Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

... and it continues...

Look at this station! And look at the name of the system! It's a historic site, the place of the great supercap roam of -A-. There are these blues in space, I didn't have those. Yes, after long search and figuring donation as a way to contribute nullsec as trader, I am actually there. My cloaky scout joined TEST. I considered it a total waste of ISK to come with logi until I learn the basic know-how. She'll join in a few days.

I won't fly that much in null, as Jita will keep taking most of my EVE time. I'll mostly take part in fleet actions if timers are involved. I'll fly a logi/carrier and turned one of my wannabe titan pilots towards a dreadnought. My real contribution to the TEST efforts will be donating 20B/month. That's about 2.5 titans/year, but of course spent much better.

I'd like to explain why I choose TEST versus the "l33t" alliances. Many believes that HBC and CFC are morons and slackers. They troll local, they follow doctrines (F1 drones lol), they use reimbursed ships. At first it cannot be true for all of them, there must be an FC on the field after all and dictors and logis and scouts and all kind of non-F1 people. The corp chat was surprisingly mature and very helpful. The alliance chat is nearly empty, few, game-related talks, no idiotism. Also if you check out somethingawful.com, little childish trolling is to be found there. Seems their "ASCII penis spamming retards" image comes only from hostile propaganda (and maybe from trolling the hostiles in local).

They are not "elite PvP" indeed. But I'm not at all elitist. I believe that someone who pull his weight, even if he pulls less than me is a useful, worthy person. An organization that respects all form of useful contribution will prevail over an elitist one which despises anyone below and arbitrary threshold. The "F1 spamming" TEST will destroy the "l33t" -A- and I want this to happen. I want to be there when the last structure of Mr Pets don't talk back fall. I will contribute to this happening, hoping that it will open some eyes.

The leeches of null are those who use it but contribute nothing to keep it up. Surprisingly the "carebears" are such. If you rat in null, you use null. If you don't go fleet, or don't provide JF or POS-babysitting services, you don't contribute via time. If you don't donate ISK, you don't contribute via money. You are a leech. This is another reason of carebear hate. My other purpose here is to show that there is a non-military way of contribution: money donation. I want to prove that "being carebear" isn't bad for itself, it's bad for leeching. One can be a welcomed, respected "carebear" if he isn't a leech.

Let me point to two serious differences between WoW and EVE. WoW has fixed group numbers, if you damage less than the tank, you take the position of someone who would provide average DPS (by definition) which is bigger than yours. Your contribution is DPS-averageDPS which is a negative number. In EVE you take no ones place. Secondly and more importantly WoW give out rewards equally to group members. The guy at the bottom of the chart, below the hunterpets gets the same roll chance on loot and the same amount of emblems as the No1 guy. In EVE no one gets anything for being in fleet, the captured space can be later utilized by any member of the winning coalition. So in EVE you take no ones place and leech on no rewards by being in fleet. You can only leech by not showing up and utilizing the space others took without paying for it.

Oh and "we" nullsec people use to post awesome screenshots about our adventures, our little ship among the other 1000 ships. Here is mine (Source):
EVE is indeed a sandbox where one must find his own unique way to make his adventure. I think I found mine.


PS: it's good to see that I'm not the only one who thinks highsec is overpowered.

Update: I'm now in the process of setting up the necessary services. It's damn hard, since the wiki is outdated (for example the api key list does not match the api mask given in the link), so practically impossible to do without corp chat help.

Update 2: I almost made my first PvP - against a blue, thanks the suggested, downloadable overview settings. It painted him red because of his low sec status.

Wednesday morning report: 154.0B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 3.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.6 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Avatar, 17.4 sent as gift)

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Seems their "ASCII penis spamming retards" image comes only from hostile propaganda"

No, it is a hard won image and not due to propaganda. I've fought TEST, and have friends in TEST. They're proud of it. Tell me you don't mind their lolspeak and faggot jokes after your first proper fight with AAA.

Your justification for choosing TEST is extremely weak in my opinion. I read it twice. Your reasoning is: "I know they're all M&S, but some of them aren't". That's it. You know, that applies to every alliance in EVE. You're supporting an alliance that cares nothing about individual ISK (they actually dislike people like you when you're not donating). Is there a smart guy at the top organizing all the blobs? Yes. That isn't justification enough to boost the rest of the slackers though.

