[DA2] Soap Operas and Stereotypes

(I originally posted this on Google+, before I realised it was more of a blog post than a G+ entry.)

I ran across yet another article about how people objected to the romantic interactions that occur in Dragon Age 2. The Straight Male Gamer complains there's not enough content for his demographic; the Gay Male Gamer complains about the portrayal of a bisexual (yes, he's bi, not gay; go play Dragon Age: Awakening, it's mentioned in there) character.

To those who have complained, I say this, as a Bi Female Gamer: try playing the game with a female Hawke. Anders comes on to you no matter who your character is, and his response upon rejection is the same; Isabela comes on to your character regardless of their gender, as well. "Oh, but that's the stereotype of a gay man! Perpetually horny and unable to accept rejection by a straight male!" Not every LGB person is an uncontrolled hornball. Most straight folk will look at you like you've come from another planet if you suggest that they don't like sex as much as the next guy or girl.

And how do you feel when your crush rebuffs your honest advances? Embarrassed, ashamed, maybe a little upset? In a game where a party character makes the first move, a bit of a drop in their estimation of you upon rejection is wholly understandable.

It's tough to write believable, human characters, particularly for a game, where the writer has minimal control over how the player chooses to interact with the NPCs. Despite my feelings that DA2 skimped on a lot and failed to meet its potential, one thing it does have is very good writing, and the characters are portrayed well. They have depth, fragility, strength, and their own motivations that don't always coincide with Hawke's. What a relief to not have deadweight shop-mannequins to drag around!

It genuinely amuses me to see the (Bigoted) Straight Male Gamer contingent complaining about a topic that the Female Gamer contingent recognises is SO tired that it's not even worth mentioning anymore. How many women gamers have complained about Isabela's design and portrayal? But now the tables are turned: instead of a woman gamer with a female character being approached by busty, lusty female characters designed to appeal to the Straight Male audience -- I'm looking at you, Mass Effect -- it's the guy's turn for their male characters to be hit on by a lusty male companion. Heaven forbid!

The gender ratio of gamers these days is an estimated 40/60 female to male split. I'll assume trans gamers go on the record as the gender they identify with for surveys like that. Let's assume that 10-20% of the male player-base falls somewhere on the pansexual spectrum. By marketing and designing solely to the majority (the Straight Male Gamer), companies can easily be neglecting 50-60% of their potential player-base; the women and LGB gamers will be passed over in favour of that 40-50% of Straight Male Gamers who have already been marketed to for decades.

Here's a suggestion: let's stop with the social divisions. In this day and age, if you want to market a game to as many people as possible, you can't think in terms of Male and Female, Straight and Bi and Gay. This is one place where I feel DA2 really hit it spot-on: all your available romances are bisexual -- that is, it doesn't matter to them what gender Hawke is, they will respond to you the same. Nearly every character in the game responds to you the same way regardless of Hawke's gender (with the exception of a few particularly drunken and/or horny individuals). And the portrayal of your player character is perfect: not overly feminine or masculine, you're simply a person. It's the ultimate freedom of choice which enables the player to make what they want of who their character is.

David Gaider was, I feel, in the right in his assertion they they couldn't just write the game for only Straight Male Gamers.

Suppose we change things up a bit. Let's say there's ONLY ONE demographic to please: the sort of game-player of a given age who is interested in a certain topic. Dragon Age caters to adults who enjoy a solid hack'n'slash fantasy epic where they get to play the hero. When you're trying to build that vital core of dedicated fans, are you going to care what their gender or sexual orientation are?

Stop the bias: create games for PEOPLE.

Recent Events

My, it's been a while, hasn't it? In my defence, I was hired by CCP at FanFest and shortly thereafter required to go to radio silence.

I am one of the 20%. Last Wednesday, I lost a job I loved, working for a noble cause with people I came to care for dearly.

All any of us wanted was to help make EVE, Dust, and WoD the best they could be. And you better believe I'm still playing the game now. The people, the community and the team behind it all mean a hell of a lot to me.

I am now going to be very blunt and give you an insider's perspective on the events of the past few months.

Let's start with Monoclegate: the massive, public flap over the introduction of the NeX store and several corporate communications being leaked.

