Rape Culture Fucking Sucks

So the battle’s over.  We won.  We won big because we’re awesome.  We’re big manly men flying invincible internet spaceships and we won against carefully stacked odds that look in their favor but really aren’t.  We raped ‘em.

No.  Wait.  We Didn’t.

You know why?  Because internet spaceships are awesome.  AND RAPE ISN’T!  It’s a simple concept but let’s face it some of us in the TL;DR crowd need pictures.  So I got Rixx to make me some.

This poster is also awesome.

By trivializing rape we act permissive towards it.  We pretend that it is not only not a crime, but is, in fact, something to be desired.  No we probably don’t all think that way, but it’s the image we put out and it encourages those who are of a mindset to do this horrible crime, and it’s a deterrent for the survivors of this crime to speak out, to get help.  We tell them it’s trivial.  It’s not a big deal.  You should harden the fuck up and deal with it.

This is wrong.  Rape is a horrible crime, it frequently exacts a lifetime toll on the victims and the victim blaming and shaming can cause even more pain.  And yes saying “We Raped Them” is victim shaming.  It says to rape victims that you are noobs.  That you are bad.  That you should have fought harder.  That you had control of your fate and could and SHOULD have done something.

We need to knock it off.  We are better than this.  We are capable of extolling our victories and coping with our defeats without hurting each other.  We may not always agree with each other but we are one community, the best community in gaming, and we can be better.  We owe it to the survivors in our midst.  We owe it to the survivors among our friends.  We should make ourselves clear to those animals among us that we do NOT tolerate, do NOT condone, and do NOT embrace anything that would comfort and console THEM.

Take it upon yourselves.  Stop using this language.  Stop using Rape as a descriptive term for success.

Gonna use this for a while

State of the Blog

So for those of you that have been here a while, I’m sure you are heartbroken that I haven’t been more regular with my amateur theatrics and demagoguery.  I promise to be on more, to write more, if not better, and to continue to beat my favorite drums.  Player responsibility, Greyscale working on Hello Kitty Online, More explosions, and less chauvinism and rape culture in the game, and gaming in general.  I’m feeling energized, more willing to play, and very enthusiastic about the upcoming expansion.  I have Real-Life friends coming back into the game, which has me endlessly excited, and our network of contacts now includes some very interesting and heavyweight batphones.

I’d like for you guys to back my STORY if you want to, and to pay attention to this space.  I have a good number of friends from other games taking the plunge this summer and fall on EvE, and we all know nooblets make for great content on blogs.

One of my toons will be in highsec full time, and stirring up a mess at every opportunity.  There’s simply too many changes affecting highsec either in the recent past or the near future.  The pot is well and truly stirred and shenanigans will soon abound with characters like Vinny and Vorg probably using and abusing the denizens of the belt who aren’t lucky enough to be wearing Fancy Hats.

One of the projects I’ll be working on will be to figure out how best for legitimately new players to spend their time, to include training plans, money making methods, self defense, and going on the offense.

EvE is a game of opportunities.  The opportunities look good from where I sit.  Fly Dangerous.

I’m using it every time I can

Pocket Battleships

So I’ve been mulling over ships I’d like to see, and with tiericide there’s become a few distinct classes that have emerged.  Logistics, Attack, Brawler, and Disruption ships.  I don’t think we’ll ever see a real Battleship class devoted to logistics.  I don’t think we should either.  What I would like to see is a disruption Battleship.  My idea for these is to make them ships devoted to disrupting the enemy, taking advantage of the opportunities that create, and then get away.

Historically Pocket Battleships refer to a smaller, slower, generally inferior battleship, particularly German ships like the Deutschland class cruisers.  I don’t want these to be second rate ships in EvE.  To me these ships should be fast, but not particularly agile, capable of zooming in, creating havoc with their disruptive abilities and their weapons, and then racing away equally fast.  They shouldn’t be capable of standing in the line of battle, nor should they have particularly good sustained DPS.  I also want to see them carry both types of racial EWAR.  Not just (for example) target painting for Minmatar, although it makes FAR more sense to have a battleships with target painting than a frigate, but webs as well.

