(Click image for 1680 x 1050 version.)

(Click on the image to see the full-sized 1680×1050 version.)

Even so, it is gratifying to see that CCP are paying attention to their customers, as it seems that getting an additional do-over on a bungled avatar requires merely that we ask them for one. I found myself in need of a do-over last night.

Late last night I got the urge to play with the avatar maker and to use my first free do-over (the one granted to everyone who had made an avatar in the time between the launch of 1.1.0 and 1.1.1, see this thread) to update my first attempt at an Incarna avatar. I don’t know what I was thinking at the time. I should have left it alone. The result looked great at 200×200 pixels, but when reduced to an in-game chat icon, it was terribad beyond belief. It didn’t even look like a human face. I was horrified at the notion of being saddled with such an icon for the rest of my career. It was so awful that I am not even going to reproduce it here in this blog.

I decided to test CCP’s willingness to work with the customers on this issue. I sent the following petition:

Hi there!

I just made a new portrait for the character Persephone Astrid, and while it looks GREAT at the large size, the chat window icon is TERRIBLE. It doesn’t even look like the same person– for that matter it doesn’t even look like any human being I have ever met or seen.

Could I beg a do-over? The small icon is unbearably bad. It would be embarrassing to me for all of time, and I would never get over the shame of having such an awful icon. My friends will mock me endlessly for it, and my enemies will not take me seriously. It is that bad.

Also, as an aside, the character creation screen REALLY should give the player a preview of how the avatar will look as an icon before they finalize the selection.

Thanks in advance,
P. Astrid

This morning I logged on and found that I had been granted the opportunity to re-make the avatar. Thank you CCP! That was fast, and painless, and very considerate of you. Cheers!

Eager to be free of the horrible second attempt, I immediately dove into the editor and made the third version of Persephone Astrid. (Persephone one is on the left, Persephone three is on the right.) Armed with the great advice in this thread on the EVE Online forums (“Tips and tricks on how to create your avatar”) I made a number of changes:

That’s it. I’m done adjusting the avatar. It may not be perfect, but at this point I think I could only make it worse with additional changes.

Despite the complaints of the super-serious, over the past three days the EVE Online playerbase has gone completely batshit with excitement for the new avatars. The forums are choked with avatar threads, and there’s already been a number of fan websites posted which use the portrait server to dish up before and after comparison photos of any player. There have been complaints, however: people are upset that there’s not more clothing and hairstyle options, or that their favorite backdrop has been omitted.

When the walking in stations portion of Incarna launches, it is going to be huge. Even if the number of possible activities are minimal at first, people are going to play the hell out of that content, and will hungrily ask for more. Space travel and combat won’t come to a halt, but there will be an obvious falloff in the number of ships in space at any given time.

I’ve seen this before. Another ship-based MMO that I have played for over five years introduced a number of shore-based games a few years ago, including Texas Hold ‘Em poker. The number of ships at sea fell precipitously when players discovered they could make far more money from fleecing each other at the poker tables than by going to sea and taking the money by force of arms, or by attacking PvE targets.

Walking in stations is going to be enormous. I’m predicting it right now.

Earlier today I logged in and spent two hours fussing over the clothing choices in the avatar creation screen, trying different tops with different pants and shoes, cycling through all the tucking options, and so on; then I realized that all that will show in-game are the character’s head and shoulders. By the time walking in stations comes around, there will probably be all sorts of new clothing options to choose from anyway. In retrospect I feel a bit silly for having bothered.

So I focused my efforts above the bust, and the portrait over in the right-hand sidebar is the result. Farewell low-res Hitler-mustached Persephone in your preposterous Chinese space dress, and hello high-res Persephone in your casual space track jacket.

I didn’t want to completely re-do the character design, aside from hairstyle and clothing. (Especially the hairstyle. The old one looks like her hair was painted on with a 10 cm paintbrush.) My goal was to have the new avatar be recognizable as the same character, but upgraded and modernized a bit. Given the limitations of the new system that wasn’t completely possible, but I’m pleased with the result.

What did you do? Did you revamp your character completely, or did you use the old one as a jumping-off point? I’m curious to know.

I’ve made a new portrait, and I’ll post that here soon. I’m not happy with the way it looks when scaled down to the little chat window, but very few of the new avatars look good at that size I’ve noticed.

