Pandora's Box

Dominion released a veritable bounty of unsavory issues into the game as I am slowly beginning to come to terms with over time.  Prior to the expansion, you had a system that had grown stale and redundant, its participants forced into destroying dozens of towers over the course of what could be weeks just to drive out the current residents from space they wanted to claim.  You had the equally redundant task of spamming your own towers into the constellation in order to contest the space, which again, took time, what was it, a whole week for it to fully update the contested territories after each DT?

Now what we have is the following...

• Bring large conventional fleet
• Knock out Cynosural Field Jammer
• Jump in capital fleet
• Anchor SBUs
• Kill iHub, TCU
• Anchor TCU
• Profit

It takes what... 8 hours?  I may be slightly sketchy on the ins and outs, but the basic point is, sovereignty is now measured in 24-72hr blocks, rather than week(s).

Here today, gone tomorrow, now the little guy has a chance, this so-called Emergent Theory, sovereignty now costs so much to maintain and defend, the large power blocs could not possibly hold it all themselves, thus giving rise to EVE Online: The New Guys, right?


Well, we would all like to think so, and our previous alliance would as well, along with a number of its new affiliates up in Pure Blind.  But what is really happening?

The rewards are becoming less and less appealing, and now that the only region in the game to welcome any influx of newer players is long gone and never to return, we have a perceived net loss of initiative out in the plumbs of space.  What does the little guy, i.e. a smaller alliance with few assets and even less leverage or influence, gain from going to null space?

Let's face it, not much.  Sovereignty can be stripped away by a fleet of as little as fifty battleships in a matter of a day or two against smaller groups incapable of fielding half that many pilots on a good day, let alone in all T2 fit battleships of the close or long range variety respectively.  I have watched it happen in Wicked Creek, and I am sure I will watch it happen in Pure Blind too.

What it boils down to me for me is the same conundrum I found myself staring at in Warcraft when I came back after a six month break to find the guild of hundreds I had fostered as a mix of all types, be they casual or hardcore, slowly degrading, or so I thought at the time, into an atmosphere of fanaticism and hardcore mentality.  This was about half way into the Burning Crusade release, and I could not have been more aghast and shocked.  How could they do this to what was formerly my precious guild of people from all walks of life, I would say to myself as I watched on from a spectator's viewpoint for the first time, unable to change a single thread in the puzzle to my liking.

Looking back, I should have known, it was not the people themselves, but the game, always the game, catering to the bottom line, those who play the most.  It makes sense right?  The people who have all the time in the world to devote to the game should get the most enjoyment out of it correct?  Well, not true, my friends, not true, and it seems Blizzard, and now subsequently CCP, are either already aware of this or slowly being charged with it over time.

Casuals.  MMOs are such a dime a dozen in some sense these days that a development company has to follow one carrot with another as the subscription base devours them like so many skittles on a hot summer's day.  As we see CCP continue to release content, alterations, and changes to the game that seem geared entirely towards making things faster, quicker, more fluid and dynamic, changing course at the slightest breeze, we see two things.

1.  EVE null security was never meant for casuals anyways.
2.  EVE null security cannot support a casual mentality so long as everything in the game, theoretically if not literally, is consumable including the skillpoints in your head.

What the developers at Blizzard have figured out, much to my chagrin after years of believing it myself, is that the hardcore player base is like a gnawing hunger, never satiated no matter what you give them, it is never enough.  They are now effectively doubling back on the trend I saw when the Burning Crusade was halfway through its life cycle, they saw what catering to only a hardcore mindset does to an MMO, it creates an insatiable hunger that never ends and only exponentially escalates into absurdity, the more you say to people, "You can have it all if you just spend one more hour in the game," the more they spend two hours, or three, but not all of them, only some, those inclined to have the time, energy, and wherewithal to be hardcore players in any MMO they subscribe to.

