Greedy Goblin

Thursday, October 10, 2013

The myth of the skilled, goodfight-seeking PvP-er

While no sane man would claim that pilot skill decides large engagement instead of strategic decisions, there is a claim that there are skilled, goodfight-seeking PvP-ers somewhere who fight in small gangs against worthy enemies and win via skill.

However when I posted that Mining barges are massacred in highsec, commenters were quick to remind that mining in the various zones is very different.
80-85% of mining happens in highsec, the rest in nullsec while WH and lowsec mining contribute by 1-2%. I guess the new interceptor changes will decrease nullsec mining significantly. Compared to the amount of mining, lot of ganks happen in lowsec and WH.

Killing a defenseless mining barge is ganking by definition and „no skill”. Besides the facts that I’m a 12 years old, fat, beaten, gay, virgin boy with no friends, the mining community informed me that I have no skill and the only reason I’m in highsec is that I don’t have what it takes to fight in low/null/WH. But if the failures like myself are all in highsec, who ganked the miners into extinction in lowsec? I mean, a skilled PvP-er looking for goodfights would surely not waste his time or sink so low to pad his killboard with a barge gank!

Ganking in highsec is harder than anywhere else, as Concord will arrive to blow you up and faction police chases you. You have to get a good warpin and kill the target in a small timeframe. In other zones you can just roam the belts in a 100 DPS Rifter and kill even a Skiff all by yourself.

The point is that the other zones are full of gankers who can gank easier. They hunted lowsec and WH miners into extinction and hit the null miners hard. While they fancy themselves to be “skilled PvP-ers”, they do exactly what I do: gank. If you have mining barges, haulers and other unarmed ships on your killboard, you are just as much a ganker as I am. Except I destroy 10-100x more ISK than you in a month, due to less competition. After all a catalyst dual gank needs much more skill than just roaming the belts in a Rifter.

Of course I cannot claim that everyone outside of highsec is such. There can be “real PvP-ers” who ignore barges, exhumers, haulers, cyno frigs, shuttles, travel-fit capitals and only engage in “good fights”. Maybe you are one of them. However we can be sure that these “real PvP-ers” are a tiny minority: if they were a significant group, they would exterminate the lowly, skill-less, pathetic gankers who sink to my level and attack mining barges.

So next time before you’d comment about “real PvP”, look at your own killboard. If there are unarmed ships on it, you aren’t less of a ganker than me. You are probably less successful ganker though! You have two options:
  • Start a new life and from now on don’t gank and only engage in good fights, earning the status of “real PvP-er” that you now talk about without merit
  • Come out of the closet and embrace what you are: a ganker who kills weak and defenseless ships. If you want to do it well, destroying dozens of billions of ISK, my corp is waiting for you



The anti-tear of today is this beautiful sight:

25 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why does a "real PvPer" have to choose between only ganking or never ganking?

What's wrong with a PvPer in low/null/WH killing other PvP ships but also taking advantage of an easy mining barge kill when the opportunity presents itself?

I think the difference between a ganker and a "real PvPer" is that the real PvPer looks for and takes fights against other PvP ships as well as defenseless targets whilst a ganker only looks for defenseless targets.

If you want to assess someone's PvP skill, only look at kills against evenly matched PvP opponents. Just ignore their kills against defenseless targets.

If you've killed 100s of mining barges and a couple of PvP ships, then you would be a minor PvPer (after all you do have a couple of PvP ship kills).

Someone else who has several mining barges on their killboard but also a hundred PvP ships would be considered a more active/skilled PvPer.

It's not hard to judge the difference between an active/skilled PvPers vs inactive/unskilled PvPers. You just need to take the right variables into account.

Sugar Kyle said...

You are welcome for the graph.

You definition of no skill is interesting. Shooting those ships is not hard, no. Getting into a position to shoot those ships tends to be the hard part. Fast tackle, chases across systems, cut throughs, and Procurers are always bait in low sec as well.

Your miners are sitting in belts mining in the blissful happiness of low sec. Quite often we're stalking them in the other parts of the system.

