7 Responses to EVE: Incursion preview

1. Aidan Padecain says:

   December 16, 2011 at 3:32 pm

   Good way to make ISK, that’s for sure. You just have to get past the fitting snobery.
2. mararinn says:

   December 16, 2011 at 4:06 pm

   There’s a heap of useful information over at the BTL incursion site: http://www.eve-incursions.net/

   Go read, and I’ll see you in game sometime!
3. Noble Noob says:

   December 17, 2011 at 8:06 am

   In the game whose name shall not be mentioned, I never did a lot of things because you had to go to a location and get inspected for gear and all. Just a bad atmosphere, a your not good enough to be on my team thing. And now here we have it in Eve, altho in a lesser form. I understand the need but hope CCP doesn’t add more content that expands this mentality. Overall incursion are good and I enjoy them.
   • Adam says:

     December 18, 2011 at 12:45 pm

     “””I never did a lot of things because you had to go to a location and get inspected for gear and all. Just a bad atmosphere, a your not good enough to be on my team thing.”””

     How terrible that people would expect you to be informed and prepared.

     “””I understand the need but hope CCP doesn’t add more content that expands this mentality.”””

     Yeah it would be terrible if they made things difficult enough that we couldn’t run around uninformed and unprepared.
     • mararinn says:

       December 18, 2011 at 3:46 pm

       Adam, there’s a world of difference between being “prepared” for an activity and being “over geared”. I many cases, the raiding guilds who took themselves too seriously would insist on things like “GearScore” being above a certain value: such as having all blues and at least two Karazhan purples in order to run Karazhan raids.

       In EVE we have the advantage of being able to compensate for non-epic fits by throwing more numbers at the enemy. For some people this is not enough: vanguard fleets are insisting on not just “DPS” but “T2/faction Nightmare” or “T2/faction Machariel”. This is in a scenario where the only hard limits on sites are reasonable resists (e.g.: 70+ across the board) and the ability to project a modest amount of DPS. Shiny fleets complete sites faster, that’s a given. The shiny fleets aren’t interested in socialising, they’re in the activity for ISK/hr.

       Wherever you find people, you’ll find elitism. It’s inescapable: especially where the stakes are truly important things like ISK/hr or having the office chair with leather instead of vinyl.
       • Adam says:

         December 18, 2011 at 5:03 pm

         In the same way you say “elitists” the other side says “bads”.

         I personally find it really more frustrating to play videogames with people that don’t prepare and don’t inform themselves about the basics of the game.

         It’s really quite arrogant of people to insist that they should be able to show up in their greens and go raid with people that have done their basics. Then they cry about elitism…

         If someone is truly elitist and unpleasant to people that truly want to get better I’m not going to hang out with them. But I will go find other players that will prepare properly.

         If someone wants to fly in a 1.5billion isk ship, they probably want to fly with others risking the same. All good for them.

         Overgearing sucks and can be boring in and of itself but that’s just an inevitable game balance issue. Min/maxing as usual.
       • mararinn says:

         December 18, 2011 at 8:14 pm

         Your false dichotomy is showing.

         Turning up to an Incursion fleet with a T2/faction fit shield Maelstrom that has 70% resists across the board, more than 80k EHP, optimal of 18km, and high tracking is not the same as turning up to WoW raids with greens.

         If someone’s “risking” a 1.5B ship, it’s not the other DPS in the fleet they’re relying on to keep it alive, it’s the people like me flying sub-300M ISK logistics boats (I have a 80M ISK Caldari Navy Power Diagnostic System, for the 1% extra shield capacity). Once you can fly a 5/1+tracking link basilisk fit there’s not much else you can do to pimp your ride. Once the vanguard fleet has two such basilisks and a 6-link off-grid Siege/Skirmish Tengu, there’s not much else the fleet can do to pimp their logistics. Being picky about the other DPS in the fleet is pure elitism. The FC has picked people they know will complete sites and behave themselves, the fact that they’re not all flying faction battleships with officer modules shouldn’t be an issue. Two logistics, nine DPS, complete sites faster and have a ball.

         I’ve kicked shiny ships from fleets because they have complained about the “welfare ships” (i.e.: the Maelstrom flown by the official fleet commander). You’re not community minded? Too bad, you don’t have a place in my fleet.

         I’ve been in fleets where 9 people have been helping the 10th figure something out. One example was how to fit his brand new nightmare properly: the silly bugger was Chinese and didn’t speak English. We had a polyglot who was able to help translate, and it turns out he was using an officer-fit suitable for fighting Sanshas Nation mission NPCs (i.e.: EM/Therm tank). Luckily there was enough DPS in the fleet that this guy got out with 10% hull remaining, so we had the opportunity to help him fit it better.

         Within three runs of each site, this non-English-speaking Incursion noob had figured out the FC’s preferred order (e.g.: AADDD for OTAs) and has hung around with our community ever since. We don’t even use English with English speaking fleet members: WWW, L x 3, AAA, JJJ, Broadcast: Target, set tags, Broadcast: Align To, Broadcast: Warp To … there’s nothing “elite” about knowing how to follow instructions.

         Even back in my WoW days I was routinely running Kara and Gruul’s Lair with folks who didn’t know what they were doing. We’d approach it with a sense of humour, help people understand the mechanics, point them at education sources (write-ups and videos), and enjoy how all this communication and helpfulness formed a sense of community. We’d lose the occasional player to an elitist raiding guild, and we marvelled at the 60% return rate (folks head off to elitist guild because they thought things would be better over there, found it wasn’t all milk and honey, came back to a place they were comfortable and could choose which nights they wanted to play).

         The elitist jerks I used to run with were constantly looking for new blood because they’d end up burning people out (those burned out folks became WoW’s “bitter vets”). They were not nice people. They weren’t “elite” so much as “exclusionary sociopaths.” They were the “bads” in our world model, because they chewed people up and spat them out. They ruined real world relationships.

         Are you a team player or an exclusionary sociopath?

         False dichotomy: it’s my concept of the week.

Comments are closed.