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[Katrina Oniseki]

Do I sense bitterness going around here?

[Lyn Farel]

You bath into it.

[Merdaneth]

I understand all that. My question was, since people create shell corps due to the things you mentioned, why don't people make multi-person shell corps? Little expected, much like a shell corp, but still providing some RP opportunities along the way while giving a great deal of freedom to play how you wish.

What, and have a corpie within my shell corp that suddenly starts denouncing God and Empire? That starts pirating? That starts scamming fellow Amarrians? Who makes a fool of himself on the IGS?

Thanks but no thanks....

[Jace]

Meet new people? I mean, really. Way to worst-case it.

[Karmilla Strife]

I'm in my own corp because it's a huge pain in the ass to get into new ones that I like.

[Katrina Oniseki]

I am in my own one-man corp/alliance because only I can conquer Syndicate.

[Silas Vitalia]

Hi there, I've run a one-(wo)man corp several times for many years.  Sometimes it just works for your character.

There's always a balance between "time investment" on one hand and "in-game" representation on the other.

For a character that has to be in-charge of their own destinies, being under someone else's thumb is sometimes not an option.  When there was time years ago to run a large group of players and an alliance, I did those things, when there wasn't time, I stayed in a one-man corp to still be 'in charge.'   I've made sure to have Silas always be the CEO of whatever corporation she's in in the entire duration of her Eve life, sticking to those IC guns.

I took no small amount of constant ooc grief from my alliance mates being the one corporation in the alliance with a single-member.   But gotta be that way


I think as has been stated elsewhere, the difficulty for RPers is maintaining a group story with many moving parts.  With a one man corp you control the message and the actions and the 'story.'

When you add others you lose control of the IC message unless you are strict with the pvp/igs/and public image.

RPers don't seem to give a shit these days, but in the old days  Rules of Engagement were a BIG DEAL to RPers.  This was before FW, but say when an Amarr FW group gets a negative concord rating and is GCCing, that used to be cause for public ridicule and PR issues with the law abiding types.  Having a large group meant you had to be ON TOP of all your people and who they were shooting, as other RPers would track this stuff and make a stink about it (rightly so), so when group A says they are 'anti pirate' and half their members are blowing up freighters, they got called on it. 

I don't think this is as much of an issue as it used to be though.

[PracticalTechnicality]

Since just after my junior years in eve online, I have been the CEO of my own industry and trade groups.  Although nominally multi-member, these corporations have always been under my sole control, with the respected input of my peers and more recently, paid employees.  Essentially, these corporations are one member as there is only one guiding individual and no real forum for dispute or debate.  This may sound draconian, but is actually far from it, as AWEX- (for example) runs itself as a business instead of an entity for exploration of EVE content. 

Essentially, I run one man operations simply to keep the house in order.  Other members have minimal roles and any active duty is reimbursed in ISk (build calculators or whim of the CEO depending on how concrete that task is within the corp framework - building is by rote and transparent for all to see (even out of corp if requested) while finder's fees for suppliers/point of sale are negotiable).  It is understood that due to this, the characters in the corp will almost certainly be alts, as the environment is lucrative but toxic to personal development.  I strongly encourage people working the production lines to have something interesting to do on another character in EVE, using their alt as a source of funding. 

Now to the point, this is not a unique situation.  The specifics may make it so on paper, but a lot of single man or single man many alt (or apparently alt) organisations exist because cooperation in anything but the basest terms in industry is anathema to profit.  If you have a horde of people obeying every order (and being paid to do so) it is an efficient machine, but not exactly the model of game time fun.  So the groups tend to be small, foster out of corp activities and are usually born from shared need (in my case SRP for individuals no matter where they hail from and PLEX to keep accounts running). 

Simply put, the cost of trust in industrial or financial scenarios is too high to countenance shared ownership with all but the closest of friends, and so single ownership of the corp and the reality of a shell-corp that has high productivity is a current evolutionary path of least resistance enforced by the unforgiving game mechanics. 

To summarise, the following traits seem to encourage single man or sole ownership corporations:

• Ownership of the mission statement - non-existent corpies cannot disobey
• Ownership of assets - might not be single man, but other corpies exist as a willing resource
• Purchased fealty - Single owner, paid employees.  Pay discourages theft of what little resources they temporarily have access to.  Little ideological drive, so varied memberbase doesn't matter
• Casual control - As Silas said, sometimes you don't have time to be King, but being Duke of your own little slice of New Eden, even if it is just a name plaque above an office door, is pleasant.
• Tax Haven - 11% tax is basically intolerable for beginners.  Start own corp after minutes of training, accelerate the only real grind in EVE - the generation of wealth.

