Hardcore Casual

My adventures in EVE continue to entertain. Right now I’m still doing some ratting in my pimp-fit Rattlesnake, with my alt in a Noctis providing cleanup, doing Incursions as they come up in my Barghest, and have most recently added Planetary Interaction (PI) to my marketing mix of importing good from Jita to sell in the KarmaFleet home staging system of 7G.

I don’t have the same level of hate others have for PI. It’s not thrilling, sure, but if you like setting up production chains and dipping into min/max territory, it’s really not that bad. Plus it scales, so if you want it to be really hands off, you can do that with longer cycle times, while if you want to really push it, you can set it up for a daily schedule if not shorter.

PI in null also has the added challenge that you can also get blown up, be it when you go to pick your stuff up or when you try to haul it to a market hub. Delve is fairly safe these days because Goons put in a lot of effort to keep it that way, but it’s still null and danger can always strike. One of the reasons I have my PI setup in 7G is because the travel is reduced. I don’t need to leave the system to pick my goods up, and I can sell them right in our home citadel as well. Prices might not be the best, but with the alliances high need for PI, they aren’t terrible either.

Speaking of profit, PI is a reinforcement of how well the EVE economy works, in that activities that most see as ‘boring’ or ‘unfun’ are the ones that pay the most, and how profit-driven you are will really determine what you do in the game. It’s no secret that ultra-boring activities like station-to-station hauling in high-sec is profitable. But the real reason one can make ISK in that area isn’t market genius, but rather because most players won’t spend their time doing something that boring. For many, ratting is more fun, even if its not as profitable. You still make ‘enough’ ISK, all without constantly doing something that makes you want to blow your brains out.

PI is a ‘blow your brains out’ activity for many, which is why despite being so low-entry and ‘easy’, it pays decent ISK/effort. 5M ISK or so gets you a full setup, while to null-rat at a good clip you need to spent a billion ISK or more (to say nothing about the danger of losing your ratting ship vs the risk of PI-related losses). Yet we have far more ratters than PI people, just like we have far more ratters than haulers or traders.

That’s the massive difference between success in a virtual world vs the real world. In the real world people have to work, which for many is near-zero fun but must be done, and where profit is often times the ONLY motivation. With that profit/fun balance being so different, making a lot of money in the real world becomes far harder, because the competition is far greater. In a virtual world, even one such as EVE, you aren’t competing against most players, as the population of people who play almost exclusively for money is very small, which is also why that group is absurdly rich (multi-trillions of ISK is the low-end here, while organizations like IWI are dealing with ISK amounts in the quadrillions.) If you focus just a bit on profit, you can get ‘enough’ ISK to then go and do whatever it is you consider fun, be it PvP, higher-end PvE, or random side project.

Ratting in Delve has left me with plenty of ISK to play with, and I’m still missing about 60 days worth of training to properly fly a carrier. So I’ve instead invested 1.3b ISK into an Incursion ship, and joined that SIG in the Imperium. With the ship (a Barghest) purchased in Jita and shipped out to Delve, its now a matter of waiting for an Incursion to come around to our local neighborhood.

Speaking of ratting going well, a recent Dark Blood spawn dropped a nice little 400m implant for me a few days ago. That, along with getting back to back 10/10 escalations, really pushed my wallet up. And overall Goons are killing it in terms of PvE performance, as Delve is now the number 1 spot for NPC deaths. Guess lots of people missed ratting after The Casino War (and also tells you all you need to know about how important the balance of PvP and PvE is, even an a ‘PvP’ MMO like EVE).

PvP-wise I’ve been in a few fleets recently, mostly just neighborhood cleanup stuff, along with a few trips via wormholes. I think things will pick up with NC/PL going to war with CO2/Test, though only if CO2/Test are dumb enough to continue throwing ships into the meatgrinder. I’m also hopeful we show up to their important fights, and put that whole “MBC will stop and shoot goons” theory to the test. Something tells me that might not be the case.