Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

How would the game be without Goons?

If you listened to the speech of the Evil One sending his minions to Cloud Ring for their final stand against the unstoppable menace of PH, TEST and BNI, you probably heard that they are doing it to save EVE too. Goons are sharing this sentiment and trying to turn it into a meme. It seems that CCP believes it too, that's why they are so desperately trying to keep The Mittani Media on life support.

It's shocking that no one sees the writing on the wall, so let me spoonfeed it to you little bees (and CCP):

Yes, only a fraction of total players live in null. About the same fraction as the miners (there is overlap). So it's fair to expect CCP to give equal development resources to nullsec mechanics as to mining mechanics. Is it happening? Not really. But of course not all of nullsec are Imperium members. So let's look at the production and destruction pictures that I typed in EXCEL, marking Imperium and other nullsec regions:

Only 11.6% of the producers live in the Imperium. So even if we assume if the fall of the Imperium would make all of them quit EVE instead of just shrug and continue under another banner, CCP would lose this amount of PvE players. If we assume that the change of 50K PCU at the end of 2013 to 30K PCU at the end of 2015 shows equal player losses, CCP lost 40% of its customers, without (or rather because of) any updates in the fields they play: mostly the Empire as shown at this chart.

The PvP graph is showing relatively the same percentage for the Imperium, but much larger part for other nullsec, giving another proof that the Imperium is just a bunch of ratters. It means that losing all Imperium players wouldn't mean a more serious blow to PvP activity in EVE than losing any random players.

So losing the whole Imperium playerbase would be a much lesser hit to CCP than they got in the last two years when they focused all their efforts on nullsec and took lot of feedback from CFCSM. Maybe they should try focusing on much larger player groups like "miners", "missioners" (some of them are also Imperium members), "lowsec dwellers", "WH-ers".

Last year I've proven that PCU correlates strongly with highsec activity and barely with nullsec, lowsec and WH activity. This is because established players live in Null, Low and WH, who are loyal to the game. The casuals who give up on EVE easily and never return live in highsec. What they got in the last two years? Bloody Omir, and he managed to boost activities a lot, proving how little effort could turn the decline of EVE around if CCP would start to care about other players than Nullbears (most nullsec changes were directly against Null PvP-ers for Null PvE players).

But the most important thing is that as a player, you are not responsible for the survival of EVE, CCP is. You are a customer here, do what you please within the EULA/TOS. Changing your game activity just to help CCP is silly, not just because you aren't a shareholder, but because if you expect some recognition from CCP for the countless hours of creating content for other players, you can be quite disappointed. Enjoy the game until the servers go down and give as much care for CCP as much they care for you!

So, "How would the game be without Goons?". Well, for vast majority of the players "pretty much the same".


PS: I received a pastebin that is admittedly from the disgruntled (ex-)minion of Evil Endie who isn't fan of the monetization. But he is wrong, I'm not writing any new articles from this, because I wrote all of these a year ago. Sure, someone from the inside confirming them is nice, but nothing new.

PS2: also Grath, PH and Legion are not on my shitlers list. I don't hate them, I don't want to fight them. I merely consider them utterly useless against Goons.

PS3: If #3 GSF PvP corp Bat Country don't want to just receive "I suspect they'd f** Bat and its members pretty hard", I suggest them to follow the example of the #4 PvP corp, Raging Ducks: join MoA, get their revenge on the Evil One who corrupted them and also help MoA in it's noble quest in liberating the rest of the minions.

PS4: Oh my God! Goons are crying over we hurt their precious feelings by being mean over the internet! My favorite part: "It doesn't matter what you think of the in-game Mittani. The real life Alex did something that nobody--not even CCP--has ever done." True to the last word!

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm confused, are you saying that goons are carebears because PvP is low in their regions? Why would goons want to attack themselves, wouldn't that mean that MoA aren't doing enough in CFC home regions?

Gevlon said...

Do we know of Goons fighting outside of their regions? Because I sure don't.

Anonymous said...

The thing you miss out here is that nullsec players aren't limited to nullsec. I live in nullsec and have 4 main characters there, but I also have 11 highsec alts who do trading, hauling and ganking.

Robert said...

