The killer of most gaming groups besides the ones that recruit random newbies is not gaming failure but social drama. This is something completely unrelated to the game, therefore the leaders who are mostly proficient in the game itself can't handle. Everyone can cite hundreds of events, they are all common in being completely ridiculous to outsiders and a total disaster to everyone in the same group: they know it's going to blow and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
They say there isn't a group without drama, well I managed to make one in WoW, I simply banned every non-game related chat in the channels of the group, so the members could not form any kind of social relationships with each other, therefore there was nothing to blow. However this success wasn't exportable and assimilative. Since the social person wants peer respect and acceptance, they can't have fun in an environment where they can't harvest these. They call this a "work", and I finally understand that their definition of work vs fun is "we do SOMETHING" vs "WE do something". This is not something any leader can "fix" as only a small group is ready to take the "work" approach - and surprisingly this group emerges as elite in every field. However to be more than a small elite PvP group that may do some really awesome videos but generally irrelevant for the future of the game, one has to accomodate socials.
To have The One Empire, one has to assimilate socials too, simply because they are the 99%. If it has socials within its ranks, it will have drama. If it will have drama, it will explode. If it explodes it fails. Result: The One Empire can't be built.
While the above is true, it isn't accurate. Its inaccuracy isn't obvious. Accurately: "a homogeneous empire cannot be built". For most people homogeneous is trivial as there is one proper way of doing things: his way.
The solution to build The One Empire that is not riddled with drama is to be heterogeneous. Will it be an empire at all? Will it have a character? Yes, since the problem is social at the first place so the differences are social, ergo game-irrelevant. The One Empire will be homogeneous regarding ingame issues, but will tolerate various "cultures" within the different corporations.
How? Well, the people in the alliance are members of corporations too. There isn't any difficulty having corporations of very different social cultures. One can be an all-male one that constantly send porn pictures and tell disgusting stories how "all girls are bitches" while the one next to it can be totally respectful towards women. There isn't any problem of the two to trade, pay tax for the supercap fund or fly in the same fleet - as long as the FC is capable to keep offtopic crap out of the channels, which can usually be enforced during a few hours fleet operation.
The ruleset that can make it happen:
EVE Business report: Tuesday morning 19.5B Ouch! Insuring the Orca and not playing on weekend hurts! (2 PLEX behind for second account, 0.3B spent on Titan project)
Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations on the "goblinworks" channel (60-80 people on peak time) and your UI suggestions are welcomed.
They say there isn't a group without drama, well I managed to make one in WoW, I simply banned every non-game related chat in the channels of the group, so the members could not form any kind of social relationships with each other, therefore there was nothing to blow. However this success wasn't exportable and assimilative. Since the social person wants peer respect and acceptance, they can't have fun in an environment where they can't harvest these. They call this a "work", and I finally understand that their definition of work vs fun is "we do SOMETHING" vs "WE do something". This is not something any leader can "fix" as only a small group is ready to take the "work" approach - and surprisingly this group emerges as elite in every field. However to be more than a small elite PvP group that may do some really awesome videos but generally irrelevant for the future of the game, one has to accomodate socials.
To have The One Empire, one has to assimilate socials too, simply because they are the 99%. If it has socials within its ranks, it will have drama. If it will have drama, it will explode. If it explodes it fails. Result: The One Empire can't be built.
While the above is true, it isn't accurate. Its inaccuracy isn't obvious. Accurately: "a homogeneous empire cannot be built". For most people homogeneous is trivial as there is one proper way of doing things: his way.
The solution to build The One Empire that is not riddled with drama is to be heterogeneous. Will it be an empire at all? Will it have a character? Yes, since the problem is social at the first place so the differences are social, ergo game-irrelevant. The One Empire will be homogeneous regarding ingame issues, but will tolerate various "cultures" within the different corporations.
How? Well, the people in the alliance are members of corporations too. There isn't any difficulty having corporations of very different social cultures. One can be an all-male one that constantly send porn pictures and tell disgusting stories how "all girls are bitches" while the one next to it can be totally respectful towards women. There isn't any problem of the two to trade, pay tax for the supercap fund or fly in the same fleet - as long as the FC is capable to keep offtopic crap out of the channels, which can usually be enforced during a few hours fleet operation.
The ruleset that can make it happen:
- The members are members of the alliance first and not of the corporation. The members must answer for their acts to the alliance and not the corporation. So if someone breaks the rules of the alliance and kicked by any of the council members, the corp leader can't keep him. He gets the mail from the council member, he has to kick the guy. Also he can't invite anyone who don't accept the alliance rules or on the alliance kick-list.
- The corp leader don't have the right to kick anyone without making sure that the member lands within the alliance. There is a "default corporation" within the alliance as temporary holder for members who are in the alliance but not in any corp. All corp leaders must have an alt with inviter rights in this corp. If they want someone out of their corp, they must re-invite him to this default corp. The former member can also ask any other inviter to invite him, who will do so after verifying only that he was recently removed from one of the alliance corps without being kicked by the council. In the default corp the offtopic chat is forbidden. This corp is not destined to be the home of anyone, it's just a lobby till one finds a corp that fits him.
