Greedy Goblin

Saturday, July 26, 2014

Weekeend minipost: The three lies of the head of evil

Thank God it's weekend, I refuse to waste more real posts to refute the lies of the head of evil. So he is out again with propaganda against supercapitals. Now this post isn't a good propaganda. Whenever someone is worried for the poor newbies, while his organization massacre them as a recreational activity, it's obvious he is lying, even if you don't see how. The only people who can legitimately speak for newbies besides actual newbies are those who actually helped newbies recently. Everyone else are just wanting to ride on the Malcanis-effect on his newbie-saving suggestion, me included. But let's cut the introduction, it's a minipost. Let's see the three lies!
  • "Eve Online's unique draw was once that a new player could jump into the game and have an impact on the galaxy three hours in." The validity of this statement can be easily seen if we read a bit more: "But true newbies spend the first few weeks being confused by the UI and bumping into things hilariously, calling rats on gates as hostiles, and generally being cute." How can you affect something in three hours if you are being confused for weeks?! But that just proves that he is lying, not that he is wrong. The true proof is in the new player graph: it skyrocketed after B-R and not after 6VDT. Why? Because the unique draw of EVE is inflicting and suffering/avoiding loss. Blowing up $300000 in ships is unique in MMOs. Blowing up a subcaps the target can re-grind in minutes is just World of Tanks in space.
  • "Humans are the sand in the sandbox; the more unique humans involved in a setpiece battle, the more viral the experience." Remember the sov-dropping of BoB? Everyone knows the story in EVE. Lot of people knows the story outside as it was covered well. How many people were involved? One. In this lie The Mittani shamelessly pulls the WoW-lolkid-defense: "BlizzardCCP must create content available to every player, regardless of skill and effort as we are all subscribers." The truth is that WoW had increasing numbers until the mass nerf of WotLK and EVE had increasing numbers until the mass nerf of "tiericide", because dreaming about being a top dog one day is better than facerolling everything and running out of content in a month. Note: killing different peoples frigates isn't new content. I couldn't make myself gank another Mackinaw after 10 weeks, despite I was probably the #1 killer in EVE and not just some nameless frigloller.
  • "Out of control sentry drones and ewar-immune spider-tanking supercarriers ensure he cannot make an impact until he has reached the endgame and acquired a capital or supercapital ship of his own". It's not only a lie because I could afford a super pilot and a supercarrier after 2 months of playing. It's even lie in the sense of "you must fly super to matter". You know how can a frigate single handedly destroy a supercarrier? By stopping its creation. Supers are expensive. They cost 30B to create and a PLEX/month to upkeep as they need a dedicated pilot. That's lot of ratting to gather. Go and kill the ratters and they won't be in supers. Even better: rat yourself, donate and then your alliance won't depend on moongoo and renters, so you can live in NPC space and can troll the "apex force" while they are outside your NPC station and can't do anything. You can defeat a super-riding empire without a super with asymmetric warfare! Of course he doesn't want you to think about that, because an 1000 Megathron riding empire can be defeated the same way.
The Mittani is probably the most powerful man in EVE. So we should ask: what did he do to help newbies in this month? Don't say it's impossible, I have charts to prove you can help them.

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mittens' articles are an analysis of what CCP must do to keep the game alive - he has a vested interest in the game not dying because his entire recreation, and his entire media business are predicated on its existence. From this perspective he CLEARLY recognizes that the life blood of any subscription based game is new customers and customer retention. This is true no matter what you are selling.

As for helping newbies - yes, goons kill newbies because it's fun. They also have the one of the highest intakes of newbies in the game at large. The CFC is, for all intents and purposes, a newbie oriented organisation.

Supers *are* broken. There are no other class of ship in the game that has no hard counter other than "more of the same".

Newbies are certainly ATTRACTED to stories like B-R, but they are not *retained* by the existence of such fights. Retention is important. It takes over 12 months for CCP to turn a profit from a single new subscription, so whilst attraction from large set piece battles is absolutely critically important, more important perhaps is the ability to retain those players. How do you do that?

Well, CCP's own figures suggest that getting players to join player corporations has a positive impact on player retention. But who would take the newbies? In the modern eve online battlefield where supers reign supreme the *value* of the newbies to the player organisation are being diminished. A newbie might join the game because of B-R but will fail to continue to play the game once he learns he cannot fight in B-R like battles for years because of a lack of skills.

