Greedy Goblin

Thursday, December 5, 2013

What impresses Ripard Teg, part 2

I wrote how the model PvP-er, Ripard Teg was impressed by a huge loss of a pilot with terrible stats. Now he is impressed again. What impressed him? This video.

The video features a gang of multiple players dropping on ... AFK mining barges. That's it. Simple miner gankers. The miners were totally AFK, the last barge was keep mining while his buddies died. It's somewhat sad that this "PvP gang" calls primaries on mining barges. Oh, and the name of the video is "wormhole PvP".

At first I couldn't figure out how could this simple mining gank get the attention of the illustrious member of the CSM. I mean it was a very simple thing: go where the miners are and kill them while they are AFK. The task was clearly easier than highsec ganking, they had 8 pilots in fleet (unknown how many players, but more than one as they talk to each other). Finally they weren't even any good. The interceptor landed 80km away from the barges, so they could easily get away if they weren't totally AFK. Their DPS was a joke, the barges died horribly slow. All I saw was a bunch of noobs getting lucky to find a WH exit and AFK miners within. The fit of the barges show that the targets weren't any competent.

So, we get a whole fleet of newbies who make newbie mistakes while ganking other newbies while AFK mining. It doesn't look impressive at all, it's actually lame, even by ganker standards. What the hell could make Ripard consider it "pretty freakin' brilliant"? That they used interceptors that can cross bubbles. That's it, they used a new game change.

This is what "PvP-ers" find impressive, learning the gimmicks of the game like approaching while keeping transversal, having a stopwatch to track polarized effect, warping in the right moment and so on. These are the "skillz". These "Wormhole PvP-ers" have done their homework and knew the game mechanics. That's impressive for PvP-ers.

One question remained: why wasn't Ripard and the rest of the "PvP-ers" impressed when I massacred 134B worth of miners all by myself? Because I had a protocol: get warpin, warp on top, fire, get out. The execution of the plan isn't hard. It contains no obscure knowledge or hard to practice flying. Anyone could copy it.

"PvP-ers" think that the guy who can get a glass of water in a desert using some obscure knowledge of the maasai is awesome, while the guy who just picks a bottle from his car is a "carebear". The guy who uses a commercial water extractor that is built on the very same maasai knowledge is carebear too. Well, I think if you go to the desert without water, you are an idiot. I think, the best definition of "skillz" is "doing something dumb, unprepared, suboptimal, but getting away with it because of fast clicking and some luck".

If you want to be respected and dream of doing something "awesome", just watch the "pretty freakin' brilliant" video again. Do you really want to be these failures? If you want a reminder, just write "Retriever is the primary!" to your monitor edge and look on it every time the peer pressure of drooling frigate lollers would push you to do "skill PvP".

12 comments:

Tabletop Teacher said...

Actually finding a glass of water in the desert is pretty impressive. Keeping obscure knowledge alive so it can be used by others is not only smart, but the building blocks of human development.

Sometimes you end up in the desert without water when you didn't expect to. Being insulting to the person who can find you that water is beyond stupid. Mocking that person's knowledge, is nonsense.

You've forgotten the path to winning. Don't scorn others achievements. Learn from them. Yes, this video is not that impressive, but it's good for showing how to counter bubble mechanics. It's a text book worm hole raid, which can be copied and adapted by others.

Analysis before emotion, Gevlon.

Washbucket said...

""PvP-ers" think that the guy who can get a glass of water in a desert using some obscure knowledge of the maasai is awesome, while the guy who just picks a bottle from his car is a "carebear"."

Yes this is true. Why? One takes skill and knowledge. The other is something anybody can do.

And from what I can tell you are saying since the guy can get more water from his car then he is better. Well it is not.

Gevlon said...

Getting a bottle from the trunk is much easier than finding water. If you had to resort to the hard way, you clearly did not come prepared, therefore dumb.

"PvP skillz" are only needed in a fair fight. If you are in a fair fight, you did not plan your engagement.

Sugar Kyle said...

And for all the people who spend their time getting into unfair fights where they put themselves at a disadvantage to use their water finding techniques and improve upon them for faster water finding when an emergency comes?

You can plan all day long. However, you cannot predict every situation that will happen. By learning to find water they are prepared if they ever wind up in a desert despite all the preparations they have ever made.

Anonymous said...

This attack was nice from a point of utilizing a new mechanic exactly the way it was designed, but overall it's not impressive. From Ripard's post I didn't get the feeling he was so excited as you portray it. I think he was rather happy about seeing the change on action. Notice how he says he was pointed to this video and responded by "working as designed". He doesn't boast the gank itself, which is not impressive as your ganks are not impressive. Also, please stop posting about things you know nothing about - not warping to 0 is a good idea (even with barges on scan) and interceptor dps is low, as intended. Everything was fine in this regard. Remember that this isn't hisec where you don't have to care about pvp while ganking.