You realise that you keep claiming to be a huge EVE fansite, and your fansite is about 97% about Goons/Imperium. You yourself are proving that they are vitally important to the game, and you're paying MoA to ensure they constantly provide content. The only way CCP will stop supporting them is if they stop being relevant, which won;t happen all the time they are mentioned every single day by hundreds of people.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: no, you are a highsec player who occasionally go to nullsec.

@Robert: I'm also claiming that I'm not relevant either. Also "hundreds of people" aren't relevant.

Unknown said...

In terms of global numbers you might be true. From the perspective of a small-gang Thera roamer (me and my friends) Imperium folks are good content providers. They do care bear, do fall asleep, do form homedef fleets. They also like to show some balls and ocasionally drop carriers here and there.
More opportunities to shoot!

Anonymous said...

Who knew that proper iterative gameplay would net such positive results for Hi-sec numbers ?!?

Now what if, and I'm an reaching way to fook out there, CCP games would invest in a proper live events team, fully staffed and with a proper budget to run for at least 2 years ?!?

Regards, a Freelancer

PS: meh CCP games management would rather piss away that budget on the next pie in the sky.

Anonymous said...

It's interesting to see that even so-called independent CSM reps like Mike A are now supporting the CFC by telling people on reddit to stop talking about the Endie leak.

Unknown said...

A very good article, again....

The numbers and statistics about EVE activities proved for the last ten years (!!!!!!) that pvp was just a tiny part of activity, that nullsec was just a tiny part of the whole EVE community.
The only difference between 0.0 bears and hisec dwellers is that hisec dwellers are just that, casuals who are unorganised, because any form of organisation in form of joining a corp or alliance is costly and counterproductive.
On the other hand, 0.0 residence needs a lot of organisation, logistics and manpower to maintain that.

Therefore, 0.0 bears were always much more vocal about their importance to EVE, which was untrue, no matter how loud they voiced their "space importance"

CCP devs were only listening to the well organised "special interest" groups, overseeing that the money much more came from the casuals... And losing casuals means drying out the potential for long time loyal players.

All the nerfs to incursions and the graphs proving that incursions are just a fraction of income/activity... Show that CCP listens to hot air rather than to rational thought.

I am so glad that Gevlon takes his precious time explaining eve nto the most loyal SHITTANI adept that he is irrelevant...

Anonymous said...

I would like to point out, that maybe the reason they put so much effort into null is because they want the players to go there.

I respect that. They want a game, which is played in a unique way (PVE content in HS would not be unique no matter what they come up with). They could make a game, where most of the players are soloing in HS and mine, but thats not the game they envisioned. They want a game with battles, espionage, meta, territorial fights etc.

Hey, look at WoW. Blizz listened to the majority and became the most succesful game. But for most players from vanilla and BC. The game became miserably bad.

CCP could listen to the majority and make a boring ass, no effort, safe high sec place where everyone and their grandma can play. Thats when most current players (including Gevlon I think) will unsub.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2015/10/the-two-extremes-are-not-mutually.html

Anonymous said...

Okay Gev I'll bite.

Exactly how do you define PL as being useless against the inferium?

Mittanis SOTG was a direct rate against Horde exactly because we were being such good disturbers of the peace. Yoh can check my brief kb and thise of other hordelings to see how many CFC guys were getting scalped by newbean hordelings, and the fact it was horde and not mordus that woke the slumbering war machine into mobilising to purge us tells you we were the first effective force to really rattle mittanis cage.

The whole purge lowsec moons wasnt horde: we dont own moons, i suspect the target of that was PL family staging POS that were using bridging titans for us to lead hotdrop raids deep in goonland on their carebear fleets.

I get you want to piss on our cheerios because we evac'd, but props to Gobbins for makng the right call. Hordelings could stand their own in skirmish fleets against KF & SMA with a few goons for support, but facing the entire bitter vet CFC supercap hellcamp rapetrain would have simply resulted in mass extermination farming if newbeans and no fun. Horde is first and foremost an apolitical newbro corps, its not here to face down the biggest napfest in EVE history so all the bittervets can carebear in peace with no effort. Expecting newbros to meatshield new eden is stupid.

So why didn't PL step in?

