Goons and TEST are bad at EVE therefore win

The "Goons and TEST suck at EVE" is a strange statement. It's not a curse told by enemies, it's something they call themselves. Many think that this is a psychological warfare trick "we're so bad and you still lost to us - what does that make you?" but it makes little sense, the enemy could easily counter it with talking about Goons as "worthy opponents" and clarify to their members that they are facing a skilled enemy.

Also, it makes little sense to decrease the self-esteem of their own people internally. However they take the "we are bad at EVE" attitude seriously. Want downvotes and hate? Post something on TEST forums about "bad killboard".

"We are bad at EVE" on the one hand helps a lot to newbies to learn. There is no pressure on anyone to look like a pro. You can ask newbie questions and perform silly mistakes and get help instead of hate. Sure you get laughter and mocking too, but the supportive "we've been there" kind. Nothing tells it better how welcoming TEST to newbies is then the event when the Foxcat fleet, full of multi-year pilots in 1B+ ships was waiting for 10 minutes until a few-days old newbie in a Rifter could finally figure out how to bridge. The titan pilot carefully explained him to approach, right-click, jump. When he made it, he was greeted with cheers.

This attitude also helps a lot for really good players to mesh with newbie/casual/not too bright players. Everyone predicted the cooperation between Pandemic Legion and TEST to be short-lived, but its not. Flying in fleets shown me the reason: the attitude in TEST towards PL is a genuine will to learn. People love to teach newbies, what they hate is the "dun tell me how2play u nolifer" attitude in bad players. Also, the "we are bad in EVE" attitude allows something that no "self respecting" alliance would let happen: coalition fleets mostly filled by TEST people are lead by PL FCs.

While a humble attitude helps newbies to learn faster, the fact that they are newbies shouldn't help them to win against the "elite". A fast-learning newbie becomes "elite" faster while a "dun tell me how2play u nolifer" guy might never, but it shouldn't affect the outcome: until you are "elite" you are pwned. And while claiming that all Goons and TEST are bad is surely not right, there are undoubtably people there who are clearly bad at EVE. CFC loses titans on a weekly schedule in hilarious circumstances, checking TEST killboards can give you the idea that the best solo PvP-er of this game is Corpus Pope and there is always someone who dies to a gatecamp between K6 and 4-0 despite it was clearly told to move in groups. A bunch of "elite PvP" players should roflstomp a team that is littered with Daves Dreams. I mean seriously, what chance would a team containing such players would have in a WoW arena against a top rated team?

However CFC and HBC, built on Goons and TEST are winning battles left and right. Their Sovereignity conquests were only criticized as "not fast enough" even by their opponents. The most "elite" alliances, -A- and NC. were just beaten out of their space by them. How?

The answer lies in my own newbie fleet experience. Despite my blog was littered with "u haz no place in a logi n00b u haz 2 learn the art of pew first or ull b ded weight", my first PvP engagement was in a Scimitar. My only problem on this fleet was that my overview as sub-optimal (though usable). In the rest of the fleets everything went perfectly, I repped, I did not die, I did not get lost, I wasn't any worse than most. Good luck doing the same in WoW, playing a new class in Arena or on a raid. There are 100+ hours of leveling before that and most people are still utterly useless. What the hell is going on here?

The solution is that there are no relevant gaming skills in EVE for the average fleet pilot. You don't need good reaction time, you don't need situational awareness, you don't need to memorize 50+ hotkeys, all you need is orbit the anchor, target the broadcasted one and press F1-4. Unless you have some disability, you should be performing at 70-80% of the perfect at the first time, assuming you fit your ship as told and downloaded the overview pack. In WoW, until you learn the boss dance perfectly you worth zero. You'll be dead making the group hitting enrage.

"Elite playing" is necessary in WoW endgame, meaning perfect memorizing the boss patterns or enemy classes, hitting the proper key in the proper milisecond. "Elite PvP" in EVE Sov warfare does not exist outside of FC-ing and running specific roles. These roles are crucial and without a few very skilled players the fleet couldn't do anything. But for the simple fleet members "elite PvP" is totally irrelevant for taking systems. And unfortunately the champions of "elite PvP" want to have a place on the map.

TEST and Goons are winning because the "we are bad at EVE" attitude prevents their members from focusing on totally irrelevant things like killboard statistics, 1v1 duels, getting and fitting ships that can get them solo kills while useless in fleet and prevent them chase away useful newbies. If you try to be good at PvP, you get worse in fleet as you spent your resources on something vanity. This only changes if you get really good and there is a need for one more specialist. For "Drake#541" or even "Guardian#26" (who is me) having solo kills in EVE is no different than having rare mounts in WoW. Instead the Goons/TEST rank and file members focus on the things that are relevant in EVE: the social skills allowing to get more people in the fleet and getting ISK to have ships.

Social people are naturally tending towards boosting their ego, trying to look better than peers. The "we are bad at EVE" attitude is almost necessary to prevent one to lose focus on the goal and shift to e-peen stroking.

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Thursday morning report: 181.2B (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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October business report

Another month, another report without much to report. I got lazy and did not even update my item list from last month besides the coolant side business.

The income graph (as usually, omitting nullsec spendings, showing how much I had if I would only trade and pay for my main) is a bit better than last month, 39.3B/month instead of 36.7 but still nothing to brag about.

What rather worth mentioning is the fact that my competition decreased instead of increased. My problems came from the FW cashouts which will now end as CCP fixed FW. It will take a month or so to stabilize as many FW orbiters still have billions worth of items in their hangar. So here is this boring, grind-like business providing about 1.5 Nyxes every month. Still I have little competition. OK, I'm probably not the kind of competition most traders want as I don't 0.01 but drive the margin down to 2-3%. I also understand that there are many who don't care about ISK and just blow things up in cheap crap. But there are people out there ratting and mining for ISK getting very low income compared to trading and they keep ratting and mining instead of changing.

I don't really understand the reason why one would choose a greatly inferior and boring grind instead of a better one? Can it be lack of starting capital? Aversion of risk (the ratting bounty is safe in your wallet, the purchased goods can lose value or can be lost during transport)? Maybe the lack of planning, I mean when you need money you can start ratting and get 100M in 2 hours but can't start trading with 10M capital and expect 100M profit on that day.

Anyway, you can clearly make profit by trading in EVE, if you want money, don't even think of shooting red crosses. (soon circles)

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Wednesday morning report: 180.2B (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Who is the actor in EVE?

My girlfriend doesn't really like EVE. She logs in to queue the next skill and does some random things too but nothing worth mentioning. She haven't join any player group nor she amasses wealth like a standard highsec PvE player. She is the kind of players you would suggest EVE. She hates trivial content, considers losses as natural consequence of failure, likes to wander off from rails. Yet she doesn't like EVE. We talked a lot about it and the result is surprising.

If you play a simple short-match game like a Counterstrike round, the actor is obviously you, the player. You make the choices and you get the rewards/losses as consequences.

In an MMO like WoW the history of your character pretty much defines what you will do. You can of course wander off to pick flowers or collect minipets but that doesn't affect anything, neither in the World, nor in your character progression. Your effective actions are lead by past decisions and doing differently than you "should" is considered being bad in the game. I mean if you rolled a mage years ago, leveled to 90 few weeks ago now, you must buy cloth gear without spirit, queue in the dungeons as damage dealer, get intellect gems and fix that Golden Lotus rep. If you do differently, you are either doing random vanity or simply suck in the game.

If you would grab a topguild member bear tank player, give him the above mage and tell him that he must play with this character only, he will do the same. His previous bear habits are null. This is why it's considered Role Playing Game. The actor, the one who makes the choices is the character, the player can only choose to roll/respec, otherwise he must obey the character. Refusing so and trying to get bear gear for the mage or pulling aggro in dungeons is filed not under "playing differently" but "sucking".

Who is the actor in EVE? Is it the player, able to pull any moves like in a Solitaire game? Not really. While theoretically you can do anything in EVE, in reality EVE is extremely punishing for "bad playing". Sure you can mine in a titan, but maybe you shouldn't. Something clearly defines your path and harshly punishes deviation from it.