Skill is more then comparison of ships and walking away with a confusion.

Merriam Webster defines skill as:

a : the ability to use one's knowledge effectively and readily in execution or performance

b : dexterity or coordination especially in the execution of learned physical tasks

3: a learned power of doing something competently : a developed aptitude or ability

If you want to say, "it is not hard to shoot a mining barge" It is doubtful that anyone will disagree with you. But PvP is not just about the end use of damage modules. That is what people try to point out and you disagree with.

I am deeply confused at your habit of pressing behaviors onto me. I know that I gank things. I gank things because I want to. I do it because they are there. It is part of my game play. I don't care if you are a more successful ganker than I am. At no point have I ever measured my value to myself or anyone else by my ganking abilities.

But the fact that I do gank things does not somehow invalidate any other type of PvP that I do. Your fascination with small, tiny, rigid boxes of narrow space and extremely high walls is perplexing.

Anonymous said...

..He wants good fights with other skilled pilots.

He wins with finesse and raw talent.

He runs with a small gang who tries to beat larger gangs.

He is the most interesting pilot in the galaxy.

"I don't always gank miners. But when I do, they were in the belts I hunt in."

Just cause a PvPer looking for good fights happens across a Hulk in a belt, doesn't mean he's not a skilled pilot and just a ganker. It means he found a target of oppertunity.

I like good fights. I also don't mind a good ole' target of opertuinty.

They are not mutualley exclusive.

Anonymous said...

The last time I made a ganker I accidentally engaged someone in pvp on the undock. The shame was so great I had to biomass him immediately.

Any highsec ganker who also takes their character out for an occasional bit of skill intensive pvp is no ganker at all.

Anonymous said...

So next time before you’d comment about “real PvP”, look at your own killboard. If there are unarmed ships on it, you aren’t less of a ganker than me.

Waaaaait a minute sparky. Hold on a second. You are suggesting that if I have even one "unarmed" kill on my killboard I'm the same as a person with nothing BUT "unarmed" kills on his killboard?

Surely by simple mathematics I am quantifiably "less of a ganker" than you in this case?

Anonymous said...

Nobody said that pvpers don't gank when they have a chance. The point is, they don't treat is a good show of piloting skills but just a gank of defenseless target, which takes little to no skill. After that they return to seek real, fighting back targets. On the other hand, you don't want to engage in real pvp and focus ONLY on ganks. While this is a valid game play as any other, nobody can truly call that pvp. There may be some skill required to perform a successful gank, but it's orders of magnitude less than a skill needed to win a pvp fight. I understand that you feel the need for our recognition, but you won't earn it by writing how bad we are, just because you don't want to engage in fights. Just go out and shoot stuff, which shoots back.

Gevlon said...

What do you get if you mix a barrel of sewage water with a drop of wine? A barrel of sewage water.

What do you get if you mix a barrel of wine with a drop of sewage water? A barrel of sewage water.

The "real PvP-ers" claim that their activity isn't just different (like mining vs missioning), but better. They claim to have something that gankers don't. Then they cannot sink to the level they despise without corrupting themselves.

The attitude of Sugar is fine: "I kill whatever I can from cyno noobships to titans". But she never claimed superiority because of that. The "real PvP-ers" do! They brag about their skill and look down on others who don't have "skill"... and then they go and gank a mining barge.

Anonymous said...

Can you point me to the place where someone said peers never gank? I can tell you that we do. It's just not our primary goal. If a target appears, why shouldn't we take it? But we know a gank is a gank and it's not worth boasting. We know how little skill it takes to perform it. We do not write stories about it; we just do our job and resume looking for a real fight. On the other hand, you boast your ganks and insult us when we tell you it's not real pvp. We do not think of ganking as something to be ashamed of. We just shrug it off as a bonus little kill and move on.

maxim said...

One of these days i'd like you to provide a series of links to ramblings of all of these "pro PvPers" you seem to like talking about so much.

One month into +/- active reading of Eve blogs, i am still to find even one of these self-important bastards you are crusading so hard against.
Starting to feel they are a bit of a myth.

Babar said...