Also, your "2 months I could afford a super" argument is idiotic. You are suffering your own confirmation bias - because YOU did it you think EVERYONE should be capable of doing it. This (clearly) isn't the case.

So yeah, it's not propaganda. It's common sense. Goons *already* have "won eve". They have the military capability to take nulsec if they wish to. But they have no interest in "owning it all". They have supercapital supremacy, fleet number supremacy, economic supremacy... Huge capital fleets and continued supercapital dominance actually works in the Goon's (from an ingame perspective) favour. But it isn't what is best for the game. Winning the game at the cost of destroying the game is clearly not a price worth paying.

Gevlon said...

If he recognizes newbies and still driving them out for fun, he is ... evil.

Why is it broken if a ship that is 100x more expensive than a subcap can't be defeated 1v1 in a subcap? It definitely can be 1v10 and that's still 10v1 price.

I believe newbies are not retained because they realize that the everyday EVE isn't series of BR-s. The solution is MORE supers, and more powerful ones, making super battles everyday. Maybe with power projection nerf, so the whole galaxy can't pile on your 3v3 super fight.

If Goons had won, they took it all. They didn't win. B-R was a perfect storm, catching PL with pants down PLUS being allied with the Russians AND BL.

Anonymous said...

I have no faith this will get posted since Gevlon censors posts he doesn't like but here goes.

"How can you affect something in three hours if you are being confused for weeks?! But that just proves that he is lying, not that he is wrong."

These two are not mutually exclusive. Someone who doesn't know what they're doing can still impact the game whether or not they know how they did it. I believe The Mittani is also referring to back in the early days of goons being in EVE where brand new players were sent out in rifters and would cause heavy damage to their enemy due to sheer number.

"One. In this lie The Mittani shamelessly pulls the WoW-lolkid-defense:"

I read this whole paragraph and still have no clue what you claim the lies being told are. The downfall of BoB was ultimately carried out by one person but there was plenty going on behind the scenes not to mention that this was an event on a giant scale as it lead to the collapse of the superpower and a complete rebalance of nullsec in the game.

You're also forgetting things like B-R5 which went viral due to the sheer destruction and number of players in the fight. Fights like B-R5 are what goes viral in EVE these days but I'm sure if someone like the goons were taken apart by a large group of inexperienced players then it would get mass media coverage as well.

"t's not only a lie because I could afford a super pilot and a supercarrier after 2 months of playing."

Good for you, but the vast majority of players won't have enough money to buy a super pilot for a very long time and likely won't even know how.

"It's even lie in the sense of "you must fly super to matter" "

In the grand scheme of things The Mittani is correct however a frigate can be important in some very unique situations. In Nullsec the most interesting and important fights are done with supers, frigates can't do anything of importance in decisive fights and are often not even taken into the fight.

I would also argue that a frigate shouldn't be able to take down a capital array since they should be guarded so again the scenario you've setup is unique and isn't really going to happen.

You seem to spend a lot of time arguing "lies" by The Mittani when you could be spending that time doing much more important things such as helping the game by talking about problems with it (like The Mittani has been). If you have a different or better way of combating the problems then raise them as a constructive reply instead of making your entire basis for posting that "The Mittani is a liar liar pants on fire" because it does nothing to help the game.

Anonymous said...

I would argue that Brave Newbies do very little to help new players. They do have some good programs such as skill book programs for new players but the alliance is just too poorly run to be of any use to a new player.

To give you an idea, a new player joins the game and is told they should join BNI, they do so and are promptly told to go to their nullsec base. The new player does so and gets some skillbooks they need but then what? There's no training for newbies they just get brought to their capital and left to fend for themselves which is terrible for a new player. EVE-University is a great idea for newbies as they go through all the details on how to play that a newbie would need to know and THEN when the player graduates they're encouraged to join a nullsec alliance (which is what BNI is now).

Brave Newbies are a problem for new players, EVE-University is the answer.

Anonymous said...

26 July, 2014 07:16 Anonymous - Do you even know what you're talking about? You really strike me as someone who has not been a newbie in Brave. Any new player that joins Brave and cannot learn anything there is either not cut out for eve or they are coming from a WoW-type game where they have been trained to expect everything to be given to them.

Tabletop Teacher said...

