Greedy Goblin

Thursday, April 21, 2016

You can make difference or money. But never both.

Jester is being smug at the expense of the Mittani. He is quoting old Mittani posts where the 2009 Mittani is giving good advices that the recent Mittani clearly ignored. The laughter is obviously overwhelming the topic. However the question is that The Mittani went demented over these years or what?

No. I'm sure he still remembers his old advises and remembered them when he broke them. I'm completely sure that one day he made a conscious decision to sacrifice what he built or at least willfully risk it in order to make real world money.

While Darius JHONSON and other old Goons pop up from the past and claim credit for creation of the once unstoppable Goonswarm, I don't believe them. If The Mittani just stole their work, it should have rot under him and it didn't. It stood high and unbeaten until The Mittani himself decided to abuse it for a "multi-thousand dollar empire". The "March-April rebels" are now compensating for their former inaction with hate and badposting. Me, after leaving the game and seeing my plans fulfilled (unfortunately, not by myself), I have the luxury of seeing him without hate. He isn't the failure everyone pictures him now. He built something that most people can't even comprehend. I have this weird feeling that he is not much unlike me, he came here with the goal to make difference: to break down the corrupted and obnoxious BoB, form an Empire for his people and he succeeded.

Unfortunately after BoB and later HBC was defeated, he didn't start a new project or left the game. Instead he tried to get money of it. Why? I can't tell. I guess when he left his job he had enough money to plan for a long term. Did he waste it on yacht parties and had to sell his work for food? This case simply becoming a dev would have been a better option. With his experience, it wouldn't be hard to get a consultant job at any AAA studio.

I'm afraid hubris got on him and he imagined that he can turn his in-game empire into a real-world media empire. Not a "multi-thousand" hilarity but a real one with millions of visitors and billion dollar buyout or whatnot. Anyway, his focus turned from making something great in game to make money of it.

Monetizing games is a nasty business, because those who pay are necessarily bad players. Good players win by their skills and have no reason to pay for anything but the game access itself. It's bad players who buy boost packs or enjoy high level play only as a viewer of some stream instead of being the player on it. There are huge arguments over "who is a good player", you can fill a forum with the feud of high ISK ratio players and those who value winning hard fights. But this argument is over what shall a good player do, there is no argument that a ganker is good in miner ganking, just over the worth of the activity. Bad players are bad in what they choose to do: I mean if you choose to make ISK and what you do is ratting for 50M/hour, you suck! Most bad players don't even form criteria or plans: they just hang around and do whatever they please in that moment.

Such morons and slackers are horrible for any group for two reasons: at first - like inactives - they inflate the size of the group, giving the false sense of power to the group and the false sense of accomplishment to the enemies. I mean "we are 40K" made Imperium members feel unstoppable and made them believe that they can get away with any nonsense. On the other hand "we are pwning 40K with 1K" made MoA members feel like they are the warriors of Leonidas himself. Had the Imperium fired 10K inactives and 20K M&S, both motivations were greatly decreased without Goons losing any power.

Secondly and more importantly, M&S radiate the culture of stupidity and slacking. When there are 100 on alliance chat and 80 in fleet, a social person fleets up too, because that's the norm. When there are the same 80 in fleet but from the alliance chat of 500, the norm is to not fleet up and to label the people in fleet "tryhards". Similarly if everyone is losing stupid fit ships left and right to MoA, to highsec deccers and to rats without consequence, the players feel that learning to play is elitism, "being a smartass" and they willfully ignore available materials. Social people are simple: they stay with the flock, no matter what. If the flock performs, they perform. If the flock slacks, they slack. If the flock is a bunch of lemmings rushing for the sea, they jump too. This can only be prevented by constantly cleaning the herd from bad eggs who start bad behaviors.

The moment The Mittani decided to monetize, he had to recruit and tolerate M&S to click ads, PLEX links and streams. He had to give up the good practices he championed. Goonswarm was filled with M&S (Goons would use "pubbies" and "J4G") without help. Awesome FCs were replaced by that idiot with funny hats. They had to gather useless allies for the same purpose, despite knowing full well that pets are a road to failure. The empire of The Mittani was doomed to fail and I believe he knew it. He just hoped that TMC will be ready to stand on its own feet before Goonswarm collapses. He was wrong and now lost everything.

Does that mean that if you monetize, you are doomed to fail? Of course not, otherwise all real World companies would fail too. Monetizing works as long as you don't plan to make waves. An RMT-er who silently rats with a dozen of bots in some rented system can go on for long. The ad-monetizing streamer who just roams with his followers with no goal besides "gudfites" can do it forever too. Monetizing isn't impossible, what's impossible is monetizing and doing something noteworthy.