So if I roam in lowsec looking for the fabled goodfight, and I happen to come across a mining barge, then I'm more of a pvp'er if I let him live because of e-honor?

Lucas Kell said...

I think you oversimplify.
Sure, on both sides there are people that only got after industrials and cynos. Whether you are in null or in high sec, that just makes you a ganker. a PvPer however is not out seeking only them. Sure they may kill some as they are found, but they are out to fight, not out to gank. A PvPer will go out if a T3 or a faction ship, putting larger amounts of isk at risk to get into fights. Gankers do everything within limits. If the risk of loss is high (or guaranteed) and replacement is easy, like high sec ganking, they chose a cheap replaceable ship so it really doesn't matter when they use it. if the risk of loss is lower, and replacement not so easy, like ganking in null, they choose evasion instead. So a Covops nullified T3.

A PvPer will go out in a ship designed for combat, not evasion, and when they think they have a realistic chance of success, they will engage. They won't always win the fight, but they have a good time trying.

As for claiming superiority, you are the one who buffs your KB, then claims that means you are better than a PvPer. We've been trying to tell you all along that is totally different categories which you are comparing. It's like saying you are a better driver than a nascar driver if you spend more time in your car than he does. Driving for thousands of miles down regular roads does not mean you are a better driver than a nascar driver, and while the nascar driver may not have clocked up as many overall miles as you what he does is more skill intensive. That's not to say however that a nascar driver never drives on a regular road.

Hivemind said...

"What do you get if you mix a barrel of wine with a drop of sewage water? A barrel of sewage water."

Ah, no. You get a barrel of spoiled wine that is no longer suitable for human consumption. It wouldn't necessarily be suitable to throw it straight into a sewage treatment plant either, as an actual barrel of sewage water would be; I know very little about sewage treatment, but I know it usually involves some quite specialised microbes that may not react well to the concentration of alcohol in the mostly-wine.

The point is, the comparison you're trying to make depends on there being specific standards for X, which X no longer meets thanks to the addition of Y, but this doesn't apply to EVE PvPers. The notion that "a skilled PvP-er looking for goodfights would surely not waste his time or sink so low to pad his killboard with a barge gank" is one of your own invention. The only "myth" here is that a player must only participate in balanced fights in order to be a "real PvPer".

Going the other way, your claim "If you have mining barges, haulers and other unarmed ships on your killboard, you are just as much a ganker as I am." is demonstrably nonsense. You can argue that if someone gets any such kills they are a ganker in addition to whatever else they see themselves as, but since you left TEST 100% of your kills have been ganks; if another player gets half their kills on unarmed mining barges, but the other half in frigate vs frigate fights in FW sites they are demonstrably only 50% as much a ganker as you are. Weren't you arguing only yesterday that a player's "mindset" is important in differentiating between players doing similar things?

"In other zones you can just roam the belts in a 100 DPS Rifter and kill even a Skiff all by yourself."

Except that in hisec, all that really matters are you and your target, possibly white knights if they've got fast-locking ECM or artillery boats and quick reflexes. In lowsec you have to compete with other players who want to kill you; your solo rifter roam is likely to run afoul of other PvPers looking for goodfights long before you encounter the elusive lowsec mining barge. I'd also argue that assuming the hypothetical lowsec Skiff pilot is sufficiently smart/paranoid to either carry 2 flights of Warrior IIs or a flight of them and another of ECM drones, killing them in a 100 dps rifter actually would take significant skill. Either taking down 10 of the best anti-fast-frigate drones before they can kill you while holding the miner tackled, or keeping the miner from warping off while you're jammed by ECM drones until you finish them off is definitely a lot harder than getting a warpin on an untanked Mackinaw in hisec.

"But she never claimed superiority because of that."

Sugar, I apologise for trying to drag you into this, but if you read this and you don't mind answering, would you say that you consider yourself better than Gevlon at EVE PvP in general as a result of your willingness to engage targets that can shoot back as well as those that can't?