Whilst I largely agree with what you've said, I don't think asymmetric warfare is as practical in this case as you make it sound. Typically it's useful against a larger/more advanced invading force, due to supply line vulnerability. In general terms, these larger/more advanced forces are aggressive rather than defensive.

However, on home ground supply lines are much shorter and reinforcement is much quicker. That style of fighting isn't appropriate for removing a settled force. You can destabilize it, but then you'll still need to switch to conventional big guns to actually take ground.

This is worse in Eve. Unless you can maintain round-the-clock raiding, the average sov-null ratter can recoup any losses within a few hours. That's even worse when moon goo income absorbs losses on an alliance level.

Unless of course you have data showing that CFC losses from your crusade out-strip their ability to recover, in which case I'll revise my opinion.

Anonymous said...

Gev said it right...

"I believe newbies are not retained because they realize that the everyday EVE isn't series of BR-s"

Its meaningless to play Eve on a daily basis.. mining, upskilling, trading, ganking etc...

How would you effectively gank CFC ratters on a big enough scale to matter?

Anonymous said...

Actually Cfc recruits (real recruitment, not a scam) more newbies than the uni, bni and rvb combined. There is a ton of info for newbies how to enjoy and prosper on the game after joining. As for killing them - Cfc kills what they like, when they like. They are a normal coalition, not a teaching corp with strict rules. So your argument as them being evil for that is moot. It could be applied to most of eve.

Anonymous said...

Everyone knows the story in EVE.
Is there some archive where history like the BoB story is written?

Rules of acquisition #34: War is good for business.
So. Whoever has supremacy will not "end" a war. Ever. Does anyone know where the advertisement revenue stream goes from themittans.com? the site has a good alexa rating http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/themittani.com

Lucas Kell said...

So to be clear then you are saying the following:
- Supers and titans should be kept and battles should revovle entirely around them
- The whole game should be exclusive rather than inclusive, so only the best players get to be victorious whey everyone else is just messing around.
- lolfrigates are the only way newbies should be allowed to take part, and if a super battle occurs they should just go somewhere else.


The really dumb thing is that you are so busy trying to disagree with everything the Mittani writes, that you don't make any sense, and even go against things you yourself have said.

At the end of the day, null is boring right now. We are basically messing around because noone has a realistic chance of taking out the established coalitions. Do you honestly think MoA really would stand a chance if we actually decided to roll on them? Something is needed to break the current situation, because it's basically us and NC/PL staring at each other with supers and titans, and the rest of null sitting around being irrelevant.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: no, I say pinnacle battles should be about supers and titans, supported by capitals. 90% of EVE PvP isn't pinnacle battles. Hell, 75%-85% of CFC losses aren't even from enemy coalitions but "pirates". They don't use supers. They use blops gangs, interceptor roams, gatecamps with cruisers-battlecruisers. A newbie can be useful on day one as a tackler for a gatecamp and in month 1 he can fly a bomber blops-dropping ratters or an inty.

MY OWN PROJECT involves no supers (besides the titan bounty). I spend my money on subcap-fighting Marmite and MoA, not supers.

I'm saying that 90% of the current EVE fights are accessible to newbies. Why is it so bad that there is 10% for the skilled veterans?

"Do you honestly think MoA really would stand a chance if we actually decided to roll on them?" Not "would", "did". The Mittani ordered his minions in an official SotA to fight MoA. 200+ men fleets were hellcamping them. They undocked in inties, warped to an insta-undock and went to roam killing ratters. You can't smash them because they have no structures to lose.

Lucas Kell said...

"Hell, 75%-85% of CFC losses aren't even from enemy coalitions but "pirates"."
You say that, but then you are looking at non-wartime. Is it supposed to be a surprise that when we aren't actively at war with a null group that most of our fights occur with the smaller null groups?

"MY OWN PROJECT involves no supers (besides the titan bounty). I spend my money on subcap-fighting Marmite and MoA, not supers."
And as of yet, there's no evidence of any impact from your own project. Sure, you have a bunch of killmails which you love to post, but no actual evidence of change. I still get to log in, do whatever I want, shoot a bunch of people and mess about. I haven't yet logged in and gone "oh no! MoA has stopped me being able to do X". Being in a null group, you get losses to all sorts of groups that hate you. That's ALWAYS been the case, and has never been a problem. Why do you think it would be a problem now because and extra 20b or so is being plopped into it?

