Reggie Stoneloader
eXceed Inc.
Ascendant Frontier
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Posted - 2006.11.16 03:33:00 -
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I'd say it's pretty much the difference in what you want out of EvE. EvE's got the most sophisticated business model I've seen in an MMO. You're dealing with a market, taxes, shareholders and competition for finite resources. It's a complex, brutal world, and you can get a lot out of EvE without every firing a blaster or launching a missile.
But a huge majority of EvE's content, in terms of skills, ships and available activities, is based on combat, because it's more romantic and exciting than watching your bottom line.
***Pre-emption: You're about to say, "But without combat and ganking and destruction on a galactic scale, nobody would ever buy the industrialists' manufactured goods!" That's not really true. EvE's economy is held up by NPC corporations. Combat characters are paid for killing rats and fetching DNA and otherwise serving NPCs. It would be a simple thing for NPC buy orders to keep an industrial corporation afloat. An artificial demand for manufactured goods is no less feasible than an artificial demand for carnage.***
So combat characters are kings of the galaxy, able to beat up the industrialists and take their lunch money and laugh all the way to their bottomless wells of isk in missions and deadspace. The non-combat characters and players are dirt in EvE, and the fighters make up a nickname for them. They call them "Carebears" because they're harmless and squishy.
Yes, combat characters need industrialists to build the ships and the ammo and the T2 modules (T1 is had from loot, and loot is usually better than what you build from normal BPs), but they don't depend on industrial players. They depend on industrial alts.
Mining, building, researching, buying, selling and hauling--all the non-combat professions of EvE--are the domain of alternate characters. Only a fool has a main who specializes in mining or hauling. Nobody's stupid enough to think they can make their way in EvE as a manufacturer or researcher. Even if it can be done, it would be horribly boring. Watching progress bars isn't worth 15 dollars a month. The sparkly toys and enthralling events are all reserved for combat.
So a "Carebear" is any poor fool dumb enough to have a main character who isn't a combat character. Blow up a hauler, and the first thing you'll see in local is, "omg u nub u think ur so tuff beatin my alt wait til i get my main here he flies a deimos and has -10 sec ur dead meat". So you didn't kill a carebear, you killed a carebear alt, who is toiling away to subsidize some leet pvper who then runs around pretending to be worthwhile on his own merits.
That's the way EvE is supposed to work.
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