Greedy Goblin

Monday, November 11, 2013

My project failed

While the last report of my ganking corp was promising, the positive summary was based on progression. Every start is hard, and compared to the first month, we clearly made serious improvement. Keeping it up for a few months would have lead us to our goal, covering all highsec, forcing miners to think before fitting a ship. While I didn't put an exact number, my guess is that 2-3T/month ganking is needed to maintain the necessary presence.

In the first 9 days of November, we reached 44.22B kills, which translates to 147B/month, a serious setback from 176B in October. But there is worse than that. Only 4.94B kills were done by gankers who are not me. 11% is a huge drop from 24% of last month. While I believe - utilizing a third ganker and now that I could use Talos - I would reach 170B monthly kills, (my October kills was 134B), but that's still just a small part of the needed 2-3T. For the corp to operate, we either need a dozen players matching my results or about a hundred players in the 5-10B/month range. Instead it seems we got a handful of casual ones. The activity in the public channel does not predict the joining of either a few whales, or a larger number of casuals. From the data available, even with the most optimistic forecasting I can't see us reaching the needed amount of ganks, so I have no choice than to declare the project a failure and discontinued.

Of course I could move the goalpost, my personal kill count is an obvious way out. The monthly average kills of the 11K members Goonswarm Federation is 1.49T, approximately 10x bigger than my personal kills. The other huge alliances have similar numbers. A single player is performing on 1/10 of alliances of several thousand "nullsec PvP-ers" is funny and probably embarrassing to some of their members who fancy themselves "killing machines". However it doesn't make any difference in EVE, as killboard numbers aren't really important. The fact that highsec ganking provides huge kill numbers was proved long ago by Freight Club. Only the original project, forcing the morons and slackers to mind the fitting of their ships would have made difference and this goal was failed.

Now what? My problem is - and always was - with EVE is the lack of goal-oriented groups. Sure they declare wishes like "X would be good to have", but if they fail to reach it, they instantly announce "we didn't want X anyway, we are just here to make explosions and have fun". Even obvious failures are laughed off. Joining or even fighting against such groups is impossible. You cannot win, nor lose in absence of goals.

Despite I'm an avid reader of state of alliance announcements, I've yet to see an explicit goal that could be mentioned a few months later and tell "you failed" or "congratulations, you made it". All I see is "we will go and pew X", which is something you cannot fail, assuming you can find the undock button. In absence of goals, you can't have a performance metric, I mean separating those who did something for the goal from those who just botted ISK.

Of course you can say that EVE is a much more casual game than WoW and people here don't want to win anything, just get drunk, roam around and explode. I've seen such players dancing naked on the postboxes, but even in WoW there was a minority who wanted to kill the big bosses. Also I don't understand why the "for fun" people are not in RvB? I mean shooting structures in bombless bombers in TiDi is not a typical source of fun. I believe they indeed have objectives, but since these objectives conflict with other player groups, someone is doomed to not reach it. And they don't have the courage that I had: standing out front and say "I failed, this project is over, we need to start something different, probably under a new leadership". Hell, the closest to that was TEST who accepted that they were beaten out of nullsec and turned into an FW alliance.

I ask commenters to inform me if there is a player group in EVE that has some in-game objectives, besides the usual bullshit "make explosions and make people mad lol". I made more explosions in the last weeks than the average "nullsec PvP-er" in a decade and I hope you don't question that ganking highsec carebears is the best way to get people mad. Been there, done that, probably better than any other ganker in the history of EVE. But I failed to make any difference. Now I wish to join - or fight against - a group that has real stakes, the real risk of defeat or victory. Do you know anyone who does that or WoW is really a more hardcore game than EVE?

I'm especially interested in organizations planning on highsec customs office domination. If I learned something during the weeks of highsec ganks is the ins and outs of highsec aggression.



There won't be more ganking-related morons, so enjoy the last one:
He went suspect to save his Mackinaw. My looter bumped him while my scout docked, refit to guns, came back to kill him. Since he couldn't break my tank with his drones, he switched to my looter, who did not aggress, just bump, so he got himself concorded with sec status loss and kill rights. Seriously? Why does an Orca pilot set his safety to yellow, not to mention red?

70 comments:

Foo said...

I have read that RVB planned on domination (all?) of 'The Forge' POCO's.

A side note: When a corp charges tax on a POCO, they get to see who, when and a good estimate of cargo value in the corp wallet logs.

Some highsec ganking corps might find this valuable intel.

Most epithals might be tripple stabbed, but if you know ahead of time their likey times and planets, that is not too big a hurdle.

(Plus highsec ganking here would remove some of my competition)

Foo said...

Is the fall in ganking values the fact that you already achieved your goals? The worst excesses have taken the hint or already been destroyed?

Anonymous said...

Have you looked at the wormhole corps? A lot of them are slightly more goal focused. Like Taggart for example.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, your project failed. Please don't stop doing the things you do. I think what has really happened is you as a leader have failed to inspire others to join you and continue this work with the zeal you have shown.

Ragelle said...

You haven't failed because it isn't feasible, you've failed because no in this game ganks miners because they want to make them better. If this were a James315 initiative you'd have your couple 100 volunteers because the true purpose would be slam dunking a bunch of noobs and laughing at them with the name of the corp as a troll. Your problem is sincerity --- unless you can find a way to make ganking really pay or provide some motivation then you can never succeed.

There are people you ought to try enlisting in your corporation. Not gankers, but the miners themselves. Every time you convince a miner to tank their ship you should recruit them into joining you with an alt ... convince them that joining is in their interest because untanked miners around them invite gankers to the belts they mine in ... collectively the miners who learn have an interest in driving off those who don't.

You simply need to continue to try to find motivational methods ... if you want to educate and make a difference declaring failure after 2-3 months isn't the way to do it. The simple fact is that nobody in this game has accomplished changes in the motivations or behaviors of the players with much greater investments of time and patience.

Some Guy said...

Nullsec groups sometimes go to war to conquer regions, and then they either fail or they succeed. Does that count?

Anonymous said...

I heard that RvB have plans to control all custom offices in Forge.

Gevlon said...

@Foo: ganking off your own customers doesn't look too smart way of business.

@I checked WHs and dismissed long ago: they settle with owning one WH and then go out to "get fights". Great...

@Anonymous: rather, people cannot be inspired to do things that doesn't mean anything else but personal fun. This is why James 315 has much more followers than me, yet worse results. "Inspirable" people aren't to useful.

@Ragelle: miners are usually bots, AFK-ers or simple noobs. Useless.

@Some guy: nullsec groups go to reinforce structures to "get fights" and when they "accidently" get a region, they are happy, if they lose it "we didn't want it anyway".

Lucas Kell said...

You biggest problem has an always will be engagement. How do you get your corp members engaged, and keep them engaged. You see the problem is, beyond yourself, most people play games for fun. Regardless of whether or not they set in game goals, the reason they pick up that game is entertainment. Ganking is not entertaining. I mean sure, it can be for a while, but after a short time you suddenly realise that you are performing the same task day in day out, and that's just not fun.
The new order continue because they don't have to continue. They don't have fixed goals, and it doesn't matter if you don't go out enforcing the code for a month. You get to do whatever you want to enjoy yourself, so it brings in a lot more people. Your corp would be perfect, absolutely perfect, if it was filled with people exactly like you. I just don't think there are many people like you. Most people don't have your mindset.

@"I mean shooting structures in bombless bombers in TiDi is not a typical source of fun"
We've never claimed that this act was fun. This was a means to an end. The fun was just hanging around in the group. That's why most siege runs took place late evening, so you could have a few beers, grab a pizza, listen to uncle suas singing some songs and socialising over fleet chat and comms.

