Since people tend to make a “farewell” thread, I’m going to follow. I’m feeling less and less addicted to game, sure real life things makes this even more complicated.
I noticed recently that I log in more and more rarely. Much less than in the past. I used to play a match at least once a day, now I only login to check what is to correct in translation, and play tournaments on Sunday. I simply burned out. Matches are still enjoyable, even if only result is loose streak, but still, I play one-two matches and I’m out of motivation for more. Open Space is good on paper, but in fact its the same empty locations with aimbot AI ships flying around. Again, I used to fly around and search for mysterious containers each day, now I’m not motivated to do so. Monos quest and single PvE supply me with enough credits to sustain and even experiment with some ship builds.
Other thing that makes me to become semi-active is slowly realization that I will never be good in this game. As a player that started in early 2013, I know each ship mechanic, their weaknesses and strong points. Still, no matter how much I train, I will never have proper reflexes to use them to maximum. My machine bear playable level of 40-60 FPS, but 100+ ping makes my ships to turn less effective than a person that have 50. Simply can’t pass “mediocre” level of playing.
My corp is rather not existant anymore, so our dread, built in fact by 6 people total, collects interplanetary dust. People that stayed in corp play on so random times of day/night that its impossible to arrange even single attack (We managed to attack once. With all-mighty 4 man wing.).
Some personal history with me and the game.
I started around patch 0.8 of open beta. There were only few maps, barely two PvE missions, T4 was the max “elite” tier. Some things were grindy, like faction reputation, contracts rarely gave 500 points for fullfilling and every faction was separated. But if you achieved certain level, you had permanent access to best that you could buy, MK3 gear. MK4 was luxury with miracle level of dropping from trophies.
Ship builds and weapons were basic, but with fantastic freedom of choice. LRF with Pulse Lasers? Why not. Heavy plasma on interceptors? Hell yeah. RF Plasma and Shrapnel precursor, RF Railgun didnt heat at all. Long-range variation of laser dealt tickle level of damage, but had basic range of 6km, allowing to harrass enemies from very far. Long range railguns didnt need charging.
T2 was king of tiers. Most balanced, most fun. T3 kinda slowly became positional war, due to access to horizon modules and heavy variants of standard weapons with increased range. You could almost reach center of map from your spawn.
Then, after some patches, “Nuclear winter” came. Every ship with heavy rocket slot could have Tactical Nuke, carrying 3 of them. Nukes then were immune to Missile Shields, that were continuous aura like signature masking. Each Nuke gave a punch like EM Torpedo. Rest you can imagine.
0.9 patch, flipped whole game upside down. T5 appeared, weapons became restricted to types of ships, switchable ammo types and rockets dissapeared. First instance of “Beach ball cannons” made the game almost unplayable due to one hit KOs. My favourite weapons, long-range laser and heavy plasma cannon got deleted, pulse laser moved out of fighter class. General disaster, but after adapting, game became playable again.
Some patches after - mixed tiers experiments. It was awfull. Prem ships fooling MM calculations. Loosing on purpose to get easier opponents. They reverted that back, but disgust stayed
Open Space beta. Nothing extraordinary, flew a couple of times, got bored and left that alone.
1.0, oficiall release. Cant remember much from that time range.
Slowly burning out process, game became less enjoyable than on the beginning.
1.1, dreads and secret project. Flew couple of times, looks awesome as awesomelly reduces FPS when asteroid explodes. Server problems became pain in the backside
1.2, new craftable ships, new maps. Same as above, but with difference of feeling that english speaking community is less ignored.
1.3 now. Age of destroyers without them yet, ok. Suspecting destroyers as PvE cruiser with difference that you can actually fly it, but cant tell untill I see them.
Still I will remain as translator and weekly Sunday tournament player, but I think I won’t play more than this.
Rob, switching to stand-by mode.