Greedy Goblin

Thursday, February 27, 2014

You can't metagame in highsec (and the creation of RvB)

Goons surely spent lot of resources to create and upkeep their highsec arm, RvB to protect them from highsec wardeccers. It's strange. Why don't they bribe wardeccers off, like they did with Black Legion. I'm sure that would be easier than upkeeping RvB.

Because it's impossible. To understand why "metagame" doesn't work in highsec, you have to understand the fundamental difference in the zones of EVE. It's not bubbles. It's not even actual gameplay of the owners (shoot the red cross). The difference lies in your options when you are not blue to the owners:

Can you travel in non-blue space?
  • WH: no. Owners can close or camp entrances. Every invasion starts with hole control.
  • Sov-null: partially. You can use gates and covert cynos, while the owners can also use Jump bridges and control the cyno jammer.
  • NPC-null: yes.
  • Lowsec: yes.
  • Highsec: yes.
Can you safekeep your assets in non-blue space?
  • WH: no. There aren't any stations to safekeep.
  • Sov-null: no. Owners can lock you out of the station.
  • NPC-null: yes.
  • Lowsec: yes.
  • Highsec: yes.
Can you use local channel to be safe in non-blue space?
  • WH: no. Local channel doesn't work.
  • Sov-null: no. Practically everyone is neut/red to you, you can't tell quickly who is after you and who ratting or sitting on the station. For owners everyone is blue except you, so they recognize hostiles.
  • NPC-null: no. Everyone vs everyone.
  • Lowsec: partially. You can see war targets while gateguns and security status loss give some protection against neutrals.
  • Highsec: yes. You can see wartargets, neuts can't attack you (unless you have enough cargo to deserve suicide ganks).
As you can see, the cost of not being blue is higher and higher as you go up in the list. This is the cost of leaving your current corp/alliance without having a new one lined up. As soon as you quit, you become non-blue to them. Until you find another home, you are non-blue to everyone. Finding a new home isn't easy. You can't just show up at PL's door telling "I got fed up with The Mittani, hire me". Abandoning your corp means abandoning sov-null for a longer period. You lose your way of life. No more ratting and no more fleets for you.

With the increased cost of leaving comes increased power of the leaders over the members. Someone must be really disappointed in his leader to abandon his current life and go back to Empire. This increased power allows metagaming. It didn't matter what the average BL pilot thought about letting the Goon carriers go, abandoning their successful campaign and start working for Goons. As soon as BL leadership made the deal, they were stuck with it. Their only alternative was giving up their lifestyle and go back to Empire all alone.

Since in highsec you can do anything on your own, the leaders barely have any power over their members. They only lead because the members are happy with their leadership. "This is a benign dictatorship here!" doesn't work in highsec. If your member is slightly annoyed with you, he'll likely leave, because he can both run missions and hit suspects just like in your corp. He can even declare the same wars to have the same wartargets. A highsec corp can only offer social atmosphere and shared war costs. This means that if Goons would "metagame" a highsec wardeccer leader to do their bidding, his members would quit instantly and join/form a new corp.

Of course Goons have an option left: they can openly approach the corp and offer something to the membership for stopping shooting Goons. However, as they are PvP-ers, they want kills, and for that, they need a good wartarget. Goons are literally the best highsec wartargets in EVE:
  • They come to highsec in large numbers. Other nullsec players don't, so you can't kill them in highsec.
  • They are absolutely horrible in PvP. PvP-ers can fight back and kill you.
  • They undock and fly carelessly as they consider themselves gods. Carebears are hard to kill as they stay docked or watch local constantly.
Well, the Goons solved the impossible task. As they could't find a better wartarget, they created one. One that is even more numerous in highsec, even more likely to undock, and - if that's possible - even worse in PvP. So RvB was born: two sets of clueless noobs constantly fighting each other. Their offer to good highsec PvP-ers is simple: "join us and you can massacre noobs day and night. Once or twice in a year we will ask something from you, but after that's done, you can go back to your 99% ISK ratio." These players are Morlocks, constantly fed with kills of the other corp, so they are happy between CTAs. But to have happy Morlocks, you must have Eloi, the newbies whose job is to be massacred. The RvB rules, especially the "no podding" is there to protect the Eloi from extinction.