You are going to be hard pressed to find a group who's goals are fixed and have nothing to do with fun.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: in WoW there are lot of hardcore raiding guilds where "fun" is irrelevant and everything is expected from members to get the boss dead. Raiding in WoW is much more repetitive and contains nothing but perfecting a series of moves like a robot, than any EVE activity.

Do you mean, that hardcore players play WoW and EVE is for casuals who "could have a few beers, grab a pizza, listen to uncle suas singing some songs and socialising over fleet chat and comms."

Anonymous said...

I see you associate hardcore with no fun. That's not how it is frankly. You can say losec pirates are hardcore because they are extremely skilled pvpers. Yet they play for fun and roam in frigates, which you despise for some unknown reason. From your posts and comments I see you don't want a hardcore group but a grinding group, focused on raising some arbitrary number. You will have problems finding such people in eve, because the game is not designed as a grind fest like most (all?) f2p themepark games. Maybe you should actually try playing for fun. People are doing that and they like it. Maybe you'll like it too. Otherwise eve might just not be a game for you.

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, WOW has very precise membership quality controls. Enchants, gems, meters, and even when failing to kill a boss, you usually know who needs to take the blame.

The raid leader only needs to point the finger yo X and Y and tell them to improve or be kicked.

In Eve, who do you blame for failure? Usually, the members blame the management, not the other way around.

WoW can be suited to quality controls and standards precisely because repetitive and exact gameplay.

maxim said...

You are forgetting that from pure player engagement standpoint WoW is simply a better game than Eve.

WoW succeeds in making a lot of people engaged in it's world. Narrative, actual relateable characters and art is all there to support it. WoW accomplishes player engagement at way higher level than Eve ever could manage. This allows WoW guild leaders to simply rely on the game to be engaging while hammering out their own goals.

Chris said...

@Gevlon:

WoW also has an higher population than Eve ;-)

If you assume that the pourcentage of hardcore goal oriented players is the same in both games than you will have trouble finding them in Eve AND get them togheter ;-)

And even most of these players won't do it for longer than a year.

I knew several of them in RL, who changed Servers to get first kills, be the best guild with the most first kills etc... Everyone stopped doing it, the time it consumes is just too big and often collides with work, family and other interests.

Hivemind said...

@Gevlon: "in WoW there are lot of hardcore raiding guilds where "fun" is irrelevant and everything is expected from members to get the boss dead."

By all means prove me wrong on this, but I'm fairly sure that this is not true. In the case of the hardcore guilds you're referring to, their members get their "fun" from getting the boss dead, rather than doing things like socialising. Whether they take pride in getting server firsts, overcoming the challenge or just their own performance in their role and their part in bringing the boss down, they are getting "fun" out of their actions.

By the same token there are EVE corps and even alliances that get their "fun" from being serious, disciplined and effective rather than socialising over comms. For them, "shooting structures in bombless bombers in TiDi" is not inherently fun, but "protecting our space", "holding the line" and so on are. Again, the actual structure shoot is just a means to an end.

"Do you mean, that hardcore players play WoW and EVE is for casuals"

I am absolutely certain that there are plenty of WoW players who also enjoy playing the game with a beer, some pizza and people to socialise with.

Druur Monakh said...

First, Kudos for admitting defeat. Not many people can do that.

Second, dude, it's a game. Nothing you do in game matters at all.

Druur Monakh said...

@Gevlon said in response to @Lucas: "Do you mean, that hardcore players play WoW"

No, he means that "hardcore players" are morons.

Alkarasu said...

@Gevlon
"Raiding in WoW is much more repetitive and contains nothing but perfecting a series of moves like a robot, than any EVE activity."

Yet hardcore raiding is an immensely fun activity - though it tend to burn people out pretty fast due to this repetitiveness you mentioned. I guess, it's something akin to sports, but with more accessible commitment and schedule.

Anonymous said...

You are looking for organisation and goals among the grunts.

The actual goal-oriented planning goes on a little higher up in alliances/coalitions/corps, unless the only long term goal of alliances /corps/coalitions is "have fun lol".

Some Guy said...

@Gevlon:

Those are just excuses to save face. Most people have excuses when they fail. Are you looking for a group that doesn't make excuses for failure? I doubt it exists.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: "lowsec PvPers being skilled" is a common, but baseless opinion, since skill must provide results. While theoretically I can be the World's best chess player, due to my total lack of ranking in chess, it's very much likely that I'm just a very casual and low-skilled chess player, considered skilled only by my even less-skilled friends I play with.

Similarly, while we cannot theoretically prove that a "lowsec PvP-er" is very skilled, we must ask why he is not in an AT winning team, or having any meaningful killboard history. It's much more likely that he is a casual player who lols around in frigs, killing even bigger noobs in even worse fit frigs.

@Next anonymous: killboard results allow to compare fleetmates of similar role. Why do X has 20% more damage in the same engagement than Y?

@Hivemind: we are talking about the same thing. My question is "where are the groups in EVE who draw their fun from winning a hard objective, instead of fooling around drunk, exchanging gay porn links?"

Also, it's without doubt that most WoW players aren't serious or any good, hence Arthasdklol in LFR being under the hunterpet. My problem is that it seems in EVE everyone (save for AT teams) look like Arthasdklol, while in WoW, there are hard mode guilds on every server.

@Maxim: that's opinionated. I find EVE graphics and the World engaging, while WoW graphics chartoony and the world is trivially small.

@Anonymous: I know that if goals exists, it must be on the leader/group level. But I see none. NC. lost Querious? "We didn't want it anyway". It seems the only goal of leaders is to be leaders of people, no matter who those people are and what they actually accomplish (usually nothing).

Gevlon said...

@Some guy: excuse-makers accept the fact they failed, they just claim it wasn't their fault "we were blobbed". What I see in EVE is the denial of failure: whole fleet eradicated: "lolol we had so much fun op success".

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon
I didn't understand your target setting. It seemed to be picking a number because it was similar to someone else doing something else and not directly related to your activity.
To reach that target you needed to get other people to join your corp.
You set up the corp to capture the kill stats of a bunch of people doing a specific soloing activity. It offered no tangable advantage that could not be achieved out of corp but it did place noticable activity restrictions on participants. If that is what I wanted to do with my game-time, I'd be a moron for not being in the NPC corp.

Anonymous said...

I run a goal-oriented group. Sent you an email with details on gevlon@freemail.hu

X Alias said...

