The killboards are logs of who killed what. So far so good. But they are used for something else too: competition. Every game has a leaderboard, if not made by the developers, it's made by players. EVE is no exception, the killboard has a "Ranks - Recent (Past 90 Days) - Killers". It ranks players by kill numbers, "points" and ISK value.
At the point of writing this, the #1 on ISK destroyed is Admiral Thelaro of Black Legion with the mindblowing 1.1T kills. This is something that you or me can never get right? This is something totally out of reach for us. For such numbers you not only have to be the best but part of the best team, right? Let's dig deeper and check the individual kills. Since he destroyed 1333 ships the last 90 days, I just checked a sample: the latest 50 kills at the time of writing, starting with this and ending with this. Below you can see three data for each kill: its total value, the number of killers on the report, and value/killers. Since only one ship died, the value must be divided by the killers.
0,01 1 0,0
0,01 1 0,0
20,2 44 0,5
28,6 86 0,3
1820 113 16,1
298,7 102 2,9
254,9 109 2,3
95,7 29 3,3
128,2 32 4,0
3120 46 67,8
2990 51 58,6
2990 65 46,0
3070 59 52,0
2720 15 181,3
25,5 19 1,3
22,1 11 2,0
10,4 9 1,2
101,4 11 9,2
25,2 29 0,9
164,7 93 1,8
164,7 93 1,8
1484 67 22,1
2402 125 19,2
5059 132 38,3
2300 121 19,0
4171 129 32,3
481 94 5,1
38 1 38,0
32,8 38 0,9
50,5 15 3,4
40,8 78 0,5
214,6 59 3,6
216 67 3,2
213,4 93 2,3
202,5 86 2,4
38,5 21 1,8
166,9 31 5,4
229 81 2,8
216,2 89 2,4
709,1 108 6,6
242,6 34 7,1
35,6 6 5,9
84,8 9 9,4
109 20 5,5
110,4 17 6,5
89,4 22 4,1
86,8 26 3,3
157,7 37 4,3
148,9 36 4,1
116,3 25 4,7
If we summarize the total kills we get 37.5B. This is the ISK destroyed number he earned by these kills. But summarizing the last column we only get 718M. This is what he'd get if the toplist would record partial kills and not full for every killer. The ratio of the two numbers are 52.2. The value of the last 50 kills were overestimated 52.2x!!! If we assume that these kills are a good sample of his performance, his 1.1T kills shrink to actually 21.1B. And that's for 90 days, so his actual monthly kills are around 7B. And he isn't some random nullsec player, he is the #1 on the toplist.
What was my monthly kill? 52B. Did I just outperformed the best of the best by the factor of 7? Oops!
Of course that comparison is unfair to him which is the point of the post (me being the best of the best would interest nobody besides my mum). The point of the post is the killboard itself. It isn't designed this way by mistake. No one forced the killboard developers to add a leaderboard or even a summary field to it. But they did, and it was implemented in a way that extremely inflates numbers for nullsec players who usually fly in large fleets. Of course it wasn't done by some evil conspiracy, simply by market forces. The killboard lives on ad money so wants to serve those who click on it the most and it's obviously not the highsec miners. Out of the multiple options the one was accepted which was most liked by the most frequent viewers. This was done even despite its obvious error of giving everyone 99% efficiency. The laziness of CCP of allowing only one killboard per player via the kill API cache killed alternative killboards, canonizing this ranking.
After the method was canonized, it started to affect the players. The "whore on mails" activity emerged, since it cost nothing to the original killers. Maybe the good Admiral Thelaro killed much more than 7B/month, but he is a nice guy and let unworthy punks whore on his kills which now unfairly affects him in my calculation. I mean if he could kill the same ships with half amount of killers, I'd give him twice as high number. But currently he isn't motivated to lock out anyone from a kill.
The error of the killboard and the fact that everyone (except TEST Alliance) has very high efficiency is well known. No one would stand out and say "look at my killboard and envy me". But subconsciously the people are affected. If they wouldn't care, no one would click on the ranking and aggregate pages of the killboard so they wouldn't exist at the first place. When I tried to mitigate the inflation by simply dividing the alliance kill values by the alliance members, the outrage was epic. Fun fact: the toplist gives 2.73T kills for 90 days for Black Legion and it has 1139 members, so BL has 0.8B kills/month/pilot. If we assume 3 alts, we get 2.4B/player, which is good for an average member, considering the best has 7.