I don't like the Noble Exchange. Pricing aside, the contents are ugly and not worth paying money for. I'm perfectly of the mind that if you don't like it, you don't buy it. The threat of including items that would actively affect the game, however, is something I can get onboard protesting. Here's why:

Many MMOs have gone free to play with microtransactions providing goods and services: access to expansion content, gear, shiny things to decorate ingame houses, whatever. A lot of these things have an effect on your ingame stats; I shall call these things "Bonussed Gear" beacause "Gold Ammo" is misleading. Yet nowhere has there been such an outcry against these until it was a possible addition to EVE. The reasoning behind this is simple. Most MMOs provide PVP on a selective, optional basis. Many players never touch the PVP zones; their Bonussed Gear is used against NPCs. Those people who do PVP are guaranteed to be on an even standing with other PVPers there because they have all bought Bonussed Gear. There is no inequality.

EVE, on the other hand, was built on the concept of all PVP all the time. By clicking that Undock button, you're accepting the risk of nonconsensual PVP. Every time you open the market window or contracts, you're accepting the risk of being scammed. Every time you talk to another player, you're accepting the risk that they might not be playing nice. Bonussed Gear, paid for with real money in EVE, would be used against players who had not made the same investment; conversely, it can be lost as easily as anything else if the other, non-bonussed players are better or get the drop on you. EVE's balance is such that a pack of newbies can overwhelm an experienced player, and unlike in other games, Bonussed Gear in EVE would not be as much of an automatic win-button. The loss would not only be time and effort -- as with all current losses in EVE -- but also a paycheque.

(As an aside, I am aware of the MT uses in World of Tanks, APB: Reloaded and other PVP-based games; these games were designed/redesigned around a MT model that puts all players on an even standing and the only thing you can potentially "lose" is bonussed ammo.)

I felt -- still feel -- that the EVE is Real motto does not need to be boulstered by costing players real money to enjoy it. EVE is already Real: the loss I felt when I was unable to play the game as I have done since 2007, unable to socialise with the ingame family I've become a part of, made that abundantly clear. Every time someone rages after losing a ship, or being scammed, or having their corp swept out from under their feet because they trusted the wrong person, it proves EVE is Real.

Now that that's out of the way with, let's talk about the players' reaction to all of this.

You people are rude, when your ire is up. You're so eager to shoot the messengers, you seem to forget that they're only messengers; the message is coming from higher up, from people you never interact with avatar-to-avatar. Raging at the GMs, insulting the Community team, blasting vitriol at Content developers who are trying to create something fun for you with spontaneous live events... this is not the behaviour of adults. It hurts us, it makes us wonder why we try to do good things for you with a game we all love.

Contrary to popular belief, the developers do play EVE. We just can't tell you who our characters are, for very good reasons. I logged into EVE almost every day, for at least an hour or two. For over a month, I had to maintain my silence, close chat windows, and run the game like a solo RPG because I could not in good conscience join a conversation anywhere. Try to put yourselves in our shoes: we're just people, trying to improve a game we love, and we're being abused verbally for it.

The layoffs worry me.

Let me put this in perspective: after all the shit heaped on us over the summer, things were beginning to look up. We'd had an internal reshuffle which was frustrating but gave us hope that the new teams would be able to deliver what we were promising. There were new initiatives that had everyone thinking positively. I felt that, if we could pull all of this off the way we were planning, it could completely revitalise EVE and bring back at least a little of the old game I started playing four years ago. Morale was high, people were really putting their backs into it again. It was going to be Apocrypha 2.0.

And then the sucker-punch was delivered.

I was just an intern with the Content department; I knew if the shit hit the fan, I was expendable, but I was willing to take that risk because EVE means a lot to me. What makes me sad, and angry and worried is that many others who were let go were counting on that job security. We were told we were alright only a few weeks ago, people were getting ready for the office move by buying new houses closer to Decatur, moving to new apartments, getting their kids' schools sorted out. And all of a sudden, the company we poured heart and soul into has told us it can't keep us on.

Some of these people have been here for YEARS and were right in the middle of important projects for the upcoming expansions. They know more about their part of game development than anyone else in the company. I've seen a lot of, "Great! CCP should stop working on WoD and focus more on EVE." I've got a news flash for you: the WoD teams, EVE teams and Dust teams were almost entirely separated from each other. Letting go of dedicated WoD devs won't improve EVE or Dust. It'll just push WoD development back by a significant margin.

