EVE Blog Banter #22: Corporate Loyalty

Welcome to the twenty-second installment of the EVE Blog Banter, the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week or so to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed to crazykinux@gmail.com. Check for other EVE Blog Banter articles at the bottom of this post!

This month topic is brought to us by L'Dene Bean of Nitpickin's who asks: Why, and how did you pick your corporation? Is your loyalty solid or just until a better placed organization "recruits" you. The shorter version:  Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and why?

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        I've been playing EVE for nearly nine months now, but I still feel like a newbie. Call it a disciplined newbie. My initial corporation was a real-life group of coworkers playing together. We made a pact to train up characters in specified roles and kick some ass as a tight-knit group.

        That was the plan, anyway.

        Turns out that many of my coworkers were either too impatient, too bored, or too disinterested to continue playing EVE. My CEO moved on to join Dreddit, and left the corporation in my hands. I continued on solo. I became a decent mission runner, eventually able to handle Level 4's alone without a problem.

        Then I hit a mental brick wall. What was I trying to accomplish? How the hell did I end up here? As a solo pilot with his own corporation, there isn't much to accomplish. Running missions is about as boring as grinding daily quests in World of Warcraft, which I wasn't about to pick up again. I kept telling my bored coworkers that all they needed was a good large-scale war to pique their interest, but I wasn't taking that advice myself. Then my former CEO contacted me and invited me to join Dreddit with him. All I needed was a Reddit account. I figured, what the hell. I've had enough of highsec. Let's make it interesting and jump straight to null. So that's exactly what I did. I sold my highsec assets, I resigned from my corporation, and I flew to nullsec in a Reaper with nothing more than the ISK in my wallet.

        Out here I've had a blast. But the question brought up in this banter interests me. Is my loyalty to Dreddit solid? For the moment it is. I won't consider myself a decent fighter pilot until I have a year's worth of additional Perception skills under my belt - right now I feel inadequate because I can't fly the ships I want and I can't fit them the way I want. Dreddit allows me to feel relatively safe in nullsec, with it currently being the largest single corporation in the game. It's like EVE University with a vengeance. Would I ever leave it? Maybe, but not for now.

        Overall, I feel that EVE corporate loyalty is a lot like real-life company loyalty. If you're not happy with it, it's hard to get them to change things, and you're usually better off leaving; though it's never wise to tell them that.

        Of course other cultures have other views. The Japanese are fiercely loyal to their companies, to the point that the ultra-capitalist Caldari are modeled after their practices. A salaryman is referred to his job title before his name. They stay in the same company for life. They take care of their company, and their company takes care of them. Rather than fire a bad employee, the company is compelled to work things out with them and come to an agreeable solution.

        We Americans are much more selfish. A bad employee is a liability to a corporation, and they will gladly cut their losses. A person working in a job that does not treat them well or pay them well will seek out another.

        EVE is much more harsh.  You can do a lot more damage to an EVE corp than you can to a real company without being sued for it - theft, espionage, sabotage, conflicts of interest, corporate coups, convincing other employees to leave, working for competitors after you quit, etc. Likewise, a vindictive corp can wardec you after you leave it, or even hire a mercenary group to ensure you never have a safe trip outside a station again. Loyalty goes both ways.

        My personal view on corporate loyalty is that EVE is primarily a game meant to entertain me. Thus my corporation must be entertaining and engaging. However I will not be able to devote a lot of time to it. I already did the game-feels-like-a-second-job thing with World of Warcraft. EVE is a social game, so it is both the individual people and the group mentality that will be judged by my loyalty, combined with the ambition of what I want to do. If all of those match, then things are cool. I'm in a learner's corporation with plenty of people who have similar attitudes. I feel I'm in a good place so far.

Other responses to EVE Blog Banter #22:


Nitpickin's: Who holds your Unshakable Fealty and Why?
The Elitist: Corp Loyalty (Oh how original)

A Scientist's Life in EVE: Corporation Loyalty - Brothers and Sisters till the end?

