Where in that video does it say that CCP will not change EVE?
You will lose your ships though. The tutorial makes this clear so if you like a certain build, have a backup or fly it with care around nullsec or wherever you prefer to prey. I’m sure large corps can’t rattle off thunderously large items, but it is not unreasonable to put some preparation into your hangars.
Now to see if my stuff is still around, a year is a long time to be away…
I am present in a starter corp chat channel where such advice is proffered routinely and I’m completely cool with it, and I’d even go so far as to say it comes a lot from people who exhibit very little aggressive play tendencies and who are not to my mind cynical.
The mack so old it has wrong-size rigs is a shiny, expensive collector’s item now. You wouldn’t want to fly it anyway when you could fly a newer one with normal-sized rigs that isn’t a collector’s item.
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Only fly what you can?
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Amazingly, nothing the OP wrote has anything to do with the saying “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose”.
It is the thread topic though.
You “answered” my question by repeating your statement, instead of explaining how you came to the conclusion. A conclusion, which history disagrees with, else the saying wouldn’t have survived the test of time. Not flying what one can’t afford to lose is a smart thing to do. just like it’s not smart to put everyfhing on the line.
How did you reach your conclusion?
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The day you begin worrying about isk and ship loses, is the day this game stops being fun. Just fly. Eve wants us all dead. That’s the point.
He did do some impressive word twisting to turn the old motto into something new so he can offer his own pearl of wisdom.
I’ll try and trace the logic.
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‘Only fly what you can afford’ - already paraphrased to drop the bit about what you can afford to lose. Still doesn’t seem too bad.
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Alliances who indulge in alliance warfare use expensive ships. OK cool. ‘Only fly expensive ships you can afford’. I mean sure that sounds like ok advice on using expensive ships, fine.
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He can’t believe they can replace them repeatedly - I’ll ignore the part about what he believes being irrelevant to what actually is. I think the big point here is it’s not only what you can afford to replace, but replace repeatedly. Updated motto: ‘Only fly expensive ships you can afford to replace repeatedly’. Definitely starting to change a bit from the original motto. I mean it’s pretty conservative advice, but I wouldn’t say it’s terrible.
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Palatine Keepstar - Lol ok so lets just go to the most expensive thing in the game, I mean why not? New motto: ‘Only fly the Palatine Keepstar if you can afford to replace it repeatedly’. Not the motto we started with anymore, and I’d say a bit out of scope of the original.
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CO2 drama! - I’m guessing that this point is about stuff being ‘violently stolen’ in eve. So now its ‘Only fly the Palatine Keepstar if you can afford to replace it repeatedly, because it will be violently stolen’. Well yeah, this is eve after all. I mean really this is just adding the ‘to lose’ part back on from point 1. Still a bit specific with the keepstar and all, but hey, the rest isn’t bad.
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ten and thousands - Big numbers! I’m not sure what the point is but maybe I’ll just add in ‘thousands of players’ somewhere. I think he’s saying titans are expensive… or something. Not even sure if there is a point here but oh well lets update our running motto. ‘Only fly the Palantine Keepstar if you, one of thousands of players, can afford to replace it repeatedly, because it will be violently stolen’.
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THE SENTIMENT APPLIES PERHAPS TO SMALLER SHIPS - whoa whoa, hang on a sec, it looks like we’ve stumbled into some sense! Oh wait… no… he’s offered his own motto. It can’t possibly apply to small ships. There’s no reward in small ships you see, so only the big stuff counts.
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Flying a ship is a risk - no wait… you shouldn’t take a risk… no that’s not right. Hang on, I think he’s saying ‘you shouldn’t not take a risk you can’t afford’. Is that right? Let me sort out all the double negatives… shouldn’t not… can’t… ok… got it. So this one is basically ‘take a risk you can’t afford’. I guess that’s his preferred motto? I’ll paraphrase it to make it fit the spirit of the motto we started with. I think it translates to ‘Fly what you can’t afford’.
Alright everyone, so I think I’ve finally got it sorted. When someone says ‘Only fly what you can afford’ what they really mean is:
Only fly the Palantine Keepstar if you, one of thousands of players, can afford to replace it repeatedly, because it will be violently stolen.
So Beachura he offers up his own pristine wisdom on the issue:
Fly what you can’t afford
Priceless.
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“Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.”
“Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.”
“Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose.”
Okay, let’s look at this. We have a sentence consisting of not too many words which is adressed at you, the reader of it. Normally you will find it with enough context to also know who wants to share this “wisdom” with you. It is up to you to decide wether or not you let some random player, Dev or anyone else dictate how you approach this game. Are you here to follow other peoples rules or make your own? In my personal experience in EVE I’d say: absolutely fly stuff you can’t easily afford to replace, because it can be fun, because you don’t necessarily want to hoard stuff, because it can yield greater rewards than anything else and last but not least: just because you can.