Gevlon I read your blog daily, you should not quit your good mission. You had a bad month, a bump in the road not a sign of failure. You have done a lot of good and should not let a bad month stop you. I spent a year in a different game leading a group of around 200 people. If there is anything I learned from that the best thing you can do is keep people pointed in the same direction and pushing towards the goals set, any player that helps more than they take away is an asset. I think what you need is an adjustment to your current plan not a new plan. You have set attainable goals to join membership but to most they seem high and discourage many that would otherwise join. Create a much easier set of benchmarks for membership. If a pilot does 5 WGBWC ganks a week it is still adding 5 to your goal and taking away nothing so increasing your overall message and goal achievement. Reward the high performers with rank and praise but don't shut the door on others that could contribute. Continue to have your other rules for members to follow to ensure the low contributors are not doing things that take away more value than they contribute. Think, if you had a hundred members and 90 of them just average 5 ganks per week it still is adding 450 ganks to your totals, 450 more messaged miners, or bots destroyed in a given week. Open your doors to all those who would help under your flag and I think you should reach your goals.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon

""lowsec PvPers being skilled" is a common, but baseless opinion, since skill must provide results"

And it provides results. You just only see results as plain numbers and don't try to see the meaning behind them. You can look at KBs of people like Rixx and see that he is really good. If you want further proof, just go to low and try to survive. But you probably won't because you will just see a number - KB efficiency - and just assume he is a failure. And that's the reason why everyone laughs at you when you compare your KB to real pvpers. You can't see past the number - you can't uderstand it. You can't understand what is to have skill, because you cannot go into the higher level of abstraction. And we see it now - you want a group who focuses on a number, not a real goal. Successfully defending space while loosing large amounts of isk is a goal achieved, but a failure in your eyes. Destroying structures with bombless bombers is a prime example of this. Eve is more complex than numbers and you either adapt or keep failing.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"in WoW there are lot of hardcore raiding guilds where "fun" is irrelevant and everything is expected from members to get the boss dead. Raiding in WoW is much more repetitive and contains nothing but perfecting a series of moves like a robot, than any EVE activity."
Rgardless of what activity is taken up, and how seriously they take it, most people play for fun. I think you have a hard time understanding that not all people having fun are "har har fun lol", which is people who act in way that have no set goal and do their porn link spamming, etc. People with goals are also having fun. Games are for fun, for entertainment. That's what they are designed for. Most people don't play games purely to stat grind.
I've played WoW, and was in a raiding guild. We had goals of taking down bosses and progressing the same as any other, but that didn't mean we didn't have fun doing it. Honestly, what's the point in playing a game if you don;t have fun? It's not a sport that you can make a career of, and nobody cares about your arbitrary numbers,

"Do you mean, that hardcore players play WoW and EVE is for casuals"
No, not at all. I'm saying both games have both, and both types of players have fun. At least half of the guys in the grind fleets are hardcore players, and they know the grind has to happen to progress, but that doesn't mean it requires them to be stern faced and do everything they can to hate it. Again, games are for entertainment.

""lowsec PvPers being skilled" is a common, but baseless opinion, since skill must provide results. While theoretically I can be the World's best chess player, due to my total lack of ranking in chess, it's very much likely that I'm just a very casual and low-skilled chess player, considered skilled only by my even less-skilled friends I play with."
Have you not realised though that the killboard numbers are not "the" ranking? They are a third party ranking. If you make it to the top of the killboard, that does not make you the best PvPer in the world, the same as I wouldn't be the best chessplayer in the world by getting to the top of the Yahoo leaderboards. Low sec PvP tends to be the most skill intensive PvP, as it requires you to know the mechanics and react to a changing environment, relying on your own skill, not being propped up by a fleet of friends. There just isn't an official ranking and tournament which allows people to officially be the best at solo PvP. If there was, you can bet fairly safely that a low sec player would be at the top.

daniel said...

I honestly didn't htink you were to give up that early.

i thought you were going the hard way - enduring a year or two that things aren't advancing as you expected, then steadily aquiere more member and su.


sorry dude, again very disapointed.


btw, maybe you don't get it.
but no good leader will tell his true eve-goals in public.
don't you understand, that to play this game on a political level, one has to play the two-faced game?

your way towards doing/reaching what you just stated would have been, stay in test, stay back, work yourself up to middle management, become logistics director, aquire knowledge and trust, work your way up into ally.command.
become a more trusted and knowledged member, work your way up into higher command, aquiere mor knowlege, quire trust amongst other ally leaders, and one day work yourself up into highest ally command, and become the one giving orders.

what you were thinking might be done within a year or two would have been a decade-long project - minimum.

you also do not understand that eve delivers your playstyle only if you roleplay it.
by it's nature (u only lose some internet pixels), you cannot lose, like you can in real life.
so, it's easy for many ppl to play just for fun.

if you demand serious gameplay, create it.


by stating that you wanted to teach highsec miners a lesson, you created such serious gameplay.

unbfortunately you betrayed yourself, by stating that your corp is about kb padding.
if you would have stayed ganking only what makes a profit, maybe ppl would have seen a deeper meaninig in your project.

maybe, at least you should have stayed padding your killboard, and aquiere a kb stat that will never ever be reached by anyone else.

both you didn't do.

again, sorry, bu i am a bit disapointed.


qithin the last almost two years, you have insulted almost everyone meaningfull in this game.
not only the monmth old hs.noobs, your commentors, established ally leaders, established bloggers or other community contributers.
you have showcased that you, allthough you excel in the things you do (trading, ganking) have allmost no knowledge and understanding of other game mechanics, game politics etc pp.
despite being told how and where you were wrong, you kept on insulting just everybody.

i am not sure, if anybody really will still take you into his lines.

i thought you were going to go the hard way, as a dedicated soloplayer.

as a project for you, i recommend you to start exploring the game.
live in npc nullsec for some time, get a feeling what it is like.
lay traps to fight the locals, or befriend them.
get a feeling for the thing most ppl call "to pvp". do some time in rvb to get a feeling for how to do things in a large unorganized group.
provide some form of content, service to the community.

whatever you do, you must uindertsand, that if you want a goal in eve, you have to create it for yourself. or be happy to be the mining, f1 monkey for some leader who will not tell you about his truest goals.


just go on.

maxim said...

@Gevlon
<< that's opinionated. I find EVE graphics and the World engaging, while WoW graphics chartoony and the world is trivially small. >>

When i was playing WoW i cared way more about the WoW lore and WoW locations than i cared about Eve lore and locations.

The guild leaders didn't need to motivate me to raid because i was already pre-motivated through actually wanting to see the endgame content. All WoW guilds needed to do is to put together a bunch of guys like me and provide leadership and doctrines.

Raid Finder ruined that part a little bit, hence the collapse of all but the most stable 25-man guilds. However, there was still sufficient drive behind the desire to beat the bosses at their very best and getting shiny personal loot with higher item level.

A fleetgoer in Eve does not get personal wealth out of fleets. He'd be lucky not to lose his ship. I also find it hard to believe that Titan fights provide the epic encounter feeling anywhere close to what a boss like Archimonde or Sha of Fear in WoW delivered.

I don't think Eve lore is at all important to anyone at all - definitely less important than WoW lore is to WoW players.

Simple fact of the matter: WoW is better at engaging and keeping it's audience than Eve is. Even if you personally are not that audience.

Astecus said...

I have many goals, one of them is building up a corp dedicated solely to maintaining POCOs with zero tax. This might sound strange, but zero tax will benefit the many, compared to non-zero tax benefiting only the few. I believe this could lead to some of those many being interested in supporting such a corp, either by setting up POCOs or defending them.

The name of the corp is Astral Planets, and I'm still working out some of the details, as stated in the corp description. A very clear goal could be to "dominate" every highsec planet, which could take years and would require tons of people and a good reputation. But even maintaining a single POCO would be a success in my mind.

But kudos for admitting failure, not many do that, independent of what their goals were.

Hivemind said...

@Gevlon: Frankly, it depends on what you define as “hardcore” in EVE. In the WoW example you’re giving, hard mode is basically playing a specific area of the game with the difficulty turned up, thus requiring more skill to overcome. By that standard I could argue that “hardcore” in EVE applies to C5 WH residents running capital escalations in 5-10 minutes, nullbears who can farm forsaken hubs or other anoms for high value ISK ticks, even miners multiboxing lots of accounts if they’re doing so competently. On a larger scale, while sov wars are largely decided on logistics (who can mobilise the most pilots, keep them in appropriate ships etc) you can make the argument that “hardcore” applies to those alliances that are best at it, which can hold together thousands of individuals and wield hundreds of them in fleets with replacements ready to go for the next battle without failcascading or spitting apart due to drama.

