Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

What took me so long?

I started EVE in 2012 February. More than a year and a half. And only now I came up with a project that can change the history of EVE and also I can run myself. Before that I traded which made me very rich but not affecting the course of New Eden. Then I made various nullsec projects that could (and somewhat did) changed EVE but weren't really mine. They all needed an existing nullsec organization to adopt and run them.

Considering that my page about the importance of bashing the morons and slackers predates my EVE career, it's weird that it took more than a year to figure out that the best way of bashing morons and slackers is ... bashing morons and slackers. Why?

Because I was fooled by the bragging of the EVE veterans. Like practically everyone, I accepted that the power in EVE lies in numbers. That "the best EVE-ship is friendship". That if you are powerful, you can do whatever you want with the powerless ones - and often you do it, just because you can. That EVE is a place of griefing and you can do nothing but run or "HTFU". That money doesn't matter, personal skill doesn't matter, all the power lies in the "metagame".

It took so long to see that it's nothing but bullshit. The first step was indeed making absurd amount of ISK. I mean in the magnitude of nullsec alliances. It not only gave me independence to test whatever idea I had, but got me thinking "how could these all-powerful guys be so broke"?

The second step was my time with TEST Alliance, seeing first hand how these "all-powerful" guys are dependent on both ISK coming from the finance/logistics team and on FCs telling them which button to press. Without such FCs they couldn't exist. Literally.

The third step was ganking with the New Order. This is where I first experienced being on the "powerful" side of PvP. This is also the place where I surprised myself with the ability of getting as much kills as smaller alliances like Rote Kapelle.

Yet all these proved nothing but the idea of the "self-made man", that one with dedication and brain can rise from the group of the powerless losers to the powerful winners. It wasn't surprising, nor interesting: it didn't change anything in the EVE landscape.

The turning point came when I finally faced the "powerful guys who can do whatever they want". In retrospective, my plans were ridiculous. I placed dozens of Procurers with fittings in the ice mining systems. Got empty pods for my miner and my Orca pilot. Placed the medical clones in systems with replacement ships. I was preparing for a long an bloody war against CFC during the ice interdiction. I planned to get blown up again and again both in the mining ships and the Orca and returning until my resources allow it. I merely wanted to prove that money at least give you the ability to make a great last stand.

And what could the unstoppable CFC do to the guy who spread CFC hate on EN24 and his own blog and went to mine ice in the middle of the interdiction? They got the shields of one Procurer down to 84%. That was all that they could do. There was no reshipping, no heroic last stand, I could trash-talk the unstoppable powerful guys without consequences.

Only then I realized that the myth of the powerful guys is a big fat lie. There are those who know the game mechanics and there are those who don't. The first group is powerful, not by their friends, their metagame or whatever self-enlarging nonsense they tell, but just by the fact that they know how to fit and fly a spaceship. Those without knowledge are powerless. The Goons could indeed hold Hulkageddons and burn Jitas and massacre "the weak", but not because they have friends or "stellar moon income" but because they knew how to fit a ganky ship while their targets had no clue how to fit a tanky ship.

The victims were indeed griefed because they believed that they were smashed by an unstoppable force and they could do nothing about it. I will disprove it. Every day I will show people how can they avoid being ganked by making examples from those who refuse to fit their ship well, orbit and get ECM drones.

I will change EVE Online and prove that there is no "powerful group" where you must be accepted to stop being the underdog. I will prove that everyone can give the finger to the "powerful guys" simply by learning basic game knowledge. If you want to take part in changing EVE and smash a decade standing myth with all those who live on it, join!

Daily anti-tears:

The ice belts are clear of improper ships after serious teaching efforts.


This is a properly fit orbiting skiff. My teaching efforts on this player clearly worked.


Finally a moron post from my girlfriend:

Lilypad is her alt. She is level 90 for 3 days. She has 466 ilvl. She was the tank.

38 comments:

Anonymous said...

