Deadlock989
Banned
Mostly shame, self-loathing and guilt. But at least that's something.
I went psycho. Here's why.
I backed this game at Premium Beta. I spent the first six-seven months of ED playing a few hours a week, grinding my way up as a trader/courier. I flirted with combat but Beta and early release experiences of combat in a Sidewinder or Eagle were not at all rewarding to me when you could be instagibbed by a kamikaze Condor or any other player at any moment, wiping out all your progress in that session, although that's since been fixed. Trading was how I played Elite 1984, so that was my mindset here.
When I finally got into a Type 6, I had already nearly lost my mind. Hauling 100 tons of identikits here and there in an incredibly slow progression across a massive gap in ship values towards more of the same. Trading consists of looking at spreadsheets and then spending 95% of your time lining up dots with crosshairs. Once in a blue moon, you're interdicted and can almost instantly escape. Everything looks the same everywhere you go. The "living, breathing universe" for a trader has the uncaring sterility of an accountancy conference. But I kept plugging joylessly away, because everything I read on these forums indicated that my lack of fulfilment was, obviously, all my own fault. The Emperor's New Game. Maybe everything will change, I thought, once I've progressed beyond some line in the sand or other.
But during that time, they'd introduced the Vulture and I failed to notice. So about a month ago I suddenly realised I could have had the best fighter in the game for some time. I picked one up and kitted it out to roughly B grade. Went to a combat zone. Immediately earned more in a week (maybe 8 hours of play) than I did in the previous eight months, tripling my net assets, not dying once. Bumped the Vulture up to mostly A grade (completely unoptimised, just whatever I felt like squashing in) and ...
... that was it. Game over.
The CZs and RESs are fun for a few hours. But the opponents are exactly the same with exactly the same tactics and outfitting everywhere across thousands of light years of space. Every Cobra drops pointless mines. Every Python sprays shrapnel. Every Asp has lumbering fixed railguns. It takes you minutes to develop a strategy against each opponent and then you've understood all there is to know about NPC combat, forever, in every other CZ and RES. It's as though you were playing a hack/slash RPG where every procedural dungeon has the exact same 10 mobs in the exact same quantities.
The Vulture is the best fighter class ship in the game but it costs less than an Asp, the first large ship, so it's effectively placed right at the beginning of "mid-game". With just two heavy pulse lasers and default shields, you are invincible, able to take out any other NPC ship individually, even large-class Elite ships worth a hundred times as much hardware-wise, and almost all of the NPC wings that spawn as well. The only way to lose is to overwhelming numbers of high-level NPCs or to other players, and by "lose" I mean "boost away and then come straight back". I'm not even a very good pilot. It becomes incredibly boring with surprising rapidity. I haven't died against an NPC opponent since I left my Hauler.
There was literally nothing else left to do. "Blaze your own path", they said. "Try other things out." I tried Powerplay - exactly the same gameplay and missions without any tangible reward other than some kind of invisible "narrative" - it sucks harder than a celestial ball of vacuum cleaners so massive it collapsed into a singularity. I tried "exploring" - seriously, I would rather play Minesweeper than waste my leisure time that way. I've repeated every mission type many times. I've done many months of trading and it's just grind to me now.
Everything is just grind. Half of the grind is naked, exposed to view: the other half is barely hidden under a tissue of metagaming. Kill ten rats. Tell Bob I love him. I need a fish, go and buy one for me in the shop down the road. Go to another place and then come back and tell me you've been there. Rinse and repeat like a zombie's laundromat.
Perhaps I lack imagination (patent pending).
The only thing I hadn't tried was aggravated PvP. So I went psycho, in a final attempt to experience any kind of emotion at all.
I went to Eravate, noob town. My mission was to kill as many other players as possible. I racked up about 200k of bounty in about four hours of play, all from deaths and attacks. That's around 35 new players' progress stamped on.
And it was so easy. I literally laughed out loud at how easy it was.