Telling CCP to drop WoD for EVE is like asking the Content team at DragonCon when hybrid turrets are going to be fixed. One does not affect the other.

Speaking of the Content team, it's been decimated. They (not I, I wasn't offered this) were told they had to either move to Iceland or accept severance. Most took severance because they have responsibilities here: children in school, spouses with careers, rental agreements and bills and car payments. These are people who were working on the most content-heavy drive CCP has ever pursued. Now they're gone, and everyone's happy that CCP is refocussing? The mechanics end of the game may be in good shape for a while yet, but anything requiring more multi-disciplinary work will suffer.

Will I continue to play EVE? Yes.

Will I continue to check CCP's hiring lists for Content Writer openings? Damn straight.

Will I worry that, because of this last setback, CCP won't be able to pick up the pieces?

Unfortunately, yes. Only time will tell if they can pull through it.

You can cancel your paid accounts, switch only to PLEX, get rid of unnecessary alt accounts, boycott the NeX. I don't care if you're paying money or not.

But please, if nothing else, try to support the people who are working on EVE, Dust and WoD. If you truly care about the future of any of these games, don't rage at the people who only want the same as you do. The support of the community is integral to the success of the game.

And keep blogging. They hear you.

Status Update

I'm in Reykjavik, settling in for some fun before Fanfest next week. If you're going to be around, come say hi! ^_^

Three years of nullsec movement

Yeah, I've been quiet on here. I have three separate blog posts I'm working on, so while you're waiting, here's a cool video. I recommend watching it fullscreen, as high-def as possible.

Refacing Eve

People have been playing around with the new character creation setup on Sisi. I was going to hold off for a few patches, but my curiosity got the better of me.

So let's see...

Shae got a little makeover, but not much of one. It took a bit, given the limited options, but I did succeed in eventually piecing together a face that looked right.

Aylara doesn't look a thing like my original character, which I found a bit disappointing. I've received compliments on her portrait before now, and I wanted to go for more of a half-caste look to emphasise her Thukker background.

I'm still hoping for a racial blending filter, since my two primary characters -- yes, I roleplay with them when I don't feel like doing anything else ingame -- are both of mixed race families. I'm also hoping we'll be able to change the relative height of our characters, since Shae, like me, is a total short-arse. Ability to customise characters ingame by purchasing self-designed tattoos would be lovely, as well.

I've heard a lot of people complaining that they don't want Incarna, they'll never use Incarna, and that it's a bad idea all around and it will change the way Eve works. I'll agree on that last part: while it supposedly will not have any impact on the part of Eve that exists right now, there will have to be Incarna content beyond the social interaction to draw people into it. Every single person who says they have no interest in Incarna will eventually venture guiltily into a station concourse, if only to see if it's worth it.

I've always had the suspicion that it could be used to bridge the gap between Eve and Dust: how cool would it be to have an in-person meeting in Eve with the Dust mercenaries you're hiring? How about missions where you have to meet someone in-person and bluff your way to acquiring something? Maybe exploring some ancient ruins? To be honest, the idea of physically leaving the pod to go exploring in a supposedly abandoned pirate base is about as realistic as Star Trek captains going down personally with the away teams. Any captain worth his rank pins will know that risking himself that way when the ship relies upon his control is a little silly. But what is sci-fi for but to suspend belief for a while and just have fun?

I'm looking forward to the possibilities.

Three years

Where does the time go?

20th August 2007, I sat down and created a character named Shae Tiann. It took two tries, because it timed out if you took longer than ten minutes fiddling with your options, and it was a hell of a lot more involved. You chose your race, bloodline and background, and THEN you got to choose a school and a branch. Your choices affected your starting stats and skills, and gave you nearly 900,000 SP. It was a good time to be a noob.

I think I'll celebrate by dropping my sec status a little >=3

[OOC] A Summary of Impressions Regarding Recent Events

Due to excessive travel, I've not been able to properly play Eve for nearly a month. This does not mean that I'm not paying attention or uninvolved (keep an eye out for a new story in a couple weeks, yes I have been working!).

