EVE General Discussion

(TL:DR @ the end)

My intention for this post isn't to address the virtues or faults of Eve Online. I simply want to talk about what "is" in Eve and how we, as real people in a real world, enter the world of Eve and interact with it and each other.

In my view, what sets Eve Online apart from every other game is the thing that most polarizes it, what makes some people love it and others completely reject it. And that is it's lack of "boundaries." Sure, there are hard limits. You can't do anything in game that would actually lead to illegal activities in real life. You can't hack other people's accounts. You can't bot or do other things that CCP has clearly defined as "illegal." But really those boundaries are very few and you can engage "legally" in so many other activities that most every other game would ban you for doing.

And please don't think this is all an attempt to say, "Look, we're all horrible people! Look at how we treat each other! Look at all the bullying, scamming, theft, blah blah blah!" Far to the contrary, while all those things exist, It's been an awesome experience to engage in (or for me, far more often BE engaged in) pvp and exchange an honorable "GF" or "o7" or "o/" afterward. For some reason those simple expressions hold a great deal of meaning in the Eve universe, I think. If you can give a "GF" when someone totally jumped your ass and you have no one to blame but yourself, and your attacker gives the sign back... I dunno, even if that's your only textual communication, I almost feel like you can still consider that "good content".

Anyway, I don't want to get too far afield from my actual intention here. Because clearly people DO act far differently in the Eve universe than they do in the real world. And the reason why is BECAUSE those limitations are so few and far between. AND both gain and loss have so much meaning in Eve! In WoW you might die just before the end of the instance and so you're angry because you feel like you just lost all the time it took you to get that far, but you still keep all your gear, weapons and armor. We all know that isn't how Eve operates. And so in the wide open world of possibilities that is Eve, you can play in so many different ways, but no matter what way you play, you play for KEEPS. And that means that this game is full of so many things: honor, deceit, loyalty, scamming, teamwork, bullies and so much more. But here's the thing. No matter what aspect of the game you're engaging in, no matter what role you're playing . . . its a PERSONAL game. Because success matters. Loss matters. You lose your ship and not only is your pride hurt, but on a fundamental level your entire experience is effected, especially when you haven't reached the point yet where isk isn't an issue. And when you suffer loss, no matter how egregious that loss is, there is no guarantee that anyone is going to help you recover. The game itself isn't going to pick you up, dust you off and give you another ship with all the fittings on it as if to say, "It's ok, friend, have a do-over." No. It's up to you to recover. It's easier with friends, but you're the one who has to make those friends and put in the time to build that network.

My guess is because it's fiction, not real and the rules of New Eden are nothing like the rules we all follow IRL.

**I only read the TL;DR

my short anser. eve is seen as a game . not a virtual reality.

To assume that is the ultimate goal in this game is a bit narrow. Lots of us could care less about ISK. We just want to have fun, within the rules of the game. "Fun" is different for different people.

It's not a social experiment. It's a game.

Overthinking has let you miss that the name is a joke.
Wherever great numbers of people interact there will be turmoil.
Where the environment and your needs meet very exactly, there is Paradise.

A paradise for humans would necessarily be turbulent. Nirvana is where all things are released into their primordial nature, more primitive versions of paradise are where only good things happen and you can do what you want.
Games approach a happy medium while also demanding and rewarding.

It's a game, not a social experiment. Social experiments are the domain of creepy idiots who think they are above the people they manipulate or pretend to see through. Marketing people on coke and failed criminals are the best examples.

Eve lacks options to act accordingly.
If you only consider options that don't include shooting anyone or anything, producing, trading, hauling or providing materials for anything that will be used directly or indirectly for shooting anything or providing an infrastructure that makes it easier to shoot something, there is not much left you can do.

Spot on. The point of Eve is not to amass virtual things, just like the point of football (all kinds) is not to score as many goals/points as you can. That would be silly. Why would I pay some dudes in Iceland to make a number tick up in a database while I watch a pretty image of a space ship shoot a laser at an image of an asteroid for hours on end? That activity probably doesn't even qualify as a game by most definitions. Even most industry (in the absence of the other players) isn't really a game but rather an exercise in spreadsheet construction and minimizing/maximizing mathematical equations - basically a giant math problem. Many people like to spend their spare time solving Sudokus, Crosswords, or math or logic problems but that doesn't really make it a game even if it is a popular and respectable pass-time.

What makes Eve a game is you are playing in competition with other players. It's a sandbox, so goals and winning conditions are flexible, but basically you are in competition with the other players and it isn't how many goals you score, but if you can score more goals than your opponent and achieve your victory conditions. Sometimes, that means you should collude or ally with your opponent, or other players in the game to further your aims (and plenty of this goes on in Eve), and other times that means you should stomp on your opponent and take their candy. Sometimes you mess with them with antimatter, sometimes on the markets, and sometimes with diplomacy, but you are always jockeying for advantage against the other players in the virtual universe CCP constructed.

It's not an accident that more people watch and play the competitive sport of baseball than participate or care about the Home Run Derby where players just hit as many home runs as they can. While watching such a contest might be entertaining once a year, it isn't a even a game with all the inherent drama, interplay and consequence of a competitive activity. It is just a bunch of rich athletes showing off how efficiently they can score points in the absence of competition.

Eve is a full-time, PvP sandbox game. It is perfectly normal that players will sometimes choose a strategy to "win" by opposing the activities of the other players, just like the pitcher in baseball tries to prevent the batter from hitting a home run by throwing the ball in a particularly difficult or deceptive way. In fact, CCP has built the game in such a way that we are encouraged to do so by adding only limited resources and space for us to control/harvest. If they wanted us all to "win" they could fill the universe with infinite resources and turn off our ability to interfere (play defense) with each other like most MMOs, but instead they are trying to build a single-shard, PvP arena game, not a single-player grind-fest.

I don't think many people approach the game as a virtual universe like second where they are expected to abide by human norms. Most approach it as the competitive economic and empire building video game that it was built as. Certainly, even if I am wrong about that, it is true that there are many different reasons people come to play the video game that is Eve and trying to interpret anything about the real-life is a fool's errand. At best, it is a social experiment on how humans interact in a virtual setting with the completely arbitrary and artificial constraints and inducements chosen by CCP in building their spaceship shooting game, but it says nothing about the human condition in a real-world environment.

A peaceful New Eden would be a very boring game but CCP could easily engineer one by tweaking a few game systems and inducements to make everyone win. But then what would be the point of playing? If I want peace and quiet, I can just gaze out my window and wonder at the civil and peaceful real-world society I and the other humans around me have managed to construct.

Op should watch this. It's quite eye opening.

I have 5 characters I consider mains and they all end up being played largely as extensions of myself. The idea of playing the "bad guy" just doesn't interest me, although I enjoy doing so in the GTA games.

no no no, EVE people are horrible and every other person is a griefer. As I was typing this all 14 of my freighters peacefully carrying 5 bil each of trade goods were ganked by people who are real life sociopaths (EVE is how sociopaths take a break for sociopathic it up in real life!!)....



Did I sum this forum up well enough, or should i go more extreme with the bullshit next time???