You actually disprove yourself in your post. Metagame rules eve as you experienced yourself when fcs left test for better opportunities. If you're still not convinced, I give you the example of Mittani. He is pretty much the most powerful person in eve, yet he doesn't actually play as others do. I can also give you examples of csm members, who represent us yet nobody knows anything about their in game achievements, if they have any. And there are people like Sindel with her angel project. She is much of an opposite of you and she is known in all eve and respected for her work. These kind of people change eve and their in game skills don't have anything to do with it. Assuming your crusade is about teaching (you said yourself that it's not; it's about kB padding), you could influence some individuals, but you will never have an impact on eve as a whole.

Gevlon said...

FCs leaving TEST wouldn't be an issue if the rest of TEST could do anything without them.

The Mittani lives on the fact that so many PvP-ers can't replace their ships without SRP.

Sindel made her fame giving a few ISK to those who fail to make money.

The "meta-game" is simply manipulating those who can't fit a ship or can't afford it.

Teach or drive out these players and they won't be mindless minions ever again.

Unknown said...

Would like clarification:

When you say "dozens of procurers" do you mean, "dozens of accounts flying procurers" or "Gevlon Goblin with dozens of procurers in hangar ready to reship"

Those are kind of different things. I understand that the CFC failed regardless due to the fact that they cannot stop you. You're an enemy of their state, you openly post anti-CFC propaganda yet you are not being griefed because you (at least currently) seem to be immune.

At this time, since you don't share your accounts, don't give resources of any kind to people unless you're ok with losing them, I don't suspect you will be ever griefable in a way that is meaningful to you. The best they can do is send their lapdog Lucas Kell who is undoubtedly on his way here to post, in a failed attempt to troll. All he does is flail his arms around, shouting "look at me!" Nice job, CFC.

But Gevlon, you can't really say that you proved Miniluv is useless unless you actually did have many alts, unidentified by goons, who were also equally unmolested during Miniluv incursions. If you did that, then yes, I agree that Miniluv is just a blowhard attempt to create fear.

To pre-empt Lucas and the other CFC sycophants, I somehow doubt that Miniluv would gank skiffs and procurers. We have already seen what these players can do. We've seen Miniluv fail ganks on lesser tanked ships (as well as tougher ships, like orcas), and we know that these players don't have bottomless pockets. Furthermore, we also know that failed ganks are demoralizing, especially if you know your gank failed because 2 pilots in your group failed to lock the target quickly or overheat their guns or some other silly fail. Blame immediately turns to the failures, and eventually the pilots who recognize the "bads" in their team and refuse to "carry" them, leave instead, quietly heading off to some other part of the CFC where they are not burdened by trash. I know this has already happened, in spite of Goon propaganda to the contrary.

Yes, you can gank Mackinaws. Congratulations, you're still socials.

Anonymous said...

Of course you can try do devalue the accomplishments of people who live the meta, but the fact remains they shape eve and you don't. It's not meant to be an insult, but a gentle hint that your methods may be plain wrong. I could tell you that being mittens is not about srp, but political skills and people control. I could tell you that being Sindel is not about giving isk but providing a helping hand and socializing. But these notions are alien to you and you won't understand it. If you want to change eve you need to change yourself first. Until then you are destined to fail. Eve is a social game which is proven to you again and again. Do you really expect a different outcome this time?

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: CFC is SRP and nothing else. All the "metagame" depends on the dumb players who can't make it on their own. All the "meta" actions are helping them, using them or griefing them.

The Mittani has all his power on people who are dependent on SRP and therefore bound to do his (or someone elses) orders.

Liberate or destroy these minions and there will be no Mittani, no Sindel, no Miniluv, no metagame.

Anonymous said...

