I've always believed that you should be able to laugh at yourself. Let's face it, you are pretty much an idiot most of the time. So being able to realize that, laugh and move on is kind of important. Sometimes things just don't work out and you end up jumping onto a Navitas.*
Oh it gets worse.
So yesterday I had some precious time to play Eve and instead of spending it running around getting into some good fights, I joined in on a spur of the moment Black Ops opportunity with some of my fellow Tuskers. I won't mention our intended target, mostly because it doesn't matter, but it was a target worthy of the effort. We got a handful of Bombers together, some support ships and a Panther and waited. We were all thinking it should be over rather quickly.
And we waited. And then waited some more. ( It took so long we took a break to kill this Tengu )
Sometimes even the dumbest of targets doesn't do what they are supposed to do. And our scouts were out and about trying to find us something to go for in the meantime. Spread out and see what happens. This went on for awhile with very little result. Eventually some members of our team wandered home.
A quick note about time. It is against you. At first everyone is sharp, alert and ready to go. But the more time that passes, the more time that passes. It is the Law of Diminishing Returns. People start to get dumb and there is nothing you can do about it. Until finally, the ideas, plans and schemes flying around, start to sound legit.
Case in point. One of our scouts landed in a nearby system. Lots of ships in this system including a potentially shiny one. But no one, despite some well-played Noob like actions on the part of our scout, would engage him. So finally he says, "One of them is in a Navitas in a belt." (Remember the Law of Diminishing Returns?) Instead of sounding like a waste of time, this sounded like a good idea. Engage the Navitas and the others will come to help him. At least we'll get a fight out of it.
So far so good. Our Scout engages, the Navitas engages and then a Rokh lands nearby! Certainly, the whole system will soon be coming to the aid of the Navitas. The order is given and we all jump.
Some of those support ships that went with us are things like an Arazu and Rapier, known far and wide as ships with points on them. Plus our Scout right? Plus all the Bombers had points. That's a lot of pointy things. I just wanted to mention that.
So we all land and start killing the poor Navitas. Meanwhile, the Rokh is about 75k away and burning like a mofo. So far no one else has arrived. The Arazu is going after the Rokh and I start burning in that direction, I think most of us did. Surely the Navitas will pop rather...
Uh... the Navitas warped off.
And then, well this isn't easy to say, but the Rokh did also.
Oh, we did get one kill. Our poor scout paid with his life. ( He actually asked for it, no one wants to hang around with the Cyno still going after that showing! )
Needless to say we returned to Hevrice and laughed a lot on Comms for the rest of the day. Heck, I'm still laughing.
We all play for good fights. For challenging encounters. The chance to prove ourselves against a foe in our ships. But, in my opinion, the best times I've had in Eve have been moments like these. Not that I want them to happen again any time soon, but if you've played Eve for any length of time with a group of other people - then I think you know what I mean.
(*a few facts have been altered to protect certain information from becoming public)