Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

You can't help the M&S

I was fighting against morons and slackers since the birth of this blog. I was proving that those who can't progress are not "undergeared" or "casual" or "newbie" but simply dumb and lazy people who deserve to be left behind. My blog slogan is "It's more fun without morons and slackers". I keep saying that social people, the ones who want to be loved and respected by peers give freebies to the M&S keeping them alive. They make themselves believe that the M&S suck because of things out of their control. It was disproved by many successful players and some of my projects like the "undergeared" was doing the same. One thing remained: the socials keep believing that while the M&S is maybe responsible for his situation, they can become better people. All they need is ... a little help (more freebies).

Since I'm playing EVE, which is dubbed as "the most harsh an unforgiving game", I'm constantly doing the opposite what I was doing in WoW. No, not about money, I'm collecting pretty nice amount disproving that a newbie can't do anything alone in this game. But with all the suggestions and philosophy posts I keep defending "carebears", claiming that they need more help and protection from the "evil griefers" who are the biggest reason for their misery (and never their own inability to think, read or act). While most readers guessed I'll be in GSF in a week with my philosophy I turned out to be yet another "bad-bad griefer" crying carebear.

My holy crusade to save the M&S from "factors out of their control" peaked in creating the Voice of Highsec. It was perfect in every possible way:
  • It had an obvious way of being successful: CCP listen to CSM and votes = CSM seats.
  • It was selfless. I would not profit from it in any possible way, the opposite, I sacrifice an alt spot to level up corporation management, I did the administration and the angry Goons would hunt me
  • It was current. The forums are drowning in Hulkageddon tears.
  • It needed very little from the "unlucky poor ones". I mean they have a very successful real life so they have little time in a "stupid pixel game" and that little time is seriously taxed by having to spend hours crying on the forums. So it would be unfair to ask them to donate ISK or participate in any activity, let alone take any risk. All they had to give is an empty character slot or a non-undocking alt, something that every carebear has (there isn't really much reason for a PvE player to spread his points between various alts except to bypass manufacturing/research/trade slots)
  • It was anonymous. They did not risk any in-game or social consequences of giving support, as no one could link the joined alt to their main
  • I competed no one else, I entered a virgin field. There wasn't any CSM or community support for carebears (EVE-Uni is trying to teach them to be better instead of supporting them as they are). It's not like I was competing with other, better projects
  • I am not some random Tom, Dick or Harriett whose (otherwise good) plan won't work. I have one of the most read blogs in the community. CSM head Selene commented on it several times. I am linked and quoted in EVE24. I have my own channel with 50-100 people every day. Hell, I even got a congratulation mail from The Mittani for my blog. If I don't have the critical mass to make difference, no one has.
So you might guessed, the "poor victims of ganking, the casual players with rich real life and those who are simply not assholes" were swarming under the flag of the Voice of Highsec to finally make EVE a better place.

If you are a social you guessed. That's why I built this leftist dream. Well, it's time for you to face the numbers:
  • 912 people checked the project page. No, they aren't just random visitors of my blog, they explicitly clicked on the page link.
  • 598 people read the post on the official forums.
  • 249 google hits going to various forums, blogs, community sites that discussed this idea, giving it even more visiblity
  • 10 members in the corp after a week. If we subtract myself and those people who sent me a mail telling that while they live in null, they wanted to give their support to me (not the project), we get 5. Maximum 5 real carebears were ready to make a few clicks to support an organization that was created for the sole purpose of helping them.
Do you still believe that you can help them?
Do you still think that they are victims of factors out of their control?
Do you still hope that they can be better than useless crap full of entitlement?
Do you still waiting for some miracle to happen or are you ready to jump into a Trasher and give them what they deserve?!


PS: the corporation is obviously closed down and you won't find any more "save the carebears" posts here. And no, they weren't troll, I did not know how it will end. I did the "support the weak" thing as as seriously and good as I could, just as a real bleeding-heart socialist would have done it.

Tuesday morning report: 59.4B. (1 PLEX ahead, 1.6B spent on LCT, 0.1 on Rorqual)

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

don't be bitter about it :-)
you're making the assumption that people who read your blog have a desire to change the high-sec game AND that they believe you can make a difference.

I read your blog and was not ready to give up an alt spot to stick it in a corp that was very likely to get wardecced.

your basic premise is that M&S wouldn't know how to help themselves if help hit them in the face. and so there are only two options: M&S don't read your blog, or M&S don't think you can make a difference. I'm betting that the first option is more likely.