Can you give more specifics on what you’d view as the EVE equivalent of WoW’s heroic mode guilds?

“My problem is that it seems in EVE everyone (save for AT teams) look like Arthasdklol”
As with “Hardcore”, what is it that you’re judging everyone in EVE on to reach this conclusion? I mean we can objectively say Arthasdklol is bad because we can see him in a situation he voluntarily put himself into – running an instance or raid – and compare him to his peers in that same situation and see how he fails to measure up. If we want to we can go further and collect more data on other people doing the same role in the same instance, collect an average and again see how he fails to compare to his peers. How can you get that kind of measure for the whole selection of EVE players, or if you can’t then what are you using as your metric instead?

Caldazar said...

You know, after all the projects in the past 'failing' like this and being cancelled, I'm starting to suspect the cancellation has little to do with success, but more with Gevlon being bored with the activity and not having fun anymore, and as such cancelling it and moving on to something new and fun for him. (Which is perfectly fine offcourse)

PS: My god, those captchas to post here are horrid

Gevlon said...

@X Alias: look. I made 134B ganks last month. The current benchmark is 4% of that. I doubt that asking for 4% of my own performance is too hardcore. People simply did not care about the goal.

@Anonymous: It's not abstraction, it's bullshitting. Competition isn't complicated. It doesn't need abstraction to see who won a Formula 1 race: the guy who passes the goal line first. Can't be more simple than that.

@Daniel: except I didn't see acquiring members, seen the opposite, existing members burning out after a month.

Your advice about "working my way up" is wrong. Montolio and Sort Dragon did exactly that and indeed got to the position where they gave the orders... just to notice that no one follows them.

Teaching miners can only happen if 2-3T/months kill happen. Otherwise I'm nothing but what Lucas predicted I'll be: an annoyance to miners and the only thing they learn is to set me red and move 2 constellations away to mine in their Yield Macks when they see me.

@Astecus: interesting goal, but I'm doubt if it's feasible. What motivates people to fight for your PoCos instead of just leeching on them for free. However setting a lower than NPC, but non-zero cost makes sense.

@Hivemind: Arthasdklol doesn't fail because his abilities limit him. He fails because of his "idc cba lol" attitude. Hardcore is at first defined as competitive, objective oriented. Some activities can be skill-demanding, yet meaningless (for example to jump up to the highest rock in the no-fly-zone island). To be a hardcore, you must win against competing players.

In EVE I don't see people openly competing with anyone. When a Red Federation fleet clashes a Blue Republic fleet, no one wins or loses, they all go home "lol we had fun". When GSF clashes N3, the same thing happens, since they didn't want that region anyway.

Gevlon said...

@X Alias: look. I made 134B ganks last month. The current benchmark is 4% of that. I doubt that asking for 4% of my own performance is too hardcore. People simply did not care about the goal.

@Anonymous: It's not abstraction, it's bullshitting. Competition isn't complicated. It doesn't need abstraction to see who won a Formula 1 race: the guy who passes the goal line first. Can't be more simple than that.

@Daniel: except I didn't see acquiring members, seen the opposite, existing members burning out after a month.

Your advice about "working my way up" is wrong. Montolio and Sort Dragon did exactly that and indeed got to the position where they gave the orders... just to notice that no one follows them.

Teaching miners can only happen if 2-3T/months kill happen. Otherwise I'm nothing but what Lucas predicted I'll be: an annoyance to miners and the only thing they learn is to set me red and move 2 constellations away to mine in their Yield Macks when they see me.

@Astecus: interesting goal, but I'm doubt if it's feasible. What motivates people to fight for your PoCos instead of just leeching on them for free. However setting a lower than NPC, but non-zero cost makes sense.

@Hivemind: Arthasdklol doesn't fail because his abilities limit him. He fails because of his "idc cba lol" attitude. Hardcore is at first defined as competitive, objective oriented. Some activities can be skill-demanding, yet meaningless (for example to jump up to the highest rock in the no-fly-zone island). To be a hardcore, you must win against competing players.

In EVE I don't see people openly competing with anyone. When a Red Federation fleet clashes a Blue Republic fleet, no one wins or loses, they all go home "lol we had fun". When GSF clashes N3, the same thing happens, since they didn't want that region anyway.

Foo said...

ganking off your own customers doesn't look too smart way of business.

Not all pirate groups are smart. But then running around with 300m of PI in epithals probably wont be too smart either, when neutrals know what and when you are carrying stuff

Anonymous said...

Your view on W-space is ill informed. W-space alliances take one or two systems because carving out large empires in W-space is utterly impractical. The mechanics themselves are designed in such a way to prevent large power blocs forming.

From time to time large blue blocs do form but these are typically unstable - isolation breeds differing ideologies and we normally end up punching each other in the face after a while.

As for "good fights" - the motivating factor is supremacy. Who has the best alliance, who has the control over the most lucrative systems, who has the ability to project power into neighbouring holes long enough to scoop up all the loot in them from under the other resident's nose.

Your "ganking lessons" would probably have more impact in w-space. Larger entities tend to believe they are untouchable, and run large PvE fleets to farm sites. A well placed gank squad can easilly catch them unawares and get some pretty big kills on farmers. There is a significant time investment.. sneaking scouts in, finding entry points, moving crews into place outside of primetimes...but the pay off can be quite good..and if you know what you are doing you don't even need a permanent WH pretense to do it.

Anonymous said...

seeking competition in a sandbox.

last time I checked real life sandboxes. there was no competition at all. Over the time of several years casual sandbox attendance there where no hardcore parents nor kids that claimed superiority in castle-smashing or building. Remembering back to my own sandbox grind ... there was no competition at all between us youngsters. Also there is no world-sandbox-competition.

So. What do you want? please define your perfect competition that will make you happy or acknowledge the enemies skill when beaten.

You can have statistical + knowledge competition with nearly any board game or RTS. if you like more muscle reflex grinding there is plenty VR and RL activities with huge competition. Table tennis world matches are low ping reflex and nearly perfect executed technique.
Basically anything has some sort of competition level ... but I never see sandboxes.

Yes there are MMO tournaments. always round based team fights of some sort to give some short term goal.
In EVE it is tournament. but you already dismissed that.

what do you want? skill of mind. skill of reflexes. skill of body endurance. A more point + group oriented activity or simple solo + undercutting high scores?


I still play "NFS Porsche" and some other old racing game "Podracer" (not the starwars one) against my own times. I don't care about the world records. And try to undercut my scores every now and then. A serious attempt needs about a week or two preparation to train 2-3h a day.

Do I need EVE to fill that kind of high score jerking? no.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon
"It's not abstraction, it's bullshitting. Competition isn't complicated. It doesn't need abstraction to see who won a Formula 1 race: the guy who passes the goal line first. Can't be more simple than that."

It is that simple - a guy who wins with equal or better opponent, was simply better in the fight. This is the exact situation you describe. But you can't tell that by looking at numbers alone and that is what you've been doing. Literally every commenter told you how little sense your argument made. Eve is more complex that a single number and you just have to accept that (or live in denial, which won't change that fact). Eve is not wow. Taking your analogy, you've been looking at who had the fastest lap, not the race itself and the winner.

Hivemind said...

@Gevlon: Again, you're going to need to explain what you mean by "competitive" - for starters the WoW example of a heroic mode raiding guild isn't competitive, as their progress isn't affected by others, nor does it affect others.