The ships should have limited high slots, perhaps 5 to 6, generous mid slot allocations, 5-6 for armor tankers, 8 for shield, and generally poor low slots, 4 or even 3 on shield, 5-6 for armor.  The bonuses should be a bonus to both types of Ewar, ideally range, to go with a high base speed, mediocre base agility, middling to poor defenses, and possibly a bonus to base weapon damage, not ROF, just damage.  The idea is to emphasize scoring hits on targets that are slowed, crippled, unable to strike back, and give the ships the ability to get in and out, but not to dogfight.  If I could get away with it I’d even give them a tracking penalty.

Finally there’s the designs.  I think all of them should be of the “futuristic-but-unfinished” look.  If you want to get really adventerous I could even see the Minmatar having a Catamaran or outrigger design.  The ships should look like what they are, fast, aggressive, modern, but not sturdy, and very unwieldy.  These ships would add a bigger option to at least show up for fights where a T1 cruiser simply won’t cut it, but T2 ships aren’t a good idea either.  They’d also offer a slightly more forgiving platform for people to learn the skills they need to operate a recon ship effectively.

Obviously the idea needs a lot of work, and it won’t happen for a *while* as I suspect the art department is very behind on old projects, let alone new ones, but it’s always fun to think, and it’s a slow day.

Fly dangerous, score kills!

I’m using it every time I can

A Mind for the Game

So EvE requires a different sort of mindset than many other MMOs.  The fact that you can and will lose something at some point in this game is thoroughly unavoidable.  I’m helping some friends from LotRO in their efforts to establish a foothold in EvE and received a bit of pushback, one quote in particular stands out:

If our newest members get into Eve then They should try not to die for the fact of losing points, gear ships, etc. I know Corelin is supplying the ships, but just be careful. My son has played Eve quite a few years and knows the cost of losing ships , property and other assorted items.

This is, frankly, completely at odds with my own playstyle and mindset.  To me, a PVP ship is dead the minute it’s fit.  Everything it does after is a bonus.  Even undocking.  That doesn’t mean that I want to lose it frivolously, but if it dies in a fire it’s part of the game.  Ships in harbor and all that.  I undock it because I plan on getting in a fight, and with T1 cruisers and frigs being what they are and where they are now, there’s no reason not to go look for a fight, and fight until the bitter, bitter end.

There’s several kinds of ships in EvE, I’m going to focus on three.  PvE ships, PvP ships, and Asset ships.

PvE ships shouldn’t get blown up a whole lot.  To me, every PvE ship that dies; dies because the owner did something really, really dumb.  These ships can be protected very easily, with planning and a modicum of situational awareness.  As long as you aren’t stupid you won’t meet the raging fist of Darwin.

PvP ships are everything from practically disposable rifters up to battleships, T1 and even most T2 ships.  These ships are not meant to be thrown away, but tend to get blown up anyway as the cost of doing business.  In a theme-park they are your repair bills and your consumables every bit as much as ammo, scripts, and cap charges.

Asset ships are ships that are meant for PvP but are only committed when there’s a lot going on, and a lot on the line.  Faction battleships, T3s, Capital and Super-Capital ships.  These ships go out expecting to come back.  Losing one is often a blow to even the most jaded pilots as these ships often have meaning to them beyond their cost.

The overarching mindset for all of these is the same, that’s why it’s overarching.  Ships are lost in EvE.  There’s circumstances where any and all of these ships can be lost.  Pick a ship you can lose, and go.  Don’t count on the ship coming back, or your pod.  Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose because you will lose it and find out just how well you can afford it.  At the same time, do yourself a favor.  FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO LOSE.  If your CEO/Officers/Good buddy is handing out ships to go shoot things in, you can afford to lose it!  That’s why he’s giving it out, to help you with costs and broaden your gameplay.

If you want to try something, try it.  Find a way to try it smart, find people to help you try it smart, but don’t let your worries keep you from trying.

I’m using it every time I can

Fixing Mining Without…. Fixing… Mining

Ok, first off, I’m a fan of about 95% of what I’ve seen come out of Iceland.  I am.  The only real nasty bit for me was the mining “improvements.”  If you had to make a list of adjectives used to describe mining in EvE, I’m fairly certain terms related to “Boring” and “Repetitive” would show up in the top 10.  In fact I’m sure derivatives of them would make up the top 10.  Now CCP seems to be set on fixing this by adding “Lucrative” to the list, which I’m fine with, but damnit, why isn’t there a change to the mechanics of mining?

