Hello Friends,
I'm here because I prefer to play on my own terms. I appreciate NPC Pirates and Criminals, but I've had more than one eagerly anticipated trade run cut short by a human - 50 tonnes of rares along with nearly $2Mil of ship rebuy gone just like that - to leave Open Play behind for a while. I'll go there once fully decked out and looking to skirmish, but for mining, trading and exploring, I just don't need that frustration.
By day, I'm in computer security. My team and I help developers all over the industry write more secure, stable and hacker-resistant code. I'm located in the Greater Boston area, and so I tend to do most of my playing on weekends and evenings - depending on the day I've had, I may be up late, mining or blasting bad guys in a RES.
E:D appeals to me because of how completely open it is. I have not yet set foot in a CQC arena, though that sounds like a great way to blow off some steam. I look at E:D less as a game and more as a pastime/hobby. Most games are too linear for my tastes - once played, replayability is always a challenge, even in things like Skyrim and Fallout. I haven't yet signed on to any of the Powers in E:D, so maybe there's a story there to follow, but as it stands, I'm enjoying just prospecting and trying to eek out a living among the stars.
E:D also impresses me with the feeling that I can play in a Universe where Firefly and Babylon 5 might be just a few jumps away. I'm currently playing on a gaming laptop from Toshiba (tempted to upgrade to something even beefier to get the full effect of the visuals since this rig, while, good, isn't really showing me everything), and the game has taken on a whole new dimension of fun since I shelled out for the Saitek x52 HOTAS. Really looking forward to seeing what this thing will look like through an Occulus Rift, once that's available.
See you out there, folks.
EDIT: Why the hell is it so BRIGHT in Rafferty's Mobius station? I can barely see where the landing pad is.