I'll say it's cycle time for me as a director and I'm likely going to be taking it and spending some of my free time in DDO now. A lot of folks were fantasy MMO players before they were scifi, you know. and DDO runs on my friend's crappy laptop, which is awesome, so I will be spending time gaming with her again. (I just couldn't bear going ot WOW so we had to find something that was more visually like EQ2 with a decent rule set. and yes I know it gets boring fast but we're not power gamers and have limited timeframes, so a dungeon or two a night works).
I've been here since June and Intrusions still mean little to nothing to our corporation without outside assistance, even with our insane size and dedicated members.
Plus we're bittervets (lol), we're cranky and angry and a lot of folks are afraid to devote their time and heart and guts into something again. So the "hold" is loose, purposely so, for a lot of folks. No one wants to get burned twice. But it won't matter WHO it is doing the burning. Devs and Players are equal animals in a Sandbox.
It's no one corp's fault. It's an attitude problem shared by different people in a lot of corps. It's the "LOL look who I chased out of game" syndrome. Works fine for EVE entering Grade A game status advertizing on YouTube and cable TV... bad for Perp. Word spreads fast and when you hear it's "Join or die", it's like, meh, I'll spend my time elsewhere.
I *said* all this stuff. I'm sure it didn't come out very eloquently when I did, but I pointed it out. Ofc I"m sure everyone thought it was political spin.. but surprise surprise.
I still love this game. Still staring longingly at my Mk2 in the hangar while I train up for it. (oops, was a teeeny bit short on that in EP.. >.>) But while I'm training up my life goes like this:
Log In
Say Hello
Defuse Current Drama
Run out of time, log out.
I'll say it once, I'll say it 1000 times.
The players make the game in an MMO that focuses on MMOness and not solo content. Perp does NOT focus on solo content, that's why I play and the hubby doesn't anymore. He likes to solo and have it at least be marginally fruitful. At our skillpoint level, it just isn't - not without 2 accounts, or tricks that we just don't know yet being new and certain choice info being so jealously guarded.
In this case, the game mechanics are just a skeleton. They are not the game.
We are the game. We are the meat and bones and what makes it all dance and sing.
There are people who are going to go where the win is, by accident or on purpose. There are people who are willing to 100% be the underdog, and deal with the possibility of crushing losses 100% of the time no matter what. But, then, there is a large section of people who want a chance to make that ever elusive third side - and there isn't much of one here. But that's just politics, that's "the game".
Not to pick on CIR directly but to use it as an example, as Commie Red as they like to be (which makes the political banter lots of fun tbh ) they act more like the USA and our at times wacky military decisions (much love to our troops but some of the stuff we send them on is plain redonkulous). Sure, we have one country, but if another country invades someone else's, oh lookie! Our troops are there, and the invaded country didn't even ask for them. We "own" one landmass but go where we want and shoot who we want, we've got so many army bases kids are born as US Citizens pretty much by accident anymore. It's not bad or good. It just is. And it leads to "terrorism" (Oh, the poor Lithuses and Sequers and Arganos It is the "civilian" bots that suffer most.) Seems to be the same sort of arguments coming out of the Russian corps - slightly different flavor, but still the same detrius.
And if you look at the whole political landscape, from AFAR, it's a pretty cool game concept, tbh. But it's not holding players. Why? Well, maybe if we were all a touch sillier about it, turnede the RP up a few notches and turned down the real life "We wanna make you quit" BS, less people would actually, uh, quit. The best pirates and generalized buttholes in EVE and other MMOs grief without griefing. Their victims don't leave. It generates story. There isn't these situations of mission statements being written that directly violate the games's EULA. It's just a game, not a RL Vendetta. And "meant that way" or not, that is how it was expressed, that is how it was and is percieved, and perception is E V E R Y T H I N G.
P.S. I was a Radiation Oncologist for ten years until my spine decided it didn't want to be a research scientist anymore. So Tusk, I know what you're saying in the way that you're saying it. Good luck to you. And that's srs bsns.
P.P.S. YOU CAN NOT WIN AN MMO. So anyone saying "Well we just want to win" is, in regular language, saying they just want to be the only ones left in the game. I mean seriously, do you realize how sick that really is, when you think about it? There's winning engagements, sure. But this "winning the WAR" BS has to stop somewhere or it will be a war of attrition and the snake will be left to eat its own tail.
Aeon had a good point many weeks ago. CIR makes a good enemy. They make an AWESOME enemy. M2S and 62nd shape up as excellent anti-heroes. (In fact, doesn't everyone?) But when I hear about people bragging about getting others to cancel subs and counting that as an in game tactical victory... Everyone. EVERYONE has to stop that crap. Hell, it was the FIRST thing I told the people from EVE to do - wash their boots. Forget the past BS. And much to our dissapointment (I won't say surprised, because, well, yeh. We knew a lot of ex-EVE were already here) we somehow walked right back into it.
If this game is an EVE "clone" it is because some players insist on acting like the stars of the C&P forums. We MAKE it one with what we DO. Sandbox? Sure. Stop building serious spaceship business intrigue in it and see how much different it will look after awhile.
For the spyless: from NeX's statement of intent documents:
Everyone I have talked to has given slightly different answers but all focus on one or both of these points.
1. Do not piss in my playground.
2. Do not disregard my humanity.
On one or both of these principles, each of us, individually, chose to leave EVE Online and give Perpetuum a try and, let's be honest, to give ourselves a break from a lot of the things that have been frustrating us. Of course, each member of this corporation has their personal roles as well as a place within the corporation's (blobby) infrastructure, but again, the impression I got was also a wish for a fresh start involving the shedding of some of the 'yuck' we picked up over the years and along the way.
This is a public announcement that as a corporate whole it is nowhere in our vision to violate either of the two things that pissed us off and brought us here. We have *all* walked through rivers of *** of one form or another in EVE in the form of reputation as part of its playerbase (rob your corp come play eve commercial trololol), and some of us have seen things a thousand times worse than that go down in the game environment with nary a whisper, simply due to the expansiveness of the 'political' and social environment.
It's time for us to take a hose to our boots and not track it into another house. A lot of people I have talked to ( and I have talked to quite a few ) seem to share this idea. I'm not saying to go total carebear. Just saying to keep it real as in; to keep it real(lly in game).
This means: no unnecessary cruel evil metagaming bullshit.
We are here to have fun, pew, and contribute to a community; to become a part of the dynamic whole of this new and exciting sandbox. But let's try to let real life stay real life. Use but don't abuse the tools that our skills have rest at our fingertips. Do not try to destroy the community we have a chance to contribute to. I am sure from listening to everyone in comms that at least this seems to be a singular voice among all of us. Corporate spies I ask to keep careful note of this paragraph. After all, you are in the corporation, and therefore, we shall hold you to this standard.
Should I just retract this? Did I misinform these ex-EVE players and thus disarm them of a very valuable tool that would have kept them subbed?
Industrial Sector: Shouldn't it be GTFO and wait if you're still paying? Well, unless it is 10$ beer money, then we can cry
Now, enjoy some unrelated 80s music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJC5R1Kx … re=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNe2YzJb … re=related
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I play MMOs. I need a signature which is deep, thought provoking, and devours bandwidth with the voracity of rabid weasels. It is also, by nature, vaguely sad with a tinge of my obvious internal, unfathomable loneliness. Like this,
, but at 1.3megs packed into 2 by 6 inches. ANIMATED.