[Lyn Farel]

RPers don't seem to give a shit these days, but in the old days  Rules of Engagement were a BIG DEAL to RPers.  This was before FW, but say when an Amarr FW group gets a negative concord rating and is GCCing, that used to be cause for public ridicule and PR issues with the law abiding types.  Having a large group meant you had to be ON TOP of all your people and who they were shooting, as other RPers would track this stuff and make a stink about it (rightly so), so when group A says they are 'anti pirate' and half their members are blowing up freighters, they got called on it. 

I don't think this is as much of an issue as it used to be though.

I miss those days so much...

Now it's mostly "we shoot who we please" and "NRDS lolwut ?"

[Vincent Pryce]

Rules of Engagement were the tool of a more civilized era of roleplay. Before the dark times... Before the FacwarFags.

I only got to see the hayday of this and it was more interesting than what ever we have here now.

Meet new people? I mean, really. Way to worst-case it.

Hahaha... HAHAHAHA... There's really no new people. Just alts of bitter ooc grudging assholes.

You can tell the rare new people apart by their naïvete and brush of fresh wind and usually they end up pulled into years old grudgematches, and before you know it the new is sucked out by the stagnant old leeches that are the old rpers. What's left is another husk to fill with piss and vinegar.

[Jace]

Hi there, I've run a one-(wo)man corp several times for many years.  Sometimes it just works for your character.

There's always a balance between "time investment" on one hand and "in-game" representation on the other.

For a character that has to be in-charge of their own destinies, being under someone else's thumb is sometimes not an option.  When there was time years ago to run a large group of players and an alliance, I did those things, when there wasn't time, I stayed in a one-man corp to still be 'in charge.'   I've made sure to have Silas always be the CEO of whatever corporation she's in in the entire duration of her Eve life, sticking to those IC guns.

I took no small amount of constant ooc grief from my alliance mates being the one corporation in the alliance with a single-member.   But gotta be that way


I think as has been stated elsewhere, the difficulty for RPers is maintaining a group story with many moving parts.  With a one man corp you control the message and the actions and the 'story.'

When you add others you lose control of the IC message unless you are strict with the pvp/igs/and public image.

RPers don't seem to give a shit these days, but in the old days  Rules of Engagement were a BIG DEAL to RPers.  This was before FW, but say when an Amarr FW group gets a negative concord rating and is GCCing, that used to be cause for public ridicule and PR issues with the law abiding types.  Having a large group meant you had to be ON TOP of all your people and who they were shooting, as other RPers would track this stuff and make a stink about it (rightly so), so when group A says they are 'anti pirate' and half their members are blowing up freighters, they got called on it. 

I don't think this is as much of an issue as it used to be though.

I do recall my first serious roleplaying corporation I joined in Eve years ago to have unbelievably strict RoE as well as very strict IC membership qualifications. And not just two days ago, I heard people complaining in-game about that very corp and its "silly" requirements back in the day.

Hahaha... HAHAHAHA... There's really no new people. Just alts of bitter ooc grudging assholes.

You can tell the rare new people apart by their naïvete and brush of fresh wind and usually they end up pulled into years old grudgematches, and before you know it the new is sucked out by the stagnant old leeches that are the old rpers. What's left is another husk to fill with piss and vinegar.

I meant new to the person I was talking to, not new to Eve. The amusing thing about bitters is their attitudes shut them off from a huge portion of RPers, many of whom have been around a while but they never actually interact with due to their superior anger and resentment.

Since just after my junior years in eve online, I have been the CEO of my own industry and trade groups.  Although nominally multi-member, these corporations have always been under my sole control, with the respected input of my peers and more recently, paid employees.  Essentially, these corporations are one member as there is only one guiding individual and no real forum for dispute or debate.  This may sound draconian, but is actually far from it, as AWEX- (for example) runs itself as a business instead of an entity for exploration of EVE content. 

Essentially, I run one man operations simply to keep the house in order.  Other members have minimal roles and any active duty is reimbursed in ISk (build calculators or whim of the CEO depending on how concrete that task is within the corp framework - building is by rote and transparent for all to see (even out of corp if requested) while finder's fees for suppliers/point of sale are negotiable).  It is understood that due to this, the characters in the corp will almost certainly be alts, as the environment is lucrative but toxic to personal development.  I strongly encourage people working the production lines to have something interesting to do on another character in EVE, using their alt as a source of funding. 

