On stagnation in nullsec

LordsServant is a HBC member well known for bad posting but today he cut to the heart of nullsec’s stagnation, and the recent calls for wargames in nullsec.

Problem is there’s no fucking good alliance leaders anymore.

Goddamn noone gets stoned or drunk and says “Hey lets go fuck those people up tonight!”

Oh, they won’t fight us – LETS FUCKING SHOOT UP their shit or punish them by taking some source of their isk/camping them in for a week or w/e.

I’ve got great memories of leaders who went out and DID SHIT. They created content for their members, they gave us the good memories, the shit that most of us joined this game for in the beginning.

What do we have now? The so called “leader” of the biggest fucking blue coalition in the game doesn’t even play the game. He comes on once every couple months to make a speech, then goes back to writing propaganda for his fucking “Fair and Balanced” Fox news wannabe website.

If eve is still around 5 years from now, how will we remember this time?

5+ years ago, we were watching juggernauts like BoB brawling back and forth with the NC. We watched the entirety of the north burn under some of the greatest focused aggression and organized pvp in the game – D2 fell and MC burned the north. We saw an entire new section of eve open up(the drones), with all the resulting land grab and stories that it involved.

We saw PL running around all over the place shooting up w/e they want(Maru Kage anyone?), and quadruple DDing ppl whenever they started to lose(lol). I remember Evil Thug screaming like a madman in heavily accented russian/english, posting about how his alliance m8s were fucking shit because they weren’t camping a gate with him in his titan 18 hours a day.

People like x13 killed the very first mothership in losec – does anyone remember how The End and Mr Xtreme used to camp Tama with a nyx almost nonstop? What about ginger magician? Infod? Burn Eden rolling into a region and SHUTTING IT THE FUCK DOWN WHILE PEOPLE COWERED IN TERROR? This shit really doesn’t happen anymore.

They’re good memories, they were content, things happened and stuff was risked.

Now all we have are these gigantic fucking bluefests where noone does anything but bitch about whatever mechanics, bitch about how rich they are, and the people at the top don’t even fucking log in except rarely.

If they’re ever toppled, we’ll only look back on this with disgust. We’re living through the antithesis of a golden age. We should be undergoing a golden age of pvp with all the content balancing going on, new ships and modules being introduced, etc etc.

CCP isn’t to blame.

It’s us. We’re killing the game. Administrators not interested in pvp or creating content for their members beyond padding their personal/alliance wallets(is there a difference?) – ingame or out of game, it doesn’t matter, “lead” the most powerful groups in the game – power that is largely gained by blueing everything. CCP has steadily eroded(at the players request) any option to exist independently in eve or to engage and be competitive in any “serious” pvp beyond bringing the biggest blob possible. Noone is to blame but the playerbase for steadily becoming more and more complacent, and pushing down those who try to fight against this fucking hibernating oozing whiny provincial morass of a playerbase we’ve become.

CCP can’t fix this so long as the most interesting thing happening in the game is fucking ship rebalancing or RvB in nullsec.

Stay Frosty – Stealth Bomber PvP

The Unbearable Leetness of Being Rote

pBump explains the recent bout of ennui that Jester is going through:

I think that one of the worst things I’ve done in my career as an FC was hanging out with Rote. Specifically attending Cass Ops, running around with Brent, and working with their guys on SiSi during the tournament preps. It brought a stark and brutal clarity to just how good, and by comparison bad EVE can be as an FC.

An example: Several months ago I was attending a Cass Op on a Friday night (as usual) On comes Cass and goes through the typical pre-op rundown. Who can fly links? Who wants to do Logi? Who wants to scout? And so forth. The difference between his form up routine and mine? Half a dozen people had perfect links. Almost everyone in the fleet could fly logi if need be, and he always used some of his best pilots as scout.

When I go through this, I have the same two people do links because they are the only ones with perfect skills. I have the same four or five people to pick from for logi (Aloe) because nobody else wants to train for it. They just want to shoot stuff. And if I put a good pilot in the role of scout, I’m almost certainly giving up a Logi or link pilot. Fuck.

Another example: We’re doing tournament prep on SiSi. Almost nobody from Clockwork shows up, so my team is almost entirely from Rote. I tell them what I want to comp for the 5v5 and off we go. The fight unfolds and things get intense. Lo and Behold! Shit doesn’t go as planned and the Rote pilots actually adjust what they’re doing without being told to do so. They actually took initiative and did something to compensate for the twists and turns the fight took. If you’ve ever FC’ed a fleet of pubbie retards, you know what a mind blowing crescendo that moment was for me.

