Rollo talks games. (And Pie)
Just another gamer pretending to know what he's talking about.

Back in the day I was about as "carebear" as they come.  I wanted nothing to do with PvP.  It did not interest me in the least bit.  It wasn't that I had a issue going up against another player.  Quite the contrary.  I have always been a huge fan of online FPS's. Once I started playing WoW and got into the BG's I started to enjoy MMO PvP.  I liked the group oriented basis with a bit less twitch style gameplay. Like most people that  PvPers label carebears I didn't have any interest in PvP because of the ganking and griefing.    Basically, people who I like to call "Honorless Dogs".  Please keep in mind that a honorless dog isn't a exploiter, they very well may be playing within the rules of the game. What it means is they are honorless dogs while doing it.  Unfortunately, I believe that the majority of people that call themselves PvPers fall into this category.

1.  We salute you Mr. "I'm going to attack you when your engaged with a mob" guy.  Valid tactic?  Sure, its not exploiting.  Does it make you a honorless dog?  Yep.  Your a wanker.

2. We salute you Mr. "I'm 30 lvl's above you and I'm going to slaughter you with one hit" guy. Once again, Valid tactic?  Sure.  Honorless Dog.  Yep.  Look, its not my fault you used to get your ass kicked in high school.  Go find the guy that was the one who was actually doing the kicking and one shot him instead.  Or find out where he lives and put his name and address on a bunch of animal porn mailing lists. 

3.  We salute you Mr. "Me and 4 of my friends are going to kick your ass for no better reason then the hot chick in accounting that I asked out turned me down" guy.  Everyone knows these people.  The groups of high lvls that roam around jumping single players. Yep, your a honorless dog.

Wait, Whats that?  I hear something... OH, it's the cries of the honorless dogs.  "Dude, it's war, if the other guy is of the opposing faction  then they are free game."  Yeah, I know.  In the last 4 years there have been plenty of times  Iwould  have been justified in  shooting a 16 year old Iraqi kid  that approached a checkpoint after he was warned but I didn't.  I am not a honorless dog.

Next argument.  "But a MMO isn't real war!"  You are 100 percent correct.  But that doesn't make you any less of a dick.  I don't care if your role playing.  It just means you are role playing a dick.  I don't care if you would never do something like that in real life.  Your a dick.   It doesn't mean you wouldn't it simply means the internet gives you the ability to do it with out getting your ass kicked.

The reason I think I can speak to this is that I said I USED to not be interested in PvP.  Then I played WoW BG's and now I am back playing EvE.  Love it or hate it, PvP doesn't get much more hardcore then EvE.  Because of this anyone getting ready to use the old "WoW BG's isn't real PvP so you don't know crap st00pid n00b!" argument can go ahead and shut up now. 

The thing that makes me come to to the the conclusion that I have come to (The one stated in the title of this post) is that in my time playing eve (About 8 months)  I have NEVER, NOT ONCE been attacked on terms that most would consider to be honorable terms. I'm belt ratting minding my own business.  Im in a cruiser - Guy kicking my ass is in a battle cruiser.  I'm in a battle cruiser - Guy ganking me is is in a battleship. 

Don't get me wrong here, I love EVE and I love the PVP.  I also understand that PvP in EVE is more about winning then honor (Hence the old EVE saying "If your in a fair fight your doing something wrong") HOWEVER, That doesn't apply all the time. 

-A enemy fleet jumps into a system you control.  Your not going to look at what ships they have or how many and then tell 6 of your guys to disengage to even the odds., You are going to open fire.  This does NOT make you a honorless dog.

-You setup a gatecamp to control movement around space you control. This does NOT make you a honorless dog.

-You fly your battleship around 0.4 space ganking people in frigs and cruisers belt ratting.  This makes you a honorless dog.

-You and 20 of your corp mates setup a gatecamp for no other reason then to blow up everyone that comes through because you like the pretty colors the explosions make and if you are REALLY lucky you might get to pod someone wearing +5 implants.  Guess what, Your all honorless dogs.

It is my opinion that the internet truly brings out the worst in people.  They say things to people they would NEVER say if that person was in the same room because they know they would get punched in the face.  They act ways they would never act in public.  But what I am really getting at is simply what I stated in the title.  The majority of PvPers DON'T want a challenge.  They want the chance to do something they rarely get to do in real life...Exert their will over others.

