Idle Hands and Space Opera

I've been playing Eve Online. It is an interesting game but I don't know if it really is worth playing long term. I've been thinking of creating my own game, mainly because so many of the games I want to play because of the visuals - eve online being one of them - fail to engage me in an expressive way.

I don't mean just fun. I like 'twitch' gaming - being a first person mode where I control every move, similar to being a fighter pilot, but Eve is slow ship movement and learning skill points over a long period of time to allow you to perform certain functions. Since you accumulate skill points second by second, you have to choose what you want to learn and spend time waiting for those skills to finish.

Since I've unfortunately been sick the past few days, it has been somewhat relaxing to start mining and drift off to sleep (damn being tired from this nasal infection!) and wake and target a new asteroid to mine.

It takes quite a long time for my mining laser to pulverize the rock and pull it into the hold.

One of the other aspects of Eve Online - curiously it seems to be the primary purpose of the game yet I don't think it readily supports it being the primary focus in terms of game theory objectives and rewards - is ship to ship combat. I've been blown up while on a recent mission. So I'm working to get the skills to fly a space cruiser: a Gallente Vexor


So I do enjoy the visuals of space and the ships, but crave something more imaginative in terms of creating custom ships and building planet resources and fleets. I've played role-playing games that were very similar in the past - this one very much reminds me of Traveler, except instead of rolling a character you slowly build up the skills for your character - but there isn't much Eve Online does to help encourage role-playing.