I’m actually ok with boring.  I work in a bank.  I study accounting.  I write a blog about EvE Online.  I watch baseball.  Boring is not a huge problem, but there’s a LEVEL of boring that is.  Log in to EvE.  Check the market prices.  Update your spreadsheets.  Find a good bookmark for mining the ore you want.  Warp in, click *snooze*.  Seriously.  Warp in, target, wait for the hold to fill, warp away, lather rinse repeat.  It’s actually less interesting than work.  At a bank.

I’m ok with mundane, even routine, but mining isn’t interactive.  Even missions you have to manage your tank, move around some (maybe) and keep swapping targets to shoot what you need to shoot.  Mining… you can do mining more than semi afk, find the right system with the right rocks, and you can go completely AFK till the hold fills.  Warp to your station, warp back.  Start filling the hold again.

Pardon me but this is a bit dull.  Sure CCP could make the rocks smaller, but that’s hardly going to do much other than drive people mad, a skilled player can tune his ship, his skills, and use his knowledge of mechanics to mission faster.  Rat faster, and market games are highly dependent on skills I don’t actually seem to have in game.  There’s no real “player skill” involved in actually mining.  It bugs me.  A lot.  There has to be an elegant solution.  There has to be someone out there that has it.  That has something INTERESTING, interactive, and useful to add to the conversation.

Oh and CONGRATS TO THE NEW CSM!  STAY ACTIVE!  DON’T LET CCP GET STOOPID!

I’m using it every time I can

Uneasy is the Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

Bill Shakespeare

Shakespeare would probably LOVE EvE Online.  The raw expression of human behavior would probably tickle him all over.  One of the points that shows up repeatedly in EvE is the toll it takes on its players.  Burnout is a frequent foe of leaders and plebs alike.  Recently Montolio resigned as the leader of TEST Alliance (please ignore) starting his resignation with the line “Shit was too much work, it wasn’t fun anymore.” which I can sympathize with from my time running a single crappy corp bouncing between mediocre alliances.

I can’t begin to speak about all the things that Montolio would go through.  He made decisions so far above my level that I can barely bring myself to care.  I want to talk about something else.  Fifty cents a day per member.  If you run a corp that’s what you are being trusted with.  Sure you might split it up with alliance leaders, with other leaders in your corp, but the bottom line is that someone in the world has said “You know what, the best value I can get for my 14.95 a month is with CEO Timmy and his Fancy Pants Corporation.” So let’s say you have 20 guys in corp, that’s 10 dollars a day, 70 dollars a week.  Can you provide 70 dollars worth of value in EvE?  Probably.  It’s not that hard, and let’s face it once people know what they are doing in game all you really have to do is set up a couple of roams a week/month.  However it quickly breaches into the realm of obligation.  When I lead I don’t feel like I can enjoy the game unless my corpies are enjoying the game.  When I start shedding people it hurts because I’m doing things wrong, clearly, or else they wouldn’t be leaving.

This may explain why I burn out on EvE so badly.

Now imagine what Monty’s share of the 13k + members of TEST is.  If he thinks of it as even a penny a member, that is, 2% of what they are paying, his “Obligation” runs over 100 dollars a day.  Over $4,000 a month.  Just over $50k a year.  That is, if I assume he is accepting responsibility for providing 2% of his alliance members amusement, he is bearing a burden of 50,000 dollars a year for his performance as an alliance leader.  Just a penny a day per member.  He may not have ever thought about it in those terms, but I bet the weight was there anyway.  Just as it is for other alliance leaders.  Just as it is for any leader.  Have fun, and remember to tell your boss if they are doing a good job.

I’m using it every time I can

You Are Where You Put Yourself

So I’ve had some issues with an internet connection that was too frustrating for EvE.  EvE is odd in that it can support TERRIBLE ping numbers, but will close your socket in a heartbeat if the connection gets wonky.  My connection redefined wonky.  Paste tense.  Got THAT sorted finally.

But I still haven’t done anything interesting.  Should soon, but for now time to talk about some ruminations I had during my unwanted EvE Exodus.