Let me put this in context: I don't play FPSs or any game with a contemporary military theme. I hate stuff like Team Fortress. I prefer co-op games of Starcraft and Homeworld against AI opponents than other humans. The PVP game I have most experience of is chess and that's after 33 years experience of video-gaming. This is the only time I have ever done anything you might term "griefing".
I did set myself some rules, which isn't very psycho but hey, I'm new to this. Killing day one noobs in Sidewinders was completely allowed but only if there were no other more advanced players around. Unfortunately, 90% of the time space was filled with Sidewinders and the occasional Hauler or Adder. I did look in other nearby systems, where you might hope for more experienced players, but it's all just tumbleweed now. Before the rampage I was about 120 light years away. That's a 15 minute trip and not even the fringes of inhabited space, but I hadn't seen other players on the scanner for a couple of week.
Only two other commanders gave me a run for my money: someone in a Clipper who simply drove backwards and pretended to be a giant turret, and someone in a shieldless Diamondback Explorer who had some very interesting heat management/anti-sensor tactics that surprised me (but who I'd still have killed if I weren't randomly out of SCBs). Both valid tactics but even then neither of them were able to take me out. Running away is so easy, even in a ship not noted for its speed.
For the first half of my rampage, I "advertised" my presence in the system as a "psycho". I warned players I was coming after them by crooning their names and giggling. I did pseudo-Gollum impressions. I stopped in the middle of fights to type out Wham! and Kajagoogoo lyrics.
Hardly any victims spoke. The sum total of utterances from all of the other commanders I met and killed over four hours was two: "" and "stop". That's what the social interaction in a 21st century multiplayer game that's had millions of pounds pumped into it looks like.
For the second half of my rampage I stopped bothering to talk and just killed. It takes six hits - a couple of seconds - from dual large pulse lasers to take a noob Sidewinder's shields down. It then takes two rams from behind to pop them like a rotten tomato, appropriate enough as the fine for murder is the same as the profit from hauling a few tons of vegetables. The first time, I hated myself. It got easier. Much easier.
The single time I died was to an outpost's turrets, when I decided to attack someone within the no-fire zone as they were landing. This had the side-effect of wiping my bounty. The cost of rebuy was a little over 500k. I'd earned nearly that much that from "accidentally" taking out players and NPCs with bounties during that time. Net loss to me for this psycho rampage: pretty much zero. Net loss to others: potentially hours of play wiped out on a stranger's whim, multiplied by 35, in just a couple of casual sessions. Lasting reputation effect to me: zero.
The system, in the heart of some cardboard cut-out Power's space, did almost nothing to stop me. About once every 20 minutes I'd be interdicted by system security. Usually it was a single Eagle or Viper. Hilariously, it was once a single Harmless unshielded Eagle. That's right folks: the most advanced civilisation in the galaxy, with a population of trillions that live in giant cubes built of metal and exotic matter occuping many cubic kilometres, is sending completely inexperienced lone rookies in ships with the efficacy of a busted tricyle to intercept an Expert criminal tooling about in the most powerful fighter in the game right in the heart of their territory where people who bought the game yesterday are spawned. For the first half of the session, I just killed the fuzz within seconds. For the second half, I didn't even bother to stop and simply supercruised away. The FSD cooldown time for submitting to system security interdiction is usually a pitiful 15 seconds or so, not even enough time for them to scan you, let alone open fire. Police interdiction is as much of a barrier to griefing as a damp cardboard box is to a falling grand piano.
Eravate also provides ample facilities for psychopaths, despite its location in the heart of civilisation. It has a number of outputs with repair and re-arming facilities. None of them are policed. You can land, repair, and then harrass its customers just a minute's sub-FTL flight away, completely unopposed. The government literally helps wanted criminals create a toxic environment.
So I felt strong feelings for the first time ever in this game world. I now know what it's like to revel in other people's misery. I accepted the game system at face value and all it actively encourages. I experienced contempt, existential misery and a pathetic kind of glee.
For the first and last time, I "blazed my own path". It was the path of a idiot, and it was the only way to finally get my money's worth.