For the non-M&S. I for one am going to wait until you've played the game a bit longer before I judge whether you can be an effective influence on anything.... to be honest (with all respect of course), most of your ideas so far have been well intentioned but poorly thought out or based on ignorance.

Alkarasu said...

Make it 4 then, I just forgot to send the mail. Most likely, other 4 did that as well.

Camo said...

Gevlon: "Do you still believe that you can help them?"
Yes.
"Do you still think that they are victims of factors out of their control?"
They never have been victims of anything other than themselves.
"Do you still hope that they can be better than useless crap full of entitlement?"
Yes.
"Do you still waiting for some miracle to happen or are you ready to jump into a Trasher and give them what they deserve?!"
There is no need to waste your time trying to fight against waves of them, suffering burnout only to realise nothing changed. It's not the way to go.

So what do I think is the solution?
Quite simple: Capitalism.
Sadly, there is no (perma)death in EVE as the final punishement for sucking.

Gevlon said...

@Camo: I still won't bother ganking as it's a waste of time. But I wanted to express that it is what they deserve.

@Evemonkey: I also made post on the official forum. If I'd get a member after everyone who posted "omfg goons are ruining my life" posts in the same damn topic, I'd be over 100. Of course they can post tears and read nothing on the same forum but how is it making not morons.

The point of the idea was that not me making the difference. I'd just make the paperwork. CSM would have made the difference. It's trivial that CSM want votes. Also mine was the only initiative to help highsec, so no matter how bad it was, it was still the best available.

Energybomb said...

Aaaand, we are back on square one.

I am sorry Gevlon but, and I know you will disagree with this and continue your efforts, some people are dumb as a rock.

They are born that way. They are born destined to be dumb as a rock. It is unavoidable. Some people are born with IQ's lower than that of apes and these people are going to act like it. You can help them along to not be an annoyance/danger but in the end at best they will end up as a glorified farm bot (both irl as a low-end job and in mmo's as a mindless grinder) and at worst as a cancer (punks).

You must start presuming that these people are not created, they are born and start using some of your excellent ideas in crowd control rather than prevention or "conversion".


I should note I am speaking about the M&S, not the socials obviously. The latter are simply misguided.

Ps: sorry for any spelling error, wrote the whole sodding thing on my phone.

Andru said...

In all honesty, it was doomed to fail, because of Eve's culture.

In Eve, it is 'cool' to be an anti-social cut-throat, and being a 'carebear' is about the worst insult an Eve player can muster against someone else.

Socials that would have benefited from it did not like to try and take a stand before their 'peers' and be recognized as a 'carebear', instead of an 'unlucky' cutthroat asocial.

You don't see that as a crippling weakness because you're asocial, and dismiss those social feelings as poppycock. It isn't quite so for other people.

Paradoxally, socials in Eve want to pass off as a-social in front of their 'peers', and while doing this, they're shooting themselves in the foot. How very odd.

I would have joined, but that would have actually require me to care about Eve. Not playing the game has its perks.

Gevlon said...

@Andru: your reason still make them idiots. However (post updated) It was anonymous. They did not risk any in-game or social consequences of giving support, as no one could link the joined alt to their main

Anonymous said...

You said you were a lobby organisation when you were actually a petition to support a bunch of ideas with limited appeal, practicality or usefulness. There was no environment for discussion or debate or for those M&S to help themselves. You created a big splash of interest that led to a brick wall. You'd of made better progress if you pointed someone at a blank http://stackexchange.com/ site and gave them the tools to help themselves.

Anonymous said...

"No one could link the joined alt to their main."

Except their API holding corp-mates.

Anti said...

"no one could link the joined alt to their main"

except anyone with their API.

what the carebears realy need is a security channel.

not sure it could work in game as null-sec ones do. they seem to be password protected and there is some quality control of information.

also if high-sec dwellers are casual players then the information needs to be more persistant. no point finding out gankers have been operating in your region all day just after you get ganked.

i'm picturing a DEFCON level for each region. if there is high ganker activity people report it and push the DEFCON level higher.

Gevlon said...

At first there is no reason for them to give their account-wide api to anyone.

Secondly they give their api to their carebear buddies who won't gank them for it.

I seriously doubt that the Goons would start sending spies to carebear corps finding out who is whose alt.

