Greedy Goblin

Monday, June 3, 2013

Why?

The question always appears among comments. Being irrational saves others from answering it. "for fun lol" and "whatever feels good" is their answer. They PvP in frigates because it's fun. They roam and kill frigates because it's fun. They fight on Arathi Basin bridge because it's fun.

On the other hand why do I earn money, raided in blues or without fixed group in WoW? What is the point?

We are mortal. We will die. Every single one of us. Despite various priests earn good money making you believe that you'll be living on a cloud with 77 virgins next to a beer river, you'll just cease to exist. In a game it's even faster: stop playing and you cease to exist for the rest of the players. Sure, if you made some impression, people will remember you after your departure. But they are mortal too and sooner or later you'll be forgotten. Everything you were will disappear without a trace.

The ancient Greek scientists like Archimedes perished more than two thousand years ago, yet not forgotten. Why? Not simply because they made an impression with their personal skills (anyone knows who won the ancient Olympic games?) but because their methods were adopted by many people generations after generations. When you use a fan too cool your room, you use an optimized version of the screw of Archimedes, designed to move fluids. The area of a triangle is still calculated by the method set by Pythagoras. The people didn't learn them because of respect or because they were forced to, but because these methods made their life easier. The name of the one who first grabbed a lightning-struck branch and carried to the camp of his tribe could not be remembered due to lack of literacy. But the fire he brought home shaped the life of everyone in that camp and their children and their children's children up to the current generation.

I wish to create replicating and spreading methods of doing things that survive me both in my profession and my hobby: internet gaming. Those who stopped boosting morons and slackers in WoW guilds after reading my blog, play differently due to my effort. They will also drag others to do so and by abandoning the M&S force them to find a new host or stop leeching. I realized and published that the EVE money is in highsec and nullsec is just a ghetto where impoverished youth brawling for street fame. From the fact I have so much haters (instead of just being ignored) it seems many victims stopped serving various manipulators and started to earn ISK and may also think about the social structure of the game itself (will no longer see nullsec fighters as badass kings of space but as brawling punks in a rust-zone block). Those tens of thousands who already read the World of Tanks cheat articles will no longer support a cheater organization and will look more critically to other cheating ones too.

In a month or two, no one will remember that you killed a T3 with a frig. In a year or two, no one will remember that you manipulated a bunch of people into a space empire (how many current EVE players know what "BoB" means, besides "some bad pubbie shit we hate"?) Similarly they will not remember that I killed 52B worth of ships all alone in a month. But they will know that you can get under the guns of a larger ship, leadership is about manipulation and the best way of getting a good killboard is ganking miners. People will be forgotten, but methods will live because they are useful.

What will be left of you after the last man who known you died?
Or less dramatically: what will be left of you in a game when your last buddy stopped playing?

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Herostratus approves this post.

Anonymous said...

What you write WOULD be true for your case, but it isn't. Why? Let's look objectively what value you added to the game. You have written posts about hisec trading, you have argued that hisec is where the money is, you have shown that it only takes to gank a few barges to get some number up on killboards. Of all that, which one was NOT common knowledge already? If someone is into trading, he knows how to do it or will read few more or less anonymous articles about it. Everyone, including CCP, knows where the money is. Everyone with a half of brain knows you can kill much more defenseless targets than fighting ones, thus scoring kills. So think about it - what exactly did you do, to be remembered? What exact method did you introduced, which weren't common knowledge already (not counting newbies, since they by definition know close to nothing)? I can tell you with absolute certainty, that you or you insights WON'T be remembered in the way you hope them to be. You will be remembered by few and in the most negative light, for reasons that might or might not be obvious (and no, it's not envy - nobody envies you). The question you should be asking is - what will you remember after YOU leave the game? Will you be happy, that you had fun and made some friends? Or will you remember that at the end your wallet balance was X and.. that's about it?

Gevlon said...

Unlikely. You and Mynnna might knew it, but the average player lived under the idea that nullsec alliances are extremely rich and they do the big PvP.

The idea that someone could make ISK and kills in the magnitude of whole alliances was literally laughed at as absurd until I did them.

Just because something is obvious in retrospective, it doesn't mean it was known back then.

Andru said...

Pythagoras could not care less that we use his theorem. He is dead. Even if we were to accept your theory (you influenced me so it might be true), it still does not answer "why".

No one outlives their own mortality.

Anonymous said...