Happy flying.
I went psycho. Here's why.
I backed this game at Premium Beta. I spent the first six-seven months of ED playing a few hours a week, grinding my way up as a trader/courier. I flirted with combat but Beta and early release experiences of combat in a Sidewinder or Eagle were not at all rewarding to me when you could be instagibbed by a kamikaze Condor or any other player at any moment, wiping out all your progress in that session, although that's since been fixed. Trading was how I played Elite 1984, so that was my mindset here.
When I finally got into a Type 6, I had already nearly lost my mind. Hauling 100 tons of identikits here and there in an incredibly slow progression across a massive gap in ship values towards more of the same. Trading consists of looking at spreadsheets and then spending 95% of your time lining up dots with crosshairs. Once in a blue moon, you're interdicted and can almost instantly escape. Everything looks the same everywhere you go. The "living, breathing universe" for a trader has the uncaring sterility of an accountancy conference. But I kept plugging joylessly away, because everything I read on these forums indicated that my lack of fulfilment was, obviously, all my own fault. The Emperor's New Game. Maybe everything will change, I thought, once I've progressed beyond some line in the sand or other.
But during that time, they'd introduced the Vulture and I failed to notice. So about a month ago I suddenly realised I could have had the best fighter in the game for some time. I picked one up and kitted it out to roughly B grade. Went to a combat zone. Immediately earned more in a week (maybe 8 hours of play) than I did in the previous eight months, tripling my net assets, not dying once. Bumped the Vulture up to mostly A grade (completely unoptimised, just whatever I felt like squashing in) and ...
... that was it. Game over.
The CZs and RESs are fun for a few hours. But the opponents are exactly the same with exactly the same tactics and outfitting everywhere across thousands of light years of space. Every Cobra drops pointless mines. Every Python sprays shrapnel. Every Asp has lumbering fixed railguns. It takes you minutes to develop a strategy against each opponent and then you've understood all there is to know about NPC combat, forever, in every other CZ and RES. It's as though you were playing a hack/slash RPG where every procedural dungeon has the exact same 10 mobs in the exact same quantities.
The Vulture is the best fighter class ship in the game but it costs less than an Asp, the first large ship, so it's effectively placed right at the beginning of "mid-game". With just two heavy pulse lasers and default shields, you are invincible, able to take out any other NPC ship individually, even large-class Elite ships worth a hundred times as much hardware-wise, and almost all of the NPC wings that spawn as well. The only way to lose is to overwhelming numbers of high-level NPCs or to other players, and by "lose" I mean "boost away and then come straight back". I'm not even a very good pilot. It becomes incredibly boring with surprising rapidity. I haven't died against an NPC opponent since I left my Hauler.
There was literally nothing else left to do. "Blaze your own path", they said. "Try other things out." I tried Powerplay - exactly the same gameplay and missions without any tangible reward other than some kind of invisible "narrative" - it sucks harder than a celestial ball of vacuum cleaners so massive it collapsed into a singularity. I tried "exploring" - seriously, I would rather play Minesweeper than waste my leisure time that way. I've repeated every mission type many times. I've done many months of trading and it's just grind to me now.
Everything is just grind. Half of the grind is naked, exposed to view: the other half is barely hidden under a tissue of metagaming. Kill ten rats. Tell Bob I love him. I need a fish, go and buy one for me in the shop down the road. Go to another place and then come back and tell me you've been there. Rinse and repeat like a zombie's laundromat.
Perhaps I lack imagination (patent pending).
The only thing I hadn't tried was aggravated PvP. So I went psycho, in a final attempt to experience any kind of emotion at all.
I went to Eravate, noob town. My mission was to kill as many other players as possible. I racked up about 200k of bounty in about four hours of play, all from deaths and attacks. That's around 35 new players' progress stamped on.
And it was so easy. I literally laughed out loud at how easy it was.