You must decide: do you want to get rich, or do you want to make difference? You can have one, but can't have both. If you try, you'll have nothing, like The Mittani.


Update: you can tell the same about "make difference or be famous". I tested strategies against Goons for years. I spent over a trillion before the winning combination (NPC living, high stat mercenary groups hunting line members instead of structures) was found. It worked and Goons are now down. Who takes credit? Someone I haven't even heard of before. (Eep deserves credit for the SMA war, that started the dogpiling) This guy simply dumped a bunch of money on Mercenary Coalition (I had to look this group up, they did less damage than The Culture or Shadow Cartel) and PL who appeared only where the Goons were routed already. His contribution served only one purpose: to get him a name. He didn't just outshadowed me and MoA, but even Eep and TISHU! Could I do the same? Sure, if I didn't spend my first trillion in the last two years but use it to trade, I'd have about 4T by now (I had 1T left after the war). Then I just had to wait for the cracks to appear and pour all 4T on PL with fanfares and bang, the credit is mine! Of course without any real effect, just like with this Lenny Kravitz2 guy, who did absolutely nothing for the fall of Goons. When he hired the useless MC and the "attack only when victory is 99.99% sure PL", the fate of Goons was already sealed. They just killmail whored. But here's the catch: if everyone waits for someone else to open the crack, the crack is never opened. The Goons were defeated only because I threw away the fame for the goal. Yes, seeing an absolutely non contributing killmail whore taking credit for my work, stinks (Eep/TISHU did actually restart the snowball and deserve credit). But you know what? The Goons are still dead and everyone in EVE still learned that "40K friends < 4T ISK" (meaning 1 friend is worth about 100M). And that's what matters. The question is: do you want to matter or do you want others think that you mattered. It's likely you won't have both.

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gevlon, long time reader (back to your WoW days), first time commenter. It's up to you if you make this comment public or not, but I just wanted to let you know about a project I've started ingame that could be an answer to your concerns about a "New Jita" destroying the metagame. A charity trade hub, a pure freeport that will charge everyone the same taxes and give profits to PLEX for Good and is supported by ingame charitable groups like Broadcast 4 Reps and Care 4 Kids.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/4fpkzm/announcing_charity_citadel_benefiting_plex_for/

https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=478046&find=unread

Unknown said...

You could absolutely do both. The problem is that most people get corrupted, stop focusing on changing the world and start focusing on the money. This is where the fault lies.

Provi Miner said...

its funny you put it that way "money or a difference". I am reminded of the first public library I ever visited (there is a small plaque that says "donated to the city of X by the Carnage foundation" Same with Hurst's and Rockefellers all were nasty nasty creatures that valued money over nearly everything else then when they "won" their game they used that money to make a difference and they did. I am also reminded of Mother Terhessa the most selfish person I have ever seen in the world. She was offered a rare chance to save tens of thousands instantly and because she was to selfish to give of herself just one more piece (a book, she wouldn't even have to write it just answer questions and someone else would write it, she was offered six figures for herself or to her charity and she said not because it wouldn't be in accordance with her sacrifices) somehow I think that a book (that was written anyways making millions for the author and book company)wouldn't have changed her. but meh perspective is the answer.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: I wish you luck. But you will fail, because your citadel will be wardecced by PL or the remnant of Goons if they are still capable or whatnot. No one passes on T/month just because of charity.

@Niko: both activities need effort, something that you have in limited supply. So while you can do both if you have the moral of a Saint, you'll still be mediocre in both.

@Provi Miner: Carnegie and the rest of the billioners got rich first and then got poor by changing the World. He told it explicitly: "Die rich, die disgraced" http://streamhistory.com/die-rich-die-disgraced-andrew-carnegies-philosophy-of-wealth/

Anonymous said...

Your plan was solid, you just did not have the means to pay for them. To be fair, a single person playing legitemately and not through exploitation of other players (casinos, gambling, etc) possibly can't afford to pay 300 billion ISK a week for months. But what you did got proofed by others and that's great.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: there was no need for 300B/week. MoA could break Goons from 12B/week and only Falcon saved them in August. Eep dropped 1T on TISHU to completely obliterate SMA, something I could also do (I admit, I never thought of focusing on SMA, I should have). Lenny did absolutely nothing. He merely bought himself a sponsorship, those who were killing Goons anyway did so with his name on their shirts. Or do you think PL would have stayed out of it when everyone and his mother was already pwning Goons?

