TLDR: I ramble on about why I love EVE and give a selfish introspective glimpse on my own character flaws.
** Warning hardly EVE related.. and really more me having diarrhea of the mouth, but it felt good posting it **
I frequent reddit /r/eve often. I came across this post that
I wanted to answer in a blog post because I feel it’s a question asked by every
single EVE player eventually.
“I flew in highsec, faction warfare, c2-c5, and ended up an
incursion runner before finally getting burned out. I want to come back, but
every time I log in I stare at my machariel, stare at my machariel, and my one
man corp, and log off.”
I have been playing EVE on and off since Oct 2003. Each time
I leave I come back because of this odd itch I get to ‘find something new’ or ‘do something new’. It will be a
little article or write up, where someone documents what made them happy or mad
or had some sort of human emotion involving the game. I then seek to replicate
it for myself and enjoy the challenge. I
think “I can do that!” and then I’m set on the mission of making it happen.
Eventually I make it happen, or I find out that it isn’t
what I thought it was and stop doing it. If I don’t instantly find something
new to do or discover I simply won’t play. This is where I feel this Reddit
poster is right now.
He has simply done everything he could think to do or has
the perception that it shouldn’t be done any other way. He is simply put. Un
inspired. The draw that made him create that macharial, fly it and interact
with the game has been sated. He also sees the value in that ship and perceives
that ship to be the hight of EVE game interaction. Everything else is a waste
of time, or simply a stepping stone to what he has already achieved. No
challenge, why try?
There isn’t an exact way to dig yourself out of what you
yourself have created, for yourself, without accepting that what you have done
isn’t perfect. As a vet, this is HARD. You have trained yourself to understand
the rules of the game that have made you successful, doing them different gives
the perception that you are doing it wrong. I’m not much into psychology but I
will say, this is some human emotion shit right here.
When I evaluate what I do in EVE I’m forced to look outside
of EVE on games that I have really enjoyed in the past.
Having a self-evaluation system to why you play games, not
just EVE should be performed whenever you have moments of question similar to
this Reddit post.
I’ll go over mine, cause fuck it why not.
I’m going way back but there is a consistent theme to my
game style.
MUDS. – I started playing these on the early BBS systems
prior to what we all know as the world wide web. I have always enjoyed the
interaction of other people in text format. I got especially excited when I
interacted with people in a negative way. I never really cared so much about my
level or gold content, the things I remember most about these games were the
personalities I played with. The sudden approach of a higher level character
entering a text based room and murdering me was always a danger level I
respected about the game. Single player
mode just seemed dull.
Ultima Online – This had the same multiplayer feel, but you
could hunt and kill one another. Living as ‘bandit’ or PK (Player Killer)
had HUGE challenges. You had a persona of a bad person. The game got dull when
it seemed that game creators kept putting huge obstacles in the way of this
game style. They simply gave in to the majority of ‘law abiding” citizens by making
their life far easier than the life of a PK, for no other reason than “fuck
you, that’s why”. Many left. I was one of them.
CAL ORT POR!
EQ – Player vs player content wasn’t very good in that game,
but you had ways of tormenting your fellow player if you needed to. There was
something new that came with EQ. Notoriety of doing something first, or at
least doing it before 99% of the other players did. The discovery of new
content and the phat loots! You could do something that no one had done before
you , then stand in a market place with your super cool one of a kind item and
let people stop, double take and go “Where did you get that”?? “O.. you know..
that totally unkillable dragon you have never seen before, in a fight you most
likely will never know how to do”. Bragging and notoriety became a huge draw
for me. Something that needed to be accomplished when 50+ 100+ of your closest
friends went and did something without making too many mistakes.
WoW --- I played wow for the same reasons I played EQ.
Notoriety of accomplishing things that were hard. They needed teamwork and an
understanding of the game that was beyond the average player. In Blizzards
wisdom lowering the bar of that accomplishment value became very important.
People who never interacted with anyone on a level beyond just random groups
could obtain the same gear (equal to) to something you trained for hours/days
and stayed up night after night to prefect. Fuck that, I’m better than them,
but why try because honestly I can get the same shit as everyone else and avoid
all the long nights. Pvp did have a good element, but there wasn’t really any
way to show you were better than everyone else. Worse, it wasn’t balanced,
there were just some characters that could obtain that very high tier of play
without pushing more than 4 buttons (hi pallies). It got dull.
EVE – I kid you not,
you could totally decimate the population of EVE if you removed one thing.
“Kill reports”. They are a measurable (to an extent) form of how well you
interact or don’t interact with your fellow players. What I truly find amazing
is, they aren’t really a big deal in the game. If EVE kill.. or any of the
other external player supported sites went down, it would be damn hard to
figure out how good someone was, or how bad. Why isn’t this simply another
clickable icon on the left of your screen. Enter a name, and bam, all the
kills/losses, right there.
Please don’t mistake me when I mention kill boards, it’s not
the reason I play EVE, but it’s a big reason. My activities in the game have
one measurable output other than ISK. A kill.
Not a big isk value…
Any fucking scrub can fleet up with 2000 of his closest friends and take
down a titan. Even if you fuck up, you have 1999 other guys to pick up the
slack. As a fighting unit, you could say there is skill, but only if everyone
in the group makes mistakes. With 2000 pilots in a fleet, there is a huge
bumber for screw ups. Perhaps one person could cyno to the wrong spot… or
someone could spook the target, but you can’t honestly tell me that 1999
competent people in a fleet either made this happen or not happen.
So, you might ask the question how do I self-determine the
difference between being on a big kill that means little and being on solo
small kills that mean everything?
Self-created content generation and the recognition of
others.
The one thing that unites my play styles from game to game
is a desire to be influential and significant through my own actions. Now I’m
not the best pvper, hell I hardly really try hard at it. But I do honestly try
hard to incorporate my own actions with the actions of others. I try and obtain
a response. To some level recognition for my actions. Perhaps it’s some sort of
approval desire my father never gave me.. invent whatever you need to explain
my actions. The point is, getting recognition for my actions in a sandbox game
is clearly important to me.
So when someone like the OP of this Reddit post asks, what
keeps me coming back and fighting boredom. My only response can be… I need
attention and I’m willing to destroy your ships to get it.
No comments:
Post a Comment