EVE General Discussion

I looked up the definition of "fear". Found a photo of Cannibal Kane.

This is a question my friend raised while discussing Eve Online. I tried to get him into the game. The first thing he noticed is that capsuleers are virtually gods roaming through space.

He would probably agree that a god - and therefore a capsuleer - can not be brave under the definition we're using.

Moreover, the reason he won't play the game is intrinsically tied to his perception that you don't really lose anything in Eve Online. He said there's no true risk. I always read "Only fly what you can afford to lose," which is what you hear from people who flirt with the idea of gambling, too: "Only play what you can afford to lose."

True gambling is when your car, or your home is on the line. Few people get that far into it, and still I would not call that bravery.

A brave capsuleer would have to be someone on his or her last ISK, flying the very last thing they could afford to fly, and choosing to dive into null security space. The stakes would be especially high - making the capsuleer exceptionally brave - if the gamer was not willing to spend real-life money on PLEX. For example, if I run out of ISK, I can't play anymore. I haven't been exploring in a while, so I could be coming up on my last two months of Eve Online in April, if I don't get out into null-sec and hack some high-yield relic sites. Am I brave for playing it that way? Ask me when I have only a week left and still not enough ISK to replace my Buzzard.

On a meta-level, however, because there is no permanent loss of life - even if CCP or another company deleted my avatar or revoked my license to play the game - I think bravery in any videogame hardly qualifies to meet the definition. Bravery, in that case, would be to walk away and never play another videogame ever again.

Bravery in the classical sense is getting out of bed in the morning because you made a mistake and had children, but you're terminally sick and continue to go to work anyway, because others are counting on you. Regular people are brave every day, but nobody ever wrote "Tales of Brave Ulysses" over a nine-to-fiver dying from kidney disease just trying to get his kids to graduation.

Unlike the Gods, your immortality is susceptible to how much ISK you have.
Once the space-benjamins run out - so does your immortality.

Fear is an emotion based on an opinion.

Bravery being the conquest of fear is thus also an individual thing defined by the individual.

A 5 year old with arachnafobia touching a spider can be brave (the child). A suicidal soldier running guns blazing into the enemy may not (the god).

In EVE you can be "brave" if you overcome your "fear". Whether or not any one else would be brave doing the same thing is irrelevant.

Based on the fact that about half of the people I've ever declared war on logged off and then never logged in again, I'l say that no, it's impossible to be brave in EVE Online. I thought that the combatants had at least some degree of bravery, such as the time I sacrificed my Proteus so that my friend could get out of a tricky situation in a wormhole battle, but afterwards I realized that I was simply stupid for doing it, because it would have been much cheaper to have him die instead and replace his ship.

In EVE, there are consequences, but no permanent consequences. And as such, being brave is impossible, because there's only cowardice, or cold, hard, mathematical risk/reward calculations.


Xena killed them all with magical Jesus powers.

You lose nothing in this, or any other game, if you lose everything.* Ego-driven acts of "sacrifice" do not constitute what your culture calls "bravery." IT might be defined as generosity of a sort, however, there must be assurance one isn't giving with both hands - giving to get. As Serene said, we have to take someone's word for that, and as EVE players love to boast, your word means nothing here.

I do find it amusing the same people who objectify others to justify their sociopathic behavior, now wish to see themselves as "brave" - a sentiment in the range of human elements they insist do not exist in this "sandbox." Unless, they are possessed by the despised "carebear" whom they would will from creation itself.

The word is "jeopardize." Beware people who call themselves brave.
Just don't turn your back on them.

*Bravery involves the possiblility of losing something dear; an arm, a leg, perhaps...your LIFE.

The Titans may have made war on The Gods, but they certainly didn't WIN. The Gods fought insolence, not a viable threat. Ask Atlas. Unbeknownst to Ayn, he never shrugged. Or, ask Sisyphus. His myth hangs around you
like a rolling stone.

My only fear is that someone will dig up pictures of me, from the darker days of my life, wearing a combination of fedora and MLP t-shirt.

at least you're wearing something ...

Indeed, ain't nothing like a bottle of Dutch courage on Saturday nights to keep you going.