In the EVE example you've given of an RvB brawl, there is absolutely a winner and a loser - the losers will lose most or all of their ships and have to leave the field, the winner will take fewer or no losses and hold it. Holding the field itself is largely irrelevant except as a metric for who won/lost in the event neither side loses all their ships, but the ship losses are relevant and will be recorded on their killboard. This is competition at its most basic level.

You can argue that there's no long-term consequence, but that's down to how the players choose to play and manage their risks - it's certainly possible to blow all of their ISK on a few very expensive officer-fit ships, lose them and go broke while basically ruining their KB. Naturally, that's not something that happens often because it's blatantly stupid, akin to a high-skill WoW Arena team deciding to get massively drunk, enter into a series of matches and lose a huge amount of their rating due to lack of coordination (both hand-eye and team). In both cases it would still be possible for the players to claw their way back - in EVE the player can go back to PvPing in cheap ships and improves their efficiency, in WoW the arena team sober up and get back to farming rating to regain their lost ground.

The only real difference that I can see is that in WoW the consequences of the failiure - whether it's a single poor decision like the drunken arena team or an attitude that cripples their performance like Arthasdklol - are largely provided by the game itself (an arena team that drops rating will rank lower at the end of the season, a player with no interest in performing well wastes more time wiping in instances and getting kicked and will never complete challenging content like heroic raids). In EVE any consequences have to come from the community instead; a player with a rep for losing blinged ships may find themselves being primaried a lot more often, they may have to worry about gankers attacking them for their modules as well and their poor KB history may bar them from some corps. That difference is at its core the difference between a themepark MMO like WoW and a sandbox MMO like EVE, but that one fact shouldn't make a difference to the fact that there is competition and there are consequences.

Von Keigai said...

Kudos to you, Goblin, for giving up. It was hopeless in any case.

Let me second Caldazar. We've seen you abandon several projects which you were apparently gung-ho on. I wonder how much the boringness of ganking factored in to your decision? You've been pretty open about a lot of things, and I credit you for that. But: did you have fun ganking miners? Did you enjoy the time you spent ganking? If you did, then why stop? If you did not, then how can you expect others to undertake the grind? People don't play games to do chores.

Oh yeah: I told you so. Many others did too. Perhaps in lucid glare of hindsight, you might go back and re-read what many people told you those few months ago, and see who had foresight and who didn't. Then perhaps you could adjust your priors.

Von Keigai said...

As for what you might do with your life... let me make a few suggestions.

As I have said before: build a superior blobbing corp. Your objective is to maximize the number of systems you are sovereign over.

Smaller scale: learn to PVP, form a team, and win a major EVE tournament. (Alliance, whatever.)

Or if you don't think you can get together a team: work together with skilled PVPers to define a fair solo PVP tournament format. (I know you don't think skill exists, but everyone other than you does; so ask us and we will tell you.) Get someone to run it, or, using your vast wealth, subsidize a tournament yourself, using the format. Your goal here is to win this tournament.

PS: you might recall when you announced your idea to gank, but before you announced the religious function of your ganking, I sent you an business idea ("Gankers for hire") for a gank-for-profit and highsec semi-sovereignty corporation. Perhaps you might re-read that and see if it suits your fancy. I am sure with your vast new experience you could refine the idea. I can certainly give you a goal to strive for initially: full compliance of all ice miners in all ice fields in highsec. As a shorter term goal: full compliance of all ice miners in Caldari space. And even shorter: full compliance in The Forge.

Gevlon said...

@Von Keigai: like everything, ganking had fun and boring moments. Examples for fun:
- Getting a Jackpod.
- Orca going suspect.
- Getting anti-tear mails.
- Lot of idiot campers faling to stop me 10v1
- Comparing my killboard to GSF or PL and see I made 1/10 of them

But of course there was the boring grind of killing bot/AFK macks and rets one after the other for hours.

But I would have continued if the goal could have been won.

Anonymous said...

Ive go same problem on several MMO-s. Its hard to make a goal oriented group.

WoW was best try. Requiting guildmates is nonstop progress. And you compete with alot of other guilds who do the same. More people you get to the guild, more people you got to choose from. Because gold was not problem for me, i offered from my pocket every gem and enchant for free if they come to my guild. It lured ALOT members in and it costs me around 50-100k gold per month. But it was worth, because doing with them LFR raids on certain times, you will get some names who show up and do well. If you notice it, you can promote and ask them to come to normal raids. I probably spent so 500k gold to get 3 people to raiding, but it was worth it.


Long story short. If you want to be effective, you need to spread you idea with high cost so players are willing to join. From those players, you ma rarely find effective ones who actually can bring you closer to the goals you want to go.

On the end, that WOW guild breaked apart and made a new one just to clear up the big amount of junk players. Problem was, being in 1 guild you cant chat on other guild. You need to be social to get players who can focus.

Anonymous said...

It was highly ambitious to start with and I had my doubts you could ever really put so much pressure on the mining community (and sustain it) that they would actually listen.

Having said that: your results are still impressive and I have learned a lot on ganking from your blog.

But compared to your ganking, mine will always be 'casual'. Nevertheless, I will continue doing it and keep linking ppl to the 'why was I ganked'-page. Unless you take it down, which would be a pitty.

Satori Okanata said...

You were doing really good with the ganking project, but as many have told you left the fun factor out your equation. You just need to rethink your goals and this project will take off. The thing is that most people don't like to have a second job in-game, so you have to make it look appealing and fun for it to work.

You mentioned in an earlier post that you were surprised about not existing highsec mining corps. Forming it might be your goal, making all those semi afk or afk miners, joining your corp and sharing their profits and giving them buffs and better profit in return.

The fun part is in having a second corp that enforces your first corp by wardeccing, or ganking those that fail to join you.

The creating content part, is making the lore surrounding this idea, by creating the corp web pages with some nice suitable story, so people instead of feeling that they are doing a grind, get the opportunity to just roleplay and be part of the group. Just for fun.

I'll look for you in game and have a chat about this.

Anonymous said...

Destroy the CFC. Liberate Nullsec.

Gevlon said...

You can't liberate space. You can only liberate people. There is a very easy way to liberate yourself from the evil oppression of CFC: move to Empire. The money is better and there are no structures to grind.

Kata Komba said...

Why I stopped ganking a little more than 1 week ago? (Not mentioning IRL things)

WGBWC had 2 goals. To teach miners, and to have an insane killboard with insane kill/member ratio. Of course the second one was never mentioned by Gevlon, but everyone knew it is there.

The teaching part was not a big success. I would say less than 5% of ganked miners considered to change fit or ship to a tanky one, maybe even less. And I realized that the proper way to mine in highsec is to group up with others, and have a single ecm ship in belt. Cloaky is even better. Each miner should make an alt and pull concord into belt with thoose. You can mine in the most shitfitted hulk, you are safe. Unless all concord just leave the belt, but then you just warp out. While ganking is most effective doing it by yourself, mining is best doing it socially. I had to leave blinged hulks in belts, just because of a single cloaky falcon, and when I mentioned this in WGBWC channel, I just got the answer to move on, look after other targets. This was clearly showing that the teaching is less important than the killboard padding. Which also failed, as no new members came to the corp. And to be honest, having a huge number next to your name is not a big deal, if noone cares about it.

I joined the WGBWC because I was in the same situation as Gevlon is in now (except I just started to play a few months ago). I was looking for some goal orientated corp, just to have a grip on the sandbox world, as my traders started to make so much isk, that I really don't have to care about losing ships. Unless you start a corp, there will be none which has the same goals as you have. And if you do so, you have to be social, you have to lead them, make them feel to bound together. That is where WGBWC failed. It was not a group, it was just a collection of players under the same corptag, and in long term it can't hold it together, as you had exactly no benefits being there.