Let's see:

Eva-Gate
I've never been a fan of hers -- honestly, would any self-respecting internet spaceships pirate? -- but I'll support her right to hold utterly batshit notions regarding pvpers. If she got elected and passed initial muster with CCP, more power to her. I will say, for the record, that I feel there are far better carbear/highseccer advocates than Ankhesentapemkah, in particular those candidates/delegates who have tried a little bit of everything Eve has to offer, because they have a beeter idea of how the gears mesh.

Right! On to the juicy bits: I'm loving the conspiracy theories. You all have such beautiful tinfoil hats, and you've clearly worked hard on them. Knowledge of how the game industry and various relevant legal issues work tell me that A) yes, she really did do something wrong and it had fuck all to do with her blog, and B)CCP doesn't HAVE to tell us ANYTHING (that they've stated it as a breach of NDA is more than they needed to say). In fact, we may never BE told anything more about it, unless something explodes (metaphorically).

Hulkageddon III
Not my style of gameplay at all, but I will staunchly defend everyone else's rights to suicide haulers in highsec. Do you wail and call your opponent a psychopathic bully who needs to get out of his mum's basement and get laid when your opponent builds hotels all over Boardwalk? It's a game and you've been given fair warning that HG3 is happening. Either join in the fun or station-spin your Orca til it's over.

CSM notes (I'll condense this down to the issue that was highest on the priority list across the board)
CCP seems to have a little ADHD when it comes to focussing on work. Trust me, I'm exactly the same: I get a new idea, and it supercedes all the other ideas in development until another brainwave occurs. Speaking from experience, this is NOT the way to progress on ANY ONE of the cool things; the only way to make real progress is to sacrifice a little effort on other stuff and focus on only one thing at a time til it's done. Obviously, being a large company which has made very public commitments on several different projects, CCP does not have the ability to sacrifice development time; they're stretching themselves a little thin. Obvious solution: HIRE MORE PEOPLE *waves CV suggestively*

[Rumour] Wormholes closing
Highly unlikely. Have you taken a look at the subscription data around the time Apocrypha was released? It was one of their most successful expansions, if not THE most successful expansion. Why would they shoot themselves in the foot?

[Rumour] CSM is being disbanded
Also highly unlikely. The CSM is one of CCP's biggest publicity draws: no other MMO has anything like it, it's a BIG DEAL both among the gaming community and the business community. It would be PR suicide to disband it after only a couple years. I've seen comments in verioius places about CCP not liking the CSM being stakeholders or something. GUESS WHAT, GUYS! Stakeholder does not equal shareholder. The definition of a stakeholder (in corporate terms) is someone who is affected by and can affect the actions of a business. We, as players, are all stakeholders. The CSM is simply a more direct and condensed route towards having an affect on CCP's actions regarding Eve than posting petitions on the Suggestions forums or babbling on CAOD that they need to fix lag. They do pay attention to those things, you know....

As it is, the CSM exists solely by the grace of CCP. If they want to disband it, they have but to say the word. Sneaking around undermining members one at a time to build an excuse of "it don't work, guv" is not only a costly effort, it could leave them open to severe (and also costly) legal consequences. Corporate suicide can be committed far more neatly than that.

---
Right, I think that about covers it. Comment trolling will see your comment(s) removed because we are not at home to Mr Arsehole; discussion is encouraged, and if you have a solid, well-considered and non-batshit argument to change my feelings on something here, please do share it!

Post-EveMeet

I've returned from a truly epic weekend in Denmark. The 5th BoB BBQ was a total success in that there was meat, booze, lulz, fire, and meat.

I kept forgetting to bring my camera out with me, and just as well, since I don't have a strap for it; I'd likely have left it someplace. There are, however, tons of incriminating photos taken by several members of IT Alliance on Facebook and various other places. Fellow Veto member StrangeR's pics are here.

Cheers to everyone who made the weekend awesome ^_^ Here's looking forward to the next!

Just a Quick Little Note...

My arm's been twisted enough to convince me to hit up the Eve Barbecue in Copenhagen for at least the weekend (I have other stuff to deal with in the UK, or I'd try for the full week).

The weekend after that, I'll be in Reykjavik for a couple days' layover.

