Building Blocks and No Instructions

"You can literally make more ISK doing anything other than mining."

-Said almost everyone everywhere

When someone inquires about mining the responders will often throw their hands in the air and tell the person that mining is a waste of their time. They will unroll vast spreadsheets of staticail equations in which they explain the economically unsound choice of mining as a career path. It is very clear that mining is not an optimal income. It is a poor choice and one smugly pointed out to the new. Yet, miners continue to rush the Asteroid belts each day and clean them out despite the obvious ISK making options out there.

I am often puzzled by those carefully explaining to the miners why they should not mine. It is sad to watch the clumps of hair that wind up in their fists as they miners continue to mine. Nothing they say stops them. The miners continue to mine. They refuse to buy the minerals from someone else. They keep insisting that they are happy mining.

It is a communication issue. Not one of words but one of taste. I often see terms such as farming ones own minerals and 'the minerals I mine are free'. I think that the underlying problem with a lot of this is that the two sides are comparing two different facets of mining.

The economic game of Eve is very important. The player may casually engage in it or they may make it the basic structure of their game. No matter what they do they engage upon it. A side effect is that many players become focused on the economic ripples. Because of loss everything has a price. Because of loss replacement and the replacements after that become a focus. The economic sense makes sense. We have to be able to replace what we lose. We have to be able to afford what we need. The concept of money and maximizing profit becomes an important part of success.

I'll not refute any of that. I do not feel that I need to. I do not believe that most miners who mine consistently are unaware of the economics of the  situation. They, after all, sell or reprocess their ore. They grind standings for refining bonuses. They seek out buyers or place sell orders. They are far from ignorant of the economics of Eve or of the product that they place on the market. They fit for yield and train up Orca boosters to increase their haul. They work very hard to mine as well as they possibly can.

And when the economists come with their numbers they receive answers like, "It costs me less to mine it myself," or some such vague answer which causes spreadsheets to burst into flames and rage to bubble up. "Are you stupid?" they rant. "You can do anything else and make more ISK!" The miner offers some other defense that really doesn't work against the economics of the situation and a stalemate is accomplished when they tack fun into the equation to derail the argument.

"How can you have fun mining?" It is go to the asteroid, target it, press button, receive ore until the hold is full. Drop it off. Wash. Rinse. Repete. How is mining fun? It can't be. And more interactive mining suggestions are made to improve it and turn it into a 'fun' activity.

The core problem of trying to fix mining is that mining is not broken. It is not broken to the people who actually engage in the activity and prefer it over others. And there are two types that fall into this category. One type is the classic AFK miner who is doing something else and using other accounts to do something productive with their time. These are the more vocal voices. The second type is the person that enjoys mining and plays a very casual game of Eve online. I exclude botters from my discussion.

The key is resource gathering. I am a resource gatherer. Resource gathering is an incredible motivator for many people. I don't compare it to resource farming where you go and harvest twenty leaves of the brilliant blossom to reach an experience point. I mean that some people, many people, simply enjoy going out and pulling stuff out of the world. In Eve, it is ore and the minerals that come from it. It is also salvaging and looting missions.

As someone who is very much in these two categories it makes sense to me. I don't blitz missions because I enjoy looting missions. I mine because I like getting the ore and doing things with it. It may be selling it. It may be refining it into my personal needs. None of it makes technical economic sense. It does not need to. The satisfaction gained from the activity happens before the economics of the activity come into play.

Resource gathering and world building games are tightly linked. Often in God games such as Black and White there is an option after the objective has been achieved to continue to build and work on the world. Games like Sim City (I have not played the newest version) are World Building games that hinge on resources. In Sim City you build a city with a general goal to be successful. That's it. It is enthralled and satisfying even though most people fail and never have a city that is successful past a certain point.

The nature of Eve allows people to decide for themselves into what they like to do. And to not do. High Sec is full of people who want to fly spaceships around to mine asteroids to build more spaceships. High sec is also full of space truckers who move people's things from point A to point B for a paycheck. Eve is also full of these people but the highest concentrations are in high security space. These are people who play Eve for the world building and resource gathering parts of Eve. They may eventually try other things but that is what they like and enjoy as much as a PvP pilot enjoys explosions.

Let me not forget the metrics of success. For the miner is successful at his action. The salvager is successful at their action. They do not fail in what they do. They in in fact, quite productive. The question and point being made is that they can be more  productive. That will not always appeal to each party involved. To say, "You are shit and not making any ISK," only has them say, "But I have made ISK." The counter argument is, "but you could make more ISK by..." An argument is destroyed and created. The two people are having different discussions at the same time.

And you can tell them that Eve's world building is terrible. You can tell them that they won't make good ISK out of it. Sim City was released in 2003 and I still play it. Because I enjoy it. At some point the economics of the situation are out of the door for some people and instead they are focused on the simple fact that they like one thing over another. The pure clarity of numbers will not educate them. They are not ignorant. In this game of choice some people select the choices that will make them happy and give them personal pleasure. Maximizing their activities may not give them pleasure. Instead, this search for enjoyment may mean mining, not PvPing, not doing Faction Warfare, building their own ships, and in general playing Eve wrong while living in High Sec their entire career and loving the game.