The killboard became another tool of the "nullsec supremacy myth", making nullseccers and "carebears" equally believe that nullsec is an extremely dangerous place, full of multi-billion killing PvP Gods. The reason why so many highsec players never even think of PvP is that they see themselves so far below their peers that they don't even try. The permanent carebear is the product of the myth. He doesn't start because he sees zero chance of winning. To fix that we must get him into PvP and teach him how to win. That part is easy: gank him and teach him how to fit a ship that survives ganking.
But it alone won't be enough. After all he just survived the attacks of some "lowly ganker" who surely ganks because he has no chance in "real PvP". So to give highsec dwellers the proof that they can indeed win against dangerous enemies by fitting their ship right, we have to look dangerous in their eyes. How? By climbing high on the killboard ranking as a corp.
The top ranked nullsec corps: Goonwaffe, Wildly Inappropriate, Dreddit are killing 3.3, 2.5, 2.1T per 90 days. That's around 1T per month. With about 25 members like myself we can get to the top of the toplist. Again: two dozen gankers like myself can beat all the nullsec corps on the killboard. This would give weight to our advices to the targets and give them the sense of success when they are not ganked due to proper fitting and movement.
So here is why I needed a corp for my adventure and a channel with NPC corp gankers isn't enough. This is how we will change the thinking of people towards "griefing": we become the worst monster out there and show them how can they survive against us. Join!
Clarification: I do not think that killboards are important or being top of it would mean something so please don't comment it. The ignorant people (like those who mine in untanked Mackinaws with multiple flashy reds on local) believe these and you can tell them anything, they won't listen. The only way to change their thinking is turning the killboard upside down.
Fun fact: my corp (which is currently just my two gankers) have 17.8B kills in September. After 5 days of September.
Here are the daily anti-tears:
The moron of the day is the player behind these two wonderfully fit Mackinaws. The second died 4 minutes after the first. I had to hurry, since the rats were busy killing the second:
Finally, the smart guy of the day is the owner of this Mack. If you check the fit, it's impossible to kill it with two Catalysts. I didn't know you can fit a Mack that high. Smart! But not smart enough, because I checked not only the EHP field in EFT but also the fitting field. You can't fit this thing even with +5% PG, +5% CPU and Genolution implants. He just put on offlined modules as scarecrows.
At the point of writing this, the #1 on ISK destroyed is Admiral Thelaro of Black Legion with the mindblowing 1.1T kills. This is something that you or me can never get right? This is something totally out of reach for us. For such numbers you not only have to be the best but part of the best team, right? Let's dig deeper and check the individual kills. Since he destroyed 1333 ships the last 90 days, I just checked a sample: the latest 50 kills at the time of writing, starting with this and ending with this. Below you can see three data for each kill: its total value, the number of killers on the report, and value/killers. Since only one ship died, the value must be divided by the killers.
0,01 1 0,0
0,01 1 0,0
20,2 44 0,5
28,6 86 0,3
1820 113 16,1
298,7 102 2,9
254,9 109 2,3
95,7 29 3,3
128,2 32 4,0
3120 46 67,8
2990 51 58,6
2990 65 46,0
3070 59 52,0
2720 15 181,3
25,5 19 1,3
22,1 11 2,0
10,4 9 1,2
101,4 11 9,2
25,2 29 0,9
164,7 93 1,8
164,7 93 1,8
1484 67 22,1
2402 125 19,2
5059 132 38,3
2300 121 19,0
4171 129 32,3
481 94 5,1
38 1 38,0
32,8 38 0,9
50,5 15 3,4
40,8 78 0,5
214,6 59 3,6
216 67 3,2
213,4 93 2,3
202,5 86 2,4
38,5 21 1,8
166,9 31 5,4
229 81 2,8
216,2 89 2,4
709,1 108 6,6
242,6 34 7,1
35,6 6 5,9
84,8 9 9,4
109 20 5,5
110,4 17 6,5
89,4 22 4,1
86,8 26 3,3
157,7 37 4,3
148,9 36 4,1
116,3 25 4,7
If we summarize the total kills we get 37.5B. This is the ISK destroyed number he earned by these kills. But summarizing the last column we only get 718M. This is what he'd get if the toplist would record partial kills and not full for every killer. The ratio of the two numbers are 52.2. The value of the last 50 kills were overestimated 52.2x!!! If we assume that these kills are a good sample of his performance, his 1.1T kills shrink to actually 21.1B. And that's for 90 days, so his actual monthly kills are around 7B. And he isn't some random nullsec player, he is the #1 on the toplist.
