The Carebear Mentality

Over the weekend, Burn Jita 2 has been in full swing in Eve with the current reported figures sitting at 128 freighters, 12 jump freighters and over 520 billion isk in assets destroyed. There have been the usual threads on the forums about how Goonswarm is ruining the game, that they are bad and general rage about the situation. But in my time on the forums this weekend, one thread popped up that caught my eye.

The thread was called A letter to CCP - Please proof read and make any suggestions.
Go and read the original post right up until the part where he starts listing responses. I'll wait...

Ok back? Welcome back.

This thread represents everything wrong with the so called 'carebear' mentality. The reason I throw in the word mentality in there is because it is possible to do everything that Asith does without feeling that losing something in high sec is wrong. How do I know that is possible? Because what Asith does is almost exactly what I do in the game.

I am what the average null sec player would call a 'carebear'. I rarely leave highsec space, I make almost all of my ISK trading, I don't PVP that often and my killboard has more losses than kills. Asith and I share the same profession of flying big freighters (although I wouldn't buy a Rhea for highsec). I have lost ships in highsec full of gear to suicide gankers.

Where Asith and I are different however, is the reaction to what happened and our viewpoint on the game. When I lost a Badger with almost a billion isk worth of faction ammo to sell, I logged out of the game for an hour to calm my nerves and make sure I didn't do anything rash. I then logged back in, convo'd the pilot who killed me and asked what I did wrong. Asith did lose considerably more than me, but he still rage posted a thread about how CCP's game mechanics are flawed.

His reasoning is that the cap in Jita is there because the server cannot handle demand. He is right of course. The cap is to prevent Jita from crashing out, as it is the highest populated system of any in the game. But how did he get stuck on the gate? He auto piloted. He put 8 billion isk worth on auto pilot and left the computer to go and make dinner. Even if burn Jita wasn't on at the time, he was running a risk of being ganked anyway.

He then tries to say that the fault lies with CCP because if Jita was full it must be their fault. However he shows that he knows nothing about Burn Jita happening by saying that Goonswarm and TEST took advantage of the cap. When it is pointed out to him that it is common knowledge that Burn Jita is on he says that he doesn't come onto the forums. Which is fine. I mean the majority of the player base doesn't come on the forums. But even my little corp and alliance sent out mails to all members saying that Burn Jita was happening. If I didn't know before that, then I was informed by my corp. He says his main isn't involved in high sec, so what corp is it that didn't even bother to warn their members?

However my favorite part of this post is where he completely fails to understand what CONCORD is there to do. He says that they don't kill criminal fleets (which they don't, that's faction police) in 1.0 space and that he thinks that makes no sense based on the story of Eve. Well Asith that's a little wrong. In the Eve lore CONCORD are there to allow the different empires to work out their differences peacefully. They have slowly added more and more regulations that everyone must abide by, but they do not do anything until a regulation is breached.

But story aside, the CONCORD mechanics for suicide ganking are pretty easy. If you attack another player you get killed by CONCORD. If you can kill the other player before CONCORD kills you, good job you got a kill. Asith was killed by 113 people all of whom died at CONCORD's hand. That is the mechanic working as intended.

Asith's mentality is what people dislike about carebears so much. To him it makes sense that highsec should be perfectly safe and that he should be reimbursed for his loss. But to me I see another person who was uninformed, and therefore unprepared for what was ahead. I see a person who was never cut out for Eve, despite the fact that he has been playing since 2006. I see someone who has the carebear mentality.

GAME ON.