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[Jade Constantine]

It’s a difficult kind of topic to address really without slipping into inadvertent evocation of the monocultural all holy church of the killboard. I mean, its ironic really that I’m seen as one of the patron saints of “back it up in space” and that leads to talk of all badassary that doesn’t involve killboard stats being pretty bogus. To a point its true of course. You get a big talking IGS pirate tough guy going on about how he’s wanted in two dozen systems etc and the genuine hard asses will rightly roll their eyes and shrug maybe. But there is a danger in adopting a single measure (pvp killboard totals) to this stuff because like everything in eve killboard stats are (small e) exploitable.

I’m sure you and I have both come across big-alliance pilots whose exposure to the noble arts of space combat consists of clicking F1-F8 when the fc tells him too and has 10010101010 touch participations on enemy ships in fleet ops. Bravo tbh, but should we be frightened of or respectful of that guy when he arrives in lowsec on his own or posts up on IGS everyone should bow down and worship him because the stats show he’s 1000x more effective in combat than anyone else in the thread?

I don’t think so obviously, but then I am an individualist anarchist so don’t take my word as gospel.

I do also take the point people raise that shooting thousands of npcs does make them pretty bad-ass in RP terms from their own perspective. Maybe the way to look at it is the difference between regular soldiers (fighting nationalist wars) and mercs and assassins (working for pay) or criminals (working for bank). I guess mercenaries and professional assassins in the real world probably look down on the skill set of squaddies in some way since they would invest the best in their kit and practise their murdering skills to extreme. Perhaps that’s a way to look at it in Eve?  Maybe.

My perspective of the Mito campaign is that we took on a self-described Nationalist powerhouse to show them that Caldari state authority didn’t mean anything in the capsuleer world and that the planetside imperialists had better stay there.

And while sure, we certainly did demonstrate that the Caldari Nationalists were pretty clueless in some forms of combat the bigger takeaway for me was the illustration of the flawed nature of “Wassenar Doctrine”" which at that time was pretty common in the RP community. (Literally if you are attacked by people you are not interested in fighting you ignore them till they go away and keep posting on the forums like nothing has happened.) This was the Sandboxista vs Dynamacist schism back in the day that led to such furious flamewars back on Chatsubo and *everyone* in the RP community got involved in that debate believe me!

But this was the cause of the ultimate collapse of Kimotoro Directive as much as anything we actually did. I still believe if the Kimotoro leadership had pumped out prefit t1 ships for its membership to swarm us every night they would have learned a lot and managed to run us out of isk with a bunch of embarrassing losses. It was the organizational command “not to fight” and to make “hiding” a virtue that destroyed that alliance. SF at the time was not that powerful and we didn't have unlimited funds or manpower. We could have lost that war.

[mod]Please avoid casting aspersions on other players, and avoid making broad assumptions about how other players and organizations were or are run.[/mod]

But hey, on general bad-assery. I’ve never really tried to trade on Jade’s combat stats. Partly for the reason its apples and oranges trying to compare an NRDS pilot with strict rules of engagement with NBSI pilots who shoot anything. As Jade I’ve shot “enough” valid targets so nobody is going to get anywhere with the suggestion she doesn’t know spaceship combat – and most know enough to be wary about getting into fights with her (pirates in particular hate the fact that Jade prowling means there are cyno’s traps, bait, and sudden death in the ether more often than not – even when it is *just a drake*)

But if we got into a cock-measuring contest on who has killed the most capsuleer ships on the IGS most tin-pot NBSI pirates will be more impressive on raw numbers because killing for them is industrial process often without much more passion than the lev4 mission-runners grinding 1000x gurrista battleships a day.

So what I consider bad-assery from Jade’s perspective is ideological integrity and sticking to one’s beliefs and honouring the cause. It’s about having principles and things one cares enough to fight for. Not surrendering principles because they are difficult – not sliding to a nauseatingly common morass of humdrum banal status quo. Daring to be different and stand up for a principle you will commit your passion to.

Other people see it differently, there are those that look at the fact that 99.9% of the nullsec server is NBSI nihilist / napfest is a slap in the face for anyone believing in NRDS principles and by definition we’ve “lost the game” because nobody has been persuaded. Thats the thinking of the sheep really.

[mod]Please avoid insulting other players (sheep, etc) - and if that wasn't your intention, please feel free to repost your points with clarification.[/mod]

Whereas I tend to see the 0.1% who do have the courage to be different are the heroes of Eve, the genuine “bad-asses” who don’t need the backup of 1000s of player mooks in Nullsec alliances and are prepared to stand tall on their ideals and principles and don’t turn their coats the moment things get difficult.

