Greedy Goblin

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Class struggle in EVE Online

Marx would love to play EVE nowadays, because everything he preached came true with the declaration of the nullsec leaders. These leaders have overcame their "ethnic" boundaries, recognized their common class interest as bourgeois and now demand changes that are good for all of them at the expense of line members in all alliances: the proletarians. The critics of their declaration feel that it is wrong, but can't prove it because they still think in "national/ethnic" terms (GSF vs N3). It doesn't work that way. This proposal isn't aimed to help GSF against Nulli or GSF against PASTA. Its aimed to help The Mittani against line Goons and to help Vince against line NC. members.

You must see that the largest income source of alliance leaders are members. They click the "PLEX" link which give the leaders affiliate money, they visit the ad-riddled propaganda sites and they pay the ratting tax that can be used for "purposes". Renters and moons just supplement it, both because they aren't loyal (they can switch or can be taken) and because they pay in ISK instead of PLEX-affiliate $ or ad-clicks. If N3/PL would completely drive out CFC from Sov-null, Vince and Grath would get the ISK from the renters and moons, but they would never get PLEX-affiliate money, ad-clicks or tax money from CFC members. The CFC members would either follow their leaders to lowsec or quit playing. This makes the conflict negative-sum. If either CFC or N3/PL would be destroyed, the sum of the $ income of Mittani, Vince and Grath would decrease, as the $ of the inactive/quiting/moving to FW members would be lost for all of them. The winner would get a slight increase, the loser would have a large loss. As they have much more to lose than win, they are all interested in upkeeping the status quo.

This is in direct conflict with the interest of their line members. The line PL and NC. members are eager to get revenge for B-R. They didn't rebuilt their titans for ship spinning. Similarly the CFC members haven't joined to shoot red crosses, but to ride with the 1000 Megathrons. The social contract between line members and leaders is "we pay you tax and grind structures, you provided us awesome fights". If the signatories would just announce "we won't fight anymore, we'll just rat all day" their members would quit overnight.

To prevent this, they agreed to not attack the Sov of each other and satisfy the bloodthirst of their members with staged fights and lolroams. They signed the BoTLord treaty to guarantee that no real fight will ever happen in New Eden again. Fate is wicked. Only 10 days later mistakes were made by mid-level managers and FCs and the signatories were facing 11T ISK reimbursement costs. They also remembered the Falcon incident: at any point one of them can lose his nerve and perform a knee-jerk action ruining coalitions. This time they want systematic checks and balances hard-coded into the game that protect their status and income forever against human mistakes of both their underlinks and their own. They want CCP to guarantee that there won't be a single major fight again.

Their suggestion wishes to reach it by separating their armies regions away. With "increased player density" all CFC can rat in Deklein, all PL/BoT can rat in The Spire and all N3/NA can rat in Omist, making any kind of random conflict impossible. The other regions would be available to terribad alliances who serve as easy food for bloodthirsty members. Dunking them is possible even for a junior FC, so reimbursement costs are low, capital subsidies aren't needed.

In the meantime, ratting greatly increases due to safe use of (super)capitals. 50 Nyxes in a fleet, each in its own anom, warping to the tackled one cannot be killed by anyone within 5 region ranges, so they can keep on ratting with even a small gang in local. This means greatly increased tax income with greatly decreased Sov costs. As there would be barely any structures to maintain, no strategic fleets to lead, no capital ops to plan, leaders would have no work, just income.

The other winners are the terribad wannabe-leaders. Arthasdklól, freshly switching from WoW can start a REAL NULLSEC SOVHOLDER CORP with his local-chat recruited buddies and take a system in the buffer regions. While they'll be routinely farmed, no one wants to take their Sov or structures, so Arthasdklól can be a proud FC and REAL NULLSEC CEO. Needless to say how much fun his corpmates will have in this process. Please understand that "new corp/alliance" means "new corp/alliance leader" and not "new line member". Line members already have the options to join nullsec corps that function at a level above Somalia. They have no interest in the success of their current terribad corp, actually their interest is to get out and find a functional one. Only the leader has interest in the success of the corp.

So with this shameless proposal the main winners are the bourgeois who will profit from the highly productive mechanized (Nyx) and socialized production performed by the proletariat. The lesser winners are the petit bourgeois who can now have the status of REAL NULLSEC CEO without being any good. The losers will be the proletarians who will forever be abused into shooting red crosses and lolroams without any hope for anything remotely resembling the fights they heard about and joined for.

Workers of the World, Unite!

PS: why would I support the worker class against the "bourgeois"? Because EVE isn't real life but a video game. If production increases and combat decreases, that's very good in real life. But horrible for a video game. Video games must have conflict coded into them and this proposal would remove all conflict from nullsec.

8 comments:

maxim said...

Good post in general :)

The only bit i'd argue is that too little conflict IRL made entire societies commit seppuku out of sheer boredom in the past history.

Wonder if that is going to be reversed now that a lot of innate human desire for increasing complexity (and therefore change and therefore conflict) is being channeled through games.

Anonymous said...

"to guarantee that no real fight will ever happen in New Eden again"

Have you even read the botlord agreement? The agreement says nothing of the sort and claiming it does is pure tinfoil.

Gevlon said...

The treaty explicitly bans moving strategic fleets to the space of another. Tell me, how can you have real fight without strategic fleets?

Borachon said...

And as proof of this, there have clearly been no real fights between CFC and PL/N3 since b0tlord was signed.

Anonymous said...

If your scenario becomes real I would expect CFC and N3/PL occacionally line their titans in a war between Arthasdklól and another nobody. Eve media sites and Plex affiliates need publicity. A third party titan fight wont risk the position of their power blocks and turns excess isk to more useful advertisement income.

Anonymous said...

"The treaty explicitly bans moving strategic fleets to the space of another. Tell me, how can you have real fight without strategic fleets?"
Botlrd only covers renters and key strategic systems. It's an agreement to make sure both sides can continue making heavy income, since if either side wanted to they could disrupt renters far easier than core systems. Since neither side wants to be the only remaining null powerblock, this agreement is in place. Fighting between the actual main coalitions themselves is mostly unrestricted, hence the many many battles that have occurred while the agreement has been in place.

Anonymous said...

Dude, please stop saying people want to rat in Nyx's.
That hasn't been a thing in years.
Fighter bombers suck at killing rats. Fighters also suck at killing rats. And super carriers can't field normal drones.

Carriers, sure. You can rat in them. An afktar will make more isk per hour though, when you calculate warping and member of completed sites per hour, ultimately more isk per hour.

Anyway, I believe your overall "they want more isk", but that's the only part.
What do you do with isk? You can tinfoil and say rtm. That's not true either. CCP would ban them. They don't need that, they get money from ads on their sites and forums.
So what do you do with your isk? Buy war toys. To use war toys.
So, yes, they may want their members to make isk, so they make isk, so they can go to war.
I've been in wars, and I've ratted.
Having 1 pvp and 1 pve toon, you get to rat AND pvp when a ping goes out.

These people are just like everyone else. They just want to ultimately have fun. Do what you need to do, to have fun.

Gevlon said...

Fighters don't suck in killing battleship rats, especially when they are target painted. Everything else can be smartbombed.