- If the alliance finds a corporation leader breaking its rules, the corporation is kicked from the alliance, but the simple members can move to other corporations.
- Besides alts of the officials doing official jobs, no alts get auto invited. Since there is no API way to verify, every pilot is considered on its own, to track who is alt of who would be a spreadsheet nightmare.
- The income source of the alliance is the tax paid by the corps. It's their business how to get the money from their members. If they fail to pay, they get a warning, then they are kicked out. Of course the non-leading members can go to the default corp and then find another corp. The tax has 3 elements:
- Fixed: this is paid for the pure existence of the corp. Its purpose is to prevent lolcorps linger. Pay, be kicked or dissolve. Any corp can dissolve at will, moving the members and even the leader to the default corp
- Member: it's a fixed number multiplied by pilot count (again: all alts are counted individually). The purpose is to prevent useless freeloaders linger in the alliance. The corp will collect this tax from the members, those who can't pay are kicked from the corp and moved to the default corp to prevent abuse. In the default corp the tax collector is a council member who is authorized to kick members from the alliance.
- System: Star systems are assigned to corps that request them. PvP corps don't need systems, industrials do who can pay the tax from the profit made in the system. The system tax is not just a huge income, but motivate the corps to give up systems they can't properly utilize and let the systems be assigned to corps that can.
- Only the members of the corporation that owns the system can harvest resources there. Of course all alliance members can fly, dock, repair, refit, trade, clone and so on in any stations, and kill enemies in any systems but only the owner corporation members can mine, rat or refine in their system. A thief found in non-owned system is kicked out of the alliance. The point is to keep the industrial corporations competing who can utilize the space better. A thief would break it as he utilizes a resource that someone else pays tax for.
- The tax collected by the alliance are reported on a monthly basis on the forum.
- The collected tax money is distributed to the following branches, and reported similarly:
- To the one of the fleet commanders (or their administrator alt) who use them to pay out for ships lost in fleet action or salary for doing something "not fun" like camping a gate. Such payments are public info and must be all published to prevent corruption and accusing with corruption. (easiest way: administrator alt has full API key made public)
- To the supercap division head. This money is used to build supercaps. All supercaps are individually named and their price tag published.
- To the head of intelligence. He buys intel and pays traitors of enemies along with salaries of deployed spies. While the names of the recipients are obviously anonymous, otherwise he had to publish complete report on the forum with items like "9B paid for the password of the POS at X-99999" so members can speak up if they think it's a waste as blowing up the POS would have been easier.
- Secretary of state: usually to pay mercenaries and buying systems from alliance leaders who rather go away with cash than join or fight. Fully reported of course.
- The Empire is money-neutral, the above branches must spend all the tax the next month (besides a small safety amount which is clearly defined). If money starts accumulating, the next month tax will be linearly smaller for everyone. It prevents anyone sitting on too much ISK to have ideas about illegal RMT and also motivates everyone to spend. Like "Hey FC, we are bored and saw there is enough in the wallet to replace the ships, lead us into enemy space, let's make some terror among them" or "Random roamers blown up 32 Hulks this week in our space. We see you can afford to place a bubblecamp to our entrance in peak hours, so please do" or one of the FCs in the council meeting: "I see that with the current spending 4T will remain in the end of the month, so if you don't mind I'd order 12 titans and 30 supercarriers as I'd go for a capital-supercapital fleet"
- The FCs are on alliance and not corp level, they belong to a special corp "Imperial council". Only they are allowed to organize official fleets and pay from the tax money. Of course others can lead fleets but only on their own money. FCs will differ in combat style, some will run huge-fleet battles head on, others will specialize in hunting enemy roams in our space, there will be avid gatecamp-commanders and elite PvP-ers who bring their well-choosen few deep into enemy space, so everyone who wants to PvP can find an FC fitting his style.
- In official fleets the rule is "no bullshit". Those who behave unprofessionally by telling jokes, talking offtopic or do anything that would annoy members who don't share their culture are to be punished by ISK fine first, kick from the alliance for repeated or serious violation. In the fleet you are to blow up ships and not to socialize. If you can't shut up for a few hours when you should be shooting flashy reds anyway, you have no place in a fleet. Reliable info that proves that the FC failed to keep the comms clear of crap can lead to him losing his FC status.
- The corp leaders are not council members and council members cannot lead corps even on alts. This guarantees that the corporations that has a unique culture cannot force this culture on anyone. The alliance members have the right to belong to the alliance and they can do so without question in the default corp. Belonging to a "real" corporation is a volunteer action of the member and accepting him is an equally volunteer action of the community of that corp.
EVE Business report: Tuesday morning 19.5B Ouch! Insuring the Orca and not playing on weekend hurts! (2 PLEX behind for second account, 0.3B spent on Titan project)
Remember that you can participate in our EVE conversations on the "goblinworks" channel (60-80 people on peak time) and your UI suggestions are welcomed.
0 comments:
Post a Comment