Greedy Goblin

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Why shall we gank?

Yesterday we saw how ganking can net kills to a single player at the magnitude of the largest and strongest corporations. OK, point proven, post written, “badass PvPers” are butthurt, tear comments harvested, can we move on to the next project?

No we can’t. I keep on ganking and I keep on recruiting gankers, now reinforced by the PR value of the 123B massacre. This will be my project in EVE and currently I can’t give a termination date. Why? I wrote that only the information we create and spread will survive us. If I’d quit EVE now, in a few months the only memory of this extraordinary feat would be “some guy got some tears from miners and dunked on Miniluv”. It’s not enough.

Morons and slackers are fine with their “fun”. They can’t care less if their activity is next to useless, but they still expect positive results. Their response to arguments is “tldr idc lol”. You can’t teach them anything. Their safety comes from the social people who carry them on their back. There will always be a group that take them (because they are adorable newbies with 50M SP) and feed them. But they aren’t invincible. If you can break the shield of socials you can force them to face their insufficient performance. Also, such action will show the socials how much they carry them. The socials don’t recognize their exploitation, they believe that the morons and slackers were just unlucky.

MMOs are played by the same people you see in the World, but without a boss telling them what to do. Being terribly ignorant in the game is common. But EVE Online is the worst among them all. Since it has no official leaderboard or goal, you can’t really fail at EVE. When you do, you can just move the goalpost yelling “sandbox”. While claiming “we didn’t want that bosskill anyway” in WoW would be ridiculous, nullsec alliances that failed to keep Sov for themselves or for rent, seriously brand themselves “nomadic elite PvP”. Those who fail in even that, still have a positive message: “we just wanted to have fun roaming with friends and explode, op success” after their fleet was destroyed.

And these are those who got to the endgame. Can you imagine the quality of miners, who do the most basic activity? Well, let’s say they can’t be distinguished from bots. This shall not stand! Something must happen to these morons and slackers, because they can’t stay in this lowly state. Since they listen to no positive interaction, only one method left: blow their ships up. When they find their barge and pod destroyed, they must react somehow. Some just vent on local and try again. He’ll blow up again.

But others do what they probably didn’t do before: read up a guide. For the first time he can’t say “tldr lol”, because he blows up again if he doesn’t learn. By forcing him to read a guide we make the biggest progress in his gaming. He no longer does whatever he pleases like a little baby but tries to get information before making a decision. While it’s hard to see, the morons and slackers aren’t born different from us. They aren’t lesser beings. They just never had to use their brain and make an effort. Now they have to. More than 6000 people already read the guide, despite it never was on the front page of the blog, one could only get there by actively clicking a link.

Socials of course respond to the “act of evil”. Ganking the miners has a very positive effect on them. First they turn into “white knights”, protecting the “weak” from “evil”. Then they fail to. They have to fail in order to improve themselves. They have to face that even if they seriously outnumbering the ganker, they can’t win. This is the anti-thesis of the social thinking: “the group is strong”. Yet, here they are, camping the station and the belts in large numbers and that single ganking “bully” still does whatever he wants. After a day or two they give up. While I can’t be sure how much they get from this experience, they surely has to learn that the “group of friends” isn’t all powerful. A single guy can be more powerful than them. Maybe some of them will say “I want to be powerful too, I want to be more than the guys around me”.

Finally there are the competitive people. The ones who are proud of their stats. Well, I gave them some stats yesterday and they weren’t happy. Why? Because they wanted to compete inside the box, using their skill. They wanted to do what the others, just better. Me on the other hand didn’t go out on a nullsec roam and bested them with ship piloting but did something very different and got much better stats. These people have to learn that the real success isn’t being a few % better than your neighbor but in doing something new. A new way can get much better results than perfecting the old way.

Ganking morons and slackers changes people. Changes the miners themselves, changes the white knights and changes the competitive guys. Come and join, make a difference!



The anti-tear of the day by Kata Komba:

The moron of the day was piloting a hulk. A dumb fitted hulk. In this pod. Because you need +6% tracking to catch those pesky asteroids!

19 comments:

Carson 63000 said...

That 2 billion ISK pod brought tears to the eye.

Tears of laughter.

Anonymous said...

I'm still waiting for you to approve my comment, so I'll post it again. How much profit did you actually make last month? Surely having provided all of the other details ad nauseam you wouldn't mind sharing this with your readers. :D

Anonymous said...

Socials of course respond to the “act of evil”. Ganking the miners has a very positive effect on them. First they turn into “white knights”, protecting the “weak” from “evil”. Then they fail to. They have to fail in order to improve themselves. They have to face that even if they seriously outnumbering the ganker, they can’t win. This is the anti-thesis of the social thinking: “the group is strong”. Yet, here they are, camping the station and the belts in large numbers and that single ganking “bully” still does whatever he wants. After a day or two they give up.