Anonymous said...

Ripard was not impressed with the gank. He was impressed with the use of a mechanic he has long championed.

Simple as that.

Actually pulling this kind of thing off in a wormhole, when defensive bubbles existed, used to be non-trivial. You'd need cloaky tacklers to get point, wait for your dps to burn through the bubble and land on target. Now you can just race over in a ceptor and do what you want.

DPS of a ceptor is low, that isn't a news flash. But DPS and alpha on a WH gank isn't a concern like it is in HS where you have a strict concord timer that is going to kill you if you don't get your business done.

To be completely honest, I'm kind of impressed with your large kill log. What i'm not impressed with is your attempt to try and pass yourself off as a top PvPer, trying to claim you are solo as good as goons or whatever, simply because you won on a single metric of kill board efficiency.Are you an impressive solo ganker? yes you are. But you are not a pvper. I'd take issue with this defensive bubble video being called "elite pvp" too, but they are not calling it that so it isn't a problem.

Anonymous said...

I'm not native english. so here is the quote:
--snip--
I had a few players bitching to me about the "over-effectiveness" of interceptors against PvE players using defensive bubbles. In particular, I was pointed at the video below. All I could say to them was "working as designed!" Mining fleets in particular are the only time in EVE where you see every single player in the same type of ship. Nobody ever thinks to defend their mining ops for some reason. And that's fine -- treat the ship losses as a cost of doing business if you like.
[vid]
But don't expect not to lose them to a well-done raid. I thought this one was pretty freakin' brilliant.
--snip--


He writes like CCP Guard talks. It's the spaceship doctrin of CCP to always remind us players to shoot stuff and that it is brilliant.

I guess as CSM you get alot of stuff. He writes it; that he was pointed to the vid without the context. and confirms that everything works as intended. Yes. his last sentence is very off. maybe he or a native english speaker can clear this up.

The Vid is a very poor executed gank and defence. they could have executed it without the rubicon nullified frigs. so there is nothing brilliant here to see.

Anonymous said...

""PvP-ers" think that the guy who can get a glass of water in a desert using some obscure knowledge of the maasai is awesome, while the guy who just picks a bottle from his car is a "carebear"."

If this your philosophy, then you probably shouldn't even be gaming. There are probably far easier ways to trigger the same chemical reward centres in your brain.

In reality, of course, you are essentially frustrated because you can't find a measure by which you can 'impress' people in EVE. So maybe you should search for your self validation elsewhere.

Anonymous said...

Obviously, it is best to know where to find water, AND bring enough along when you can prepare for your desert trip. One is the skill of being able to adapt to the situation/environment, one is the skill of clever forethought, planning and coming well prepared.
The "leetest" people are the ones who do both/can both. Or rather, the ones with the highest success rates.

Von Keigai said...

"PvP skillz" are only needed in a fair fight.

False. You need skills in most fights. Only in the most ganky of fights can you dispense with skill. And this works at both ends. When you are on the losing side of a fight, you need skills to disengage and escape. Your gank victims totally won or lost the fight before it started. But most fights are not like that.

If you are in a fair fight, you did not plan your engagement.

This from guy wanting to live in wspace. Listen: you can plan most engagements in highsec, and highsec only. (And even there, gank exists.) Outside, sometimes engagements come to you unwillingly. Also, people often engage on what they think is favorable terms, but those terms change because the enemy has his own plans. Yes, you can fly around rejecting all engagements in your triple stabbed nullified Tengu. But you can only do a limited amount of stuff in that. There are many things that you cannot do, or cannot do effectively, without exposing yourself to the possibility of PVP.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the "frigate lollers" thing. It would seem to me that you think Frigates have no place in the game for people who've been playing for more than a few months? Is that correct in your view?

Further, it would appear that because it takes longer to learn to fly bigger ships, bigger ships are inherently better? Is that correct in your view?

What then do you make of historic doctrines, like Drake Armies which could go toe to toe with battleship fleets?

Or AHAC fleets (T2 cruisers) which could beat up on carrier supported battleship fleets?

It is true that you can fly frigates first, but as a 90 million skill point player myself, I'm actually going back and filling in the support skills to *perfect* my frigate flying, because there are so many useful frigate hulls. Interceptors, electronic attack frigates, covops, bombers, assault frigates. And yes, even plain old T1 frigates have their place.

I am not sure what the bias against frigates really is.. and I'd be interested in your insights, and reasoning behind the position that people in frigates are just lollers.

Premier Sovian said...

Gevlin is results orientated. He views getting the job done in the most efficient, tidy way possible the epitome of skill.

Other people think pulling off clever maneuvers is what skill is about, especially if they hard to do successfully. Succeeding at your goal is secondary to doing something clever.

Neither definition is wrong. Which is why skill is such a vague and useless term to use in these conversations.