Ashlar Vellum wrote:Come on dude, seeing people overreacting and getting butthurt over their fictional side is as fun as pew-pewing spaceships. So you go Mr Falcon. ^.^
PS
where is my 4 way war CCP and then a civil war inside those 4, huh?
You know what, you're right. I hope some people got enjoyment from seeing me butthurt. So I'll blank the above post.
But that is kinda my point. Falcon has no way BUT to make butthurt, and in my opinion, here is why:
In a competitive game like Eve Online, you derive enjoyment from winning. How do you know if you've won? Well, you put effort forward and achieved your objective. How do you know if you lost? Well, you didn't achieve your objective.
So, if your RP side wins in the story, you feel great for a moment, but it isn't truly a "win", because it was Falcon that did it, not you. CCP made the storyline. But if your side is the one that lost, you feel that just like if it was your own failure, because perception of loss doesn't need to involve effort. There's a reason "well, you tried" is such an empty comfort.
So, when RPing a side, Falcon is always going to end up screwing you. And it's always going to appear that he is, especially if he's fair. I don't think he is fair, in the fictional treatment of the sides, but hey, why should he be? It's his (well, CCP's game), not mine. He's the artist, not me. If I hate it so much, I can **** off. And, for a little while, because I was a crybaby, I did.
That little realization revealed to me that complaining about toxic players and RP doesn't do much when one is the toxic RP. And, then, thinking about it, I realized that my best moments in EvE were, and have been, the interpersonal and exploding things moments. In other words, the EvE storyline is not your friend, or even your enemy. It's fluff, literally. It gives flavor. It's not what makes the game fun, at least not for me.
So, because I'm a moron, I was walking away from gameplay I enjoyed, because of a storyline that was only ever intended as instrumental to the enjoyment of the game, not the core of it. Oops.
From this perspective, now, getting involved in RP, at least factional RP, was probably a pretty big mistake. I spent a few years of play getting no better (ok, a little better) at the game, and not doing much of what I enjoyed, trying to "win" something that couldn't be won and that other people told me I was taking too seriously. Oops again.
I got two of my friends to try EvE, or at least told them about it. One of them, IIRC, I tried to get into Caldari loyalism. He's gone. The other? Well, he went into EvE Uni, and eventually got me to join Pancakes (I was in Horde before). I think he'll be here for years.
EvE isn't supposed to be about the Empires. I don't even think it's about stories of alliances and grudges. EvE is at its best when, for example, I'm flying in my first cruiser nano-gang ever last night, and having a blast even though we didn't kill much (and I lost a Phantasm on an accel gate because I'm stupid, lol). It's a really great wide-open sandbox with tons of fun things to do, and I think that CCP have done great work to improve the game (Citadels are awesome, btw).