Speaking from the perspective of the white knight mentality (i.e., morality matters, the strong abusing the weak is wrong, fairness and equal outcomes are good) teaching us through failure is not going to work.

Leaving aside the question of whether individual white-knight efforts have failed utterly (opportunity cost: time the ganker spends afk-cloaking could be time he spent ganking) the white knights' failures are of method, not of principle.

A group could stop more (never all) ganking if they were better organised - corped up, perhaps, with a patrol schedule assigned to individual members. Perhaps other measures could be devised.

Just like in Real Life, the "criminal" has the initiative. This, despite the vast resources of the state deployed against him, permits him to succeed a lot of the time. It does not render him a superior being in the human hierarchy, or mean that efforts to minimise his activities are worthless. The thoughtful white knight keeps this in mind and remains serene.

This is particularly true for the fire-and-forget type of transgression, where the damage is frontloaded and cannot be undone, and consequences do not really matter. Like a ganker, or a flasher in the park.

Anonymous said...

Do you honestly believe pvpers are "butthurt"? The comments seem to try to teach you, how comparing two different actions, ganking and pvp, is flawed because of their totally different nature. Just as you try to teach miners, as you say. There are no tears in these comments. There are no tears in this one, despite me saying on this topic. Also, did you notice if anyone outside your blog and en24 talk about you and your kb? There are no such people, because nobody cares about kb. Why would you like people to remember yours? Especially given my first point. That's an honest question - why do you think you should be remembered (and in a positive way)?

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: My profit (over the costs of lost ships) was 1B. Which is pretty low. But I already have enough ISK for the rest of my EVE life. I now donate my efforts to the betterment of EVE.

@Soresu: the AFK cloaking happens when the ganker couldn't gank anyway. The "knights" can't really stop ganks because they don't know where to be. They lose because of their principle: trying to protect not themselves but "the weak" who can't be protected because he can't do anything for himself, like moving to the same belt as the others.

@Anonymous: see tomorrow post.

Unknown said...

I just don't like that you blatantly stole james 315 idea and not even recognized or mentioned that.

Yes I know the rigor and method differs a little bit, but still it was originally his idea. I know you have personal differences but still that doesn't mean you can take an original idea and make it seem like it is yours.

I am not claiming that your stole the idea or aren't allowed to use it, but as professional courtesies go I think you think you should at least give him credit somewhere.

I still don't understand how this is going to chance the state of the game. The high seceres are going to read more guides, but how is this going to have a lasting effect in the game, than having a little more informed care bears?

maxim said...

<< While I can’t be sure how much they get from this experience, they surely has to learn that the “group of friends” isn’t all powerful. A single guy can be more powerful than them. Maybe some of them will say “I want to be powerful too, I want to be more than the guys around me”. >>
I need a clarification.

Is this aimed at all groups in general, or specifically at groups organised on "friends" basis?

Lucas Kell said...

Well this is probably your most egotistic post yet.
Yo ureally think that what you do is amazing don't you, as highlighted by this: "the only memory of this extraordinary feat would be “some guy got some tears from miners and dunked on Miniluv”"
How have you possibly dunked on miniluv? I mean as far as I can see, they haven't mentioned you, not once. They haven't stopped ganking freighters (since that's what they do), and they have been totally unaffected by you. You are as bad as the "white knights" you insult making absolutely no impact yet claiming superiority.
A killboard stat means nothing when you can see what it's from. Saying "“badass PvPers” are butthurt" is simply misunderstanding the mind of a "badass PvPer". They are no more butthurt than when someone grinds structures to pad their KB (which is 0 butthurt by the way). You have to remember that their goals are not the same as yours, so while you think the KB is the most important metric in the game, they don't. Personally I was hoping you'd at least boost the mineral prices though your ganking so I could make a bit more profit on production, but the index is still on a decline, which makes me sad.

At the end of the day, all that you are showing is that destroyers are imbalanced compared to the defense of a mining barge, which everybody already knew. That's why there are hundreds of ganking guides point and the catalyst. Sure plenty of newbie miners are jumping in their barges scream "look! 2 lasers!" and getting blown up, but you'll find that a lot of people don't tank simply for the fact that there is no point in tanking a barge. If they tank it as best they can, you simply come along with a dual box gank and kill them. If they tank for void, you bring a thrasher with EM. Nothing they do short of moving into a procurer will protect them. You claim you want them to tank when clearly what you want them to do is not mine in any other ships. So congratulations, you are fighting to remove diversity from EVE.