Really looking forward to this summer, should be awesome fun ^_^

They're Back!

I don't often comment on the dev blogs -- maybe I ought to do, really -- but today's is significant for me.

All These Worlds: The Return of Live Events

I always felt I'd missed out on the best years of Eve, not only because of the early actions of m0o precipitating nerfs, the insanity of cavalry Ravens and fun times bouncing macro-miners out of belts -- I would love to have been in on all that action -- but because the AURORA events were phased out not long before I started playing.

When my then-flatmate Suze'Rain was putting the hard sell on me to give Eve a try, the AURORA events were one of the things that really got my attention. They represented a chance for the players to get involved in the game-world in a tangible way, and they showed that the developers were willing -- even happy -- to get their hands dirty and play the game they'd helped to create. I found that impressive, and evidence of a game the developers were really passionate about.

I can understand why they stopped -- player population growing, outcries of favouritism, disappointment from people who were never in the right places -- so the fact that they're starting again makes me both hopeful and wary.

We'll be able to see things ingame unfolding around us in realtime, rather than being told about it after the fact -- that's awesome! And it'll be scattered events across the map with no advance warning given, which should cut down on the accusations of favouritism. They have a picture of a wormhole above a planet, which is making me wonder if they did, after all, have some plan to expand the Sleepers background. Another NPC to kill is all fine, but to see them with an ingame purpose? About time!

Hopefully, the forums won't flood with whining from people who simply have bad timing and miss the events -- if drama gets sparked from this, they may decide to not bother again in the future. Remember, kids: play nice and you get more sweeties in the future.

Cue the Jaws theme!

Lucky Seven

What's the average lifespan of an MMO? If you look it up online, there are lots of blogs about individual games and a few rants about how developers should pay more attention to the players in order to extend a game's lifespan. Nobody's published a comparative of all the MMOs, their running time, and their player-count during that time; I wish there WAS one so I could pull a Kirith and put up a shiny graph.

I remember seeing the first ads for Eve back in 2002/2003 and going, 'Ooooooh!'. Then the 'online' part hit me and I didn't look further into it, because I wasn't keen on online gaming at the time: I was a tabletop player, a LAN-party CounterStrike camping bitch. Watching friends disintegrate in front of EverCrack made a bad impression, I guess. In August, I'll be celebrating my third Eve-birthday, and that... makes me feel like I've been playing for a long time. Three out of seven years. Good lord. And sometimes it feels like I missed the best part of those seven years, too.

Seven years for an MMO... that seems like a long time. Longer than many MMOs that were widely anticipated and fell flat against all expectations. And if there ever will be an endgame, it's not yet started to lurk in the corners like one last closet-monster waiting to frighten you on your way for a mid-night glass of water.

Here's to seven years, and here's to seven more, if we're lucky.

Tackboard

I have quite a backlog of screenshots I've snapped when I remember how to turn off the overview display. Eve keeps getting prettier with every graphics update, though I do bemoan the loss of things like the old cloaking effects, the old cyno fields and engine trails -- stuff that maybe didn't make sense, but did a lot to give the game that feeling of Epic. I can't wait to see how it'll look once the ship models and station models are upgraded!

...You, uh, ARE planning to upgrade the stations, right guys? Because having a battleship emerging from an undock ramp a frigate will barely fit down is just a tad silly...

Left-click the images for the full-size screenie.

Size comparison: Ishkur vs Hyperion

A Nightmare in warp:

Thanatos in Vitrauze:

Freighter traffic around the Perimeter gate in Jita:

A newly-built Legion on her maiden launch:

A Veto Logistics/BC fleet, tanking on a gate...And aligned for warp

A planetary station with a trail of undocking ships:

Eve vs Women

I'm going to start by saying that this isn't part of CK's blog banter, and it's not intended to be. It's a response to all the responses in general, rather than spamming up your comments.

Let me tell you what question women gamers get asked the most by their male associates. No, it isn't 'Are you really a girl?' or even 'Send boobie pictures?' (I will say, when people ask that, I generally give a link to this picture, but I'm perverse like that).

No, the question we get asked the most is, 'How do I get my girlfriend to play Eve?'

Guys are making, lessee, one, two... three major errors right there with that one question.

