Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Griefers


I went home yesterday with a warm fuzzy feeling after writing my progress blog.

And I went home, well to do my usual house stuff, then to settle down and run some mining for 2-3 hours, and head for bed, well knowing I was on the right track.

The Eve-Online did what Eve-Online does best:
Kick you in the face, spit on you, talk a bit of trash, and kick you in the groin, before starting to laugh about your struggles. Lovely.
Within the MMO universe this behaviour is referred to as griefing. In the real world it's referred to as sociopathic behaviour.

In most games you can just reload and the individual is gone and you don't really need to deal with the person, or you can report them for harassment.

In the real world and in Eve, that's not really an option. The world doesn't really revolve around you, no matter what you are told. So basically you are being bullied, but what can you do about it.
Well you can stand and fight or you can walk away.

Personally I walk away. Fighting is too resource demanding and brings me no joy. I might retain my place, but that hold no value to me. Compared to the resources needed to throw a fight. (Plus these folks tend to thrive on the fight and beating them up with give them pleasure).

It throws a dent in my plans for the 1 million cubic meters for this week, but I have friends, and friends help out when the need is great enough + you've done your own part first.

But back to sociopaths:
Most people hate Eve-online because they are present in fair shares. In fact they aren't blocked from doing their stuff. And personally I'd hate to see something done actively.
As in the real world, going to a bar you might run into what i call an idiot. Someone basically there to pick a fight. Should someone remove this person from existence, just because he's a jerk?
No. Course, who'd be next, and who's to judge the subtle lines?

What I in these situations where I'm being griefed and start to resettle/move on, I wonder why...
Why does anyone have a basic urge to inflict struggle upon someone else, to course suffering in some form.
To my minds eye there's the kid with the anthill and a spyglass. Burn, burn, burn, but why the need to make the ants burn. As usual I start imagine the ants gathering in great formation and teaching the boy a lesson of violence . It never happens because the ants just move to another spot.
There's very few corners in a world after all.

I'd love to see a few comment on this. Everybody has experience with griefing either via a game or in fact in the real world., Childhood tend to be a rich source for it. Please share.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Progress


It's been awhile with no updates.
And that's mainly as I had to resettle.

I started out getting help raising fund, mining. and we choose a 0.9 system relatively close to the starter systems. at the time it seems a good I idea, as i could use most of the time running L3 Missions while someone else simply gathered minerals to refine and sell on the spot.

Quickly it turned into a can-flipping fest. My friend was used to mining big ops and with that you have haulers and protectors, so jet-canning  was something timed for can recycle of one can with a 5 minute stamp, and it would be picked up eventually.

Close to the starter systems can-flipping is more common and loads of income was lost this way. With usual apathy. But I needed to raise above an income pr. hour to keep things going. And I would end up having to focus solely on hauling to deal with the problem.
Also that wouldn't really be an option either when I got around to barge mining. I really would want to care for mining with anything less. and I'm not far from the covetor now, think Mining upgrades, and Barge are the last 2 books (and Astrogeology 5).

Anyway, for the the target is set at 1 million m3 pr week, and I've acquired a Stations vault for easy measure. I usually attend 5 days a week, meaning 200.000 m3 pr session, and I'd like to sleep. So supporting until 3 in the morning isn't an option. But current installations seems to provide well 75k pr. hour meaning 3 hours of focus will do if we keep it up, less once I get a barge (more if I need to do it on my own).

For the number freaks:
First week of June gave 500k highsec ore, refined and sold = 85 Millions (Rough numbers).
Last week here gave 1M of Sec 0.6 ore, and we didn't dent the system much, refined and sold = 180M
Current balance = 315M, Current estimated plex price < 500M.
2 weeks left of june to provide 185M meaning 95M isk pr. week should carry.
I'll try and maintain the 1.000.000 m3 quote of ore, with any surplus being carried over to next week.






















Hmmm, this is hard to read, I must find better display options.
But it's what I'm told to be the default Exhumer / Barge setup, and it makes some sense to me. Yet I don't like the survey scanner and would love to put something else there, but I fail to find anything that will fit. Same goes with the riggings, I don't have the skills for it, but is it worth rigging a vessel like that?

With Hulkagedon continuing forever, hulks aren't really something I'd consider flying before being a Billionaire, and that's not going to happen soon.

What scares me the most is how quickly I fall into the miners role, I keep telling my self it's just while I build the skills for a navy raven able to spew missiles spam. As Curzon Daxx sings it. Yet fact remains that mining at this point seems more of a reliable source of steady income with little to no risk, that even during hulkagedon. And it's not like I even venture low sec or the like. Trouble is that it's just and only isk. Nothing but isk, you don't acquire standing. The coms tend to be quit. Looking at the CAS corp channel that might even be a blessing.

That must begin as my next project, socialization. Wonder if joining a corp would be a good thing. Yet from experience, I need to cover the cost of my account first. With the mantra : Don't expect to bring back what you undock. Undocking from CAS could be expensive.
Come to think of it, mission whoring??? what respectable corp would seek people for that. CAS is safe..
Anyway that must become next project. First off I'll need the Covetor undocked.

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Hanging out in corp channel.



With my toon "Maxx Loproc" I break my usual RPG style of gaming and will build the social infrastructure on something real. But time has changed since I started online socialization back in the 90's. Yet I note the same things all over.
I've seen corps/guilds whittle and die with great people as the social structure was way to fixed or too demanding for the individual. Yet dropping the intense need to socialize moves the people further apart.

Last week I went corp shopping, doing as all noobs would do: Follow the advise of the veterans so go join the recruit channel...
It took me 30 minutes tops to land a corp that where interested. I joined, was there for 2 days before getting kicked. No reason why, but i assume it had to do with he fact they ran Wednesday mining ops in the middle of my workday. Yea timezones can be hard on you. And I didn't attend + I had some RL issues to deal with so I had relative little in-game time, thing I made 4 hours in that corp channel...

Well realizing my failure to fit in, I simply looked in the adds. Top add was a Swedish corp, (I took my timezone + missioning as interests). Relatively few guys, meaning some 35 ish members. Well that's nothing new to me. And I usually see a few in the corp channel at the start of my evening. Great bunch really, but I thus far haven't really connected. And it made me speculate last night if I should go seek different corps yet.

The answer is no. I'm slow to get on-board, and I haven't provided for the corp yet, proven my worth if I am worth anything. Remember I need to collect 500M pr. month to keep the Plex going. Lucky I have some old connections to help out. As my income is still miserable. 1M pr day is a high average, but time will change...

I can't help but to compare it to my entry to Google+.
At the moment it's so silent and/or irrelevant, but the concept makes me believe I'll receive more content, and later on the right content, and that it'll bring me more interaction in forms that are more social then the current one-way stream.
But as with google and knowing my settlement issues, I keep fearing I land the wrong place.

Do you know that feeling of being utterly misplaced, that's what most of my socialization attempts are like.
Anyway still much work ahead, and little changes. But still I think, and thus ramble.
Thanks for reading.