Minerbumping.com is introducing TDD Dominaters, a moron of epic proportions. There is a common misconception in EVE about "little corps" like his: that it's a group of friends chatting while running missions. Reading his own mails (captured by the resourceful agents of the New Order) reveals that he is so broken that he is begging for 250M ISK from his own members. 250M is nothing for a trader or multiboxer, but it's not a huge sum for a solo mission runner either. An afternoon of missioning can provide this money.
Since EVE is a sandbox, there isn't a simple way to evaluate a group. In WoW you look up their raiding progress and you can tell if they are good or just a lolguild with no activity besides leveling alts and dancing naked on mailboxes. However in EVE you must do spying to see their true colors. Until you do, you "naturally" assume that they are somehow similar to you. Even if you are in nullsec and they are in highsec, doing nothing but mining and missioning, you think that they just have "different preferences" or "find other things fun". You could make 50M+/hour by missioning, so you assume that they like this gameplay and they do make this money, or more.
People cling to this belief so hard that even clear evidences of horrible play doesn't change their mind. "It's a game and he just plays for fun" or "he doesn't want a second job", they say when I point at a joke fit or a horrible killboard. But the letters aren't gameplay, they are written by a human to another. These letters clearly prove that the person behind the TDD Dominaters avatar is very dumb.
Needless to say, how destructive it is for new player retaining. EVE is very unlike other games: in a normal game, you have a long initiation period while you learn to play solo. By the time you grow to max level in WoW or get a lvl 10 tank in WoT, you'll be able to recognize a scrub and avoid his guild/clan. In EVE a new player is thrown out to the wild after a few hours of trivial missioning. Even worse, the whole game has this "metagame" hype that the new one cannot understand, therefore can't classify. I mean, even if I'm a total newbie to an FPS, I can tell which of two teams are better: the one with the "victory" screen. The game is about winning the map, period. In EVE there is no such "win", there are no "maps" and there is this "diplomacy" and "spying" thing he can't fathom. So when he sees a player who talks buzzwords in confidence, there is no way for him to tell if he is facing The Mittani or a 12 years old kid who is copy-pasting a media company manifesto.
The result is that the newbie gets trapped in these horrible corps, lead by complete idiots without much chance to figure this out. He looks at his leader as an experienced veteran and when he fails to progress, he blames himself ("EVE is too hard for me") or blames EVE. He needs unusual self-confidence to assume the truth: he, the 1 day old newbie is better than his "guildmaster". If he is unable for that, he can only stay in EVE by blind luck: an awoxer or ganker comes along and instead of harvesting his tears, explains him why he died.
If you've read the minutes, you know that the chance of an awoxer saving him is about to end.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think awoxing is a good highsec rule. However CCP needs to give something to save new players from bad corps. There should be some limit before someone could create a corporation. Like "be top damage on 3B kills in the last month" before he could mark his corp "PvP" and "have 5B cash in your wallet" before he could mark his corp "PvE". Without these his corp is marked "social" and recruits are explicitly informed in a popup that "This corporation has not seen serious combat or industry and lead by a rookie pilot. Are you sure to join?"
Moron of the day: fitting cyno to a lone titan is no longer in style. But two officer damage mods for one gun is necessary. Oh, and doomsdays are working in lowsec now.
Since EVE is a sandbox, there isn't a simple way to evaluate a group. In WoW you look up their raiding progress and you can tell if they are good or just a lolguild with no activity besides leveling alts and dancing naked on mailboxes. However in EVE you must do spying to see their true colors. Until you do, you "naturally" assume that they are somehow similar to you. Even if you are in nullsec and they are in highsec, doing nothing but mining and missioning, you think that they just have "different preferences" or "find other things fun". You could make 50M+/hour by missioning, so you assume that they like this gameplay and they do make this money, or more.
People cling to this belief so hard that even clear evidences of horrible play doesn't change their mind. "It's a game and he just plays for fun" or "he doesn't want a second job", they say when I point at a joke fit or a horrible killboard. But the letters aren't gameplay, they are written by a human to another. These letters clearly prove that the person behind the TDD Dominaters avatar is very dumb.
