When Riverini of EN24 re-posted my article over reaching half trillion, he also added a comment: "TBH, I wonder if a guy like Gevlon or DannyCentauri would have been in charge of TEST finances how would they look like today...". I'm glad I was bored and had some time swimming in poor man tears that the other forum comments are, because it's an important question.
So how would TEST finances look like if I was in charge? Worse than now.
Let me explain. When a system doesn't work as it should work (and an alliance shouldn't be permanently at the edge of bankruptcy) people look at the leaders and shake their fists. TEST is poor? Fire the damn incompetent and put someone in his place who has skills! Sometimes their rage works and the leader is removed or leaves in disgust (for example Montolio). The people get what they wanted, a new leader who does as they pleases and ... things go from bad to horrible. I mean while Montolio was at the helm, the timers were offensive.
When a system doesn't work, it's the system that doesn't work and replacing "clerks" won't help. While those who work in the administration of a democratic system consider themselves powerful, they are just clerks. They can't make the system work any better. Leader change works in only two cases: if the old leader was indeed some horribly incompetent or corrupted one, or when the new leader can somehow convince the people to change the system itself. But for that you don't need to be the leader. Actually it makes the change harder because everyone assumes that the changes are for your own good.
TEST is poor not because their income is mismanaged. Goons aren't fighting over pitiful moons because Mittani and Rydis RMT-ed the tech money away and need replacement. They both work on an income scheme that makes them naturally poor. Their income is a joke. I mean we are talking about 5000 man organizations that live on 0.5-1T/month. That's 50-100M/person income. A few weeks old highsec miner would laugh on that.
People believe that some genius will come who makes things right. Riverini here cast me into the role of a financial genius who could turn this 50-100M into a meaningful sum. I can't. No one can. TEST and Goons are doomed to either stay docked when the chances are against them or field comedy fleets like Thalwars, Caracals and bombless bombers. I loved how The Mittani claimed "while shooting a structure with 30 bombers is a miserable, time-consuming process, 150 bombers can nuke an Ihub down into reinforced within 20 minute". It is plain stupid as it's the same man-hours, just distributed over more people. Maybe these doctrines are my punishment from fate for calling Drakes the ships of poverty. Now I can think of them as the lost golden age when unnerfed Tech made the alliance "rich" enough to field battlecruisers. (I can hear highsec mission runners laughing).
To have decent finances, these alliances need at least 1B/month/member. Moons and other passive income sources won't provide these. I mean if you are a CFC or TEST member and flied 2 hours/day on average as part of the war effort, you put 45 hours into this conflict. If your side wins today and keeps Fountain with no further combat in the next 4 years, then you gained the same ISK as you'd have if you spent the same time ratting.
Oh, I'm sure you'll say that ratting is bad and fighting is so much fun. Well, according to The Mittani himself "the foe is either being blueballed or massacred entirely, and not having much fun." But let's act like sov war was fun. Even if you have fun, the alliance coffer is still empty and reimbursement requests are coming in.
Decent money can only come from one source: the members. They must contribute. It can be either a mandatory tax, it can work in alliances which have mandatory CTAs. For those without CTAs, only volunteer donation is imaginable, probably motivated by some toplist. Either way the alliances must have industrialists, miners and ratters who pay for the bills both for themselves and for the combat pilots who can't make money since they spend their time in fleets. Luckily there are such people, many already inside the alliances.
To utilize this income source the alliances need to change their culture, making PvE a valued activity instead of "lol carebear". Changing the clerk who desperately trying to make ends meet won't make difference.
So how would TEST finances look like if I was in charge? Worse than now.
Let me explain. When a system doesn't work as it should work (and an alliance shouldn't be permanently at the edge of bankruptcy) people look at the leaders and shake their fists. TEST is poor? Fire the damn incompetent and put someone in his place who has skills! Sometimes their rage works and the leader is removed or leaves in disgust (for example Montolio). The people get what they wanted, a new leader who does as they pleases and ... things go from bad to horrible. I mean while Montolio was at the helm, the timers were offensive.
When a system doesn't work, it's the system that doesn't work and replacing "clerks" won't help. While those who work in the administration of a democratic system consider themselves powerful, they are just clerks. They can't make the system work any better. Leader change works in only two cases: if the old leader was indeed some horribly incompetent or corrupted one, or when the new leader can somehow convince the people to change the system itself. But for that you don't need to be the leader. Actually it makes the change harder because everyone assumes that the changes are for your own good.
