*post*
U mad, brah? There are some seriously dangerous levels of bitter coming from you whenever this topic comes up. What gives?
The attitude and perception (coming from several people, not just you) that people go pirate (or join Veto, as is the usual expression of the issue) because their RP is dead or whatever is really starting to get old and tiresome.
There are a lot of people in Veto. The majority of them do not RP outside of, arguably, shooting people in the face. There are a few who used to RP, yes, but those are not quite as numerous as people seem to think. In fact, I went through the roster the other day, and of the people on there, I only counted about 27 unique players (yes, I ignored alts) who I've ever seen RPing, or have heard of doing so in the past. Even assuming each of those players has an alt in the corp, that's still only 50 characters in a 170-strong corp.
Why are people making this ridiculous assumption that the vast majority RPers who are tired of "national" RP end up in Veto or some other pirate group as an "RP retirement home" as Ember put it? Why do some people seem to think it's impossible or inexcusable for someone to value the gameplay from their $15/month over the RP? Why do people assume that the thought process is "omg my RP is dead wah wah oh I know how to fix it, I'll go pirate and join Veto or some other outlaw faction/corp" instead of the more logical "okay, I'm bored with EVE, what can I change to make it worth my subscription fee"?
Isn't it possible that the players made the decision, not caring about the RP aspect of things? RP isn't all there is to the game, people. If you're getting fuck-all out of your $15/month for a given style of gameplay, it's your right to try something new ingame to see if you can get your money's worth, regardless of RP. While I'm someone who prefers to have an IC reason to do something ingame (like, for example, change corporations) rather than not, if the gameplay I'm getting where I am is making the game a waste of my time and money, I'm not necessarily going to just wait around for an RP reason to present itself.
Enjoyment of the game comes first, and RP after that. If joining a new corp, or trying something new, like piracy, makes the game more enjoyable for you, or makes it more worth the money spent on the subscription fee, that's your business, and not a single person but yourself has any right to complain about that decision.
I will try to keep this civil, despite your tasteful start to the part of your post directed at me.
First of all, this 'issue' is not about Veto in particular or any other pirate out-fit at all, it's about, ultimately, balance and what I perceive as a lack of originality this lack of balance brings.
There are two major 'game-styles' in EVE currently that are broken; FW and piracy/vigilantism. The problem here is that the latter part of the P/V side hardly exist and poorly at that. Anyone of us who have tried to keep it to the straight an narrow as vigilantes know that to have any level of effectiveness you eventually end up little more than a slightly more discriminating pirate yourself, as far as targets are concerned.
Ergo, due to this besides the random trips by random corps/alliances pirates can hardly be opposed or 'stopped' as such, and several other factors maintain the image for many that piracy is 'where it's at'.
That's not really a terribly bad thing; the image that is, as more pirates = more potential enemies for everyone else.
But in the realms of RP, most RP'ers like to have stories behind our toons. We try to play to live the lives of our toons not just being yourself in a game where your toon represents you. Ergo, where a non-RP'er might go, ' time to try piracy instead of what I'm doing' RP'ers end up with 'why would my toon go pirate, how do I work this out?'
Enter my problem; the ever-available 'grand betrayal' and the obvious corps of choice; Veto and/or (insert decent pirate corp of choice here).
Veto is a good place to be, because it's lots of nice folks doing their thing with a RP/RP-lite back-drop. It makes it all more interesting to join as you can continue to do your RP in a corp that, at the very least, respect it. Thus it seems Veto and other RP-friendly pirate corps seem the good options.
And I would not have had a problem with any of this, if only there were good options to going pirate at all, and possibly the game-fun to go with this. But there are no good alternatives for vigilantism or even, dare I say it... bounty hunting.
Again, to clarify; it don't matter to me at all how many in VETO or any other pirate corp RP or not; their choice to join and so on etc.
What matters to me is that piracy has no good 'opponent' other than perhaps, other pirates, and many RP'ers who wish to go pirate and still RP thus ends up in predictably few places, with some exceptions. I wish there were a realistic option to piracy in this regard, so as to get a more even playing-field, in a way, and thus (hopefully) more action and fun for all participants.
Anyhow, this was a serious derail. If your not satisfied with my answer or I've done a poor job explaining, let me know. Though we will likely end in a new topic at this rate.