Why Solo?

A first-time reader of this blog or someone who has never soloed before might ask this question: Why solo? Why put yourself at risk, lower your kill/death ratio, and lose more ships when you could just x up with 10 other corpmates and instapop those idiots who dare to solo?

To someone who asked me this, I would ask them: Why play the game at all? The obvious answer, of course, would be "To have fun." If anyone is playing EVE for any other reason, they shouldn't be playing it, because that is the only reward. And fun in EVE is a little different than in most games. In a game like Call of Duty, you start it up, have some heart-pounding action and show off your reflexes, and then log off. But you don't feel like you've truly accomplished anything.

EVE, however, has an entirely different way of making you have fun. It's the sort where you think "Oh my god this is so awesome" or "wow, look at what I just did." After all, that's why people play Spreadsheets Online with hundreds of POSes simultaneously; something which by itself more resembles a middle-management job than a video game. It's because when it's all said and done, they can look back and see their alliance name on the influence map with 5 stations and a military that can crush anyone nearby. It's the same sort of satisfaction you get after finishing a long task at work (that you enjoyed at least a little).

If this were real life, the optimal strategy would be to remove yourself as much as possible from danger, to set as many people to +10 as possible, and to move around in 2000 man fleets crushing anything to minimize losses. However, there's no challenge in that and that's not really fun after the first few times. Challenge and accomplishment is what's fun. That's why we solo. That's why we feel good when we trade our Myrmidon for a cruiser; because that cruiser was in a 10 man gang, and we had enough skill to take him down despite 10:1 odds.

And when we kill an entire 5 man gang by ourselves? We feel even better. That loot is all the sweeter, because all of our hard work in designing our setup, training the skills, and engaging the targets in just the right sequence paid off. And we just made 5 people feel like they completely suck at the game. It gives us a rush to feel like we're "better" than 5 people put together, that we're actually good at the game. Plus it was challenging and hard. In my opinion, that's why ganking industrials and t1 frigates solo isn't too much fun. Unless it's close and heart-pounding, it's not really an accomplishment.

And that's why we solo.

Until next time,

Securitas Protector