This is why I don't care about RvB-ers posting "we are having fun and love this war". They are all Morlocks. They do have fun and and do love this war. The Eloi aren't posting nor having fun, as they fall left and right with their expensive pods. When they leave, the Morlocks will be hungry and leave too, probably to Lemmings as we can offer them not only the remaining Eloi in the other corp (red for blue), but the Eloi in his current corp (red for red) and dumb Goons, FCON, SMA, Li3... Please note how Lemmings are different from all other highsec PvP corp: we are in permawar with these easy targets. Others had periods of lull or periods when they had hard campaigns with bad ISK ratio. In RvB (and now in Lemmings) a good PvP-er could constantly slay easy targets, upkeeping 95%+ ISK ratio.


Finally, some "metagaming" fun: here is my cross-vote table from CSM8:
The numbers mean "% of people who voted for the guy on the left also voted for the guy on top in their first half of the ballot". So the first line means "who did Mynnna voters supported too", the first column means "whose voters supported Mynnna too". What is interesting for us is Mangala, leader of RvB. He was mentioned on 12176 ballots in the first 7 spots, much more than the size of RvB. Where did he get external support? From other unaligned voters, from WH voters and from Progodlegend voters. He barely got votes from the CFC/HBC voters, which is obvious as random CFC guys didn't consider him friendly. Now that RvB was outed as the highsec Goon arm, I doubt if too many N3 (Progodlegend) or highsec carebear (Mike Azariah) voters would support him. From the blue boxes you can see that non-aligned voters supported all non-aligned candidates. Losing the "non-aligned" status will cost him even more votes. Will it be replaced by CFC votes? Only if the CFC members are instructed so by their leadership, because they don't believe that RvB is a Goon highsec arm.

So dear Mangala, I suggest you to wait for the CSM9 results next to a Goon POCO, so you can comfort yourself with "I still have this".


PS: Arrendis, I hope this wasn't you.

32 comments:

Foo said...

Thanks for the preference flows.

It is useful in predicting how the 'lower half' of the next CSM election may pan out.

Anonymous said...

Hello

Neat voting chart. And good analysis about the ease of leaving in highsec, and it's influence on leadership. I'll also note that makes high-sec awoxing *far* easier, but whatever.

If you had stopped there, that would have been a solid blog entry. But then it got... not so good.

First you make some comments that are just flat out wrong.

"Carebears are hard to kill as they stay docked or watch local constantly."

Really?!? You spent *months* slaughtering miners by the hundreds. Many carebears are *very* easy to kill.

Second, your claim that the Goons created RvB so that highsec PvPers would attack each other instead of them is a bit... tinfoilish at best. A claim like this demands some kind of evidence, otherwise it's just far-fetched speculation.

Lastly, the notion that RvBers are bloodthirsty "Morlocks" who prey on their own newbies is ludicrous, and a little bit offensive. Of course newcomers will tend to die more. It would be very peculiar if they didn't wouldn't it? We teach newcomers how to fight, and we believe that the best way to do that is by doing, ie jumping into the fray. (Incidentally, that also teaches you not to be so terrified of losing a ship). And unless they quit after a day or two, it works - they start getting it, they stop making silly mistakes, improve their fits, their tactics, and become better PvPer.

Something that regularly happens is 1vs1 duels to the hull with newbies. Would that happen if all we wanted was kills?

After a while some leave, and some stay. That's ok with us, we are a casual group. Some stay on because we *believe* in what RvB is doing... and that's not massacring newbies.

LR

Gevlon said...

@LR: To get the evidence you want, I need to download the RvB kills from Zkillboard. You have ANY idea how many kills are we talking about? That database is larger than all the databases I've used COMBINED. No, the official RvB killboard isn't useful, unless you seriously claim 24 titan kills: http://purple.rvbeve.com/?a=home&y=2014&m=1

I suicide ganked miners. That uses exactly that they don't consider themselves in danger.