In EVE there are no classes or real character progression. Your character can't tell who you are, he can only tell who you are not. If you have no Caldari Battleship skill, you are not a Rokh pilot. But having Caldari BS 5, Large railgun specialization 4 and all needed support don't make you a "Rokh pilot". Also, the path can't be put in a textbook like in WoW. If you read ElitisJerks and gear/talent your character accordingly, follow the yellow exclamation marks and you are doing good regardless of the setting. On the other hand if you jump into a 10 man gatecamp, your ship skills or even ship choice matter little. Your personal gaming choices are equally irrelevant, the #1 solo PvP video hero dies just as sure in that camp as a 1 day old newbie. What will define if you win or lose in EVE if not your character and not your ad hoc choices?

The actor in EVE is the corporation, alliance or even coalition. Not I blown up 7 supercarriers in 1V-LI2, nor the titan pilot with final blow and highest DPS. Not even the fleet commander did it. The HoneyBadger Coalition did. We were just units in a huge Starcraft battle, pieces on the chess table. No, it wasn't coalition leadership who organized the cooperation between anti-SOLAR alliances, many red to us. Their moves were limited by the abilities of the coalition. It was the coalition itself, the system, the organization.

You, as an individual affect EVE by shaping one of the organizations. Maybe your part of shaping is simply adding +1 pilot to the fleet. It's no small things, alliances die when players start not giving pilots. Maybe you make plans, get more people, get towers running. All these actions shape the organization, therefore affect its future choices.

You as an individual player won't make story like you do in a phased MMO or a single player game. Your effect won't be direct and obvious. However it is anything but irrelevant. If no pilots come, there is no fleet. The culture of a coalition is shaped by every member. In EVE you don't make difference by pressing buttons. "Orbit the anchor, target the broadcasted ship and start shooting/repping" could be done by an upgraded autopilot. The difference is made by taking part in creating the organization that can field that fleet.

That kind of play is surely not for everyone. I can only hope that my girlfriend finds an aspect where she'll like to participate. But if not, I can't blame her. I keep giving her PLEXes and hope that one day she'll fly with me. For now she is undecided. If she finally says no, her character can be sold after all and most of the cost regained.

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Tuesday morning report: 179.9B (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Greed is good 2: the FW scheme

CCP is evil. They want money for themselves. In our leftist world that's considered the worst crime after child porn. Their view echoes in the narration of EVE. They care little about the well-being of the EVE player they get their salary from. They spent the subscription money on various other projects and as the pinnacle of treachery, they planned to change EVE to a pure pay-to-win game. It was the infamous "Greed is good" plan when they wanted to sell ships and other in-game items for real world currency. Their plan did not end because they realized that it's "wrong". It ended because the players revolted and unsubscribed in masses. They did not get any "better", they just bowed to the stronger dog.

Jester wrote a half-good piece about the FW economy disaster. It's bad because he got the economy totally wrong. The FW cashouts were increasing the ISK volume in the hands of players, despite the LP stores are officially ISK sinks. The reason is simple: if you bought a +5 learning implant in the highsec LP store, you paid 65M. If you bought the same item in FW T5, you paid 16.25M. 47.75M ISK was left in the player economy. The FW implants weren't added to the market, they replaced highsec implants, by making highsec missioners leave that field for either faction ships (you needed to give a full ship at T5 and not 1/4) or left missioning totally. You can see that the traded volume of implants did not increase significantly due to FW:
Jesters post is great because it shows how unrealistic it is to attribute the disaster to simple incompetence. It was identified and mass-exploited for long, it was all over the blogs, it was reported by CSM and they still did not fix it. Hell, they had the fix, they just refused to put it to the live server. I agree with him that it was a scheme to make a wealth transfer, to make some players rich at the cost of the majority. Inflation is the tax of everyone. The price of PLEX is the conversion between ISK and real money. If you have a PLEX worth of ISK, you can play for free for a month. You save 15-17 euros. If you had a billion ISK before FW, you had 30-35 euros, assuming you wanted to continue playing and would pay money to upkeep your subscription. Now if you have the same billion, you have 15% less Euros. This money was taken from the EVE players, given to those who exploited the FW system. And they got tens of trillions. The wealth transfer from the average EVE players to the FW exploiters can reach a million dollar. To make it worse, even the cynical "stay docked if you don't want losses" advice doesn't work against inflation.

Why would they do this? Why would they want to screw up with most of their players just to help out some other players? They could keep the dollars for themselves by printing the same amount of ISK, using it to buy PLEX at Jita and trash the PLEX. That would be more subtle.

Enter the DUST Bunnies. DUST will be an ISK sink. Their weapons, clones, vehicles and whatever they use will be NPC seeded. The ISK they pay is removed from the economy and in turn - like a skillbook - an item appears. It won't live long as it will be used in a bloody FPS game. Where will the ISK come from? Two sources: one is that the DUST players buy it via some form of microtransaction (the new intro shows items purchasable with Aur). The other: EVE players hire DUST players with ISK for capturing planets. What planets?

Faction warfare planets. With the current implementation of DUST-EVE integration, the only EVE player who has a reason to hire DUST bunnies are the FW players. So the scheme was to feed up the FW corporations with the T5 cashouts. To fill their coffers with trillions so they will casually spend it on DUST bunnies, letting them play for free. The FW scheme was to remove about one million dollar worth of ISK from the EVE playerbase and give it to DUST players in a "Try DUST out fully, now free!" marketing campaign. To make the players enjoy access to expensive gear for free. Of course when the wallet runs dry, the DUST players won't get more ISK from EVE players, they have to start paying. CCP hopes that by then they are hooked on the game enough to do so.

While 30T ISK might worth $1M to you, legally it worth nothing. It is a game item and it is in total control of CCP Games. You have no ownership over it and they are free to do anything they want with it. They could just announce "we take 15% from the wallet of every player, corporation and alliance and use this money to give free ISK to everyone who tries out DUST in part of its marketing campaign". You had absolutely no legal right to debate that move. But you could hold a Jita riot and unsubscribe in masses. And you probably would. So they did not say that. Just took the money silently and placed all blame on other players: the FW exploiters.

Why did they stop it prematurely? Because there is one thing more "evil" than CCP Games: EVE players. The trillions never reached the FW corporation coffers. Most players involved had nothing to do with FW. The real FW players are in the FW zone for the good fights and I doubt if they earned more than they used to. OK they might got a few billions here and there, but nothing worth mentioning. The money went to players who moved to FW exactly to exploit the cashouts. Their legion pushed the real FW players aside, practically destroying Amarr and Gallente faction, turning Caldari and Minmatar into a huge farming blueball. They ran the multi-account AFK orbiting fleets, they ran the multiboxed missioning bombers and they will not give a cent to DUST bunnies. The price of Slave implants increased by 50% the last two months and the titan BPC contract prices doubled! I guess the trillions from the FW ISK print is already in the coffers of supercapital builders an - ironically - the highsec miners who mine the veldspar for all those titans. Mark my word, soon the horrible fit titan lossmails will pour out of the sky.

The moral of the story: the best counter of "evil" is not "moral" but "selfish". The scheme wasn't caught by some watchdog, it did not leak and no one can prove it (my post is just speculation without hard eveidence). The scheme was destroyed by a bunch of AFK-farming, botting, multiboxing exploiters. They forced CCP to fix FW early. You cannot make an hidden scheme without it being exploitable as guarding it is impossible without clarifying your aims. They couldn't say "those who do it for a titan must stop, those who do it in preparation of DUST can continue". If you see an exploit and no one responds to your calls, you should go and exploit it. Every cent you take is a cent the "evil ones" will miss. I'm sure CCP learned its lesson and will never try to make such market schemes again. All they achieved is making a bunch of players upset with no profit at all.

Summary: EVE is real!

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The moron of the week is this specimen, without doubt. Just a week ago it was established that you don't transport expensive small items in an unfit frigate. This week's moron managed to pick the slowest aligning frigate in the game for shiny transport. Congratulations.