TEST is poor not because their income is mismanaged. Goons aren't fighting over pitiful moons because Mittani and Rydis RMT-ed the tech money away and need replacement. They both work on an income scheme that makes them naturally poor. Their income is a joke. I mean we are talking about 5000 man organizations that live on 0.5-1T/month. That's 50-100M/person income. A few weeks old highsec miner would laugh on that.
People believe that some genius will come who makes things right. Riverini here cast me into the role of a financial genius who could turn this 50-100M into a meaningful sum. I can't. No one can. TEST and Goons are doomed to either stay docked when the chances are against them or field comedy fleets like Thalwars, Caracals and bombless bombers. I loved how The Mittani claimed "while shooting a structure with 30 bombers is a miserable, time-consuming process, 150 bombers can nuke an Ihub down into reinforced within 20 minute". It is plain stupid as it's the same man-hours, just distributed over more people. Maybe these doctrines are my punishment from fate for calling Drakes the ships of poverty. Now I can think of them as the lost golden age when unnerfed Tech made the alliance "rich" enough to field battlecruisers. (I can hear highsec mission runners laughing).
To have decent finances, these alliances need at least 1B/month/member. Moons and other passive income sources won't provide these. I mean if you are a CFC or TEST member and flied 2 hours/day on average as part of the war effort, you put 45 hours into this conflict. If your side wins today and keeps Fountain with no further combat in the next 4 years, then you gained the same ISK as you'd have if you spent the same time ratting.
Oh, I'm sure you'll say that ratting is bad and fighting is so much fun. Well, according to The Mittani himself "the foe is either being blueballed or massacred entirely, and not having much fun." But let's act like sov war was fun. Even if you have fun, the alliance coffer is still empty and reimbursement requests are coming in.
Decent money can only come from one source: the members. They must contribute. It can be either a mandatory tax, it can work in alliances which have mandatory CTAs. For those without CTAs, only volunteer donation is imaginable, probably motivated by some toplist. Either way the alliances must have industrialists, miners and ratters who pay for the bills both for themselves and for the combat pilots who can't make money since they spend their time in fleets. Luckily there are such people, many already inside the alliances.
To utilize this income source the alliances need to change their culture, making PvE a valued activity instead of "lol carebear". Changing the clerk who desperately trying to make ends meet won't make difference.
12 comments:
for an alliance in the size of test or goons its easier to kill man hours with men than with hours. Hence having 150 bombers do it in compareably no time is an acceptable outcome.
Still...
how WOULD test finances look if you managed them?
"Their income is a joke. I mean we are talking about 5000 man organizations that live on 0.5-1T/month."
would you mind elaborating a bit, where u take these numbers from?
in your calculations, what about the (not sure about the english word) follow-income? like, take that 1T, and speculate at the market, use burnjita/iceindertiction to make a few coins of extra.profit and so on. i just assume, that goons financial team is doing stuff, i don't even dream of.
your calculations do not make that much sense, because, according to your figures, goons should be dead broke by now. they obviously aren't.
who tells you that goons and test don't get tax income from their members?
they obviously do.
i mean, you did read the goonwiki, the parts, where it advises their members on the different careers in eve? you browsed through their ship-fitting advices? you saw the e.g. apoc fitting for doing L4 highsec missions?
could you honestly say, that you read all this, and still stick to your assumptions about goons and co?
but yes, i think you are right. you wouldn't be of any help to tests finances, as the only thing you do is buy.low.sell.high. it's intresting to see, that your daily income is not growing with your wallet, as you stick to the same trading scheme u started with 1,5 years ago.
you had this half trillion isk, and didn't use the last expansion to earn a big extra overnight?
you are a bit like an industrialist, who sticks to mining, and never starts to go into production.
it's also interesting to see, that you never talk about how much time you invest(ed) into the game.
one other thing, as i am a bit in writing mode atm.
you allways talk about earning lot's of isk, you allways mention supers and titans. you develope at least one char towards flying them. i gets clear that u are going to buy one or the other.
what's so desirable about a titan, if flying a t1.frig into lowsec is not?
Oh, I'm sure you'll say that ratting is bad and fighting is so much fun.
No. There is no moral dimension to ratting. The problem is that ratting is unfun. By contrast PVP is is fun. Most players will tell you this if you are willing to listen.
according to The Mittani himself "the foe is either being blueballed or massacred entirely, and not having much fun."