What was my monthly kill? 52B. Did I just outperformed the best of the best by the factor of 7? Oops!
Of course that comparison is unfair to him which is the point of the post (me being the best of the best would interest nobody besides my mum). The point of the post is the killboard itself. It isn't designed this way by mistake. No one forced the killboard developers to add a leaderboard or even a summary field to it. But they did, and it was implemented in a way that extremely inflates numbers for nullsec players who usually fly in large fleets. Of course it wasn't done by some evil conspiracy, simply by market forces. The killboard lives on ad money so wants to serve those who click on it the most and it's obviously not the highsec miners. Out of the multiple options the one was accepted which was most liked by the most frequent viewers. This was done even despite its obvious error of giving everyone 99% efficiency. The laziness of CCP of allowing only one killboard per player via the kill API cache killed alternative killboards, canonizing this ranking.
After the method was canonized, it started to affect the players. The "whore on mails" activity emerged, since it cost nothing to the original killers. Maybe the good Admiral Thelaro killed much more than 7B/month, but he is a nice guy and let unworthy punks whore on his kills which now unfairly affects him in my calculation. I mean if he could kill the same ships with half amount of killers, I'd give him twice as high number. But currently he isn't motivated to lock out anyone from a kill.
The error of the killboard and the fact that everyone (except TEST Alliance) has very high efficiency is well known. No one would stand out and say "look at my killboard and envy me". But subconsciously the people are affected. If they wouldn't care, no one would click on the ranking and aggregate pages of the killboard so they wouldn't exist at the first place. When I tried to mitigate the inflation by simply dividing the alliance kill values by the alliance members, the outrage was epic. Fun fact: the toplist gives 2.73T kills for 90 days for Black Legion and it has 1139 members, so BL has 0.8B kills/month/pilot. If we assume 3 alts, we get 2.4B/player, which is good for an average member, considering the best has 7.
The killboard became another tool of the "nullsec supremacy myth", making nullseccers and "carebears" equally believe that nullsec is an extremely dangerous place, full of multi-billion killing PvP Gods. The reason why so many highsec players never even think of PvP is that they see themselves so far below their peers that they don't even try. The permanent carebear is the product of the myth. He doesn't start because he sees zero chance of winning. To fix that we must get him into PvP and teach him how to win. That part is easy: gank him and teach him how to fit a ship that survives ganking.
But it alone won't be enough. After all he just survived the attacks of some "lowly ganker" who surely ganks because he has no chance in "real PvP". So to give highsec dwellers the proof that they can indeed win against dangerous enemies by fitting their ship right, we have to look dangerous in their eyes. How? By climbing high on the killboard ranking as a corp.
The top ranked nullsec corps: Goonwaffe, Wildly Inappropriate, Dreddit are killing 3.3, 2.5, 2.1T per 90 days. That's around 1T per month. With about 25 members like myself we can get to the top of the toplist. Again: two dozen gankers like myself can beat all the nullsec corps on the killboard. This would give weight to our advices to the targets and give them the sense of success when they are not ganked due to proper fitting and movement.
So here is why I needed a corp for my adventure and a channel with NPC corp gankers isn't enough. This is how we will change the thinking of people towards "griefing": we become the worst monster out there and show them how can they survive against us. Join!
Clarification: I do not think that killboards are important or being top of it would mean something so please don't comment it. The ignorant people (like those who mine in untanked Mackinaws with multiple flashy reds on local) believe these and you can tell them anything, they won't listen. The only way to change their thinking is turning the killboard upside down.
