I realize EVE Online caters to the griefer crowd, the paranoid scheming and infighting crowd, the "internet spaceships are serious business" crowd that sees themselves as Loki-esque trickster gods. When what they really do is choose the easiest targets available and press their biggest, most obvious buttons, in a game that uses its lore and its atmosphere to lure in the suckers for them without their even having to do any work.

I realize FPSes cater to the douchebag crowd, the "cry moar" crowd, the "your tears are delicious to me" crowd that sees themselves as professional e-sports athletes. When what they actually do is find games that let them grief their competition mercilessly while they're still newbs, so that they never have to face them at full power and have their precious e-peen shrunk down.

I realize the likely response to this all is HTFU, which I've learned is EVEspeak for "I can't be arsed to inconvenience myself."

And I realize that griefing and playing for dominance are seen not as extraneous, but as a vital part of the game most people here signed up for.

But I personally don't enjoy being spawn-camped. I don't enjoy spawning next to players from the opposing team and instantly dying to them. I don't enjoy being sniped out of nowhere. I don't enjoy running around trying to figure out what's going on and running into a vastly superior force. I don't enjoy spending 90 percent of a Skirmish mission trying to claw my team's way back from the grave and dying a million times. I don't enjoy losing to a team that seems to have bought its way to victory, and having to figure out how to spend my fake moneys. And I especially don't enjoy being humped by the guy whose armour I just repaired, or cringing the whole time I'm on the war barge and hoping some guy doesn't invade my personal space.

Improving my skills would fix some, but not all, of the above problems, for a value of "fix" which means "shoddy hack that should not have had to be implemented." Most of them I see as the consequences of extremely poor game design. I have more fun playing a generic-brand Modern Warfare I picked up for $0.99 than DUST 514 most days, even though I like the atmosphere and the lore of DUST better.

I'm trying to play a fun, heavily thematic first person shooter which is one of the few that will let me play a female character. And I'm getting a steaming pile of crap where the FPS part's only part of the game, and the rest of it is getting bullied and ganked in between reading a spreadsheet.

I'd already figured out that the only two kinds of EVE players are sadists and suckers. I think that applies to this game as well, I think that's intentional, and I think the design reinforces that. I'm not enjoying the time that I spend in-game, and I'm not going to recommend it to friends.

But hey, I got the voucher for it in my new PS3 box, and I sound obviously hurt and upset. So I guess both the developers and the players are happy with that. Glad I could make your lives better.