"You and Mynnna might knew it, but the average player lived under the idea that nullsec alliances are extremely rich and they do the big PvP."

Well, we are and we do. Individual players may not be as rich as traders, not to mention industrialists and wormholers, but on the alliance level - we are. As for big PVP - no other group does it at that scale, so the premise is also true. But still, you just tried to evade the problem. And it is that to be remembered, you have to do something exceptional. You don't provide anything exceptional (I'm not counting negative input). Everything you say can be heard a million times over in EUNI, for example, or any other newbie corp/site.

"The idea that someone could make ISK and kills in the magnitude of whole alliances was literally laughed at as absurd until I did them."

It is still laughed at and it is still untrue. The different view is based on the definition of PvP. For you - these are ganks on defenseless victims. Sure, you can pad a killboard with those, but no one takes them as serious kills. And that's another example of why you will be remembered in a negative light. You see it as something spectacular, something worthy of bragging about, where the rest of the game sees that as a coward's excuse to PvP. Just read all those "hater" comments and think what they have in common, what their base is. People have been explicitly (like me now) and implicitly telling you that you accomplished something totally opposite of what you think. Yet, you still stand by your way (your post proves it) so you will never be taken seriously in this matter. You have reached the point that even if you somehow score more worthy solo kills than whole alliances as you claim (as far as I remember - you have only one against some idiot flying an inty against a dessie), nobody will even bother to check it out, never mind remembering it.

"Just because something is obvious in retrospective, it doesn't mean it was known back then."

True, but I have followed all your posts about Eve and I can tell you that everything you wrote is either obvious at the time of writing or plain wrong. If you think I'm mistaken, please provide an example of something new and exceptional (in a positive way).

Gevlon said...

@Andru: the method itself lives. The meme matters, not the carrier. Read Dawkins.

@Anonymous: PvP-ers always try to bend the definition to only fit to what they do, while what they do is exactly what I did: ganking. The Talos is having guns, but it does it no good when jumps into a gatecamp. A titan has the largest guns in the game and it still dies like an exhumer when lured into a gank. The SOLAR supercapital fleet at 1V didn't have any more chance of fighting back than a Retriever. PvP is ALWAYS over before it started.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon

It is you who is trying to reinvent PvP and make it fit for what you do. The baseline is simple - fight against something, which can defend itself. If you want recognition - fight against someone at the same level. If you want praise - fight against much tougher opponents. That is the most basic notion of Eve PvP. Surely there are gank-type fights, like blapping a BC with a Moros, but no one is expecting to be recognized as a skilled Pvper for them. On the other hand - you do. For you it's all about numbers. For the rest of us - it's not. You may say that you have 99.99% efficiency and billions upon billions of ISK destroyed. But one look at your killboard only makes people laugh at it.

"PvP is ALWAYS over before it started."

And this proves how little you know about PvP. This is exactly the type of a negative message you send into the world. If you want to know why you have so many haters and little to no supporters, reevaluate your approach to the game and the people in it. You make terribly wrong statements, like the one above (replace "ALWAYS" with "sometimes" and it will be true) and you fiercely defend it instead of listening to people with more knowledge. And that kind of messages resonate louder than anything insightful you post. Do you really want be remembered this way?

Gevlon said...

It's hard to listen to people who have no definitions or metric. Their statement is mostly "PvP is what I do and everyone else is blobber, ganker". Please link me some widely accepted rankings of EVE PvP-ers!

Anonymous said...

"It's hard to listen to people who have no definitions or metric."

It may be hard to listen, but it still doesn't prove them wrong. Is there any metric that defines a "good person"? No. They why it isn't hard to call someone that when it's obvious? The same applies to PvP. I have given you something of a definition. If you listen to PvPers, you'll find that it's pretty much it. Gankers don't fall into any of these categories and most of them realize it. You try to make your ganks PVP-worthy, but they're not. Literally everyone, who commented on this, told you the same thing (disregarding obvious trolls). You are the only one who claims otherwise, thus making and image of some crazy guy killing barges and claiming to be a PvPer. You must realize yourself that your number-based approach just doesn't fit all situations. You will not convince anyone to your claims, because they are just wrong. You ask me for a raking, which would show you some numbers. And I tell you - there isn't one. And there won't be exactly because of the reason I made here - you can't judge it by numbers. You have to look at the fight and understand it. Only then you can tell if it was a worthless gank or a brilliant act. Of course you can prove fights can be staged (which you did and it's another example of something that was already known at the time of writing), but then the question becomes - what for? To gain a moment of faked glory, which will be shattered the moment a real fight happens? Let me quote Margaret Thatcher, I hope you'll think about it for some time:

"Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't."