So what’s the deal? What am I trying to say? Rote is unique in Syndicate. If you look at Johns handy little map, they are the only entity on that map with the luxury of running their outfit like it should be. They troll out entire corporations because of a low skill level, much less individual pilots. They recruit and kick people based on their abilities to fly spaceships. When they CTA for a certain fleet type, the people who show up actually have the right ship….crazy I know!

What about GROON? Well we recruit exclusively from Asperger’s anonymous .com as if this is somehow going to let us play EVE with likeminded people. We never kick anyone for being bad at EVE, because it’s supposed to be funny. EVE is after all nothing but a big joke and ‘trying’ to play it well is the antithesis of a proper goon. Our blue list is really just the people that can tolerate us on coms. That’s all it takes. Despite some pathetic undertone that we’re somehow better than pubbies, we’ll blue up pretty much anyone to bolster fleet numbers.

To tie this into the politics of Syndicate, I’d be interested to hear from the main FC’s in SynCo, FIGL, etc. if their experience has been more like mine, or that of Rote.

And before everyone jumps out of their seat screaming “holy shits just join Rote aleady!” I actually really like the core group that I’ve been playing with in GROON for the past couple years. They are my spaceships friends and I will never leave them.

Poor Rote; it’s tough being elite.

A vision of nullsec

Weaselior has released part two of his ‘what is fundamentally wrong with nullsec’ manifesto.

Part one was called ‘The Vision Thing‘. This part is called ‘Creation and Destruction‘.
Worth reading.

Another slice of eve’s history

Enjoy.

A slice of history

Someone on reddit posted his recollection of the first two years of EVE online from the perspective of a member of the Guiding Hand Social Club.

It makes for a great read.

James 315 on lowsec

Following on from the recent theme of low sec, a very long post, but worth reading. Just in case, here’s some quotes:

On the risk/reward balance:

On a superficial level, EVE follows this principle. Take mining, for example. High value ores are found in lowsec and nullsec, where risk is higher. But the question isn’t whether the ore is more valuable, the question is whether the risk/reward balance is properly set. If it’s much more dangerous to mine in lowsec than highsec, the ore needs to be much more valuable. If it’s only slightly more valuable, then the risk/reward calculation favors highsec. The same goes for any other isk-making PvE in the game.

I’m probably not being too controversial when I say that the rewards of lowsec and nullsec mining are not sufficiently more valuable than highsec mining to offset the risk. The same goes for other forms of PvE.

Why isn’t it controversial to say this? Because EVE players, by the tens of thousands, have independently reached the same conclusion. And they went to live in highsec where they could make plenty of isk without the risk. That, I believe, is the reason why highsec is so populous. Not because EVE players are all carebears who won’t take risks, but because the risks of leaving highsec are not properly incentivized with higher rewards.

On industrialists in the PvP foodchain:

Highsec miners do provide minerals so that things can be built. But that’s only one of the jobs they perform in EVE. The most important thing miners provide is not minerals–it’s targets. Miners act as soft targets for PvP’ers. They are the base of the PvP foodchain.

You’ve probably heard it described before: Industrialists get targeted by solo pirates and protected by small defense gangs, who then come under attack by larger pirate gangs, which, in turn, are chased by larger defense fleets, and so on. Take away the soft targets at the base of the foodchain, and there’s nothing for the solo pirates to kill, so solo PvP dries up, small-gang PvP dries up, and all the way up the foodchain. You’re left with consensual PvP, and the structure shot/defense ops of the big nullsec alliances.

All of it depends on the industrialists putting themselves at risk. Why should they do that, though? If risk/reward is properly balanced, they’ll do it for the greater rewards. If, however, risk/reward is stacked in favor of highsec, there’s no need for a miner to put himself at risk. Simply mine all the money you want in highsec. Goodbye, lowsec mining. Goodbye, lowsec PvP. Goodbye, lowsec.

On the absurdity of null players making ISK on high sec alts.

Consider the common nullsec-dweller’s observation, which I mentioned earlier: Highsec has a big population, but a lot of those highsec residents are actually alts from lowsec and nullsec. Why do nullsec players put alts in highsec to make money? Because highsec is that profitable. The dirty little secret is, for many players, in many situations, highsec is already more profitable than nullsec.

And just as we saw in lowsec, every time a PvE’er moves from nullsec to highsec, a soft target is lost. Take away enough of those targets, and the predators of nullsec disappear, and the PvP foodchain rolls right up. This process is well underway. People have been complaining about it for quite some time. But if highsec is buffed further, things can get worse. A lot worse.

Nullsec is the Africa of Eve

Sponk has a post on Failheap in a thread discussing the logistics of transport and trade in Eve (amongst other things) that highlights the main issues surrounding the mythical ‘industrial expansion’ that always seems to be on the horizon but never gets done.