"Morlocks" is offensive, but check this out: https://zkillboard.com/character/773213117/ Count his RvB kills and RvB deaths in the first few pages.

Anonymous said...

@LR: To get the evidence you want, I need to download the RvB kills from Zkillboard. You have ANY idea how many kills are we talking about?


Killboard stats alone isn't evidence, not given RvB's stated mission of just fighting *whatever*.

You'd need a chatlog. Or a forum post. Some sort of serious smoking gun. Goons suspected CCP helping Bob - but couldn't prove it (no matter how much statistical analysis they did) until they got access to forums and got a forum post that implicated T20.

You need that sort of evidence...otherwise nobody is going to believe you

Gevlon said...

The point of statistical analysis is that RvB's stated mission is indeed to just fight "whatever". So if their kills are focused on some targets, that's an evidence.

People who believe in chatlogs or forum posts will not believe me anyway, as these can be forged. Intelligent people on the other hand believe in numerical evidence. That's all I need. RvB can't function without its management and most of them are just honest, useful idiots. If I convince them that they are scammed, they will quit and RvB crumbles.

Arrendis said...

Nope. Not me. As you can see, I'm in .NSC., not EXACT.* When I need to travel in highsec on any of my TNT characters, I do so in a cloaky, nullified T3 w/a full rack of warp core stabilizers. Even when we're not at war - the CFC has many enemies, after all.

Besides, moving back and forth to Jita's much easier to do w/a jump clone, and just contract whatever crap I for some reason came out to buy (instead of using my newbie-corp trade alt) to a reliable freighter pilot I know, and poof, it gets where I need it.

This is what we mean when we say that the people you are catching in high-sec are people who deserve to get caught.

* - also, I fully admit to a particular foolish consistency: with one exception, the only character of mine who ever undock are all named in Sindarin. (Arrendis - Ar- [King/Royal] Randir [Wanderer] dess [Young Woman] - 'Queen of the Wanderers', and obviously not the character's birth name (that would likely be something vaguely Nordic or Finnish). The character's a female Matari, and they're traditionally a nomadic people, so I went with the kind of self-inflicted title a fairly full-of-herself capsuleer might choose. I could have just as easily closed it off with -ndeth, a fairly common female ending, or -iel, but wanted to have the 'young and potentially impetuous' connotation.)

You'll notice, I've never claimed not to be a nerd. ;)

Unknown said...

So wait you put the ballot proving that goons didn't vote for him, and this supports your argument how?

The goons after owning half of the good part of null sec and no viable opponent to give them content, they have to create a scapegoat to keep their members entertained. A dupe that uses reasons such as "racism" to attack the big bad goonies. Now the goons can have content and narrative, doing what they love most, shooting "pubbies" and "shitlords" in highsec while most of their managerial and logistical arm take a well deserved break.

Gevlon according to your logic, you also must be a goon pet. Congratulations.

Gevlon said...

@Dado R: except Goons can't win in highsec. If they blob, they get blueballed. If they don't blob, they die. This is why they created RvB at the first place, to have someone fight off wardeccers.

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:

"@Dado R: except Goons can't win in highsec. If they blob, they get blueballed. If they don't blob, they die. This is why they created RvB at the first place, to have someone fight off wardeccers."

You're not taking into account objectives here. If the reason the Goons form up is to save a POCO, then if they're blueballed, op success.

When the CFC blobs, we give no fucks about 'good fights'. We have a job to do, and that's all that matters. Work can be fun, but fun is not a requirement when it comes to doing the Work.

Anonymous said...

"Goons are literally the best highsec wartargets in EVE:

They come to highsec in large numbers. Other nullsec players don't, so you can't kill them in highsec."

thats just propaganda. look at marmite wars. If other nullsec players would not come to highsec, why they are wardeccing others and have success with it?
All alliances have their dumbass members to go to tradehubs during war.
ofcourse the amount in CFC is higher, because they have a lots of members.

Anonymous said...

Two things with your article I need to point out in fairness;


"Mangala, leader of RvB"
Mangala is not the leader of RvB.. He's one of the 8 (I think) directors. The two real leaders are shown on both the corp info list (CEO)



"These players are Morlocks, constantly fed with kills of the other corp, so they are happy between CTAs."

