Blog Banter 32: “The Sandbox Argument”

Topic:

      "A quick view of the Eve Online forums can always find someone complaining about being suicide ganked, whining about some scam they fell for or other such tears. With the Goons' Ice Interdiction claiming a vast amount of mining ships there were calls for an "opt out of PvP" option.

      Should this happen? Should people be able to opt-out of PvP in Eve Online? Should CONCORD prevent crime rather than just handing out justice after the event? Or do the hi-sec population already have too much protection from the scum and villainy that inhabits the game?"

Answer…

For me, this is a non-question... a semantically null discussion as regards MMO virtual realities. EVE already is far safer than RL ever can be... In EVE, everyone is IMMORTAL. You cannot DIE.

What people want, what they are crying about is not “safety”… it is the protection and permanence of their STUFF.

They dunt wanna LOSE any of the ISK, or THINGS they have gathered, made or bought with ISK in the game. Whether it is ships, ore, mods, POS(es), blingy faction mods, simple  10K ISK implants to a set of 1.5 Billion “Slave” implants… their very first Rifter all proudly T1 fitted or a Nyx they’ve had since ‘05.

What they want… is their STUFF safe from attack and theft and destruction… and I say your ASS is already Immortal, your STUFF isn’t… shutup.

Rational…

EVE is the first MMORPG to be a ‘true’ virtual REALITY in “most” respects. In RL, as In EVE, there is NO WHERE that you are perfectly safe from attack, theft, scams, griefing, being bullied and ripped off… but unlike RL, in EVE “you” CAN’T DIE.

Yes, your current clone can be shot, lazered, railgunned, blastered, asploded and burnt to a crackly crisp in a horrible fire, flash frozen in the depths of the black, scooped up and put on display or sold at auction… and YOU will wake up in a nice fresh clean clone... EVERYTIME. So you lost some STUFF… so what? YOU are still here and you will certainly still have (almost) all the skills you have already trained (unless you were flyin a T3). But the STUFF (and any skills) you lost CAN BE REPLACED. You just gotta have the guts and desire to get off yer pod gooey ass and get back out there. IT’S A GAME.

The problem is… it is the first game to have REAL RISK. Loss in EVE COSTS. And the cost can be very high… but you cannot die. So get some perspective people. The fact that there is real loss in EVE is the very thing that makes it so very special… and the main reason that universal and inescapable potential for loss MUST never be nerfed in ANY respect. If you do… even a little… then we are all just playing WoW.

Life is a challenge, a constant fight to find safety and prosperity for yourself and your heirs. EVE mimics life in that very challenge and constant fight to safely go about one’s pursuit of wealth, power or peace in a world that IS NOT “SAFE”.

Does this mean there are players who wont play EVE? That there are players who will be driven away?

Yes it does... so? CCP knows this and accepts that EVE is unique and is not for everybody, they made it this way. It is for us... for those who are willing to fight for what we want and fight to keep what we have.

I am not good at PvP… my record is basically 50/50… so I dunt suc at it either, but I always get the shakes… I always get an adrenaline rush the likes of which is damn near incapacitating… and NO OTHER PvP in any other game does this to me… or ever has… why? Loss. Real, measurable, expensive, painful, costly, aggravating, effin LOSS.

I live in a wormhole... I have lost a lot in my time here... we lost a Noctis with 30 melted Nanoribbons in the hold last night to a Stealth Bomber attack inna C4 wormhole... 30 MNRs = 240Million ISK at current Jita prices... So what did we do? Cry, whine and moan? Rage log? Nope... we warped in to save what we could, the pilot got his POD out OK so we went back to running the rest of the sites, got a new Noctis and salvaged and looted the rest of the sites, with tighter security... what else? Its EVE dammit.

This is why some players get so upset… Carebears and Greifers, ALL of them dunt wanna loose the STUFF they have worked so long and hard to collect or create… Carebear or Geifer, it takes TIME, lots of precious time and effort to skill up, then to generate or collect or steal or destroy then loot and salvage the STUFF ingame need to sell outright or to make other STUFF ingame that they can then sell for other STUFF they want ingame… and because of this, that STUFF has real emotional meaning and value to all of them.

Neither side wants to lose they STUFF… the difference is one side, the carebears don’t want to have to fight for it. They want a safe place or a safe way to go about doing the things they do to get STUFF without any risk to the STUFF itself.

The Griefers also dunt wanna lose they STUFF, they just accept the risks and act accordingly and when they get griefed and lose they STUFF, well… they unnerstand and/or they try to get even… but either way they usually dunt run to the forums and rage and cry about it.

If CCP removes the element of real loss… of real risk. Eve will no longer be EVE. EVE is a game, but take away risk and It will become just a game… it will lose the very deep emotional connections it has for ALL of its players… because without risk… there is no VALUE.

You cannot VALUE that which you cannot LOSE.

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Afterthoughts...

I probably should have added this in the original post but, all of the above is based on this:

My small corp lives in a wormhole. We have for many months now. We make our living primarily running Sleeper sites, both in our homehole and especially in the static C2s that pop up everyday...We have made some atrocious ISK upon occasion. We have lost a number of ships, maybe less, maybe moar, than we would have in Empire, I dunt know. I DO know that we are not at all PvP adverse But we are not a griefer corp... one of our members is definitely quite bloodthirsty, but... we consider ourselves moar a carebadger corp rather than carebear or greiferbear.

As stated we are not against PvP... you can't be an live in wormholes... try it, you'll soon see what I mean. But we also do not spend the majority of our time actively seeking PvP. We spend moar time on making ISK and planning for the future, IE what ships we are training for, building our next carrier, or Orca... and we let PvP take care of itself.

By that I mean we raid other WHs as they pop up... if there's people inside, and we feel the odds are in our favor... we setup an attack and try and take em. Why? Why not? It's a WORMHOLE. The deadliest space in EVE and we are wormholers. If we feel the odds are not in our favor, we mass close the hole and see what pops up next.  If the hole is unoccupado, or has Towers but no one 'awake', then we scan the sites, if there are enough to make it worth the risk, we run em.

We have lost ships to raids we have done, we have lost ships to being raided, we have killed in raids and taken ships as prizes, we have killed some who have raided us... but we are not a PvP corp, or a greifer corp, or a pirate corp...

We are a corporation of like minded individuals who live a virtual life in New Eden, where we work, and fight, to make this virtual life for ourselves and our membership... life in New Eden is not safe and it can be very, very harsh at times... sometimes for us, and sometimes for those who cross us. but it is always WORTH it and it is NEVER boring.  =]

Please... please don't ever make it boring by making it safe.

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