—————
(* Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2. Expect me to disappear for a month at the end of 2011 when Mass Effect 3 is released. It has got its hooks in me.)

Persephone Astrid returned to her home station in Evati, and docked her capsule in the hangar. There had been a Vexor cruiser wrapped around the capsule when she had left fifteen minutes earlier.

“Bad luck then?” asked her crew chief, who waited patiently as his employer disentangled herself from her capsule. He wore a similar black jumpsuit as the other members of the Bastards support crew, with a small rank insignia above the breast pocket. He carried two towels in his right arm and an electronic data tablet was tucked under his left. Persephone had left the capsule’s hatch open when she had disembarked, and left a trail of capsule goo down the boarding ladder. Aside from a skin-tight grey and blue capsule suit which covered her torso and a thick layer of amniotic slime, she was otherwise unclothed.

“Towel,” Persephone said curtly, extending her arm. Thick rivulets of slime dripped from her arms and legs and accumulated on the deck plate.

The chief handed her one towel and refrained from further comment. Persephone was in one of her moods, he saw. He waved over his shoulder to the two junior techs who had been waiting nearby at attention, and they sprang into action, attaching umbilical power and data cables to junction points on the capsule’s exterior, and readying the capsule for its next sortie.

Persephone wiped the capsule goo from her arms and legs. The towel didn’t absorb the thick gel like a sponge would, but rather wiped it away. When the towel was covered in the stuff, Persephone tossed it into a nearby bin and wordlessly held out her hand for the other. The chief handed her the other towel, and she finished the task, then threw the second towel after the first.

“Eve Uni,” Persephone said at last. She had said it the same way someone might say “flat tire” or “that time of the month.”

The chief nodded, but Persephone was already stalking past him towards the passageway which lead into the station proper. She hadn’t even stopped to don one of her black Bastards-issue coveralls, or a pair of shoes.

Tuesday

“There’s two Hurricanes and a Cyclone here on the gate,” TheHermit reported. A six-ship Bastards fleet was jumping into Eszur. FlashFresh, the CEO and fleet commander, lagged behind.

“Well let’s get ‘em,” Persephone suggested. “Isolate one and hit and run, right?”

“Yes, let’s,” FlashFresh agreed. “I’m just a little behind, I’ll be right there.”

The three Rifters belonging to TFS Tibbs, Red Vegas, and InterDict ran headlong into the fray, alongside TheHermit’s Merlin and Persephone’s Incursus. Not quite a minute later, the five of them flew their capsules sans frigates in the opposite direction. In the distance the three Battlecruisers were dispatching salvage crews to pick over the wrecked frigates.

“Sorry chaps,” Flash radioed. “I’m catching up now. Who’s primary?”

Inside her capsule, Persephone clenched her teeth around her breathing tube and said nothing.

Wednesday

“That didn’t go as I planned,” Persephone muttered. She was again in her capsule. Her capsule was, again, not safely tucked inside a combat ship.

“You should have checked that Moa for small turrets,” Lady Shaniqua suggested.

“Yeah, should have,” Persephone agreed. She flew her capsule towards her home station.

Thursday

Persephone lay on her back in the center of the plushly-carpeted floor in her luxury apartment’s front room, with her arms and legs spread wide as if she’d been knocked to the floor right there. She wore only her capsule suit, and her hair was still damp. She stared at the recessed light fixture in the ceiling, and let its glare slowly turn her vision into green and purple blotches. She didn’t care.

Artemis Fortune emerged from the adjacent room, which had been converted to her business office, and paused at the doorway, putting her hand on the door frame as she looked at her lover with concern.

“I was looking at your accounts a moment ago,” she said. “I saw the insurance notification pop up. Your Drake–” she trailed off uncertainly.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Persephone murmured.

“Are you–?” Artemis asked.

“I’m fine,” Persephone interrupted without looking away from the light. She hated herself for being rude, but she needed her space.

“That’s it,” she muttered. “This week cannot get any worse.”

Friday

Persephone jumped her Arbitrator cruiser from Egmar into Orfrold, where she found herself surrounded. Twelve SCUM. warships had been waiting for her, all within 10 kilometers. The Cerberus, Broadsword, Zealot, four Hurricanes, Maller, Falcon, Myrmidon, Brutix, and Drake opened fire as one. Her cruiser lasted nearly four seconds under the withering barrage before exploding into a million bits of metal scrap.