RvB has never ever had a CTA. Any event they have is entirely optional.

Anonymous said...

The point of statistical analysis is that RvB's stated mission is indeed to just fight "whatever". So if their kills are focused on some targets, that's an evidence.

People who believe in chatlogs or forum posts will not believe me anyway, as these can be forged. Intelligent people on the other hand believe in numerical evidence. That's all I need. RvB can't function without its management and most of them are just honest, useful idiots. If I convince them that they are scammed, they will quit and RvB crumbles.


Er no. Your statistical analysis, assuming for a second that we accept your method of analysis only shows that perhaps RvB are biased towards goon interests. It does not show that Goons created RvB. No amount of numerical evidence could show that.

You are assuming that because interests of RvB and Goons may align periodically (or even frequently) that it somehow equals "Goons created RvB". That is a tin foil hat conspiracy theory..because you have zero actual objective evidence to back up the claim.

Your standards of evidence are pretty appalling. And the premise you derive from that evidence does not stand up to scrutiny.

Gevlon said...

So you're from an alternative when shooting the same direction doesn't assume allied status?

Since none of us have seen the chatlogs where TNT and GSF allied, we can just assume that they happen to have frequent interests, right?

But your trolling won't work. Who created RvB is irrelevant. Who are the Goon alts in the RvB directorate is irrelevant. What is their ultimate plan is irrelevant.

What matters is right now RvB is a Goon pet and anyone joins or stays in RvB is serving Goons, while he is still called a "pubbie shitlord" by Goons.

Anonymous said...

Correlation doesn't equal causation. One famous example is that there was a correlation between the numbers of white stork and the number of newborn children.

If we follow the Gevlon Goblin brand of logic, storks are bringing babies to happy couples.

Anonymous said...

Jagtor is hardly an average RvB member... Even among the veterans he is a bit of a legend.

LR

Provi Miner said...

So the idea is to eliminate goons, thats the stated goal right?

Well you can't, there are three slight problems. 1: the general goon mentality will continueally bring them back together. 2: They are not internal to eve at all, eve is just one part of their community (all of eve could hell camp them till the game breaks down and they wouldn't care). No eve? no prob Wot time.

The third reason is that no one will accept a large influx of goons and goons can't lead in general (out of what 40K you will find some leaders) that means even if CFC stopped existing tomorrow you would have 40K players that no one in eve would touch which means that 40K automatically have there own community. Gotta find a way to rehabilitate them.

Gevlon said...

@LR: my point is that there aren't many "average" RvB members. There are two distinct groups: the PvP-ers, and the food.

@Provi miner: There aren't 40K Goons. That's CFC. They already have FCs and management. There aren't even 12K Goons, that's GSF. Those corps were in various alliances.

We are only talk about Goonwaffe members. 4K. Some will find home in various small ganking-griefing groups, the others won't be missed.

Remember that there are already SA members outside of GSF, like in Clockwork Pinapple.

Anonymous said...

" Who created RvB is irrelevant. Who are the Goon alts in the RvB directorate is irrelevant. What is their ultimate plan is irrelevant.

What matters is right now RvB is a Goon pet and anyone joins or stays in RvB is serving Goons, while he is still called a "pubbie shitlord" by Goons."

O.o

What? You've been arguing repeatedly that RvB is a goon creation. That is central to your premise and included in the title of this blog. How can you now say it doesn't matter? How is that not countering your whole argument?

Smith said...

GG, you're an intelligent guy but you severely lack in critical thinking. It hampers almost every article you put out and although it can be amusing it sometimes reach frightening levels.

I'm going to do you a great service. Go buy and read Carl Sagan's 'The Demon-Haunted World'.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World

Sagan puts forth a lot of clever ways to not come to faulty conclusions. Some of those tools you already master (law of large numbers come to mind) but some you ... don't.

Almost all people should read that book, but for many it would be a waste of time. You have the intelligence to grasp it and use it.