YOU ARE WHERE YOU PUT YOURSELF

Your decisions led you to the place you now stand.  They built your skills, they built your wallet, they built your hangar, they built your shipyard.  All that you are is the sum of your choices, your reactions, your interactions.  Yes other people have a say in things.  They do that, it’s a massively MULTIPLAYER online role-playing game.  You can still change things.  You can’t change it all at once.  EvE does not work well with fast changes.  It is hard to make them at the micro level.  You cannot simply move all your inventory at the snap of a finger through the magic of vaults, the hobbit postal service, or any such gaming flim-flammery.  Red Frog can move you across highsec, your alliance can move you to the fringes of space, but it takes time.  It takes effort.  It takes resources.  Mostly it takes planning.

You make the choices.  Set up the skill plan, and skill queue.  You acquire the isk, the ships, the modules, the munitions that make you the pilot you are.  You travel from gate to gate, from cyno to cyno, from wormhole to wormhole forging your own story.  Your own history.  Your own destiny.  As the ancient trailer says:  ”For their can be no other destiny but our own.”

Your destiny is yours to create.  Your choices are your own to make.  You do not make them alone.  Build alliances.  Cultivate friendships.  Make adversaries.  EvE is but a stage, and we are all players.  No, really, in the old sense.  You know.  Actors.  We play our parts in the great dramas.  We create heroic epics, tragedies, comedies, satires and farces.  Mostly farces.  We can all write our own parts, but in all events we must remember our destinies intertwine.  They splice, flow together, or crash headlong and are re-written.  We do not always choose the outcomes, but our choices create the endgame.  Write your story.  Play your part.  Create your history.

And fly dangerous.

I’m using it every time I can

Moneyball in Space

Goons published their latest CEO Update on TM.com today.  There’s a lot in it that will raise eyebrows (one or both) including:  Free carriers, a rundown of who is doing what to who and where, and hints at a full-out DREAD giveaway which would be quite a windfall for the CFC folks.

What struck me was a little throwaway bit at the very bottom:

We do not do things that way: any alliance admitted to the CFC will understand our focus on both offensive war and metrics to prove collective effort.

This was what really raised my eyebrow, especially as it was thrown in with talking about recruiting newer alliances to CFC.  It brought me back to some musings I’ve had on how an Alliance so publicly and self-admittedly bad could be so GOOD at what mattered in the game.

Short version?  People like winning.  Goons have isolated the “winning” elements on a strategic level and devoted themselves to it.

Skip to the explosion if you have a short attention span.

Long version incoming so settle in or X out.  There’s two kinds of winning, tactical and strategic.  Alliances like R&K and old-skool PL¹ had isolated the surprise + leadership = victory core of tactical winning.  They used tactics their enemies couldn’t respond to to score hard fought but surprisingly bloodless victories, and pumped up their members by trumpeting their wins to the high heavens, while brushing off their losses with their ability to replace ships themselves.  They keep themselves lean, because that lies at the core of tactical brilliance, but they alone aren’t a threat to take and hold sov, they don’t have the raw mass required to weight the scales in a mass war.

Strategic Victory in EvE requires an ability to set your nose to the grindstone on two scales.  Leaders must bear an incredible weight, both leading and managing their alliance, and the rank and file have to respond to their leaders, be active and take part.  This requires something more than killboard l33tness, which is a good thing as Goonswarm’s 68.48% on EvE-kill is rather… bad as PvP alliances goes.    Yet Goonswarm Federation leads the most powerful coalition, with the most valuable nullsec space, in EvE.  How does such a bad alliance get to hold this position?  Leadership and determination.

Now how do you rate that?  Because clearly killboard efficiency doesn’t quite catch it.  So let’s dig in and catch some glimpses.  Goons use the term “Metrics” quite a bit so let’s start our search there (from http://www.businessdictionary.com)

Metrics:  Standards of measurement by which efficiency, performance, progress, or quality of a plan, process, or product can be assessed.

So a metric to Goons is a tool that allows them to measure the effectiveness of a sub-unit.  They don’t hand out directorships to that cool guy who shows up all the time.  Nor do they ally themselves with people who consistently underperform by their standards.  Now to be a true “Metric” Goonswarm has to set up standards which are quantifiable, that is, they can be measured objectively, they have to be relevant to whatever they are trying to measure, and they have to be capable of being scaled for large and small entities.

So Goonswarm leadership has set up two sets of Metrics, one for leadership, to determine who can generate the best quality and quantity of useful “Leadership” and they have applied this to themselves and to their minions, I’m not sure where to begin on this.  Certainly revenue is important, driving participation is important, and filling the markets is important.  What else is important and how it is generated, measured, and compared is beyond me.  There’s a reason I fly in fleets rather than lead them.

