Greedy Goblin

Friday, December 5, 2014

Donations > stupid loss reports

Baki Yuku keeps on giving to the EVE community. His recent gift is this 9B, officer fit web/cyno/salvager. Now, it's not a moron of the day post, that would be a PS. While losing such ships would be devastating to most players, I'm completely sure that it's not really meaningful for Baki. After all he has insane income from "certain methods". Let's just say that people in TEST were honestly surprised when they learned that there are actual players in his 100+ men corp.

He probably lost smaller part of his wealth than an average PvP-er on a Cynnabal loss. But it doesn't change the fact that 9B is a lot to most players, therefore it could have much more utility than creating this abomination.

The problem is that critics are right in one thing: if you consider PvP in the primitive way, one player against another, ISK doesn't help. Having more expensive ships merely lead to ALODs. But if you are capable of looking at the strategy game of EVE, you see why it's all about ISK: you can buy the PvP-ers themselves! I mean if you set up SRP, you get pilots to shoot for you. Most of them don't care about who he shoots, hence the quickly changing blue lists, as long as he can shoot stuff without consequences. If someone could stop the CFC from paying SRP, it would be done overnight as no one would X up for anything above frigs. Even better: you can find PvP-ers already doing what you want them to do and give them money so they can do it more often. This is better because they are more motivated than your average "let's get drunk and shoot stuff" grunts.

The proper use of money is buying/supporting PvP-ers, not officer modules. This 9B would have much better place in the Black Legion SRP coffers than it had on the lossboard. But Baki couldn't look behind the primitive approach, hence this loss, and his most recent: a 1B pod in an interceptor. The reason is that getting trillion ISK worth of kills via paying for wars or donating to PvP-ers isn't as immediate and personal as getting a few kills first hand. I don't even know how much damage I caused to the CFC until I process the killboard data, while a PvP-er sees the enemy exploding instantly. Hence there are so many PvP-ers and so few who move them around like pieces on the board.

I hope one day Baki realizes where power lies and uses doctrine ships for himself (or stops flying completely due to its high opportunity cost) and give the rest to his alliance. That day Black Legion will grew a lot in power, due to being able to run a much bigger SRP.

17 comments:

Rob said...

If I were to play a game like EVE, and give all of my isk to other people to go and fight people, what would be the point in me even playing in the first place? Surely if I like to PVP, even if I'm terrible at it, then I should do just that. Paying someone else to do it while I sit and do boring PVE all day to make their isk doesn't sounds like the best choice.

Gevlon said...

When you play starcraft, you give all your resources to those pesky zerglings and marines instead of going into battle yourself.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon

Yeah, if you consider EVE as a deep, complex strategy game. But that's need an above-average brain. Most of the players in eve prefer a bit primitiver gameplay.

maxim said...

Not arguing that donating excess money to other PvPers is not the best use of money in PvP. It probably is.

Arguing against dismissing the ship-vs-ship fundamentals of PvP as "primitive"

Anonymous said...

actually it shows that again pay-to-win is relative.
he put so much isk into a pvp ship and he still lost. he got no big advantage with it. surely he did not pay with rl money.

nevertheless it is a moron. that isk could be used better. even if you support 10+ newbies/newcomers to your alliance with isk it is better invested.
im not sure if donation to corps or alliances "for SRP" is the best way. I guess most of the money gets lost on the track. you will just feed the leaders plex/personal wallets. it is like charity events. the real poor guys who needs the money, only will see a small amount of it.


interesting would be to see, if your donation had impact on moa? did they have more active players now? do they invest in better ships?

Rob said...

@Gevlon
"When you play starcraft, you give all your resources to those pesky zerglings and marines instead of going into battle yourself."
In starcraft the gameplay mechanics which players enjoy are the micromanagement of those individual characters. That's completely different to paying other people to play for you, especially since you don;t get to control those players like you would in starcraft.

Some (if not most) people enjoy playing the game, and accomplishing things themselves. If they pay other people to do it instead, they no longer get to play with the mechanics they enjoy. It's like me saying "I enjoy playing golf, but Tiger Woods is better at it, so I'll just give my money to Tiger Woods so he can play golf".

I also enjoy fishing, even though for less than I pay for bait and tackle I could go into a fishmonger and just buy some fish. I guess that makes me a moron.

Gevlon said...

@Rob: yes it does.

maxim said...

@Gevlon
That would make anyone who spends money on recreation a moron.

Gevlon said...

And indeed it does. If you gain nothing but "good feelings", not new skills, new connections, new ideas, than it was money wasted.

Anonymous said...

Well your definition of moron must differ from everyone else's. Most people would say that someone that spends so much time playing a game that they get no enjoyment from is a moron. EVE isn't teaching you anything useful outside EVE, your not accomplishing anything, it's simply a game. So playing it at all is a waste of time.

daniel said...

the tmc interview with baki y. pretty much sais it all. if they field huggins instead, they die so fast/many that fielding this fit is/was more cost effective.
i wonder why you do not acknowledge this.
also, bl does not seem to be an alliance for newbies and poors, additional isk for srp won't improve them too much. one should also mention that they are not playing eve for any strategic objectives but for the generation of good fights - entertainment it is.

on the other hand, you yet havn't done a single numbercrunch-article on how your funding has improved moa's performance.
also i wonder how does moa feel that you think of them as your zerglings?


anyway, you spend time and energy on a computergame. time and energy that you also could utilize to earn money. playing a computergame does not gain you "new skills, new connections, new ideas" that are usable in your life. do you think that playing a computergame instead of earning money is time well spent?
why exactly are you playing computergames?

money spent on recreation is not wasted. recreation is needed to extend the time one is able to earn money. therefore it is an investment, or cost of operation.

Anonymous said...

"you don;t get to control those players like you would in starcraft."

I'm terrible at starcraft. the minions don't do what I want in that game either. Just because you and I (and perhaps even Gevlon)are bad at the eve political game and cant successfully control minions does not mean it is not a worth while play style for those that can / do.

Anonymous said...

Did he not just unfit one of his old, big ships?

Nulli-Pilot said...

I like your approach goblin, donating to the cause, rather than spending it on my own shiny ship. The problem is, whereas you get a lot of recignition from a cool killboard, you dont really get any "kudos" for donating. Other than the alliance leader your donating to.

The only exception being MOA maybe, where it is public who donated what.

Gevlon said...

@Daniel: how many Huggins could they fit from this one? Or how many faction fit Lokis?

The time I spend on EVE is needed to write this blog, where I communicate with 5000+ people every day. Would you call that nothing?

mugg said...

So what skills, connections and ideas do you get from playing EVE and writing this blog Gevlon?

Unknown said...

While EVE might not be a "deep and complex strategy game", is does contain strategy. You don't remain in an NPC corp to hold sov and shoot other people in Null Sec, you tend to form corps, alliances, and coalitions to fight. You give ISK to people to fight for and with you.

Baki has x amount of isk. He is certainly entitled to using it however he pleases, but given the fit in that ship one has to ask: why did he spend it that way? Could the resource have been better spent on a fleet to help him behind those Cyno generators? If it was a bait ship - why officer modules? If it was not a bait ship: why not some alt in a covert ops?

All in all, EVE has a lot of tactics - what happens on the battlefield. But there is a lot of strategy involved as well: how and where do you allocate resources for the best results?

Line members are the zerglings. CTA is called and they jump into battle at the direction of their leader and are told where to fight and when to flee.

There is a lot of strategy in EVE. People just fail to see the forest through the trees.