“Good fight,” radioed Bytes, the apparent fleet commander of the hostile fleet.

“You got owned,” added Prosum, laughing out loud.

Persephone lay on the sofa opposite the massive holographic video display in her luxury apartment’s front room. Artemis was curled up at the opposite end of the sofa, which was possible both because the sofa was as long as a freighter and because Persephone was short, even for a Jin-Mei. Sensors embedded in the holographic display sensed that Persephone was no longer paying attention to the movie (Raid Over Caldari Prime) and automatically paused the playback. Artemis noticed that the holovid had stopped, and looked up from the market interface that she had been idly browsing. From the corner of her eye she saw that Persephone was staring at her—again—and she smiled as she turned to face her.

“What’s up, hon?” Artemis asked pleasantly.

“Don’t you ever get tired of numbers and spreadsheets?” Persephone asked, dodging the question. She nodded in the direction of the screen. “You’re missing a really good vid.”

“This is the one where they bomb Caldari Prime, right?” Artemis asked rhetorically. She arched her eyebrows and made a sour face.

“Oh, yeah, that’s awkward, isn’t it?” Persephone realized.

“Just a little.” Artemis sniffed. She let Persephone squirm in the hot seat for just a moment before she continued: “It’s ancient history, hon, I’m just teasing you.”

“You–!” Persephone exclaimed. She threw the nearest over-sized sofa pillow at Artemis, who stuck her tongue out and ducked. The pillow thudded into the far wall, narrowly missing a lithograph of a twin-star sunset on a white sandy beach, then fell to the floor.

“You should take a closer interest in business,” Artemis pointed out, defusing the nascent pillow fight. “Maybe you wouldn’t be so broke all the time.”

Broke was, of course, a relative term. Persephone controlled enough wealth to enable a hundred million million people to retire to a paradise world and live the rest of their lives in pampered luxury should she wish to do so. In capsuleer terms she was not so wealthy, however. Sometimes when she wanted a new battleship, she had to wait while she earned the money to pay for it, and to most capsule pilots that meant broke.

“I have a pretty good business on the side,” Persephone protested. “I sell second-hand ship fittings on the local market, and I’ve got a production array stamping out Rifters all the time. I sell them right here in Evati for a nice mark-up.”

“Where do you get the second-hand fittings?” Artemis asked.

“I steal them, duh,” Persephone giggled. “I’m a pirate.”

“Why did I even ask?” Artemis groaned in false exasperation. “Tell you what, can I see your books? I’ll bet I can find all kinds of ways to boost your margins.”

“You’re on,” Persephone dared her. She addressed her apartment’s domestic AI: “Raphael! Allow Artemis Fortune access to my finances, all accounts–” she paused a moment, then smiled, “–full privileges.”

“As you wish, Miss Astrid,” replied the disembodied voice. “Artemis Fortune has full privileges to all of your accounts.”

Artemis goggled.

“I’d only meant to look at them,” she sputtered. “I could clean your accounts out with the privileges you’ve assigned to me.”

“I know,” Persephone said with a confident smile. “I trust you to do the right thing.”

To a Caldari, such a display of trust was tantamount to a marriage proposal, or even a corporate merger! Artemis swallowed and sorted through her thoughts, which raced almost out of control. Did Persephone understand the significance of what she’d just done, or was she simply being her usual carefree self, she wondered. Artemis decided to set that thought aside as it was too much to grasp all at once, but resolved to return to it as soon as practical.

“Let’s look at your recent transactions,” Artemis said, summoning Persephone’s accounts onto the console she’d been using earlier. Without meaning to, she found herself drawn into the comforting matrix of numbers and matrices. Numbers and spreadsheets made sense, and were familiar, unlike emotions and relationships. Eight would always mean eight, and never seven or about that many, give or take a few.

“Is this going to take a while?” Persephone asked. When Artemis didn’t reply, she chuckled. “I guess so, then. Rapha, resume playback please.”

The holovid resumed, and fighter-bombers screamed through the thin atmosphere high above Caldari Prime.

“Whoa, what the–!” Artemis sputtered suddenly. She tensed as if she had touched a live wire.

“Rapha, pause playback,” Persephone ordered. “Hon? What is it? I thought you said this was okay.”

“It’s not the vid,” Artemis choked out, still staring at the data. She took a breath and regained her calmness. Artemis’ expression brightened noticeably, and she gave Persephone a significant look. “Have you looked at your sales lately?”