The other set is for members as a group.  I’m even less certain how this is measured, what it measures and how it it is applied internally and externally is frankly outside of my horizon.  Clearly efficiency isn’t that big.  Raw participation has to be a factor, as well as both unique members joining fleets, and how often each person joins said fleets will likely be a factor, who brings what, what they lose etc, but how is it measured and evaluated?  What are the standards?

Moneyball was a book written in 2003 about the revolutionary new way of thinking that the Oakland A’s had been doing for a few years.  Rather than looking mostly at “counting” stats, especially ones like Steals, RBIs, and Strikeouts for hitters, which often didn’t have as much impact as conventional wisdom would lead one to believe.  Instead the A’s went with “rate stats” focusing in on new stats generated by the SABR community, which served as indicators of overall contribution, like OPS (On Base Plus Slugging) for hitters and ERA+ for pitchers, or simply stats like VORP (Value Over Replacement Player) for anyone.  This gave them a competitive advantage over other teams over the course of a season, as they could find bargains on players who weren’t highly regarded, but generated wins.  Most leaders in EvE are the old-skool types.  They equate pure l33t PVPness as espoused by killboard stats, big shiny fleets and vaunted FCs as the be all and end all of EvE success.  The new leaders in the game are people who have cut away the traditional stats, and look for what wins.

By creating their own metrics, the Goons have done what SABR did for statistics.  Creating their own methods of reporting information gathered, and doing so in a way that contributes to the overall success of their coalition.  Moreover they have done what Billy Beane did for the A’s, by using those stats to build both an alliance that wins, and train other alliances to contribute as part of their “team.”  Goons were successful before OTEC.  Sure their current success is greatly aided by Tech, but they didn’t get Tech to get successful, they got successful to get Tech.

¹New-Skool PL manages to do both with rather admirable success.

I’m using it every time I can

I Want You to Want Me!

Mord FiddleJan 23, 8:33 pm

Well, now you’re just ignoring me.  Why do you believe people should be forced out of highsec?

I haven’t been ignoring you Mord.  I’ve been puzzling out a proper, non-flippant answer.  The short version is:  I don’t want to force people to do anything.  This is EvE.  I want them to move of their own accord, for reasons that make sense to them at the time.

I write a blog so you get the long version for free -

I think it’s fantastic that there’s people who stop travelling out when the sec status starts looking yellow.  They turn around and scamper back.  They find their rut and they travel it doing the things they like for as long as they want.  It’s fantastic.  They are enjoying the game their way.

The problem is they are likely engaging in single-player EvE.  It may actually be a small group, but they are not really doing much to create content for the greater community, and they aren’t terribly likely to stick around according to CCP’s metrics.  CCP has stated repeatedly that players are far more likely to stick around if they are engaging with other players socially.  Usually this means a corp/alliance.  I think there’s two reasons for this.  A player who works with other players is more willing to share in risks, and a player who is confronted with adversity is far more likely to recognize the scope of them, and overcome them either by getting advice before the adversity and mitigating their risk or by having a support network that can soften the blow with recovery efforts.

Let’s zoom out a stage.

Many, if not most, highsec-only players believe that they are, or at least should be, totally safe as long as they are playing in highsec, and not doing anything aggressive towards another player.  They think that their sole responsibility for self-preservation is to keep themselves out of 0.4 and lower sec status systems.  They do not think to protect themselves from people willing to lose a ship to destroy what they are flying.  When they do lose a ship to people willing to make that effort they blame it not on themselves for failing to protect themselves, but on the gankers, and not in such a way as to give them credit.  They do not recognize that self-preservation is forever and always their own responsibility and that a reliance on CONCORD and other players forbearance is a fickle means of protecting ones hard-earned isk.

This is not to say that gankers are all wonderful people that shit rainbows.  Some of them are bullies, some of them are jerks, some of them are people playing the game their own way.  Just like the miners.  The difference is in how they define their way, and how they understand the game.

Now if a miner belongs to a corp that does have a support they can still lose their shit, but they aren’t likely to leave the game.  As long as the corp supports them.  I have lost some EMBARRASSING ships.  However I had corpmates who supported me.  I had a community I belonged to, and who helped me see the scope of things and how unimportant one miserable Drake was.

