Because we’re still in the first flush of ARC Raiders, no equilibrium has been truly reached and thus raw potential permeates every interaction. This is the terrifying, middle-space ambiguity. You’ve heard – from us and others – that solo runs very nearly constitute a separate product from the first. You can and will get put under and robbed by rats and scoundrels, but the ratio is much different. I would say it’s the inversion, almost to the number, of the group play dynamics. They are gonna try to kill and eat you the vast majority of the time, but every now and then they are just trying to check a box on the meta progression – a human universal, something anyone can understand. I have a button that shoots a gun and I have a button that talks to strangers. They’re both modes of communication.
Just as an example, we’re at a point in many people’s progress where they need to feed a chicken thousands of dollars worth of produce. They need to secure for this goddamn bird the most elite comforts. My Rooster is dripped the fuck out, he’s got the Prada collar, but now like many young men he’s demanding princess treatment. I gotta get him olives and a fucking cat bed. I have no doubt I could stack up twenty such cat beds and this dainty fowl would still writhe, scourged by the pea beneath.
Lots of people need olives and there is a place called the Olive Grove. There’s always a lot of people there, hands greasy, lidded eyes – sure signs of avian submission. We were able to talk to these fellow raiders about our shared burden and harvest these fruits unmolested. We bonded with people from around the world over the onerous yoke our feathered masters had placed on us, and dreamt each and all of a sunrise unmarred by cocks.
That’s a rarity, as I suggested before. I haven’t been bullied like this since high school and it’s churning shit up. If you go in with two people, you’re often going against groups of three people – that’s just how it works. One time we got out of a sticky problem we didn’t deserve to at all, pure bad play on our part, but Gabe just got a gun so big that it does a lot of the talking for us.
(CW)TB out.