Fly it Like you Stole It

I get into the dumbest arguments in game. I know better and I often try not to step into arguments that are nothing but a circular action of ego and opinion. However, I often fall from my high horse and often that is when I am in Eve Uni chat. It is not that I expect to convince anyone of my opinion it is that in all of the noise and chest beating that the new players are reading I figure I might as well throw out my own noise and chest beating.

I talk about things I am not supposed to talk about. I do the same on my blog. I say the things I am not supposed to say because Eve is just a game. Somehow, the social pressures others are exerting on each other are ignored. Play Eve how you want as long as you play it my way is what those displays really say.

Ship loss is something that is important to discuss with new players. They have to be removed from the idea that they should never lose their ships. In PvE or PvP ships are going to be lost. That is a tremendous moment where many players are lost to Eve early in their careers. If a kernel of thought can be inserted early on, that loss happens and it is an okay thing to happen, they may catch onto that when they are most stressed and use it as a life preserver instead of rage quitting.

You are not supposed to mind losing your ship in Eve. People poke each other for tears. "Is he angry?" they ask themselves in a more vernacular type of slang. "I believe that he is angry." Oh. Interesting. So, if losing your ship does not matter why would anyone believe that anyone would ever be 'angry' or 'mad' over losing their ship? Perhaps because losing ones ship does bother some more than others?

There is some disconnect that puzzles me where if anything has an aspect of importance that importance must be taken and slammed into the ground until it is unrecognizable. Losing a ship cannot matter. It must not matter. Because it does matter that emotion must be eradicated. Some announce that they enjoy the loss. It feels good and excites them. Or there are justified reasons for why losing a ship is the best thing that can happen to them every day.

One of the latest reasons I read, that started this entire thing, was that "losing my ship means I had a fight." Sure. So does not losing your ship. So does nether party losing their ships.  I can take a ship out and return in that same ship and have had a game session full of spaceship fights.

There is such a thing as going out and taking every fight and pushing yourself and your ship with full non stop aggression it is a path that normally ends in an explosion. It is not a path made to reach the explosion to scream at the organismic joy of ones ship exploding around them as if that is the ultimate moment that they have played and fought all day to achieve ship loss. Although, as I roll my eyes at what is said I more think it is that losing the ship is the end of the line. It is all used up and for many using everything as much and as hard as they can is how and where they derive the enjoyment of it.

Some say to fly a ship like you stole it. If I were to do that all of my ships would be docked up or for sale. Everything I have stolen has been sold or sits in a hangar somewhere for me to smile at. I use exactly one thing I stole, a Viator, and I've had it for almost a year now. If I lose it, like every other ship, it is lost and I am fine with that. It does not cause me to 'want' to lose it. I hope when I lose it I don't flip my hair back over my shoulder and announce, "It was stolen anyway!"

Some may confuse not caring when one finally dies with not caring at all. I think the two are very separate if they lay close together. I lost two ships the other night. My irritation had nothing to do with losing the ships and everything to do with how poorly I was flying the ships.  The ship loss is going to happen. That does not mean I writhe in glory when it does. It does not define that I had a fight. It does not mean anything other then the fact that it is now gone.

I'm also the wasteful type that gets attached to their ships. I have retired a few to a particular station because they have memories and I am a hoarder. They've not died, time after time, and their battle scared glory sits with a well deserved rest. It makes me happy and they are my ships. I don't need to lose them for them to feel used. Some do. But, not everyone.