Greedy Goblin

Friday, June 24, 2016

Why do I hate Falcon so much

I promise this will be my very last EVE post ever (except completely politics-free posts about EVE economy). I am sorry that I spent this week with EVE. I played BDO constantly and from next week will post about it. It's a kind of therapy for me. I'm sorry, I know you didn't need these posts. But I did.

This post grew out from an answer to a comment: "I agree that Falcon went too far in letting his personal opinion surface more than it should have. I don't think anyone can dispute that. However, I'm definitely not convinced that Falcon *hates* you and wants to ruin you."

I started to answer to it and then I realized the answer for a bigger question: why do I hate Falcon so much. Because hell, I do hate him. The short answer is: it doesn't matter if he wanted to ruin me. What matters is that he did ruin me in EVE.

Let's go back to last August: We were after the data analysis phase and MoA was financially stable. We were convinced that Goons can be defeated right now while everyone else were "Goons already won EVE". MoA - despite being rather a small group fighter - did extraordinary efforts to be able to field strategic numbers, proper fleet command and discipline. Due to everyone giving their best and half trillion already spent, they were able to take systems one by one. I really hope that someone links this post in Reddit and I ask you to be that someone, because the following objective facts are unknown to most people. Please click the dotlan links to see that I'm telling the truth, Sov changed to MoA:
  • July 27: MoA captured ION-FG in Pure Blind
  • Aug 6: MoA captured D2-HOS
  • Aug 15: MoA captured Y-C3EQ
  • Aug 17: MoA captured 7RM-N0
  • Aug 18: MoA captured GA-P6C
Honestly: did you know that someone took several systems in the middle of Goon land in August? Not in Tribute, not in Vale, right in the face of Goons with only an 1000 men alliance.

Goons could not respond because anything besides total blob got massacred and increased MoA morale and participation, while calling for total blob every time MoA formed 50 was unsustainable, especially as they couldn't even get kills or deny content to MoA: while they won the timer with the blob, MoA made another or went on a roam and killed a dozen ratters. Goons were desperate. Their FCs were so frustrated that they openly cried even after a won battle (imagine him when he lost).

We believed that in a few weeks one of following things will happen:
  • Goon line members burn out and Goons cannot field enough numbers to blob and MoA evicts them from Pure Blind, defeating the Imperium alone. 1000 PvP-ers and one financer broke the Imperium all alone, total, undisputable victory.
  • Other groups see how weak Goons are and jump in the fray, mopping up Goons. While this would be a "war of everyone", the key role of MoA and me were still undisputed.
  • Goons can keep up the fleets and stomp out MoA attempts until MoA FCs burn out. This case Goons were not that weak as I expected and we were wrong. Defeat.
What actually happened is that after I wrote the celebration post for the first capture (capturing the first system from those who "already won EVE" is something worth celebrating, right?), Falcon appeared in the reddit copy of that post and dropped his toxic comment. Then he returned two more times, making it absolutely clear that he didn't slip but delivered an "official statement of CCP". The results were disastrous, the MoA players lost motivation while Goons literally made a SotA saying "Falcon knocks Gevlon out". Goon numbers surged, MoA fell. The push died. We can't know (or prove) which of the three outcomes would happen without his action.

Back then I considered it a setback, we recover, build up again and try. The problem is that the RMT gang Lenny/IWI realized how weak Goons are and built their own project to secure their filthy business. While I believed that The Imperium could be defeated with 1000 men and the destruction of SMA by the similar size TISHU hints that I was right, Lenny hired every Tom, Dick and Harriett, regardless of merit or actual activity. At first they wanted to leave MoA out, but it turned out to be impossible as MoA once again started to take PB systems, so they "accepted" MoA in MBC, but always downplayed their efforts, despite they - once again - were fighting in the heart of the Imperium against Goons instead of pwning BASTN and FCON on the edges. On IWI-paid sites their August push or my killboard analysises - despite Lenny grudgingly admitted that he used them - simply never existed.

The point of this stupid overkill (hiring 30K when 1-2 K was needed) was to make every significant group owe the IWI gang a favor, which they badly needed against Bugartist. Their plan worked, they managed to pull most "content creators" under their flag, making them just as immune to bans as The Mittani was in his heyday. Bizarre, but true, the real target of the MBC was't Goons, but Team Security. As The Mittani invited everyone to The Imperium to watch streams, Lenny invited everyone to look bigger in front of CCP. While I am mad at Lenny for not only stealing all credit but rewriting history from "Goons were an M&S farm and got pwned" to "Goons were a terrible enemy and all forces must have united against them", I can't really blame him, he just did what's best for him and his RMT operation. The blame is on Falcon who sabotaged my project in August. If he didn't do it, Goons were defeated by MoA and later joiner groups coming for free and there were nothing left for Lenny.

