EVE General Discussion

I have lived in Provi and have been in CFC.

I see major alliances as much more of a mirror of real life than high sec ever can be. In real life everyone has a few roles to play, has obligations, etc. and goes out to have fun (ie, create content) only when their day to day obligations are fulfilled. Alliance living is akin to the professional IRL who holds a job, has a mortgage, etc. High sec is a free for all, for the most part

Your metaphor needs a lot of help.

The most successful capsuleer organizations follow the model of a military, not a civilian government. Democratic alliances fail for the same reasons that democratic militaries do: because sometimes somebody has to make a call right now, and you always have to be 100% sure who that person is at all times. Deliberation is for peacetime, and peacetime is not generally considered good game play.

The kind of artificially forced competition you want within a group is inefficient: one miner driving another miner out of a belt is less efficient than two miners in the same belt, and inefficient alliances have fewer resources than efficient alliances. Furthermore, people who are used to working well together will accomplish more than people who aren't. In the large-scale competition that defines null sec, the efficient and the cooperative tend to win, and the inefficient and discordant tend to lose.

The NPC empires are wallpaper. They're so huge that nothing you do or don't do has any effect on them, so they're completely indifferent to your actions. They've even delegated police work to bots, because they'd really rather that capsuleers had never existed in the first place. There's no analogy between them and any capsuleer organization. If you don't like space where people are organized and motivated to fleet up and kill you for harassing them, then high sec is the place for you. In dangerous space, people have to work together to survive.

These last posts are really good!

Well, yes, that too..

And actually, contra Angelica's definition of "content," this is definitely content because even a failed roam (which I'm familiar with--who else can FC a fleet through Amamake three times without getting a single fight?) still builds camaraderie and community among the pilots. It constructs a shared narrative, in-jokes, and stupid links in Fleet. It gets people familiar with each other and the way they play. Content is not merely oppositional or destructive. This is a game fundamentally about interactions between people; any interaction between people is significant in one way or another.