Now to the point, this is not a unique situation.  The specifics may make it so on paper, but a lot of single man or single man many alt (or apparently alt) organisations exist because cooperation in anything but the basest terms in industry is anathema to profit.  If you have a horde of people obeying every order (and being paid to do so) it is an efficient machine, but not exactly the model of game time fun.  So the groups tend to be small, foster out of corp activities and are usually born from shared need (in my case SRP for individuals no matter where they hail from and PLEX to keep accounts running). 

Simply put, the cost of trust in industrial or financial scenarios is too high to countenance shared ownership with all but the closest of friends, and so single ownership of the corp and the reality of a shell-corp that has high productivity is a current evolutionary path of least resistance enforced by the unforgiving game mechanics. 

To summarise, the following traits seem to encourage single man or sole ownership corporations:

• Ownership of the mission statement - non-existent corpies cannot disobey
• Ownership of assets - might not be single man, but other corpies exist as a willing resource
• Purchased fealty - Single owner, paid employees.  Pay discourages theft of what little resources they temporarily have access to.  Little ideological drive, so varied memberbase doesn't matter
• Casual control - As Silas said, sometimes you don't have time to be King, but being Duke of your own little slice of New Eden, even if it is just a name plaque above an office door, is pleasant.
• Tax Haven - 11% tax is basically intolerable for beginners.  Start own corp after minutes of training, accelerate the only real grind in EVE - the generation of wealth.

Much appreciated response. You and Silas answered in the way I was looking for, definitely helped me understand your perspectives. Much to think about.

[PracticalTechnicality]

Rules of Engagement were the tool of a more civilized era of roleplay. Before the dark times... Before the FacwarFags.

I only got to see the hayday of this and it was more interesting than what ever we have here now.

Meet new people? I mean, really. Way to worst-case it.

Hahaha... HAHAHAHA... There's really no new people. Just alts of bitter ooc grudging assholes.

You can tell the rare new people apart by their naïvete and brush of fresh wind and usually they end up pulled into years old grudgematches, and before you know it the new is sucked out by the stagnant old leeches that are the old rpers. What's left is another husk to fill with piss and vinegar.

I pretty much answer any questions from my newbro and irl friends trying eve, with regards to rp, with exactly this statement.  Stay away until you're sure enough of yourself and your friends that the tidal wave of competition for attention (attention that just didn't ever exist in a meaningful way, but is sought after anyway) doesn't wash away your constructed identity. 

I didn't get into 'the community' until 5 years after I started playing EVE, surviving for half a decade on personal and tiny group rp based on what we were doing in null (usually banal or routine stuff, but it was fun at the time).  I think I'd have a very different outlook if my first experience had been OOC, The Summit or so on. 

They are not 'bad' in a blanket quantitative manner, but they are antagonistic and daunting if you are not anchored in some manner to something you know you enjoy.  Caveat emptor in all things, always - even the attitudes of people you play space pretend with!

[Jace]

I pretty much answer any questions from my newbro and irl friends trying eve, with regards to rp, with exactly this statement.  Stay away until you're sure enough of yourself and your friends that the tidal wave of competition for attention (attention that just didn't ever exist in a meaningful way, but is sought after anyway) doesn't wash away your constructed identity. 

I didn't get into 'the community' until 5 years after I started playing EVE, surviving for half a decade on personal and tiny group rp based on what we were doing in null (usually banal or routine stuff, but it was fun at the time).  I think I'd have a very different outlook if my first experience had been OOC, The Summit or so on. 

They are not 'bad' in a blanket quantitative manner, but they are antagonistic and daunting if you are not anchored in some manner to something you know you enjoy.  Caveat emptor in all things, always - even the attitudes of people you play space pretend with!

My early forays into Eve RP were failures for the very reasons you folks mention, and this was several years ago when the bitters weren't quite so bitter, the drama llamas weren't quite so dramatic, and people did have a tendency to scoop up newbies and try to help them along. Even then, the dynamics of public Eve RP nailed me to the wall more often than not until I was scooped up by someone and shown the ropes of the cluster. Before then, I was designated to a few folks and complete randomness in my own little corner.

[Gaven Lok ri]

I think there is also an issue of selection bias in responses here rather than just bitter.

People who do well/enjoy either managing or being a line member of a multiperson corp are already in multiperson corps or are using the shell as a temp holding spot between corps. And most of the people who end up making shell corps have had larger corp experience. So the pro-no corpies attitude should be taken in that light.

[Jace]

I think there is also an issue of selection bias in responses here rather than just bitter.

People who do well/enjoy either managing or being a line member of a multiperson corp are already in multiperson corps or are using the shell as a temp holding spot between corps. And most of the people who end up making shell corps have had larger corp experience. So the pro-no corpies attitude should be taken in that light.

Good point.