nuances. RP being a style of collaborative fiction, how many opportunities will there be for real meaty investigation of the setting and its peoples? While I don't tire of the concept behind Dessau, I admit that as a latecomer to EVE RP, the ideas I'm interested in digging into within the context of of the setting are undeniably old hat to RP mainstays. So for him, collaborative fiction seems somewhat unlikely. No harm in trying, though.

Once I get that last dopamine hit from 'skill training completed', I'd have to wonder about my future with the game.

[Havohej]

I considered selling Havo and using the ISK to buy a comparable character.

I even looked through Eve PF, looking for what else might be interesting to me to play.

In the end, the only thing truly interesting to me about RP in this game is being the bad guy in a good guy faction.  Amarr and Caldari are bad guy factions (generally), and being the worst of the bad guys in a bad guy faction feels too easy to me.  Not in the sense of the RP itself, it takes a certain subtlety, I think, to do that without being too over-the-top.  Easy rather in that all of the framework is there for you to be bad with.

So that leaves Gallente and Minmatar.  I just don't like Gallente as a faction.  They're terrible, imo.  Which leaves Winmatar.  And if I'm gonna be a bad Minmatar... might as well still be Havo.

Would be interesting to sell Havo, buy another Minmatar and see all the comparisons to Havo as I RP a new Minmatar villain.  But fuck it, too much :effort:.

[kalaratiri]

I did it when I cam back this August. Decided I was done with flying with Minnie FW and was going to join a corp of completely new people (apart from Vince, but without his offer I probably would never have been allowed into URIEL ).

[PracticalTechnicality]

A few times I've actually done this, but generally it is to transplant people who work well together away from toxic influences in the same corp rather than loose social contacts (like the rp community in my case - loose groups of people I occasionally talk to, certainly not enough to judge contribution vs toxicity). 

An example would be my Steel frontier days renting in Fountain; we had a good crew but a lot of instant gratification types who were unfortunately in director positions in the alliance.  Constant friction pretty much turned two valid play styles into opposing factions and I walked out (taking my investments aka the alliance bank) with me just because the social stress was getting out of hand for a game. 

Essentially, so long as the people I hang out with aren't putting my enjoyment or progress in jeopardy, I am happy for them to disagree/agree or whatever.  It is if disagreement turns into OOC/RL impact that I pretty much drop people like hot bricks.  Steel Frontier resulted in people that actively sought to bully each other for leaving; TS-F let me go without a bad word and I stay on their TS to this day when our ideals diverged.  Guess which group I still hang out with . 

At this juncture, I have dropped EVE more than the people in it.  Elite lets me fly solo or with people I have known for years (be it Jikkarr for the last 10-12 years or Zanzibar Heroshima for the last 2.5), make contributions that matter to me and generally means I am on my own schedule (I don't mind slow burners, but US vs EU tz timers are impossible for me to tolerate as it is hard to defend a timer when you're on Campus teaching ).  So it is pretty much a toss up - if the people are doing your calm harm, drop em.  If the game is not helping, well I reduced my play down to speculating on the PLEX market and that's about it. 

[Lyn Farel]

Dropping OOC for a whole new OOC ? Nah. Already hard to find good RPers and circles to just drop all that for a whim. Too precious. And one would need a real reason for that to happen, like having serious issues with one's own group of friends no ?

Dropping the current character for another one out of boredom or envy of another faction ? I have thought of that actually. Not strongly enough to drop a main character that I am attached to though. I tried to do like Ava with another potential character that was gallente nationalist, because I really like the gallente faction, but since it was directly during the time where "stfu, actions are louder than words and if you do nothing in space you are lame", I didn't try to push it further with a character with no skillpoints that I didn't intend to skill up.

That mentality was sure a good way to kill all initiatives trying to enrich the universe and RP milieu with standard characters of the ordinary.

[Jace]

I'm at that point where I feel like Jace is in a corner and I continue to play him primarily because he has so many trade skills. I have so many other alts, I have considered just liquidated assets and dumping them on an alt and letting things go where they may.

And as far as the starting over OOC bit, I didn't mean it in the sense of too many people around me being toxic (though I can understand why that is the first thought people went to) - I am fairly good at handling that. What I meant was more of realizing how toxic I have been, how few people that are left in EVE know anything about me, how rehearsed and rote my OOC interactions with people in-game are.

[PracticalTechnicality]

That's just the nature of having to be guarded with people who aren't close to you - few people here can say much as to my motivations outside of 'make isk, stop you getting it', while people I am close to in my old groups could tell a whole l ot more (they wouldn't and that is why they're close friends ). 