"The "real PvP-ers" do! They brag about their skill and look down on others who don't have "skill""

Do I really need to point out that this is a very, very obvious 'No true Scotsman' fallacy? If a player lives in lowsec, seeks out fights against other players which are, or at least appear to be, fairly evenly matched, but is also not averse to attacking a target of opportunity if they present themselves, are you seriously saying they are not a "real PvP-er" just because they're able to be polite? This seems very much like arguing that someone is not a "real hisec miner" because their response to being ganked is not to spew hatred and death threats at their ganker, regardless of how much ore they remove from belts in 0.5 sec and above.

Gevlon said...

I've actually killed a few white knights,
http://zkillboard.com/detail/33104015/

http://zkillboard.com/detail/33116463/

Am I a PvP-er now? If I claim that
I'm actually looking for good fights with the white knights and just "reinforce belts to get fights", would it be better?

You have to set rules to claim that something is X. Would you allow fish to be called dogs because they make bark-sound with their flippers?

The problem is that these "PvP-ers" claim themselves to be something without setting any limits to their activity, practically ending in "I'm a skilled PvP-er because I say so".

Von Keigai said...

I've ganked miners in highsec. It's easy. I've tried to shoot people outside of highsec. It's easy to shoot at them. It's very hard to beat them. I have ganked people outside of highsec. This is much easier than shooting people who shoot back, but it still is not easy at all. I search for hours in wspace to get a single kill. Read Tiger Ears; wspace hunting is mostly hunting and very little shooting.

You are ignoring the skill component of ganking outside of highsec. Getting a kill in highsec is almost trivial. Try getting a kill in wspace. Just one kill. It can be a Heron, a mining barge, an industrial. Or a "real PVP" ship. Anything. Then report back to us. How many hours of hunting did it take you? Contrast to how many hours it takes you to find a Retriever in highsec. Which is more difficult?

Sugar is a "real PVPer", by the way. Read her blog. Your claim is that all "real PVPer" claim that their activity is superior. A single example invalidates your universally quantified definition. Try again.

Eleven replies, now twelve, and you twice. And every single one other than yours is telling you that you are wrong.

Gevlon, you know that you are abnormally asocial. Well, this is one of those things that maybe if you tried, you could understand, and it would give you insight into the universal pushback you get when you make posts like this one.

The beginning of understanding is to walk in the shoes of those you don't understand. This can be hard to do IRL. I can never be many things which many average people are. I.e.: a combat soldier in Afghanistan. But in EVE, you can do almost whatever you want. So, Gevlon Goblin, I challenge you. Get a gank in wspace. Just one gank, that is all. Get a gank in lowsec. Get a gank in null. Once you've done those, get in a fight with something in any of those spaces that shoots back. Now repeat until you actually win a fight against something that can shoot back. Then, and only then, tell us how easy it was compared to shooting miners in highsec.

Gevlon said...

@Von Keigai: I did not claim that ganking is hard. Never did.

I did not claim that there cannot be a "real PvP-er" who has superior skills.

I say that those who claim to be one are refusing to give any standards to their actions.

By the way I already got a lowsec kill. Against a capital. All by myself: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2013/03/moar-l33t-pvp-solo-capital-kill.html

On top of that, I was there with TEST at both the capture of the South and the loss of it to the end at 6VDT.

Lucas Kell said...

honestly, I'm going to stop bothering to comment to you on the different between ganking an PvP. Either you understand, yet for some reason want to continue to act like you don't, or you truly can't tell the difference, in which case since literally anyone, not even just eve players, could tell the difference no amount of explaining will help you understand.

I'll just say you are utterly wrong, we all know you are utterly wrong, and we'll just leave it at that.

Hivemind said...

@ Gevlon

"Am I a PvP-er now?"

IMO, no - I'm only speculating here, but I assume that you followed your normal MO for ganking, scanning with an alt to make sure that they didn't pose a threat and that you could kill them before CONCORD arrived, setting up a warpin to drop you on top of them etc. Just as a group of gankers in Tier 3 BCs popping a blinged out incursion boat is still a gank even though the target was armed, so too are these ganks even though your targets were armed.

"You have to set rules to claim that something is X."