Take it for what it is. Not a flame, just a tip of how to be more correct.

Anonymous said...

I think you would have to demonstrate that... But I there is a core of RvB veterans. It doesn't mean that they are there to kill newbies. In fact, if you look at jagtor's killboard, some are definitely *not* interested in killing RvB newbies at all.

LR

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: I believe Goons created RvB and many circumstantial evidence point there. But it's not really IMPORTANT if they really did it. If you prefer to believe that RvB was only infiltrated/corrupted before Burn Jita, that's good for me too. I won't bother convincing you.

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:
"What matters is right now RvB is a Goon pet and anyone joins or stays in RvB is serving Goons, while he is still called a "pubbie shitlord" by Goons."

So far, you've demonstrated something nobody denies: that RvB and CONDI have a mutual defense pact regarding their highsec POCOs.

There's two elements you haven't demonstrated, though:

First, you haven't demonstrated that RvB are subservient to CONDI - ie: that RvB are doing things because CONDI orders them to do it, as opposed to RvB living up to the obligations they've chosen to take on. This may seem like a distinction without difference, but I assure you, it's not.

You keep tossing around that word 'pet', and clearly mean it in a disparaging way, but the relationships you're using it to describe in no way fit the 'do it or else' mold that you seem to want to make them fit. If they did, the CFC would be far smaller than it is. SMA would have been purged last year, and other alliances might have been on the chopping block far more recently.

It is entirely possible that RvB entered into the mutual defense pact not because they were told to, but because they saw exactly this scenario as a possibility: People looking to hit Goon POCOs would be valid targets under the war ally system. If anything, that would mean they're using Goons, not the other way around.

Can you demonstrate this is not the case?

The other thing you've not demonstrated is that Goons, by and large, consider RvB "pubbie shitlords". Pubbies, yes, certainly - after all, they are. But 'shitlords' is something I've never heard thrown at RvB members, any more than it gets tossed at BNI members. They have their thing, they're doing it, and they're getting bloody in it.

In both cases, you're attempting to disparage RvB line members and lay the blame at the feet of the Goons, in an effort to drive a wedge between the principles in the mutual defense pact. It's a pretty transparent attempt, by the way, but I just wanted to point out what, exactly, we would call that:

You're metagaming in highsec.

Peter said...

RvB participated in Burn Jita and have a POCO treaty with goons. That it. That's the entirety of your 'circumstantial evidence'.

Both of these things are public knowledge, and neither point to them been created/controlled by goons.

So it's rather a shame you keep repeating your nonsense - 'RvB protect goon assets in highsec' is a legitimate criticism, wheras 'RvB were created by goons to...' is the ranting of a lunatic.

Gevlon said...

@Peter: and Blohm and Voss shipyard war and 2/3 of Goon wars in highsec.

@Arrendis: RvB has absolutely no self-interest in protecting Goon POCOs. They could easily take all POCOs themselves. Or they could enter a non-aggression pact. Or simply just ignore POCOs since they lived without them for long. There cannot be other reason than subservience.

Anonymous said...

Or, you know, not wanting to eternally fight over the POCOs while at the same time ensuring they are the only ones that own the good ones. Sure, half that goal could be accomplished by a non-aggression pact, but by maintaining a level of mutual defense as well, it discourages anyone from taking them from each group separately (note here that you attacking POCOs doesn't mean much unless you actually deprive either group of them)

Babar said...

Imagine this scenario: CCP announces high-sec pocos. Nobody knows how it will play out. Nobody knows if all the big null-sec coalitions will make a stab at them, nobody knows if high-sec alliances will, nobody knows anything. Everything is unclear, and so those who are interested start making strategies.

It's very possible that Goons and RvB imagined there would be a lot more fighting over high-sec poco's than what came to be. If that was the case, it was not an unfounded assumption, nobody knew what was going to happen after all. So they enter a treaty: They'll divide the areas around Jita, and protect each other. Goons know that RvB have constant presence and high-sec and are thus valuable allies, and RvB know that Goons can gather huge forces in high-sec if properly motivated to do so (Burn Jita, the interdictions etc). They also know that Goons have a huge war chest, but most importantly, they know that Goons never back out of a treaty they've "signed".

