Sure:
First of all the point of the game isn’t to keep “setting up a set of dominos”, as he puts it, until all eternity. If one expects to be able to build a sand castle forever and ever and “to be left alone” then one is playing the wrong game. The POINT of your sandcastle is to raise a flag and go “come at me bro, go try it” so what he’s whining about is actually the core premise of the game. So he already didn’t understand that bit.
Secondly: if you build a sand castle that is so big that it a) attracts attention and b) your capabilities aren’t good enough to defend it then you did it wrong UNLESS you did it to go “come at me bro” on purpose, in which case you DO understand the game. It’s very obvious he’s not that kind of person. Doing so and then whining about how bad this game is, again, just means he doesn’t understand the game.
Thirdly his “you’re content even if you don’t want to be” which firmly shows he has no grasp at what EVE is about because We ARE the content! That’s the point, if you don’t like being content then clearly you don’t understand the basics of the game. Every sort of player interaction, both constructive as destructive, is content. It’s literally the point of the game to build a sand castle to then HAVE people come after your sand castle. Grind bears can go away, or just remain content forever and ever.
But just as the EVE rule is “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose”, you also shouldn’t build what you can’t afford to lose which comes back to point #1: if you just keep building, unchecked and not based in the reality of the game where you run a risk and might have to defend it then at some point your sand castle will be everything you have, everything you invested in and then it’s going to hurt, yeah. It’s like flying around in a 70 bil costing mission runner for no other reason than you could (because generally their fits are crap regardless of the cost, they’re not even good or fast mission runners) and then rage quitting after losing it, losing everything.
BOB did the “come at me bro” against pretty much the whole server, Goons did it to an extend and many other groups have. Some have lost, some have won but the point isn’t really winning or losing, the point is having the interaction when people test your sand castle, the point IS the “monkeys taking a dump”, so to speak. And if you lost you will rebuild it, better and stronger. EVE is a meritocracy: if you weren’t able to defend your sand castle you built it too big or made it too obvious compared to your capabilities to defend it, adapt and overcome.
Over the years I’ve both constructed as destructed, some I won others I lost but it’s all content and it’s all part of the story. The only time it hurt like a B**** was when I was new and I didn’t understand, but one grows out of that and starts to understand and then the choice is do you want that sort of gameplay or not and if you decide that it’s NOT what you want then, idk: switch games?
Every newbie who isn’t hand reared will at some point have this issue but one has to be really seriously weird to play this game for years while not getting beyond that issue. It makes no sense to not agree to the core concept of a game but then keep playing it for an eternity, all the while whining about how bad the game is and how it would be better if only the game would be completely different. That’s a really DUMB way of doing things and is only done by people who… don’t understand the game.
TL;DR If you’re crying about being the content and having your sand castles kicked in then you don’t understand what this game is about. Because that is ALL it’s about.
