Greedy Goblin

Friday, August 9, 2013

Quotes from TEST forums

Two quotes from the thread discussing the op that ended with serious capital losses for TEST against BL:

Callduron, on 07 Aug 2013 - 22:42, said:
Woo hoo we just blew up EloManRus in PR-. My point!
This fleet is awesome.
Test + Tribe + Boobs v BL + Pizza + Riot

Baki Yuku, on 08 Aug 2013 - 00:11, said:
Anybody thinking this was great should fucking kill himself. That we lost 19 dreads and 2 carrier is not even the issue the issue is that we FAILED TO FUCKING KEEP EM ON THE FIELD 1 FUCKING JUMP FROM OUR STAGING SYSTEM. WE FAILED TO FORM ANY SORT OF FUCKING DECENT FLEET I'M SORRY BUT LIKE THIS MIGHT AS WELL FUCKING DISBAND!

After these quotes I asked the question:
Guys, do you seriously think that there is a chance to keep these two people (and those who agree with them) in the same alliance?
It's quite obvious that I'm on Baki's side, and I'm not going to argue over it. I'm not saying that we are right and you are wrong. This is a game, everyone plays the way he wants.
I'm just asking: do you really see common future? Wouldn't it be better if the "Callduron people" go left and the "Baki Yuku people" go right?

This is what's been eating TEST: there are clearly two parties, one that aims for competency and victories, and another who honestly believe that defeats are awesome fun. The tensions between the parties are rising and several former leadership members like Beffah and Ingen Kerr left for Pandemic Legion or Nulli.

TEST - while still having the largest membership and only a week away from the record-breaking 6VDT numbers - barely have any FC left, especially since Kurator has announced that his corporation will leave TEST (that's why "Boobs" was mentioned separately on the first quote). Donations went to complete halt after reaching 350B in two weeks.

The forums are burning, especially after Dysphonia Fera who was kicked when connections between PL and TEST broke and went awoxing (actually the awoxes broke the connection) was invited back. His posting quality got him kicked in a day by BoodaBooda (TEST leader) again, only to be re-invited by another leader and instantly set forum mod.

I think the inability of TEST to failcascade due to most of its size provided by one corp is now a curse, as solutions cannot be forced by corp CEOs. The usual "fix it or we leave" that forces alliance leaders to make changes is openly trolled here. -A- died by corps leaving one by one. TEST can lose half of its corps without visible mark on the Dotlan statistics.

It's clear that fire and ice can't be in the same bucket. The "defeat is fail, we must do better" and "defeat is awesome, do it again" people won't last in the same alliance. However the question rises how could they last for 3 years? The solution is simply: because they didn't have to mix. TEST was lead by Montolio and his close and separate staff. He aligned TEST first with Goons, than with PL. The coalition fleets were lead by outside FCs (I don't remember flying under a single TEST FC in the campaign against -A-). This meant that TEST members did not need to be more competent than being able to press F1 and also that competent members could always find like-minded leaders to work with.

However TEST is now alone and the former leadership is gone. Now TEST must use self-grown leadership and it doesn't seem to able to grow any since as soon as you are competent enough to have other options, these options look much better, as nothing annoys a competent person more than "defeat is awesome".

One can ask where the top leader is? I mean even if the whole military directorate and all the FCs left, someone need to be the formal head of the alliance and the corps. The head of alliance is BoodaBooda, the head of Dreddit is Dovinian. What are they doing? Well, BoodaBooda isn't a bad leader who makes bad decisions. BoodaBooda is a horrible leader who makes no decisions. When practically the whole military directorate jumped ship, what did this blessed soul do? Renamed the leadership forum group from "Shortbus" to "High command" and even made a lengthy forum post about it. No doubt that the former name was stupid. But probably this wasn't the most urgent change. But still this was the only change BoodaBooda made in the last weeks. Dovinian, who has proven his worth by being the most AFK CSM of the history is keep being AFK and does absolutely nothing. Ever. TEST has no one left who could give orders and handle problems. Let BoodaBooda explain it himself:
"I MEAN DID YOU EXPECT ME TO READ THIS AND BE LIKE OH YEAH MAYBE GEVLONS RIGHT AND I SHOULD GET RID OF CALLDURON OR BAKI YUKU HMM MAYBE I SHOULD PICK ONE"

Yeah, his all caps anger is understandable. After all the idea to choose between two absolutely conflicting opinions within his own alliance is too much to ask from a leader. I mean such action would be ... leading.

