Greedy Goblin

Friday, December 11, 2015

Monetization vs meritocracy

There is a first-hand report with the telling title "Why We Left The Imperium". It is written by an SMA FC whose corp, along with another SMA corps left and created ChaosTheory., currently living in Fountain and without doubt PvP-ing a lot.

He claims that they have PvP-ed a lot in SMA and they were proud of their situation. But then "the performance based reward system was trashed, and was replaced by a bare minimum standard" and "SMA started recruiting. A lot. We would recruit from renters like Shadow of Death, from fail-cascading alliances, like Gclub and Brave, but mostly from highsec.", "numbers swelled from less than 2500 to over 5500 ... despite all this, the average fleet numbers hardly changed, jumping from ~90 to ~120. Fleet compositions like skilled HAC/T3 doctrines with T2 logistics and dedicated support frigates used to be our go-to doctrine. With the increased numbers this instead became 30 Drakes, 10 Scimitars and 80 frigates."

This change affected his corp too: "A change to the participation (PAP) metric used by the alliance meant we no longer needed to go on every fleet called by FCs. The required participation levels dropped to quarter of what they used to be ". To battle this they started corp fleets but it wasn't enough. "something drastic needed to be done" and they left.

But what happened? What ruined SMA? He blames Aegis Sov and ADM fleets, but it's wrong. That should be more fleets, not less. Sure, an ADM ratting fleet isn't something a PvP-er wishes, but he can still fly PvP fleets while the newcoming carebears fill the ADM fleets. This should be a good thing! The real reason is the trashing of the performance based system and recruiting every warm body, the new standard of the whole Imperium. While older ages bad corps and alliances (or ones they wrongfully identified bad like MoA and Ducks) were dumped, now there is no such thing, anyone are welcomed!

Why did the once mighty CFC sank to the level of a Looking For Raid in WoW? Why is it bleeding PvP corps and top FCs? Monetization. The morons and slackers are invited and kept without demanding any performance because they are clicking PLEX links and generating ad revenues while getting propaganda on TMC. In-game performance isn't needed for that. The guy who just lol around in a frigate without any skill or purpose is actually more valuable than a multiboxing ratter or a top PvP-er, since he'll surely need PLEX-es to fund whatever nonsense he made up and he'll more likely to hang out watching some stream on TMC than in a fleet doing something.

The Emporium is weak. They no longer have PvP-ers. They lost half of their land. Their Providence campaign was a disaster. Their Burn Amarr was a disaster. Their lowsec campaing is a complete disaster. Their ratting income per member is much lower than nullsec average. The only reason they are still on the map is that they made treaties with those groups that could destroy them. Treaties that aren't about pixel moons or Sov. In this safety they can keep decreasing standards and increasing $ revenues.

Who are to blame? You, for still being in these monetization-pacified "enemies" instead of in MoA, Snuff, Project Mayhem or OOS who are undocking every day against 5x outnumbering enemy fleets and win. If the people who GRR on reddit would actually join a group that fights or financially supporting one, Goons would be over in a few months, defeated, scattered, humiliated, crying like a Sion. They have no fighting force left, not me saying this, but those who were their fighting force.

I already put more than 1T of my money where my mouth is. Your turn! Pull your heads out of Reddit and either kill a Goon (or minion) today with your own ship or donate to those who do. Let's finish this hive of morons and slackers off! I've even figured out a great name for the coalition against Goons:

The Community



16 comments:

Jim L said...

The reason the CFC changed their requirements were because of Ageis SOV. With Ageis SOV, carebear activities are just as important as fleet activities becuase they increase indicies.

Stan vanderVille said...

I have no idea, why you insist on your statement, that every imperium member is buying plex from the mittani site. Thats even technically not trivial for most of us. Besides tax reasons there is also the thing that i never would provide my credit card data to a "random" website nor would i use paypal and any other shady stuff like this. So the only secure way is to buy it from CCP. That's it. No one I ever talked to is buying from mittani.

Besides this point: I have no wish to fly in a so called "elite-PVP" corp. It simply does not fit into my RL. It is impossible to hit the one fleet per day together with people who can easily fly around until midnight.

As many others i can only afford two or three evenings per week for pixel games. This fits perfectly to being in imperium. You can safely be away for a few days and can still be sure, that your sov is still there and if you are logged in, you can be sure that there is a chance to contribute to the alli efforts. Even if this might be a POS shoot. So what? It's also fun to hang around with these guys in coms.
I don't need to be the richest eve player, most elite pvp-er, best miner to enjoy this game. So what is you problem with people who just play eve with limited time but still enjoy it? I just have fun in being able to pvp when i can, to rat when i can, to do whatever i like in eve when i can. It is the biggest degree of freedom if you do this in imperium.

Gevlon said...

@Jim L: Aegis only changed the TYPE of the fleets instead of their number. The same or more Paplinks should be demanded, it's just for mining and ratting fleets.

@Stan: I never did claim that every member does so. However I do claim that lots of people do buy via affiliates, or there would be no affiliates. Remember SOMER who made stupid money as Markeedragon affiliate. It's also reasonable to claim that if an Imperium member uses an affiliate link, he'll do it on TMC.

And The Imperium is the only place which is not Elite PvP?

Monkey said...

