[OOC] EVE blog banter: Adaptation

Welcome to the fourth installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here.

This month's EVE Blog Banter comes to us from Manasi of A Mule in EvE. Manasi asks "How do we, EVE bloggers, adapt to changes as they are thrust upon us (speed changes, no more ghost training, all the Dev blogs, etc), or as our lives make playing the game different (more time, less time)?"

Joining in for the first time, here are my two cents.

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“The wise adapt themselves to circumstances, as water moulds itself to the pitcher” - Chinese proverb.

Having shared this beautiful quote which perfectly reflects my views and life philosophy, let me elaborate some more: Change is unavoidable and never ending - and thankfully so, or things would quickly get boring! I believe it is human nature however to feel a little uneasy around change. We like to be able to predict everything and plan accordingly. And some changes get our feathers ruffled a bit more than others. Fighting against it though is in most cases a fool's errand. And thus I believe in the power of adaptation.

I see two kinds of change in this month's topic. Change within the game and change within the player. I will continue on with addressing both from my personal experiences in EVE, as well add a third kind of change, that which I perceive within some of the various communities within EVE I take part in (my corporation and the role-playing community being those I will take as examples).

Change within the game is an easy one. You have the introduction of something new or the balancing of something existing. In some cases new things are introduced as well to balance out old things and you get a combination of the two. Boy have I seen players go emo-rage-quit over this! Balance is a truly tricky business since it is so open to perspective. And you will never manage to please everyone (one of those awful truths in life which I will touch upon again when we reach the third kind of change). What puts me off is that some shout murder and fire before a Dev blog is even released or the changes are on SiSi. Not to mention those that believe what is on SiSi is already live. Personally I've not had anything to complain about. Yeah, my crow isn't the overpowered-mobile it used to be, and my Raven will have me train a little more to make it as uber as it used to be, but in return I got my beloved Assault Frigates whom I now would even consider a tad overpowered! My Arbitrator had to have its dronebay reviewed as medium drones got slightly nerfed, but my beloved Warrior II's are the fear of many a small ship out there now. And so the list goes on. And ghost training? I always thought it was silly. I much rather have that skill queue and am already looking forward to find out how it will be implemented.

Change within the player then. Having graduated two summers ago I've certainly noticed my game time increase and shrink again upon finding my first job. Coming from WoW where I once was a hardcore raider I began to play EVE around the time of my graduation as I suddenly had so much free time on my hands. It seemed the perfect MMO to have on the side as the skills trained by themselves and due to the sandbox concept you could decided when and what to do as you pleased. No linear leveling path to plow through. Now a year and a half later I find myself rarely logging into WoW anymore (likely ending my sub soon having taken an interest in LotrO instead), having quit raiding entirely in favor of becoming CEO of my corporation. I also have a full-time job and am moving with my partner into an house of our own. And while I hope EVE may last many years more I know that someday I will log out for the last time and bid New Eden farewell. Instead of fearing this day however I try to make the best of each EVE session. So that if the worst would happen and perhaps I couldn't play anymore tomorrow at least there will be no regrets.

Thirdly then, change within communities within the game. I will start off with my corporation. Ghost Festival is a corporation that despite the many odds it had to face has survived the struggle fairly intact (faithful readers will be familiar with at least a few of these). There seems to be some kind of glue that keeps us all together: Friendship and a common goal. For indeed even more than other MMO's EVE is about the people and not the pixels. Sure you can have your badass Titan but you'll soon be parted with it if you're all on your own. It's by our own choice that Ghost Festival is a role-playing pirate corporation aligning itself with the Angel Cartel, being quite alone in the support of this faction. It is by our own choice also that it is a small and 'elite' corporation, not in the sense of having a ton of SP and ISK, but in the dedication to the art of small gang warfare. We have found our niche and we're determined to make it work. And thankfully we do not stand alone in this! At the end of the day I know we can count on the support as well as admiration of many, friend and foe alike.

So now you are probably thinking "Good for you Myr, but where is the !@#$% change?" Well, only yesterday I received some praise from a prospective member on our Code of Conduct. He called it an impressive piece which covered everything. And as I told him, this Code of Conduct didn't just magically appear out of thin air. Continuing on the work of Kyoko Sakoda and Aria Jenneth, assisted by current and past directors, adapting through trial and error, this Code of Conduct as well as many other regulations within PRETA is but the end result. There's been some things that we got right from the first time and needed but a little minor tweaking as we could simply take them over. Other things such as our ranking system have been build up, broken down and rebuilt until we were pleased with them. It's not easy finding that balance between fun and responsibilities. For me this game is a hobby just as much as any other and be it sports or music or arts, you always needed a bit of both. But it should never be a second job. And also while some things may work perfectly for a 500+ player corp, if you apply the same template on a 20 player corp you're sucking the life out faster than a kid devours a cupcake (to borrow one of Yishal's expressions).

Lastly then, change within the role-playing community. A while ago the novel by Tony Gonzales caused quite the stir. Some loathe it and feel he didn't bother to even read the rest of the back-story and intentionally destroyed their vision of it for the sake of writing a good novel. Other love it and preach it as if it were the One and Only Truth. Personally I sit a bit in the middle. It's not bad for a first novel and I love certain plotlines but on the other hand I enjoyed his other novella's such as Theodicy and Ruthless a lot more and grieve the loss of my favorite prime fiction character Otro Gariushi. I feel he was well informed on the subjects he did write about in the past but not so much on the rest. Or perhaps it only seems so as over time role-players have adapted to what was written? Back then with Faction Wars, and now again with the Sleepers and wormholes, things stir for good and for worse. Some of us are on the edges of our seats waiting for new information. Others sit back bitterly rambling about "the good old days". I always had a hard time understanding the latter group. Just as the emo-rage-quitters they seemingly believe they should get to dictate what should happen and preferably it should remain unchanged. While I can understand it's not so nice when your favorite character or faction altered it is only natural that it happens. I will go as far as saying that change is a key ingredient to keep fiction as well as characters interesting and believable. Because this makes them be alive.

And so, about an hour of writing later, I've written down my first blog banter and shared with you my opinion and experience with change within various situations. I hope you as reader found it helpful or at the very least enjoyable. See you in game or on the next installment!