Friday, April 12, 2013

The Mythos of Contention...


~or, Imagine a Hisec That Doesn’t Need a Savior…

(Disclaimer: No this post has nothing to do with Incarna, WIS or any of that stuff.)

Just imagine…
You warp your cloaky scout into an Ice Belt…
“Ahhhh yessss…” you murmer to yourself… it is ripe with many many foolish AFK Retrievers calmly, placidly munching ice…
You fly carefully and make a BM at just the right spot…
You move off so you don’t get decloaked, and with murderous joy you call in the Holy Fleet…
A minute later the Agents in their fleet of Sacrificial Catalysts land on grid and open fire on the stupid defenseless Retriever!!! And you watch in sheer joy as …
Huh? What!?!? CONCORD has landed as usual and all the Cats were sacrificed as planned but the Retriever is still there…

Hmmm… you may have made an assumption, you close to lock range and scan the target… Damn, he is well tanked. This one was not fit for ‘Max Yield’ but for ‘Max Tank’… well, that answers that. Ok, so one out of ten has some brains… you scan the next one… huh, max tanked too, and different corp… so you scan the next, and the next… Damn! They are ALL max tanked! Every single one! You report your findings to your Savior and head to the next belt…

And all you find in belt after belt and system after system is max tanked Retrievers and Hulks and even Procurers… heck in the farthest out belts there was even a fleet of mining Rokhs!! Your Savior calls… and you have to report that ANY gank attempts made today will fail. All the noobs and AFK Botters have learned how to tank their ships… the number of Cats needed now to take down even one Hulk before CONCORD does it’s thing… is simply too high.

“Well…” your Glorious Leader says, “We can still bump em.”

**********

Now, this will never happen for a whole spate of reasons, from the fact many really are bots and botters don’t care about ganks, they are not ‘playing’ the game, they are ‘gaming’ the game for ISK usually for RMT. Some of the real miners don’t really care as they are actually older Industrialists and they make more out of their Mining and Industry than you can ever gank out of them as they build their own ships and mods etc. and mining is just one segment of their ISK stream. The ones the gankers affect the most, the ones that are ‘hurt’ by ganking are the noobs and the casual players who simply aren’t into PvP, and/or really don’t have, or want to devote, the time needed ingame to get into much else.

There are those, James315 (who no longer matters) and Psychotic Monk (who I hopefully does or will matter, and yea I voted for him, low on the roster but he does represent a very real segment of the EvE playerbase and all parties have a right to a voice)… there are those who simply do not accept the above premise about players not wanting to be involved or wanting to play casually. They feel that any player in the game should be, to paraphrase Monk, adding or creating content for the rest of us. If they are not part of the games substance, then they should not be here.

This is a position which I find utterly and completely fascinating. Think on it, more ‘words’, posts, flames, diatribes, dialogs and sheer shit has been written and discussed and argued about and over “Miners” (AFK, Bot or not) in Hisec, than any other single issue I have seen yet in EvE. Seems to me that “Miners” (AFK, Bot or not) have and are continuously creating far more ‘content’ than all of Nullsecs Big Blue Cockring ever has. I mean who else are these guys ‘interacting’ with? Who else does James315 and his minions log on to gank and play with? If there were no “Miners” (AFK, Bot or not) what pray tell would the Savior of Hisec and His New Order do???

James315 damn near turned the whole issue into a probable CSM win until he realized he might actually win and have to deal with REAL people… and Monk has the guts and intelligence to back him doing just that. James315’s self-aggrandizement as the ‘Savior of Hisec’, his site Minerbumping.com (and the billions of ISK he has extorted and scammed from EvE players thereby) would not even EXIST were it not for “Miners” (AFK, Bot or not).

Seriously… really try and imagine an EvE without ANYONE mining. Let’s say the minerals for all Industry were available ONLY through purchase via NPCs like skill books. And please, let’s not get all misdirected on how that would fuck up the ‘existing’ economy, I am postulating an EVE where mining NEVER took place and yet we have the magical ability to look back on an EVE that did… ok? Work with me here. It’s a hy-poth-e-sis (#2) ok?

Anyhoo, try to imagine an EVE without miners. No Hulks, no Retrievers, no AFK Botters (mining at least)… Ruminate on that for a full actual minute and then answer me this. Who would the no-tank gankers gank? Why, Indies of course! Mammoths and Hoarders and Ittys of all marks right? But… would it be the same? to a degree, yes... to a degree, no.

If you are fitting and Indy for Max Load you fill your lows with Expanded Cargohold IIs which could be used for tank… I guess. I fly Matarii ships so my Indy’s shield tank and that’s in the mids, in hisec I Max Load the lows (1 DCUII) with 1 Invulnerability II and an Ancillary Shield Booster in the Mids while in the hole or to/from the hole I switch my lows for GTFO mods usually Overdrive Injector IIs (1 DCUII) for faster warping or Warp Core Stabilizer IIs (1 DCUII) depending on scout info etc.

