I'm struggling with the "Just hang out and let's have fun" people in TEST, just like I had struggled with them all my MMO play. Today I try a different angle defeating them, removing opinionated elements.
EVE is a video game. Games are played for fun. If you are playing a game, you are having fun on average. Of course you can have upset moments, but the general experience must be fun or you simply stop playing. Every activity players do in the game is therefore fun for someone. If it's not, then no one plays that way and that aspect of the game dies unless devs fix it.
So "playing for fun" is a meaningless statement, since playing is fun. Of course we can take this statement as "I want to play in a way as I want in that moment". This is a valid statement and a valid form of playing. However the corp/alliance formed under the ethos of "everyone can do whatever he wants" has a problem: it's worse than the NPC corp. The NPC corp (or 1-man corp) is the ideal form of "do what you want": no one is capable of limiting your play. No one stops you from mining, ratting, missioning, gatecamping, roaming or whatever you have in your mind. A player corporation cannot be so completely free of interference. There are activities needed to be done and it forces players to do things even if they don't want to. Also, no player corp can be as big as the NPC corp. At the moment I'm writing this, the Science and Trade Institute has 4x more players online than TEST, the largest player alliance in the game. And STI is just one of the several identical NPC corps, so the amount of players you can randomly interact is much larger. The main problem with "for fun" corps is that they are naturally worse than the NPC corp.
The NPC corp isn't a corp. It's simply "the game". You can do everything in it that the game allows. "Having fun" is playing the game. The corp that allows and welcomes every activities is simply equal to the game itself. What is its recruitment slogan then? "Join us and play EVE"?
Of course the situation is different if you want to interact with people but in a repeating manner (having friends in-game). However to do so, you need to play similarly. You can't hang out with people if they are in different regions doing different things. Or actually you can, but then the game is just annoyance. Shut down the client and go to Jabber or Mumble and focus completely on each other! To interact with people in a game-relevant manner, you need to play in a connected way. If you want to play with an ice miner regularly, you need to be an ice miner or someone who uses ice. You can't have fun together with ice miners without somehow connecting to their defining activity (ice mining).
To have a regular fun with other people, you need to be in a player organization that plays in a structured way, either having a common goal or a common rule of conduct.
EVE is a video game. Games are played for fun. If you are playing a game, you are having fun on average. Of course you can have upset moments, but the general experience must be fun or you simply stop playing. Every activity players do in the game is therefore fun for someone. If it's not, then no one plays that way and that aspect of the game dies unless devs fix it.
So "playing for fun" is a meaningless statement, since playing is fun. Of course we can take this statement as "I want to play in a way as I want in that moment". This is a valid statement and a valid form of playing. However the corp/alliance formed under the ethos of "everyone can do whatever he wants" has a problem: it's worse than the NPC corp. The NPC corp (or 1-man corp) is the ideal form of "do what you want": no one is capable of limiting your play. No one stops you from mining, ratting, missioning, gatecamping, roaming or whatever you have in your mind. A player corporation cannot be so completely free of interference. There are activities needed to be done and it forces players to do things even if they don't want to. Also, no player corp can be as big as the NPC corp. At the moment I'm writing this, the Science and Trade Institute has 4x more players online than TEST, the largest player alliance in the game. And STI is just one of the several identical NPC corps, so the amount of players you can randomly interact is much larger. The main problem with "for fun" corps is that they are naturally worse than the NPC corp.
The NPC corp isn't a corp. It's simply "the game". You can do everything in it that the game allows. "Having fun" is playing the game. The corp that allows and welcomes every activities is simply equal to the game itself. What is its recruitment slogan then? "Join us and play EVE"?
Of course the situation is different if you want to interact with people but in a repeating manner (having friends in-game). However to do so, you need to play similarly. You can't hang out with people if they are in different regions doing different things. Or actually you can, but then the game is just annoyance. Shut down the client and go to Jabber or Mumble and focus completely on each other! To interact with people in a game-relevant manner, you need to play in a connected way. If you want to play with an ice miner regularly, you need to be an ice miner or someone who uses ice. You can't have fun together with ice miners without somehow connecting to their defining activity (ice mining).
To have a regular fun with other people, you need to be in a player organization that plays in a structured way, either having a common goal or a common rule of conduct.
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