Firstly, they assume that one woman gamer can relate to any other random woman in the world. I'll tell you right now, beyond having a common gender and the issues it brings with it, and perhaps sharing a cultural background, most women have utterly nothing in common. In truth: I don't understand women. In general. I just do not get them, and a lot of the typical behaviours make me shake my head and wonder if most women simply choose to let their brains atrophy, or if we have popular culture to blame for making them act that way.

Secondly, they're approaching a woman who is, for all intents and purposes, a total stranger to their girlfriend. I know nothing about your girl, save what you tell me, and so my impression of her will be tinted by what you say. I have no idea what would make the most convincing argument for your girlfriend to try playing the game. I don't know her. All I can do is point out your third -- and biggest -- error.

And that is: 'You cannot make a gamer of someone who has neither the interest nor the inclination.'

Shae, what the hell is that supposed to mean? Exactly what it says. In order for a person to enjoy playing games, they have to WANT to play them in the first place. Maybe Eve-players' girlfriends are simply being stubborn, maybe they're refusing to 'get' the game out of some perverse need to make the guy jump through hoops. But I'm willing to bet the vast majority of these Eve Widows are simply not interested.

I'm a huge sci-fi nerd: I always wanted my own X-wing fighter, I grew up watching Star Trek and more crappy B-movies than I can count, and getting into Eve was a very easy and natural step for me. I find WoW wholly uninteresting for its cartoony nature, reputation for internet greebos with no social skills, and lack of cutomer-provider relations. Eve is a world for people who want to have a role in an interactive sci-fi universe -- people like me, and I suspect the majority of you -- and CCP does deliver to the best of their ability.

You only get to that stage of nerdiness if that's where you always wanted to be. If your girlfriend or wife would rather sit down to watch The English Patient when the only other option is Serenity, then making her watch Serenity isn't going to endear the genre to her any more than cajoling her -- as an uninterested non-geek -- to try to enjoy flying virtual ships in a competitive game where human interaction is relatively minimal.

I do know your pain. The guy I was dating when I started playing Eve began to suggest that I should grow up and stop playing games. I never thought he had much of an argument, because all he did was come home from work and get drunk and stoned out his gourd in front of crappy tv serials.

It's all about priorities.

Most people don't think playing computer games is socially rewarding -- that it's the venue of the dreaded Cheetos-munching, 'Dew-swilling Basement Troll -- and that may be the biggest obstacle a guy has to surmount when introducing his girl to the other half of his life. It's a terrible stigma to have to refute when you don't see yourself in it; non-gamers in general will instantly make the connection even if you don't fit the stereotype.

People automatically assume everyone else has a similar set of priorities in their lives. It's incredibly difficult to bend one's brain around another person's way of thinking when it differs radically. Most people see social interaction -- in a bar, a club, at work -- as being high-priority. Gaming, in general, is viewed as something for the socially inept, a place for the freaks and geeks to conceal their shortcomings behind a scantily-clad digital Barbie-doll named Chesty McTitties.

If a guy wants his girl to at least understand the game -- if not give a shot at playing it -- he has to try to compare it with the things that are important to her. Like... soap operas = Eve forums drama. Sports = Eve pvp. Board- and card-games = Eve pve and 0.0 territory battles.

If enough effort is put forward, it's possible to at least get a non-gamer to understand your fascination with games and Eve in particular. But if you want to turn a non-gaming girl into an active Eve-player, you're going to have to be prepared to tear holes in the walls of social structures the girl has built up over the course of her lifetime. Some people don't like their comfort zone being wrecked like that; some people will be alright with it, if all they have to do is add a little to their understanding. One person in a thousand might rub their eyes, stare around and exclaim, 'My god, I never KNEW!' and plunge happily forth into the unknown.

At the end of the day, all you can do is explain things, and if that fails, compromise, and ask if she'll sit with you through Serenity after The English Patient is over.

Eve gets more shiny

A lot of people are drooling over the images of the soon-to-be revamped Scorpion as revealed in the latest dev-blog.

And man, is it about time the ships got some love to update them with the newer graphics. I'm impressed with the hull redesign, too... suddenly, the poor Scorpion is a ship I'd actually want to fly.

