Morality ramblings

Most recently mister Darius III made a post in followup of Jester's post about sec status gains only going to the person with the final blow.  Of course, this post was made in CnP so any attempt at quality discussion was out the door by the first page.  The thread started off with the usual cast of people agreeing, people saying its not big a deal, and carebear trolling.

While i'm not sure how many of the "PIRAT TEARS DELISHUSH!" posts were legit, I have to say that i've been noticing an increasing trend of carebear entitlement and self-delusion.  First off, I want to start by saying the worst part about these posts is that hardline carebears and "good guys" can't really seem to discern what tears really are.  Maybe its the lack of self-awareness coming from the fact that they have never harvested them themselves, rather they are the source, who knows.  Still, I can't help but think how bad these people are for the game.  They approach consequence in EVE from a RP perspective in that for every crime an appropriate consequence needs to be levied.

To them, it would be perfectly acceptable for someone to go from 0.0 to -5.0 for killing some noob's CNR they brought into lowsec to mission.  Why?  Because to them, if you're going to kill someone's mission ship that took them a month to save up for then you should be forced to spend an entire month seccing back up as punishment.  Obviously, this would be game breaking from many perspectives, but the main point I want to make by bringing up this attitude is that the extreme carebear or carebear roleplayer plays a completely different game than we do.  EVE as an MMO stands apart from others because the burden of the journey falls upon the player.  While to the new player this may seem overwhelming, to older players, this is crux of what makes EVE much more rewarding than any other game I've played.  There is no dungeon finder that automatically teleports you to a plex, nor are there any PVP "zones".  If you want to make ISK, depending on where you go or what you want to do, that is entirely up to you, in decision and responsibility to execute.  The same thing goes for PVP in that depending on what you are feeling like that day, you can find it in any part of New Eden.  Conversely, this also means that you need to be prepared for it, but this is what makes the game unique.

The reason these extreme carebears aren't healthy for the game at least not in the attitude they bring is because they don't understand this.  They would rather rely on game mechanics to protect themselves, than learning to protect themselves through their own devices.  While I understand that not everyone wants to do this, some people just want to log in, carebear a bit, and then logoff, this does not mean that the core foundation of what EVE is should be changed to accommodate.  EVE is NOT that kind of short term gratification game, even the way you train skills is evidence of that.  There is no power leveling.  These kind of players are like someone who plays Gran Turismo 5, but then criticizes the gameplay because the races are too long for casual play and complain about how one mistake can cause you to go from first place to last place.  These kind of players miss the point that the Gran Turismo series is a racing simulator and they can't handle the realities of what this entails and can't understand why they keep losing since they were awesome at Mario Kart.

EVE is a game that punishes stupid.  In fact, it punishes stupid severely at times.  Combined with in-game losses being much more significant, this generates a lot more "rage" and "tears" than most other games.  Most games nowadays barely punish losses.  In Counter-Strike, when you get killed, either by another player's skill or your own stupidity, you have to wait the rest of the round to participate again, however, most games nowadays, this is only a matter of seconds.  In EVE, losing your faction fit CNR in a lowsec mission to pirates could potentially mean you just lost 100 dollars of real life money in the matter of seconds.  If you earned the ISK in game, this could potentially mean you just lost out several weeks worth of work.  Obviously to the victim, this is upsetting and easy for them to classify the aggressors as morally bad people in real life, since they killed you for no reason other than you were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they felt like it.  The argument always goes that people's true selves show by the decisions they make in EVE, but that argument only makes sense to the people who play EVE as an extension of their real life.  In fact, I would argue that the person who drops 100 dollars in PLEX on a GAME without understanding the reality that they can lose it instantly, is just irresponsible.  

Just because you were just minding your own business doesn't mean that you get a free pass to do whatever you want.  Just because you don't get your way all the time doesn't mean the other person is bad.  Just because you feel self-entitled to be left alone doesn't mean that you are right to expect it or be upset when you don't get your wish, especially in a multiplayer game.

As easy as it is to forget that there's a real person on the other side of the computer monitor, its just as easy to forget that what you see in game are nothing more than just pixels.  

Just because you make like to make other people's ships explode, doesn't mean you're a bad person, nor does picking Bowser in Mario Kart mean you like turtles.

tl;dr Roleplayers are bad for the game in regards to their views on how game mechanics should be.  Extreme carebears are the worst because the only thing they roleplay is being a victim.