Needless to say, how destructive it is for new player retaining. EVE is very unlike other games: in a normal game, you have a long initiation period while you learn to play solo. By the time you grow to max level in WoW or get a lvl 10 tank in WoT, you'll be able to recognize a scrub and avoid his guild/clan. In EVE a new player is thrown out to the wild after a few hours of trivial missioning. Even worse, the whole game has this "metagame" hype that the new one cannot understand, therefore can't classify. I mean, even if I'm a total newbie to an FPS, I can tell which of two teams are better: the one with the "victory" screen. The game is about winning the map, period. In EVE there is no such "win", there are no "maps" and there is this "diplomacy" and "spying" thing he can't fathom. So when he sees a player who talks buzzwords in confidence, there is no way for him to tell if he is facing The Mittani or a 12 years old kid who is copy-pasting a media company manifesto.
The result is that the newbie gets trapped in these horrible corps, lead by complete idiots without much chance to figure this out. He looks at his leader as an experienced veteran and when he fails to progress, he blames himself ("EVE is too hard for me") or blames EVE. He needs unusual self-confidence to assume the truth: he, the 1 day old newbie is better than his "guildmaster". If he is unable for that, he can only stay in EVE by blind luck: an awoxer or ganker comes along and instead of harvesting his tears, explains him why he died.
If you've read the minutes, you know that the chance of an awoxer saving him is about to end.
Don't get me wrong, I don't think awoxing is a good highsec rule. However CCP needs to give something to save new players from bad corps. There should be some limit before someone could create a corporation. Like "be top damage on 3B kills in the last month" before he could mark his corp "PvP" and "have 5B cash in your wallet" before he could mark his corp "PvE". Without these his corp is marked "social" and recruits are explicitly informed in a popup that "This corporation has not seen serious combat or industry and lead by a rookie pilot. Are you sure to join?"
Moron of the day: fitting cyno to a lone titan is no longer in style. But two officer damage mods for one gun is necessary. Oh, and doomsdays are working in lowsec now.
19 comments:
no one is hindering the newbie from using google. those that want to learn the game will do.
Actually, it is to the new players advantage that such bad players are insulate themselves. Creating such artificial restrictions on player created corps won't filter out the bad players from the new players but ensure that the bad players are influencing new players.
CCP would be best served doing a PSA for each new player telling them that a so called 'older' or 'experienced' player asking for ISK not good leadership material.
In fact, anyone following such a 'loser' is likely no better themselves. Indeed, this might as well be looked at as killing two birds with one stone.
@daniel: that works in WoW, not in EVE, due to lack of clear objective. I mean, he can learn from written sources how to make a ship or how to run a mission. But even veterans are arguing what is "good play", so he can't learn it. I mean he might learn how to run missions very efficiently, just to be surprised that he isn't considered "good", he is considered "carebear".
Finally, another good article from GG. Congratulations!
I totally agree with you.
Creating a corporation which other players can join should require much more experience or SP.
But I doubt that CCP will take any steps towards that direction, on the contrary, I was getting convoed by a GM on a new ALT I am training (yes, those Bowheads need to get some love...). The GM suggested to join a "newbie-frinedly" player corp asap, as to get much more information about the game...
I was left speechless, GMs actively advising new players to join a shitty highsec lol corp only to get wardecced???
Seriously, CCP GMs should require to play EVE with an account like we do, no subsidies from CCP, live in highsec, if you work on highsec mechanics, or null if you live in nul, but with no help from CCP. Do as every other players do. Only then will CCP GMs learn about all these issues in EVE...
You are trying to treat awoxers as a "feature" of Eve, when they are simply a fortunate side effect of an otherwise broken system.
If fixing the system removes awoxers, so be it
As much as I hate awoxing (it is an arbitrary and random mechanic), I have to agree it makes sense for occasions like this. However, it's not that hard to just wardec those corps and open conversations with newbies once they are found. I believe this happened before in one of his previous failcorps.
I agree that creating a corp and flag it for PVP should need some "certificate".
But how will you set the rules for that, the 3B kill mail won't work if you only do nice frig-pvp. On the other hand if you gank you will get the 3B kill mail very sure, but is that good pvp?
Flagging for PVE should have no requirement, 5B in pocket or 10B, can easy be done by selling plex or borrowing the money from a friend.