I think this “rule” is just one of many examples how game-design and player culture try to push people towards a risk-averse hoarding game. In fact there are so many on so many different layers, that it is often not easy to say which risk-averse behaviour or mechanic is the result or the instigator of another.
If you follow the red line and logically escalate even the smallest forms of it to see how it fits in the greater shift of EVE-related things, I’d often find them all being directly related - cause and result at once - to people trying to win this game by getting to the very top, becoming untouchable, being able to afford everything and to replace everything, etc. While every 2nd person will tell you “You can’t win EVE”, almost everyone tries. I think, if anyone single person or group ever came close to that, winning EVE would be losing EVE.
For new and newer players it would be completely sufficient to properly teach them about EVE not being a safe place and not being supposed to be one. If advertisement needs to sugarcoat it, so people will feel Highsec should be secure, then these are people who will get frustrated over time. Better be clear: this is a game of (often friendly) savages.
Of course this also means changing a number of mechanics, which have nothing to do with highsec. I can understand that people who wrongfully understood highsec will be at least relatively safe, are getting really mad when they realize that the one place where unmatched safety can be found, is in large Nullsec alliances.Being the “defender” facing Highsec gankers is much more difficult than facing PVP seeking people in Null. So if we don’t want Highsec an even safer place, Null needs to become vastly more dangerous.
CODE are neither the problem nor are they the solution. As far as I know they are also actively recruiting new players, so while you may think they ruin your beginner game, they create content for other beginners.
That being said I think everything in EVE would be more interesting and challenging if it wasn’t so easy to specialize in some PVP niche and run the exact scheme for ages. While some people may enjoy to farm kills for whatever reason, it doesn’t really add to the excitement of the game. If both ganking and avoiding ganks follows a specific set of rules, which anyone can easily learn and repeat for many years, the entire gameplay will be a protocol which is to be followed and not any form of emerging situations and certainly not support the feeling why many people joined the game: endless possibilities. Seriously, if by “endless possibilities” we mean that there is a large limited number of options of which 96% are bad options, that most people sooner or later know - we can rather call it theater with some applause for a nice impro and some whistling for someone who brought the wrong costume.
This counts for all areas of space and surely not just highsec. And it has to do with player behaviour just as much as with game mechanics. While CCP can’t directly influence player mentality, they can certainly take a much more courageous approach towards changing mechanics. The base of that would be an analysis of wether or not one is happy with the number of “good” options people have for different kinds of scenarios. Is it really complex enough or are mechanics strongly suggesting to go one of 20 beaten out paths if you don’t want to constantly eat dirt, because players older and stronger than you can farm their mechanics again and again? And yes, from time to time someone will come up with something new and CCP will express how amazing it is, that people still find new ways. Sure. But players don’t need that kind of commentation by CCP and neither does it help 99% of the new players who don’t find new ways.
I’m happy that CCP created a special team for ship rebalances and I’m hopeful that we will see many more of these much more often in the future. Now, let’s do the same thing for game mechanics and let’s be couragerous and take risks. Because: if the Devs don’t take the risk of ever-changing game mechanics, how will the playerbase find more joy in risk? And really, even for drastic changes, if they can be quickly replaced and changed again, it is worth a shot.
P.S. I think CCP should stop including the CSM in pre-discussion of such changes. I’m sure most of the CSM are nice people and some are maybe actively trying to get player-input for their CSM work, but let’s not kid ourselves: the guys that got elected are EVE-politicians who win a popularity contest. Like real world politicians they have a very specific and limited view on the wants and needs of players. If the CSM would be limited for people who have not more than 2 years experience of playing the game: ok. If voting would happen on Election day without ever presenting the names of the candidates, just their statements, ok. But that isn’t the case so I think CCP should just throw the changes at all of us in the same time, without any long warning and let us find our way through it. If anyone needs inspiration just go to the “One line bad idea thread”. It is fully of actually great idea for temporary changes that sound like they could question the status quo enough to bring new life into this sweet game.
I’m sorry but you can’t cherry pick parts of a quote, it gives it different meaning… You sound like a typical Labour voter, here let me complete your quote “Only Fly What You can Afford to LOSE”
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No it’s not. Despite some people’s need to overthink everything, “don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose” is very simple to understand. It’s simply the EVE Online version of “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
The most ironic thing about that saying is that the original form of that saying (A Mariner’s warning from the 18th Century) read “He is a fool which will adventure all his goods in one ship”. Almost like the saying was purpose built for EVE Online.
“Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose” came about as a reaction to the whining and crying people did in the early days of EVE when they would spend every isk they had on a ship and then lose it like a damned fool. It has nothing at all to do with risk aversion.