Actually, what SMA did was introduce the bare minimum for staying in, but still rewarding corps who performed better. It is now up to individual corps to push their members, making each corp much more autonomous but still working towards spoils by contributing to the alliance but now in a much more dynamic way. The reason fleet numbers dropped is because there were more fleets (there are actually far far far more fleets now than ever before) at any one time because individual corps had much more control over the types of fleet they wanted to put in for. Having read that report, it sounds like the reason they left is down to a knee-jerk reaction to a change they didn't understand, but a change which made SMA significantly better managed.

Cathfaern said...

Semi-Theoritical question:
I'm not playing EVE, have no account, ships, friends in EVE, etc. But I read your blog, and it would sounds fun to join the Anti-CFC campaign (exactly because it sounds like I can influence the "ingame lore" which you can't do in most game). So questions:
1. How much time would it take to get skills, ISK, etc. to actually join the fights? (suppose I want to spend RL money only to subscription)
2. What ships should I get, which skills should I learn, etc? In short: is there any guide / blog how to be a good Anti-CFC pilot?

The second question could be interesting for current high-sec dwellers too who get interested in to join the fight.

Anonymous said...

"It's also reasonable to claim that if an Imperium member uses an affiliate link, he'll do it on TMC."

Why?

Could you please show us on the affiliate link page from CCP, where TMC is listed? Perhaps I need my eyesight checked, but of the 16 affiliates, and 2 wholesalers, I don't see TMC listed, nor do I see a PLEX link on his page.

Banedon said...

@Cathfaern

To have at least SOME affect on the battle field? You're pretty much good to go the moment you finish making a character. You'll be flying a small ship, with crap equipment, minimal upgrades and boosts, and have no understanding of what you're looking at or doing. But you'll be able to inflict damage, get on kill mails, and most importantly LEARN.

If you want to have all the skills, to the highest level, for the biggest ships, as well as cross-train the various races and factions? That takes literally years, even with max stat implants to shrink your training times.

There is no special guide to be a good anti-CFC pilot. There is only the guide to be a good pilot.

Step #1 is LEARN.
Step #2 is Pause every now and then to verify #1 is still true.

The best 'newbie skill guides' I've found are these:

http://blog.beyondreality.se/Newbie-skill-plan-2 - Newbie Skill Plan
http://blog.beyondreality.se/EVE-Skills-1-Ranks
http://blog.beyondreality.se/EVE-Skills-2-Levels
http://blog.beyondreality.se/EVE-Skills-3-Catching-up

Also, while I think the blog author is delusional, this is a good write-up here:
http://www.minerbumping.com/2015/10/catalyst-training-under-new-system.html

Finally, hit up Eve-Uni in game, and out of game look at their wiki:
http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Main_Page

Have a nice day.

Anonymous said...

Please show us proof of these PLEX links you go on about. I mean actual proof. Show us where these links are, because I have never been told or asked to buy a plex while in the Imperium.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: are you troll or just dumb? It's on www.themittani.com, top right written in blue, under the H1Z1 logo. It says "PLEX" and it leads to Amazon with TMC referral link.

Anonymous said...

"@Anonymous: are you troll or just dumb? It's on www.themittani.com, top right written in blue, under the H1Z1 logo. It says "PLEX" and it leads to Amazon with TMC referral link."

most of the guys dont even go to mittani.com
why should they and I?

Gevlon said...

You come to this blog but not to TMC. Seems legit.

Anonymous said...

I still don't see where it is required for Goons to buy PLEX from the Mittani

Gevlon said...

It is not. It's just convenient.

Anonymous said...

I come to this blog and don't go to TMC, though I was in PL from the start of my time in Eve until recently. The quality of the TMC articles dropped in late 2013 when they fired everyone with more than three neurons to rub together. There isn't anything worth reading on TMC anymore. You aren't always right and are often blind to your own irrationality but you are a much more original, creative, and entertaining writer. A fine example of this irrationality is your post at 17:57, which implies that the entire CFC consists of illiterates who can't see the huge quality gap between your writing and the dross on TMC. It isn't a difficult notion that in such a huge player base there should be a decent population able to understand that TMC isn't worth the time to browse through it.

I do wish you would get a native English speaker to polish up the occasional grammatical mistakes. I understand you speak English far better than I speak Hungarian but if I were trying to publicly communicate in Hungarian I would be damn sure I had a native I knew and respected check for typos and simple errors.

Anonymous said...

Anon you are only reinforcing the original point. If the product quality is bad then the only way to make the same money is get more and more customers through the door and hope some still buy = more recruiting.

Stan vanderVille said...

Goblin, you can think what you want, but I also didn't visit mittani website.
Sometimes i read news from there as feed to my eve-news app on the mobile.
And if it is indeed a link to amazon then certainly to not amazon.de and therefore no chance for being used.

But true is also: No one ever begged or forced or somehow told me in my whole time in CFC/Imperium to buy plex from there.
As stated earlier: I subscribed at CCP and thats all. They are providing the game and the service to me. The in-game service provided by being in Imperium is a "play"-service and is served be my ingame activities (pap links, taxes). That seems to me appropriate and reasonable.
And also said earlier: I never meet one who buy plex for playtime. They buy it for ISK or just subscribe. But maybe this is a specific regional speciality... I don't know.