Maybe that's to counter the some of the old racial descriptions including the ones that used (maybe still is?) to be part of the character creation. As day one new player your don't know anything about eve lore except the descriptions given about the four empires and for many that's as far as their knowledge will ever extend. Based on the way the four empire have historicly been portraied at character creation, if asked 'who are the bad guys' more new players would probably say the Caldari followed by the Amarr. If asked 'who are the good guys' they'd probably pick Gallente followed by the Minmatar.
While none of the empires are really good or bad guys, if you were to read all the lore and rate rate them 'bad to good' using a metric of who used violence and coersion to force themselves on others you'd have a strong case for rating the empires as follows: Gallente Federation -> Amarr Empire -> Minmatar Republic -> Caldari State.
I suspect a lot of Gallente RPers picked the Gallente because the character creation told them the Gallente were the good guys and that the Caldari were bad guys. Basiclly CCP trolled them. Ha.
Anyway, maybe it's to make up for telling people the Caldari are space Nazi in the character creation?
You really would have rated them that way ? To me the first time I entered the game the Amarr directly screamed bad guys over at me. The Caldari just looked like some heavy militaristic douches with ultra patriots leanings. It reminded me a bit of Einlein kind of space empire. But the guys outright described as having enslaved a whole race, which was one of the 4 major ones ? It was a no brainer to me, like to a lot of people.
No argument over why gallente are always picked up as the good guys. They are our western values twisted to very darker places, but the dark places are not apparent at first glance. However I know that a huge lot of people tended to pick up the Minmatar because they were actually fitting more the proactive hero, rebelling stance with a lot of very honourable values, like fighting for their kin and freedom, etc. They looked genuinely good to me at first. A lot of people actually used to spit heavily at the gallente because they reminded them so much of the RL shit around democracies, economic crysis, and the likes. Funny enough, that outburst of outright hostily against the gallente coincided exactly in my eve experience when the subprimes hit the US, and then when it was all about the 1% vs 99%, police dudes gasing people in the face and whatnot. Now - what a surprise - it's gone.
Now then, after a lot of lore digging and years of experience in Eve, I can safely say that the Amarr and Minmatar are the most alien and certainly the ones who hold "universal" distate for some of their values or actions. The Amarr with their reclaiming, genocides, slavery. The Minmatar with their blinded hatred, voluval mutilations and barbaric practices, their outright terrorism and blood thirst. That's their darkest sides, and it's not even about political opinions anymore here (coming to that later).
Now for the Fed, the children labour and slavery allusions, and depraved things, could also enter that kind of considerations. But for the Caldari ? It's mostly a matter of politics. I just can't find a reasonable side of them that we as players would all agree to find absolutely abject. They are the most advanced technologically. They have space honour (for what it's worth), the sense of sacrifice, the sense of duty. Their megacorps sure look gloomy, but to some political opinions that could seem acceptable. They hate slavery (even if in my opinion they practice it, but that's it, my political OOC opinion). Where the hell are the dark, dark sides of the Caldari ? Tibus Heth ? Space nazis ? Perhaps. Not convinced.
Maybe i'm forgetting something crucial.
They are said to have the best or second best standard of living average in New Eden (which I don't dispute), and that most of their employees live good and well off lives. Which I call utter bullshit. We are speaking about a corporate society where the megacorp is your overlord. Do you seriously see a ruthless megacorp somehow cutting on their benefits to feed their salaries fat ? Do you see a megacorp actually setting up a minimal wage because, well, they feel like dealing into social welfare and politics ?
As a Libertarian I vehimently disagree with this entire sentiment but I'll think I'll leave it at. I feel that a persons opinion on real life politics is extremely relevant to a discussion on the Caldari because it effects their perception of them. If it wasn't, then we would not run into this topic so frequently when discussing them.
However, while the mods here freely allow people to promote Liberal ideas without any comments on 'discussing RL politics'- when someone brings up a conservative or Libertarian idea the thought police quickly censor them. I'm sure they are on their way now.
Actually, I was expecting that exact answer... I also can see why megas could offer advantages to their employees (who are definitely a whole thing above mere employees considering caldari society). But when you see that as a libertarian ideal, I see that them as corporate tools.
But that's the whole thing heh ? CCP probably thought this was enough to paint them in a grimdark light, since it refers a lot to the Shadowrun trop of ebil corporations. But they introduced a lot of things that actually make it somehow vanish, with no poor class or plebs (the thing I find utterly absurd, that can't work in a capitalistic world), happy dutiful industrious citizens... They are not even imperialistic like the Amarr or the Gallente.
That's the whole thing : the way you can see the Caldari is mostly up to your political RL affinities. And well yes, I am on the exact opposite on the political spectrum RL : authoritarian social democrat. Which explains things.
