Defining a bitter vet

Playing for years and realising its all a big stitch up.

Thank f*#k it’s only a game or one could become quite embittered by it.  It does get to me, but I just kind of shrug, get over it and go back to the game. What’s wrong, fundamentally, is Real Money trading (RMT). Like all things it is never one factor that pushes things over a threshold. No one thing is particularly significant, until threshold is reached then everything seems to boil over. So what else is flawed to add up to threshold?

Null sec is the ultimate end aim, but is it?

1.       Null sec industry is not broken, it’s completely useless. You mine minerals only because its the only way to get the high end ones, then you ship them out to empire (unless you have specific cap builds that need them in null sec). Mining only works in fleet so you can kill enough rocks and tank the rats. Then when you have the minerals you are really only interested in building caps, especially given the limited number of build and R&D slots available. It means that you have to have an empire base (or low sec) to contemplate building in null sec. Then let’s not even consider how building ships to melt them down is the most efficient way of moving minerals. http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-reflection-on-00-life-and-kills.html

2.       Ratting sucks? See http://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2011/04/equal-pay-for-equal-risk.html  basically the return on time versus risk means you are better off mission running! You can get the lottery in some ways when you hit a hauler spawn (load of minerals) or a nice drop from a rat, but it’s not as efficient (read safe) as Empire, so not as cost effective. The only way to rat is to scan down dungeons and do them, so that’s another ship (cov ops) with associated skills, call it Null Sec elitism requirement, for not a lot. Add the recent nerf to ratting plexes and this is now a big bulls eye. By that check maps such as DotLan and see where rats are being wacked, where the very low sec areas are for the rats and you now have a rich environment to go hunt ratters for PVP. So yeah, bulls eye has been painted on those areas.

3.       Small fleets are dead fleets. You head off on a small roam, it snow balls a bit, you shoot at a few things, stir up a hornets’ nest and get hunted down by a large red fleet. When you get on roams as well it can be hard to find kills http://www.ninveah.com/2011/06/collapsing-waveform.html

4.       No movement without carriers. Jump freighters suck, only repackaged ships and containers. So moving junk is painful. Change them so they can carry rigged ships and full containers and they start actually becoming freighters, rather than a big fat pain in the arse (rich target). It seems carriers are great for moving things which I thought would be a freighters role. Without a carrier in Null sec you’re screwed. See  http://letrangeeve.blogspot.com/2011/06/some-reflection-on-00-life-and-kills.html for another opinion along the same lines.

5.       Getting your arse kicked without a fight. The enemy roles out a big cap fleet, your side can’t face it, so they roll over sovereignty without you being able to stop them. So you need a carrier to move stuff, don’t have one? Well you can side by the fireside as it all burns down. Everyone is busy moving their stuff out, so without a carrier you are at the mercy of others. It has cost me a lot more than a few times.  My worst kill mail that haunts my table (which sucks) was when my corp turned traitor and I bailed, stuck in nowhere moving my stuff and got caught by a red fleet in blue space. Most of my losses have come from trying to flee collapsing regions, like Geminate, through heavily camped areas. So now with a flick of sovereignty, with no fight, and no losses I wave good bye to 2 DIC’s, 2 HIC’s, 1 AHAC, 1 SB, 1 Electronic attack frigate, 1 Ashimmu and 1 logistics. That hurts.

6.       Null sec war is pointless. I roll out my fleet, you roll out a bigger one, we rally and roll out more, and then so do the reds, so we pack up and go home. Oh wait, no, let’s fight. First on grid wins. Time dilation my arse. Grids loaded, holding, enemy warps in, lag hits, one side wipes the other for 100% kills and no losses. Yeah, hell, that was fun. Blob fleets and lag, game over. It cuts both ways I guess, a Geddon I was flying get red boxed by the whole enemy fleet and sailed on through the middle of the enemy fleet without a scratch in Y8R when we were hot dropped. Yeah, that makes sense, proves the point that he who is first on grid wins. http://www.ninveah.com/2011/06/fall-of-nc-from-casual-grunts-view.html

So there’s the things that stack up but are ok, until the final kicking. Which is:

RMT
It seems all major null sec coalitions are involved in RMT. Evidence posted on EVEnews24 about Russian based RMT got them DDOS’d. Here is the evidence on NC and the goons:
http://www.evenews24.com/2011/06/10/jabber-logs-purportedly-throws-proof-of-northern-coalition-leadership-allegations/
What is CCP doing about this? Notes from XXX  show they are planning something. But is the actions with tech moons (non-existent one day, then added, one rumour had it to make NC a target). Is this all due to high level politics? Did the NC not pay off the right people to keep it’s RMT going? IT Alliance went south over RMT (link), why not the NC? Why not the DRF next?

So what is CCP going to do about this? RMT is the crunch, this is what puts it over the threshold, this is what is killing Null Sec.

And this is just kind of funny. Where’d the ‘Reds’ get there super cap fleet? They bought it off the NC. Everyone so interested in profits they sold themselves down the river. Reads a little like the end of the Vietnam War with South Vietnam trying to make as much money as possible until the house of cards collapsed and everyone looked around going how did that happen?

And for the sidelines, Bitter vet view on dust – let’s ignore it. What if you threw a war and nobody came? I actually really like the idea, and would love to play it. But I am not buying a PS3 to do it. I was looking at buying a console to play with my little boy, and a PS3 was on the cards. But Sony has so blown it, just bad timing for CCP.  I agree with CCP’s business model to chose Sony, seems limits from Xbox stopped them developing for that platform, so CCP went with what they had, fair call. That aside I like the blurb, seems like a cool game and has an extra factor that a lot of other games don’t offer. But there are a lot of FPS games out there, so why should people part with their cold hard cash to play it. A serious question, really, what if CCP threw a war and no one paid?

Bitterness aside, I like scanning down dungeons, ratting, roaming around in null sec, going on roams and being parts of big fleets, chatting on TS with corpies, watching sovereignty flip. It’s all good. At the end of the day it’s a just a game and I still love it. It doesn’t cost much for a lot of fun and meeting some cool people. And I want to play Dust514.