Reggie Stoneloader
Teikoku Trade Conglomerate
Visions of Warfare
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Posted - 2008.02.03 11:47:00 -
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I'm part of "we". The notion of some kind of structure PvP rumpus room in EvE, the formalization of pewpew, would be a huge sign of the end of the game as we know it. It would mean that CCP forgot what makes EvE great.
There's a line in the sand between "common" activities like mining, ratting, running missions, etc. and PvP. The other things you do can be understood and quantified and defined fairly easily. You know how much ore comes from a cycle of your lasers, and you know how to kill hordes of NPC and what loot to keep and what to leave and when to salvage. You learn which mission rats have warp jammers.
But in PvP the world turns liquid, and anything can happen. I'm referring specifically to ship-to-ship combat here, and it's not uncommon for tables to turn and ganks to turn into battles, or vice versa. Well, that's not really true. It is uncommon, and that's what makes it special. Your heart races, your hands shake, you really get into it.
It's popular as a topic of conversation, and now a lot of people have the resources and skills to maintain high-level PvP around the clock. This makes it seem like PvP is furniture in the EvE world, just a fixture in the background. It's talked about in general terms, like "high sec ganking" and "gate-camping battleships" but when you're actually there and your shields are melting and you're aligning and hoping you have enough extenders and WCS to get out and then the fire is pouring out of your hull and then the little blue bar wipes from left to right and the torpedo that would have killed you passes behind your engines and you're on your way to the next gate, it's not unremarkable. When you and your enemy are locked and webbed and scrambled and toe-to-toe and his hul and your hull are fading and you suddenly have to reload and he's got two pixels of structure left and his drones are stinging you and you slap all your F-keys and "Boarding Ship" appears on your screen and you howl with frustration, that's not mundane.
But if that experience, or one very similar to it, could be had at any time in a cheap ship with a guaranteed "fair" fight, then watching those white lines turn red would just be another progress bar to stare at. PvP is rewarding, and it's fun, and it's dangerous, frustrating, exhilerating, expensive and cheap and easy and hard. It's why we do what we do. We earn money to pay for ships to lose in PvP. We buy implants to risk them in PvP. We join corporations to have wingmen in PvP, and to have infrastructure to support PvP, and to have advice on tactics for PvP. If the streets were paved with the treasure that we hunt, there'd be no reason to log into TQ anymore.
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