Being social and goal oriented does not exclude each other, actually I think most succesful players are goal oriented and social ones too. Gevlon you are great at setting up goals, reaching them, but your biggest waekness is beaing able to reach others. Your theory is not working in mmo's, as asocial ones are not the the most succesful ones in games. And I think neither in real life.

What I suggest you is to stick to teaching people by guides. You are excellent in thoose, trading guide, PI, newbie, ganking, miner tanking. But stop comparing you to others, all you get from this is hate, pity or laughter. You can say you have the best isk kill/month, but you can't say this makes you the best pvper. This makes you the best isk sink player of the game. The low/null pvp is less effective of course, but the low/null pvp has other goals too, which high sec ganking does not. And you can't say getting a committed member worth x isk, having a laugh worth y isk, so you just compare your highsec ganking killboard to nullsec killboards. I realized this after a few days after joining BNI, I wonder how can't you see this after being the member of TEST for a longer period.

Thank you for the WGBWC, I had really funny moments there. It was a nice motivation to move out of the highsec carebear status, and I wish you good luck with your next project whatever it will be.

Kata Komba

Gevlon said...

@Kata: the teaching part failed because we failed to maintain a presence. They could rightfully say "dock up until these assholes move away". Or they could move away themselves.

We could only way to beat it is to have a complete highsec coverage what we clearly failed to have.

"you have to be social, you have to lead them, make them feel to bound together" Why me? Why should I do extra work for others. Why don't they lead, made me feel whatever? The problem with this isn't he emotional work involved, but the one-sidedness. I give and give and they just get and demand more. No way!

What I saw in TEST is a bad example. What I saw was troubling (up to the "kill yourself you worthless piece of shit"). And finally it was unsuccessful. TEST was beaten out of nullsec because their social attitude driven away anyone remotely competent.

Kata Komba said...

The teaching part failed, because it was not 100% accurate.

1. Get a covetor/hulk
2. Get an orca support (orca alt or mining group/corp)
3. With buddy program, get an ecm alt for free, park in belt
4. Pull concord to belt with a 0 sp alt that you don't care about sec loss
5. WHEN gankers show up (concord is pulled), change to your tanked proc/skiff

This is the proper high sec mining. We should have taught this.

Your tanking method is the best way for a solo miner. Which is not the most effective way.

Actually I tried to maintain a presence in Kador, you suggested me to move on to get more/better/easier kills. That was the point I realized the teaching is just a cover.

"Why me? Why should I do extra work for others."

You get back a handful of guys who are willing to do effort towards your goal. If this extra effort is bigger than yours motivating them, you win.

Anonymous said...

"Why me? Why should I do extra work for others."

Because you stated that goal for yourself. And you've been showing us how right you are in various posts, despite us telling you otherwise. Now you have to face the fact that we were right and you failed. No shame in that - you just learned something new. Use it. Join us and finally be successful. Kata Komba already did.
Honestly, I think this might be a turning point for you. You can let go of your previous attitude, since you now know it doesn't work, and listen to us and have some fun. Forget about the numbers, try to do something which is not measurable, for pure enjoyment. Or stay what you are now and watch your future projects fail. A wise man learns from his mistakes.

"TEST was beaten out of nullsec because their social attitude driven away anyone remotely competent."

Yet, those who drove them away are the same social folk, that TEST was. Just with more disciplined leaders (but also socials). Social players rule this game, wheter you like it or not.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"Why me? Why should I do extra work for others."
Because you wanted to run a corp. That's what it takes to run one. You can't just expect everyone else to just dive in and do whatever, you have to lead. Yes it takes effort, but the payoff is you get what you want, you get a corp efficient at what it does. Instead you let your corp run as a collection of individuals and just expected it to work out. It didn't

If you are not willing to lead and not willing to follow, then you will forever be stuck in solo play.

"TEST was beaten out of nullsec because their social attitude driven away anyone remotely competent."
TEST did not fail due to their social behaviour. The CFC has a heavy social focus too. TEST failed for the same reason your corp did, lack of leadership. Their leadership was absent, and when it wasn't it did not lead.

Anonymous said...

This seems like pretty definitive proof against your "never fleet up" doctrine of the purely individualistic asocial who can achieve anything he personally sets out to do. You had great personal success in the fields you chose to focus, but your inability to recruit, organize, and motivate other people to operate as you did ultimately meant you could not impart any permanent change against the masses of morons and slackers who are far less time dedicated and ideologically committed than you.

I'm very interested in how you could interpret this failure against the endless proclamations of personal success and superiority that came prior.

Sugar Kyle said...

What are you giving, Gevlon? You scream at people not to socialize, not to interact with you, not to care about you, but to follow what you do to the goal you believe is waiting to be reached.

You name drop enough to know that leadership matters. You want people to be lead without a leader towards a goal you have pointed out that they cannot see. You want them to make huge leaps of thought and rational to reach a ledge below them they cannot see but you want them to trust you is there.

But, the entire time you have given them no reason to follow you. You seek to speak to their rational mind. That the ledge is there. That physics and gravity and this ledge scanner have proven it, so why don't they just jump into the void.

They call them leaps of faith for a reason. You have given them no reason to have it in you because you reject them when they reach out with it.

You are blindly playing with human psychology.

But then, I am a mindless social.

Anonymous said...

probably shouldn't assume that every month will always be better than the last. I would stick with it, growth does go in spurts.

daniel said...

@Daniel: except I didn't see acquiring members, seen the opposite, existing members burning out after a month.

not sure if you are talking about your members.
if so, you should ask yourself: what did you do, to keep them in line, in your corp, in ships.
did you provide any additional benefit to them.
instead of blaming them for a failed gank, and advising to not fleet up, why didn't you enable them to always have a ship at hand. as you are spacerich, would it have been much of a problem to seed catas + fitting all over new eden, so they'd allways have had a ship at hand?
would also have been a nice add for your corp in the recruitment forum.

as for the other text ... sorry to tell you this: test maybe is not the best example for a goal driven organisation - more the opposite.

on the other hand, mittens and the gang seem to be doing fine... what we witness nowadays as goons/cfc is a product of years of planning and hard work, and total dedication.
eloknight, though that super whelp was a bit unlucky, didn't become a recognized fc over night, but put years of work into becoming one.

i am not that super knowledged about nullsec folks and celebs, so i stop after the most obvious and talked about ones...


why can it only happen at 2 t destroyed value ?
your daily anti-tears are speaking a much different language, you obviously reached them.
with more careful target selection you could have minimised your efforts vs taught miners.
don't forget, your stated goal was to educate them. you did.

"[...]and the only thing they learn is to set me red and move 2 constellations away to mine in their Yield Macks when they see me."

Isn't that exactly what you wanted?
Miners paying attention to local and their surrounding?

don't forget that there is more than one way to tanking.
flying a sys or two away from you is just another form of speed/range tanking. kiting - totally legit. lesson learned. goal reached.
another win for you.


"In EVE I don't see people openly competing with anyone. When a Red Federation fleet clashes a Blue Republic fleet, no one wins or loses, they all go home "lol we had fun". When GSF clashes N3, the same thing happens, since they didn't want that region anyway"

first of all, if you took the advice to join rvb, you now would know what kiting is, and in which situations to use it, how to counter it and so on.

What do you mean by "openly competing"?
because, it can't be more openly than it already is.

"When a Red Federation fleet clashes a Blue Republic fleet, no one wins or loses, they all go home "lol we had fun"."

what else should they do ?
i mean, that's exactly what it is about.
it's like ppl meeting in the citypark and having a lose round of soccer. nothing meaningful, just hanging out in the park, have a good time.