Fun fact: my corp (which is currently just my two gankers) have 17.8B kills in September. After 5 days of September.
Here are the daily anti-tears:
The moron of the day is the player behind these two wonderfully fit Mackinaws. The second died 4 minutes after the first. I had to hurry, since the rats were busy killing the second:
Finally, the smart guy of the day is the owner of this Mack. If you check the fit, it's impossible to kill it with two Catalysts. I didn't know you can fit a Mack that high. Smart! But not smart enough, because I checked not only the EHP field in EFT but also the fitting field. You can't fit this thing even with +5% PG, +5% CPU and Genolution implants. He just put on offlined modules as scarecrows.
35 comments:
Some time ago Lucas said that this post would be something people knew for years. He was right. We all know how absurdly broken the KB mechanic is making it pretty much irrelevant for most of the players. The only valuable thing out there are killmails themselves, which could be quite amusing sometimes. Efficiency and isk doesn't matter, but people have been telling you this as long as you were boasting your kb stats. Nobody cares and you just came to the same conclusion why. So why you do it? Do you think anyone will be impressed? At the moment all you get is laughs when you talk about your personal kb and that won't change. So again - why do it? To show a broken mechanic which everyone already knows it's broken? Also your method of counting kb isk is much retarded. You should give every player isk, proportional to his contribution to the kill. Using plain average is dumb.
No one with game knowledge cares. That's true. But the uneducated masses are worshiping the killboard. Why else would anyone whore on kills?
Remember! WGBWC is a teaching organization, so we must speak the language of the dumb ones.
Distributing kill ISK according to damage would give 0 to the tackler who has zero damage but without him there wouldn't be kill.
There is a more efficient way to teach newbies about the unimportance of kb - just show them group mails and explain what's going on. There's no need for ganks or corps or relying that a player will get the message after a failed gank. What you're saying just looks like an attempt to justify your need for kb padding. Why bother since we know that already? As for distributing kills - you're right, but I wasn't aiming at providing a solution to the KB problem, but to show you picked the worst metric you could. Even your example proves it, since a tackle Atron can whore on a multi billion kill that way. The real solution is impossible to make since besides percentage based distribution and counting support in somehow, it would need to take into account the power difference between parties. A frig duel of equal power would be most likely a good fight and have the highest value, when a miner gank would have 0 value, since it's not a pvp kill. But that's utopia and we need to use our heads with what we have now. And now kb aggregate stats, like personal efficiency, are a joke.
"Why bother since we know that already?"
YOU KNOW IT! You are an educated player who spends his time on out of game resources. The average player doesn't know about basic ship fitting and movement.
"just show them group mails and explain what's going on." Yeah, that would totally work! Why should they listen: I'm just another nolifer nerd talking shit in their eyes.
If you blow up their precious, you get their attention.
I was talking about knowing you aim for kb padding rather than teaching. But on to the point. You are claiming that blowing a ship up would somehow enlighten a newbie about the nonsense of isk efficiency? That's very naive, since he most likely doesn't know about kbs and he'll be pissed about loosing a ship rather than thinking about the effect of his killmail with respect to you corp efficiency. To teach him about that you would need to bring the topic up, therefore do what I suggested without the need of a gank, failed or otherwise.
Again you are ranting about something that has been solved years ago.
What you complain about is exactly why killboards have point systems that assign each kill a point value which reflects the number of players involved in the kill and the class of their ship vs your ship.
e.g. some examples:
https://kb.pleaseignore.com/detail/33062389/
Thrasher kills Talwar: 40 points
https://kb.pleaseignore.com/detail/33082886/
Stabber kills Talwar: 30 points
https://kb.pleaseignore.com/detail/33098815/
Vagabond kills Talwar: 11 points
https://kb.pleaseignore.com/detail/32771099/
Typhoon kills Talwar: 6 points
https://kb.pleaseignore.com/detail/33098860/
2 Vagabonds and Navy Omen kill Talwar: 5 points
@First anonymous: blowing his ship or someone elses ship next to him makes him CARE, which is the first step of teaching. You can't teach someone who can't care less.
