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Heart of Gold

I was reading a very angry rage quitting post on the forums. I'm always fascinated by theses posts. They seem motivated by the extreme need to vent frustration with the liquid courage of quitting allowing the person to transcend from sadness into a being of pure ranting power.

I do like to read these to figure out why people are quitting. They may announce the reason, but it is often more complex. If they continue to post, which they almost always do, eventually, the kernels of truth start to fall out. While the rage post itself may not be particularly constructive, figuring out why people are upset allows various aspects of the game to be looked at. It does not mean that things have to be changed just because one person has loudly thrown in the towel. I am just a believer of finding out the core of a situation.

The owner of this particular thread decided to start posting in caps to be a terrible troll to everyone on his way out. That is the emotion and rage talking. He wants to be heard otherwise he would not post. He is upset, otherwise he would have no reason to vent. He is still reading the thread, otherwise he would not answer. A side effect of my IRL job is that I deal with very angry, often irrational people all the time. One technique I have learned to work with this is just to let them vent and listen to what they are saying no matter how obnoxious and annoying they are about it because they will tell me what I need to know if I have the patience to listen to it.

So is the same for this poster. I have rewritten what he said due to his use of capital letters.
"I have always been a nice guy that you can trust and that you can count on, ask anyone that knows me and even ask Chribba, who has loaned me billions in the past and always got paid back. Chribba is literally the only guy that was ever nice to me and helped me when I needed it in this game, even though I have always been nice to everyone in game."
This is a very poignant and raw statement by the original poster that states his reason for being upset. He is a nice guy. He is always a nice guy. And with the concept of him being a nice guy bad things should not happen to him. He is not mean to others. He helps others, yet he is the one that winds up in the bad position. That does not sit well with him.

There is also the fact that he has not been helped, as he feels that he should have been helped or as he feels he needed help, by others in the game. His entitlement for being helped by others is directly connected by his statement of being a nice guy that helps people. Because he is nice and with the concept of nice the theme of good is brought in, he should not suffer bad things or to push it further, deal with evil.

The evil, bad thing he had to deal with was being ganked in an unfit T1 hauler. He posts the battleclinic link but the battleclinic link does not show what was in the plastic wrap. Thankfully, Eve-Kill does show what was in the plastic wrap. The ship scanner that scanned him will also know and make the decision to go for the gank or not.

His reasons:
"Considering it was only for 5 simple high sec jumps, and I was in a tanked, manually flown, fast align ship, I thought the risk/reward was good, if it wasn't for an overpowered ship that can instakill and instalock (some curse) when flown by 2 month old characters."
While I may live in low sec and identify with piracy, I am a space trucker myself and also a potential target to the high sec gankers out there. I attempt to mitigate this by watching what I carry. Sometimes I split things up between courier contracts to other people as well as moving things myself. I have access to jump freighters if I need to use them. I do shudder every time I jump into Udema but that does not mean that I assume every other system is going to be safe for me.

Vov is a ganker and he lost a ganked ships cargo the other day to to other people bumping his hauler and scooping the loot before he could get to it. These are the things that happen.

The second part of his anger is that he had an ISK tank that was not respected. ISK tanks are common in Eve. The basic concept is, "Because, my stuff is expensive only something as expensive should effect it because that would be balanced." This is most commonly seen in complaints about catalysts ganking mining barges and mission T3s and bling ships being killed for their potential drop.

ISK is not a balancer. It is one part of the whole but it is not the great balance that everything should fan out from.  Carrying 2 billion ISK worth of items should not somehow make you immune to only two billion ISK worth of ships lost to the gank. It is about choice. The Tornado that shot him could have failed that shot. I'm sure that pilot was working off of pure adrenaline trying to land the kill before he lost the target.

 And finally, I decided to skim Mr. Freezehunter's corporation history due to his plaintive wail that no one has ever helped him. I noticed that he has spent the last five months in a NPC corp after leaving Dreddit where he spent five days. This is his only character he says but he spends a lot of time in NPC corporations. It does make me ask: Where as his social relations after seven years in the game?

I have played for but a year and a half and I could never, ever, make the statement that no one has ever helped me. Even when it has annoyed and angered me, help has come from dozens of directions. Eve actually over flows with help. It may not be personal but the number of wikis, blogs, guides, videos and chat rooms that are there to do nothing but assist a player can leave a new player occupied for weeks.

He was ganked. He is more mad that he was ganked in a way he feels was not 'fair' then he seems to be over what he lost. Which was a lot. But his arguments really do not point out, "I am now poor" and more gnash their teeth against the fact that it should not have happened to him because he is a good guy. That it should not have happened to him when he attempted to prepare against it.

But for that to have happened, Eve would have to give up one of its strongest features:

You are not guarantied success, only the opportunity to try for it.

Comments

  1. The real surprise is that it took him this long to quit. Nothing was his fault. It wasn't his fault that he put 2bil cargo into a T1 hauler that is easily ganked for a profit (although, the loot fairy should be hunted down and shot -- none of the cargo dropped). Not his fault that it takes several seconds for an industrial align. Not his fault that he blew up the signature to epic proportions with the Inertia stabs. He also claims to have had all the hardeners on, but the killboard shows none of them on.

    Its not his fault, its CCP's for designing poor game mechanics. Its the ganker's fault for not being nice to him. He takes no responsibility. I can't imagine how he made it 7yrs that way.

    As for people being nice to him, I have an idea as to why that might be. But this is a nice blog and I don't want to say bad things about someone here. I will say I've only been playing for 7 months, but the number of people that have been nice to me in New Eden are too numerous to count. Given me isk, ships, helped on missions, let me salvage their missions, and most of all advice. Lots of advice on how to survive and prosper. Even the guy who ganked my venture on week 3. He was a fountain of information and help and is still my friend today.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I haven't spent a huge amount of time playing EVE, but in that time, I've had my ship blown up by other players twice. And on both occasions, it led to a friendly conversation, excellent advice, good tip, and on one of those occasions, the guy gave me money to buy a new ship because he felt bad for me!

      Mind you, on neither occasion did I have billions of ISK of cargo loss!

      Delete
  2. i read some of the article. I have to admit ive rage quit b4. ganking was the reason too. in my case it was a catalyst ganking a 300 mil hulk. eventually i realized everything you do has consequences in this game. if i fail to tank properly and keep my ship moving instead of sitting still well i am too blame.
    on another note...
    what is the max damage a nado can put out? 21K? that seems high to me...if it possible i want to know how cuz i have a ganking alt just sitting collecting dust and i would love to bag a t1 indie..X:D

    ReplyDelete
  3. Play with EFT and no, it's not 21k. The rage quitter was most likely AFK autopiloting (so his hardeners were off), lying to make himself the victim, and so on.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Epic thread, simply glorious, too bad it got locked.....

    ReplyDelete
  5. The rage poster seemed to be very out of touch with the Eve Community. I'm semi-new to the game and have been carebearing in hi-sec (check my lingo)because I like get my feet wet slowly. By reading about ganks and gate canps etc. it actually makes hi-sec life more interesting for me (I'm really looking forward to low-sec and w-space life but I want to be self-sustaining ISK-wise). I remember mining very early on and someone can-flipping me. The first time it happened I thought "I know what's going on here. I'm not falling for that." The second time I thought "Sweet! I'll just get my cruiser and blast 'em" - and therefore lost my Cruiser. Both times were fun.
    It's the rISK that makes it all worthwhile!

    ReplyDelete

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