Saturday morning report: 176.9B 570M spent on trade alts PLEX. It is operational cost. (5.5+1.1 spent on main accounts, 6.5+0.6 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2+0.6 on Ragnarok, 2.7+0.6 on Rorqual, 2.8+0.6 on Nyx, 2.8+0.6 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 178.6B (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 178.5B I have no idea what happened here, no misclick, no gank, nothing in the journal that explains a loss. Can only think of the sharp increase of the implant prices which makes the CCP item price guess greatly undervaluing. (6.6 spent on main accounts, 7.1 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.8 on Ragnarok, 3.3 on Rorqual, 3.4 on Nyx, 3.4 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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The Scythes of poverty and fun

While all games are for entertainment, they all require some attention, training and skill. This is especially true for team games where the action of one player affects other players. While amateur baseball is a game played for fun, you can't get in a team if you don't know which end of the bat goes to your hand.

I can't tell what is the difference between computer games and table-top games or sports that creates the "for fun lol" player. These players refuse or unable to provide the needed skill and effort to play the game any good and yet expects to be accepted as a participant. Can it be anonymity? Or the fact that the player pays individually to the game provider while in offline games there is no provider (kids playing soccer in the car park) or the pre-created team as a whole pays to the provider (bunch of friends at the bowling club). Anyway they pay money to the provider who doesn't want to lose this money.

A totally incompetent, not goal oriented player has near-zero chance to be any successful in the game, therefore having the fun he came for. There are three ways for a video game provider to handle this situation:

• HTFU or GTFO: this is practically what would happen in real life. The wannabe player is told to either change his attitude and give the game the proper attention and effort or leave the playing field. This is what Everquest, Darkfall, EVE Online did. Their stable but small playerbase proves both that there are enough serious/good players to keep the game alive but also they lose on large amount of possible players. The "for fun lol" bunch isn't a marginal group, they are the majority. It's not a surprise, 98% of the students are not on the school basketball team either.
• "Accessible content": this means lowering all bars to allow the "for fun lol" players to complete the content. World of Warcraft spearheaded this way. The original WoW was much more tolerant to bad playing than its contemporaries and the subsequent expansions all introduced ways for bad players to get game rewards. Emblem gear (raiding level rewards for dungeons) was introduced in Burning Crusade. In Wrath of the Lich King the raiding content was nerfed to triviality and the "every patch resets gear" system was introduced. The subscriptions stopped their previous rapid grow and started to decrease. The content was strongly criticized by the good players and the community started to fade. Current WoW and clones are often called Massively Single Player games due to the near-zero interaction between players. It's unavoidable, just as the teacher can command the basketball team to take little Johnny in, but can't make them be his friend. Single player games have short natural life, players hop on the new shiny fast.
• The third way is somewhat new and has good potential: while the game remains "serious", it allows "for fun lol" players to be around without actually affecting the game. Minipet collection, leveling alts, doing various random silly things can make the "for fun lol" players busy playing, without making them interact with the real players which would lead to frustration for both parties.

OK, but why the title? It is to explain a new direction in EVE Online development, a change from their original HTFU/GTFO attitude. The most recent addations to EVE (besides DUST integration and fixes) are various nerfs to highsec aggression and serious buffs to mining and small ships. It affects both combat cruisers which receive DPS buffs, serious buffs to T1 logistics cruisers and also introduction of logistics frigates and new destroyers. Jester recognized that T1 logistics will be near as good as their T2 counterparts for much less ISK. One could think that it's to help new players get into ships faster. However for new players the problem is rather ignorance than skillpoints. I'd guess most Moas lose more DPS on having non-meta T1 guns, stupid fittings and unlearned support skills than they gain on that 5%/level hybrid gun DPS. Aura telling you that you should learn Rapid Firing 3 before Caldari cruiser 5 would help more than any rebalance.

No, the targets of these changes are not new players. It's the "for fun lol" players who have problems of even getting the price of a Drake. While I called the poor things "Drakes of poverty", I've seen the term "upshipped to battlecruisers" so many times that I reconsidered. My cloaky travels in low/NPC null also helped. Most gatecampers are in destroyers and cruisers, not battleships. A Drake - while considered newbie doctrine next to Foxcats here - is something serious in the eyes of the "for fun lol" players who are unable/unwilling to rat/mine 100M needed for a fitted Drake. They want to have instant fun in something that requires little ISK or skillpoints to fly.

I support this change. Every player paying the $15 helps the game be better. The Scythe supported Moa gangs won't make any difference on the Sov map. I'd be extremely surprised if we'd ever encounter such fleets. They will be no match for serious lowsec pirates either. But they can lol around in lowsec killing each other and careless ratters/miners. They will die at the end but for them it's "gf lol".

Elitism is bad. Everyone has the right to play and enjoy the game. The problem comes when someone has the bizarre idea that everyone has the right to win the game. Arthasdklol has no place under a Kingslayer title. Someone who can't get even a battlecruiser has no place on the Sov map or in a C2+ wormhole. CCP does it right while Blizzard messes it up. The question is can they properly advertise it, can they make the legions of "for fun lol" players try out EVE which still have the reputation of being unforgiving and evil?

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On Monday extremely nasty article comes, don't miss it!

Friday morning report: 180.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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The real difference between EVE and WoW

Everyone agrees that EVE isn't a WoW clone. However they are wrong in figuring out what the difference is. The common answers are all wrong, leading to various games that end up being a WoW-clone and fail as they are all worse in being WoW than WoW:

• "Open-ended" is wrong because you can do countless things in WoW too. OK, the quests are linear, but so are the EVE multi-step missions. You can fly anywhere in EVE but so in WoW. You can collect minipets, build a museum, gain exalted with some obscure faction and countless other options are available in WoW. Also the raiding toplists are still third-party, WoW has no official scoreboard.
• "Losses" are equally wrong. The resources are infinite in EVE, therefore getting ISK is only matter of time. If your ISK/hour is 30M then losing a 15M ship is losing 30 minutes. In WoW you also lose time if you die. The honor/hour of the losing team is lower than of the winners. The valor/hour of a team steamrolling a heroic is higher than the valor/hour of a usual LFD group where the #1 is the tank, the #2 is the healer. Losses in EVE and WoW are merely decreasing the average income/hour.
• "Non-consensual PvP" is both a blatant lie and irrelevant. 80% of the EVE players don't even leave highsec where PvP is extremely limited. Unless you do something really stupid or bump into one of the few pre-announced ganking events, you can't lose a ship. Also you shoot a red cross in EVE, an avatar in a game. If one would make properly coded AI that can't be distinguished from players, he could create an equally engaging PvE game.

The fundamental difference between WoW and EVE is that in WoW the endgame provides gear/currency rewards while in EVE doesn't. The more competitive type of gameplay you choose, the higher ilvl you have in WoW. The faster you start raiding and the more bosses you kill every week, the more high ilvl epics you have. In EVE winning in the competitive areas only make you poorer. I've recognized long ago that highsec is the most profitable zone in EVE and proved it both via economic theories and my own income. The recent statement of a CFC diplomat "if I had any interest at all in making personal ISK, I'd be doing it in empire" hopefully silences those who suck with numbers and troll with "i haz experience in null so im right lol".

The reward structure in WoW has two effects: at first it forces players to unite completely according to in-game merits. No matter how terrible X is, if he spams buttons faster than Y, he is in your team. When Blizzard started the nerffest, they focused on this. They wanted to allow people to play with their friends, even if those friends totally sucked in the game. They failed because no-friend teams are still winning WoW. The only effect is now everyone, including the average player finds the game trivial which is necessary to allow an average one to play with below-average friends.