@Lucas: every killmail whores care about killboards by definition.
Highsec miners don't worship it but fear it. In their mind lowsec and nullsec are full of horrible things that would devour them in one piece. I want to bring the monster to their belt so they can see it's just a guy in a ship.
The Revenant kill did NOT skew his result: http://zkillboard.com/detail/31776088/ it's 314B for 104 killers, which would give him 3.1B personal kill. Which is nice for one kill but I had several similar in pods.
@Last anonymous: the point system is horrible:
http://zkillboard.com/detail/29134110/
Tengu vs Chimera: 3200 pt, got to the "Top Points Lost - Last 3 Days"
I paid the Carrier pilot of course for the "kill"
"Highsec miners don't worship it but fear it. In their mind lowsec and nullsec are full of horrible things that would devour them in one piece. I want to bring the monster to their belt so they can see it's just a guy in a ship."
As lucas said, high sec miners and most other people go to KBs just to see the huge losses and go "WTF" at either the cost, or the lolfits.
You are bringing the monster to their belt to show them that the monster can devour them, and with concord protection, so how much more dangerous would it be in lowsec or nullsec without concord protection?
It is nice to pretend to have altruistic aims, like Solstice Project says his aim is to teach people not to AP pods and ships in highsec under the illusion that it is safe, but, when it comes down to it, it is a reason, one of many, (and there are always justifications and reasons to be found if you want one) for ganking ships.
It is the lengths people will go to to avoid saying "Hey, I really enjoy blowing up other peoples ships" that I find interesting.
uff, i don't know where to start...
last thing first:
"Finally, the smart guy of the day is the owner of this Mack. If you check the fit, it's impossible to kill it with two Catalysts."
ok, here's the point where i'm losing it.
you ganked someone who did absolutely everything right?
he not only tanked his mack properly, but also outsmarted most potential gankers, and you ganked him to teach him what?
yes, there are kb-whores out there. yep, i once was in a sov.0-indu-corp, yep corpies told me, that's it's nice to be in 0 as it is easy to get on killmails.
yes, this myth/system is wanted by nullsec players, as it encourages ppl to take part in ops - even the boring ones (pos shooting and such).
"What was my monthly kill? 52B. Did I just outperformed the best of the best by the factor of 7? Oops!"
&
"Clarification: I do not think that killboards are important or being top of it would mean something so please don't comment it."
i won't comment that ...
but, in the time that u use to jump into the next cata, a nullsec spends several hours scouting/hunting a target, prteparing the kill, communicating the strategy and so on.
it's his style of gaming, and i assume, most of them would do so, even without the existing of kb's at all.
"The reason why so many highsec players never even think of PvP is that they see themselves so far below their peers that they don't even try. The permanent carebear is the product of the myth. He doesn't start because he sees zero chance of winning. To fix that we must get him into PvP and teach him how to win."
i think there is FactionalWarefare.
it's fun, it earns isk - better isk than dedicating 3 accounts for killing untanked barges.
as you have dedicated your wealth towards teaching, maybe you want to do it for a while, learn the mechanics, teach them to others etc pp.
gevlon, if you think the current kb system is broken, there is one easy workaround.
develop a new one.
not by raging and shitting on everybody who posts his mails on a kb, but by sitting down, and writing a better one.
eve is easy.
@Daniel: I CANNOT gank someone who does everything right. He was flying a Mackinaw. You can't tank a Mack properly, Macks have no place in highsec, they belong to low/null/WH where you avoid being killed not by tanking but by warping off or having patrol. Even if you put tanking modules to every slot of the Mack (making it worse yield than a Ret), it's still very profitably gankable.