I think you've made a big mistake here, and you'll realize it when you find out how many leaches (about 8000 of them) you're boosting with that ISK. Despite TEST's huge membership numbers, only a few hundred show up to fleets, the rest are non-contributers and your donations are making their contributions unnecessary.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to be honest, I've always thought you were a bit of a self righteous tool. Not a massive one, but a tool non-the-less.

Regardless of this, I'm impressed with your progress to date and I honestly hope this works out well. Best of luck man. One thing is extremely clear - you understand how the sandbox works.

o7

IO said...

"Seems their "ASCII penis spamming retards" image comes only from hostile propaganda (and maybe from trolling the hostiles in local)."

This pretty much summarizes your EVE posting so far - making conclusions out of absurdly low experience.

I spent half year in one of the more mature CFC alliances, when we were taking back Tenal. Some of the fleets were alliance only, some CFC-wide usually led by Goon FCs. In the second fleets myself and alliance mates always went to "no-chatter" room, where you could only hear orders from FC. Why? Because the jibberish from goons was terrible.

Then, at some point in the war, TEST also deployed to the north. Oh my. If I thought Goons are bad, TEST are impossible to listen to. I left the fleet on several occasions as soon some more notable TEST sperglords joined (hello durrhurrdurr). Oh, and local - I used to minimize it; also please don't click any links that your alliances mates will post!

Luckily we had much more alliance-only fleets in the second part of the war to make joining fleets actually enjoyable.

To conclude: I wonder how you will go on further, will you start defending your new M&S friends (TEST by far has the most M&S people in their alliance), or you will think some arbitrary reason and leave them shortly?

Gevlon said...

@IO: in a fleet there are 200+ people. On local there is 1000+.

It is theoretically impossible to collect 200-1000 people without having completely smashed idiots between them.

Not reading local and listening to no one but the FC are so obvious to me that I did not even consider to write these down. These advices are identical to "don't forget to exhale".

"Don't click on any link that leads to an unknown domain" is nearly as obvious, it's usually the #1 advice on every internet security 101 pages.

Hivemind said...

"Many believes that HBC and CFC are morons and slackers. They troll local, they follow doctrines (F1 drones lol), they use reimbursed ships."

Actually they think HBC and CFC are M&S mainly because they rely on huge numbers to win. It's not that that's not a viable tactic, it is as long as the numbers in question are available along with the funds to replace losses, and the enemy forces can't bring equivalent numbers to counter. On the other hand, any time that's not the case, CFC or HB tend to lose - remember a few posts ago where you pointed to a CFC vs NCdot fight where CFC lost despite having more people? That's par for the course for both CFC and HBC when they don't have a 2-1 advantage.

"At first it cannot be true for all of them, there must be an FC on the field after all and dictors and logis and scouts and all kind of non-F1 people."

Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't you normally almost as scornful of competent players who mire themselves down among the M&S as you are of the M&S themselves? Any competent TEST FC would still be just as competent outside of TEST with the bonus of not having to shepherd facerolling F1 idiots. Presumably if they're staying it's because they like those facerolling M&S and the social attitude; last I checked those social players were just barely above the M&S on your hierarchy of loathing. What's changed that they're suddenly a selling point of the alliance?

“Also if you check out somethingawful.com, little childish trolling is to be found there. Seems their "ASCII penis spamming retards" image comes only from hostile propaganda (and maybe from trolling the hostiles in local)”

Because the SA forums are actively moderated to keep flamewars and trolling off. They charge a membership fee for posting, so there’s actually a financial incentive to keeping the forum signal-noise ratio high; more people will pay to join if the quality is high, and many banned members will pay again to register a new account. On the other hand any time SA Goons show up outside of SA itself they revel in “childish trolling” - check out Second Life where Goons have used the in game scripting tools to invent “grey goo” objects that multiplied until the server crashed and created flying penises to disrupt a news conference.

“I'm not at all elitist. I believe that someone who pull his weight, even if he pulls less than me is a useful, worthy person.”

And yet yesterday you wrote a whole post built around complaining about those exact same people, calling them morons and slackers. 11.8k DPS is more than enough to complete ZG HC even if it’s the standard for all the DPS, rather than the lowest example; the other players were pulling their weight just fine, just less than you, but they certainly weren’t “useful, worthy people” then.

“If you rat in null, you use null. If you don't go fleet, or don't provide JF or POS-babysitting services, you don't contribute via time. If you don't donate ISK, you don't contribute via money.”

Two words for you: Corp taxes. They’re right next to you on your donut graph, in fact, filling more of TEST’s budget.

“One can be a welcomed, respected "carebear" if he isn't a leech.”

