Banter #26: Beauty is in the eye of the markets

Welcome to the twenty-sixth 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 or so 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 to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month’s topic was proposed by @KatiaSae of the much praised “To Boldly Go” blog. Katia asks: “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As an astrophotographer, I’ve found it in the stars and planets of New Eden. Where have you found it? Perhaps you’ve found beauty in the ships we fly? Maybe it’s the sight of profits being added to your bottom line? Or maybe it’s the pilot portraits you see in the comm channels? Where ever you’ve found it, write about it and post an image.” Don’t be afraid go beyond the simple visual aspects of EVE as well. Is the EVE Community in itself a thing of beauty? What makes EVE the game, the world, the Community, so appealing to you?

The original title mentioned something about holding beers.  I should start by saying that most nights, when I play EVE, I’m not drinking.  Then again, I don’t get drunk.  I just couldn’t think of a better title at the moment.  Suddenly Ninjas does encourage turning EVE into a drinking game as often as possible, but the only beauty in that is that our voice comms quickly turn into a penis joke channel.  To each their own.  I am in no means complaining.

Back on track.  What is beautiful in EVE?  When I first started this game, I thought, “Holy hell.  Space.  It’s big.  But…”

“All the systems look alike. It’s just planets.”

“Space is always black.  It’s not EVE or even Everquest 1.”

Then I started to play.  I mean, actually play.  The fact that is that space isn’t always black, and all the systems certainly do not look alike.  You begin to “own” your region you call home. [EVE Travel is one of my favorite EVE related sites, by the way.  All should check that out.]  I feel out of place or like I’m on an extended vacation when I hop into the ninja-orca and run off to another area with the intent of stealing from the locals.

Back onto the idea of what is beautiful.

That is beauty.  A PLEX for 400k.  From my neck of the woods, money in real life can sometimes be tight due to some medical concerns.  That’s not why I place those contracts however.  If money is tight, I’ll just not play.  Simple.

But that you can take an existing arena called the contract/marketplace and apply social engineering, dumb luck, and a little bit of P.T. Barnum-esque skills to the mix – makes the game we all love to play so very interesting to me.

Sure, I fly around, steal loot and try to get into fights.  But where I really, truly, enjoy EVE is in the non-visual side of the game.  The beauty behind playing a character, infiltrating a corporation, and then fleecing them.  Gaining trust as if it were a failing form of currency; that the mint does not realize is failing.

Getting people to misclick and sell a PLEX for 400k, a full thousand times lower than market value is easy.  It’s only happened once, but it’s easy nonetheless.  What takes true beauty is gaining entry into a corporation, or something else we at Suddenly Ninjas and TEARS do often:

Determine and discover game mechanics that piss people off, make us rich, and put our corporation and its alliance on the map.  While my schedule doesn’t allow for much corp-op stuff, that we do it makes me very proud.

They are usually held secret, until either a mechanic is nerfed or we move on to the next thing because the public has adjusted.  That constant take-give-take more is what keeps me playing.

Be certain: there is a level of beauty to this game that is not visual.  It’s spreadsheets, social science, and firepower.

I’m sure this appeal to me is partly because I am by career a programmer, and firefighter.  I’m into discovering new methods do to the “same old thing” and very happy when shit hits the fan and my heart starts to race a bit!

Here are some of the other sites talking about Banter #26:

• EVOGANDA: The Ballet of Battle
• A Lush in Space: Beauty in a Bottle
• CrazyKinux’s Musing: Beyond nebulas and shiny ships
• Freedom: the beauty in EvE » A Mule In EvE
• Achernar: The bike and the barbecue
• where the frack is my ship?: Blog Banter 26: Love at first sight
• BlogBanter 26: EVE … beautiful … « One capsuleer against all
• Blog Banter 26 « Mad Haberdashers
• » Blog Banter 26: Beauty of EVE – To Boldly Go To Boldly Go
• Down By Law: Blog Banter #26: “The Beauty of EVE” (OOC)
• Blog Banter #26 – Beauty « Roc’s Ramblings
• Banter #26: Beauty is in the eye of the markets | Diary of a Garbageman
• Progression’s Horizon: Blog Banter 26- Carry It With Us, Or We Find It Not
• Blog Banter 26: The Beauty of Eve « A Scientist’s Life in Eve
• Freebooted: BB26: The Beauty Between the Lines
• Eve Opportunist: EBB #26 : Beauty is destruction.
• Blog banter #26: EVE shines, and not just visually « Diary of a Pod Pilot
• Learning to Fly – Spinning ships since 2003
• BB26: Beauty, in certain conditions | A Missioneer in Eve
• Dying in Lowsec (One Hauler at a time)
• EVE Blog Banter #26 – Beauty « Evehermit’s Blog