Mercenaries, Pirates, Samurai, and Vikings

What is it about playing the spoiler that I love so much?

Generally speaking, my approach to PvP is pretty much "shoot all the things". I tend to care only if I'm in high-sec (I've lost a Proteus to Concord by accidentally killing a scanning Buzzard on the other side of a wormhole, not realizing it was a high-sec hole). And every time I try to boost my sec status up again, it's back down below -2.0 within a week or so.

A lot of folks are nervous about attacking targets on gates. For them, gate guns are a frightening prospect that will obliterate your ship in a couple shots. Part of that may come from the old gate gun mechanics, but I think most of it stems from the uncertainty of another opponent shooting at you. Risk aversion, and all that. On low-sec roams, I shake my head in surprise when PvPers - I mean really good ones, too - worry so much about gate guns when taking down a single target. And nearly every time I roam while I'm above -5.0, I pass a gatecamp that isn't willing to attack me on a gate.

All of that surprises me, though I honestly get it. Losing a ship is an expensive undertaking, and on top of that injury is the insult of having to source and import a new ship to replace it. But, we're conditioned to cultivate our killboards and assess skill in terms of killed/loss value. Our eyes bulge out by huge losses, and only some of us take the time to pull up the related kills and see how many opponents that huge loss took out before exploding.

It puts me in a strange position. On the one hand, the Eve roles I tend to fit into are "pirate" and "mercenary". But at the same time, I don't measure success according to the same benchmarks.

So what am I?

Lessons: It's Not How You Win, But How You Lose

In Star Trek lore, there's a psychological test cadets go through at Starfleet Academy called the Kobayashi Maru scenario. The basic premise simple. You're a starship captain, and your ship happens upon a distress call by the freighter Kobayashi Maru, which is under attack by Klingon birds-of-prey. No matter what you do, no matter what decisions you make, the simulation escalates the situation by introducing new threats and variables in pursuit of a true "no-win" scenario. You can respond to the distress call, or leave them to their fate. If you search for additional back-up in the area, your search will turn up dry. You can pretend to want to join in on the attack and claim to be a rogue starship captain, and other Starfleet vessels will attack you. If you attack the first ships, you may find they have an experimental shield you can't break through. There's no way to win.

The purpose, of course, is to see how a cadet will react to defeat, to constantly having one's efforts thwarted, and to being responsible for having a ship full of lives lost around you. After all, Starfleet doesn't need weak-willed officers on the command track.

There's a power to a no-win situation that we as humans recognize. Whether it's the Alamo, the idea of a "forlorn hope" company, the Song of Roland, the Charge of the Light Brigade, or the countless times in Lord of the Rings that individuals step into harm when it seems they have no hope of victory, we're deeply moved by the way people react when they face no hope.

In Eve, we see it all the time. You find yourself in a wholly untenable situation in which your ship is at mortal risk. It becomes obvious that you will lose that ship, but the way you lose it is a great test of how far you've come as a pilot.

A Game for the Sith

In response to a comment on my last post, a player voiced a complaint I hear often about my perspective on Eve. For context, it’s pretty clear that I deem Eve to be a social, PvP-focused game, though recently I’ve expanded that definition of PvP to include more than simply ship combat, but the various ways Eve players thwart each other’s efforts.

The reader responded by citing several stats that show that more characters focus on PvE and industry activities than PvP, that more characters live in high-sec than all the other spaces combined, and by a very large margin, and that there are simply more activities that are non-PvP related – by a wide margin – than all others combined.

Here was my response:

Don't Occupy, Modify

Well, this is going to be awkward...

Neville Smit is a good writer, a great thinker, and a very dedicated Eve player. He also represents a style of Eve play that is quite different from mine. It's for all those reasons that I have him on my blogroll, read him regularly, and appreciate his insights.

I saw his recent post, Occupy New Eden, before he sent me a note asking for me to comment on it. I confess, I was already going to do so. It's a dense post that packs a lot of issues into a single manifesto. I must apologize for the length of my reply, but there's a lot in there to discuss. You're getting your pageview's worth today.

The tl;dr (for those of that persuasion) is that I agree with his suggestions, but not for anything resembling the same reasons. I also challenge some of his premises pretty fiercely.

How Are You Earning Your ISK?

I'm finding myself in an odd situation recently. I'll be the first to admit that I have limitations on my in-game knowledge, and I'm certainly prone to failure from time to time.

First, it was the PLEX investment that resulted in a whopping 6.7 billion isk loss. Then it was PLEXing my account for six months... at 1.1 bil each exactly two weeks before it dropped to around 950 million (I deem that another billion or so down the drain). Then there was the highly ill-advised and overly optimistic 3 billion isk loss on eve-bet. Penguins, Penguins... you underperformed on me...

All tolled, I'm down about 10 billion in the past month or so. This has - as you can imagine - thrown into sharp relief my need to earn some more isk.

So, I've started inventorying the means available to me.

A Ship in Every Citadel

Sure, the title of this post wasn't the tagline of Empress Catiz' coronation celebration, but given the timing between the conclusion of the Amarr Succession Trials and the release of the Citadel expansion, it might as well have been. If you're curious about the lore implications of Catiz Tash-Murkon's ascension to the throne, check out the CZ article by Tarek Raimo. It's very good and informative.

Citadels are coming in about half a day, and with them are coming widespread capital rebalances. What was two is becoming three, with fighter damage and logistics being split up into Carriers and Force Auxiliaries respectively. I still hate that awful name, by the way. It's terrible and doesn't really apply. In my mind, auxiliaries have one of two meanings: either allied forces you don't rely upon, but use to "mop up" or a reserve force you keep until you identify where along a battle line you need some help. They should have called them triage and been done with it.

But, I digress. I won't waste your time talking about the detailed effects these changes will have on capital warfare, more because I honestly don't know than because of personal restraint. I'm not a very experienced capital pilot, and couldn't say how it'll affect the meta. I do predict that the new capital modules will provide some local repping power to offset the danger presented by the new doomsday weapons, and I generally expect more caps to die in engagements than in the past. But I'm not putting any money on it.

Upon first glance, it may not appear as if there's a lot in the Citadel expansion that directly affects subcap PvP. After all, we aren't getting ship rebalances, new ships (which, honestly, we don't really need), or the desperately warranted assault frigate rebalance we've all been asking for. And, generally, I get it. Subcaps have gotten a lot of attention, and it's time to let them sit for a while until all of the ramifications of the whirlwind of changes settles down.

But it'd be a mistake to believe this expansion won't affect subcap pilots.

Let's Take a Moment to Appreciate What This Means

So, after the death of Empress Jamyl Sarum, the Amarr finally have a new empress, Catiz Tash-Murkon. Glory be, God’s will be done, etc. etc. Roleplayers are going all googly-eyed over the change in the guard, and all that. Good for you guys!

I’m sure that’s probably your reaction. After all, the Empress of Amarr has little to no consequence on your gameplay. That Tash-Murkon and not Kor-Azor won doesn’t change the price of PLEX in Jita. So anyone can be forgiven for caring little about the avatar who keeps the throne warm. One NPC is like any other.

But let’s consider, for a moment, how truly special it is about how we got there.