Ring Around the Rosie

“How do I tell the logi that I don’t need any more armor?”
-General Gallente Militia

Last night, after dealing with some alliance shop stuff, I jumped into a fast frigate and headed to Gallente space for a much needed break from the Amarr/Minmatar warzone.  I had been chatting with some Gallente friends, and was invited on coms, given a fleet invite, as well as access to buying some fit ships their corporation had lying around.

It was a general militia fleet, though in all honesty, having rarely flown with the Gallente, I wouldn’t know the difference. All the names and voices are unfamiliar to me.

At any rate, I laughed really hard when one of them, at one point, asked the question in fleet, “How do I tell the logi pilots that I don’t need any more armor?”

Sometimes, after flying with truly new players, I feel like older players are completely unqualified to even remotely begin talking about new player experience. It’s a subject that interests me a bit, and I’ve read various blog posts and ideas about how to make things more interesting to new players. But, truly, they think on a completely different wavelength then we do. And once you leave that wavelength, I’m not sure there’s really any going back…or really any sort of ‘remembering.’

I admit, I thought about trolling him. “Well, you need to tell them right away, otherwise you will receive too much armor and your ship will explode!”

But I didn’t. I just assured him the logi pilots would know, and he didn’t have to worry about a thing.
The Gallente FC was pretty patient for the most part, though I could detect a hint of annoyance here and there when people had difficulties following simple instructions. At one point, people were going squirrel on a kitey caracal we had no hope of catching. The FC told us all just to return the gate so we could move on. Some of the frigate pilots didn’t return to the gate.

“Fine. Stay out there and die. Everyone else, jump.”
Sometimes, people need to learn the hard way.

We chased a few things and reshipped here and there throughout the evening. It’s odd really, the fleet seemed to made up mostly of Gallente ships. Algoses…Vexors when we were running cruisers. When I fly with LNA, we tend to fly a lot of Minmatar ships –SFIs, thrashers, etc. Now, I know neither group is can remotely be called role players, and it may be just coincidence, though I still find it kind of curious….

I ended up leaving a jump clone out there, and plan to do a lot more roaming around Gallente/Caldari space. It seems like even solo roaming might have some possibilities.