“No?” Persephone said slowly, wondering where this was going. She tried to decipher Artemis’ expression, but failed.

Artemis giggled madly into her hand, obviously delighted at some secret knowledge. “Rapha, throw this transaction data up on the big screen please.”

“As you wish, Miss Fortune,” responded the AI. The image of a low-orbital dogfight was replaced with a simple excerpt from the database.

“Well that seems peculiar,” Persephone said, skimming the entries.

“That’s the understatement of the year. You sold a Rifter for 164 million ISK,” Artemis said. “That’s about a thousand times what they’re worth. You’re not running scams are you? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, I mean.”

“What? No!” Persephone protested. “I’m an honest pirate. I mark my Rifters up to a quarter million ISK, sure, but people are willing to pay that since we’re six jumps from the nearest market hub, so it’s fair.” She pointed to another transaction on the same page. “See? 249,999 ISK for the sale of a Rifter to Darek Virec. I sell twenty like that every month.”

“I believe you,” Artemis said reassuringly. She looked more closely at the data. “163,999,998.15 is a really odd figure, you know? It’s not an input error, or it would simply be off by three significant figures.” Leaving the offending number on the wall display, she quickly waved her hands at the console to her right, spreading the local market data out in three dimensions around her end of the sofa. She found what she was looking for.

“I knew it,” she said triumphantly after only a moment of searching through the numbers. She pointed at a particular entry on one of the floating spreadsheets. “Check this out.”

Persephone clambered to the other end of the sofa to join Artemis and peered over her shoulder at the data.

“One unit of Rifter, 163,999,998.15 ISK,” Persephone said, reading the entry out loud. “It’s for sale in Evati, and the order was put up just a few days ago. I see! Someone else is running a scam on Rifters, and the sucker who fell for it got my Rifter because it was the cheapest one on the market, and I got the money.”

“Pretty much,” Artemis agreed.

“Win!” Persephone squeaked.

“Congratulations,” Artemis said warmly. She brushed the spreadsheets aside like flies, and they obediently disappeared from sight. “What will you do with your windfall?”

“I have no idea,” Persephone admitted. “Maybe I’ll get a Falcon.”

“That’s why you’re always broke,” Artemis chided. “As soon as you get money, you buy something with it. You should learn to invest. Then your money will be working for you.”

“A Falcon is an investment,” Persephone protested. “With it, I can go out and earn more ISK via piracy.”

“You already have a hangar full of ships for that,” Artemis said.

“Well, yeah,” Persephone faltered. “But none of them are Falcons.”

“What’s special about a Falcon?”

“It’s. . . it’s. . . it’s a Falcon, okay?” Persephone surrendered. “I don’t know. Just trust me on this one. Besides, I’ve wanted one for a long time.”

Anyway, I’ve played EVE-O for a longer time and with more devotion than any other game, and about two months ago I quite burned out. I’ve been away nearly that whole time, only logging in to train new skills. I had lost all enthusiasm for the game, and I needed some time away.

In a week or so, or perhaps a bit after that, I do plan to return. I spent some time in-game yesterday, sorting out old contracts and moving some things from here to there, and it wasn’t terrible. And it was really good to see my friends again.

I have some ideas for this blog, too. I’ve got a story that I was about to write just as I burned out, and it is still fresh enough in my mind that I can write it satisfactorily, and a few other ideas came to mind while I was away.

BRB soon.

"Is it? I'd like us to explore this even further. Is Low Sec being treated differently by CCP Games than Null Sec (Zero-Zero) or Empire space is? Can one successfully make a living in these unsecured systems where neither Alliance nor Concord roam to enforce their laws? What's needed? Or is everything fine as it is?"

In response, I'd like to present the following bit of in-character fiction:]

—————

Inside a space station, a sunrise can be summoned at any time of day that one wishes, provided that they can afford it. At just the right moment, the AI which managed the automated functions of Persephone Astrid’s luxury apartment increased the illumination in her bedroom, selecting a color temperature which simulated the yellowish-orange hue of the star in her childhood home. A trapezoid of warm light fell across the bed, warming Persephone’s face and gently rousing her from sleep.