Just ad an Icon to the corp-banner, upper left a red scull if the corp is flagged for PVP and a green baby if only flagged for PVE. And a popup when joining that tells:
a) attention: corp is pvp flagged and can be wardeced by other corps.
b) attention: corp is only PVE flagged, no corp-wardecs.
but still the problem, how will you measure a good pvp-player.
Normally the question of guild evaluation is resolved by having some sort of guild leaderboards with rating.
CCP was completely disinterested in making these leaderboards, though, and mostly left the community to work these things out on its own :)
@Maxim: right, but the situation is worse than that. In WoW, there is no official leaderboard, the "community" created wowprogress.com. The community also created dotlan and zkillboard.
The fundamental problem is that while in WoW everyone agree how a leaderboard should look like, so it just needed some enthusiasts to code it. No one would claim that a 1/14 Mythic guild is better than a 12/14. On the other hand EVE players happily claim that a PvP-er who has 1B worth of frig kills "haz skills", while the nullsec fleet fighter who killed several titans is "just an F1 monkey". They also look down on the "ganker" who killed hundred billions solo. And they look down on the "lowly carebear" who has more money than they combined.
The "EVE leaderboard" isn't just a coding/methodology problem, it's a theoretical problem.
My best idea would be multiple leaderboards for different activities, but there would be even discussions what considers "activity". However we can agree what is NOT: someone without money AND kills is considered scrub by everyone.
"No one would claim that a 1/14 Mythic guild is better than a 12/14"
That would entirely depend on the aim of the guild. Like corps in EVE, they can be based around any activity, not just a single one. You could say achievement points is a measure of success, or total gold owned.
"On the other hand EVE players happily claim that a PvP-er who has 1B worth of frig kills "haz skills""
"Haz pvp skills" maybe, but that doesn't make them better than other players overall. Unless an online game has a specific goal, like matches, or has a developer declared winning metric, then the metrics for success will always be varied. Players will pick their own playstyle and claim that as a metric for success.
Realistically all it says is whether you are better at that one activity, not better overall. MMOs with no set goals like EVE, and even WoW, are like a collection of games rather than a single game, so you will never stop the arguments over various metrics of success.
Re your original post by the way, the problem with awoxing is that it stopped most highsec corps, not just bad ones. People smart enough to run a good corp in highsec are smart enough to exclude most new players because they might be awoxers. Therefore you get very few newbie friendly highsec corps run by players that know their stuff. Sticking in arbitrary limits based on random stats would be irrelevant. Liked pointed out above, ganking could get you killboard stats able to run a PvP corp for example. You've ganked, would you really suggest you would be competent enough to run a PvP focused corporation?
@Anonymous: theoretically, you are right, but practically everyone in WoW considers raiding "the game" and no one would claim "I have more mounts, so I'm better than the world first raider". On the other hand the frig-PvP group is very loud and serious about "skillz".
@Gevlon
Agreed that there is a theoretical problem, indeed.
Disagree that "multiple killboards" approach can solve anything on its own. The more diffuse the information, the less capable newbies are of processing it.
The most interesting part, i guess, is to have some way to measure the amount of "content" a newbie can get access to, while being a part of a certain guild.
I mean, guilds with many bosskills are attractive not for their glorious history, but for the promise of future fun.
If there was some way to measure "fun that can be had in this alliance" that most of Eve would agree on, that would be a step towards a leaderboard
IRL, we use GDP per capita and quality of life measurements. Countries with better and more balanced combinations of GDP per capita and QoL are generally more fun to live in and are perceived as "better".
Your attitude towards frigate-based pvp is making me sad.
I'll try to explain my point of vision on the subject to justify its existence.
1. Frigate solo engagements are way more intense, than cruiser-based. A smallest mistake upon engagement range selection will make you die way faster, than a cruiser-class would. The hull size leaves less room for error.
2. The ship roles of frigates fulfill the same ones of the cruisers and above: some are more suitable for brawls, others are more suitable for kiting; logistics and ewar are present too.
3. In most cases of small gangs electronic attack frigates are more favorable rather tan recon ships (hyena, keres and kitsune, sentinel falls out of this line due to weak neuting power against bigger hulls) due to their higher mobility and survivability; the output parameters like webbing range / point range / damps are on par with the cruiser hulls.
