The Fine Art of Not Making ISK (How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the HiSec Missionrunner)

Today in Twitter I was affronted by a post by @EVE_Rhavas. I'm easily affronted, but moving beyond that, here's the post:

@redrickstar Fantastic post. I strongly support a "senate" approach. +1 follower. Cc @HilmarVeigar #nerfnullsec #eveonline #tweetfleet

Now to be fair, I have no idea what Rhavas was supporting. Because all I saw was #nerfnullsec. My reply:

@EVE_Rhavas @redrickstar @HilmarVeigar in case you hadn't noticed, nullsec has been nerfed about 10 ways to Sunday. #nerfhisec

For those of you just joining this game, welcome. EVE Online is a harsh mistress, moreso than the Moon of Heinlein's imagining. The follow-up discussion (if one can have a discussion in 140 characters or less) was even more entertaining, from @redrickstar:

@swearte @EVE_Rhavas @HilmarVeigar Crying about your milk being spilled and your answer is to piss in everyone else's is a poor solution

Now I get it. I won't even go find a blog, or an original link, and even if there were an original idea with merit, it doesn't matter. Because @redrickstar is angry about Goonswarm. Maybe he's an ice miner, who likes to sit and watch torrented films while multiboxing a fleet of dangerous Mackinaws. Maybe he's an unlucky Gallente Cap pilot (like me) who can't undock the big girl because the fuel cost is too high. Maybe he's running a Gallente POS farm reacting Technetium, and he's not swimming in ISK anymore. It doesn't really matter, because whatever he's doing in EVE, he's angry.

The basic argument I'm finding from the cesspool we know and love called the EVE Online official forums, is that Mittani should not be encouraging Goonswarm to do dastardly things, and he should not participate himself in these alliance activities, because he is the chairman of the CSM. Of course it doesn't help when he posts things like this in his twitter stream:

Ssh. The Tornado is for ~fleet warfare~. Pay no attention to the hisec ganking possibilities! #tweetfleet

Of course, the problem isn't The Mittani. Or Goonswarm. Or their current game, Gallente Ice Interdiction. The problem is that too many people in EVE are risk averse and feel entitled.

People are angry, yes angry about the Goonswarm Ice Interdiction. After all, you can't mine Gallente ice and make mindless isk right now, and the price of oxygen isotopes makes that so tempting that even the wisest of carebears is probably considering the risk to reward ratio. But the simple thing is, EVE is a sandbox game, and in the nullsec section of the sandbox, CCP has a lot of work to do. Looking at the hints, allegations, and things said about the winter expansion (and beyond), CCP realizes that. But in the meantime, one of the largest groups of players in the game are bored. And bored players will do crazy things. Last time, shortly after the fall of BOB, Karttoon led them on a rampage against hisec towers. It's a lot harder to make that fun, but Goonswarm made it memorable, and (hopefully) had fun in doing so - even if most of that fun was bad forum posting.

I made a comment in the EVE forums that perhaps what people should be doing since they can't mine ice, is anything else. EVE has so many avenues of experience, you don't have to simply mine or PvP. You can cut your hands off at your wrists doing missions. You can have some enjoyment doing Incursions. You can explore, and do it in LoSec where space is really a no-mans land. You could, oh, I don't know, learn to lose ships and not care.

What Mittani is doing (and by extension Goonswarm) is playing EVE. There is a vocal minority who believes that his version of EVE is wrong, and he shouldn't play it, because he's on the CSM. Others claim he should resign from the CSM, because his playstyle doesn't match their own. EVE is a game. A very involved, very time consuming, sometimes very frustrating, game. It has many facets, and one of the most important is that CCP does not interfere with the sandbox. We all share one universe, one game world, and if you don't like the way someone is playing in one section of the world, move.

Pack up your Orcas full of barges, and move to a different space. Or don't. But don't complain about someone playing the game. Find a way to enjoy the game on your own terms. Because the rage you spew, in the forums on Twitter, on your blogs, feeds their enjoyment of the game they are playing.

Now about the title of this blog. Nullsec is broken in many ways, and that's changing soon, from the looks of it. In the meantime, people who like to play this game against other players are finding other avenues to do so, and when the only way they can afford ships is the intermittent Incursion fleet or the mindless Level 4 mission, I'm not at all surprised that the unwashed masses of Goonswarm (and their finely manicured leadership) are turning against those players who think HiSec is risk-free riches. It's quite possible that even fixing Nullsec won't change this, because a side effect of the Gallente Interdiction is that every Nyx and Technetium-chewing tower costs a lot more to use right now. Which actually makes the game fun for more than just the Goons.

