Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Critique of Penny Arcade review of Eve

"There's a saying in EVE, 'Don't fly what you can't afford to lose.' There are certainly some extravagant ships that would really set you back if you lost them, but in general as long as you keep to only flying ships that are within your budgetary range then you never have to feel too bad over losing one." PAreport
-- Myth: elitist pricks have this mantra they like to tell those who have no choice but to 'risk' flying an overly expensive, probably poorly fit (from lack of true experience in the ideal ship fitting) ensemble in order to make a decent isk/hr. N00bs like maximizing their income and when new most of your assets and isk are sunk into replacing ship losses it can easily dwarf the pitiful scattering of ships introductory mission agents give n00bs (if you even know to look for such, since most eschew FAQs and tutorials)
-- debunking: notice how Helicity completely misses the point of risk management for n00bs - they simply have to risk everything if they want to maximize their early revenue stream. If they don't they are succumbing to the risk avoidance that's endemic to eve's griefer/carebear population.

“The myth is, of course, that in EVE everyone is out to scam you, trick you or otherwise screw you,” he said. “In fact it's more like there is a small number of rather succesful people out there who like to PvP by matching their scams against your wits. It's just observer bias created by the fact that succesful scams make for great news stories. For every scam, thousands of players went on and had a fabulous day in which nothing bad happened.” PAreport
-- Myth: elitist pricks are so enamored with this mantra that griefers are matching their wits against carebears in an ArmsRace scenario of the villains scaling that mountainside because of the challenge. It scares players into believing that they simply cannot risk investing in a big juicy target. Nothing could be farther than the truth.
-- debunking: Hulkageddon dispelled this notion of the wily griefer being attracted to the biggest challenge. There was the odd overkill on targets that simply screamed of a random BC tech2 rape of some poor schmuck who wasn't even ship scanned before being wiped off the map, but that was the exception to the rule where the vast majority of griefers targeted poorly tanked barges. In fact, there was a sea of untanked ganks and a small smattering of overkill victims...Not something even remotely resembling the forum trolls of "if you tank we'll just bring moar ships to kill you"

Basically, in a nutshell, the majority of eve players are risk-averse (aka lazy) either through greed or ignorance...mostly from just basic laziness.

My point has always been to welcome risk, not try to 'manage' it (which is just a euphemism for avoidance)...I've always been poor and have never truly gotten into a situation where i'm generating lots of isk/hr consistently. I think i'm in the minority and that the majority of eve players are 'achiever' types that do generate a decent revenue stream after being in the game as long as i have.

Which means that there's enough lazy greedy achievers who are risk averse (aka carebears) to keep the lazy greedy killers who are also risk averse (aka griefers)...and these two groups make up the majority of MMOG players out there. That's okay, it's just insulting to my intelligence to read drivel like this with the moniker of "risk management"