Anonymous said...

were they unique hits on the blog/page?

I know I checked the forum post 10-12 times, and hit refresh a load more, the same for here.

You forget that people might have thought "why should I join a no-names corp in eve, when eve is full of people out to rip you off"

Or "what the fuck is this corp about lol"..

Or "lol, this guy is making a list of people who have carebear alts"

As others said, you were merely making a petition. Nothing more, nothing less.

You wanted people who feel un-noticed in eve (so not any real socials then), to join your voiceless corp, to do what?

You get upset because the minimal % of people who read forums or your blog did not get excited about your idea.

If you want to reach the socials (which you dont, being anti-social instead of asocial), then you would have used better ingame methods.

You seem to think that the people complaining in the goons thread are pure carebears. You have not considered the other option.

I am probably wrong, but then I am asocial, not anti-social, so disagree with you on most of your approaches.

Anonymous said...

Maybe they read your blog but don't even play EVE. Like me.

Anonymous said...

@gevlon: "At first there is no reason for them to give their account-wide api to anyone."

This is a requirement for most nullsec corps as an alt-checking measure. no, it's not foolproof, but it is a measure.

Gevlon said...

@Evemonkey: it's not like nullsec people were the target here.

Antivyris said...

If you created a leftist dream, then wouldn't that be doomed to fail in the first place? You yourself know first hand that anything that a very social person would put his voice behind is something he will rarely put his body behind.

It would have been far more interesting and successful if instead of trying a project that you knew would fail to try a project like Undergeared. Such as {Less than 10mSP}, or something of the like. Do you know one of the larger reasons behind mining afk? They simply want some sort of income because anecdotally they have heard that they are useless until they have 100% of the combat skills they need to fly x/y/z.

Creating an Asocial based alliance to govern, direct, and defend the social corps of high-sec, now that would be a project that people would not voice much, but get bodies behind.

Hivemind said...

Quick question based on this post; when did 'carebear' become a synonym for M&S? You're using them interchangably here, yet I don't think I've ever seen you either lump all carebears under M&S or define all M&S as carebears before.

Gevlon said...

"Carebear" is a commonly used derigatory term for risk-averse and always crying players.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, no, Carebear is a term for a PVE oriented player in any game.

You don't have to whine or cry. If you don't PVP, then you a Carebear. That simple. You like mining, then you also like thrusting your belly out and shooting rainbows from your button. KNOWN FACT.

From your 0 Kills, 2 Losses Killboard stats, you are a Carebear Gevlon in all definitions of EVE Players everywhere, except apparently yourself.

You cannot redefine a extremely common term like "Carebear" and change it to someone who cries. It's any PVE player. You want to define M&S player, then I follow you. But I won't stand for you redefining an extremely established and heavily used term. It won't stand!

:D

Anonymous said...

Why bother trying to appease the masses? Why not just go directly for the economic victory?

After all, any EVE account that was active for more than 30 days gets one vote during CSM elections. Obviously, this includes trials that got activated with a single PLEX. So for your purposes, 1 PLEX = 1 vote.

During this year's elections, the cutoff point for full-fledged CSM members was 2439 votes, and 1282 for alternates. The highest number acquired (by Mittani) was 10058.

This means that, at current PLEX/ISK rates, you could vote yourself directly into CSM by spending approximately 1.2 trillion ISK on alts. For 4.95T, you could acquire the Chairman seat. And for 17.5T, you could buy out the entire CSM!

Samus said...

Let me ask you this Gevlon:

If you were the leader of one of the EVE NPC factions, would you not work to eliminate gankers in your space purely for your own selfish, financial motives?

I know you care nothing for "what's fair," or whether M&S are happy or dead. But if you think of them no differently than (poorly programmed) bots, each trade in your space brings you money.

Would you not make serial gankers like the Goons shoot on sight just for your own profits?

Kristophr said...

Samus:

But every time they loses a ship, they have to grind out a new one.

Grinding a new ship = more tax revenue.

If I owned asn NPC corp, and no one was hurting the little sheep, I would pay someone like the gGoons to blow their crap up so they would grind harder.

Anonymous said...

If I led an NPC faction I'd want a safe zone to maximise economic growth with neighbourhood frontier zones to inflate demand for my products of war.

As a PC trader I want ganking activity that is high enough to increase demand and limit my competition, but low enough that I am "safe" if I take reasonable precations.