Alphas and Perspectives: The Cautionary Tale of Art Hornbie

Way back in June of 2014 I wrote about Art Hornbie's blog and his culture shock at coming into EVE and finding things were not as he expected:

At first my reactions to these angry posts was the usual "get friends and do things", or to simply ignore them as the ravings of a bitter new player without the patience to work towards a goal. But over time as I continued to read his blog posts and consider them with an open mind, I realized that the issue is not his patience or ability to adapt, its the difference of a vastly different perspective on what Eve could be.
My Perspective
My perspective, and the one shared by the vast majority of the playerbase I suspect, is to view EVE's storyline and a lore as merely a backdrop to the actions and machinations of the player constructed entities, be they high sec manufacturers or null sec coalitions. I've often said that in EVE the players are the end game content and that roleplaying in EVE doesn't exist because players live the roles and don't need to play-act them.
On the other side, we have Art Hornbie and I'm going to try and paint what I think his perspective is. Imagine watching a show you love for years and getting a chance to visit the set. You walk down the street and decide to walk into a store and discover that inside the door the building is empty. Not just unfurnished, but a shell representing a store and not really a business. And the next house is also fake, like those ghost towns they used to build for nuclear tests. In fact, every building is a placeholder for a real business or home or utility but on the inside they are merely facades, painted to look the real thing but are not.
If you approach EVE as a living and vibrant sci-fi operatic universe filled with millions of souls moving in cohesion or conflict, and the players are mere actors in this milieu, then you are going to be sorely shocked to discover its all a two dimensional backdrop to the players that occasionally gets a new coat of paint or picture but is static and unresponsive the rest of the time. Don't bother looking for a man behind the curtain, the curtain hides only a brick wall.
This disappointment is further compounded by a game that continually gives more power to the players, which if you are a "players are the endgame" proponent is a good thing, but can be frustrating for a newer player who sees only the resources fought over and gobbled up by the string and/or numerous, leaving scraps (if anything) to the casual newer players.
And from that perspective, I can see why Art Hornbie writes what he does. I don't know if I agree with it and I definitely thinking he's tilting at windmills, so I'm patiently waiting for the "I'm Quitting" post albeit with a bit of sadness. Its possible the game Art expected and wants might have been a fun game if the technology could be built to allow it.
But its not EVE.

I was correct and Art Hornbie left EVE for Elite Dangerous a few short months later:

Well, after reading the CSM minutes, I plunked down my money for Elite:Dangerous. E:D's idea of billions of stars to precariously explore and frolic in appeals to me.
I've written before about how much fun it is to build things from scratch in Eve. Go out get the blueprints, harvesting the materials, assembling all the pieces and building a thing-a ma-jig. It's all fun until you realize that raw moon resources are all spoken for. Monopoly of content by those who have gone before stopped we newer players, me and my corp mates, dead in our tracks. And I've written about that ... extensively.
So the wide open opportunities that I presume are inherent within E:D are simply begging for me to discover and explore. A space game with actual space.
Eve doesn't have any much needed infinite-growth inhibitors so everything gets taken and monopolized by the few large constructs. In E:D, who cares! We'll just get what we need somewhere else; or, we'll simply operate on some fringe performing up to our capabilities. No more ghetto, no more content exclusion.
I'm looking forward to some real E:D space exploration of a logically laid out universe and discoverable resources. I expect I'll still Eve a bit, maybe.
Maybe I'm approaching one of those walk-away moments that I've read so much about. It's too bad, really, as the Eve Online sci-fi universe is so full and evolved. Wish it was actually part of the game.
Anyway, we all try new games from time to time. Since I'm a one-game kinda guy I'll be largely absent from Eve while I explore E:D. But I'll be checking in every once in a while to see if any content opens up for the progression of newer players.
Looking forward to the future of both games ... but more so for E:D atm as Eve has lost its way.

Consider this a cautionary tale for November and the possible incoming wave of Alpha players looking for a vibrant game they can plug into easily, or resources they can exploit alone or in small groups, and facing the same disappointment and uphill struggle Art Hornbie faced.

Perspectives

Have you ever read something that was so off-the-wall wrong in your current worldview that you just have to stop and wonder what it is that they are smoking?

But you keep reading and reading and over the following weeks or months you finally hit on what it is that makes their worldview so different than yours when looking at the same world. Its all a matter of perspectives.

With that introduction I want to point you at the blog of Art Hornbie.

Its easy to think reading Art's posts that he does not like EVE, the current majority of the playerbase, the people on the Council of Stellar Management, or the developers at CCP. For a quick sampling:


Wutz Up Wit Infinite Growth?