So it made perfect sense for both parties to enter a mutual defence pact. We know now that there hasn't been much conflict over high-sec pocos, and you're probably right that currently Goons are benefiting more from the treaty than RvB, but RvB still choose to stand by their word.

Gevlon said...

@Babar: and allying Goons in Burn Jita 8 months earlier? Protecing Blohm and Voss Shipyards?

These happened long before the POCOs.

Again: 2/3 of the external war losses of RvB were suffered in wars where they were (the in-game highsec war sense) allied with Goons.

Unknown said...

You keep saying 2/3 of RVB losses. You don't have any evidence for this number, all you know is that the Marmite GSF was during Burn Jita had 120b in kills. You don't know how much of that was GSF and how much was RVB. Looking at the war history in game suggests it's incredibly weighted on the GSF side (not a single RVB loss is listed). Moreover, as it was during a suicide ganking campaign, it's likely that a large portion of those losses were concord whoring

You also don't know how much of the war RVB actually participated in, other than it being at least two weeks.

Basically the statistic is even more useless than the raw RVB killboard that shows 24 Titan kills

Gevlon said...

@Michael: then let's look at it backward: in the wars where Goons lost 2/3 of their ships (among highsec wars), RvB was allied with them. Maybe they were useless allies, but allies still.

And as soon as I have the RvB kill data, I share it with you.

Unknown said...

That's a more reasonable statement. It still has the flaw that you don't know how much of the war RVB was allied for, and the contextual problem that it's burn jita and so there was probably a ton of concord whoring. It is, nonetheless, a more reasonable statement

The main problem with your conclusions remain however. The data is explained fully by the two publicly stated facts that RVB joined goons for burn jita (as did many other entities, including TEST in between Goon attacks on Delve and their invasion of fountain) and that RVB and Goons made have a mutual defense pact over highsec POCOs. This doesn't mean you're conclusions are wrong, but you have no evidence that they're correct either.

To actually show that RVB are currently pets (since, despite numerous blogs claiming RVB was made by goons you keep deflecting and saying that doesn't matter) you need to show something that isn't explained by the (IMO much more reasonable) hypothesis that their relationship is just what they say it is.

Arrendis said...

Gevlon:
"@Arrendis: RvB has absolutely no self-interest in protecting Goon POCOs. They could easily take all POCOs themselves. Or they could enter a non-aggression pact. Or simply just ignore POCOs since they lived without them for long. There cannot be other reason than subservience."

You've been attacking Goon POCOs. Have you attacked RvB POCOs? Have you reinforced them, and beaten RvB when they came to defend the timer?

Because until you do that, and show that when that happens, they call for help and Goons don't respond, you haven't demonstrated that they gain nothing.

Anonymous said...

Where is your proof that Blohm and Voss are a goon alt corp? You've claimed this, and yet what do you have backing this assertion?

WarrenE Buffet, member of Bolhm with a history of being in Red Federation Holding Corp, the alliance holding corp for Red Fed.

Marla Tource, former member of the red Fed holding corp.

Saxonaire Trollstriker, former member of Red Fed.

This is all available by clicking links in evewho, not much research effort at all. You know, maybe that war wasn't protecting goon assets. Maybe, just maybe that was a war protecting RvB alt assets. Given the past history of those members, that seems much more likely than protecting a random goon alt corp.

As for burn Jita, again what gets RvB the most high sec targets for the least cost in that scenario? Allying with goons meant all those war deccing goons were legit targets for zero cost. Goons could also be shot when going suspect for zero cost. Why would goons accept the ally request, because the choices were let rvb help and maybe kill the deccers or not accept the ally request and face one more group shooting when they went suspect or even face a wardec from RvB too.

It seems like in both of those cases, you are assuming RvB's subservience to goons. Yet in one case the logic seems to be protecting their own alts and in the other case, allying with goons gave RvB the most targets for zero cost. Heck, for all we know, RvB could have told goons to accept the ally or they would flood Jita with their own members, messing up the burn Jita plan.