I CANNOT write a better killboard, because the EVE API system allows one killboard per player. No one would send his API to my new killboard instead of the established one.
but you can write a kb that divides the isk.amount through participating parties. one that shows, if someone was a dmg.dealer, or a kb whore etc pp.
a kb that shows statistics the way u like/want them.
this is doable.
if i were you, i wouldn't be too cocky about people falling for myth and propaganda.
in your one and a half years in eve i have seen you falling for every myth and propaganda eve has to offer.
no, eve is not what ccp promises. no, a titan is not an overpowerd endgame that noone can afford, but the biggest alliances.
no, goons aren't in it for being different, but for the isk.
no, test will not win the war.
no, kb stats do not have any meaning, other the one that one puts into them.
no, no, no and no.
eve isn't even that much of a dark cold place. many ppl, even reds in nullsec, pirates in lowsec, and gankers in highsec are very friendly. not every system is camped (when i create new toons, i let them autopilot to nullsec, out of 8, 1 got podded, one lost the noob ship (rats at the gates)).
eve(ccp) lives from myths, because that is the only thing that makes the game intresting outside the game - everyone not realising that after a few months, doesn't deserve any better.
imagine, without all these myths, how would you attract ppl towards eve?
by telling them: oh, it has such a shitty ui, many ppl are total dickheads, who try to harm you, even if you want to just mine in highsec, it's complicated, it's timeeating, being in a fleet isn't anything but pushing f1, with 10% tidi.
no, you tell them about the awesome side of eve.
of course all that is propaganda.
it's a selfhealing mechanism.
newbioes join, and only the ones that really wanna play the game stay.
i'm perfectly fine with that.
"The reason why so many highsec players never even think of PvP is that they see themselves so far below their peers that they don't even try."
No. The reason is that they wander into lowsec once in cluelessness, and are killed and podded mercilessly. Then later they go back in a calculated fashion, but in ignorance of many game mechanics, and are killed and podded without mercy. And then they learn a bit more and try it one more time, and although this time they are not killed, they do not profit because they are ignorant of how to do that. They may iterate on this last step for a while (occasionally losing a ship).
So they say "bother to all that", and stick to highsec.
"[Topping a killboard] would give weight to our advices..."
Not for the vast majority of players.
I grew up in highsec. I never looked at killboards then. This is because I did not even know they existed. Do recall that you are trying to manipulate people who occupy the left side of the bell curve.
I never look at killboards now, either, even knowing what they are. Whether the Goons are #1 in some arbitrary number, or Black Legion, or someone else, including "We kill because we care" (snicker), is utterly uninteresting to me. If I had found out, back when I explored highsec, that a ganker corp topped a killboard I would have just thought, "well, that's evidence of how badly designed the killboard algorithm is". And I'd have been right.
They should remove from a killboard anything they can detect as a pure gank. Popping Macks in highsec is fun, I am sure. But it is simply not comparable to PVP outside of highsec in terms of difficulty.
p.p.s.:
you could also write a kb that pulls data from other kb's, but generates a different statistic.
"I CANNOT write a better killboard, because the EVE API system allows one killboard per player. No one would send his API to my new killboard instead of the established one."
But you could at least, to some extend, grab data from the killboards and create your own with this data. This would also deprecate the silly requirement of your corp, that only no kills in low or 0.0 are allowed.
About writing my own killboard: I think the developers of Zkillboard are perfectly capable of implementing the function "/". They CHOOSE not to, because it would lose them visitors and API keys.
Even if CCP code allows it, my killboard would not have API keys because people would not like to face the truth, their "badass pirate" status is actually killing a few dozen or hundred millions. They WANT the myth, without it, they are noting but F1 pushing drones grinding structures in bombless bombers.
Very clever of the mack pilot at the end. Probably enough to fool a lot of would-be gankers. Very clever indeed.
"Even if CCP code allows it, my killboard would not have API keys [...]"
as other kb's do have api keys, therefore release api verified km, and you'd pull those km from other kb's, in an indirect way, you'd have verified killmails.
i mean evekill and zkb and and and, they pretty much do the same with each other.
Plus, in the beginning, you'd only have to write a kb for your own corp, and if you make api-key delivery a rule of being in your corp, you have everything that you want.
you then can show to other players that you kb-system is superior, and maybe, if the community realises that, the preassure on zkb will rise, and you have changed another thing in eve.
as changing stuff in eve to the better is your proposed goal, writing your own kb, with better statistics, i think this would totally fit in what you are aiming for.
@Lucas: making a killboard that calculates skill is theoretically impossible.
