Where is the IWIN button?

This is the last of a series of ideas that I created drafts for and them spamed myself with over the last few days. I had a lot of random and unconnected things I was pondering. Normally, I forget some, often because I run off to try to do the good pewpew.

I had logged in after work, as I am ought to do when I found myself rolling my eyes and doing my best to answer someone plesantly who was detailking his future goals to fly a titan and how badass he would be.

Maybe because I've always enjoyed playing the more fragile classes in games, I don't understand this desire for an IWIN button. I'm the person that plays the summoner/caster/archer/healer. If someone breaths on me I die. One reason I loved City of Heroes is that I was the 'healer' class and I had exactly 1 offensive skill. The rest of my training was all geared towards healing and buffing my teammates. I couldn't kill anything alone but everyone wanted me in a group.

I love Eve's skill classes. My comments about my test server the other time simply build upon that. Everyone was dropping into the combat zones in big, badass stuff that they would not risk in normal game play. I was in my Jag. People were horrified of my Jag and running away from it (on the test server where nothing matters) until they made a concentrated effort to remove me from the field.

In a frig, surrounded by big badass ships, the frig still mattered. That type of game play kicks ass and chews bubblegum as it takes names.

But I know that many games are geared around having 'X' and 'X' makes your a badass. So, trying to explain to people why capital ships are and are not awesome is very, very hard. It is about as hard as explaining to people why they should spend 4/8/12 days on secondary skills.

I guess Eve can sound dull that way. But it has a cool feature called 'game play' and 'learning how to play the game' that really keeps you occupied, IMO.

Buying ISK is also not an IWIN button. It just puts more shiny things on the field that someone can't fly for someone else to blow up. I had someone get into a nasty argument with me over the fact that I don't judge ISK gain in game by how much I make per hour IRL just because I can buy ISK with IRL money. I like the game play of making ISK. Also, I feel a newer player will learn more by earning the ISK then buying it even if they can afford to buy the ISK. Playing the game is part of success.

Buying a skilled character is not an IWIN button. You might be able to fit something amazing, but without game play knowledge, it doesn't matter how great the toon is.

It's a balance. Of course, there is a lot of frothing CPP hatred about things. Yet, for all the hate and venom and eye rolling spewed, people keep playing. I'd say that is because the game is still good. They even commented about the impassioned responses from people. It's because they care.

One of the endless beauties of Eve is that you actually have to play the game as well as have stuff to be successful. You can have an amazing ship and a high skill point toon with billions of isk in high grade implants and still pop to a low skill point newer pilot that has learned game mechanics you have ignored for your shiny, glittering IWIN button ship.

*pop*