Unfortunately, you are very wrong. Once again you are talking about things you don't know about. Cfc rose on certain culture, just as test did and any other similar group of people. But let's leave Cfc because I see we have our first troll here with anti-cfc propaganda. We don't need that in a discussion. Let's take people who don't have any "control" in your understanding. For example csm. None of them control anyone, yet people chose them because of the things they do outside the game. Let's take people like Sindel (again) who became famous for her social skills, even before the charity. Let's take Azual, Rixx, Poetic and other who are well known and respected, yet don't control anything. Euni for teaching players, brave newbies and r vs b for providing fun. New order for providing funny content, fot those who like it. They all succeed in their goals and they all do it through meta. No one knows or cares about their kB or isk.

Gevlon said...

CSM is an advisory board for CCP. They have zero direct control over the game, they are merely speakers for the players.

"Azual, Rixx, Poetic and other who are well known and respected" are just that: well known, but not changing anything. Like Kim Kardashian: famous but unimportant.

This is what "meta-game" can give you: a space-Kardashian status.

Same for The Mittani. The guy who figured out that "elite PvP" alliances can be defeated by F1 bashing monkeys did change EVE. The Mittani just uses that scheme and did not make any change himself.

Displacing TEST by CFC is NOT a change. Some guys lived in Delve doing stuff, now some guys live in Delve and do the same stuff.

Things change when the people do different stuff.

Lucas Kell said...
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Lucas Kell said...
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Anonymous said...

Sindel didnt make her fame by the angel project, that is 1 year old.

Chribba is also the polar opposite of you, and is known and respected throughout eve.

If you think TheMittani is only famous due to Goons SRP then it shows that you do not understand the metagame.

So far, your impact is measured by your own metrics, and we should at this point bear in mind that you assert people only come to read your blog because it is informative and full of good information.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: N3 and it's 780B is indeed what I'm talking about. Nulli has 3.3K, NC. has 2.1K pilots, with smaller allies it's 10K pilots. Of course lot of alts are around but still above 2K players. So the income/capita is 390M which is like 1% of my income (was).

"You're going to teach us by killing noobs in high sec?", no I will teach the noobs. You already know enough, hence you are member of the strongest coalition.

To claim "you are better at EVE than every other player" we'd need toplists and metrics where I'm on top. Without these I can only say that I'm having one of the highest income and one of the highest solo ISK kill speed.

What I'm doing is indeed something that was nothing ever done. Of course people ganked before. But their narrative of their action was "i'm gud in eve u scrub" or "i haz freinds". No one ever told the little guy that he has a chance to stand on his own, against everyone, defying even the CFC, literally.

"So gather your forces and take a region from us. Prove you are not just talking nonsense. Prove that SRP is not required."

This is the very point of my income part: why the hell would I do that? What is in that region? I could rent it out and then get income that could be matched by AFK mining?

You see the CFC as some powerful empire holding vast amount of valuable space, while in truth they are the criminal gang controlling some disastrous neighborhood where no one wants to go. Imagine the gang of some ghetto claiming that they are better than the middle class since the middle class never gathers up, comes down to the ghetto and take it from them.

The Hulkageddon, Burn Jita and such were part of a narrative that "highsec pubbies can't take our regions but we can go to highsec and kill them at will". If it would be true, they'd indeed be powerful. But it's not. CFC couldn't come and kill me.

I'm NOT proving that killing miners is hard. I'm teaching miners to be hard to kill.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, do you honestly believe those things you say? That meta is pointless and you provide the real change? Than tell us why ccp both promotes and engages in meta? Why it is THE most advertised feature? Why meta players are well known and respected while you are not? Why does ccp chat with them and values their opinion, while nobody is asking for yours? And lastly, why do you engage in meta by writing a blog?

Lucas Kell said...
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Lucas Kell said...
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Gevlon said...

Simple: because "meta" sounds so deep and meaningful. "Take part of a huge economy" is better PR line than "mine veldspar and grind rats". "Conquer player empires" sounds better than "PvP in space".

Think! Did the "important and famous" meta players like The Mittani changed YOUR life ever?

