Greedy Goblin

Friday, June 27, 2014

Nullbears vs PvP-ers: the reason of EICO-like dramas

The map of Immensea shows a Gentlemen`s.Club, a 230-men alliance where the East India co Sov was. The alliance that had 1500 members days ago is now disbanded, some of its corps formed the new alliance. As usual, their last days were led by the Drama Llama. Under the layers of he-said-she-said, we can see the main faultline: "nullbears vs PvP-ers". The former wanted to use the space, the latter wanted to force the former into fleets. The former called this forcing unfair and revolted against the latter. Corps were kicked, flaming issued, no one won.

Those damn carebears just don't want to fight, right? Except why would anyone join a PvP alliance without wanting to PvP?! Hell, even I had near perfect attendance on stratops while I was in TEST, because I liked the large fleets. Sure, there are always freeloaders, leeches, but not in the magnitude that you couldn't purge. The key thing is that nullsec PvE isn't that lucrative. If you want ISK, you are much better off in highsec or WH space where no one bothers you to fleet up. Or you can rent together with people who actually like you instead of calling you a useless carebear. We saw that an average renter pilot has 0.05 part of a system. If a system rent is 3B, you save exactly 150M/month by leeching on a PvP alliance. Why would anyone do that? And why can't they settle their differences like adults?

The real reason of the "nullbears vs PvP-ers" drama is different play time. Alliance fleets demand fixed hours instead of percentage of your play time. If there are 10 hours of fleet in a week and you play 40 hours, you can attend all the fleets and PvE 30 hours. If you play 8 hours, you can't keep perfect attendance even if you do nothing but flying in fleets. The problem presents as a drama because of different perspectives. Those who play a lot say "we need to spend small part of our time in fleets, and these damn carebears want to skip even that", while those who play less say "I've been doing nothing but flying in fleets and they still call me a useless carebear".

In the fixed-hour fleet system, people who play a lot appear as PvP-ers, while those who play little appear as carebears, regardless of how they allocate their time. Unless you play a lot, the normal setup won't work for you. Keep only your PvP pilot in a PvP alliance and keep your PvE pilots in highsec, WH space or rented null. This way no one can tell you "stop carebearing, come to fleets", as you PvP pilot is always in fleets when online and your other pilots never use alliance space.


PS: there is one thing that makes me happier than seeing an expensive minion of evil fall: seeing an expensive evil one fall in a wonderful fit!

9 comments:

Unknown said...

I've always been mystified by the concept of leeching. NPCing is only a step up from mining, something into which one plows manhours only under financial duress. It doesn't help that this miserable activity of avoiding others by playing with the server is the most financially important activity in the game, far outstripping moon income for alliances.

If it was just a financial problem for corps, they could simply raise taxes. However, the real commodity alliance leaderships object to are manhours, specifically their distribution to alliance projects. A warm body is the most prized commodity no-one is willing to pay for, which is why taxes don't seem relevant. If there was a series of mechanics that made it reasonable to assume funds in a corp would flow to the line members rather than away from them, leaders would have a pretty reliable means of coercing people. Players would respond to this if they had a surfeit of options for "content" from which to choose.

Anonymous said...

I'm an former EICO member that was around for all of this. Yes PvE/Indie people were put into this situation. If a player can only play 2-3 hours a night is it right to force them into CTA's and Strat ops that can run for 2-4 hours.

Alliance leadership was also a major fault point in this collapse lots of douchery and micromanaging people who didn't need it or want it was a huge part of the prelude to this as well. In the end No one won, we all lost.

There was also a major issue with sslink and other leaders wanting to turn EICO into a big PvP alliance. While the membership didn't feel the same way. Hard to get the workers to do what you want when they don't share your vision.

Anonymous said...

Except it never works.

Nullsec is a game of absolute numbers, not relative numbers. A small alliance can turn up to a timer with 50% of members in fleets, but will lose to a large alliance with only 10% of pilots in fleet.

On paper the "high participation alliance looks like great dedicated pvp'ers, while the other alliance looks like pvp avoiding carebears. Except 10% of 10000 is better than 50% of 500. And they will win.

It costs little to nothing to accommodate a carebear, asteroids and anomalies respawn infinity, more than any alliance in total could use. So competition for resources is not the problem. It is better to keep bears around on the small chance they will join a fleet occasionally, than to purge them over and over and then end up with only 20 pilots in strat ops.

Anonymous said...

the leadership roles naturally fall to those who log in the most. they belong to the elite pvp group to whom a 3 hour strat op is 10% of their play time.

the fleetbears, for whom 3 hours may be their entire weekly play time, have little say in the management of most groups. though they may vote with their feet (or have done so already).

is it coincidence that the largest blob is run by a guy who rarely logs in? as anon@14:38 says 10% of the CFC is a powerful force.

fleetbears are perhaps the most unappreciated resource in eve.

Anonymous said...

It's not exactly like that, 14:38. If the carebear was -never- going to show up to fleet ops, or show up enough that their contribution to fleet was too small to count, the corp loses very little by kicking them. They gain a lot because other carebears think "jee I don't want to be kicked, I'd better show up in some fleets".

StoneJager said...

I admit I'm split on this issue.

One the one hand, as an admitted carebear who enjoys his independence and who has limited playtime, I need to be able to do what I need and/or want to do when I have time available.

That being said, as a former director of a low-sec corp, if joe player signs up knowing full well what is coming, they only have themselves to blame. Some of my biggest frustrations centered around explaining to people what the responsibilities of living in low sec was going to be like, and then having people complain that that living in low sec had responsibilities!

"Okay everyone, we want to make our presence known, so for the next little while, we'll be cutting back on our [carebear] ops and focusing on joining alliance fleet ops and roams. Everyone understand?"

"Yep! Sounds good boss."

Two weeks later...

"WTF boss, we're doing roams and fleet ops! This sucks! I'm out of here!"

* facepalm *

If you're informed as to what you're getting into and what's expected of you, and can't manage both commitments (needs of the group vs. your own desires), you only have yourself to blame.

If nothing else, if you discover that you can't manage it when you thought you could, talk to the people in charge (directors, CEOs) and try to come up with a mutually acceptable solution.

Provi Miner said...

you crack me up, explain provi then go ahead. this should be good. Absolutly nothing you wrote even remotely resembles provi.

Gevlon said...

Because Provi is special. Strange rules, strange people and strange space.

Provi miner said...

"Provi is special. Strange rules, strange people and strange space"

Well not sure about the space part but yeah the rest is right. I don't think Provi is that different but it way more relaxed then the uptight null you are presenting. There is great divide between provi and any other group unless its isk. Even then I suspect a lot of isk just sits in provi rarely appearing, after all we have no need for a snake fleet we get the action we want in less than 10% tidi