The important effect is that WoW endgame is a positive feedback loop. I mean if A and B are equally good teams, but for some totally random reason A kills less bosses in the first week than B, then in the second week B will be stronger than A due to more gear and will kill more bosses becoming even stronger. In EVE having a space empire costs you resources. Sovereignty structures costs money. Towers costs fuel and manpower to keep them running. Fleets need ships and manpower. If A and B are equally good and for some totally random reason A loses some systems to B, the next month A will be stronger due to less Sov costs and less people spending their time babysitting towers. This allows A to counterattack and win again. A new player can catch up by focusing on making money in highsec, a defeated alliance can regroup by no longer being bound to Sov. On the other hand in WoW if you are not in the best teams or just came late, you have no chance to catch up ever, the difference between you and the established one just grows, this is why Blizzard needs to reset gear time and time again.

The "failed" economy design is the very reason EVE lives after 10 years with little new content added, while a WoW content patch has the maximum lifetime of one year. The year CCP "fixes" the EVE economy, making living in Sov-null more profitable than living in highsec, will be the year the total Sov map becomes conquered by one entity and everyone who matter will be blue to each other. In short: the year EVE dies.

How could WoW be changed to be "sandbox"? Raids should have high gear demand, high consumable cost and provide absolutely no reward at all besides achievement and cosmetic stuff. Create an official scoreboard celebrating the guilds that raid well! To get gear and consumables one has to do lot of non-raiding activity. This will have the following effects:

• Social: every player is a valuable addition. If he picks just a few flowers for the guildbank, he became an asset as his flowers will provide elixirs for the raiding team. He would rightfully consider himself a member of the guild and not just a carried casual friend.
• Easy to catch up: a latecomer who focuses on getting gear gets gear faster than those who spend their time raiding.
• Open: various different activities are useful for the progress of the guild.
• Competitive: only those would raid who want to raid for itself or for the scoreboard position. Lootwhores would have no reason to raid.

Unfortunately Blizzard managed to find the direct opposite of the solution: in challenge mode dungeons you get valor points (gear) and you don't need gear for it (as it's normalized).

With all this, we reached the true definition of "sandbox game": where the "fun activity" or "winning" is completely separated from "grinding in-game wealth". In a sandbox game only the "not fun" farming (or paying in the cash shop) creates gear, currency or other useful items. This is the only way to prevent players "optimize the fun out of the game" as they can only optimize the no-fun time. It is impossible for someone who mines for fun to ruin the ISK/hour of his "serious" teammates as no one mines for fun. On the other hand a "for fun" player in your dungeon is the most common source of annoyance of gear-farmers in WoW. Similarly, the "no lifers" won't ruin your fun on a roam since they don't go a roam as the game gives no reason to. In WoW the players looking for rewards are mixed with "for fun" players ending both parties annoyed.

Of course the results of grinding and fun/winning are connected: your ISK limits what kind of activities available to you. If you have little, all you can do is frigate roams. If you have a lot, you can doomsday down supers and own regions. The grinding part is necessary to give a meaning to winning or even fun, without it all sinks in "who cares" nihil that can be seen in WoW.

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Yesterday I was primaried first time in EVE - and lived. It happened in LGK where some small fleet was doing random things when -A- jumped on them and needed reinforcements. By the time I bridged in, there were a serious Foxcat fleet already. As soon as I started clicking things and moving, I had target painters on me and yellowboxed by every red in the system. Broadcasted for reps but was in hull in a few seconds. Luckily for me I did not have time to start repping anyone before they aggressed, so I simply docked up in LGK, repaired the ship and undocked. We won soon after, they docked up, the battle ended. -A- considered themselves winners because their "capital killboard is green".

Thursday morning report: 178.4B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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EVE after 1V-LI2

Supercapitals die every week without making any change in the universe of EVE. The death of a mining titan, Daves Dream, the jump-OH-NO-BRIDGE dozens, the bumped out RA titans and even the 15 -A- supercarriers told no other message than "don't be an idiot". These were all ganks started by someone doing something seriously dumb. All and every one of them could be prevented by utilizing common sense.

The 7 lost SOLAR supercarriers at 1V-LI2 were different. They were sent to battle willingly. They were in a supercap blop, just like the book said. They weren't idiot fitted (OK, he was). They were supported by fifty-something carriers and a huge subcap fleet. They were in a time zone very inconvenient for US and west-EU players while acceptable for their mostly Russian playerbase. There was nothing to stop a decisive victory for SOLAR.

If you remember the screenshots from yesterday, I was in the fleet that turned it upside down. We were camping LGK to let a few of our supers clear up towers, usual business. The FC entertained us by live commentary on the 1V-LI2 battle, yet in just capital phase. When the supers were dropped, silence was asked and in like 15 minutes we were already bridging. 3 midpoints later we arrived with 19 titans and forty-something supercarriers and a whole Navy Apocalypse fleet, massacring SOLAR.

What does that mean? That you don't have to be an idiot to lose supers. You can do everything perfectly and still lose supers and your system if you are not blue to HBC. 1V-LI2 was a power display, a proof that HBC can throw a large supercapital blob supported by the strongest existing subcap doctrine fleet in an inconvenient time at the other end of the galaxy. You can't plan strategy the way you did a week ago. If you are not a blue to HBC, your supercapital fleet is just for ratting and drive-by shooting ratting carriers. You can't field them in a battle where the enemy has reasonable chance tackling them even for a short period of time. That short time can see a cyno go up and a HBC supercap blob arriving. This limits capital activity of non-blue entities to suicide dreads and non-triaged carriers sitting on a station undock.

The "normal" way of "progressing" in null was building supercaps. Both individuals and alliances were busy focusing their resources to supers. This led to a serious form of elitism, if you didn't have at least a carrier, you weren't even considered human being. The term "rifter noobs", used on Goons and TEST was referring not to actual Rifters (I barely see any) but as "subcap pilots". However this was the building point. Goons and TEST had little supercap power but could start to grow using subcap blobs. Subcapitals are hard to hit by capitals and are much cheaper. They can clear tackle fast and tackle supers. Using subcapitals, mostly cheap battlecruisers, Goons and TEST could grow big enough to be accepted as allies by Pandemic Legion, the largest holders of supers. I doubt that PL choose to side with TEST because Rifters are cute. They recognized that TEST has what they don't: a subcap blob that can tackle enemy supers and free their own.

This is the way, the only way front of the other alliances/coalitions. They must give up their elitist "green killboard" attitude and must accept everyone (except troublemakers, awoxers) who are ready to fly even a Rifter on their side. Had SOLAR have a fleet of battlecruisers, they could clear tackle fast enough. Elitism, "ima l33t ur a n00b" trashtalk and "60M SP or GTFO" have died in 1V-LI2. You need a blob of subcaps to do anything in the Sov map from now on.

I hope that the eastern, mostly Russian alliances recognize this and start a recruitment campaign, making null even more accepting to new players. They have time, as HBC and CFC don't have the ability to manage their regions today, so they aren't in a direct danger of invasion. But as the "Rifter noobs" grow up and more people join (in the last 30 days HBC gained 2600 members), more and more regions will be needed. If they remain as AAA, still daydreaming about being elite, one day they'll have nowhere else to live than NPC null.

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Blatant self-ad: don't miss tomorrows post, really important findings incoming.

Wednesday morning report: 177.0B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Cool(ant) business + 7 supers down

Breaking news: FW got a hotfix. The time of AFK-farming billions is over. I don't know what made CCP change, probably finally they figured out that cutting an ISK sink to 1/4 causes inflation. Anyway, it's gone.

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Coolant and Enriched Uranium are PI materials. They are used for POS fuel blocks. You can farm them yourself on via Planetary Interaction. However my experimental business wasn't that. I was buying up these in Amarr, Dodixie, Hek and Rens, and got them hauled to Jita via courier contracts. The difference between the buy orders in these systems and the sell orders in Jita is often above 10%. The volume is great, I could usually fill up a 1B package waiting for the contract.

The profit was often 40-50M/package, so it isn't a bad side-business. I just have to stop time to time when the price crashes in Jita, probably not unrelated to me sending multiple freighters there.

Variations of the same business also exist! The point's isn't the item, but the haul trade of something you don't haul trade. I mean taking 30 jumps with a freighter to get 80M isn't that great. However it's great to pay 20M to some guy who thinks it's a great idea to take the risk of gank, learn a freighter and spend the time with the jumps for that 20M.