Let me put this in context: I don't play FPSs or any game with a contemporary military theme. I hate stuff like Team Fortress. I prefer co-op games of Starcraft and Homeworld against AI opponents than other humans. The PVP game I have most experience of is chess and that's after 33 years experience of video-gaming. This is the only time I have ever done anything you might term "griefing".
I did set myself some rules, which isn't very psycho but hey, I'm new to this. Killing day one noobs in Sidewinders was completely allowed but only if there were no other more advanced players around. Unfortunately, 90% of the time space was filled with Sidewinders and the occasional Hauler or Adder. I did look in other nearby systems, where you might hope for more experienced players, but it's all just tumbleweed now. Before the rampage I was about 120 light years away. That's a 15 minute trip and not even the fringes of inhabited space, but I hadn't seen other players on the scanner for a couple of week.
Only two other commanders gave me a run for my money: someone in a Clipper who simply drove backwards and pretended to be a giant turret, and someone in a shieldless Diamondback Explorer who had some very interesting heat management/anti-sensor tactics that surprised me (but who I'd still have killed if I weren't randomly out of SCBs). Both valid tactics but even then neither of them were able to take me out. Running away is so easy, even in a ship not noted for its speed.
For the first half of my rampage, I "advertised" my presence in the system as a "psycho". I warned players I was coming after them by crooning their names and giggling. I did pseudo-Gollum impressions. I stopped in the middle of fights to type out Wham! and Kajagoogoo lyrics.
Hardly any victims spoke. The sum total of utterances from all of the other commanders I met and killed over four hours was two: "" and "stop". That's what the social interaction in a 21st century multiplayer game that's had millions of pounds pumped into it looks like.
For the second half of my rampage I stopped bothering to talk and just killed. It takes six hits - a couple of seconds - from dual large pulse lasers to take a noob Sidewinder's shields down. It then takes two rams from behind to pop them like a rotten tomato, appropriate enough as the fine for murder is the same as the profit from hauling a few tons of vegetables. The first time, I hated myself. It got easier. Much easier.
The single time I died was to an outpost's turrets, when I decided to attack someone within the no-fire zone as they were landing. This had the side-effect of wiping my bounty. The cost of rebuy was a little over 500k. I'd earned nearly that much that from "accidentally" taking out players and NPCs with bounties during that time. Net loss to me for this psycho rampage: pretty much zero. Net loss to others: potentially hours of play wiped out on a stranger's whim, multiplied by 35, in just a couple of casual sessions. Lasting reputation effect to me: zero.
The system, in the heart of some cardboard cut-out Power's space, did almost nothing to stop me. About once every 20 minutes I'd be interdicted by system security. Usually it was a single Eagle or Viper. Hilariously, it was once a single Harmless unshielded Eagle. That's right folks: the most advanced civilisation in the galaxy, with a population of trillions that live in giant cubes built of metal and exotic matter occuping many cubic kilometres, is sending completely inexperienced lone rookies in ships with the efficacy of a busted tricyle to intercept an Expert criminal tooling about in the most powerful fighter in the game right in the heart of their territory where people who bought the game yesterday are spawned. For the first half of the session, I just killed the fuzz within seconds. For the second half, I didn't even bother to stop and simply supercruised away. The FSD cooldown time for submitting to system security interdiction is usually a pitiful 15 seconds or so, not even enough time for them to scan you, let alone open fire. Police interdiction is as much of a barrier to griefing as a damp cardboard box is to a falling grand piano.
Eravate also provides ample facilities for psychopaths, despite its location in the heart of civilisation. It has a number of outputs with repair and re-arming facilities. None of them are policed. You can land, repair, and then harrass its customers just a minute's sub-FTL flight away, completely unopposed. The government literally helps wanted criminals create a toxic environment.
So I felt strong feelings for the first time ever in this game world. I now know what it's like to revel in other people's misery. I accepted the game system at face value and all it actively encourages. I experienced contempt, existential misery and a pathetic kind of glee.
For the first and last time, I "blazed my own path". It was the path of a idiot, and it was the only way to finally get my money's worth.
Happy flying.