EVE Blog Banter #20: Griefing, Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming

Welcome to the twentieth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check out other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

With the recent completion of the 3rd installment of the Hulkageddon last month, @CyberinEVE, author of Hands Off, My Loots!, asks: "Griefing is a very big part of EVE. Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming are all a very large part of the game. What do you think about all these things? You can talk about one, or all...but just let us know your overall opinion on Griefing, and any recommendations you may have to change it if you think it's needed."

I've been playing EVE for a fairly long time. I've heard lots of calls for "HTFU", or "Griefing is against the TOS" and my personal favorite "I hope you die of cancer." Right or wrong, good or bad, EVE is a virtual place we can be someone other than our day-to-day selves. I know some really nice guys who play EVE - guys with families, who would pull over on the highway in the rain if you were there with your flashers on - and in EVE they wouldn't bat an eye at scamming your entire corp's assets out from under you. These are genuinely good people, who play EVE to escape real life. So lets start with the inevitable fact that EVE is a game, and like any other game, is an escape from your personal reality. If you take EVE too far, and blur the lines between players in a game and the characters they play, you won't like what I have to say (hint: HTFU).

Griefing
Personally, I don't like griefing. The idea that you play to make other miserable intentionally isn't my cup of tea. But I know (or like to think I know) enough to (a) not be a good target for a griefer and (b) to give as good as I get. Mind you, I have no issue with smacktalk, or laughing at someone in local. My issue with griefing (that I don't like it) revolves around the fact that you aren't playing an MMO if you grief one particular player all the time - if you get your jollies in game from being a general ass, that's cool - but I won't be one to play "with" you since that's not my style. ASCII genetalia - fine. Hassling another player so much they emo log or even ragequit - just not cool.

Ninja Salvaging
Totally within the scope of the game. Those who take this to the next level and get the mission runner to attack them and blow up their ships? Experts at harrassment. And no, this is not griefing - unless you are doing this to the same poor sod day in and day out without looking for other targets. I have even been a rookie ninja salvager, without the part where you try to get aggro and blow up the mission runner. I love this piece of the game though. Scan down a mission runner, warp in and salvage his wrecks. Back in the day, salvage could be as valuable as the loot in the cans. Today, maybe not so much, but still valuable. In addition, performing an important service keeping New Eden green by cleaning up other people's trash.

Suicide Ganking
I am of two minds about suicide ganking. First of all, I think it's a perfectly legitimate tactic - my only concern is that even with the recent insurance changes, suicide ganking doesn't have a lot of drawbacks for the ganker. Choosing your ship wisely, you can still break even (or even make a bit of profit) when CONCORD responds to your actions, which I think is an issue since you can also collect the loot from your victim. When I mine in HiSec, I watch my overview, and if someone enters the belt in a vessel that doesn't do mining duty, I am aligned and ready to warp out. Will I survive? Not bloody likely. But I'm going to try. And if they succeed, more power to them. Confession: I have not participated in alliance suicide ganks/freighter ganks. Timing just doesn't work out. But I'd do it in a heartbeat if it worked with my schedule.

Trolling
No brainer. This one brings a smile to my face, or a smack to the forehead when I'm a victim. Total HTFU.

Scamming
Scamming takes two faces, that of the corporate mole/thief and that of the Darwinian opportunist. I think the Darwinian opportunist is brilliant, after all, you should pay attention to what you are giving your ISK for. CCP makes it easy to do this safely - and victims of these scams are frankly, stupid enough to fall for them and should learn from their mistakes. The corporate mole is a different beast, but one that has some grudging respect. Taking days/months/years to develop a character who is designed just to infiltrate (and steal) is a commitment to the game I can't make - although I do have such an alt in the works.

All of these are legitimate courses of play in EVE Online - whether you (or I) like it. So, in the immortal words of every scammer, griefer, troll, and ninja salvager: "HTFU" EVE is a dark, dangerous world, no prettier than the one we live in every day, except that we don't end up face down in an alley bleeding when we get mugged in EVE. It's a game, one that supports many paths to escape the grind of reality.

And if you want more sage advice, you can send 1,000,000 ISK to Swearte Widfarend, and I'll tell you which PI materials to produce between now and October 1st for the highest profit margins, and 1,000,000 more gets you which T2 items to focus your R&D efforts on.