So the business idea for today: look up large-volume items on EVE-Central or manually and get them freighted. Just because you can't or don't want to haul, you can profit on its hauling.

Also, someone could really explain me why does someone lock down his 1B in the collateral and haul my coolants for 20M instead of locking down his 1B in coolants and haul his own coolants for 80M?

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The moron of the month is not the mining titan. It's this guy. Unless of course it's the biggest troll in EVE.

Another story from nullsec. We gathered up to camp LGK undock some more where -A- is locked in, while the supercapital fleet was busy destroying towers. But when they finished, we did not went home, but to the other way, to 1V-LI2, where the largest battle of the year happened. More than a hundred capitals were present and 7 supercarriers, all belonging to SOLAR fleet, along with 23 carriers died. The lost subcaps that were blapped by the Foxcats don't even worth mentioning. The picture below has brackets only on capitals:
The subcaps were shooting tackles and the enemy titans got out. The supercarriers were closing to a valley between bubbles. The Heavy Interdictor holding that bubble was neuted out and damaged to hull. Called for reps, but out of range to most logis (something wasn't right with logi placement, we were out of range for some time).

You probably laughed and mocked the the "I was there" intro. Overwrought, over-played, unreal. Well, for me at 1V-LI2 it didn't seemed unreal at all:I don't know how many other logis were in range and how many enemy subcaps were trying to take that HIC out. Maybe he would have been saved without me or other bubbler could take his place in time. Maybe not and the supers could escape. That "maybe" worth joining fleets, coming to nullsec. By the way TEST alliance is recruiting, go to the official forums and see which corps are looking for new members. And we are always low on logis and dictors.

After two cycles his armor was back, the bubble went back on, and the supercarriers were trapped. Later new interdictors arrived and soon they were totally covered in bubbles:
From here the battle was won and we had not much to rep, spent time capping up some battleships. Soon after the last Aeon popped we aligned out to go home:

Tuesday morning report: 175.4B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

Thanks to this report I can claim without doubt that when my pilot will be ready, I'll be flying a titan, maybe into battles like this. Trading means a sure way to get into the ships that shape the universe of EVE.

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The purge of idiots from icefields

The Goons are back with their friends, killing miners again in highsec. After it was made practically impossible by CCP. Why? Because many miners are dumb as the rocks they shoot. Look at these horrible loss reports: 1, 2, 3, 4. Zero tank. Nada. These poor things are already in the company of the MLU stacking arch-moron in the afterlife for ships piloted by braindead monkeys.

Let me put it as simple as possible: if you are piloting something like these on the Gallente ice fields, you are a capital idiot. No, these aren't "max yield" fits, that would include a "medium ice harvester accelerator" rig:
But first let's see what a max-yield fit Mackinaw gets in the ice fields:762m³/minute. The cost is using up all the CPU from any decent tank. It still allows to put on an indecent tank but the failures messed that up too. 19K EHP just don't keep you alive if someone smarter than an Playstation FPS is after you.

Now if we remember the Exhumer rebalancing, we can tell that CCP created a specific ship to the miners who don't want to die to gankers:693m³/minute. -9% yield, +250%. Can it be ganked? By 10 Catalysts, yes. If you are fast enough to overheat (78K EHP), 14. If you use shield repping drones on your other ships (mining drones can't take ice), even more. A ganking catalyst costs about 10M. So the price is 100-150M to kill your 99M-insurance Skiff and I did not include the opportunity cost of waiting out GCC because "time is free lol". You're welcome by CCP.

Now that we agree that using a Mackinaw for ice mining during Goon Ice Campaign is dumb, let's move to the advanced stuff. What shall you do if your style is AFK mining? I mean target the ice, start laser, go AFK.

[intense drumming]

Get the hell out of the icefield idiot! Do you seriously expect to live during a griefing campaign in a PvP game while being AFK? Go and mine Scordite in a Mackinaw! Seriously! There is no way the Goons or anyone else can cover all highsec. You will always find a peaceful corner to AFK-mine something.

So you plan to keep mining ice during Ice Interdiction and ready to take it seriously? Do you have an Orca supported multi-miner gang? If no, just move to something else. Going trough the trouble for the income of only 2-3 mining accounts is silly. Go mine Scordite! If you have 6+ mining ships and an Orca and ready to reap the profits of the increased ice prices, you need to PLEX 1 more account. If you already have at least 7, +1 isn't that much.

No, not a Scimitar with 4 reppers. That ship has 30% less EHP than a Skiff and costs 40% more, they'll gank that after they failed first time. The extra ship is a link Tengu with Armored Warfare Link - Passive Defense I, Siege Warfare Link - Shield Harmonizing II and Siege Warfare Mindlink implant. This ship sits off-grid and boosts the gang for higher shield and armor HP and resists, rising the 66K EHP of the Skiff to 101K (121K overheated). Don't forget to fit buffer tank on it, it can be tanked up to 190K. It can sit on a remote location.

The Orca acts as squad booster (wing booster is the Tengu, always place the Tengu above the Orca). There is no need to boost ice harvester capacitor use as the Skiffs are stable at high capacitor. Have a shield transporter if the Skiffs are close, a tractor beam if far. If you can't buy a booster Tengu pilot fast, just fit the shield harmonizing link on the Orca and replace the mining Mindlink to Siege. Shield maintenance drones shall be deployed, Skiffs pre-locked to engage them fast. Orcas cannot be ganked by Catalysts. Goons claim that they can do coordinated attacks on Orcas, but the linked ships aren't Orcas. They are "abominations created during a session in the daycare for Down syndrome children". This is how an ice field Orca shall look like: If you overheat, you get to 370K EHP. Higher than of a Navy Apocalypse that can tank a whole Tengufleet.

The above makes ganking totally unfeasible. The gankers lose 2x more ISK then their targets and need an extremely organized fleet of dozens where the fail of one player can end up in a big waste of money, time and security status. But what if they keep coming back, just to show who is the boss? Give up 9% more yield and show them who is the boss!
Ganking miners without extreme effort is impossible. Anyone dying to ganks simply deserves to die by the law of Darwin.

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Some more news from nullsec. We took the station in GE-8JV, the former capital of the c-A-rebe-A-rs. The supercapitals took down its hull while the enemy were camped in their station:
They now live in an NPC station in Stain. We have a tower in this system with lot of juicy titans:

They also have a tower, but with only one titan and lot of our titans waiting for a spy to bump it out (but no spy was able to):
Finally some laughs: Have you heard people whining that the enemy upshipped, ruining a good fight by bringing battlecruisers against T1 cruisers? Well, PL brought upshipping to a new level.

Saturday morning report: 169.8B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 172.0B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 173.4B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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October character report

Here is my character report, I hope my plans help you make yours and that your comments help me refine mine. If not, move along, nothing to see here. I try to use a simple format that can be copy-pasted and updated. First an overview table, then detailed description of characters. Unused characters are ignored.