Of course there is a possiblity that Goons could defeat MoA in August-September and our approach was wrong. No one can know. But one thing can't be questioned: we had the right to be measured on the battlefield against the Imperium forces. EVE is supposed to be between players and not between devs.

I don't care what Falcon meant with those posts. Was he corrupted by Goons? Was he just "edgy"? Did he have a grudge against me? Doesn't matter. What matters is the outcome: my project was completely destroyed before definitive result could arrive. I spent more than two years building it and the previous two stumbling around to learn EVE enough to run it. He, using his Dev powers destroyed it in 2 minutes. Wouldn't you hate him in my place?

Finally, considering that he wasn't removed for this, nor new rules were set to prevent it from repeating, would you play a game where he (or any other dev) can do it again at any moment?

18 comments:

maxim said...

I do recall leaving a comment at some point to the effect that your project is not against Goons, but against CCP itself.
Whatever happened, i am sure that those who cared at all to find out whether ISK truly rules Eve now have their answer thanks to you. ISK does rule Eve, and even Falcon's intervention didn't stop Goons from failing. In fact, in my opinion, calling in Falcon was the same as publicly admitting impotence, and that's what prompted IWI to action.
The only thing i found interesting here is that IWI moved without fear of the devs, while you couldn't build that kind of social safeguard even if it killed you. And - in Eve - it did.

Gevlon said...

@maxim: it's more like that I moved first and got the bullet. Since I dug out enough damning evidence of him and I wasn't banned, the limits of dev corruption were showing. Also, IWI went in with extreme overkill, while we pushed with doubtful numbers. I REALLY don't know if we would win in August/Sept.

Provi Miner said...

I do believe that is the social post you have ever written, it reads like someone who cares about what others think. On the other hand you missed your target slightly cause the numbers suggest "those who get shot" play harder and longer. The implication is your project should be to prove in game what an ass hat falcon is.

Rob Kaichin said...

@Lenny, by replying I think you spur him to write more. Please stop.

@Gevlon So because you captured 5 systems in 20 days, you belived there was a possibility that the entire edifice would come crashing to the ground?

I will, for your edification, point out a similar scenario: Goonswarm conquered a string of 6 systems in two to three days from Saranen to Deklein.

It was then quickly rolled back by 'the Goons' in your scenario.

So, politely put, your meaningless gains were meaningless.

Gevlon said...

@Rob: every conquest starts with the first system. We don't know how far MoA could get.
Goons used to have more than 6 systems, so for them capturing 6 isn't that big. However it DOES show that they are not dead and they still have a chance to stand up. Also, Falcon jumped in after the first system and repeated his position in the same period. So the whole push was done against the declared will of CCP. Not that bad now.

But most importantly: why nobody else captured anything "meaningless"?

Basil said...

You are assigning too much importance to what Falcon said. Things people say are an order of magnitude less important than what they do in terms of outcomes. Can you draw a cause-effect chain between his words and the outcome you ascribe to them? How could an insult affect the war?

That said, I agree with you that he shouldn't be interacting with players for CCP- he still thinks like a player, not a dev. He has no maturity or professionalism.

Gevlon said...

@Basil: I'm not the only one. Goons made a SotA around it, showing how important it was.

He didn't just throw a random insult. He - as a representative of CCP - declared multiple times that our plan is madness. Players rightfully assume that CCP is "all knowing" and he sees something that we players cannot.

Imagine that before the next football game the coach of Team 1 gives his usual pre-game speech about how the team is motivated and trained and ready and all that crap. Then suddenly an Angel descends from the sky and wearing all his holy garments declares that this is all madness. Don't you think that it would have some effect?

Most players in EVE are casual/socials their decision to log in or not, fleet up or not depend on small stuff. Is it stupid? Yes. Is it how they work? Unfortunately.

Anonymous said...

I'm amazed one of my comments caused you to write an entire post. Anyways, I now understand better why you hate Falcon so much.

I'm not going to try to convince you to come back to Eve, but in my opinion it's still the only game where your ideas will have the most possible impact. No other game will ever come that close.

Gevlon said...

Nope, it's a game which promises that your ideas will have the most impact.
In reality, corrupting the devs have the most impact.

Paul Leary said...

Hey Gevlon, I hope you had a chance to see the recruitment trailer I made for MOA.
We wouldn't be where we are wtihout you. We miss you man!

Here's a link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a7sEqRtMNQM

Obscurity X - MOA forever!

Anonymous said...

Mark Cuban says "Pioneers get slaughtered and settlers prosper," in regards to companies. Perhaps this applies to Gevlon's actions in EVE.

Pioneers are the ones who discover a new market or idea, but they have to deal with bumps along the way (Gevlon + MoA were the pioneer, bump was the Falcon posts).