"I'm saying that 90% of the current EVE fights are accessible to newbies. Why is it so bad that there is 10% for the skilled veterans?"
Because they are boring. Even the veterans don't want to be in the capital battles. Sitting in a system for 22 hours in Tidi cycling a doomsday isn't exactly entertaining.

"Not "would", "did". The Mittani ordered his minions in an official SotA to fight MoA. 200+ men fleets were hellcamping them. They undocked in inties, warped to an insta-undock and went to roam killing ratters. You can't smash them because they have no structures to lose."
lol, that wasn't even close to a war. Why is it that you keep stating that the way to kill an alliance is to cut off it's cash, yet you then seem to think that MoA are untouchable? If we really went to war, we'd make sure they had to move to highsec to stand a chance of making income. The fact that they don't have structures is a bad thing, since if you attack me in a ratting area, I can hop a few bridges and be the other side of the universe in minutes back to ratting, and if all else fails, we still make the passive income off the structures. MoA don't have that option.

And so they went out in inties. Their isk efficiency also dropped by 20% and their overall kill amounts dropped by nearly half. A few instalocking lokis would help reduce that further. The part you seem to miss is that whatever pirates can do can also be done by the larger coalitions. Pirates don't gain anything by being small, which is why groups like MoA cling to groups like BL and brave to survive.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: let's say that my project has no objective result. But since it keeps me occupied with the game and keeps Marmite and MoA occupied and "provides content" for lot of Goonies, we can say that the game is fine the way it is. Not everyone needs to be in supers to play.

What pirates gain by being small is safety from counterattack. The worst thing that can happen to MoA is having to play on highsec alts. The worst thing that can happen with a coalition is losing multi-trillion structures. MoA can afford to go head-first into something uncertain, worse case they come back with a bloody nose. A coalition must be very sure that they won't lose.

Anonymous said...

Gev as wild as your plan is it is feasible.

The only missing component is we need a sufficient critical mass of players with a sense of urgency in this task to succeed.

You are good at working out devious schemes like these but we need the 2 factors above to succeed at any venture

We need to create a sufficient sense of urgency in at least 1000 players to kick this off.

Give it some thought.
(same guy)

CFC Grunt said...

What did he do to the newbies this month? The usual.

A newbie that enlists with the CFC is given advice, ISK and free ships. The CFC attempts to make subcaps relevant in combat so that everyone can participate. They have doctrines (Such as FYF) that allow newbies to be effective on the battlefield.

They get thrown into a massive battle, are effective against others and hopefully help ruin someone's day.

I myself went from being a tackler frigate in a CFC fleet to flying heavy tacklers - and can attest to the fact that my day as a Devoter pilot was almost ruined by a meta-fit atron with a web and a scram.

Now he can tell a story of how he made a Hictor fall behind and lose tackle with his brave webs. I can tell a story of how I tried to catch up and do my job while being pinned down by something I couldn't hit - until it was sniped at my request.

When supers come into play, there's no chance a newbie in a T1 cruiser or frigate will make an impact. B-R was decided by exchanges of doomsday fire and interdictors bubbling. Subcaps fought in different systems.

Gevlon said...

@CFC Grunt: and how does a newbie without outside connection finds his way into CFC? (besides Goons gladly "recruit" him)

"B-R was decided by exchanges of doomsday fire and interdictors bubbling. Subcaps fought in different systems." You know that interdictors are subcaps, right? And they can be killed by other subcaps.

If CFC was losing in B-R, the subcaps would come in to clear tackle and extract supers.

CFC Grunt said...

CFC is not just Goons - it's composed out of multiple alliances which also recruit new pilots.

One may of course say "Oh, then they just become pets" - that is not true. CFC is not goons + pets, it's a Coalition. Both goons and non-goons are on equal footing in it, and you aren't "worse" by being in Razor instead of GSF.

You gain different leadership, different home region, different community because not all of the CFC embraces the same rules and culture (Razor, AFAIK, does not condone scamming. Most other alliances allow it).

As for B-R, Interdictors aren't exactly newbie-friendly subcaps, and if CFC was losing they would've just started calling them primary to clear tackle. Subcap fleet would've never entered system, because that would just result in them being slaughtered by the supers.

That was seen in HED-GP previously, where as far as I remember, CFC tried to cyno capitals and subcapitals into place. What resulted was a disaster that ended in a node crash.

