Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Brutal beat down of underskilled newbies and other things

I got a strange comment: "How is Jester, a man who flies in one of the most reknowned PvP corps in the game a champion of the carebear? What? because he doesn't support the brutal beat down of underskilled newbies? Hilarious." Such comments are easy to dismiss and delete as idiot/troll, but they often offer a genuine belief of social people.

One of the major myths of EVE is that it's not newbie friendly. That a new player - without veterans carrying them - is lost and without hope. EVE is actually one of the most newbie friendly games, due to lack of levels and clear progression path. Until you get to lvl 95 and ilvl 9999 in WoW, you are a worthless n00b for the endgame raiding or arena play. In EVE you can go out and tackle a carrier in your Rifter on day 1 and Goon newbies literally do that. You aren't carried by the fleet, you are a useful member. Similarly I made billions on my first months by hauling for people and starting to trade. The "hopeless newbie" is a myth mostly created as ego-booster: "If you’ve played Eve for any significant length of time, there have been numerous occasions where you’ve had your teeth kicked in by this cruel internet spaceship mistress. But rather than throwing in the towel and calling it quits, you picked yourself up, dusted off your implants and charged back into the thick of it. You’ve earned your position. You made it through the days when the tutorial consisted of you being handed a gun, a mining laser and being unceremoniously thrust into space with the advice “Don’t die”."

The newbies gain protection from being worthless target. Sure, anyone can pop a newbie flying his untanked destroyer, trying to finish his career agent mission, but why? To get a 1M kill report with a 0.08M pod for 15 mins GCC and sec status loss? I've never lost a ship in highsec. I once went to lowsec and got popped on the first gate, but hey, I asked for it by moving to lowsec. I even clicked off that "Concord won't protect you" dialog.

Jester and the other "protect the newbies" people don't see that they can't protect newbies without protecting a bunch of bad veterans. He is not a newbie. If you have an untanked barge in 0.5 AFK-ing, you aren't a newbie either, you are a new farmalt. The Concord mechanics makes it impossible to profitably gank a normally fitted ship without without valuable cargo. The safety system makes it impossible to trick someone into combat using obscure game mechanics. If you accept a duel or switch off your safety you should know that a fight is coming even if you've never played EVE before. The newbie protection is already fine.

The "protect the newbies" people are actually protecting bad veterans who are full of ISK but no brain and fly around in all-cargo-expanded T1 haulers with billions in the hold or farm while AFK. They use "newbie" very loosely, including several months old players. Try to tell "this newbie is only playing for half a year, give him a break" in any other game without becoming laughing stock. Why should EVE be any different? Only because a bunch of bad players try to feel good for their "accomplishment" of having 50M SP. Congratulation for being able to renew your subscription for 25 months. You are my hero!

Jester did not have problems killing genuinely clueless newbies and his alliance doesn't accept newbies. This really good blogger turned into hypocrite politician harvesting votes. I don't know which is worse, if he want to scam votes (offer to support bad players and then don't deliver when elected) or if he genuinely push CCP to make it even harder to hit those who already make the best ISK: the highsec farmers.

There is only one way to protect newbies and casuals without protecting farmalts: if you decrease the rewards more than the risks. A genuine newbie won't care if his ISK/hour drops as he is playing a game in space. A farmalt will be hurt badly.



About CSM primary: due to the well-organized scam of James 315 those who want to fix the economy have no candidate. Therefore I suggest to not vote in the primary. The primary is needed to filter out comedy candidates and to give an initial estimation of support. This is the time for people to stand behind their candidate. We have no such. Let those who have strong affiliation choose the candidates, and then we will pick the ones that are least hostile to our case.


Personal note: reading the changes Sort Dragon implemented to HBC and Kaesong Kosmonauts leaving (or kicked, you never know due to politics) I'm wondering if I just joined TEST a bad time. I mean the point that led to my removal was definitely the forum shitstorm (mostly fueled by Kaesong members) and no one even blamed me with anything else. With proper moderation and the absence of these horrible posters my stay would probably be uneventful. Bad luck? Or maybe my case opened the eyes of leaders that it can't go on this way (the first moderation attempts were happening in my time). Or the other way: I awakened the dormant and more or less controlled trolls into burning rage? We'll never know. EVE is real.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

After highsec nerf, most nullsec "oh so l33t pewpewers", Jester including, will be forced to "goodfighting" in noobships with civilian blasters. That's why they won't shut up about mythical newbee opression.

Anonymous said...

Firstly, just because Ripard does not advocate for a world where new players (or farmer alts, or however many other collectives you wish to slot them under without evidence) are not subjected to a game mechanic for which they have no means of recourse does not mean that he is a supporter of carebears. I think you will find the original comment is trying to point this out to you. There is such a thing as a middle ground. I'll note that "docking up" or "paying 10m" or "fitting a tank which will not do anything" are not means of resource. These are not desirable forms of game play and are a sign that there is a fundamental imbalance in highsec. No, not the imbalance you think there is. There is STILL an imbalance in favor of the gankers - and this will continue until the miners can do something in retaliation which will hurt the gankers. This is how the game is balanced in every other respect.

Secondly, your comment on the fact that you made a fortune in the first month is a non sequitur. Just because you achieved something, it does not follow that all will achieve it. You completely gloss over this fact time and time again.


Ripard for CSM

Anonymous said...

Don't agree with you that Eve is noob friendly.
Most people don't get the hang of things as easily as you do.
But i agree with you that noobs shouldn't be protected. Many people start to play Eve because they heard somewhere how ruthless the game is. It's what draws people to Eve.
When you get your ship ganked and podded in the first week and greeted in local with "welcome to Eve" you are either like me and appreciate the challenge that is ahead or you or you start start whining and quit Eve eventualy.
Nobody wants the whiners except other whiners. It's a good mechanism to filter out the people who would ruin what Eve is in the long run.
Thing is even if there are parts in Eve that are not "fair" people have access to all the ressources on the internet to inform themself about what is going, how they can protect themself or what other professions to look into to make their start in Eve easier for them. We want this sort of players who educate themself about the game and appreciate a challenge.

Roy Lofquist said...

Don't know if this is OT but since I'm a real newbie - 3 weeks old - I'll risk making a rookie mistake.

I'm looking to make 50-100 million ISK/hour to finance both my play time and future ship needs. I see via Eve-Central that there are suggested trades that make 15+ million/trip for a 145 m^3 Atron.

Therefore I have fitted an Atron with 3 Warp Core Stabilizer I's and 3 Small Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I's. This ship makes the Dodixie/Jita run in under 14 minutes.

I bought 2 PLEX to finance this endeavor and have 2 alts stationed in Dodixie and Jita to check real time prices.

Is this plausible or am I making a crazy rookie mistake?

Gevlon said...

Yes, you are making a rookie mistake: they won't even try to warp scramble your Atron, just oneshot it with a Tornado. Replace the stabs with Nanofibers or inertia stabilizers for faster align. If you warp out faster than they can scan your ship, they don't know what you have, only see a lowbie frig and ignore it.