I'd like to remind you the kill that gained the theoretical maximum points in Zkillboard: http://zkillboard.com/detail/29134110/
The calculation must be zero sum (what the killer gets, the victim loses) or the killer and the victim cooperate to pad killboard.
Some immaterial points can be sacrificed by an alt. Who cares if my nameless alt has -100000 points if my main has +100000.
The only thing remained is ISK, which still can be tricked, but at least it hurts to blow up your own alt.
Topping the kill board sounds like a perfectly fine goal. It has a measurable and public metric, and your strategy to achieve it seems feasible.
I don't understand where all the "EVE is a sandbox, you can play how you want" people went. If you want to top the kill board with your corp, I say go for it!
"I don't understand where all the "EVE is a sandbox, you can play how you want" people went. If you want to top the kill board with your corp, I say go for it!"
Of course it's a valid goal. But Gevlon thinks it's the ultimate goal and tries to convince everyone that he's the top-notch Eve player by kb padding. There's a difference between reaching personal goal and be happy about it and reaching personal goal and insult everyone else, who has different goals. On top of that, kb efficiency seems to be one of the most irrelevant metrics in Eve, which makes it even more strange thing to boast.
"Even if CCP code allows it, my killboard would not have API keys because people would not like to face the truth, their "badass pirate" status is actually killing a few dozen or hundred millions. "
My corp got just over 100b in ISK destroyed last month. It was a big deal. We were pleased. Not because we are at some random point on some ranking but because it spoke of the number of fights we took. It says the amount of PvP we engaged in for our corp type and size.
I don't think anyone I am in corp with would be able to tell you their personal monthly or all time ISK destroyed without looking. They don't care. The people who solo in frigates will point to individual kills and fights. I'll point to fleet ops where I did this thing well or we had that result.
I have this image of you leaping out and waving a file in front of someone showing them how they only destroyed 2 billion ISK in ships and you expecting them to burst into tears and admit that they are ashamed and it is all a facade.
until now I didn't even know about thirdparty ranking in eve.
this reminds me so much about healers and their dilemma to get pvp reward. the last implementation was swtor that brought me to tears. the healoverall row is the essential one that will hand out reward. guess what. that makes no good healers. sure your hots and aoe heals are on CD and even the very inefficient and dumb players will contribute a bit. still to rank on top of that row says nothing about skill and performance.
same here with KB. without logs or demos every ranking means nothing.
it is like the K:D ratio of a ctf capper and saying "oh he must be bad".
without sending in demos and combat logs ranking will mean shit. ESL is full of it and every game in there with recording and logging had it much easier to verify accusations. same her. kb whoring will be gone with that datasets it would lay open what everyone on a kb really did.
Goblin I'm a bit lost with you project and it's teachings.
"But it alone won't be enough. After all he just survived the attacks of some "lowly ganker" who surely ganks because he has no chance in "real PvP". So to give highsec dwellers the proof that they can indeed win against dangerous enemies by fitting their ship right, we have to look dangerous in their eyes. How? By climbing high on the killboard ranking as a corp."
how will tanking up help in low or null? Or how will your actions push people to low or null?
what about bookmarks?
I got poped 1500m out of docking range in jita. not AFK and screaming like a little girl only docking up my pod. that day I learnd to make station bookmarks, many station bookmarks. to counter the warp-to-0 2000m radius bubble randomness. bookmarks in general are very powerful. sure passive targeting and scram will screw you up. but that is a risk to calculate and take or leave. to be alignd and ready to warp no matter what helps a ton.
I only read about the days where you had to make tactical bookmarks otherwise you always land way out of gate slowboating for the jump.
same goes for pod-saver overview tab. and many other very basic things including tanking sure.
but the day I made my fist bookmark made me feel much more secure. now I feel naked in systems that I didn't bookmark at all.
The only info you seem to give is to tank up your ship if you want to be AFK in highsec. further supporting AFK.
tl;dr: Right now I am seeing only one moron who is impressed by killboard stats: Yourself.
"we have to look dangerous in their eyes. How? By climbing high on the killboard ranking as a corp"
Only Morons and Nublets who don't know better (big difference) will be impressed; everybody else will take a look at the actual kills and quickly deduce that you're a high-sec ganker with the threat level of Poison Ivy (painful to stumble into, but easily avoided). And that the only thing you can teach is how to survive high-sec gankers, but not real PvP.