"When GSF clashes N3, the same thing happens, since they didn't want that region anyway"

you do realise that the "didn't want that x anyway" in these situations is pure sarcasm?
of course they wanted that region, of course they wanted to keep the titan, of course they didn't want to lose those supers. internally someone is raging, because everything just fucked up. i mean, the operation just fucked up, and they had been working months towards this fleet, that war, that titan, whatever.
no they didn't want to lose the situation.

but it happened.

what would you do?

jump into the next plane to give that jerk whom you blame for the failure a beating of his lifetime?

or

take a deep breath,
take another one,
keep calm,
and say something stupid?




because after all this is just a videogame.

Anonymous said...

Why me? Why should I do extra work for others. Why don't they lead, made me feel whatever? The problem with this isn't he emotional work involved, but the one-sidedness. I give and give and they just get and demand more. No way!

Why you? because this is your idea! you don't get to make something then expect someone else to make it a reality. To get your highsec coverage and build a force large enough to do what you wanted to do across multiple timezones to truly make a difference you need to be **charismatic**. The job of a leader often is a lot of giving, and giving, and giving some more.


What I saw in TEST is a bad example. What I saw was troubling (up to the "kill yourself you worthless piece of shit"). And finally it was unsuccessful. TEST was beaten out of nullsec because their social attitude driven away anyone remotely competent.

I think it is a stretch to state their social attitude lost them the war. They were beaten by an equally or moreso social group. There is power in social interaction, and if leveraged properly it can do incredible things. Social interaction is what makes humans powerful. We do not have claws, or teeth, or incredible strength. What we do have is the ability to communicate and work in social groups which magnify our innate wisdom and allow us to rise above the rest of the animal kingdom.

Anonymous said...

Firstly,
I've really enjoyed your blog over the last couple of months, and admit I am disappointed your giving up so early. Call me a leach if you like, but I've enjoyed the content you've created without giving back :P

Secondly, I do hope you find something that you enjoy and something achievable, which also makes a bit of a splash. I think thats important to you.

Thirdly, although at a much lower level you might say I'm in the same boat, trying to find something to do in Eve atm. Thinking of heading to wormhole space and controlling a single hole for a few months as my goal. Not sure if its naive of me to try doing this solo.

"you have to be social, you have to lead them, make them feel to bound together" Why me? Why should I do extra work for others. Why don't they lead, made me feel whatever? The problem with this isn't he emotional work involved, but the one-sidedness. I give and give and they just get and demand more. No way!
This is what leading a group is about. You get the results of the group effort, in return you reward them with goals and motivation and results. Its ok if you don't want to put that effort in, but if your goals are bigger than one person can achieve then you have to give what your followers want. They want someone to follow.

Gevlon said...

@Kata: no. Your scheme needs the miner to be at the keyboard. Any plan that needs you watch the mining beam and the concord in the overview is way inferior to simply:
1: send out a T1 fit retriever
2: if you find yourself in the station, update clone, grab your next ret and go 5 systems away.

What made Kador special? We had to maintain presence in all New Eden. Maximizing kills is maximizing teaching. By camping Kador even 24/7, you could only teach "don't mine in Kador because some dickhead is there".

@Anonymous: yet I saw no successful social. The fact that I ALONE made as much kills as 300-1000 Goons (depending the number of alts), is that socials are even less successful than me, just there are awful lot of them. This makes their GROUP strong, but the individual Goon is still just a sorry loser grinding structures in bombless bombers under TiDi. This isn't the life I want for myself or for anyone follows my blog. Remember, you can't be Goonswarm, you can just be Goon#12358.

@Lucas: no. I wanted an idea to lift off. It didn't. If I would simply pay people IRL to do my bidding and gank the living shit out of highsec, would I prove anything else than the most obvious thing in the consumer society: you can get people do the most absurd nonsense with money.

Same with "leadership" aka paying them with social bullshit. Such followers wouldn't be less social than the ones they gank. They would simply draw their "fun" from my bullshit instead of the bullshit of Mittens or Vince. Not something I'd call progress.

@Sugar: I calculated the physics of the ledge and I got the ledge scanner. They just have to read it and verify if they wish. For me, that's enough from a leader. If they jump not because they were convinced that it's safe but because they believed some guy (me), then they are dumb lemmings who will one day jump at a word of a griefer or idiot false prophet.

@Daniel: sure, give them ships, sing them on comms to make them happy. Maybe I should also go over their house and give them a blowjob so they'll be more motivated.

I'm not their slave and won't be it.

The anti-tears proved that I could teach some. Very few. The 2-3T is an approximated number needed to close the "simply mine 5 systems over" door.

No, I didn't want them to watch local, that's what James315 want. I wanted them to use a superior tool instead of throwing insane amount of work hours on it. Imagine 10000 miners all watching local. That's 10000 human hours wasted.

What I'd prefer over "didn't want that region anyway"? How about "what we've learned from losing our region and what must be changed". Because currently nothing is changed. BoodaBooda is still Dreddit CEO. Elo Knight is just wasting 150B that SOLAR
Fleet gave them. They will fail again, because they managed to fool themselves that the loss did not matter.

Yes, it's better to look loser, failure, idiots, than REMAINING loser, failure, idiots forever.

@Last anonymous: the problem with leading with money or social bullshit is that it's tied to me. In the second I stop leading them, the whole thing falls apart. One day I'll stop everything as I'm mortal.

If I want to build anything that lasts, I have to make people believe as I believe and act on their own.

I failed to convince anyone that ganking miners is a good thing. My project failed. I could cover up this failure by simply paying people to act like they believe. But it wouldn't be less of a failure.

Anonymous said...

" yet I saw no successful social. The fact that I ALONE made as much kills as 300-1000 Goons (depending the number of alts), is that socials are even less successful than me, just there are awful lot of them. "

And that is where you're wrong. I won't name celebs as successful ones as this is obvious. I will give the examples of us, commenters. We play, we have fun, we win. As for the kills, you are still hanging on to a single number and can't let go. We've been telling you how your kills are irrelevant and you can't compare it to pvp. Even your own member realized it. Just let it go.

Gevlon said...

Jhonny in the neighborhood has dawn syndrome. He licks the window with a huge smile on his face. He clearly has FUN!

He is such a winner in life, just like you for having fun "PvP-ing" without any results. I feel so bad that I can't be like you or him.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
" yet I saw no successful social. The fact that I ALONE made as much kills as 300-1000 Goons (depending the number of alts), is that socials are even less successful than me, just there are awful lot of them. This makes their GROUP strong, but the individual Goon is still just a sorry loser grinding structures in bombless bombers under TiDi. This isn't the life I want for myself or for anyone follows my blog. Remember, you can't be Goonswarm, you can just be Goon#12358."
This makes no sense whatsoever. CFC clearly are not failing, as we own half of null. You on the other hand have just shut down your operations due to total failure. Surely that, the situation you yourself have described, shows that your kill numbers mean absolutely nothing.
You can say "I ALONE made as much kills as 300-1000 Goons", but in the end, who cares? It's a number, it means nothing alone, it's a means to an end. I guarantee, that if suddenly boosting a KB number actually achieved something, CFC would excel at that. It's not exactly hard to grind kill noobs. But it's a pointless achievement that is of no use.

And I'm in the CFC, am I a sorry loser?
I grind in bomberless bombers from time to time, but most of the time I do what I would be doing in high sec, but in null sec instead. I trade. I make isk ensuring the market is stocked with what people need. If my alternative option is to sit in high sec, grind ganking miners and playing the 0.01 game, then I think I'll stick with being a "sorry loser", while you continue being a "winner".