Miners shouldn't be packing it up and moving into procurers though, its' a pointless waste of efficiency. The best thing miners can do is raise a ticket whenever they are ganked. It's not against the rules to gank, but after a couple of thousand tickets CCP will get bored of copy pasting the same message and buff barges defense to a sensible level. A bit more raw shield HP and an extra couple of midslots would do it.

Being truly honest, you are more of a moron that anyone else I have seen in EVE. You like to insult people because it makes you feel better, but look at yourself. You are trying to force everyone to do things your way, which anyone could tell you is an impossible goal, while simultaneously pointing at everyone else yelling "you all suck". When are you going to realise that this is a game and that people will always play it the way the want to, regardless of how much you do to try to stop that. I think you seriously need to go back and reevaluate your whole M&S thing, since it's fairly hypocritical. You are saying that everyone is blind to how useless and inefficient they are, yet you are inefficiently performing a useless task.

I just wanted to point out by the way that you seem to have this huge rage against group and want to show the world how group are pointless and that you can do better solo, yet you only ever pick activities better done solo. Comparing it to WoW, you are running around farming for materials, which is obviously better done solo, due to the reduced depletion of material sources. You wouldn't then go on to say though that an end game raid is better done solo. Then consider when you are raiding, if some solo player is whispering you telling you that they are beating you because they are endlessly gathering materials while you are just part of a group attacking a boss. Would you care even in the slightest that they were doing that? I doubt it.

Anonymous said...

I applaud you to your milestone.

To your goal to have this as a lasting echo through EVE. Well I'm new and not a very active day2day player. Ingame I really don't see any "echos" from the past 10 years. Sure it's my lack of freetime and interest to lookup some EVE archive/historian resources (if that exists) to catch up on things. I guess this kind of "marking ideology" into the game and give it heritage for players to come is not supported. otherwise you wouldn't write outofgame.

anyway gl and fun with WGBWC.
thanks for your newb-trading guide that helped a lot!!

C.A. said...

is it possible to gank untanked miners in 1.0 space?

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: there isn't an activity that is better in group in EVE, in a sense of providing better personal result.

I mean you can hold moons but moon income (even at the peak of Tech) got less income than veldspar mining.

Now I proved that padding killboard is best done solo.

Can you name a metric that is better in group. Sov comes to mind, but for some reason everyone hates Sov and no one claims: I want more!

About tanking and diversity: wait for Monday post. There is place for Covetors, Hulks, Yield Macks too.

Von Keigai said...

@Lucas: no, miners should not file petitions. Ganking is CCP approved gameplay. And I am surprised to see you advocating more carebear buffs. The balance is OK where it is. If anything, barges should be nerfed, in particular the ridiculous tank on the Procurer and Skiff.

@Gevlon: you say you "can't give a termination date", but perhaps you can give termination conditions. Please tell us what circumstances would have to obtain for you to give up this ganking campaign and move on to some more productive activity in EVE.

Gevlon said...

@Von Keigai: the victory condition is cleansing highsec of Mackinaws, Hulks, Covetors and untanked Rets.

Defeat condition would be being stuck in kill count for months.

Von Keigai said...

Well, good luck with that. I hope you realize what you are up against, namely, human stupidity and newbie ignorance. How many new players try EVE per month? Hundreds at least, perhaps low thousands. Even if you can reach every one of them with a single gank, which you know you cannot, it will still take 10 guys ganking like you do to even have a chance of keeping up.

I appreciate you going beyond my request and providing a defeat condition. This is good. My prediction: I think you'll get a few interested gankers but your kill count will top out at 500, and then decline as your acolytes get bored with it.

I might point out here that mining for yield in Covetors the way Kell does seems eminently reasonable to me. So unless you want to openly admit the religious quality of your crusade, perhaps you ought to add a caveat to your victory condition.

Similarly, my own "low hanging fruit" ice mining philosophy will admit the use of Macks, which I find reasonable in many common circumstances.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"there isn't an activity that is better in group in EVE, in a sense of providing better personal result.
I mean you can hold moons but moon income (even at the peak of Tech) got less income than veldspar mining."
Well clearly that depends on your metric. If your ONLY metric is personal ISK, then sure, personal income is better obtained solo. I aim to enjoy my playtime, and enjoy fleet battles quite a lot. It would be very hard for me to control 1500 alts in a fleet fight. Titan manufacture is another example. Sure you can do it yourself but it's must easier, faster and less boring to do as a group.
You need to understand that not everyone judges their playtime by their wallet balance.