[...]
It irks me no end that all of the POCOs I use are owned by pirates; well-connected, low-standing vets who exploit the fact that they rule, and Empire is essentially non-existent. Why would a Gallente citizen be forced to pay THEM taxes? What are they even doing in Empire space? If only the NPC Empire leaders behaved as real people would.
Speaking of disenfranchisement, the elimination of "standings" for POCOs sticks in my craw. CCP's harmonization of Eve toward null is a mistake. POCOs should at least have some standings restrictions placed on them to allay infinite expansion by corporations.
[...]

Rant rehash: What is the Choice?

[...]
I learn that the game is evolving toward permanent ship balancing. New ships always being introduced and new modules always coming along to make ships interact in different ways. Very sandboxy. Hollow, dry; not all that interesting. I hear WOW has motorcycles -- see, not interesting and not very intellectual.
I learn that Eve's superb cluster-faction storyline base is becoming ever more irrelevant as faction influence is deliberately whittled away for space-starved vets. It never really got past its initial, well-developed Empire factions and its tentatively developed cluster factions. Empire has CONCORD, but players never got to join Mordu's Mercenaries or the Guristas which, in theory have their own CONCORD equivalent -- after all, a Gurista would be just as safe in primary Gurista systems as a Gallentian is safe in Gallente systems.
So safety is defined in terms of just Empire. ISK is measured in distance from Empire. And resources are distributed in some perverse inverse relation to player inertia. It all spirals out of control as player groups clamor to skew the game in their favor. The loudest player groups being the most detrimental to the game as they cause the greatest skew.
Now CCP, clever beast that it is, has done an end-run around the vociferous vets. All by necessity, of course, as the vets would destroy Eve Online as certainly as fishermen would take the last fish from the sea. Fearful to stabilize Eve's death spiral, CCP begins instead the development of Valkyrieand Legion, flying and walking shooters, in an effort to add novelty to the dry, hollow game play created to placate the vociferous vets.
[...]

Rant Rehash: POCO Tax in Kind

This whole POCO thing just pisses me off. The vet bias inherent in it sticks in my craw. The lack of standing required for them also sticks in my craw. My craw is getting jammed full of hollow, dry, frustrating sand!
I've moved on from the lack of "standing." Moving away from standing as a driving mechanic is the game's death knell. But I've moved on. Nothing for it. Not sayin no more.
So here we are, staring at a POCO. It is owned by a Goon bigwig who lives in a tight little all-alt (presumably) 5-person corp. The POCO tax rate is abnormally high. It's on a rare planet in this area.

We have been launching material off of the planet, by-passing the POCO. It is time consuming, bothersome, and expensive to do this. The POCO is essentially abandoned yet still collecting taxes. It is just one of the things that just sucks the life out of doing PI. And each time I'm there I get more and more aggravated.
[...]

At first my reactions to these angry posts was the usual "get friends and do things", or to simply ignore them as the ravings of a bitter new player without the patience to work towards a goal. But over time as I continued to read his blog posts and consider them with an open mind, I realized that the issue is not his patience or ability to adapt, its the difference of a vastly different perspective on what Eve could be.

My Perspective

My perspective, and the one shared by the vast majority of the playerbase I suspect, is to view EVE's storyline and a lore as merely a backdrop to the actions and machinations of the player constructed entities, be they high sec manufacturers or null sec coalitions. I've often said that in EVE the players are the end game content and that roleplaying in EVE doesn't exist because players live the roles and don't need to play-act them.

On the other side, we have Art Hornbie and I'm going to try and paint what I think his perspective is. Imagine watching a show you love for years and getting a chance to visit the set. You walk down the street and decide to walk into a store and discover that inside the door the building is empty. Not just unfurnished, but a shell representing a store and not really a business. And the next house is also fake, like those ghost towns they used to build for nuclear tests. In fact, every building is a placeholder for a real business or home or utility but on the inside they are merely facades, painted to look the real thing but are not.

If you approach EVE as a living and vibrant sci-fi operatic universe filled with millions of souls moving in cohesion or conflict, and the players are mere actors in this milieu, then you are going to be sorely shocked to discover its all a two dimensional backdrop to the players that occasionally gets a new coat of paint or picture but is static and unresponsive the rest of the time. Don't bother looking for a man behind the curtain, the curtain hides only a brick wall.

This disappointment is further compounded by a game that continually gives more power to the players, which if you are a "players are the endgame" proponent is a good thing, but can be frustrating for a newer player who sees only the resources fought over and gobbled up by the string and/or numerous, leaving scraps (if anything) to the casual newer players.

And from that perspective, I can see why Art Hornbie writes what he does. I don't know if I agree with it and I definitely thinking he's tilting at windmills, so I'm patiently waiting for the "I'm Quitting" post albeit with a bit of sadness. Its possible the game Art expected and wants might have been a fun game if the technology could be built to allow it.

But its not EVE.