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Not quite. It has something to do with averting unneccessary risks. You actually do three considerations:
- Would it be too much of a setback for me if I lose that ship early on due to a fluke?
- How gank-prone am I in the ship? (Value of ship and cargo, tankability, chance of hostile encounter)
- How quickly would that ship pay itself (add a few ISK to the ship cost for the simple effort to reacquire the parts, too)?
Example for 1: If you don’t mind falling back to a BC after losing your BS, it’s good. But losing the SC that would be the lynchpin for all your operations without any backup is bad.
Example for 2: A Venture in an NPC corp may be target for a suicide ganker or “the usual suspects”, but if you stay out of way, you can keep it for a long time. Flying a hauler in Jita, while being in a wardecced corp or even having hundreds of million of ISK in cargo just screams “GANK ME!”
Example for 3: Said Venture pays itself with just one successful run in a belt. The Venture and a decent low-cost fit comes at maybe 100-200k ISK and a full hold of highsec ore is worth 500-800k ISK. So even if the Venture is popped on the second run, it paid for the second and the third one. A mining barge or an exhumer, well, that takes longer and you have to re-check 2) to see if your ship will make it long enough.
You are of course all correct. My getting my miner blown up was entirely my fault. I was new. i had no real idea what I was doing. It was all my fault. But…
I have been learning from these disasters. First time I got ganked it was by some guy in a destroyer. I was easy prey. I think last time CODE got me they had to send a small fleet of 5 ships. I for one was pretty proud of that. Showed true progress on my part.
I sat and read about the scanners. Learned how the gankers worked and their tactics. I’ve seen many ganker traps and now know how to avoid them. So someone here looked at my profile and saw how and when I was ganked in the past. Look again please. Do you note that the times between my losing my ships gets longer and longer? I make no claim to being a great player, nor even a good one. But I am learning, and perhaps one day I too shall have an “old” ship.
“Fly safe” is the motto i prefer. “Fly only what you can afford to lose”, or “It was your fault” feels like advise from someone in a battleship with years and years of experience.
Ganking is all part of the game, and I accept that. But I see no honor in it, no real… challenge. It’s just “I’m going to kill you just because I can”.
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The point. Exactly. I would do the same. In every game. Including chess. When you, by mistake, offer me a figure, then i will take it.
I prefer something more… “bragging” worthy than just “I killed a miner today in my battleship”.
I once took on a battle cruiser in my Tristan. It was PvE but it had two frig escorts as well and I was alone. Took ages.
Lured the frigs away from the big ship and killed them one by one, then got in real close so the BC could not get a lock on me. My small guns took ages to take the BC down, but I almost had him (Yay for me!!!) But…
Was not paying attention to the world around me and a PvP BS arrived and killed us both. Lol.
Still… darned proud of myself over that (The bit with the BC I mean). It’s a story worthy of being told. And… I learned from it.
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Then you are reading too much malice that is not intended in the “Fly only what you can afford to lose motto.”
No malice is intended. It’s not something only old bitter vets say. It is a philosophy of risk reduction to ensure you continue to enjoy the game even when the game throws a world of hurt at you.
And really, that is part of eve. Eve is risk. Playing Eve often entails managing or reducing that risk. All the new skills learned, reading you did, and such helped reduce your risk. So congratulations. You are learning and getting better.
Just remember, don’t fly what you can’t afford t lose, because we all want you to keep playing and enjoying learning to thrive in this hostile world we call EVE.
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Then you are the kind of player who sets new and higher challenges for themselves and you will never be happy with farming kills just because you can. You aspire to become better, to evolve, to keep yourself on your toes. If you have a fight you will not be happy if your opponent does a number of stupid mistakes or you generally outclass them. In other words: you are a predator who wants to fight other predators and not go clubbing baby seals.
For me the game would be so much more fun if more people were like that. The reality is, that many people take this game too serious and prefer a safe and easy win over a hard fight which potentially ends in a loss. It’s the mentality of trying to win EVE.
A variation of that might be: some want you to keep eating punches, feeding them killmails, without leaving the game. For people who farm killmails, there is the need of people who take the beating and continue to play. Personally I think if you lose a bit more than you can afford, it makes things more interesting: either you realize the mechanics are tuned too much in favor of blobbing and leave the game, thus stop feeding killmails or you decide that you need much more power, isk and abilitiy to get sucked in even deeper.
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Or I need miners to extract minerals, industrialists to make the modules, and traders to sell them. Then I can use the isk I earned missioning and trading myself to buy the next bomber I plan to lose in nul or ship for a spectre fleet.
We don’t all feed off miners and ganks, but we do need their effort to help keep us in modules and ships.
Edited to add: and the less the miners get ganked, the less that cost is passed on to the end consumer, making my purchases that much cheaper!