And a Bottle of Quafe

Jester proposed that there might be pirates with the upcoming expansion.  With the addition of pirate frigates there is some hope.  Maybe I will learn to post faster when I think about things or stop scheduling a week's worth of posts at a time.  Anyway...

Pirates are a very good idea for a minor-major expansion.  Many of the tools are already in the game.  This allows for more time building stuff for players to do and play with then adding in new code to even make that stuff happen in the first place. The option list is huge.  Pirate itself is just a tremendously deep field.  Piracy is really not a thing beyond a certain type of players self identifying with it.  Giving players abilities to be, by games defines, pirates, would excite legions of rabid fans.

For me, the biggest areas of interest lay in how they will make it accessible.

I know that Eve was randomly generated.  It makes for some interesting layouts.  Then things were assigned and then it was blessed and the game was entered.  Its been fiddled with and changed over the years. However, what has always puzzled me is that some NPC space seems to be surrounded by Sov Null.  I'm sure there was a time when Sov was different.  I know there was because I read history.  I have never experienced much more then hugs blocks and some smaller ones. 

Accessibility would be the first thing and I think a very good thing.  One would think that there would be multiple ways to get in and out of pirate space.  Yet, many of the routes are rather restricted and fiddling with the star map a few are encased by Sov.  Sure, with enough jump freighters, capitals and cyno alts you can make it work.  Yet, that hop scotch effect has always irritated me.  It turns it into a private wonderland more then anything else.  

So, I would wish for more gates.  Gates from NPC null to NPC null that do avoid the Sov Empires.  

I would also be interested in them bringing Pirates in.  At least into low sec.  If not stations then agents or call them contacts or something new and interesting to separate them from the normal.  Maybe we can even have beacons and rogue agents/ships settled in places that you go to for your transactions.  No safety of the station for these missions/trades/events.  Let me sell them boosters or something exotic.

The Sec for Tags thing keeps being dangled.  I feel like I've written about it a dozen times.  I know I whine about it enough.  I have been mystified over peoples obsession with their security status. It is like it is some magical halo wrapped around their heads illuminating the darkness.  I'm not talking about NPC standings. I understand the obsession there and I'm glad that I do not share it.  No, I mean actual security status.

I understand not dropping into the negatives.  Some people would find it rather inconvenient to be locked out of high sec.  I'm baffled by the pure sanctity some people find having a positive sec status to be.  I understand the 'more room for buffer' and going outlaw.  Not everyone wants that.  I didn't want it for the longest time.  I fell into it and let it stay.  I'm more talking about the ones that scream if their sec drops and cling to a 5.0 as if it unicorns are going to burst from it and go dancing across the undock.

Yet, easier sec gain would benefit them.  The current loss of sec is a hindrance.  The gain is pathetic in high, miserable in low, and soul exhausting in null.  It's bad so for me. I am used to it. I know how to tackle it. For someone who is not, the complexities of, "Oh just gain per system per fifteen minutes per largest NPC killed but only one" is a "wut?" type of moment.

Maybe sec status was once supposed to mean something different then it does today.  There are many things like that in Eve, things given love and attention and then allowed to lapse.  it is inevitable in a large game such as this with so many needs.  Plus, employees come and go, plans are started and then they vanish.  For now, it is a complex and cumbersome process that inhibits people because they cling to their standings of 'good' with no clear way to progress smoothly between Good to Evil to Good again.

Perhaps, people will get the arm tattoos they so long for.  The grey camo shirt came out.  I think I need a new shirt now that I think of it...