...Yes, I'm vain about my ships: if I'm going to be seen in it, it's gotta be sexy. Or make up for its visual shortfalls by pwning hard :p

What interests me more in the dev-blog, though, are the details about how they're changing the file system to make the graphics update possible. I'm an art geek and taking classes in that sort of thing right now. The potential that system change opens up is immense. I'm really looking forward to seeing what the art team does with it.

Evespaces

Meme time! Why not?


...The camera wasn't actually tilted. The desk is tucked into a small angled window niche. It's... cramped. If I need the extra room, I put the laptop and tablet down on the bed. And yes, that's a figurine of Guan Yin on top of the tower. The tower itself won't fit in the floorspace. My setup in my old place in Scotland was much more spacious and comfortable -- and I didn't need massive curtains to keep the cold out. The sound system was better too, but that's in storage. I have to make do with what I can get, these days.

Where Have All the Pirates Gone?

...I find I'm asking myself this more and more as I read the blogs of my fellow pilots in crime.

Many are getting in on the action in nullsec right now. A few have gone mercenary. So many of us are cleaning up our acts for various reasons. Is it a sea-change, the inevitable ebb and flow of ingame life? A year is a long time in Eve; hell, things can turn from black to white in less than a week in this game, alliances broken and remade quickly for the most unpredictable reasons.

I have to say, I think the ones who went where the fighting is are in better condition than the members of HellFleet; the urge to kill is being thwarted frustratingly by the need to keep security status up, and the moans and complaints are amusing.

Eve gameplay has changed a lot in the two and a half years since I paid for my account before my trial period ended. The average online population has doubled. More players means space is more crowded, less quiet. It becomes necessary to modify one's strategies and style in order to not be overwhelmed or left behind.

I don't think Eve piracy is dead, or even dying. It's changing, and that means the rest of us need to change. Some seem to be simply taking a break, getting new experience as a change of pace. Others continue as they have, forging friendships to deal with the more difficult situations.

To each and every one of my fellow pirates, or former pirates, I say this, with a wink and a knowing smile:

You'll be back.

What's wrong with this picture?

Hmph. Right.

I'm going to take a little break here and talk about something that's become kind of a big deal with me recently. I say 'kind of' because it's not something I would ordinarily do in Eve had I not a very good reason for it.

Now, let us postulate that you live in a very strange part of the world, and that you've been a street thug for years. You've never been caught, and your activites of stealing, murdering and shaking down hapless passers-by for coin have made you a wealthy, wealthy man (or woman, if you prefer; I tend to use 'man' as a catchall). People know you. It's pretty obvious to anyone what you do. Except that now you want to operate in a different part of your city where the police are tougher, and the rules are more stringent. In order to even get into that part of they city, you need to atone for your sins, as it were, and make up for your years of thievery in the eyes of the authorities.

Now, tell me: which of the following methods seems least realistic?
A) Bribing a contact to hack the system and clean up your record
B) Bribing the authorities to clear your record
C) Doing crappy unpaid piecework for someone important in order to get their 'word of honour' that you've cleaned up your act
D) Going out into the lawless regions and playing vigilante for a few weeks

After a week or two of very lazy sec-grinding -- yeah, lazy, I'm at -8.5 because it is SO dull and SO boring that there are days where I just cannot be arsed undocking -- I've realised that the CONCORD standings system makes very little sense. You spend years as an outlaw, and then go to a place where there are no sec-drops and kill NPCs for a couple weeks and come up smelling like roses. It's dull work, yes, but there ought to be more to it. The cost needs to be higher.

Case in point: I'm back up over a billion ISK in Shae's wallet. I'm being paid grandly for this. Now, I get that it's from pirate bounties, but if CONCORD's DED is in control of that, could they not simply deny payment to those with outlaw status? It's not like the outlaws could go waltzing into their highsec offices to beat the money out of the officers there, after all. Have you tried to get into Yulai as an outlaw? Well, sure, you can get in; getting out with your ship intact is a different matter entirely. You can't just dock up, either, because the stations won't let you in. Tough cookies.

It boggles the mind that CONCORD will not penalise you for other players killed in nullsec, yet will grant a full standings boost for every NPC you pop. Lawless means lawless: there shouldn't be any security changes down there. End of story.