About my blog: if you consider trading tips and ganking tips "meta", then probably the richest "meta" site is eve-survival.

Lucas Kell said...
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Gevlon said...

@Lucas: even if alliance income is not personal income, it's spent on things that are divided between people like SRP and capital subsidies.

So the statement "N3 can spend 390M to keep an average member in ships" is true. The statement that "the same member could get more money by having his alt AFK mine veldspar in 1.0"

Teaching bad players will strongly affect the current power holders because their power lies in information asymmetry. You are powerful because they are dumb. Stop them being dumb and you won't be powerful.

The killboard ranking is a joke because it gives full kill value to everyone. Someone with a noobship in Asakai could get 1T "kills". You need to look no further than my own ganking corp:
Botslayer Goblin: 5.26B in September
Botmuncher Goblin: 4.66B
The corp: 8.07B

Of course the corp is just these two gankers. But 5.26+4.66 = 9.92, so 23% fake kills gained.

When I made a proper approximation of kills (alliance kills/alliance members), ridiculous numbers came out.

One AFK miner can't make as much money as a region renters and moons. The amount of players who are needed to keep that region could easily do with AFK mining.

"So you're saying the CFC can't kill a procurer? You can honestly say that with a straight face?" and "The only way to prove to EVE that you can stand alone and beat us is to actually beat us." are mutually exclusive. If you claim the only way for me to prove my ideas is defeating CFC than the only way for CFC to prove that they can kill a procurer is killing the procurer. Which they failed because of [excuses].

Anonymous said...

To answer your first question - yes mittens by his decisions changed my gameplay as he did for others. He started the war which ended in the biggest battle in all mmos ever. He literally made history. Magazines all over the world speak of it and the meta behind it. Who speaks of you? As for second - yes your blog is a part of the meta, for both market tips and non market posts, like this one. If you want to stay true to your words, stop writing since you believe it is useless. If meta was so useless, people wouldn't be so attracted to it. When marketing ends and reality kicks in, people choose for themselves what is meaningful and what is not. And people chose meta. You may not want to be a part of it but you can't just cover your ears and shout meta is bad! And write a blog post about it.

Lucas Kell said...
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Sugar Kyle said...

I've watched you list your kills. You kill new players if they are there even after the 'try to avoid' conversation on one blog. You say you want retriever kills with juicy pods as you gank in your own chat. Then here you want to empower people so that they resist goonswarm because you banked their barge and that people will become educated.

I'm still puzzled that you can invalidate everyone else's play style and list yours as superior but no one else can do the same in response. It feels a bit full circle with your adventures. I hope this method of comparison brings pleasure to your game play. There still seem to be a lot of conflict between your mission statement and actions.

Von Keigai said...

"Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain."

Good luck with your crusade against stupidity. You believe you are a god. Like Prometheus, you will give fire to the masses of morons and slackers in EVE. Ha ha ha!

You are mistaken about three things.

First, human stupidity is larger than you, and it is larger than any group you will put together. The New Order shows that every day. And we have ALOD posts all over the place. Yet on they come. The marching morons. They cannot fit a ship to save their life, because -- duh -- they are stupid.

Second, I think you fail to grasp how stupid people are. I am sure you will be able to convince some stupid miners to not use whatever fit they are in, but to use a fit you supply them. But does this mean they understand it? Why it is a good fit, and for what conditions (i.e., you being around)? No. They will be just as ignorant as before, except now they fly a Procurer. You cannot educate a man with a hammer. He has to want education, and then, you don't need the hammer.

Finally, the change you seek is ridiculous in its triviality. Even if you did convince every miner in highsec (against his own best interest in many cases) to fly a procurer, what will you have accomplished? Will this "change EVE Online"? Not in any way that matters to anyone. Nobody care what highsec miners fly, except inasmuch as they wish to gank them for lols.


