Ganking

[robosquirrel]

I tend to prefer making fights close, if possible. This is because I like the tension of it.

Then you should make sure you make your fights really take place in an environment where there is little risk for "outsiders" to stumble on your fight and join because their RP status demands it.

If you stage your fight in a place where, lets say LPI or LN indies, will have no choice but see your, lets say [LN] vs HF, battle, and if you are telling them to stay out of it because you want to satisfy your personal need for PvP tension, you are thereby destroying their and the surrounding player's RP atmosphere. Its pretty much like talking oorp. "No your help would be a waste of resources" while in fact your side is at risk of losing (thereby losing human and materiel resources) or "// stay out this is my PvP duel"... its really the same, only one is clearly oorp driven baloney RP while the other is maybe oorp and a bit self-centered/selfish, but at least honest.

In my opinion, if you are asking others not to join so the fight stays close, you are putting your personal PvP preferences above the server RP. You can make close fights with people who want it, but don't try to force everyone around you to always fight on the terms that you wish for. That's what I see constantly everywhere on the server.

If the fight is a foregone conclusion in either direction, I get extremely bored and tend to wander off.
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If there is no risk of losing, what's the point in participating?
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And by the same token, if there's no hope of winning, what purpose does fighting serve?

Your perspective is again only focusing on one thing: the PvP thrill, and the search for the feeling of having shown that you are better at PvP than the adversary, by trying to score "deserverd" wins, and not "undesevered" ones.

There are, many other aspects to fights, in particular RP aspects. First, the feeling that you are playing your role in a realistic way, and that you are contributing to immersion into the RP universe, for yourself and for others. The feeling of being immersed in the RP universe. That feeling is often shot to smithereens by players who say "no dont fulfill your RP role, I am trying to get a PvP thrill here and am trying to look fair in a fight". If you character is a hotshot pilot, sure you can say "I want to kill him myself and prove to everyone that I'm the bigger man". But if you say "no lets give our mortal enemey a chance to kill at least half our fleet before we win, because thats more fair. We also save some fuel, even if we lose half our ships (and the fuel in them)", your character can't really be anything else but mentally challanged.

However there are some situation in which I think it's justified. Defending capital planets for eample. There are situations in which I think it is not justified too, for example when you're on the offensive.

The problem is that when you encourage people to complain when ever they think a fight wasnt fair, they will do it when ever they get frustrated because they didnt win. They do it when flying up to the capitol planet of their enemy where an armada is waiting for them. They do it when they fly up to a hostile station and one person starts a one vs one with them, and when an ally of that person sees his wingman in danger, he will help without much talk before. And, yeah, I have seen you complain about 1 person helping another in precicely the situation you just described as justified (after you lost a 2 vs 1). And I've seen you attack another person with greater numbers in exactly the same situations (3 vs 1 and 4 vs 1). The single player was within 10k of an enemy base in both situations. The thing is this "fainess" and "justified in this situation" always turns out to be what is more convenient at the moment, for everyone.

I would rather not get bored. I would rather feel that every fight is one I can potentially lose, or potentially win. I'm pretty certain that most people would agree that without risk or hope, it's boring.

For the people who find other aspects than proving your skill in PvP by killing enemies in number-ballanced fights of the game interesting, there are many other things that keep them from getting bored. Role play. Surviving against superior numbers. Having been able to gain the tactical advantage through strategic thinking. I find this "lets fly around on a RP server looking for ballanced PvP to show everyone what great pilots we are" a but one-sided. And if those arent interesting for you, you can always do your arranged ballanced PvP in places where you wont interfere with other people's RP.