Abulurd Boniface
Gallente
Construction Cabal
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Posted - 2009.12.02 10:27:00 -
[1]
I'm ambivalent. As a miner, can flippers are not my friend. However, this is EVE. EVE's lessons are the school of pain compliance. It hurts a little now but it's for your own good.
On the one hand it is a game with a ludicrous learning curve. I was blind when I first came in. You -see- the interface, you can do all the things in there, but you have no vague clue what it means or why you're doing it. In that context can flipping a new subbie is very unkind. They barely saw all the dialogs before they hear loud noises and all of as sudden their pod is blinking amidst the rubble of their once shiny space ship. You could ask the can flipper: do you -really- need to do this? What went wrong in your life that ruining someone else's game became a fun thing to do? Especially someone who really has no clue yet what it's all about. I'm not saying they should get away with everything, but ninja please, cut them some slack already.
On the other hand, this is EVE. The can flipper is a first, valuable lesson of the rules that apply in the universe. Bad things happen to good people. The kind of personality that will whine about losing their 30k ISK ship is going to be a problem in their future corp. It's a harsh place, we need resilient personalities. My first hour experience in EVE was being podded by a gate camper. If losing a ship is too much of a burden to bear, EVE is not the right place to be. It smarts, certainly, more so when it was an expensive ship. But it is a reality of the game, that's how it works. If a new player can't accept that, EVE was not their best choice of MMOG.
Still, seeing as how can flipping can occur when one is really new and green as grass, some kind of warning might be offered. Someone might be totally ok with the harshness of the game once they understand some of the basic rules, being stomped on the second hour in just isn't going to be fun. A new player is also not going to call on friends for help. He doesn't know anyone yet.
I believe can flippers have cost CCP a significant amount of business already. New players are asked to accept that they can be lured into a trap, an accepted game mechanic, and to be shot at by experts against whom they have no shadow of a hope of defending themselves. Lots of people just won't take it and quit before they get a real feel for the game.
tl;dr: I don't like can flippers, the mechanic should stay in the game, the really new player should be informed, in consummate fashion, that this is -not- MyFriendlyPony land. The spaghetti -will- hit the fan.
AB
For good to survive it suffices for evil to acquire a deadly, incapacitating disease. |