BB35 – The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am…

Welcome the the thirty-fifth EVE Blog Banter.

Now approaching its tenth year, the EVE Online player community has matured into an intricate and multi-faceted society viewed with envy by other game developers, but is frequently regarded with suspicion by the wider gaming community. 

Is this perception deserved? Should “The Nation of EVE” be concerned by its public identity and if so how might that be improved? What influence will the integration of the DUST 514 community have on this culture in the future?

I’m going to preface my response by talking a bit about the bad guys, most especially Darth Vader. The big D is rated either the top or in the top ten movie villains of all times in many many polls. There is no doubt at all, he’s epic in scale and contributes mightily to the Star Wars trilogy (Second trilogy? What second trilogy?).

We need our bad guys. Without them, there’s no drama. No betrayals. No anger and loss. No hardship and travails. And yet again I say we need them. Why I can hear you asking. Well, without all of the above there is nothing for the hero to overcome, to resist or to shine in spite of. Eve is a cold, dark place (and an advertisement just before a screening of Prometheus might just be reaching the right target audience btw), and some of the players make it colder and darker.

The only problem is this: the bad guys get a disproportionate amount of press.

This game needs EPIC to bring in new people. A 60 billion paladin gank is epic and makes the news. An alliance heist making off with trillions of iskies of ships and items is epic and makes the news. The Mittani opening mouth to swap feet is epic (oh dear lord – did I just write that?) and makes the news.

A small corporation making its way in New Eden isn’t epic on a grand scale. But perhaps that small corporation under attack learns how to fight off a ganker using better fits and tactics. They’ve learned and trained and implemented a counter to the griefing.

There are plenty of leet PvP videos. Plenty of leet supercap smackdowns. What we are lacking is those small corp videos where victory is hard won, but sweeter all the same. There should be a metric ton of them out there showing 15 people only a week old can tear apart just about anything subcapital you care to mention. There aren’t. And there should be.

I’m going to put this one at CCPs feet. The videos out there aren’t really for the new player (with the possible exception of I was there and the butterfly effect). They should be actively encouraging people to join a corporation for a couple of reasons, so they can learn the how to’s that neither the new player experience nor the vids show. But mostly because, at its heart, EvE is a community based and social game. Nothing else is going to keep someone in it for years at a time. Nothing else will really help to encourage people to overcome the infamous learning curve either.

Yes, we should be concerned at how EvE is perceived. But EvE isn’t just a hive of scum and villany… it’s also the mom and pop mining operation worried about their moisture evaporators, it’s the jawa level salvaging a dedicated noctis pilot can bring to the table, it’s the targetting womp rats in an interceptor.

We bloggers are going to continue to rebuff and re-educate the other “news sources” out there who take the one piece of villany and blow it all out of proportion (or who at the very least fail to acknowledge context, or the fact that for every one of these issues there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of positive interactions). But CCP, c’mon please do moar stuffs. Set the expectation that EvE is hard by all means, but show that it’s not all like this… and show people where they can go to get some help.

This EvE community is so staggeringly passionate about this game, all you need do is ask. Use the CSM lever by all means. Engage us as players to shout it from the rooftops. But we also need to be able to point someone to a place to go, see SEE!, that waz oarsum. Thats how it CAN be. And yes, every one of those players was only a month old….!!

As for Dust, well I really don’t know too much about it at this point. I also don’t own a console. So, going to reserve judgement until I know alot more… but I’d be surprised if there is all that much in the way of cross pollination tbh.
[Unrelated and random bonus question sponsored by EVE News 24: What single button would you recommend be included on an EVE-specific keyboard?] – I reckon a “disable Jita local” button would be WONDERFUL…. 🙂

FS

H

Some other posters… 🙂

• BB35 by Xander @ Crossing Zebras
• BB35 by Drackarn @ Sand, Cider and Spaceships
• On the Outside Looking In by Kirith Kodachi @ Inner Sanctum of the Ninveah
• For the Nation! (EVE Nation that is) by Lucas Rox @ Torchwood Archives
• BB35 by Harrigan VonStudly @ Gun Turret Diplomacy
• Through the Lens of Past Experience by Emergent Patroller
• Eve and the people that hate it by Urziel99 @ Urziel’s EVE Chronicle
• Growing Up by Grimmash @ Warp to Zero
• Individuality by blastradius @ Blastrad’s Tales
• All Bark or All Bite by Logan Fyerite at Eve Opportunist
• What public identity? by Evehermit at Evehermit’s Blog
• The long tail by splatus @ A journey through the mind
• Public perception, or what the eyes see and the ears hear the mind believes by Myrhial Arkenath @ Diary of a Pod Pilot
• State of the Nation by The Scientist @ A Scientist’s Life in EVE
• The Nation of EVE and Why it is Perfectly Fine by Marc Scaurus @ MALEFACTOR
• The Society of EVE – 2400 Year in the Making by Rundle Allnighter @ EVE All Night
• The Implications of being built on Trust by Conventia Underking @ Married Minmatar Life