The fact that there isn't a hard coded rule for what is/isn't X doesn't give you carte blanche to create one yourself, especially if you're trying to define a group to which you do not belong and whose playstyle you've never experienced. That's what you were doing originally with your "If you have ever killed a ship in an unfair fight then you are a ganker, nothing else" claim.

"The problem is that these "PvP-ers" claim themselves to be something without setting any limits to their activity, practically ending in "I'm a skilled PvP-er because I say so"."

There isn't a hard definition for what constitutes "real PvP" both because there's no single authority in a position to make such a definition and because if one were formulated in the sense of "You must do X to be a real PvPer" some enterprising person would quickly find a way to meet the criteria while blatantly violating its spirit.

At the same time the community generally acknowledges shared unwritten rules for what is "real PvP" or what makes someone a "real PvPer". This is why you get so many people telling you you're wrong when you come up with a definition that violates those unwritten rules. It's also why there isn't much disagreement that people like Sugar Kyle or Ripard Teg are "real PvPers" even without a hard definition for "real PvPer" that anyone can point to them fulfilling.

"I did not claim that ganking is hard. Never did."

From this post: "Ganking in highsec is harder than anywhere else". As several people have pointed out this is not true, mainly due to the presence of other hostiles better able to act against you outside of hisec and/or scarcity and difficulty in locating targets.

"By the way I already got a lowsec kill. Against a capital."

If you really think that paying a capital pilot to let you shoot them and then self destruct their ship so you get a solo KM is relevant to Von Keigai's challenge then I think you may have missed the point of it.

Anonymous said...

"Am I a PvP-er now?"

No, because you don't actively hunt and kill combat targets. Those white knights kills are just a coincidental byproduct of you being a ganker.

"I say that those who claim to be one are refusing to give any standards to their actions."

I remember long ago someone was giving you an explanation who is a Pvper. I can see now, you chose to ignore it all. Why should we tell you the philosophy of pvp, when you constantly ignore everything we say? Take a look at your last series of posts and the comments in them. You are purposely ignoring what more experienced players tell you and you keep pushing your own view on Eve, despite you never even tried what you're talking about. And no - being an occasional drone in a blob does not make one a pvper, when he refuses to take up a fight outside one. Likewise, being one person in an angry mob during a riot does not make a soldier.

Sugar Kyle said...

"Sugar, I apologise for trying to drag you into this, but if you read this and you don't mind answering, would you say that you consider yourself better than Gevlon at EVE PvP in general as a result of your willingness to engage targets that can shoot back as well as those that can't?"

Ahh Hivemind, what a question.

The answer is no. I don't consider myself to be good at Eve PvP in general and I don't rate myself above or below other people. I feel that a lot of PvP is very personal to what the individual is looking for. For instance, I participate in small gang PvP mostly in low sec. There are many, many people who spend a lot of time sneering and spitting on that activity and say that Sov Wars are better and low sec PvP is for people who are to weak for Sov. There are high sec warlords who say that their intricate station dances are the top level of PvP and they do it because we other PvPers have no honor.

PvP is lateral for the most part with some areas of linear advancement.

My disagreement with Gevlon is that he does not separate his ganking into what it is: ganking. But pours it into the entire pool of defining PvP and then crowns himself king of that pool based off of rules he created that others are not participating in.

I do not understand why he does this. What he does, ganking, is its own complete activity. I know people who are better at it and who are worse at it depending on what the goal of the ganker even is. His miner ganking would be more closely compared to hauler and freighter ganking because both are high sec ganking. Yet, they are not the same because those gankers are looking to make ISK and picking their target off a completely different metric.

Gevlon focuses on killboards as a metric to judge who is good and who is bad who is relevant and who is not. I don't understand this because the entire measurement is flawed due to the activities not being the same. It would be like comparing fleet fights to incursion running and incursion runners saying they make more ISK so they are better at fleets.

This burning need to measure everyone down a straight line and have the people agree that they indeed do belong on that straight line and they are amazed that they never realized it before is what causes the waves of discussion on these topics.

Nielas said...

I am going to disagree with the general sentiment here.