I have recently become a bit discouraged with the "gaming" community.  I am not a "old" guy.  I am 28.  However I have been gaming for about 15 years.  It has always been my number one hobby.  I am not going to bore you with boasts about my Commodore 64 or Atari 400 but I will tell you this.  My first online game was Tradewars.  If you get that reference then you should have a pretty easy time following what I am going to say.  If you don't get that reference then you need to proceed with a open mind.  First, I am going to start with a little story. (Dream sequence sound)

In addidtion to gaming I have another hobby.  It's not my number one but it's a close second.  Disc Golf.  I LOVE ME SOME DISC GOLF. Love it love it love it.  I take my hobbies pretty serious.  Gaming- Ive got a pretty nice rig.  Disc Golf - Im one of the guys with the bag, 20 discs, etc.  To use a phrase from my day "I come correct."  I play in tournaments, blah blah blah.  Anyway, one afternoon I am finishing up my 1st round as I am getting ready to to tee off on the 18th hole when I see someone walking around in the woods looking lost.  This generally means someone has lost  a disc.  I shout "Want some help?"  and he happily agrees.  Walking around in the woods alone looking for a lost disc REALLY sucks. 

After a few mins of looking it is apparent we arent going to find it.  I ask the kid (Who appeared to be about 15 or 16) If he was going to play another round.  He said no as he didn't have a disc.  I asked him if he would like to throw a round with me and he could use one of mine.  He happily accepted and said "Well, at least one person out here isn't a asshole."  I inquired as to what he meant and he explained.  A few groups of players had given him a hard time about using a frisbee.  Disc Golf is "Meant" to be played with a disc, not a frisbee.  When people use frisbee's they tend to get heckled by other players that "Know how the game is meant to be played.   a lot of players on their first time out or players that don't play often will use a frisbee.  I told the kid that that was just the way some people were and to ignore them.  I said to play the game how he wanted and the way he had the most fun.

I know, the disc golf story is getting a bit long winded but I promise, its relevant to the point I am going to try to make later.   Anyway, after we shot a round I needed to be on my way.  I told him to keep the disc.  He thanks me and said that we was going to practice putting for a while.  He was hooked.  I knew it.  Three days later I was back at the course and there he was.  Throwing putts.  We shot a few rounds together.  Every time I was at the course I would see him.  The next time I saw him he had 2 discs.  Then 4.  Then a bag.  Etc.  We shot together just about every week.  Fast forward 2 years.   Saturday afternoon I was standing in second place at the awards ceremony for a local tournament.  Guess who was standing in first?

This story has several morals. First and foremost is don't be a dick.  That goes for gaming, disc golf or any other facet of life you care to apply it to.  The way that it applies to gaming is something I have been thinking about quite a lot.  I spend a lot of time on these forums.  I have a job that I don't do anything until something breaks so I have a lot of time to fill.  I see a lot of garbage.  I'm not talking about the flames per say, but I am talking about the bashing.  Mainly the bashing on games like WoW that are "To easy".  They "Aren't real MMO's".  "They are for N00bs". 

My question is this.  If you don't like playing disc golf with a frisbee, then why not just not play with a frisbee?  Why do you feel the need to berate others for their choice of playing with one?  How is their playing with a frisbee effecting your game play?  What I am saying is this, If you don't like easy MMO's, don't play them.  In addidtion to not playing them you should also SHUT THE @$*% UP.  Honestly, Why do you feel the need to berate players of a game just because its not hardcore enough for YOU?  Ok, its not your particular brand of vodka.  Thats fine.  Why can't people seem to just leave it at that?

I remeber when gamers were a tight knight group.  One more person wanting to get into gaming was embraced and welcomed by the community.  They taught them the ropes.  Now days, they berate them for making "stupid" mistakes and not playing games that are hardcore enough.  More gamers is better for all gamers.  More people playing WoW and LoTR is good for our community.  Strength in numbers.  Our industry continues to grow and with the help of easily accessable games like WoW and LOTRO will probably soon rake in more money then the movie business.  Thats coming a LONG way from Tradewars.  Some of the players will mature into hardcore gamers and move on to more hardcore games.  Some will not.  But for those that don't, what gives you the right to berate them because they don't?  Who are you to decide what "The way it is susposed to be" actually is?  Who are you to tell others that their way of having fun is wrong? 

Its like someone that goes to a little leauge game, decides they don't like it and then spends the next 6 months moaning and complaining that "Its not real baseball" and "The kids aren't very good"  "And the action sucks".  If you don't like it just don't go to another game.  Why do you feel the need to spew your negativity to everyone else?