4. Frigates are great material to understand the basics of combat. You can and should dunk a dozen prior to flying something bigger to ensure you will have the necessary comprehension of combat ship piloting.
5. Factional warfare encourages frigate-based combat due to ship size limitation, so are some of the deadspace complexes.
I hope the points listed above are enough to justify such thing like frig-based pvp.
Gevlon, the Titan was very likely simply refitting for neuts/smartbombs to attempt to shake tackle. His remaining guns are in the cargo bay/fleet hangar.
Combat refitting is a very important part of (super-)capital ship piloting, so judging a capital by the fit that appears on the lossmail is not always wise.
I'm assuming he simply didn't have sufficient cargo space to remove the last gun.
(Why he didn't refit for full resists, I don't know, though.)
"but practically everyone in WoW considers raiding "the game""
I honestly don't think that's true. Perhaps a more vocal group do, but there are a huge number of players that never raid because they find it boring. That's not even including people that play solely for PvP, of which there are a huge number. Challenge mode is another big player.
It's not even that way publicly tbh. If you google wow leaderboards, the first result are PvP. If you go to wowleaderboards.net, and look at their leaderboards there, there's a huge variety of leaderbaords available.
"On the other hand the frig-PvP group is very loud and serious about "skillz"."
And from a solo PvP perspective they are right. Much like your suggestion that WoW raiding is the measurement of skill however, it's only one element of the whole. The best frigate pilot n the game isn't necessarily a better player than a mission player for example, they simply have different objectives. In the same way, a raider isn't any better than an achievement hunter of an arena champion, they just have different objectives.
" practically everyone in WoW considers raiding "the game" and no one would claim "I have more mounts, so I'm better than the world first raider"
And a raider would not claim (unless they are pants on head stupid) "I am better than the top ranked arena player"
Hardcore raiders (who you are talking about here) are a shockingly small number of players, and there are multiple things to do in WoW without ever going near a raid or any heroics etc (or even a dungeon at all!)
Would a pvper claim they are a better trader than someone who does that exclusively in Eve?
No, there are different end goals again, whether it be maxing all races and classes and crafts and achievements in WoW, or in Eve, industrialism, trading, missioning, incursioning, PvP.
Of course, egos exist, and everyone insists theirs is the only valid playstyle.....but, that is a human universal trait. "My stuff good and valid, your stuff dumb and moronic"
Here's the thing. TDD was recruiting out of newbie starter systems. That's an option only realistically available to high sec corps, unless low and 0.0 recruiters want to not have fun for a few days. This is the best strat for recruiting newbies, except having some popular out of game group of course. CCP is entirely at fault for gifting crap hi-sec corps with newbies. Not helping matters is the corp ad function which is a joke - I never knew so many hi-sec/lo/wh/newbie friendly/ pvp/ pve/ mission/ exploro 24 hr TZs existed - probably because it's a bunch of scrubs ticking all the boxes. CCP needs to redesign newbie space so it's inaccessible once you leave. Give players options for gameplay and have a specific WH that spits them out in different hi-sec constellations depending on their chosen occupations. Pirates and PVPers go to random low sec systems. Basically spread out newbies and give them a 'starter pack'.
"My best idea would be multiple leaderboards for different activities, but there would be even discussions what considers "activity". However we can agree what is NOT: someone without money AND kills"
By these criterias, the Mittani would be a struggling scrub. (Yes, he has some ISK and kills to his name, but that is after the fact).
In general you prefer to forget that that WoW and EVE are different games. Yes, there are parallels to be drawn, commonalities to be sought, but ultimately they are different games, catering to differing audiences.
You fail at EVE because you treat it like a metrics-driven game like WoW or WoT, when on many levels EVE is definitely not.
And if you had actually read the myriad comments (instead of just sorting them into the "non-moron", "moron", and "blocked" categories), you would know that by know. Not necessarily agree with your commenters, but at least understand.
@Druur: "The Mittani" isn't a corp to join. Goonwaffe has kills, Sov and money.
Everything is metrics-driven. Claiming that something can exist without metrics is equal to "it's good because I say so".
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