My prediction: TEST won't lose visible amount of members, but it will lose the competent members and their corps. The remaining mass of "for fun" leeches won't be able to hold Delve against Pizza (a small pirate alliance), and will eventually transform into Brave Newbies 2 (without being cute) somewhere in lowsec.

16 comments:

Unknown said...

100% of all virtual organisations that have made a clear choice for one or another have failed.

In my mind, there is a clear casual link between choosing firmly one side of this debate and ending up unable to function.

It is obvious you need competent people. But competency itself is not the source of energy that drives the organisation. You need people able to have fun for that. Competency without fun results in burnout. Fun without competency results in lack of progress and - eventually - boredom as all the fun available at given low level of competency is exhausted.

The best situation is, of course, when everybody is competent and everybody is having fun. There is no clear method to reach that state, though.

However, you don't get there by saying that all "for fun" people should go their separate ways.

Unknown said...

Didn't mean to doublepost, but this thought happened after i hit the "publish" button and there is no way to edit after the fact :(

ALL CAPS is generally a good indication of a person that you don't want in your alliance. Even if that person is saying sensible things (or is alliance leader).

This is actually one of the basics, on the level of "no lols in guildchat".

Anonymous said...

TEST's entire problems are leadership, or lack thereof. There are obviously two diametrically opposed groups being led (or rather, not led) by someone who's out of touch. Best thing that could happen is for TEST to disband. All the talent is already looking for the exits.

Babar said...

This is a good blog post, I enjoyed reading it. It's level headed, gives insight into Test, and you make some excellent points. It's much more enjoyable to read a blog post where you predict something, by using facts and logic, rather than when you just state something like "This will be Mittani's last mistake!". You'll probably get less responses, but I'm guessing a much higher percentage will actually be discussion about the points, rather than just people trolling.

To contribute: The whole "proud to be bad" thing is basically copied from the CFC. Whenever there's a welp for a CFC fleet, it's shrugged off, we just say we're incompetent and that's how it is. This way, we "never really lose", but when we win, it demoralizes our enemies even more because we flaunt how incompetent we are. And sure, there are lots and lots of really bad people in the CFC. But at the same time, there's a very strong core of some of the best people in EVE. We have a very charismatic and well-spoken leader, we have some of the best bloc FC's around, we have probably the best finance team and logistic teams. All this enables our line members to be basically as incompetent as they want, and we still end up usually winning in the end.

Test lacks this core, as they've never really had any reasons to have it. As you say, the most competent people leave for greener pastures rather than building up the alliance. And those that do stay seem to make matters wors, like Baki Yuku de-nationalizing moons when he was head of finance, and buy them himself.

Test needs to find itself, make some changes, and come out stronger. They are simply not competent enough to take care of themselves. The next few weeks will be interesting for sure.

Tithian said...

Actually, from my experience, 100% of all vitrual organizations that have failed to set a clear focus and group 'paradigm' eventually fade into obscurity.

I'm not talking just about EVE here, but about all online games. The leadership should in all cases be able to step up, make a decision and then stick to it, while building on it. Obviously this is a lot of work, so it's no surprise most people can't be arsed to do it.

Gevlon said...

@Maxim: I'm fully aware of that, the proper utilization will be the topic of Monday's post.

Anonymous said...

@Maxim: It's very difficult to find a large group with "all competent" people, but you don't need that, you need the competent people in the key places (which is not only management). With the key players in the right places even not-so-good teamplayers can shine, since they find the direction and support they need.

I call this the critical mass. In an organization you need a critical mass of competent, influential people with the same core values. It doesn't need to be the majority of members, it can also be a small percentage as long as it's influential at all levels of the organization.