Your crusade is not even tilting at a windmill: at least one can hit a windmill with a lance. It's more tilting at a mirage. You will ride forward, with much noise, and hit... nothing at all.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: we can give an estimate how much personal income nullsec worth: highsec income + rent fee. A renter would clearly not rent if it would be in a loss. Northern Associates, the N3 renter alliance has 5500 members and I doubt if the alt count is high as renters must pay for alts. So for an average renter it worth 150M/month!!! to live in nullsec.

How could I get anyone in my corp? You need to train a catalyst pilot, learn to gank to get in. They can't get in for weeks no matter how much they want in. You are so desperately trying to call failure already.

@Sugar: I try to avoid killing them because they are bad for my killboard. The noble thing is to especially kill them as they are the most likely to learn new things. So I go the middle way: if there are better options around, I spare them. If not, they die. After all even a 1 day old can tank his ship using T1 and meta items and keeping out of 0.5-0.6 until he can fit T2.

Gevlon said...

@Von Keigai: someone surely cares what highsec miners fly: highsec miners.

There is more here than meets the eye, wait for Friday post!

Lucas Kell said...
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maxim said...

@Lucas Kell
<< You are essentially ignoring all personal income and saying that the alliance income divided by the memeber count is all they get. They don't they get all that ON TOP OF their own income. >>
Can agree with that.
A properly operating alliance can and does supplement the income of it's members, rather than replace it.

<< Making a miner cut his income to prove he can still mine doesn't show he is powerful. It proves he is weak and has to buckle to the pressure of others. Powerful people tell you to go fuck yourself and mine in whatever they want. >>
Disagree with this. Power does not mean the ability to tell people to fuck off. Power means the ability to change people's behaviour. Means, the ability to tell people to fuck and off in such a way that fuck off they do.

A tanked miner is able to divert gankers away from him and is - in this - already more powerful than untanked miner.

<< Hey, you're the one saying KBs are so important. I couldn't care less. But you killing a bunch of AFK miners is hardly what I would consider to be the traits of a "top solo PVPer" >>
What do you consider to be the traids of a good solo PvPer in Eve?

<< Yes. And we do. again... ON TOP OF the alliance income. Again you don;t seem to be able to see that there's TWO incomes here. ALLIANCE INCOME and PERSONAL INCOME. There's NO WAY you could match the combined total of both solo, yet that's what you claim. all because you divide everything down. But it doesn't work that way, again, your math is flawed. >>
It is still weird, though. Let's assume that 780B of N3's income and 2k players are both the right estimations. And let's accept that Gevlon is not lying when he is saying that at some point he earned 100 x 390M, which puts him at 39B. This, in turn, means 20 Gevlons could cover as much cash as N3's total income.

Now, i don't doubt for a second that each of these 20 Gevlons would earn more, if they were in the alliance. But this does make you wonder what are the remaining 1980 players in the alliance doing.

<< Except the CFC have killed procurers, and anyone with EFT can tell you a procurer is killable by 12-18 T1 catalysts depending on fit. Claiming they can;t do that is moronic. But you claim to be "beating" the CFC and all you;ve done is kill miners, which as far as I can see would actually be classed as helping us, so.. thanks I guess. >>
When Gevlon says that he "beat" CFC he means that he got to say really offensive stuff about Miniluv during the interdiction and no one came to gank him.

Now, a defense that CFC is so far above Gevlon that it doesn't even need to even recognise him would be plausible... Except you being here kind of craps that style :D

<< All you can do is continue to post daily about how the CFC are super fail, and you are amazing, and carry on having your few WoW supporters stroking your ego. >>
Not sure how this is bad at this moment.
If this was the same a couple of months down the line, then he'd have a problem.

Lucas Kell said...
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Anonymous said...

purple gear means nothing in this game. the DCI DCII difference is about 10k to 600k isk. please explain why this should matter to fit in .6 .5? boost the value of the kill for this module 60 fold. sounds ridiculous.

anyway good luck with your project.

Von Keigai said...