Settlers come in after the bumps have been discovered and with good execution and marketing achieve success (e.g., Lenny).

Anonymous said...

"Imagine that before the next football game the coach of Team 1 gives his usual pre-game speech about how the team is motivated and trained and ready and all that crap. Then suddenly an Angel descends from the sky and wearing all his holy garments declares that this is all madness. Don't you think that it would have some effect? "

Its more like "An expert says this thing is impossible and cant be done"

sure, a lot of people will say "Oh, it cannot be done"...some will say "Challenge accepted".

Which group are you in?

Unknown said...

The first ones out of the trench are often those who catch the bullets, but they clear the way for those after them. As someone so intensely dedicated to the goal of bringing down the Imperium, aren't you in the slightest way satisfied with the result.

You said it yourself, the efforts of you and MoA showed that it can be done in theory. Someone else picked up where you left off. Isn't that a good thing from your perspective?

Gevlon said...

@anon: Falcon isn't an "expert" (someone who can guess the outcome accurately) but am "authority figure" (someone who can CHANGE the outcome).

@Kamar: yes, and this is why I kept going. The problem is that "those after us" act like we never even existed AND that the whole battle went differently.

My main problem with Lenny is that he rewrites "stats show that the Goons were a hollow shell" to "Goons were terribly strong but we united everyone and won"

Anonymous said...

> Someone else picked up where you left off. Isn't that a good thing from your perspective?

The brute-force approach removes clarity from the outcome, though. Gevlon wanted to show that the Imperium was *so weak* that a small group (with good organization, motivation, and leadership) could inflict serious damage upon it. This victory would also show that a lone player (i.e. Gevlon) could hugely impact the political map of the game - with nothing more than clever use of game mechanics (market trading schemes) and some out-of-game knowledge (killboard analysis).

IWI muddies the latter point, since they brought in *absurd* levels of ISK. Nobody doubted that a huge SRP warchest was a significant factor in sov warfare. But nobody could accumulate so much capital via normal gameplay. Instead of "one rational player can beat thousands of morons and slackers", the lesson becomes "one RMT website can beat thousands of morons and slackers".

The size of the MBC muddies the former point. The Imperium steadily losing space to MoA is an *underdog* story; each victory forces observers to reconsider their assumptions. MBC conquering Imperium space is less thought-provoking, because people can simply dismiss it as "bigger blob wins".

paco vato said...

not trolling you should keep putting stuff up. I read it and while I might not agree, I'm not shitty about it either way, and on some stuff you are right - as a goon of course your dislike of our entire community tends to put a damper on any positive relations between any of us and you. However part of being me is talking to whoever I want since I don't worry what my other goonfriends think at all.

I do think the game is better with you in it. If you're bored of it then find something else to do in it, but keep going and keep writing. I read your stuff -- not all the time, but I do read it. Others in game do too and you give some good advice like about freighters using bulkheads and not carrying as much value. It's a service to the bears, which means they act more confidently and so fishing the waters is still fun and we still get kills.

Anyway your call. The game needs good guys and bad guys. It's the coolest part of the whole MMO. Pro wrasslin' baby.

Unknown said...

Hey Gevlon. Long time reader. I wanted to say my 2c. I think you got the ball rolling and proved what was possible. However you couldn't match the massive amounts of isk thrown around once the casino was involved. I see it as two separate things. You had your own specific effect as a single man to the best you could achieve with the funds you had. But you were out shined by a bigger wallet that has unfairly pushed your part in this out if the spotlight. I don't think the falcon thing is as big as you make it. Why not be proud of what you started rather than let it burn you from the inside?

Anonymous said...

You really take that stuff too serious, like seriously.
Falcon behaved like an idiot, yes, but that doesnt mean he was trying to actively influence your project in support of goons.
He just gave his opinion, like every other person does. Only problem with that was of course, his nice little "ccp" in the name.
Still doesnt mean its the view of the company, its just the way ive seen ccp people generally interacting with the community on a more, err.. "personal" level.
As for the goons posting about that comment on tmc? Well, so what? Of course they needed to do that, if your project made people unhappy, they need to spin it in their favour to keep the alliance together.
If that comment from falcon really broke the morale of MOA and you that much, you probably wouldnt have lasted much failure anyways, to be honest though.
Seeing him as the "angel descending from heaven" is a bit ridicolous, imho.
Hes just some dev/ community person, nothing more, nothing less.
I do hope that maybe playing BDO for a time, gives you enough of a break to view all of this nonsense in a different light, as some stupid mistake some person made, and not as a personal assault on you and your project like you see it currently.
I dont know you personally, but certainly sad to see someone go that actually wanted to achieve stuff, over such a small thing.