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[Desiderya]

Loyalist is such an interesting term. Same as 'enthusiast'. Hard to pin down, and in the end it comes down to what Leon has said: Doing something. Talking in the pub how bad things are is hardly patriotism.
The other aspect, and I think that gets often mixed up here, is cred and to some extent notoriority. And that's basically impossible to gain just by posting threadnoughts (unless you shoot for DoS levels of cred) and only by achieving things. Doesn't matter what it is. EVE is real, and there are a lot of cool things one can do or be part of. People will be measured by their successes, and it doesn't matter if one paints oneself as roleplayer and tries to write it all in without lifting a finger.
'Being loyal' is just branding your actions in a certain way.



In the case of LDIS, unless you've changed it, it was always portrayed as a Lai Dai capsuleer subsidiary. There was the Black Rise frontier to develop, the FW markets to supply (thanks to the market as it is it was more or less impossible to just sell to the friendly militia back then - ironically, today it would be easier due to station lockout). Now there's a new frontier and there can be a believable case made for a state megacorporation using 'immortal mercenaries' to try and test the waters in this juicy looking space. Think secret colonies all over - they might be able to colonize into nullsec but are forbidden by CONCORD treaties.
Now someone can come in and tell you that you're just in for the money, you're just using paper claims... Then lean back, look at the history of your actions, adjust your aviators (optional) and tell him: "Grow up, son.", because you've been there, man, and you've done things. You're not one of those hippies writing awesome stories about their planetary empire, owned and operated by that super 1 man corporation.

[purple]

I might be wrong, but I think Jade coined loyalist.  As an insult.

[Morwen Lagann]

Few things come to mind, as someone who's really more or less 'outside' the Heiian-jerk.

Over the now 6 years I've been playing EVE, 5 and a half of those with Morwen and RPing, I would say I've probably seen/heard more over the years about I-RED than I have about 4TH (and by extension, LDIS, CAIN, etc.), both ingame and out of game.

I'm left wondering if the reason I-RED catches a lot of flak is due to its apparent higher visibility than its Providence-bound counterpart. Looking at the two alliances side by side without any extensive knowledge of internal workings, here's what I see:
- Two alliances whose primary residence is nullsec. One is holding 'psuedo-sov' in NPC null, the other actually holds a bit of sov in Providence.
- Two alliances whose primary loyalty (beyond each other) in some way points to the Caldari State, even if the relevant megacorps are different.
- Two alliances whose members participate in a variety of activities, including PVE, PVP and industry.
- Two alliances, neither of whom is presently involved in FW, even if they have or have had interests or holdings inside the warzone.

The difference that is most apparent to me, as stated above, is that while I-RED takes a visibly active stance with other people, 4TH is dead fucking quiet in comparison, as far as making 'noise' publicly goes. I don't see anything being posted - whether it's quarterly reports, AARs, press releases, whatever - I just hear a whole lot of silence. If 4TH or its subgroups were posting about things they were doing, or getting actively involved outside of their little (maybe not so little, I don't keep tabs on sovnull most of the time) corner of space, would they perhaps catch more flak from people, simply for being a more visible target?

That said, and more to the point of the main discussion topic, I would be hard-pressed to say either group is not what I would consider State loyalists, though I might prefer to go with "<insert megacorp> loyalists" instead where applicable, since that's less likely to raise hackles.

Also Kat, there are days where I feel you wouldn't know how to take a compliment if it walked up to you, got down on one knee and proposed. (Like a lot of other people, myself included, to be fair... )

[purple]

In I-RED, the leadership are RPers while the rank and file are not.   In 4th, the leadership are not RPers while a portion of the rank and file are.  Also, since the Mito Conflict CAIN's, and now 4th's, moto has always been 'Quiet Competence'

[Morwen Lagann]

But do you think that more RPers might question the "loyalist" title of 4TH if you were more easily visible like I-RED is? Or if fewer would question I-RED, if they were less so?

That's more the question I'm asking - because it seems to me like visibility has a really big impact on how assailable a group becomes for this kind of discussion.

To put it a little more wordily: I-RED as an entity is really visible to us because, as you noted, the leadership is largely made up of RPers who are active in the community. What isn't so visible from I-RED is what things it does as an entity that provide some theoretical benefit for the State. This latter quality is something arguably shared by 4TH - the difference here is that 4TH is not as visible as an entity in general to the people who might start picking nits over whether a given group should be considered loyalists or not.

Do you think that being more visible as an entity would cause people to use that lack of easily visible/tangible benefits to the State as an excuse to attack 4TH's position as a group of loyalists?

[Katrina Oniseki]

Also Kat, there are days where I feel you wouldn't know how to take a compliment if it walked up to you, got down on one knee and proposed. (Like a lot of other people, myself included, to be fair... )

True! I do have self esteem issues sometimes that pop up.

[Arista Shahni]

I LOVE YOU KAT.

You may continue the conversation.

[Katrina Oniseki]

I LOVE YOU KAT.

You may continue the conversation.