Unknown said...

Gevlon is suprisingly religious :D. Now i wonder if he is close to any world religion, or if that's a homebrewed neopagan thing.
---------

The guy who brought us the flame is remembered in the myth of Prometheus.

The only mythical figure that gets more cross-confessional respect than Prometheus is Jesus (the guy who basically turned on free will itself).

---------
@you can't outlive your own mortality
That largely depends on the definition of "you".

If you define yourself as a lump of flesh and eletrotransmission within, then yeah once the transmission stops and the flesh decays you're gone.
Thankfully, while you may have faith in that definition, i don't need to :P

--------
@the only thing that matters is what YOU remember
Tied to the previous notion in a weird knot.

In a strange confluence of logic, the very idea that you are null after you are dead gives ground to the idea that the only thing that matters is what fills your life now.

Oddly enough, you would think it should be the opposite. After all, if you are null after you die, then what you were before you were null doesn't matter. But that depends on locus of judgement. After all, a null can't judge it's own null status. Someone outside has to point and say "that guy is an irrelevant corpse now".

Can you point at anyone you know who died and call him an irrelevant corpse, without feeling your insides cringe? If you can, i pity you.

Unknown said...

You are looking at far too short of a measure of time. The earth itself is mortal. Evenetually Sol (our sun) will enter its red giant stage and destroy the Earth. There will simply be nothing left.

(And Dawkins currnet theory is that we were seeded her by intellegent aliens. I think I'll pass.)

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: but it seems like the definition is circle-jerking: the same people call themselves PvP-er, for no other reason than they are themselves. If they don't want to include you, they won't.

I was a "carebear" when I literally did not miss a pre-announced stratop in TEST. Why? Because the "right people" decided so.

Anonymous said...

" but it seems like the definition is circle-jerking: the same people call themselves PvP-er, for no other reason than they are themselves. If they don't want to include you, they won't. "

Not really. Even carebears understand that killing other ships that fight back is PvP. Everyone knows that winning against a tougher opponent is a greater achievement then winning against a defenseless one. The notion is as natural as the "good person" example I gave you. That MT quote really summed it up pretty good. If you need metrics, specifications or arbitrary numbers to call yourself a PvPer - you aren't.

Gevlon said...

But without definition what makes one PvP-er? You, anonymous can declare it?

Better question: I lost a gank against a miner who had no drones out, but launched ECM drones when I landed. Is he a PvP-er? Was I a PvP-er when fighting him? Since using ECM drones is available to all miners, how are they defenseless?

Anonymous said...

very very ungoblin.
The Sons of Gevlon will honor and remember him with battle songs and riddles. He and his beloved Gevlon-GF are the arch of true blooded antisocial ... that will last throughout their kin for ages.
So basically make children (allot!) ... indoctrinate them well and maybe some of your philosophy's will last.
Some very ungoblin stuff might help you ... like legacy heirlooms that will transport your teachings.
Seriously?

If you really want your stuff last for ages ... just don't. Look at stuff that already got misinterpreted allot today. All the scriptures of history. What ever historians wrote back then they really fucked up on the thought "what if my language and my concepts of thought are long gone? will any body understand it?" ... so some did thought about that and made some really fucked up kinky stories like adam and eve or elephant gods. Religion to far fetched? ... look at voyager 1 and it's contents that will hit interstellar plasma 2014 ... the CV of mankind/earth *sigh* *facepalm* ...

blogspot will be gone. in whatever digital format you will backup your blog nothing will interpret it correctly in 100 years. To understand this blog you really need more information too understand yours. Old posts and it's references (URL) are already broken, their reference and meaning are already gone. so ... well ... Gevlon doesn't look too good. Better start carving big chunks of crystal matter with your essentials now.

anyway good luck with this one ^^

Anonymous said...

"But without definition what makes one PvP-er? You, anonymous can declare it? "

I already gave you an example explanation. You still demand a specification or a metric. I can tell you this: start fighting people, who fight back. Win or loose - doesn't matter, just do it.

"Better question: I lost a gank against a miner who had no drones out, but launched ECM drones when I landed. Is he a PvP-er? Was I a PvP-er when fighting him?"