Whats the difference between Hero’s and Bad-asses?
You kinda care what happens to a hero’s narrative whereas mass produced bad-asses are common as tin-pot tyrants and unflattering haircuts.

Still, there is a grain of a point here with the op post. People should try to do in space what they claim they stand for in their bio’s and IGS posts. But on the other hand, people should be more respectful of the attempt to do something than they currently are.

Trying and failing is usually far more impressive than lowering your sights and following the herd to ensure you’ll never fail at anything.

Perhaps ask yourself next time you mock somebody on the IGS (or other forum) for a failfit or embarrassing fiasco or failed event or hilarious reversal. What is the motive for the desparagement you cast? Are you really comfortable with attacking the motivation to try these things? Do you want an Eve where everyone is too frightened by potential humiliation and mockery to try something new?

Or should we applaud those who dare to take risks and end up flat on their faces most of the time because one day those are the guys we'll be telling stories about when Eve online has othewise passed into legend and memory.

[Hamish Grayson]

It was the organizational command “not to fight” and to make “hiding” a virtue that destroyed that alliance. SF at the time was not that powerful and we didn't have unlimited funds or manpower. We could have lost that war.

I completely agree with this concept.  Take for example the last time Star Fraction declared war on CAIN...shortly before or after we took Intaki wasn't it?   If instead of ordering their pilots to tuck their tail between their legs and flee as far and as fast as they could...the above tactic might have brought Star Fraction's efficency into the double digits.

[mod]Please don't respond to flame bait.[/mod]

[Jade Constantine]

It was the organizational command “not to fight” and to make “hiding” a virtue that destroyed that alliance. SF at the time was not that powerful and we didn't have unlimited funds or manpower. We could have lost that war.

I completely agree with this concept.  Take for example the last time Star Fraction declared war on CAIN...shortly before or after we took Intaki wasn't it?   If instead of ordering their pilots to tuck their tail between their legs and flee as far and as fast as they could...the above tactic might have brought Star Fraction's efficency into the double digits.

Was that when we were wardeccing most of the active corps in the Caldari Militia in and around Tama? I think we considered Militia the campaign there and CAIN were just one minor element of that campaign. As you can see from the campaign results we pretty much enjoyed that one to the tune of 29.5b isk.

http://www.jericho-fraction.net/killboard/?a=cc_detail&ctr_id=17

Granted we didn't pursue CAIN to Intaki (because our stated goal was to create chaos in TAMA/NOUR) but the declaration had the impact of ensuring you guys didn't stand with your comrades so was pretty much mission accomplished from our perspective.

[lallara zhuul]

For me the keywords in the issue are 'forums', 'IGS', 'Kill-Boards' and 'background'.

All of them only serve the player, not the character.

You can blablabla about IGS being integral part of your characters RP, but you still post there just because you, as a player, enjoy the hell out of it. So the motivation behind posting on IGS is OOC, not IC.
Same goes any public venue where you are thumping your chest in one way or another.
As soon as you start doing something that gives you more enjoyment because you have an audience, you are an attention whore.
It is completely and utterly normal, and everyone is an attention whore.
Everyone wants to be loved, everyone wants to be told that they are good enough, everyone wants to be acknowledged.

But...

To me, his whole thread seems to be about not liking people who get attention for things that you do not get attention for, or others getting 'undeserved' attention.

In EVE, to me, the biggest bad asses were the ones that were like farts.
Quiet and deadly.

/brekkiehunts

[mod]Please avoid making assumptions about why other players do what they do - particularly negative ones.[/mod]

[Hamish Grayson]

declaration had the impact of ensuring you guys didn't stand with your comrades

No, CROW was with us the whole time.  Repeatedly man handling any anarchist the showed up in our AOR had no negative impacts on that relationship.  If anything it served as an excellent team building op.  A nice supplement to the anti-pirate roams we were doing at the time.   While I'm sure you came at us with everything you could manage to muster, it was nice to be able to grab a few pilots and fight somebody who didn't blob our three BC with thirty faction battleships.   Good times.   

Now that i think of it, this  was when we were deployed in Kinakka, before the move to Intaki.   You dropped the dec weeks before we redeployed to Intaki and you were not seen harassing any of the three-week-old ten man CalMil crops nearly as often after.