But that means that you'd need an alternate way of boosting your standings, doesn't it? Hmm. Not many people are thrilled at the idea of ratting in lowsec. Knowing lowsec the way I do, neither am I. I have actually ratted there (shhhhhh, on an alt; I was introducing a friend to lowsec) but the lesser rewards mean it'd take much longer to raise standings out of the gutter.

Maybe the DED should have agents in nullsec, offering gruelling mission arcs. Only available to outlaws, situations CONCORD either doesn't have the strength to deal with or doesn't want to be seen getting involved in. Minimal pay, if any at all, but massive standings bonuses and the opportunity to pick up a piece or two of faction gear, similar to the Empire arcs. By the time you finish an arc, your standings are back up to -4, leaving you to figure out the rest yourself.

Sound good? It would certainly relieve the monotony of ratting sec up, add a bit more to Eve's massive background... and the risk would still be there, because you never know when the next branch will send you into a hot system. Give it the Sleeper AI so the difficulty scales with the type of ship -- or ships, if there's a group of you -- you bring in, and you're sorted.

Ah, but who am I to suggest such things? I'm one of the ones the current system is designed to punish for my predations on the community, after all.

*Returns to popping red crosses*

Too long

Real Life has dealt me probably the worst hand yet. All I can say is I'm not happy to have to leave Scotland, my boyfriend and all our friends and the familiar places behind. And I'm really lucky my parents were willing to take me in while I try to restart my life. The last month or so killed a lot of my actual playing time, and then there were a couple weeks wherein my PC was in separate components waiting to be installed in a new case in the US.

It's been hellish. At least Eve looks pretty, and I was able to get my PC together in time for the first Hellcats bomber roam.

Picture time! I'm taking sov map pictures every day to track the changes, so for right now, you get a shot of Shae's homeworld. I was kind of paranoid that it'd turn out to be an inhospitable lump of rock in the new planetary graphics, and I was so incredibly happy to see that it's still a pretty, temperate world with cities.

An Aside

IntenseDebate is eating my comments again. I'd love to respond to comments; I've been trying, but the system is b0rked >_<

A Series of Moves

The Eve blogoshpere has been too quiet, and I've been too busy with other things to blog, much less properly play Eve. Where did I leave off? Oh yeah.

So... I decided in the end that, since there were only three days left til my alt could fly my recon ships, I might as well move the small amount of gear I had in the wormhole into the lowsec system we were currently linked to, grab a shuttle to fly back to Evati, and have my alt fly the rest back at the earliest convenience. Moving out didn't take very long. I think if we'd had more people in the w-space and active, it might not have been so painfully dull, and we may have scored something. As it was, with only a handful of alliance members on sporadically, there wasn't much to do.

I'd left the bomber and the Arazu in the incredibly quiet(!) lowsec system our wormhole dropped me in, bought a shuttle and was partway home when I passed through the Hellcats' old main base of Vitrauze. It felt good to see the place again, and being inundated with cheerful welcome comments in Local from our old blues was even better. If only I'd not been in such a rush and decided to fly the bomber back, I could have got in on the fun they were having -- I was sad I had to turn the fleet invite down.

But it got me thinking. It'd been a while since we'd used the secondary base out in Amamake. In every corp I've been in, I was always happier if I had a secondary base to go to when I wanted a change of scenery. Why not move my stuff from Amamake back to Vit?

To the alt!

It took a couple days to get everything moved over, and I've spent the last couple weeks out there, saying hi to old mates an especially the Tuskers (<3 ya, guys!), Ghost Festival and Veto. The Hellcats have reopened our old office, and our other members have invitations to stick a couple ships in, as well. Once I'm back from holiday, the corp will reopen recruitment(!), using our secondary base as a place to run Hellcats-only ops from, so that we can get a sense for how well the recruits work within the corp.

Unfortunately, I've not been able to do much, since I've been working on the last chapter of Space Captain Starke (it is epic, and will be done tonight!), and spending the rest of my time trying desperately to find a job before I face deportation (my student visa expires in a month. It's not fun).

Tomorrow, when my boyfriend gets off work, we'll be catching a train across to Glasgow to spend the night, then an early-morning flight to London, and then up to Reykjavik for a week of fun and geekyness. I've been looking forward to this trip all month! Hope to see some of you up there ^_^