Same thing here - you still want a concrete description of something which, by nature, has none. In my opinion - no and no. He was still a miner, just with some lame attempt of a defense. He didn't want to shoot people, he wanted to mine and fend gankers off. If I scare a bear by shooting in the air, does that make me a bear hunter?
Were you a PvPer? No, you were and still are a ganker. You saw a defenseless miner and intended to gank him. Did you expect a good fight from him? Does beating up children on a street make one a boxer?

Sassafras1232 said...

I have to agree with Gevlon here, and disagree with all the pvp eliteists. What he was doing was pvp. He (as a player) was killing other players. Anything beyond that is just social convention that you are adding to the definition of pvp.

To extend the bear hunting analogy, if I go look for weak, sickly bears to hunt I am still a bear hunter. I am a lot safer than if i were to hunt healthy aggressive bears, but if i am killing bears i am a bear hunter. Being smart about fulfilling your goals does not invalidate your efforts.

Since, as Gevlon's critics are so quick to point out, Eve is a sandbox game getting as many kills as possible is just as valid a goal as any other.

Anonymous said...

"What he was doing was pvp. He (as a player) was killing other players. Anything beyond that is just social convention that you are adding to the definition of pvp. "

You are attacking semantics here. By that logic everything is pvp - traders and miners pvp, because they compete with other players.

"To extend the bear hunting analogy, if I go look for weak, sickly bears to hunt I am still a bear hunter."

Read again that bear analogy. Do you anywhere see the part about going out hunting? Why do you even think it was about Gevlon (it was about the miner)?

"Since, as Gevlon's critics are so quick to point out, Eve is a sandbox game getting as many kills as possible is just as valid a goal as any other. "

Nobody disagrees with that. Just don't call it what it isn't. If he likes to have thousands of ganks, it's ok - that's his playstyle. But what does that have to do with killboards of whole alliances, I don't know. He's doing something totally different than them, so it's comparing apples to oranges.

Syeira said...

Just wanted to drop a line and say thanks for this update and to report back to a GM and blogger I learned a great deal from. At least philosophically.

I played with Gevlon during wrath of the lich king during the PvP project, inglorious gankers on a rogue called Syeira

What I took most was the definitions of players, M&S and social and the casual/Hardcore.

Using the methods I learned I went on to create and lead a guild in wow for Cata, I didn't follow them as strictly as gevlon but I did follow them to success.

I still do and have passed on this blog and it's philosophy's to all gamers I play with, we have adopted the antiM&S and continue to do well.

Three years later it was still a fantastic learning experience

Anonymous said...

if this whole discussion proves anything at all, it is that there is no definition of what a carebear or pvp'er is.

if anyone feels like calling himself the one or the other - do as you like. i mean, it's a sandbox. whether you think of yourself as a carebear, a pvp'er, a wannabe-hitler or just a poohead - won't change how i like to play the game, and it shouldn't affect your way neither.


@gevlon: sorry to say, but in your postings you often miss to first give a definition of the things that you are talking about - which is something absolutely vital - which is a bit sad, because your blog (most of the time) is a pleasure to read - but it totally kills the discussion.


@everyone: your way of playing the game isn't the only one, it's not the best, not the worst, not right and not wrong - it's just one of many many thousand; get over it.


@gevlon: after reading your blog for allmost a year by now, i must ask you something:
do you actually enjoy playing the game?

Anonymous said...

Why would people whose goal is social fulfillment wish for anything to outlast their social engagement with the game? They chat, post cat pictures, go on roams, pad their killboards, do 1v1 elite pvp honour duels or what have you, "for fun". Then they stop playing and move onto something else more fun. What's the point of leaving a legacy if you're not around to enjoy it?

Meanwhile you toil and blog and gnash your teeth at the people who disagree with you and who make fun of you for treating this like serious business. But the thing is, even if you're right and your methods catch on, the vast majority of people won't remember your name any more that the name of the person who invented spider tanking. Turns out you're right, but you'll get no public acknowledged validation. Then years down the line the game shuts down and people won't even remember the methods anymore.

So what? Why do you care?

Unknown said...

@Ted Atchley
>> You are looking at far too short of a measure of time. The earth itself is mortal. Evenetually Sol (our sun) will enter its red giant stage and destroy the Earth. There will simply be nothing left.
>> (And Dawkins currnet theory is that we were seeded her by intellegent aliens. I think I'll pass.)