You’ve been welcomed, but as you’ve pointed out before you could also have been welcomed by applying with an anonymous alt without donating a single ISK. What evidence do you have that you’re respected, and possibly more importantly why do you care?

“PS: it's good to see that I'm not the only one who thinks highsec is overpowered.”

That’s still James 315 you’re linking to, he’s still either trolling or being exceptionally myopic.

Gevlon said...

@Hivemind: 1v1 "honorable" fight is nonsense. Bringing numbers or bringing better ships is a winning tactic. The ships are fitted for and the pilots learned this large-fleet doctrine, of course they suck in small-gang engagement.

The TEST FCs could indeed join some "elite PvP" group and LOSE! The big difference between competent players boosting M&S in WoW and the test FCs is that the WoW guild were wiping on trivial bosses and TEST controls more land than anyone else.

Don't mistake trolling with idiocy. Trolling is a viable tactic against enemies who expect respect. A l33t wants to hear "good fight man, you gave us hard time" and not "lol we ownd ur gay ass". Give him the second answer and he might not log in. On SA, when they are among themselves (no enemies to troll) they live up to high standards.

Let me copy and paste the last paragraph of my post: "Let me point to two serious differences between WoW and EVE. WoW has fixed group numbers, if you damage less than the tank, you take the position of someone who would provide average DPS (by definition) which is bigger than yours. Your contribution is DPS-averageDPS which is a negative number. In EVE you take no ones place. Secondly and more importantly WoW give out rewards equally to group members. The guy at the bottom of the chart, below the hunterpets gets the same roll chance on loot and the same amount of emblems as the No1 guy. In EVE no one gets anything for being in fleet, the captured space can be later utilized by any member of the winning coalition. So in EVE you take no ones place and leech on no rewards by being in fleet. You can only leech by not showing up and utilizing the space others took without paying for it."

Corp taxes hit ratting bounties. Doesn't affect mining and the ratting loot/salvage.

Random Rifter doesn't have his own line in the budget. But I don't claim that my way is respected now, I plan to reach and prove it. It's a long term goal.

Finally, come'on don't sink to ad hominems. Whatever James314 is says nothing about the merits of his post.

Hivemind said...

@Gevlon: I’m not talking about a 1v1 fight, enforced equal numbers or small-gang PvP or anything like that, I’m talking about CFC or HB forces having more numbers and still losing, even against similar enemy ships, in large fleet engagements. In a fight of 300 CFC or HB vs 200 -A- even if both sides are using T2-fitted Drakes, I would put my ISK on -A- winning - their average members are better able to follow the flow of battle and use their ships effectively than their enemies and the minor improvement that adds to each individual pilot/ship add up across the whole fleet and allow them to up-engage even in battles that are even or stacked against them purely in terms of numbers.

The reason the likes of -A- and other ~leetpvp~ organisations aren’t dominating all of Nullsec is that the coalitions like CFC and HBC are large enough to ensure that they rarely encounter fights where they don’t have sufficient numbers to overcome their weaker pilots, especially for strategic ops where they have time to organise. This doesn’t change the fact that their need for heavy numerical superiority to win fights is a tactical weakness that could exploited against them.

Certainly the Goons have high standards on the SA forums, but as I’ve already pointed out those standards are enforced. On the other hand to once again bring up Second Life there is no conflict, no war to win and nothing to gain from trolling another player except for lulz and yet the Goons still existed there primarily as a trolling/griefing organisation. I’m not saying “trolls are idiots” or “trolling is stupid” but I will go on record saying “most trolling is done for personal amusement and tactical benefits are a happy coincidence”.

I did read the paragraph you’ve repeated, but the point you’re making there still seems to contradict you saying “I'm not at all elitist. I believe that someone who pull his weight, even if he pulls less than me is a useful, worthy person”. I would interpret that as leading to the attitude “So long as each member is doing more average DPS than needed to complete the instance, they are contributing to success”, which you clearly do not agree with, since all the members of the group you were complaining about yesterday were doing above that average DPS (I believe about 10k+ DPS per member is needed for ZG HC? It’s been a long time since I ran it, so I may well be wrong).

There are refining taxes that apply to mining; they can be avoided by not refining in Alliance stations, of course, but then any other collection attempt can be avoided by players who choose as well, donations included. Granted there’s no tax on the sale of loot/salvage/mined material but the process of generating those DOES contribute to the alliance, contrary to your claim it is pure leeching. I’d also like to point out that you don’t have your own line on the budget; there’s now a “donation” line and you’re the only person on there, but it’s not tied to your name and will be shared if anyone else starts donating.