The thing is, a lot if not the majority of Industrials do tank their haulers as compared to “Miners” (yada yada) so the game in that respect would be very different... but wait… isn’t that what the gankers and War Deccers etc. etc all WANT?? They all talk incessantly about how if players would ONLY learn how to properly tank their ships or actively play the game etc. then they would what? Stop ganking? Stop War Deccing? Oh please.

James 315 wants to ‘force’ everyone into low and null so the “food chain” (read “PvP Killers and Their Victims”) would be unhindered by CONCORD. Plain and simple that’s all he and his kind want. Everyone would get to spend just enough time in Hisec to learn how to become good little targets and then they all go directly to Lo and/or Null so the gankers and griefers can kill ‘em and not lose their ships, IE their version of “How YOU Should Play EVE”.

Monk on the other hand wants to keep the target rich environment he is used to in Hisec… he just wants a richer target environment… and I don’t mean blingy rich, though that’s always good too, I mean no corp jumping kinda ‘rich’. He states that he starts a ‘round of War Decs’ with usually approximately between 600 to 1000 or so targets and by the end of a week and that leaves him with 200 active of which, somehow, only 4 are actually available targets… hence he is prescribed Valium due to the deep depression he experiences at being down to just 4 or so war targets cause they all ran away or logged off… and all of this has something to do with how we look at and run corps… well duh. As far as I know the only way to do that is (1) corp hop or (2) log onto an alt in a different corp (same thing really) or (3) just stay logged off.

Monk wants the rules & mechanics setup so that his War Dec targets cannot so easily evade and/or hide from him, denying him (and all of us) the game enriching content he so desperately needs so he can end his Valium addiction and just start enjoying them again like everyone else instead of actually needing them to get through an hour or so of boring EvE play… (OK, as far as I know Monk is not on ANY drugs… I was just making a point there and having a little fun with him, you should really hear him talk about this subject in the Lost in Eve – Episode 84 – CSM 8 Debates — Debate #4 starts at 56:00) a truly fascinating take on EvE gameplay).

But again all of this is still just a desire to force other players to accept his version of “How YOU Should Play EVE”. Monk feels every player, Irregardless of his or her desire or intent or what they want out of their EvE experience in this great “SANDBOX” game should be playing in a way that will “create content”, for his (he says for all of our) benefit.

I read a lot of blogs and forums and I have my blog here and I play extensively. I have been playing for 2 years, 4 months, 20 days as of today. While I am an Anoikis dweller and vastly prefer the rules and mechanics of holes over Hi, Lo and Null, I have and still do spend a LOT of time in Hisec. I traverse Lo almost daily, have roamed there many times and I lived in Null for several (painfully boring even though highly lucrative) months. And I have flown through the content of EvE everyday of those 2 years, 4 months and 20 days…

Read Minerbumping.com… read the details of the daily Player Interaction that takes place between the New Order and random players… content. Read Psychotic Monk’s blog where he shares his stories of War Decs and ganks, tears and fails… content. If these two guys, myself, Jester and Mabrick just to name a very few of the literally hundreds of EvE Blogs out there (248 by my count on The EVE Online Bloggers Portal alone) If we can fill a page or two every couple of days (or like Jester fill a page or two every couple of hours… sheesh) then pray tell, is there some kinda massive ‘lack of content’ in EvE all these 248 bloggers are missing due to the incredible mass of content we are all so busily creating, joining in on and writing up?

Or is it that James315, Monk and their brethren do not ‘like’ the emergent content as it currently exists in EvE? That the “content” they want is them winning every time without loss or risk? Intentionally getting a ship (or ships) CONCORDED in order to take down a higher value target is not “risk” it is part of a thought out and accepted loss to win ISK ‘winning tactic’.

Like a Jihadist suicide bomber, they accept their ‘loss’ because they KNOW they will take out more than they lose. What they fear most… is that that loss/win ISK ratio might get changed… and thereby change their winning tactic to nothing more than a fail… and that is not the ‘content’ they desire. Who wants to write up a post about how you destroyed a single ship worth less than the gang of ships you lost in order to kill it?

I say quite substantially… No one. I also say… HTFU bros, the myth that “Miners” (AFK, Bot or not) in Hisec are not creating Emergent Content is pure crap. All in all that part of the game seems to be Working just as Intended.  =]


Fly Safe and see you in the Sky  =/|)=

6 comments:

  1. The New Order of Highsec doesn't claim that the miners provide no content. We claim, and I think all the discussion about us proves, that the miners don't WANT to provide content and feel that CCP needs to "fix" things so that they don't.

    What James 315 did with The New Halaima Code of Conduct was to, brilliantly, set up a set of winning conditions that, no matter what happened, resulted in victory for the New Order and defeat (again by our definition) for the highsec miners. A choice between buying a mining permit and being bumped or ganked was considered by many players to be a choice between one kind of defeat (humiliation) and another (actual ISK loss). Even getting miners to stop mining to fly what we call vultures to pvp against New Order Knights is called a victory by the New Order (and considered a loss by the miners themselves as they aren't, by definition, making any ISK while away from their mining ships).