Bob said...

Okay you don't like Mittani. As a 2 months old player myself, after joining a rather big alliance, I can tell he's right. There's nothing new players can do to contribute in a fight against capital ships.

There are no counter against capships. Money might be a small issue but it's your own obsession and hitting the wallet isn't enough for most people. Most people just want to kill stuff. Including carriers.

Whatever the game is, any "class" must have natural counters, for the sake of balance/fun/diversity. War is more engaging when overly expensive ships are being blown up. It also wins wars. I'm not saying carriers have to go, but I'm saying carriers shouldn't be immune to ewar and have such strong logi abilities beucause there's nothing you can do unless you can alpha strike the said carrier. That sucks. Like RL carriers, eve carriers should be forced to have light escort ships to defend them against various threat chaper vessels (like submarines) represent. This gives everyone an interesting role to play.

I'm not a CFC member, I'm actually in an alliance fighting them, but if making subcap a vital part of any fleet makes them win more wars, then be it, because it means my alliance can't have a high enough degree of organization to counter them. It can't be bad for the game and CCP should definitely strive to make low tier hulls mandatory even in the biggest battles.

Gevlon said...

@Bob: so you want to kill expensive ships without fielding expensive ships. The question is who will be the moron who flies the expensive ship for your fun?

Bob said...

@Gelvon: people with escort ships, of course. Saying cheaper ships should be useless against bigger ones should ultimately make you say that inties shouldn't kill Ishtars, condors shouldn't be able to tacke ravens, and so on. Is that really what you're saying? If the answer is yes then I'm done arguing with you. :)

Gevlon said...

But why should anyone pay 30B if he can have the same fun for 30M? There must be exclusive content for those who go an extra mile, or the game will be "completed" in a week or two.

Anonymous said...

I'm actually shocked to see what's stated here on the CFC. Someone posted that the CFC n00bs receive advice, ISK, free ships, etc.

Bullcrap. I've been to the CFC myself, I remember announcing a war in Pure Blind then immediately announcing peace-time SRP (SRP payment reduced), then 2 days later the fits were not covered by SRP only the ship hull.

I remember paying ratting tax to the alliance, I remember POCO taxes screwing over PI projects, I remember marketeers talking how they could make more profit out of their own blues.

I remember a top director stealing 600bil ISK worth from this alliance, then 6months later a diplomat stealing 60bil ISK worth of elements, but of course we the members had to pay the price.

Leadership took no responsibility at all... and I received no SRP ever, my submissions were all rejected all the time for various reasons... as a n00b I was told that insurance should be paying all my losses and ratting, and I should not rely on these "luxury" services by this alliance.

Thank you CFC for all what you do for newbies every day, I've been there, I've seen it. Had enough...

Anonymous said...

"Okay you don't like Mittani. As a 2 months old player myself, after joining a rather big alliance, I can tell he's right. There's nothing new players can do to contribute in a fight against capital ships."

The problem is that if the counter to cap ships is always numbers, then no matter how high you set the bar there is only room for the numerically largest coalition (which is why Mittens is shortsighted).

Anonymous said...

But why should anyone pay 30B if he can have the same fun for 30M? There must be exclusive content for those who go an extra mile, or the game will be "completed" in a week or two.

Quit misrepresenting the argument. This isn't the point. The point is that NOBODY in the game should be able to pay 30B to have an invisible "i win" button that can only be defeated by the other side spending 60B on 2 of them.

Anonymous said...

The problem is that if the counter to cap ships is always numbers, then no matter how high you set the bar there is only room for the numerically largest coalition (which is why Mittens is shortsighted).

the counter needn't be numbers, just a slight reduction in invisibility. I.e - introduce a super-capital siege mode to enable ewar immunity like their capital cousins - suddenly subcaps are effective but a sieged super is no less effective at mincing subcaps than it is today.

Or relegate supercaps to a pure support role (no dps)... give them a useful bonus but one which does not scale with unbelievable numbers.

Or introduce some sort of "reverse" bonus, where the super's tank and DPS is a function of how many sub capital ships are in the same fleet it is in... wear down the subcap support fleet and the super becomes like shooting wet cardboard...

There are any number of creative (and even non-creative) ways to maintain supercapital *relevance* without making them a "he who has the most of these toys wins the game" kind of deal.