Whats the point? pL isnt a sov focused alliance, trying to hold content ring would have just resulted in catastrophic losses and newbros still being hellcamped as a tidi slugfest raged. Again, that didn't benefit either horde or PL's objective to gve newbeans safe space to learn to stand on thrir feet and learn the game, they supported our Evac to put us in range of their Delve protection knowing mittens isn't going to run the gauntlet of the rocketX rekking crew to fight OZl in their iwn back yard.

I get you are grrr goon and wahey mordus, mordus are nothing more than a pinprick against the inferium which is why mittens ignores the. 2200 raging newbeans actually worried him more which tells you that mordus are failing as a lightning rod for anti CFC members to rally round.

So its unfair to call out PL for not taking a stand when 90 percent or more of new eden won't even x up and fight the imperium on any level let alone pledge a full blown war coalition against them: carebears are too busy jewing and simply grrr goons! Someone fight them.

Btw, i'm pretty sure if you threw trillions of isk at PL they would do your bidding, but unless goons actually brought the fight to PL's doir whelping our titan foeet against them is simply pointless and we can get much better content eosewhere while continuing to do skirmish insurgency against CFC and making a nuisance of ourselves.

Gevlon said...

I think you answered your own question.

Anonymous said...

Well i think its unfair to say PL is useless against them, given just cause PL would be the most existential threat mittens faced, its more correct to say PL is not interested in fighting the imperium. Two different things. They are only useless in your eyes because they are not white knighting your crusade, but nobody else is stepping forward so why call out PL to do it? Why not the russians, or test, or the FW rabble? Not to mention the tens of thousands of carebears who if they woke up and actually x'd up would put cide to bed in a heartbeat.

Its not nullsec politics you should be raging over: its the general playerbase apathy and cowardice that stops them from rising up against a de facto dictator who wants to belittle them all into serfdom to fuel his own ego.

Lets see if goons dare send viceroys to delve. I've got a feeling mittens is more interested in griefing carebears than poking the PVP elite into all out war.

I get what you are trying to do, but as long as hisec 'bends a knee' on command then we are stuck in this stalemate.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon
"no, you are a highsec player who occasionally go to nullsec."
Whether you want to put it that way or not, I'm in a null alliance, and if I stopped playing the loss to highsec would be greater than the loss to nullsec. You only look at nullsec stats and act like highsec would be unaffected if goons left, but in reality hgihsec activity would also drop drastically if goons left.

It's a moot point anyway though, since the goons are never leaving.

Gevlon said...

Obviously "everyone is not fighting the Emporium" is guilty. However they don't act like they could. Their uselessness is obvious, admitted (no FW guy will call himself a null superpower) so no need to tell. Also, it's not them who tried to
- scam me: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.com/2015/10/i-wont-hire-plph-aka-travis-was-at.html
- recruit scam me: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-4JmI9NsOSUk/VlN-bHJrvKI/AAAAAAAAK-I/VLHIwoMekQs/s800-Ic42/wrik.png

Finally: people look at PL instead of acting on their own. It's not PL's fault, but I still have to inform them in no subtle words that PL WILL NOT COME ON WEDNESDAY!

Anonymous said...

Your graph is a little misleading.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68738/1/activity.16.png

You make it sound like the "warp" = highsec only.

It is all players who undock and warp.

More people warp in null than run missions in all locations, or than mine in all locations.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68738/1/trade.balance.(m3).by.region.sept.2015.png

Thats a lot of stuff being moved into nullsec for an empty area, deklein out performs every region in highsec without a hub.

http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68738/1/total.market.trade.value.by.region.sept.2015.png

What the graph you used actually shows is that perhaps you should focus your efforts on cutting off the supply of goods to Imperium, rather than the pvp, as pvpers are smaller than pretty much every other group in eve.

Deklein is 5th in production in Eve too.

Graphs can be used for all sorts of statements.

Anonymous said...

"http://cdn1.eveonline.com/www/newssystem/media/68738/1/trade.balance.(m3).by.region.sept.2015.png

Thats a lot of stuff being moved into nullsec for an empty area, deklein out performs every region in highsec without a hub."

That must be a lot of warping in high sec to get it out there too... hmm.