Inclusion: the action or state of including or of being included within a group or structure.
Over the past decade my advocacy of Piracy inside of Eve Online has centered around a general theme. An attempt on my part to keep our little niche group of players top of mind, in the conversation, and part of the forward momentum of development. In those years it was often challenging to achieve this, naturally, as our numbers pale in comparison to other areas of interest. We're not as news worthy as Null Sec, or as easy to define as High Sec, nor as weirdly specific as Wormhole space. Until recently Low Sec was devoid of development resources, slowly gathering dust in the corner. Which, frankly, just helped add to our sense of identity.
Until Uprising. There can be no doubt that the recent changes/upgrades/enhancements to Factional Warfare have been good for Low Sec, and for us Pirates - it strangely remains odd that our role within that ecosystem has largely remained unchanged. What I've been spending so much time writing about these past months is largely just a question I think needs answered - is there a more integrated role for Pirates in Low Sec space? Or should we just continue our role as is?
As the CEO of Stay Frosty my role is always to worry about things. How do we attract recruits when joining a Militia is so easy and obviously rewarding? How do we avoid stagnation? How do I help increase inclusion and involvement for my pilots? And while we long ago accepted our roles and our fate by choosing this play style over others - is there more to it that could help us achieve all of those goals. There are a lot of questions there. And none of them need answered - we could just motor on as is and let things play out. This is the sandbox after all. We could do that. Or we could admit that there seem to be some obvious answers available.
And this is when I start thinking that there should be more to it.
The other day Phoenix and I slid into a Medium Advanced FW Plex that had a Vexor Navy Issue in it. We were in Frigates. He had been running the site for about 20 minutes prior to us arriving. He ran off and docked up before we even slid into the plex. He had about 2 minutes left on the plex to finish it. So we decided to hole up inside and hope he returned. In all we waited about 15 minutes. Every so often he would undock, see us on d-scan, and dock back up again. Eventually we got bored and moved on. I'm sure he undocked and finished the site afterwards.
This is just one of dozens of examples I could present, but I think this one simplifies the issue for us Pirates well. We have no tools, no role within that environment to affect anything. Pilots can simply run away and wait. There is little incentive for them to do otherwise. And little we can do to encourage alternate choices. The only solution - which is obvious - is to join a militia. And yet that is completely counter to the entire point. Doing so would eliminate half our potential targets and we would essentially no longer BE Pirates. The solution is to abandon our identity?
That is not a solution. And so I keep writing words and suggesting alternative ways of thinking. I don't pretend to have all the answers, I might not even have any good answers. What I do know is this - it doesn't seem to be that challenging to imagine a system in which we could potentially have more inclusion in this environment.
Go ahead and run away, but I'm going to steal your plex from you and grab the LP for myself. Now that would be piracy wouldn't it?
Until then we will just continue to be Pirates. And that is just fine with us.
Yarrr!