Having or not having fun is a different aspect: with competence you can achieve more goals than without it, but still someone has to decide which goals are in the organization's interest and which are not, and which priority needs to be given to any of them so that you can satisfy more people without losing too much focus or ditch them because they have too incoherent goals.

Bobbins said...

'Donations went to complete halt after reaching 350B in two weeks.'

Test is one big money pit if you give them money then they seem to lose it within a few hours. Just who is/was responsible for allocating the use of the isk. It reminds me of 'Brewster's Millions' except Brewster just lands up broke at the end.

If people show no remorse like Callduron at needlessly losing isk why would anyone 'donate' anything to Test. The quote from Baki Yuku at least shows the your isk mattered and someone should be and is upset at its loss.

Unknown said...

Both people like Baki and people like Callduron are necessary. Callduron's attitude is not 'losing is fun', it's 'TEST is fun, winning or losing'. It's not like there was a successful OP and he went and said 'we won, that's no fun, let's lose'. You need people like that to come out and fill fleet spots.

Obviously, for a sov holding alliance, you also need people who are objective focused like Baki as well, or you aren't going to meet many objectives and aren't going to defend much sov/moons/etc.

I do agree that TEST has major leadership issues, and I think you accurately diagnosed the problem as 'they aren't making any decisions'

Von Keigai said...

Gevlon Goblin discovers leadership.

Oh Gevlon, do you recall not a few months back where you were saying that there is no such thing as human quality? "It's always the method, the idea which is superior, and never the person..." I hope you are discovering now that people matter.

There is no formula for leadership, but nonetheless it exists and it matters; in the EVE metagame it matters more than anything else.

Gevlon said...

@Von Keigai: and "make up your mind" is not an idea?

Unknown said...

I refer you to http://mabricksmumblings.blogspot.com/2013/07/youre-making-us-look-bad.html. Sounds like the same crapola. Here's a possible solution for you. FCs can control who's in their fleets. Let the competents run theirs with restricted membership. Let the others do as they will. See who gets the largest fleets. Then live and let live - or DIAF as the case may be.

Unknown said...

@Anon
<< It's very difficult to find a large group with "all competent" people, but you don't need that, you need the competent people in the key places (which is not only management). >>
It never said all-competent is the only way. Just the best.

So you better keep looking, even if it's very difficult to find :P

<< Having or not having fun is a different aspect: with competence you can achieve more goals than without it, but still someone has to decide which goals are in the organization's interest and which are not, and which priority needs to be given to any of them so that you can satisfy more people without losing too much focus or ditch them because they have too incoherent goals.>>
It seems you equate fun with lack of goals and goal-orientation with lack of fun. This is a false dichotomy, which arises from people trying to force their goals on other people without considering whether it is fun or not for those executing the goals.

Here is a thought:
at the core of competence lies ability to have fun while pursuing a useful goal.

Unknown said...

@Maxim

"Here is a thought:
at the core of competence lies ability to have fun while pursuing a useful goal."

That does not in any way preclude having fun while failing that goal.

Again, if people are saying 'we're winning, but it's not fun, we should do something else', that's a problem.

Not being able to have fun while losing is a very undesirable trait, and generally leads to the person in question leaving the corp/alliance (Beffah, Ingen, Arello, Kurator, etc etc)

Unknown said...

@Michael LeBlanc

<< Again, if people are saying 'we're winning, but it's not fun, we should do something else', that's a problem.

Not being able to have fun while losing is a very undesirable trait, and generally leads to the person in question leaving the corp/alliance (Beffah, Ingen, Arello, Kurator, etc etc) >>

Please remember that you are operating within the context of a virtual game.
If a game is not fun, then you really should go do something else, even if you happen to be winning it.

And you definitely should go do something else if you are losing and not having fun. Because this means that your are not only just losing, but also not learning anything from it.

Stabs said...

Hi I'm Callduron.

In my defence my post was made mid fight and I had no idea at the time we had lost the caps fight so badly. Subcaps weren't even in the same fleet, not were we told anything except GET TACKLE GET TACKLE.

I didn't mean to give the impression I don't care about my teammates and I'm sorry if I contributed to your leaving Test, Gevlon.