Char#	Personal data	Account#	Implants	Sept. SP	October SP	Remap	Last month focus
1	Gevlon Goblin	1	4	8.29	10.05	P7-W7, then I8-M6	Freighter, Cyber5
2	Hek trader	1	3	2.10	2.10	C10-M4	Nothing
3	Scout/cyno pilot	1	3	2.67	2.67	I10-M4	Nothing
4	Amarr trader	2	4	3.53	4.31	M10-I4	Caldari frigate 5
5	Dodixie trader	2	4	3.43	3.43	C8-W6	Nothing
6	Rens trader	2	4	3.67	4.43	C8-W6	Mixed
7	Titania Goblin	3	5	10.29	12.10	P10-W4	Amarr Cruiser 5
8	Rorqual pilot	4	5	6.60	8.41	I10-M4, then C10-W4	Mining boost
9	Ragnarok pilot	5	5	6.11	7.98	I10-M4	Support skills
10	Nyx pilot for sale	6	5	5.73	7.60	I10-M4	Support skills
11	Moros pilot	7	5	5.38	7.25	I10-M4	Support skills
12	Girlfriends' character	8	4	11.76	13.57	P10-W4	Missiles

1. My main, Gevlon Goblin, the perfect example why one shouldn't remap before knowing what he is doing. Few days old I was so sure that I'll do manufacturing that I remapped M10-I4, just to recognize that I can't do that without hauler ships. Also I thought I'll fly logi on this very same highsec pilot, so I went P7-W7. Later when I started to get a clue, I had to learn all the ships I'll ever need to extract some value from that remap. At least I can be very sure that I won't need any more ships since I can fly freighter, cloaky hauler and Orca too. Have the P/W prequisites for a cloaky Tengu too. Now I learn Cybernetics 5 for +5 implants (which I should have done months ago).
2. This pilot practically never leaves Hek - Boundless Creations Factory and does only trading. Finished Accounting 5, the last important trading skill, the rest can wait:
3. As busy member of TEST, she is my first nullsec pilot. Her job is to scout for the other pilots and open cyno if needed. Whenever not in that, she is in the "gaybar", the AFK Cloaking services of TEST, providing entertainment to ratters. They used to mock the little girl. Since they lost a 6B Thanatos, they run like roaches when she arrives.
4. She trades in Amarr and I was considering closing this account and move the characters away as there is nothing to learn for the 3 traders. Luckily I didn't. She got new jobs. At first a cloaky frig to scout the always camped highsec-nullsec routes and to do reseach on blueprints:
5. She trades in Dodixie and practically does nothing else. Training is more or less complete:
6. She trades in Rens and has a few planets. They aren't much of an income (about 0.35B/month), rather a hobby:
7. Titania Goblin is a regular fleet member of HoneyBadger Coalition fleets. She is flying Scimitar and Guardian with Logi 5, sticking to the "only stratops, no roams" oath. She is escorting Foxcats whenever RL let me guide her. She trains now for a triage Nidhoggur.
8. While I'll fly in null, I won't stop being an industrialist there. So my Rorqual alt has born. Still in newbie phase, but support skills are complete, now learning Mining Director and Wing command to be able to boost a mining fleet. Finally he'll remap P-W for my ships: the Rorqual, a freighter and a jump freighter. It will followed by industrial skills, needed to compress ore.
9. This pilot has long way before flying anything but a shuttle. Still months in Int/Mem and Int/Perc support skills. Then leadership skills. A lot. That will take some time. But at the end, I'll have a fleet booster Ragnarok for sig-tanking fleets. Don't even try to talk out of it! One must have wild dreams.
10. To experiment with Character Bazaar, I started training a Nyx pilot. We'll see how much profit this sale will provide. Still in support skill phase:
11. He also started out as titan pilot, but my "20B/month" combined with the decreased income because of FW limited my budget to one titan. So I'll have a structure shooting Moros. One day. Now I haven't even finished support skills:
12. On the top of my own accounts, I give a PLEX a month to my girlfriend, as it would be stupid to pay for it with real money. She is still extremely casual, but now that I fly fleets and she sees it on my screen, she gets more and more interested. Bought Amarr frig, cruiser, battleship books with a meaningful smile. She is also interested in flying ECM which she already has Caldari BS 5. Anyway, probably this is the only character on this page that looks what a usual EVE pilot looks like:

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Friday morning report: 169.1B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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"Lossmail" and how I learned to respect frigate roams

On the forum of my alliance, a guy started a thread where he talked about his successful frigate roam. I considered that bragging about taking some trivial sum with the involvement of 10+ people isn't great. I reminded him that he could get more ISK by bringing the same amount of people on a veldspar mining fleet.

Considering that TEST is the very opposite of "we r so l33t" alliances, you can imagine the flamewar. I didn't understand them for long. They kept telling that "its great fun" but couldn't tell what is so fun in that. "Being with friends" doesn't fly here as one could be with the same friends on a mining op. "Winning in PvP" also a bad answer as the probable kills and losses are all trivial. I doubt that SoCo will crumble over the loss of some AAA Citizens frigs (you can't kill -A- frigs, they don't undock). A stupid waste of time. If you want PvP/kills, TEST don't just fly Foxcats (Navy Apocalypse based fleet) but Drakes too and it's pretty easy to get into one. If you want ISK, go rat/mine!

The flamewar went on, exactly because lack of arguments. "Its fun", "No, its stupid". Isn't a constructive discussion. However the question was in my mind all day and stumbled on the answer when I was discussing other topic.

This is the fitting of "Lossmail", my future Ragnarok Titan. You've seen it evolving from April when she first shown up as concept. The links are of course variable, I'll have all link specialist to 5, the rest are set. No MWD for fast align, no smartbomb or neut to clear tacklers, no cloak to hide in a safe. Lossmail got her name for a reason. She isn't intended to jump out of a fight. Her job is to carry around a fleet and serve as fleet booster. Either sitting under a POS shield or if offgrid boosting is removed, on the grid, taunting enemies to drop dreads/supers on her. The cyno is obviously there to jump in HBC supers if someone actually dares to do that. One day they will be pissed enough to do so (not -A-, but someone who actually fights for his space). While HBC has a very good response time if "titan tackled" is called and I have no doubt that we'll win the ISK war, one day poor Lossmail will fullfill her destiny and have to give her place to "Lossmail2".

OK, it's silly enough, but clearly a waste. No one will reimburse my loss, even if we take down several enemy supers. Why do I stick to it? Not boredom or "can't do anything with that money", I could donate that to TEST too, for more reimbursement money. Also, why a Ragnarok? An Erebus or Avatar would clearly fit better to the current Foxcat doctrine. One gives armor, other gives capacitor and as armor tanked titans, they could receive reps from the fleet logis. Why can't I just let a stupid newbie random idea go?

Let's be rational: most likely Lossmail will spend her life bridging subcaps, sitting under a POS shield or trashing local. Oh, and grinding structures with the rest of the supers. Considering how risk-aversive people are when it comes to supers, she will probably won't be shot at for a several months, until someone finally plans a suicide-dread op. Most likely she'll be nothing more than convenience for fleet commanders for faster transportation, easier link assignment and easier fleet recruitment (people will come in hope that Lossmail bait dreads/supers they can kill). What is so interesting in building a space taxi?

When I realized the reason, I also understood that I was an ass with those frig roamers. The reason they went on roaming instead of mining is the same why I stick to having Lossmail. The hope to create something much bigger than destined for. While Lossmail will probably be nothing but space taxi, but there is a chance to do something huge. It's a small chance, but I noticed it in the moment I've checked the bonuses of the titans. By halving the signature of the boosted ships, Lossmail has the potential of spawning a new doctrine. Thousands of people fly doctrine ships, ships that were told them to fly. They aren't commanded to do so by authority but by rationality. If Foxcats are the best against Tengus, we fly Foxcats, it would be stupid to fly Rokhs or Nagas. There is a tiny chance that with Lossmail a new doctrine can be designed: small, sig-tanking ships. AB T3s? HACS? AB-battecruisers? Upcoming T2 Destroyers? I have no idea. Maybe it doesn't exists. But if does, when Lossmail will leave the CSAA, some HBC theorycraft wizard will find it. Then the life of all nullsec pilots will change. They will fly the "RagCats", they will fly with the "RagCats" or they will have to fly against them.

The frig roam don't go out to kill frigs. They go out for the tiny chance of zerging down on a lost Machariel or 5B Tengu. To tackle a carrier or dread. To spot travelling supers. The pilots are new or poor or both and their situation destine them to mine and train for Drakes. But they want to do something bigger. Most of them will not kill anything worthy and will return with nothing but frig kills. But the hope of doing something above their league provides enough fun to keep them training and mining/ratting, to grow to the point when they regularly blap Tengus in their Navy Apocalypses.

If you aim for nothing but paying the bills tomorrow, you'll succeed in paying bills forever. If you aim for the stars, you'll probably fail and only reach the sky.


PS: just don't spend all your money on the stars, always have enough for the bills!