What CCP has consistently failed to do is to articulate a plan for the economic structure of nullsec.

Currently, nullsec is the Africa of Eve.

Imports: Basically everything due to no local infrastructure, but mostly weapons
Manufactures for local use: lol
Exports: valuable unprocessed materials (rare earths high-end minerals, oil moon goo, diamonds deadspace modules), corpses

A lot of people who complain about this situation would prefer nullsec to be the Stargate:Atlantis of Eve instead.

Imports: Basically everything, but in punishingly small volumes
Manufactures for local use: as much as it can
Exports: high-tech relics in punishingly small volumes

To change to this model, jump freighters have to go (or have their cargohold cut by 95%) plus jump spoolups plus nerfing mineral compression for low-ends plus make mining low-ends in null easy-mode plus a whole raft of other changes, or else you’ll find that a single nullsec fight depletes the entire region of manufacturing capability for days, just to replace the ammo, let alone the ships.

This is a major issue for a nullsec industry shakeup that hasn’t been addressed so far by CCP.

What should nullsec import, and what should nullsec export? More on this once I’ve had a think about it.

Not as predicted

I predicted (and expected) this.

I did not expect this.

As some of you might have heard, one of the Alliance leaders speaking at the Alliance Panel during EVE Fanfest 2012 breached our EULA/TOS with some ill-advised remarks about a fellow EVE player. It goes without saying that CCP deeply regrets this incident and will work towards reducing any possibility of this happening again in the future.CCP requested that all panel PowerPoint presentations and discussion topics be handed in beforehand for approval. Regrettably, the offending comments were made during an unscripted Q&A session after the main presentations.Following a thorough internal review CCP has decided to respond to this clear violation of our Terms of Service and wholly inappropriate use of the Alliance Panel. According to our existing policies, we have issued a 30 day ban from EVE Online to the panel speaker.

The policy of CCP is not to publicly discuss warnings and bans on an individual basis. This situation is entirely unique because the panel was displayed via CCP’s Fanfest video stream component, a platform analogous to our forums. As a result we have published this statement due to the special circumstances involved. However, our policy remains that we will not publicly discuss warnings and bans.

The panelist has subsequently posted a public apology as well as a private apology to the victim of his attack. He has also resigned from his position as Chairman of CSM 6 and has forfeited his right to serve on CSM 7. As per our policies, this candidate may be eligible to run at a later date subject to candidacy review.

The Council of Stellar Management is a democratically elected council that represents the players of EVE Online. Although council members may represent the players in any manner they choose, being a council member does not permit actions or playstyles that violate our policies.

(emphasis mine)

So, what happens now? Jester has some ideas.

Losing the chairmanship was manageable for Mittens.

Being kicked off the CSM entirely is another thing entirely. He will not be happy about this at all.

I wonder if this is the price you pay for embarrassing CCP…

Bar Fight in EF-F

A screenshot of the fight. True Story.

So, recently Alexander. and Altruism have been having a low-intensity war in Syndicate. We both share the same pocket, but don’t share peak timezones, so the opportunities to do lasting damage have been low. We’ve blown up a few towers around the place, they’ve blown up one or two, and occasionally called the batphone on us.

So, Alexander. had reffed two POCOs in EF-F and they were coming out at Saturday morning, 0300 Eve time, which suited both parties.

The fight started on the station ahead of the reinforcement timers expiring. We popped a few Harbingers, then Altruism undocked with carriers to rep, then it rapidly escalated from there. An AL3X Thanatos got bumped 50km off station, and other carriers went into triage to save it as it crawled back.

Suddenly Rote Kapelle dropped in a couple of dreads and carrier. They weren’t shooting Altruism, so we figured they were just getting in on an opportune carrier kill, and kept repping our carrier.

Next minute! A mixed Ninja Unicorn capital fleet hot dropped Rote, and started wailing away on them. A handful of hictors also bridged in. This is what we expected to have happen to us, so we stopped shooting the Rote capitals and started repping them up, since it was becoming clear that our carrier would make it back to station.

And then! Rote counter-dropped with a couple of supercaps and a bunch more dreads and carriers, and went to town on the Ninja capital fleet. Altruism warped off, so we concentrated reps on the Rote fleet. A Rote sub-cap fleet also bridged in with many bubbles.

Capitals exploded or self-destructed left and right, then Altruism warped back and shot everyone. I’m not sure why, but then Rote turned on us even though we were repping them, so we said “screw this” and disengaged.

http://www.eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=12548657

(Some of the fight, frapsed by Rote)

Notable quotes:

• “I’m getting reps, but I don’t know where from”. Yep. That was us. Ungrateful bastards.
• “So who we shooting?”
  “just shoot Alex”

 

PS: We saved that carrier 🙂