By the time the Sun will start imploding, humanity will already be in a position to do something about it.
Required reading:
Azimov "A choice of catastrophes"
Arkadiy and Boris Strugackiys: "One billion years before the end of the world"

One thing that needs to be understood, though, is that if humanity is ever to be in a position to do anything about cosmic level events, it needs to keeps learning and evolving new methods.
Mindless ego-driven PvP is actually counterproductive to movement in that direction.

Unknown said...

@Anon talking about PvP and boxing

Boxing is very clearly defined. Yet you, mr.Anon, say that PvP cannot have a definition.

If PvP is like boxing, then you should be able to provide a ruleset (f/ex "stay in the ring", "wear gloves", "no hits below the belt", "no kicks" etc.). Otherwise the analogy is faulty.

If you can't provide a ruleset and insist that PvP cannot be defined, then you'll have to agree that it's not like boxing at all.
What makes boxing different from beating up kids on the street is exactly a well-defined ruleset. If PvP doesn't have a well-defined ruleset, what makes it different from ganking?

Anonymous said...

@Maxim Preobrazhenskiy

You are right to some extent. There has to be "something" to differentiate boxers from non-boxers. But it doesn't have to be a metric or a written specification and that's my message here. You can say a boxer is someone who fights other boxers, you can say it's someone starting in tournaments, you can also say it's someone who does "amateur boxing" on the streets for money. In all cases you would be right from a given perspective. There would be no single definition here, just a fluid notion. But is there some common knowledge naming people who beat up little children, boxers? I don't think so. The same goes for PvP. If you actively seek fights with people who fight back, you will be called a PvPer, despite there is no rule saying that a PvPer is someone who actively looks for fights (although it looks pretty accurate). If you shoot defenseless barges, you're no different than a school bully who prays on the weak. Can he honestly be called a real fighter?

Unknown said...

Boxers fighting other boxers involves rules (you only fight boxers).
Tournaments involve rules.
Amateur boxing on the streets for money also involves rules (spectators, ring, money get exchanged).

Sure, there are different perspective on what a boxer is, but all of them involve rules.

Unless you can name one which doesn't.

------------

"Defenseless barges" have subscribed to the game, the rules of which allow being attacked at any moment.
They are doing the equivalent of going into the boxing ring without gloves, protection and any intent to fight.

Sure, wrecking them makes a poor show, but similarly how there are boxers out there who make a living taking out noobs, there can easily be gankers who make their fun taking out people who forgot they are supposed to be in a vicious free-for-all universe.

Gank targets are still in the ring and still operating under the game's ruleset. Pretending they are somehow not viable PvP targets is trying to bend the game's intended rules to what you like. Which is perfectly okay, human beings are all about bending the rules. You just need to get specific about how exactly you'd prefer them bent.

Anonymous said...

"Sure, there are different perspective on what a boxer is, but all of them involve rules."

...making the overall rules (or general description) fluid, as I said. The rules, you talk about, can describe specifics, like how to fight with X using Y.

""Defenseless barges" have subscribed to the game, the rules of which allow being attacked at any moment."

Nobody is denying that. Ganking is a part of the game. I have no problem with that. If someone wants to be a ganker, let him be one.

"Pretending they are somehow not viable PvP targets is trying to bend the game's intended rules to what you like."

Again, nobody is saying that they are not targets (or should not be targets). Nobody wants to bend any game mechanic. But, as you said:

"Sure, wrecking them makes a poor show"

Unknown said...

We seem to have arrived at the notion that your definition of "true PvP" implies "good show".

Would you agree with this?

Anonymous said...

"We seem to have arrived at the notion that your definition of "true PvP" implies "good show".

Would you agree with this?"

I'd rather not, because we might stumble upon no definition of what a good show is and we're be back where we stood before. Although, conceptually, we most likely "feel" what it is and implicitly agree on that. So I will say "no" if it would lead to another "what's the definition of X" debate and "yes" if we agree on our natural understanding.

Unknown said...

So i'll have to conclude that you just don't like definitions and prefer to go with "feelings".

That's ok as long as the intent to just have fun. That does not satisfy me as a game designer, though.

Anonymous said...

"So i'll have to conclude that you just don't like definitions and prefer to go with "feelings".

That's ok as long as the intent to just have fun"

That was my way all along.

"That does not satisfy me as a game designer, though."

Why should it? We're looking at it from a player perspective, where no such definitions are necessary. Gevlon may claim to be a pvper, nobody will believe him by looking at his KB and all will be within the game itself. Why should a game designer formalize such thing? Stiff rules work badly in sandboxes.