From what I can tell as an outsider, the Goons are not being successful in denying the enemy fun. Big fun battles and skirmishes are happening. But in any case, if you are simply willing to interpret what The Mittani is saying, you'll see that people play EVE for the (fun) fighting. Fun is an end in itself. This is why his strategy has been to deny it to the enemy.
I mean if you are a CFC or TEST member and flied 2 hours/day on average as part of the war effort, you put 45 hours into this conflict. If your side wins today and keeps Fountain with no further combat in the next 4 years, then you gained the same ISK as you'd have if you spent the same time ratting.
Your mistake is in thinking that men are indifferent between ratting and warfare with comrades. They are not. The one is grinding and many pay real money to avoid it. The other is what men play the game for, and they will pay real money to experience it.
@Anonymous 14:10: Agreed. Also, short operation timers will draw in more people to accomplish objectives. You're going to find more people who are willing to participate in a thirty-minute op than a two-hour op.
@Anonymous 15:53: My understanding is that self-funding a Titan is a proof-of-concept, since they're generally considered alliance-level projects.
@Gevlon: Part of the problem might be that, by considering financiers administrative (to use your terminology), the required numbers are vastly underestimated. Administrative roles scale better with organization size. For example, a skilled FC makes his fleet more effective the larger it gets.
Financiers don't work like this. The more people they support, the less effectively they support any one of them. They're more like industrialists or miners. A five-thousand-strong alliance wouldn't try to support themselves on a team of ten miners, why expect that of finance people?
The most ridiculous part of the situation is that there are legions of high sec industrialists who would be more than happy to go out to null sec and make these alliances money in exchange for a guarantee of security and a modest amount of income. Yet the nullbear mentality doesn't allow for that to happen. It is the most comical part of the load of BS that is "farms and fields". The problem isn't in the rewards of null sec but rather in the insufferable jack asses that make up the null sec player base.
Invictus: @Anonymous 15:53: My understanding is that self-funding a Titan is a proof-of-concept, since they're generally considered alliance-level projects.
a proof of what?
that someone with 9 (was it 9, or is it more by now?) accounts can grind sufficient isk to buy whatever he want's to?
eve's economy is broken - if one want's to see it that way. but that is obvious. and it is for obvious reasons - if ppl don't have to care about losing isk, they are more willing to lose a ship or two, therefor it get's more likely to generate huge battles over minor things.
the thing about gevlon is, everybody is grinding isk to play his own minigame in the sandbox. but gevlon still thinks that it's about the isk and nothing else.
if he were roleplaying a greedy business man, yep, i would say, cool thing u do. but he obviously isn't roleplaying - i feel that he doesn't even understand that most ppl in this game are roleplaying. may it be a combat avoiding "carebear", or the mittanis f1.drone, or a wannabe.space.hitler. most nullsec alliances are roleplaying an epic rts game.
it's like playing chess. it obviously is a waste of time. because in the time playing, one could go to work, and earn money. yet ppl find it joyful to meet and measure who is the one superior in the game.
gevlon, who thinks that everything other than isk.grinding is a waste of time, doesn't seem to realize that computergaming in general is a waste of time. with his attitude, i wonder why he doesn't have a dayjob. i wonder why he's got a gf. girls are for generating babys. unless she is pregnant, it really is a waste of time to spend time with her, as it would make much more sense to attend a dayjob, and work 24/7. everythibng else is not generating money, therefore a waste of time.
and yet i wait for an answer if he really did his homework before writing about goons and what and how they do.
gevlon: this is a sandbox. it's not a game with a given goal, it just is a sanbox. a parallel universe. whatever u do, and whatever everyone else does in it, there is no right or wrong.
reading your blog for more than a year by now, i see that allmost every day your readers point that out in the comments. you never comment on that very one thing, and the next day you go back posting like no.one ever told you, that eve is a sandbox.
could you please please please write just one article about the sandbox character of eve, and that you understand it's nature?
just one article, please.
p.s.: writing a blog is a waste of time, as it isn't generating money, neither isk.
Anonymous said... The problem isn't in the rewards of null sec but rather in the insufferable jack asses that make up the null sec player base.
even more sad it is, that gevlon will waste his isk on a titan, rather than founding a corp.