    And of course what makes the miners absolutely rage is the justification given by James 315 that the miners are actually the bad guys in the situation and that any changes CCP has or may make to lessen their defeat would ruin Eve. We even use the nerfs CCP HAS instituted against our opponents (such as dropping corp and reforming during wardecs).

    Putting aside the over-the-top way that James 315 and the Agents of the New Order address the miners, the way www.minerbumping.com puts the rebel miners in the worst possible light, and the CSM candidacy and it's eventual demise, what the New Order represents is how, in Eve, a well organized group of players dedicated to achieving a single goal while playing Eve the way a PvP game intends will ALWAYS defeat a random group of individuals who will NOT sacrifice anything for other players and seek to redefine the parameters of the game to their individual benefit. Say THAT three times fast.

    Or more simply, we make our own rules and enforce them. The miners are welcome to try and do the same. And they have no hope of doing so.

    Buy a permit, follow The Code or be bumped or ganked. It could not be simpler.

    Highsec is worth fighting for.

    Bing Bangboom
    Agent of the New Order of Highsec
    Belligerent Undesirable

    ReplyDelete
  2. Man, no offense but this discussion is tiring. The James crowd is too lazy to attack real PvP ships and the HS miners are too lazy / disorganized / stupid to defend themselves. That's it. Virtually ALL bloggers writing nothing but this. Is there really nothing else going on in our Universe?

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's not that... this was so not much about James and his Legions of Mouth Breathers, or that Miners (who are not stupid so much as focused on Max Yield) are boring as it is about the wider subject of 'content' in EvE

    Hence the Title, the "Myth' that 'Content' is not being created by Miners... or that they don't want to create any or that they simply don't care about it, which is their right and which is my argument... IE Miners have created a HUGE amount of content by the way their not actively creating content pisses off James and his ilk...

    IE it's about the SANDBOX 'ideal' and some wanting to force or control the way others play... which is not part of that ideal sandbox.

    Plus, for me, aside from my 'How to Fail at Salvaging' foray at the 'Titan Take Down' in Luminaire and I spent 2 boring weeks in Hisec grinding mishes to finally make the grade with Fed Navy so I can has Jump Clones in Empire... other than those boring details, things have been kinda quiet lately.

    My PI is going well, approx 500mISK a month nicely flowing into da wallet there and we (20 or so in fleet) recently ran sites 2 nights in Bastion and I should see upwards of a bISK for that... but we haven't had any raids or merc Ops or Incursions into the homehole to speak of so simply not so much of the 'fun' stuff to write about for me...

    Funny how during times of peace and plenty there just isn't all that much to say that's really interesting... =]

    And GET OUT and VOTE for CSM8!!!
    Your 14 votes PER active account COUNT!!

    Ripard Teg for CSM8 Chair!!!

    WH Candidates:
    James Argent
    Nathan Jameson
    Chitsa Jason
    Cipreh
    Ayeson

    ReplyDelete
  4. Some of the pvpers (including some 0.0 reps talking about farms and fields) seem to have the impression that those risk avers miners should be the sheep running happily to the slaughter house and enjoy being slaughtert.
    But thats not in eve. Your losses count and you really lose something. If you had cost free respawn you might see hords of slaughter willing sheep invading your space.

    Beside the fact that HS miners provide the content you discribed so nicely, the war decs still have there flaws.
    Yes some are just evading them by switching corp. But you also have the problem of the point that it simply isn't fun that there is somewhere in the known universe someone who can kill you. If a one man corp war decs a larger corporation he just hopes for easy kills and there is at least 1 week you can't do anything against it. If you show up where you located him (locator agents are nice) he hides up in station or logs of.

    Helpful would be
    a) mechanics to have something to fight over. If the attacker is putting nothing to risk and provides no targets for the defender to engage upon, the war itself is very limited. The five man war experienced party might even have a lot of fun when the defending pvp noobs show up with a 10 to 15 man gang to fight the war braking target. Obviously that is very dependent on timezone.

    b) increase tracking capabilities of both sides. Searching the killboards for player names and running them through locater agents is time consuming.
    Add a function to pay your agent to locate the active members of a corporation. Some criterias to make a character visibile for the agent: market transactions, kills, losses. Maybe even dock and undock but thats a matter of design.
    The hunter can get his pray more easily and the hunted can respond faster and actively hunt the hunter.
    Oh and it would add a health isk sink as the service to locate the members wouldn't be for free and both sides are likely to use it regularly.

    There is no solution for getting all players play one style or to force them to provide the content for others. As we are all in the same universe we already share all our content. But there is many room to improve the level of shared content.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I evidentally have a valium problem! \o/

    Good post.

    ReplyDelete

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