I don't even think many miners care, beyond that their ship mines. Again, see my point #2.

Thumbing your nose at the CFC from behind the protection of Concord is not worth your time. Or put another way: you and the programmers at CCP can already stop the "unstoppable CFC". The CFC cannot beat Concord. Congrats. You don't need to prove it. We already know it.

I just hope that when this crusade whimpers out, you find something in EVE worth devoting your intelligence to.

Lucas Kell said...
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Lucas Kell said...
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Anonymous said...

High sec miners dont care...calculate risk/reward of AFK mining, procurer = 11m isk or so, retriever = 23m or so..

Procurer, even untanked, is a better risk/reward calculation than a retriever. 1.5hr to replace a procurer, assuming worst payout.

Although, if you ever get around to blowing up tanked procurers we can finally get the price correction to occur.


Anonymous said...

gevlon said:
"and I doubt if the alt count is high as renters must pay for alts."

plz plz plz quote where u got this statement from!

i am in an NA renting corp with seven chars. neither my tax, nor the corps rent is affected by the number of alts.
i pay tax (to the corp) on the resources i farm, and the corp pays a fixed price for the system.
there are more members in this corp with as many (or eve more ) alts as i have.

as far as i know, the price for a system depends on sec status, resources, outpost type, and other things, but not amount of members/alts.

yes, in recruitment threads i have read, that there indeed are corps, that don't ask for tax but isk/alt. but that has nothing to do with renting.

gevlon, as much as i enjoy reading your blog, that you still are making up statements, and statistics, without providing the slightest prove of their rightness - it is very annoying, it doesn't help your cause. it is very very counterproductive.
i don't understand why you do that.


@Lucas: plz go on commenting, it helps this blog being informative, as gevlon helps goons to drive ppl out of highsec.

gevlon, by ganking newbie miners, you are totally helping goons and all the other semi-elite nullsec.sov.rvb alliances.
a) ppl leave highsec for nullsec
b) less ressources farmed in highsec means better prices for ressources from nullsec
c) other causes that i don't understand, because after 1.5 years in eve, the very one thing i have learned so far is, that this game is more deep, and complex, and complicated, and demanding, and and and than i will ever be able to understand. and this is what keeps me logging in.


p.s.: what is that statistic about lilypad?
nothing about eve?
sorry, i don't understand what you want to tell me.

Anonymous said...

the part about lilypad. It's WoW (you know ... greedy goblins <_<) she is pala tank. all under her "do less dmg than tank" on/after encounter probably LFR-25. proably minus 2-3 heal and another tank.

all DDs under her are one of the M&S or both.

Lucas Kell said...
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Sugar Kyle said...

I can't resist. You should divide your kills in half or whatever precent at least if they use a scout.

You may be one player but you are two to three characters. If you decide a corp or alliance across every character ignoring scouts, cynos, POS, logistics and more specialist accounts you need to do the same.

Your focus on ganking as better than fleets puzzles me. You discount the value of an interceptor pilot catching the kill because they can't also solo it (usually). And fleeting is just FC calling F1 to you. Yet you use a scout to set up the bank. That scout is a character in a ship invaluable to your end goal.

The hunt and work people put into kills and Ganks are no different from your own. I wont debate what is harder or better. That is personal taste. You are fleet ganking. Both (or all three) accounts are just you. You still have to split across your own accounts if you insist on doing so for other groups.

MoxNix said...

"while in truth they are the criminal gang controlling some disastrous neighborhood where no one wants to go. "

Now that's a quote of the year contender!

The truth is many players don't give a rats ass about null with it's goofy sov mechanics.

Lucas Kell said...
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Anonymous said...

'The best ship is friendship' is a Hydra Reloaded quote. They're an AT winner, several times runner up, and the only group to orchestrate taking first and second place in the same year of the AT.

They're also an extremely good small gang PvP organization. Not exactly the Sov War 'Max numbers' crew. I think you're misinterpreting the quote.