Blizzard has been backpedaling on this, to my knowledge, quite literally for years now, inventing new and easier ways to gear out or experience all the game has to offer right out of the box after every new content release.  This is the best of both worlds for Blizzard, their hardcore players can devour new content as always, being the best of the best, flaunting the fact that they have little to no real purpose or lives outside of the monitor, while the casuals, slower but determined, will eventually catch up, at least until new content is released.  Blizzard has done it, they have finally found how to hook all players, not just some.

Okay, so I've been talking about that other game for awhile now, do I have a point?

Yes.  My point is, in EVE, everything is consumable down to the training you do, in theory.  What this means is that the only way to compete is to have as many or more assets than your competitor, and to lose yours slower than they lose theirs until one of you keeps going and the other is forced to retreat.

Think about it.

Do you see a way for casuals to succeed in the player controlled regions of the game, i.e. null space?

I sure as hell do not myself.

Now the ironic part is, I can be, often are, and am a hardcore player at heart.  I am obsessive in the sense that, I pick one particular pursuit or passion at a time, and I mindlessly, in some sense, pursue it until I accomplish the goals I set out for myself.  But I am the exception I have found, and not the rule.

In order for smaller groups to succeed in EVE, every contributor has to be like me, in principle, and insofar as it concerns their commitment level.  You want a few systems to claim sovereignty in 0.0 and to prosper and hold said systems?  You better gather up at least as many people as required to field a conventional fleet of heavy hitters up to and beyond fifty people at once, if not more.  Consistently, night after night, not a one time deal, I am talking, whenever it becomes necessary, and it will, you field fifty or more ships, every, single, time.  This is not a casual mindset, and if you have ten casual players, and only one is online at any given time, you multiply that factor to 3000 players, and suddenly the most you could ever hope to muster at any given time is 300 people, and that's if you're lucky.  300 people is barely enough to fight a moderately sized alliance with high participation levels.  And our previous alliance had at its peak about a thousand people, and we saw just that, maybe a hundred people online on a good night, and if we were lucky, twenty people ready and willing to participate even if Rome was burning.

Look at Systematic-Chaos, a short while ago they had almost three thousand people, but they could not route their opposition, alliances with numbers in the ballpark of 700 or 300 total members.  Why?  Because Systematic-Chaos was full of casuals.  Their own members have reiterated that again and again on the CAOD, trying to vindicate themselves in light of their alliance's complete and absolute meltdown in a matter of weeks.

How, could the combined forces of one alliance with +2500 members, and another with +2000 members (Primary.) not overcome the meager forces of one alliance with 700 members, and another with 300?

Consistency and participation.  C0VEN and Stain Empire, so I am told, had +90% participation levels, and everyone who showed up, showed up in the ship they were asked to, and nothing else.  Vastly different from the account that members of Systematic-Chaos gave of their own alliance, lack of numbers, people unwilling to fight for their own space, poor fleet composition, poor leadership and initiative, more carebears than not, etc.

Without trying to sound too much like a jackass... hearing people in Systematic-Chaos talk about why their alliance had an epic failcascade reminds me all too much of the reasons I pulled my own corporation from our previous alliance.  The writing is on the walls folks.  It is an unfortunate reality that casuals do not a null security sovereign holder make, and even more unfortunate that the only way to ensure long term survival and prosperity is to do one simple thing: get rid of them.

Now, those who know me well, know that I am a champion of people's rights, I work hard to make sure all my own corporate members know that they are more than welcome to be who they are, feel comfortable with who they are, and enjoy the content of the game in their own way while within my corporation, so long as they do not interfere in any other person's ability to do so themselves.  This little caveat has served me well and I stick to it tooth and nail without exception.  However, my corporation made the choice to remain a mix of casual and hardcore elements, as it allows me the luxury of upholding said caveat.  But as I see the numbers dwindle away in the corporation, I wonder to myself, has it been naive of me to dream the dream that I could maintain a mix of casual and hardcore players all the while attempting to help alliances establish themselves in null security?

Probably so, but I never shy away from allowing myself to be labeled as a dreamer, as half the joy of life in my opinion, is being able to imagine all the possibilities out there for oneself and those who one surrounds oneself with.