Eventually that community led me to branch out.  To see PvP not as an evil practice to be avoided, but a fun and challenging (but hopefully not too challenging) focus of the game.  I want people to see as many reasons as possible to leave highsec, and I want highsec to be as limited as possible in pursuit of that goal.  Not every player is going to get involved in blowing up other players spaceships.  At least not directly.  However, at some point in his EvE career, every player needs to realize that pvp is the foundation of the game, and can happen to anyone at any time.  The players least likely to understand this are the highsec carebears who never venture beyond 0.5 for fear of encountering… well… EvE.

I want production to be more practical and useful in low/null to make the decision on where to manufacture goods to actually involve a choice other than “Safest area with the most available slots = win for me!”

I want resources to be more accessible and valuable in low/null to create an economic push so that veld isn’t always a “top 3″ mineral when it comes to value.

I want low/null to have useful and unique mechanics that make them more fun and enjoyable.

Some of these already exist.  The last one especially has quite a few options, but there still isn’t enough to drive the great hordes out of highsec empire.  Having unique resources that cannot be collected in highsec space helps.  Having unique gameplay opportunities, like wormholes, or FW, helps.  Having organizations that help even the newest players capitalize on the opportunities to be found below 0.4 helps.  Look at Goons and TEST.  They can and will take players still in awe at the power of their reaper, slap them in a rifter and throw them to a system with a name like VFK.  They will bring them in, teach them to play and understand the game, and give them an opportunity to grow.  Sure they can be an embarrassment to the community, but they also contribute to the community.  Look at the rage being spouted by highsec carebears almost every day over at minerbumping.com and you will see just how “noble” the pvp-averse carebears can be.

So no.  No I don’t want to force people out of highsec.  I want them to want to move out themselves.  I want them to go out and create content of their own and discover the real awe of EvE.  The ability to drive your storyline wherever you want it, not just Motsu station.

I’m using it every time I can

 

The Urgency of EvE

One thing EvE has for it against other games:  The clock is ticking.  That tower you need to defend?  Timer is up in 14 hours.  Your WoW raid will still be there after your opponents have burned the tower to the ground.  Your huge fleet the alliance is putting together?  Or the smaller worm hole raid?  Once it’s over it’s over.

While “Theme Parks” have content that is endlessly repeatable and farmable, EvE walks another path.  By having the players generate their own content, they guarantee that while you may get the opportunity to take part in a similar event later, you likely will never see the exact opportunity again.  Things will change, you might have to buy a new tower, or reinforce the enemies’ tower again, and face more reinforcements (or less if you at least took the opportunity to learn their timezone and response) This sense of urgency permeates EvE.

EvE rewards you for playing.  It seems a bit counter-intuitive what with you training offline, but you only get to experience what happens in EvE when you are, ya know, IN EvE.  You only get the opportunity to experience awesome when you are around it, and when you create it.  Sure sometimes the awesome will happen to you sometimes, and be someone else’s fantastic day, but them’s the breaks, and that’s what makes this game great.

Emergent Gameplay is something that most developers treat as a parasite.  ”Unintended” is the longest 4-letter word over on the blizzard forums, and some people at CCP seem to feel the same, but the prevailing wind blows in a different direction.  Emergent content is treated as awesome, amazing, and a proof-of-concept that the game works, not in spite of players striving to break the system, but because of it.  In EvE, Emergent Content come from the efforts of players trying to do the impossible.  Whether it was holding short range battleships up in the absence of any effective dedicated repair ship (other than carriers, which NOBODY was risking in those days) or holding Carriers up against Supercarriers during the “Summer of Supers,” People trying to do the impossible will often find completely unconventional means to do so.  At best CCP sees themselves as providing tools for the sandbox, and letting the players create content with as few restrictions as practical.  While there have been some heavy-handed revamps on some ships and mechanics in the last year, there have been others that were more open-ended, instead of closing paths they opened them instead and we are only seeing the edge of the cliff.  More and more events are accessible to new players with the new T1 ships, and they want to get involved in more and more activities.  This creates an engine of creativity, where you build more and more inventive means to achieve bigger and bigger goals.  EvE can only be so much with 60 or 70 devs building content.  With 450 thousand players creating content, even if they don’t generate as much individually as a dev, they develop the deepest, richest content there is.  But only if you log in.

I’m using it every time I can