Skip to main content

My First Tags

I was ratting and I was enjoying myself. And as I went, "yay!" over my newly acquired tag and rushed back to station to drop the precious thing off, I realized, with amusement, that I was having fun ratting.  It was an unexpected revelation. Why was I enjoying myself so much doing something that I had loathed a week before.

There is patch magic of course. Everything is new and interesting and somewhat different.  Yet, that wasn't it. It was a mix of things but the main, motivating factor was productivity. The entire process was productive compared to ratting before Odyssey in low security space.

The reason was quite simple. Suddenly, ratting had become rewarding.

The first was searching for the tag rats. Unlike faction spawns, tags rats spawn enough that you tend to be rewarded with finding one before you become bitter about not finding one. While you comb belts looking for them, you will find them. That gives a reward for the action and makes it more engaging.

The tags always drop. While the luck of the loot draw is something that keeps explorers on their toes it becomes tiring. Finding faction spawns is always exciting but not getting anything is always disappointing. Because, once I achieve my task of finding the sec rat I will receive the tag once I kill it, my reward causes me to get all gleeful once I spot the target that I am looking for.

The tag has more than monetary value. I can improve my own security status with the tags that I find. I can also sell them for ISK or give them to others. Even if the market crashes the tag has worth to me as a player. The duel aspect of its value is very interesting. It is something that we do not see as often in Eve as we do in other games. When I started Eve, I assumed I'd get basic, useful gear from the NPC drops. How wrong I was. However, that has always been one of the rewards of grinding. That useful item at the end.

It is very productive. Over the course of finding five tags I upped my security status over a -9 for the first time in quite a while. The changes in sec gain have benefited me. Before, I'd rat for sec in low sec and perhaps, maybe, bring my security status up by .25 or maybe .5 if I was having a good day and finding a lot of battleship rats. The productivity was apparent. My sec is going up actively instead of endless jumping and searching and jumping for gains I don't even notice.

Basically, tags 4 sec = bacon.

I need to find a better ratting ship other than my Cynabal. Something cheaper. There are a lot more people out in the belts. A lot more fights going down as people hunt each other and hunt the tags. Although some are doing the data and relic sites by killing the exploration frigates and looting the sites contents that way. A bit messy and wasteful but much more fun and engaging.

The mass exodus of pirates from low sec into high sec hasn't really happened around here. Most of the people I know are in low sec to be in low sec. Some have raised their sec. Many more are selling the tags which are being hoovered up by a rather sec hungry market.

And so, I spent my evening ratting. And I enjoyed it. As I write, on coms, they are bickering over the belts with each other in a mild, good natured way.

Comments

  1. So.... CCP has discovered the low sec pirates "bacon", everyone has a button, finding it is sometimes the task.

    Sly

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We have had long talks in low sec longing for tags for sec ever since the first whispers of it. I've written a ton about how shitty the old sec ratting was.

      Right now people are paying nearly a bil for sec adjustments (mostly on utility alts) and not complaining.

      It has been very good for us, yes.


      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe one day!

 [15:32:10] Trig Vaulter > Sugar Kyle Nice bio - so carebear sweet - oh you have a 50m ISK bounty - so someday more grizzly  [15:32:38 ] Sugar Kyle > /emote raises an eyebrow to Trig  [15:32:40 ] Sugar Kyle > okay :)  [15:32:52 ] Sugar Kyle > maybe one day I will try PvP out When I logged in one of the first things I did was answer a question in Eve Uni Public Help. It was a random question that I knew the answer of. I have 'Sugar' as a keyword so it highlights green and catches my attention. This made me chuckle. Maybe I'll have to go and see what it is like to shoot a ship one day? I could not help but smile. Basi suggested that I put my Titan killmail in my bio and assert my badassery. I figure, naw. It was a roll of the dice that landed me that kill mail. It doesn't define me as a person. Bios are interesting. The idea of a biography is a way to personalize your account. You can learn a lot about a person by what they choose to put in their bio

Memoirs - Part Seven: The Taste of Scandal

Virtual Realities: Memoirs of an internet spaceship politician by Sugar Kyle CSM9, CSMX Viewers get some drama Is there any election that is scandal free? Virtual space politics are not excluded. Sometimes the scandals come from the people ruining. Sometimes they come from outside of that. “I can’t wait to enjoy the drama!” someone had said to me about the election. Those words would haunt me later as I fought not to be caught up and defined by the decisions another person had made. While I played the game and tried to convince people of my worthiness a dark drama was sweeping across the game. The CSM does not dictate game policy. CCP does that. It does not stop many from seeing the members as vocal representatives. It was a public post made by one member of the CSM that started a fire that would take years to go out. Eve Online is an interactive video game with few social rules. It is one of the games charmes. If you can trick another player into making a po

And back again

My very slow wormhole adventure continues almost as slowly as I am terminating my island in Animal Crossing.  My class 3 wormhole was not where I wanted to be. I was looking for a class 1 or 2 wormhole. I dropped my probes and with much less confusion scanned another wormhole. I remembered to dscan and collect my probes as I warped to the wormhole. I even remembered to drop a bookmark, wormholes being such good bookmark locations later. My wormhole told me it was a route into low sec. I tilted my head. How circular do our adventures go. Today might be the day to die and that too is okay. That mantra dances in the back of my head these days. Even if someone mocks me, what does that matter? Fattening someone's killboard is their issue not mine. So I jumped through and found myself in Efa in Khanid, tucked on the edge of high sec and null sec. What an interesting little system.  Several connections to high sec. A connection to null sec. This must be quite the traffic system.    I am f