You're already married, tease. >:[

[Lyn Farel]

From my - albeit somewhat limited - experience of doing FWing on my non-RP alt, I have to say that I have no clue why so many people like it so much. It seems like a dull, stressful, and unrewarding experience (even when you win) populated almost completely by jerks. But I find Eve PvP kinda horribly designed to begin with, so that's probably why I miss the buzz.

Well, I found it still a lot better than any other form of pvp... It was pvp you could do in 5 min, without much commitment. It was appreciable.

Though yeah, pretty much what you say. Fleet overview exercises are boring, and very small scale pvp (less than 5 people in fleet), is highly frustrating. Anyway, small scale pvp is highly frustrating, it's farming 1-2 hours to pay for a handful of ships, then looking for a target for another hour, and then getting ganked by the first blob you are unfortunate to meet.

And yes, average pvp joes on eve are complete retards. The atmosphere is obnoxious. Well at least, I had the chance to play in the Amarr militia, they well still at least a little close knit at the beginning...

[orange]

But do you think that more RPers might question the "loyalist" title of 4TH if you were more easily visible like I-RED is? Or if fewer would question I-RED, if they were less so?

...

Do you think that being more visible as an entity would cause people to use that lack of easily visible/tangible benefits to the State as an excuse to attack 4TH's position as a group of loyalists?

I think 4TH's relative lack of IGS presence, and thus "RP visibility" means that there is relatively little to no drama to be gained by assailing 4TH's credibility as State loyalist.  While I was not involved in Mito, it shaped the culture of CAIN and subsequently 4TH's in many ways, to include its public relations.

For LDIS, I was very active on IGS for a while, to include LDIS financial reports (links here, needs an update) on a roughly quarterly basis.  However, after about a year or two on IGS following the release of FW, I was having conversations with the same people about the same things and could literally link threads where the same thing had been discussed.  So, I stopped putting any of my play time there.

[V. Gesakaarin]

I might be wrong, but I think Jade coined loyalist.  As an insult.

Yeah well I always thought it to be a homogenizing term in the context of Eve that denies any form subtlety.

Fortunate then I don't bother trying to be a loyalist.

[Korsavius]

I guess the real discussion here is then, "How can I be an industrialist/non-pvp'er and be recognized as a factional loyalist."

Essentially yes. While in my case I do PvP, I'm unable to with my current internet. 

Ok, so I am going to do the dangerous thing and ask a question I may not like the answer to - is Dex Nederland not considered a State loyalist (Lai Dai) because he (and his corp) is primarily industrialist?

Kor considers Dex a State loyalist and valuable kirjuun (and I do OOC as well). <3

But don't think for a second that Kor would hesitate to work some kind of underhanded magic to try and score benefits (ISK, technology, womenz, etc) for Ishukone. 

[Katrina Oniseki]

While I was not involved in Mito, it shaped the culture of CAIN and subsequently 4TH's in many ways, to include its public relations.

Assuming you're talking about that big fiasco where the big Caldari loyalist alliance was destroyed by Star Fraction et al. That may be why I-RED vets don't post, like John.

[Silas Vitalia]

From my - albeit somewhat limited - experience of doing FWing on my non-RP alt, I have to say that I have no clue why so many people like it so much. It seems like a dull, stressful, and unrewarding experience (even when you win) populated almost completely by jerks. But I find Eve PvP kinda horribly designed to begin with, so that's probably why I miss the buzz.

Well, I found it still a lot better than any other form of pvp... It was pvp you could do in 5 min, without much commitment. It was appreciable.

Though yeah, pretty much what you say. Fleet overview exercises are boring, and very small scale pvp (less than 5 people in fleet), is highly frustrating. Anyway, small scale pvp is highly frustrating, it's farming 1-2 hours to pay for a handful of ships, then looking for a target for another hour, and then getting ganked by the first blob you are unfortunate to meet.

And yes, average pvp joes on eve are complete retards. The atmosphere is obnoxious. Well at least, I had the chance to play in the Amarr militia, they well still at least a little close knit at the beginning...

OT but I'd caution against lumping FW gameplay and PVP in with a lot of the other things going on. There's derpers everywhere, but FW derpers are of a particular variety, different from null derpers or high sec derpers or lowsec derpersn.

[Pieter Tuulinen]

TBQH - When I hear about large scale null actions involving hours of massing, station camping, structure bashing and 10% TIDI clusterfucks, I get quite misty-eyed about the joys of leaping into some T1 Frig hulls and going roaming to cull the herds in local systems.

For the most part it's graft - setting up ambushes, waiting in plexes or on plex gates, landing on grid as the locals tear off in the opposite direction, venting from every orifice - but there are plenty of kills to be had (can't remember the last time we went on a one hour roam and came back blueballed) and every now and then you find an idiot in a blingy ship that makes it all worthwhile.

Short, punchy and fast engagements that let you be aggressive without destroying your wallet.

As for derpery, every time a large nullsec organisation deploys to FW lowsec because they assume it's the idiot hole, filled by people who would love to be nullbros but don't have a CNS, we start seeing BIG wreck clusters on gates and at stations.

Yes, we're niche predators, but in that niche...