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Speaking of frigate fleets. GE-8JV IHUB was coming out of final reinforce and there was clearly no one coming to defend it. So someone came up with the "brilliant" idea to bring out frigates instead of Foxcats. Of course I could just skip that fleet, but the day before, when the supercap battle of LGK took place, I logged out my Guardian in GE, expecting to simply join there the Foxcats. So here I was with a bunch of frigates:
The frigates started to kill the IHUB as soon as it left reinforce. Of course where is a kill report, there are killmail whores who just want to get on it without actually contributing: The purpose was to taunt -A- for not undocking, even against frigates. Well, that worked, only bombers came after the frigs. Now, if this post would be a film from Hollywood, it would end with finally finding fun and love in frigs and roaming with them ever after. But I was so bored hunting bombers and various random lost noobs who kept trying to travel in the "blobbed" system that I rather logged off again. The final station timer is coming, there will either be Foxcats to join with or I simply wait until the station is taken by frigs+supers and dock there. Everyone must pursue a different star, frigswarm is clearly not mine.

Thursday morning report: 168.5B 0.4B spent on the +5 set of my main. (5.5 spent on main accounts, 6.5 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.8 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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What would happen if people could trade?

The question of mirror-ability of strategies often comes up when I post my trading strategy. The 0.01 strategy is clearly mirror-able. If there are more than one 0.01-ers, then their income will be shared according to their camping strength, but the sum of their income does not change, since it's defined as the price (which they don't change) multiplied by volume.

The undercutter grabs bigger share by increasing volume. However the question rises: what will happen if two undercutters meet. The practical answer isn't interesting: "one of them will be unsatisfied by the profit and moves away". The interesting part comes if we assume that there aren't more niches than traders. Currently this is highly academic as there are very few undercutting traders and many niches. But what will happen if the smell of 2-3 PLEX/day lure more people to my blog (or they learn economics on their own) and the amount of undercutters grow to the point that you can't go to any untaken niche?

Well, the practical answer (the one that wasn't interesting) is still true: "one of them will be unsatisfied by the profit and moves away". Where? There aren't more niches! Aanywhere he can, probably farming.

If we add up the above, we get the result: if all niches are covered by undercutters, the profit of trading is nearly equal to the income of farming, since the only place a quitting trader can go is farming. It will never be exactly equal as trading needs capital, so not all farmers can go trade while all traders can go farm, but it will be near enough.

This is indeed what the moron letters scream: "you ruin the profit for all of us". Yes I do. 0.01-ing is cartel and cartel is the only way to allow more than one trader to have profit in the same field.

Maybe the 0.01-ers aren't simply dumb. Maybe they are socials. They do the "moral" thing and share the wealth with their peers. I'm not social. I can't care less if I destroy all trading profit and force everyone (including myself) into farmerhood. Till the moment it happens, I'll make more money than any 0.01-er, so I'm not being selfless, protecting the little guys from the evil capitalists. I protect the little guys from the evil capitalists because it pays well.

This result exceeds EVE or WoW or any other game. It's a universal economic result: if everyone could trade, no one would have extra profit. So if you want to stop the 1% from having 99%, the best way is to join them.

What will I do if it really happens and no one will make profit without actually having to do something useful? I already have plan B.

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This was close!
Another screenshot from nullsec life: our enemy -A- almost saved their system by destroying our SBU. An allied fleet drove them away when the SBU was deep in armor. On the picture you can see us repairing.

One more picture. You read about the supercap battle at LGK?

Finally the moron of the day! While people can lose ships without their own fault in a battle or well designed trap, having your ship terribly fitted has no excuse. Look at this mining barge and despair on the lack of brain (for newbies: lack of cyno, lack of tank, too many MLUs, too small cargohold, rigs don't help mining or surviving).

Wednesday morning report: 168.7B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 5.8+0.7 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4+0.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Come, play EVE Online

I made a permanent page to popularize EVE Online and to draw my non-playing readers to it.

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Tuesday morning report: 168.1B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 5.8+0.7 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4+0.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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To end all PVE exploits in EVE

After the Goon exploit of FW people were not satisfied. Some felt that even if the Goons went extreme, they simply used features created by devs. One player asked "If we do not manipulate prices but do research to take advantage of existing market values, is this still exploiting? Your blog seems to hint that it is." The dev answered "I'm going to pass this point around internally. I'm not really comfortable answering this Maverick-Style." Another asked: "Along those same lines, what about people who didn't actively manipulate the value of items, but benefited from these manipulations?" Good point regardless the answer. Also, there was a dev blog about another exploit: parking drone battleships to complexes that grind rats AFK.

The problem is real: players shouldn't contemplate over which features are intended and which are not. This can lead to a gameplay where you get ahead not by being good in EVE but in being good guessing what the devs wished.

I wrote how the game could be re-designed to prevent exploits, but that's huge work and would seriously change the gameplay. I figured out a much-much simpler solution. The one that is used with Concording. It is told that "if you attack a non-war target in highsec, Concord will destroy your ship. Any action to prevent this action and save your ship is an exploit and will be punished". While tricks come up time to time, they aren't abused like the LP-print. Why? Because it's not the code, but the clear written "law" that guides the players. One knows that if he'd create an unkillable Tornado to grief players in highsec, he will lose his account fast.

To prevent all forms of money prints CCP has nothing else to do than make a declaration:

EVE is a PvP game. If you want to score big, you must score on other players: defeat and loot their ship, sell them high and buy from them low, scam them, ransom them, tax them! PvE activities are meant to have limited income, they are here to allow new players to start and to let those who were defeated to re-start. They aren't meant to provide income that is competitive to successfully defeating/tricking other players.

For these reasons mining, ratting, missioning, anomalies, signatures, Sleepers, plexing, incursions or any other farmable activities where NPCs or environmental objects give you wealth shall not provide more than X/hour/account in long time average, neither in ISK, LP, ore, loot nor any other form or combination. If you figure out a way to reliably create more than X/hour/account without taking it from other players, you found an exploit and you shall contact a GM who will reward you for your find and undo the extra income. Failing to report, and keeping or using the income will result in GM action against your account after the exploit is found.

X is:
30M in highsec, solo
40M in lowsec, solo
50M in null/WH, solo
+10% for every extra pilot needed, up to +100% (so a highsec incursion needing lot of people can net 60M/hour/account).

Also EVE PvE is meant to demand active play. After going AFK your ship finishes the asteroids or NPCs you actively started, but that's it. If you figure out any way to start earning any income on a new object (rock, NPC, agent) while AKF, you found an exploit and you shall contact a GM who will reward you for your find and undo the extra income. Failing to report, and keeping or using the income will result in GM action against your account after the exploit is found.

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For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Saturday morning report: 162.1B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 5.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Sunday morning report: 162.4B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 5.8+0.7 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)
Monday morning report: 165.0B Another FW cashout caught with low buy orders. (5.5 spent on main accounts, 5.8+0.7 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4+0.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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My first kill report (and I'm not even on it)

This isn't the real post, that was at 7:00.

Remember the first kill where you meaninfully participated? Not the ones where you just tagged along with the pros, but the first where your actions mattered.

It started by a drakefleet was called for to escort supers to reinforce a station on 25S-6P. You can guess not many shown up for that "boring" job. You can also guess that I did. And off we went to clear the system from randoms and cyno in the supers. They put the station into armor reinforce fast, no hostiles shown up.By the way the station has some really idiot name:

Then I noticed that we are just next to 6BPS-T, the system I use to AFK cloak. I told that there are always bubbles on the gate but also some really brave ratters/bots who no longer warp to the safe because they trust their bubbles so much. There are of course some casual ratters who warp in when I log in, but the core just links stealth bomber kills and lols. It seems they were known by others too and some scouts went in. They noticed a ship outside the POS shield. It was probably gaining cap. We gathered on the gate, and discussed. The POS is a death star and we were low on logis. It could be a trap. But hey, we can only lose drakes, so let's go! When tackle was called by the scout, jumped, MWD-ed out of the bubble and warped. The job was to bump the target away from the shields. And here I am bumping: Well, it's not exactly a T1 cruiser or frig that most people killed first in lowsec. It's a 3.7B Thanatos (the in-game kills shown more cargo).

