Coming to terms with
what solo means
When I first started
soloing, I suffered a lot of frustration. When I say soloing I don't
mean roaming about a few systems by myself looking for carebears to
gank, I mean fighting against other pvpers, most of the time against
gangs of them, with no scout or link alt to back me up (though using
alts does not declassify you as solo by any means).
I was originally
inspired to start doing this by watching videos of the great soloers.
People such as Kil2, Kovorix, Garmon, Endless Subversion, the list
goes on. Ever since I watched a solo PvP video for the first time (it
was Garmonation 7), I was blown away by what these guys could do all
by themselves against many times their numbers and knew that this was
the sort of skill that I one day wanted to achieve in EVE. But it was
more than a year after watching Garmonation 7 before I finally began
trying to emulate these heroes of the game in earnest.
In any solo PvP video
there is a certain amount of deception needed which is absolutely
necessary to create an enjoyable video. You do not see all the ships
the player lost while being perma-jammed by Falcons, or because the
other gang brought in logistics, or simply because they blind jumped
into a system and got caught in a 20 man gate camp. This sort of
stuff is not interesting to watch, unless the player managed to
somehow overcome these odds, which is incredibly unlikely.
So when I began soloing
I was not prepared for what I was about to encounter. It seemed as
though every small gang I found to fight had at least one Falcon with
it. If they didn't have a Falcon they had a Scimitar or an Oneiros.
If they didn't have logistics then they had about 40 ECM drones
swarming around you jamming you almost as consistently as a Falcon. I
had expected some of this, but had thought I'd have at least 1 good
fight for every time I was ganked. Huge underestimate.
During this early
period I became quite frustrated and even angry with the state of PvP
in EVE. Every time I was set upon by a Falcon or a logistics ship I
would rant and rave to my corp mates. “Oh man, these guys are such
pussys. What a bunch of faggots. I hope they all go die in a car
accident. They're killing solo on purpose because they suck etc.
etc.” Often refusing to accept or realise that they probably had
that Falcon in their gang because they were expecting to find another
gang to fight that also had a Falcon. Or that everyone in their gang
had ECM Drones because they planned to use it to jam out enemy gang
logistics ships.
Certainly there are
some in EVE that will purposely dock in their home station and reship
to a Falcon or something similar to gank a pilot they know are
soloing and has no backup, and for these people I will never have
much respect for. EVE is after all, a game, and I can not understand
those who care so much about their virtual spaceship they will do
anything they possibly can to make sure it never ever dies. But I
have come to realise that most of the time would-be gankers are not
trying to gank you, they are simply killing some unlucky player who
happened to cross their path while they were searching for a gang of
equal strength to fight. Fleet mentality barely recognises the solo
PvPer. To a gang a soloer is just one more unlucky sod to jump into
their camp and is hardly paid any attention most of the time. However
for the soloer, that gang they died to might have been exactly the
sort of gang to fight they had been searching for all night, if only
it wasn't for that Scimitar. This sort of difference of perspective
creates a vast gulf between the soloer and the fleet PvPer. Fleet
members are from Mars and soloers are from Venus.
Much of this I believe
is a result of something I have come to believe firmly in, that CCP
did not really intend people to fly solo in this game.
Why I love solo
So that's the big
negatives. I don't think anybody would disagree that solo is an
incredibly hard thing to do in EVE. So what's the point in doing it,
what keeps soloers going? Well I think it is for the very reason I
just stated: Soloing in EVE is incredibly hard.
In my view there are
two things in EVE that are at the absolute peak in difficulty. Fleet
Commanding and Solo PvPing. Many people, probably most, who try their
hand at soloing give up after a while out of frustration. Whether it
be lack of targets, too many blobs, too much ECM, the conclusion is
always the same: “Solo is dead”. This oft-repeated statement is a
big part of the reason I (and I believe many others) persevere with
solo. To succeed at something many consider near impossible,
something that it seems even the games creators did not intend people
to do offers extraordinary satisfaction. A thing easily achieved can
only offer a limited amount of fun. What at first seems to be the
thing that is killing solo (falcons, blobs) is in my opinion the very
thing that is keeping it alive. The rush when you finally get a
really good fight, and you manage to win in a situation that most
people would consider you defeated before the fight has even started,
and you did it completely by yourself, with no help or reliance on
anybody else but your own mind and reflexes. Those are the moments a
solo PvPer lives for.
So thank you to all
those gankers out there. The Falcon and Blackbird pilots, the
logistics pilots, the titan alts bridging 30 man gangs across regions
to wipe out a single battleship. If it wasn't for you solo wouldn't
be like it is, and I'd probably start looking for a real challenge.
Operation: Annihilate
Pandemic Legion anyone?