Ganking is actually pure PvP in its rawest form. One player sees another player, attacks him and kills his character. It's definition "Player vs Player". Whether the target of the gank had a chance to fight back is irrelevant.

Ganking is not very challenging so players seeking challenges have evolved PvP beyond that and now look down at the gankers as 'uncivilized'. They got so used their artificial rules that they no longer consider it PvP if those rules are not followed.

Frankly, I am suprised that EVE players would hold these views as the EVE community has always seemed to have taken pride in its unfettered approach to conflict at its basest form.

A ganker is in a sense a "truer" form of PvPer than someone who only seeks out fair fights (ie a sportsman).

Anonymous said...

@Nielas

Using your logic, mining is PvP because a miner player "fights" over rocks with another miner player. Traders pvp using orders, etc. That's why the notion of pvp evolved into what is generally understood now, inside and outside of Eve. It just came out natural and seems like only Gevlon is having problems understanding it, or simply doesn't want to acknowledge it. I guess it all comes down to player skill and attitude needed.

Nielas said...

@Anonymous

We are getting into fairly abstract concepts here. In fact, I consider mining to have PvP characteristics provided there is a competition for resources. A miner trying to claim an asteroid and another miner disregarding that claim is a very basic competition for resources (similar to using someone's water) and would be PvP.

In a larger context, EVE PvP is fairly 'unevolved' since it still has such 'primitive' concepts as non-consensual attacks and death penalties.

There are plenty of WoW PvPers who would look down on EVE-style PvP as 'unskilled' and in turn EVE PvPers who look down on WoW-style PvP as 'sterile' and overly formalized.


Anonymous said...

"The attitude of Sugar is fine: "I kill whatever I can from cyno noobships to titans". But she never claimed superiority because of that. The "real PvP-ers" do! They brag about their skill and look down on others who don't have "skill"... and then they go and gank a mining barge."

yet you fail to give an example.

who is that ominous bragging elite pvp'er, the one that is looking down at me?

when i think of what i think a leet.pvp'er is (and i am more far away from being a pvp'er than you are), i think of guys like that azual skoll guy, or those who do/did the eve.is.easy videos on youtube, while reading these blogs, watching these tube vids, i never felt like being looked down at.
so you must be talking about someone else.
but who?

as you demand, that others should give standards, i wish you would do the same.


p.s.: don't worry, i know you won't publish this comment, neither will you answer my questions nor dedicate an article towards the clarification of your terminology.

have fun.

Anonymous said...

So I'm having a hard time figuring out where Gevlon said he was better than others? Maybe that is just me or maybe people are reading words that aren't there.

What he's saying is that if you are actually interested in being a skilled pvper, you will seek those opportunities out and the non-skilled things like shooting barges will just be a waste of time.

Of course you can just blow ships up because it's fun like Sugar does and that's ok too. She acknowledges that's what she does and doesn't make herself out to be an elite.

The drivel-spewing illiterate trash like Lucas on the other hand, continue to pretend they are the bestest. If you actually wanted to show you had skill you would play competitive games, not eve.

Lucas Kell said...

lol @ Anonymous
So much conviction behind your words that you refuse to put your name to them, interesting. Glad to see I've cause you to rage out somehow though. There's nothing I like reading more than tearful rage directed at me.

If you actually read Gevlons blog posts as a whole, you will see the answers you seek.
He is trying to claim that ganking = PvP. He is also claiming that he has more in KB kills that the average of alliance kills/member count. The outcome of this he is trying to show is that if his KB is better than others, and ganking is PvP, then he is better than any other solo player at PvP. The truth is though that it's nonsense. We know that there is a stark difference between ganking and PvP, so comparing the stats between the two activities is pointless.

I do have to ask though, at what point have I claimed I am the "bestest"? I don;t claim to be a PvPer at any point, I'm primarily an industrialist. I have had experience and solo, small gang and large scale PvP, so I can safely say my knowledge of those subjects is first hand, but I never claimed to be an elite PvPer, and unlike Gevlon, I don't try to grind up metrics to prove that I am.