@Anonymous 21:30:
http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2012/04/what-to-do-with-all-money.html
The "proof-of-concept" is for his theories, with the Titan as both evidence and marketing. Evidence because he gained it using his theories, marketing because top-tier equipment is more immediately compelling than revenue charts. Basically, Gevlon is playing Eve by using it as a proving ground for ideas.
invictus ...
i remember that post.
yet his so called "ideas" never were doubted, therefore do not need to be proofed.
it's nice that he is writing about them, and his business articles are of very high value to the eve newbie - at least to those too dumb to figure them out themselve.
if he'd write this blog as a guidline for the newbie, it would be great.
but this constant aggressivnes, the anger, the hatred towards everybody else in the game...
radom rumblings about things, mechanics, playstyles, aliances that he doesn't understand, that he didn't investigate properly...
this constant big mouthing...
never admitting that he might've been wrong on something...
ok, in other words, because this was my break.even.point:
remember that article series about wot.matchmaking?
i read it, the first, the second, the third article. me and my roommate were very excited. we read it, and thought, yep, he's right. so well written, everything proofed with numbers. splendid work.
the day he promised his final article on how to exploit the so called cheat, i went right at the comp after waking up, to read it.
i read it, and his "exploit" was the most fucking obvious thing i ever read.
and i really realised, that reading these articles were just a big waste of time. doing one high level fight, and a bunch of quick ones in minor tier tanks to grind isk, while waiting for the big tier fight to finish.
i play wot that way, my roommate does, my friend does, and i think many many more.
it would have been a really nice series of posts, if he'd written it ... well, without the bigmouth words, a bit more humble, u know?!
it feels like he really thought to have figured something unbeknownst to anybody.
he didn't.
neither did he figure out anything about eve that isn't just obvious.
for the last year and something, i can not think of a single post, where he comes up with a new and original idea.
i mean, on the contrary goons.
if one sais: hey, we could make a massive amount of isk with high.sec.ice.miner.ganking!
and the other one sais: i doubt that. minerganking does not bring enough isk to justify the amount of time.
and the one proves that, by doing the ice.interdiction, and earning the isk by speculating the ice.market ...
well, that is an original idea worth to be proved.
what he is doing is what everybody seriously playing the game does as well.
grinding as much isk as possible to pay for big things.
i mean, what do you think how other ppl get to sit in supers, and titans, and whatsoever?
the difference is, that other ppl, after they have sufficient isk, start to "waste" these on something - called the metagame.
the only thing he proves is, and sorry if i am repetitive, that earning isk is easy - if you invest a sufficient amount of time.
time that others rather spend on something they find more joyfull than grinding for isk.
I mean, he was talking about the income stability has to come from members, and why this dude always generates so much of hate? People are weird. If you don't like it, don't read it.
He was not talking about "Let's all go to do L4 missions." He was talking about it is sensible to have many members to do such things to support the alliance. Why is it so hard to understand? I mean, people usually like to throw away "You know nothing about XXX" to this guy as insults. But come on, if it is a way to insult people then he has pretty good reasons to insult us all, as he clearly know many things we do not know/realize.
I rarely write in blogs/forums as English is not my naive, but to my understanding we read because we want to learn we do not know, not because we want to show what we do know but other don't. This dude is smart, and surely he is extreme sometimes. But isn't we should pay attention on what people say is right and true, other than what is wrong and untrue? After all, the latter is too plenty in this world.
i wonder how a lot of that would look, from an economics standpoint. If you just upfront want cash direct, then youll probably get a lot of unsubbers, since they expect to at least have as much fun as they would of on their own, which no one ever will.
But upping station fees, taxes etc changes behaviour, who would rat in nul for 25% tax when they can rat in hisec for10%. Though being issued free ratting shipis, skillbooks, and pvp ships would help with that too.
I do like previous ideas about specializing. .mining corps sell minterals to indy corps, ,who sell ships to traders, who contract freighters to get goods to mamrket, and alliance buys them. What would be even better is just contracts of all the coalition fits, but again, cant really just have a day 1 switch on that. Moon goo is internal production, with extra traded in hisec for goo we didnt own.
And id argue that even 200m a month is fine, not 1bn. If we can get full on space corporate with bs, that would be fine, and thats assuming they get whelped every month. Most woudlnt, and paying out half what they would have gotten in ship as a cash incentive would keep people alive, or with enough ships to go crazy for a month.
Since POS are allowed to have whatever password is set for them, can be easy enough for people to rent moons from alliance to make goo, or capitals etc. So long as people get a 5% return, they will pay whatever. Plus since they have all different passwords, ,makes it hard to steal from them
Pay people to manage jump bridge networks, freighter services etc. You could be the lowly space janitor, fillin up the jump bridge in the back corner of the galaxy, or keeing your research pos good to go, charge whatever you want to rates, if you make back what youre charged for rent, good on you
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