"Jhonny in the neighborhood has dawn syndrome. He licks the window with a huge smile on his face. He clearly has FUN!

He is such a winner in life, just like you for having fun "PvP-ing" without any results. I feel so bad that I can't be like you or him."
You realise that this analogy is better looked at the other way right?
Jhonny really is having fun. As far as he is concerned everything he is doing is winning. He's licked way more windows than anyone else. He doesn't realise that the number of windows licked is a dumb metric with no benefit. In the same way, you can't see that grinding your killboard numbers up means nothing if you can't achieve anything off of the back of it.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
" no. I wanted an idea to lift off. It didn't. If I would simply pay people IRL to do my bidding and gank the living shit out of highsec, would I prove anything else than the most obvious thing in the consumer society: you can get people do the most absurd nonsense with money.

Same with "leadership" aka paying them with social bullshit. Such followers wouldn't be less social than the ones they gank. They would simply draw their "fun" from my bullshit instead of the bullshit of Mittens or Vince. Not something I'd call progress."
Well you don't have to give anything, and you are free to call it bullshit all you like, but at the end of the day, lack of leadership is why you failed. You can't start a corp and expect it to run itself, that simply does not work. So if giving some of your time in order to run a corp is really too much, then just don't bother, as you'll just keep ending up failing in exactly the same way.
In the same way, you probably won;t be able to join a corp, as they will expect you to give up your time for their goals. So your only options is to sit about solo. Best of luck with that.

Lucas Kell said...

@Gevlon
"I failed to convince anyone that ganking miners is a good thing. My project failed. I could cover up this failure by simply paying people to act like they believe. But it wouldn't be less of a failure."
You realise this is wrong right? You need to put in the effort and the isk to start with. What you are building is a culture. Once you get more membership and start putting people in place to do these tasks, the corp eventually is able to support itself with minor oversight. That's what lasts.
Nobody has ever made a lasting corp by just expecting people to do what they need to, it's taken a leader putting people in the right places and building a culture that can be followed.

Gevlon said...

@Lucas: I've never said CFC leadership is a loser. Goon#12354 is the loser who spends his evenings in a bombless bomber under TiDi, shooting a big structure while hostile bombed bombers are bombing him. I don't want to be that guy, and as a blogger I don't want to tell anyone: "come be my bombless bomber slave!". I'm not a space politician, I am a blogger. I want to provide my readers good advices and not use them to get pixels.

A corporation clearly can't run itself. But what you are telling me isn't organizing. I did that by having guides, channel, doing statistics and all that. You expect me to be the CLIENT of the corp, paying for everything, forever. It wasn't a business venture, like a "grind region, rent it". It was always a "society betterment project", meant for making a change. If someone joins for the pay, he leaves the second I stop paying.

If there is a corp with goals, I want to use my gaming time for that goal (if I don't like the goal, I wouldn't join).

Anonymous said...

"@Daniel: sure, give them ships, sing them on comms to make them happy. Maybe I should also go over their house and give them a blowjob so they'll be more motivated.

I'm not their slave and won't be it."

first, i didn't mean for free.
just seeding the market, even making a profit.

no, you are not their slave, but their ceo - if you didn't act like that, you shouldn't wonder why they left.

"Yes, it's better to look loser, failure, idiots, than REMAINING loser, failure, idiots forever."

Isn't this exactly what you do?

Sorry, but it's you whining about his project failed, it's you whining because ppl left his corp, it's you whining because of no achievements ...


"What I'd prefer over "didn't want that region anyway"? How about "what we've learned from losing our region and what must be changed". Because currently nothing is changed."

That is exactly it.
You corp/project failed.
You are told why it failed.
You deny it and keep on as usual.

Why do you demand such behaviour from others, while it isn't possible for you to act according to your own standards?

Von Keigai said...

A corporation clearly can't run itself. But what you are telling me isn't organizing. I did that by having guides, channel, doing statistics and all that.

Wrong. What you provided is educational materials. (I suppose the channel might be education.) Education and organizing are very different things. Organizing -- leading -- is about telling people what to do, where to be, how to interact with each other, and very much more. That can certainly include educating themselves, but it is much much more.

It wasn't a business venture, like a "grind region, rent it". It was always a "society betterment project", meant for making a change. If someone joins for the pay, he leaves the second I stop paying.

Yes, and this is your problem exactly. What you are "selling" here is religion. Why should a person playing a game want to join a "society betterment project"? Are there any out there you can think of? I can't.

Well, sort of: there is the New Order. Why has the NO succeeded and you have failed? Answer me that.

I'll tell you the reason, and it is why I italicized playing a game: it is because the NO offers people fun. Value for value. The website -- the daily writing of James 315 -- is fun to read. I laugh. Probably even you have laughed a few times. Rich players give him ISK for that, like a tip. And extracting tears (which the Code is optimized for) offers many players fun. The comradery of working together to gank and grief is fun. You're the good bad guys together! And it's fun to listen to slackers and morons cry in local about how mean you were to them. And when you do manage to collect the occasional 10m fee, that's fun too -- it means you bent someone to your will. Or educated him. Power is always fun to have.

Will highsec ever be Code-compliant? Of course not; it will not for the same reason you failed. Because (a) human ignorance is unlimited, and struggling against it is the domain of saints and fools; and (b) there will never be enough NO gankers to create the pressure necessary. It's not a viable business.

Lucas Kell said...

Oh Gevlon, if you are still struggling for ideas of what to do, you could come join me on a venture. I'm planning to turn Maire V - Moon 2 - Quafe Company Factory into a market hub. The aim is to make it huge, and try to get more people into solitude to the point that it Rivals the top 5 hubs in mainland high sec.
Since the thing you are best at is trading, and the entirety of the venture is trading, and it requires nothing outside of a solo activity, it seems like a good fit. Logistically it's a nightmare, and at least for now it's zero profit, but it WILL HAPPEN!
I'll be blogging about it later, but the post is here on my alt, Tim Timpson.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=3865405#post3865405

FeralShadow said...

I run a mercenary alliance, and not one of those fakey ones that rando-dec everyone and go "lol we're a merc alliance, pay us to go away". We take money from clients and follow through with the contract stipulations, and don't rando-dec.

Honestly though, I wish I had more goal-oriented people like you, Gevlon. If I did, we'd have much better results. As it stands now, there are a few people who like to pew and are goal oriented so they go out pro-actively and find targets, then there's the rest that just wants to find stragglers in trade hubs.

All this is to say that you didn't fail, it's just the general playerbase isn't as goal-oriented as you. You're passionate about the anti-bot thing, I'm passionate about getting isk through pewing and getting the job done to the letter (granted, it's not nearly as much as being a carebear), but neither of us can inspire our followers to be as passionate about those subjects as we are.

The only thing you can do is keep looking for people who are as passionate about the subject as you are, and eventually you'll build a corp full of passionate people and you'll get your end goal. You can't depend on positive progress every month because you can't depend on people being consistent.

Anonymous said...

As everyone else is giving you suggestions on what to do next: guerrilla warfare against goons. Measure it in isk value of ships destroyed if you want. Your ganking characters shouldn't take too much time to skill into stealth bombers.

A hunter could measure kills in terms of kilograms of meat. But, killing a lion is more impressive than killing a cow.

If you start getting kills, you will find it easier to recruit people to join you than ganking miners. Everyone wants to be the guy who can wrestle lions and win, not everyone wants to work in a slaughterhouse.