Anonymous said...

there's many "names" (and wannabe names) claiming victory for them bringing down Goons. None of them did.
We, the players, did.
But for what? What's next? PL?
@Gevlon: we do know what you have done for the game, for us all, and we salute you for it. Don't worry about the wannabe's out there. They'll go away. Your name will always be rememberd. o7

Gevlon said...

@Anon: no it won't be. It's already forgotten. But "money > friends" will never be forgotten and that's what matters.

Anonymous said...

What you describe is "belling the cat". Same reason an airplane full of people could stop 3 hijackers armed with pocket knives if they want, but the ones who go first will be stabbed and die, even though plane passengers will be guaranteed successful in the end. Therefore no one goes first and nothing happens.

Despite what happens you and MOA always be remembered as people who did SOMETHING against goons while everyone sat for years saying, "cna't be done", "will be boring", "too much work, just want to 3rd party instead".

Unknown said...

If Gevlon and Mordus Angels are not recognized as laying the foundation leading to the fall of the CFC/Imperium, then someone got their history wrong. You did good work Gevlon.

Any Charity Citadel, if it were to survive at all, should be named: "Gevlon was Right".

Anonymous said...

IMO, "Had the Imperium fired 10K inactives and 20K M&S, both motivations were greatly decreased without Goons losing any power." is giving into the socials the same way as measuring epeen with a killboard.

A corp with 10K active members and 50k inactive is stronger than a corp with just the 10k actives. Inactives drift back into the game every month; they are more likely to work in the corp if they are still in it rather than need to reapply. Similarly, if a 45% killboard baddie were to join the corp that is still increasing the damage the corp can do; all that is harmed is the social's kb epeen.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: indeed. But you can't have a 40K rational group because you don't have that many rationals. You need to work with socials and that needs strict rules to avoid slacking and stupid stuff

Unknown said...

Gevlon, you were right, about the CSM election: just about every goon that ran got in. Looks like I wasted my time trying to run.

Anonymous said...

Mittani's attempts to monetize goons have been painfully obvious for the last year or so, and goons have been circling the drain since then. It drove out the people who actually got shit done, and attracted people who just wanted the complete security of an "unbeatable" empire. As much as people want to hype a civil war/coup scenario, people like Darius Johnson will probably just filter into "bittergoon" corps like Black Omega. Mittens isn't going anywhere.

The LennyKravitz stuff is mostly being overblown by the media outlets IMO. There was another, more detailed interview with him today. It was less "I AM THE PUPPETMASTER OF MBC" and more along the lines of "people in IWI were pissed at goons+co, and they went through me because I already had contacts in the mercenary community." Its easier and more click-baity for a news site to say that one guy is the mastermind than explain the massive snowball that has been building up for the last 6 months.

I think you are being a bit harsh on MC/PL though. Simply having NC+PL in the area was a big deal because it keeps the goon capitals in hiding. Before their arrival, supercapitals was one area where goons still held a significant advantage over LSV+friends. Killing pilots' desire to log in and fight is what will be needed to truly kill goons, and having enemy titans drive-bying your home station with impunity can't be good for morale.

As for Mercenary Coalition (and PL), your definition of usefulness continues to elude me. You shit on MC for being #11 on your damage list, as well as PL despite them being #2. For the larger fights like M-O, MC and Dead Terrorists were heavily involved in the entosis and interception fleets rather than the main brawl. Fewer/smaller killmails, but still critical to the battle. For what its worth, they were also something like half the size of The Culture or Shadow Cartel.

Anonymous said...

Darius is right, it was months of hardcore FCing where true goons dedicated a lot of their real life time to break BoB. The martini wasn't really part of any of that. The reason they don't care he took credit is because they are adults.

I don't really agree that the martini did any good with the power that was granted to him. He took the most effective fighting machine in eve and turned into a care bear haven. There is a reason any true goon talent is in other alliances, most of the old SA members are in pandemic legion for instance.

I think world war bee has shown exactly how much of a fraud the martini is. I mean they couldn't even handle pandemic horde, which is ironic because in a BoB vs Goon kind of world Horde would be the goons (minus assholeness) and goons would be BoB. This is on the martinis hands, and his tactics of abandoning the only pvp alliances in his coalition was clearly a bad idea.

Today goons is a 17000 member alliance which can barely put together a fleet of 100 pvp pilots, and that decay is the martinis fault,