And you havent proved killboard padding is best done solo. You've proved that you've got more time and the inclination to pad your KB. If 100 people did that together, they would be able to set aside say 10 people to do logistics, leaving 90 people to non stop gank.
Look at your stats - 1052 kills for September. With 40% of those being capsules, that drops you to 630 actual ganks. Over a 30 day period, thats only 21 kills per day. And you use 2 gankers and 2 supports to do that. If a group was dedicated and wanted to do that, they could get a hell of a lot more than 21 kills per day for each 4 characters in the corp.
If anything proves even more that it's better in a group though, it;s that you yourself are forming a group to further your killboard as you know you can't top the killboards alone. And you spend every waking moment ganking.
Side note: I also find it amusing that your idea of "solo" takes 4 characters, and it's further amusing that you've recently posted about how bad alts are. Also note that anyone that doesn't have a large pile of isk to begin with would need to either pay cash for the 4 accounts or spend at least some of that time earning the isk to plex them.

@Von Keigai
"no, miners should not file petitions. Ganking is CCP approved gameplay. And I am surprised to see you advocating more carebear buffs. The balance is OK where it is. If anything, barges should be nerfed, in particular the ridiculous tank on the Procurer and Skiff."
Ganking is, but so is petitioning for whatever you feel is harassment. If the miners felt like petitioning against it, they have every right to do so. CCP don't pay attention to people much outside of the ticket system, so it's a way to bring it to their attention.
How can you possibly say it's currently balanced? 4 of the barges are utterly pointless in high sec, and ganking, is easy to do with a couple of week old alts. No other part of the PvP even comes close to how easy it is to gank. Considering a mining barge is supposed to be a miners end game target, they should have a chance to defend themselves.
As it is, ganking can easily be done with just a couple of characters, has ABSOLUTELY no repercussions Bear in mind, being -10 means basically nothing, and a kill right on a -10 means even less, and bounties are laughable at how incredibly pointless they are. Combine that with alts to scout and instant undocks, I'm honestly surprised anyone can consider ganking balanced.
Don't get me wrong, I approve of ganking, it's as needed to make EVE what it is as scamming is, but theres simply no art to ganking anymore. It's incredibly easy to do, and thanks to the new tags, incredibly easy to quit doing too.

Anonymous said...

Your detractors are basically right, in that you are not having much impact at the moment. But it looks like there might be potential here. If you have a hundred people all ganking this many miners, that would actually be felt.

Von Keigai said...

I say it is balanced because ganking is constrained by much more than possibility: it is constrained by economics. Economics is an iron lord. Few players have a multi-billion fortune to piss away on ganking miners. Ganking miners loses money. It is economically irrational. The real tank for anything that just sits there must be an economics tank.

I disagree that 4 barges are useless. You say you use the Covetor. I use the Retriever. Macks are tempting to me with that nice big ice hold as the next step up. The tanky hulls are needed when gankers are around. The only hull I find seriously lacking in highsec is the lowly Hulk. They ought to buff its mining, not its tank.

I find the repercussions for ganking sufficient. The penalties you mention do deter almost all gankers: you have to be willing to be -10, or you have to have a fortune to buy tags (or spend years ratting for sec.) Also gankers become easily visible to everyone very quickly: they are those flashing red guys. Then beyond those are the penalties that apply to every ganker, -10 or not. Namely: you get a 15 minute timeout, and you lose ISK if you gank people with a clue.

Any boring task which you have to pay to engage in is, relative to boring productive tasks, a boutique operation. Compare the number of men who will pay you to dig ditches to the number of men that you can hire to dig ditches.

Lucas Kell said...

@Von Keigai
"Few players have a multi-billion fortune to piss away on ganking miners. Ganking miners loses money. It is economically irrational."
This is thrown out by the fact that Gevlon has made 1b profit from miner ganking. Then when you extend that to all ganking, haulers earn a ganker an absoulte fortune.

The reason I state the barges are useless, is that by themselves they cannot be made to be gank resistant. No amount of fittings will stop a barge being destroyed and remaining KB green. Being an end-game ship for miners, they should be robust enough that someone can choose to fit them well and resist ganks.

As for repercussions, it costs less than 200m to got from -10 to above -5 with the new tags. considering that used to take weeks of grinding missions, its considerably easier. Then if you are going to be a ganker, what does -10 do? You can fly around in a pod, and get an alt to deliver ships to you. Nobody will catch your pod as bubbles cant be used in high sec and you are free to dock. With instant undocks, the only time you are actually able to be killed is when you perform a gank, and usually, that's too late to stop you. Any other activity in the game can be stopped by other people fighting to stop you. with ganking, thats no the case. At most, you need an extra couple of gankers to be cannon fodder to any resistance.

Anonymous said...

One thing I am wondering about:

I dont tank my house. All I do is look the door. There is no expensive camera security system stuff... is it ok to break into my house to show me how much of a slacker I am?