Let people play the way they way the want to.  Who knows, in a few months they could be pwning YOU.  A lot of you probably don't understand this.  A lot of you probably WON'T understand this until one day.  On this particular day you are going to be at a little leauge game for your son/daugter/neice/nephew/grandkid/whatever.  And little Timmy or Katie is going to be up to bat or maybe running to catch a line drive.  And then, they are going to strike out or miss the catch.  And then something is going to happen.  Some asshole parent from the other team (Or maybe even the same team) is going to yell some stupid remark about how he/she should have made that catch or hit that last pitch.  And that kid is going to look at you.  And then, you are going to have to fight every instinct in your body to walk over there and smack the living hell out of that parent.  All that time you are going to be thinking..."What gives them the right"

Goodnight.

I admit it.  I have always considered myself a pretty hardcore gamer but I wasn't hardcore enough to hang with EVE.  I LOVED the setting.  I was getting to the point where I was a bit tired of fantasy and wanted to give something different a try.  The EVE world is terrific.  When I was playing EVE I reallyfelt like I was in space.  The would just seemed massive. (Exactly what I would hope from a space MMO).  But in the end.  I just couldn't hang.  I wanted to, I really did but I simply couldn't.  For me, the game had 2 glaring issues that made me step out of the captains seat.

My issues aren't the cut throat nature of the PvP.  Honestly, I am a pretty PvE focused player yet the constant risk of being attacked even in safe space didn't bother me in the least bit.  I held true to the golden rule of EVE, Don't fly anything you can't afford to loose.  I learned quickly that if I was going to be going to low sec on a regular basis then Implants were going to cause me more frustration then they were worth.  The things that bother most new EVE players really didn't bother me.  But still, I just couldn't get over 2 things.

Issue number one.  The skill system of EVE is INCREDIBLY deep.  The storyline is deep.  The crafting is deep.  The races and ships are deep.  The one thing however that I found NOT deep was the game play.  In all honesty It's not really so much the game play as it is the combat and movement.  Don't get me wrong.  Like most Western gamers I am a WASD type of guy.  A game being point and click doesn't TOTALLY but it does put a damper on a game for me.  What I don't understand is this.  Eve has some great things in it that make use of motion.  Distance plays a important role.  Transversal velocity play a role.  But the system of movement really makes those items feel arbitrary. 

Let me get something right out in the open because I know what a lot of people are going to say.  "They aren't small fighters, they are massive space ships!".  I understand that.  I don't expect a space battleship to handle like a F302 (Props to anyone that gets the reference).  However I need something a bit more then double clicking a area in space and starting to fly there.  I just never felt like I was really in controll of my ship and that really kills the imerision in the game. I am the captain of a starship, I want to feel like I am actually in control of it. Transversal velocity plays a major role in hitting your target but I never felt like I could take offensive manuevers .

Second is the combat.  Clicking on a enemy ship to target it there really isn't much to combat other then clicking on your "tank" (Assuming you are using a active tank) and clicking on your weapons and waiting for the other ship to explode.  I am not a button masher.  I really loved FFXI combat where classes only had a few skills to use.  It doesn't bother me when I only have a few skills.  But the bottom line for me is that I have to have something to do during combat or else why am I even there?  The ship does 95 percent of the fighting.  I felt more like a spectator then a captain.

Second is the skill system.  The skills your character has has a HUGE impact on the game. There is a metric crap ton of skills in EVE. I loved the idea that I could tweak my character towards drones, or missles or whatever.  It made me feel like my character was trully what I made them.  But the longer I played the more I began to understand 1 very important things. No matter how long I played and how many skills I aquired I would NEVER be able to match up with the vets  because there is no skill cap and  the only way to aquire skills is time.

Don't get me wrong.  I understand that tactics and skills as a gamer are a HUGE advantage.  However character skills in EVE is equally important if not more.  Because the only way to aquire skills in ever is through progressing through a set amount of time, it became apparent to me that I was pretty much always going to be a "Low man on the totem pole".  Lets face it, EVE is a great game but there isn't a HUGE influx of new players.  This meant that for the most part my character was always going to be behind the majority of the player base.  I just couldn't deal with that.  If I loose to another player because they have superior tactics and strategy then I have no issue with that.  If I loose to another player because they have a better understanding of the game I also have no issue with that.  However, when if I loose to another player simply because they have been playing the game longer then I have then I have a issue with that.  I have a big issue with that. 

I played EVE for about 6 months.  I really wanted to hang in there.  I miss my megathron.  I miss my drones.   If I had started playing eve from the start then there is a good chance I would still be playing right now. I probably could have gotten over what I consider to be dull combat.  However, I know there is no way I will ever catch up and that there will always be players out there that can beat me in a fight just because they have been playing the game longer then I have.  The list of things that I loved about eve is HUGE.  But in the end, that fact that I could really  "catch up" killed it for me in the end.