Which may be teaching success by itself, I guess.
"As a slight aside: DOGFT changed the color of losses on our corp killboard to green, so yeah ... killboard still green!" -- LAWN alliance mail
Just to point out that even 0.0 alliances know about the silliness of KB ratings.
"they are noting but F1 pushing drones"
Maybe so, by they are /organized/ F1 pushing drones. And they know people, who know people. And suddenly an unsuspecting industrialist faces an influx of F1 pushing drones who commence to reduce his income-producing infrastructure to rubble. That's a level of terror WGBWC will never be able to achieve.
"bombless bombers"
If you had flown them, you'd know that torpedo-bombers are awesome. Iffy, with clear limitations to what they can do, but way more flexible than caps (for starters: no cyno needed).
"They WANT the myth"
FWIW, I petitioned CCP last week for a missing loss-mail. I /want/ my KB to reflect both my losses and my wins, at minimum to keep me honest about myself.
And while ganked hi-sec miners myself, it was only an experiment. It was too easy, so I stopped again. "Never start a fight you're guaranteed to win." -- Roc Wieler
The sheer number of detractors falling over themselves to argue your measurable sandbox goal is irrelevant is sad. Gevlon's Corp topping the killboard would be a marketing coup. Miners may or may not care, but the killwhores care by definition, and maybe once they see how easy it is to leap to the top of the board without having to leave high-sec, they will give Gevlon a call. So the miners will care in a roundabout way, because suddenly there are more people forcing them to tank their ships or lose them.
I mean, Jesus, you people have been reading this blog for how long? "Killboard-whoring" or not, Gevlon has a means of measuring progress beyond screenshot anecdotes. His only mistake is trying to justify the killboard stats and goal beyond shrugging and saying "it's measurable whereas the alternatives are not." You need goals in EVE to justify playing, and this one is just as arbitrary and sufficient as any other.
@Azuriel
You should really read a comment from 06 September, 2013 20:33. It explains the problem with Gevlon. Nobody is arguing that one can have a goal of topping a KB with miner ganks. What we are arguing is Gevlon's notion that this makes him somehow the best PvPer in the game and is the only valuable metric. Not to mention his arrogant tone. If he would done as you suggest, shrug it off and openly say "I like ganking so I will measure my progress by KB stats", it would all be ok. But he's not. He's constantly trying to justify his view of Eve. Why does he need our recognition so badly? I don't know, maybe he'll write about it someday. Until then we will just comment on what he writes, whether he's right or wrong.
PS. If you think KB whores will come rushing to them, please realize that they are after pvp killmails to brag about. Who cares if someone has 99.9% efficiency, when there is not a single pvp kill on it. That's why you'll rather see them in blobs.
@last commenter
Killboard whores tend to prefer to have actual combat ships on their killboard, whether via blob or solo.
"I kill bazillions of mining ships" doesn't give you any sort of e-peen to wave around.
Druur Monakh
<< Maybe so, by they are /organized/ F1 pushing drones. And they know people, who know people. And suddenly an unsuspecting industrialist faces an influx of F1 pushing drones who commence to reduce his income-producing infrastructure to rubble. That's a level of terror WGBWC will never be able to achieve. >>
That's actually an interesting spin on things.
Social players as the ultimate terror of Eve?
You, lady, have just - with a single comment - convinced me to start an Eve account :D
@Lucas Kell
<< I disagree to some extent. It really depends on if you accept "having fun" as a goal. I play a lot of games, and I play them all to get enjoyment out of them when I am not working. No other goal is required. >>
There seems to be a bit of confusion between game's internal goals and your motivations for playing the game.
A game always has internal goals. . No game without internal goals. If the rules of the game don't provide a goal (that the player agrees with), then the player imposes one of his own.
"For fun" is an external goal.
You go earn ISKs, collect tears or just fly around through pretty cosmos for fun. Earning ISKs, collecting tears, flying around through pretty cosmos - all in-game goals. "For fun" - external goal.
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