Evil Silents: Corp Loyalty

Progression's Horizon: Loyal til Underverse Come
Chocolate Heaven: Arise Lady Chumpington
Diary of a Garbageman: Corp (dis)loyalty
Interstellar Privateer: Not a Nice Game
Sarnel Binora's Blog: Corporation Guilt?
EVEOGANDA: Corp Loyalty
Free 2 Kill: Where Does Blood Run Thickest?
A Mule in EVE: Loyalty Isn't For Sale
An Amarrian Capsuleer: Corporation Cooperation
A Merry Life and a Short One: Lie Back and Think of England
The Reformed Anti-Pirate: Loyalty
Drifting Through the Stars: Corporation Loyalty - Brothers and Sisters till the end?

Hands-on Training

        Despite the lawlessness of 0.0 space, CONCORD was still out there. Not in any official policing capacity, mind you, but their scouts were out there. Capsuleers fighting over solar systems were of no interest to them. It was the pirate factions they were keeping tabs on. These same pirate factions were constantly pushing their way into Empire space, and it was CONCORD's job to monitor their activity at their nerve centers here in nullsec, and reward the capsuleers who took it upon themselves to act as local police.

        It was in this capacity that Knee Anderthal was flying his Dominix with a group of seasoned pilots and new recruits. The purpose was threefold - to give the new pilots some combat experience, to try and discover hidden complexes that would yield lucrative custom equipment reserved for the Dread Guristas, and to collect the bountiful compensation doled out by CONCORD for their efforts.

        It was during the clearing of one of the Guristas sanctums that a simple training exercise became a bit more real. A rogue Crusader Interceptor warped in to the sanctum 100km away from the fleet. One of the new pilots set after him, but the fleet called him back. Not only would a simple frigate be unable to catch an Interceptor, it would be outgunned as well. So the Interceptor was ignored for the moment as the fleet continued assaulting the Guristas.

        Suddenly the Interceptor decided that if the fleet was not going to fight it, it was going to fight the fleet. It warped on top of the fleet and pounced upon a defenseless salvaging destroyer just 15km away from Knee's Dominix. The fleet immediately rallied for tackle and Knee sent out his Hornet drones normally reserved for Guristas frigates. What was a battleship pilot to do?

        Normal fleets would not have warp disruption handy, but extra precautions are taken in zero. Although the Interceptor was able to take out the salvaging destroyer, it was overwhelmed and exploded marvelously before it could escape. A three-million loss for a twenty-million gain.

        The training for the morning was complete.

On PLEXes for Remaps

I feel the "PLEX for Remap" issue is being terribly blown out of proportion by the player base. People act like it will give people a huge advantage when they don't stop to consider that you still have to train the skills after the remap. Even when your stats are optimized, the training time is still significant. Why have attributes at all, then? There's still the opportunity cost. You either train things you're optimized for, or you train other things anyway at a suboptimal speed, or you wait a year to remap, or you pay a PLEX and remap now. Each time you take the PLEX route you diminish the significance of attributes, but you pay a large sum for that privilege.

I know people who stuck themselves into a remap that outlived its usefulness and would give a PLEX to reset and train other things. Plus, would it not make sense during one of your annual remaps to take a small detour down Charisma Lane, knowing you weren't going to spend an entire year in it, but getting good things like Trade, Social, and Leadership skills out of the way, then dropping a PLEX to remap again to the next important attribute set? Maybe if Charisma had a more significant role in the skill set such that there might actually be a year's worth of its skills worth training, it wouldn't be the neglected stepchild that it is now in the eyes of the remapping capsuleer. But that's a separate issue...

Save Capsuleer!

The folks behind the Capsuleer application for the iPhone have announced that they are discontinuing the project. The reason being that CCP has not yet granted them a license to give them the rights to sell their app, despite previously giving them overwhelming praise and promises of cooperation.

As a developer, an EVE fan, and a blogger, I'm compelled to lend my support. We need to get this issue brought to CCP's attention. These guys deserve it for the time and money they have invested.

Nashh Kadavr has created a petition on his blog.

There is a thread in the Assembly Hall to get the CSM's attention.

Please do what you can to increase the visibility of this crisis.