But, remember the lesson, null security is for hardcore elements, the casual life died with Providence, and so little else remains but to succeed by shucking off and sacrificing the ability to champion people's rights in lieu of a more restricted right to be, or continue living the impossible dream, as you watch friend after friend slowly fade away over time, unable to compete in an environment where the hardcore elements, struggling to accomplish the goals they desire, continually prey upon the casuals, who will never be able to supply those goals, as it is their nature, being a casual player, you cannot very well expect someone with three kids, two jobs, and a bad back to sit at a computer six hours a night pelting TCUs so you can claim sovereignty over pixels on the internet.  And to be honest, in my opinion, it is morally reprehensible to try and prey upon them by peer pressure, coercion, guilt, or malice, to do so otherwise.  These people rightly put their families first above all else, and members of the alliance who thought to change this, should be expelled faster than I can finish typing this sentence.  If it were up to me, either the decision would be made to go hardcore and expel the casuals, or to go mixed casual and hardcore, and resign oneself to the reality that sovereignty is unattainable with such a platform.

Does this make me a hypocrite, on the one hand lauding the rights of people to be themselves in an online environment, to feel safe, secure, and nurtured by caring and genuine leaders who put the people's interests above all else, and on the other shake my fist at those same people because they are the very reason why a group based on said environment can never succeed at sovereignty and they need to either commit to being hardcore or leave?

Of course.  But I never claimed to be a simple man...

What does any of this mean for my own corporation, the Aurelius Federation?  It means I have some tough decisions to make in the next six months, I grow older every day, and while nearing on thirty may seem like a fairly trivial milestone as it concerns age itself, as certainly thirty is undoubtedly young and brash to others, I find myself wondering, I am almost thirty years old, do I have the luxury of dreaming anymore, or do I consign myself to reality, and make the kinds of choices an adult would make.

As I told the executor of our previous alliance, and/or his close associate, if I had merely been given the power to eradicate insubordination, by force, and to expunge all the... unfortunate dead weight that were and are the casual players, as much as I abhor myself for contemplating such a thing, I would have fought to my last breath in game to do so.  But having had my hands tied by neither being bequeathed nor denied said power, I could do nothing but sit idly by, shaking my fist and roaring at others around me, who were destroying the very thing I was trying to protect.  To protect the right to decide, do we choose people over content, or content over people.  The choice is at present, yet to be made, and I no longer desired waiting around for it to happen, as again, I grow older every day, and my patience to sit around as people wring their hands trying to figure these ^ things out wears thin with me quicker than ever before.

I am and always will be a lion at heart, and those who know me best, those few friends I have had with me along the journey of the past few years, know well that my fervor knows no bounds, and if unleashed, I am a frightening person to list as one's enemy or antagonist.  If only I had been given the chance to use that fervor, passion, and spirit to compel the kinds of change that although unsavory would have produced results given the goals and intentions of the alliance as a whole, maybe I would not be sitting here pining at the abysmal losses I see day after day, and the continued fail fits, of the very kind I and many others continued to decry, day after day, night after night, but would instead be leading fleets of dozens and dozens of battleships, all properly fit to the teeth, roaring through space, letting our enemies hear that we are not few, but many, each hell bent on their annihilation.

Sharks swim alone, they die alone, whether in a feeding frenzy in which they devour one another, or from starvation when there remains no prey, but lions, a pride fights, lives, and dies together, and if any one lion questions the authority of the leader, he is eliminated or driven out, without question.

I find myself feeling less and less inclined to be the nice guy in MMOs anymore, and more inclined to be who I really am, but that is something for another time.

EVE has been under quite a load bearing stress for six months, and with the most recent loss of some net $30,000 USD worth of assets in a single day due to a poor and broken game mechanic, it seems like things are going to get worse before they get better, much worse.  There is no room for casuals out there in null security anymore than CCP would have liked there to be, as they have somehow managed to make it almost impossible for casual life in null security, when their every intention seemed to be the exact opposite of that.

Oh the best laid plans of mice and men...