Starting over isn't neccessary, you may just end up in the same rut if you follow the same progression.  Instead, maybe look at building up some purely OOC trust with people of your choosing and move from there.  In an environment of trust, you may find that even your guarded interactions open up slightly with those people around, without compromising your core activities in rp and in game. 

Tl;Dr; Establish a mutually beneficial comfort zone with people you think you can trust.  Take it from there.  Restart if you must but an established identity is more useful for trust building.

[Lyn Farel]

I'm pretty sure most people have rotten relations with some other people to various degrees... Once acknowledged it doesn't ask so much for it to become clean again with time passing if you try to correct why it went wrong in the first place.

I know I did. Of course leaving the game helps.

[Samira Kernher]

Nope. But then, the period of knowing no one and having to interact with complete strangers is the worst part of RP when you're shy. Gets better once you get established.

Definitely are things I wish I could do over, but not a complete restart. If I'm going to start up in a new community then it will be in a new game with a new universe that offers something I'm not getting in what I'm currently playing.

[Anyanka Funk]

I started over twice. First in 2011 and second with Anya in 2012. It felt good with Anya. I wanted to rp with her from the start but had too much fun playing her OOC for the first year. Then it got boring and I went full RP.

I tried starting icly and oocly recently with alts. The game mechanics make playing ooc boring. Even solo. Even with friends,  because there is no adventure left. We have done everything.

And starting over icly doesn't make any sense for me right now. Anya is my perfect character. I would not give her up or change her course. I enjoy playing her.

[Havohej]

And as far as the starting over OOC bit, I didn't mean it in the sense of too many people around me being toxic (though I can understand why that is the first thought people went to) - I am fairly good at handling that. What I meant was more of realizing how toxic I have been, how few people that are left in EVE know anything about me, how rehearsed and rote my OOC interactions with people in-game are.

Am I understanding this (the bolded part in particular) correctly as you saying you've been a jerk to people?  If yes, just change it up.  Soften the edges.  People'll develop a new mental image of you as an OOC person, gradually.

If I did not understand that correctly, ignore this post. 

[Jace]

And as far as the starting over OOC bit, I didn't mean it in the sense of too many people around me being toxic (though I can understand why that is the first thought people went to) - I am fairly good at handling that. What I meant was more of realizing how toxic I have been, how few people that are left in EVE know anything about me, how rehearsed and rote my OOC interactions with people in-game are.

Am I understanding this (the bolded part in particular) correctly as you saying you've been a jerk to people?  If yes, just change it up.  Soften the edges.  People'll develop a new mental image of you as an OOC person, gradually.

If I did not understand that correctly, ignore this post.

That is certainly part of it. It took me being gone from EVE over the summer to realize how toxic I had become, how my in-game OOC persona was not me and not what I wanted others to have to deal with. Over the last four years on two different characters, my OOC EVE self slowly became some aggrandized asshat in my own eyes and I had the same reactions, same phrases, to nearly everything I encountered and everyone I met. My thought process is that starting over may help me to get past that. Focusing on a 'new main' might help open things up for me, let me be at ease and actually enjoy myself again, knock me off of my pedestal. There is a lot of OOC and IC things I have never done in EVE because of the absurd image of 'who I wanted to be' that got in the way.

So the long and short of it is, this is sort of an anti-YOLO post. 

[Havohej]

I see.  That's certainly more clear, and I'm glad I wasn't insulting with the assumption.

That said, a word of advice from my own playbook...

I've been RPing for a long time, starting with WoD's Vampire: The Masquerade.  My first ever character was basically me, with fangs.  I had a poor experience, took things too personally, etc.  With Havohej, I set out to have a believable villain, but one far removed from my real self in his thoughts and motivations.  For instance, I would never be okay with, say, the murder of a several thousand (let alone several hundred thousand) people because they would not give up an ideology that was distasteful to the status quo.  Havo, on the other hand, was more than willing to blow up a freighter full of liberated slaves because they wouldn't give up their religious faith.

What I'm saying is, keep who YOU are separate from who your character is.  Let people know you for you, if you so choose, and let them know your character for your character.  Most importantly, you keep yourself.  Don't be too effected personally by what befalls your character, his/her triumphs and failures.  Maintain the "it's a game" aspect of things, you know?

My 0.02 ISK.

[Jace]

I am pretty good at maintaining the OOC/IC divide because, well, there has never been an OOC. There are essentially two characters. OOC Jace and IC Jace. Distinct characters, distinct personas, they don't leak into each other much - but the OOC Jace is still just another character.

I really, really hate the term authenticity and I'm trying to avoid using it. But I can't think of a replacement at the moment. Sometimes you just wanna be you, ya know? I haven't done that in EVE OOCly in years.