I wasn’t aware that calling James 314 a troll was an ad hominem, for the same reason calling you an engineer wouldn’t be an ad hominem. In this case it seemed relevant since you were citing his post as proof that other people think hisec is overpowered, which is not the case if he is deliberately making that claim in order to incite a reaction from others and does not really believe it, IE if he is trolling. If you would prefer, I could point out instead that his entire post is focusing on a hypothetical “risk-free hisec” where PvP were completely impossible, not hisec as it currently exists.

Gevlon said...

Many of CFC/HB are newbies and (very unlike WoW) it cannot be fixed with reading, farming and practicing, due to the real-time skillpoints. For example my girlfriend plays for 5 months, spent about 90% of her training on Rokh and still couldn't fly a TEST doctrine Rokh. I can't fly a doctrine scimitar despite having 10M SP, learning only for that ship.

This "SP-newbness" cannot be overcomed by any other way than bringing numbers. I don't question that many of the newbies aren't doing their homework and they are indeed worse than they could be. But - unlike WoW - we can't say "he could do the same as a 5 years veteran if he wouldn't be dumb"

Standards are enforced everywhere. The standards of Makalu often leak for public amusement/shock where he threatens people by kicking for ratting in supers and such. The Goons volunteer to obey SA rules, so they agree with them (even if many would slip if the rules wouldn't exist), just like -A- members agree in "l33t PvP" ethos.

While one can complete the instance with the DPS of that failmage, his presence greatly slows down the instance compared to the average player we could get in his place.

The donation line is just the first step. When others will come (hopefully), WE will ask for a detailed list somewhere.

Just because James is a weird roleplayer, his ideas have their merit on their own. He could publish it on a site not his own, so at least the editors agree that it's worthy of posting. My mere statement was that I'm not alone with this idea, I did not say that it proves it to be right.

Ermak said...

Absolutely off topic, Gevlon, but do read (if you haven't).
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/104j7o/you_are_all_destroying_the_mmo_genre_and_you_dont/

Anonymous said...

" "Don't click on any link that leads to an unknown domain" is nearly as obvious, it's usually the #1 advice on every internet security 101 pages."

that you think this is a matter of computer security only goes to show how far out of touch you are with "your" alliance.

Goons are at the bottom of their heart cultivated adults (might even rise up to "a gentleman and a scholar" levels when slightly drunk) - their all-time favorite site is bonjourmadame (NSFW) to which they link frequently in fleet chat and local.

TEST, however, being the mentally disturbed teenagers that they are, are much more likely to show you some amputee porn or scat - and no amount of eye-bleach will undo the damage you may suffer as a result of following their links.

Anonymous said...

just to follow the logic of the comments in here,
in cold war the soviet union did better then the americans because they controlled more land, right?

Magson said...

I've gotta go with Gevlon here about the whole propaganda bit:

I was in TNT Alliance, which was part of the CFC, and I flew in a few Goon fleets and gate-camps. The FC's were good, comms chatter was held to a minimum, my 1st few times as a logi pilot the Goons flying with me in that squad were *extremely* kind, knowledgeable, helpful, and forgiving of my newbishness. And during all of this, yes, local was being spammed with ASCII penises, trolling, and many links to various pages of bonjourmadame.fr.

Outside face vs inside face. Outside face is trolling and propaganda; inside face is people who are very dedicated to and good at the game they're playing. Sure it's fun to play the meta-game and when I 1st started playing I planned to move to null with any alliance that was against the Goons so I could fight them. When I joined TNT it was simply to get into null -- the Goons played no part of that, and only after I got out to my new home did I find out that TCF was folding their tent and the Goons were replacing them. I wasn't too happy about it -- I didn't want to be a Goon pet -- but in the end, I had a wonderful in-game experience with the Goons.

Anonymous said...

You seem to think hbc cfc have sp issues when they csn field tengus rokhs and apocs. Any player that can t2 gun fit their main doctrine has no problem performimg to standards. Having shield management v isn't going to save you 95% of the time.
Also, because you've classified jbc as not elite pvp you needed to put -a- as elite, but most other wars they were considered just another powerblock alliance, without the leet pvp propaganda,(and they still are, fielding tengus didn't suddenly make them elite. The alliances that actually called themselves elite would be PL BL and a few others, most of us just don't enjoy blobbing thats all