Persephone coughed as she awakened, as frequent exposure to the moisture-free air supply in her hydrostatic capsule had given her a never-ending tickle in her throat. The capsule’s air supply was dehumidified to prevent corrosion. When she considered the vast power and wealth which came with being a capsule pilot, a chronic cough barely bothered her at all. She scratched at one of the implant sockets at the nape of her neck. It itched fiercely and felt warm to her touch, telling her that the skin around the supposedly non-bio-reactive hypo-allergenic metal flange was irritated again. Like the cough, Persephone filed the itch under “shit I just put up with” and moved on with her morning.

Persephone had the day off, so she was in no hurry to get out of bed. Besides which, her favorite bedwarmer, Artemis Fortune, was snuggled at her side, snoring raspily in a way that was cute only to another capsule pilot. She reflected on the unusually long time which her latest girlfriend had stayed around. Ordinarily, her live-in girlfriends had usually moved in and then back out again within two weeks. Artemis had been around for slightly longer than a month, and as yet showed no sign of becoming fed up with Persephone’s most obvious character flaw—that she was a blood-thirsty mass-murdering space pirate who killed without a second thought just to earn a profit.

“Rapha,” she whispered, addressing the AI. “What’s on my agenda for the next 48 hours?”

“Miss Astrid, your next scheduled–” the disembodied butler pronounced it sheduled “–event is in 44 hours and 17 minutes. You are to join the current class of recruits and covertly evaluate their skills.” Raphael whispered its response to avoid awakening Artemis.

Persephone stretched and yawned and sat up in the bed, pulling her knees to her chest.

“Send up breakfast for two, please. The usual, with Tai Ling tea.”

“Working,” Raphael replied. “It shall be delivered presently, Miss Astrid.” Before the AI had finished speaking, it had already relayed a priority order for the hot breakfast to the catering staff. As a capsule pilot, almost anything Persephone desired could be hers at a moment’s notice. Her hangar was lined with rows of deadly starships which required the resources of entire solar systems to produce. With what she paid for just one of her least-expensive frigates, a million people could retire in opulence for the rest of their lives on a paradise world. Compared to that, the cost of a luxury apartment and on-demand catering was a pittance.

Artemis stirred, rolling toward Persephone and muttering sleepily.

“G’morning,” she croaked, blinking the sleep from her eyes. She pulled her long black hair back with her fingertips, tucking it behind her ears. While Persephone preferred to sleep in the nude, Artemis wore a diaphanous body-hugging slip, made of a synthetic miracle fiber which breathed perfectly, never bunched up, and which slid over the (already slippery) bedsheets with just the right amount of friction. It was absurdly luxurious, and left to her own devices, she would never have bought such a thing. Instead, Persephone had bought it for her, and to her surprise, she found it delightful.

“Good morning sleepyhead,” Persephone replied. She lay down again, and snuggled against her lover. “Breakfast is already on the way.”

“Mmm,” Artemis hummed, enjoying the feel of Persephone’s body pressed close to hers. “You’re not getting the nong berry crepes again, are you?”

“What’s wrong with nong berries?” Persephone asked.

“They’re too bitter,” Artemis said. She playfully stuck out her tongue and grinned.

“Bah, I like them,” Persephone replied. “But for you, okay. Rapha, no nong berries on the crepes!” Persephone ordered.

“Of course, Miss Astrid,” replied the AI. Raphael quickly relayed the instructions to the catering staff.

In the bowels of the space station, the team of caterers who were already halfway to Persephone’s apartment turned their breakfast-laden trolley around and ran back to the kitchen with their white linen frocks trailing in their wake. In the kitchen, the cooks hastily assembled a new stack of crepes without nong berries. Persephone had no idea that any of this was happening. All she knew was that she was a capsule pilot, and whatever she wanted, she got. Quickly.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Artemis said. “Do you ever miss high sec?” As a transport pilot, Artemis could go anywhere in Empire. To her, it seemed impossibly restrictive to be an outlaw.

“Miss it?” Persephone asked, wrapping her arms around Artemis and kissing her. “I’ve got everything I need right here.”

“Mmm,” Artemis replied, returning Persephone’s embrace. The slip she wore enhanced the sensation of skin on skin in a way that would cause an Amarrian to question her faith in God. “You’re–” complicated emotional concepts like love were difficult for her to articulate. “You’re pretty neat, too.”

The caterers sprinted through the high-security corridors of the capsuleers-only section of the station towards Persephone’s apartment, pushing a gleaming breakfast trolley.