The "bad" thing is that I'm not on the kill report as I fly a Scimi. Why do I consider this my really first kill? Look up the system on the killboard sites and count the dead HBC drakes today. There are none. Not a single one was lost. The POS was shooting like hell, but our reps held. There is a killboard for logis: the one with friendlies. And when there are none on the list, we did good.

After the fleet was called, I logged to the AFK cloaker and chatted with the locals. They warped now. I hope I could convince them to quit AAA citizens and rent in Fountain instead.

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Random BG blacklist disaster

For everyone who did not notice: Blizzard added a wonderful feature to the PvP interface, you can blacklist 2 BGs that you won't get when going random. This is really nice of them, right?

Now why would anyone blacklist BGs? Because he loses it. If you are horde and see AV loading screen, you already lost. Same with Alliance in WSG/Twin Peaks. Or that's what people think. Now you might quote some research that says it's overvalued and horde loses only 60% of AV and not 100. This is where the random BG ban becomes a disaster. Who will blacklist AV as horde? Those who are both informed about the fact that horde mostly loses it and who care about winning it. We can call them goal-oriented good players. If they blacklist it, the remaining horde will be the less informed or "i dun care bout winz i wanna pwn". No wonder that the 60% loss rate will go up. This creates a vicious circle where the map is more and more biased so more and more people blacklist it.

Why is it a problem? Because it either ends every horde blacklisting AV, therefore removing the map from the pool. This way 4 maps will be removed: 2 by horde, 2 by alliance. The other outcome can be that there is a significant amount of uninformed players remain who don't blacklist anything. Since only they can get to the blacklisted maps on the losing side, they will experience nothing but being hammered to the ground every time. So it's another feature where Blizzard wants to be casual friendly and actually turns out the opposite way.

Let's think why do random BG with valor and extra honor rewards? To compensate for going to sub-optimal maps. If all maps were giving out equal rewards, I would only queue for AV for a 90% winrate (which I can provide with only 2 teammates as alliance). Now it's better to suck up the other BGs for the chance of getting into one where I can win. If the BGs were equal, there would be no need for random BG rewards at all. The blacklist will turn it back: I get the rewards without ever having to go to the maps where I have the lowest win chance.

Why am I not even surprised that whenever Blizzard touches PvP it goes wrong?

On the other hand the LFR raid was a very pleasant surprise. The fact that 2/3 of the people did it in normal already helped a lot. No lolling, limited standing in the fire, only one wipe. The dungeon is nice - but as usual - dancy: you could do it in much worse gear than the required 460. Which of course I don't have, but PvP gear, an agi fist weapon, a tanking cloak and the stamina trinket from Direbrew pushed me over the "needed" ilvl.

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For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Thursday morning report: 161.2B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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I was there ... despite I was asleep

Yesterday night (2012. Sept 8-9 night), the coalition I'm in captured the capital system of one of the biggest enemy alliances. AZN-2D of Red Overlord was dropped sov by spies and a Navy Apocalypse fleet held it while Territorial Claim Units came online. The system was captured by Pandemic Legion, we can access it, our enemies can't. These events made the Red Overlord break up and part of them forming a new alliance "Unclaimed" that joined us, HoneyBadger Coalition.

While this happened I was asleep. I've seen the fleet calls but couldn't participate even if it wouldn't be late night in my timezone as I can't fly anything that fits into a Navy Apocalypse fleet. Still I write about this event as "we captured it". What did I do to help this happen? My biggest contribution is 20billion ISK (about $700 in the item shop) donation every month to TEST alliance, the biggest member of HBC. This money is 6% of the income of the alliance. It is enough to buy 30 Navy Apocalypse battleships. Also I participated earlier fleets against Red Overlord, contributing to their weakening. I am busy AFK cloaker in the space of the enemy coalition, preventing their bots and cowardly members from farming money.

"OK, you don't slack overall. But you still weren't there." I don't blame you if you think that way. EVE Online is a very unique game, unlike any other MMO. "Modern" MMO world are merely a lobby for various minigames. The only thing carries trough between minigames is your character, however this character progression is trivialized. Everyone has more or less the same item level. In EVE Online the world is changing by your actions and your own character strength varies a lot. There isn't an NPC that hands out battleships for some trivial task. You have to get 2-300M ISK for the empty hull and 50-100M more for fittings. Getting this money is about 8 hours farming for an average player.

Unlike in any other MMOs, your past has an effect on your present and future. You can't just catch up with everyone in a week of extensive playing. Therefore every past actions that lead us here contributed. AZN-2D couldn't be taken if we wouldn't have ships to take it or if the enemy wouldn't be demoralized and unable to defend it. I took part in rising both the army and hitting ROL.

EVE Online is unique in one more way: in every other MMOs, doing the endgame provides the best rewards. If you do heroic raiding in WoW, you get the highest available ilvl. No other actions can give you so high ilvl. In EVE capturing the star systems, painting the map to your colors isn't really rewarding. The act of PvP gives nearly nothing. No loot roll jumps up when an enemy blows, and no honor points handed out. Sure, you can utilize the captured space, but the best way to get very rich is to ignore the whole thing, stay in the starter regions (highsec), semi-AFK-farm day and night or trade/industry for higher ISK/hour. The fruits of nullsec are rather a compensation than a goal. Capturing star systems demands you to donate your time/items instead of rewarding you with ingame items. You capture them because they are there and not because they give you something.

Because of this, many player choose to opt out of the system ownership warfare. Many systems are held by outright morons simply because no one else wanted it. It's not an obvious choice for competitive players like raiding in WoW.

Here is where industrialists become interesting. The reason while I alone can provide 6% of TEST income (average guy provides 100%/10000 = 0.01%) is that the income is small. Recognizing both that capturing star systems is a goal on its own, needing effort and that most people prefer to make effort by participating in fleets I choose to participate via providing ISK and motivate other industrialists to do so. Without such contributions the expansion cannot be upheld and the galaxy cannot be captured. Obviously I'm not the only one contributing via industry. Most of the income is from moon mining and mining towers must be managed. It's done by volunteer logistics team. Despite our name don't show up in the killboards, without us there wouldn't be fleet at all.

The very purpose of my rather large donation is to show how important industry is in EVE and motivate people to openly be moneymakers instead of doing it on an alt while spitting "we r l33t PvPrs fuck carebears" on his main.

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Speaking of this donation, I made the first just a month ago, here is the next:
For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Wednesday morning report: 159.9B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 37.4 sent as gift)

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Kill 10 mogus

There are various gaming skills that one can practice while having fun. If you like to test your reaction time, FPS games are for you. If you like combination and thinking, chess is there for you. MMOs aren't the best for this as they don't provide instant action. I think chess would be much less popular if you had to level to 90 before your first match by killing about 10000 pawns, first with your pawn, then by your rook, bishop and finally queen.

MMOs are perfect for those who enjoy optimization. There is a task that isn't hard but lengthy and by being smart you can speed it up by large. You combinate, practice, read up and your speed improves. I love to optimize and pretty good in it. You can see that from very simple basic actions (buy an implant in Jita, haul it to Rens and sell it) I can conjure up a working system that makes me extremely rich in games.

As I said, I play World of Warcraft - Mists of Pandaria, mostly for the story-graphics content. But my wish to optimize things caught on me. I quickly figured out that Tol Barad still gives the best honor/hour if you win in 5-15 mins, and honor gear is the easiest way to improve your ilvl to raid finder level. I also found out how can you do all the Golden Lotus dailies in 10-15 mins, netting like 1000 rep and 40 valor point, making this a faster VP source than running "heroics" even with a competent team.

I enjoyed playing WoW doing these. But the constant news stream don't even let me forget the big picture: I optimize for nothing. The optimal way of getting higher ilvl gear is simply logging out for a month. When you log back, you get it for free. Everything that I could earn now will be baseline stuff in the next patch and even until then there will be hotfixes to make it trivially easy to get. For example the mentioned Golden Lotus quests get some "developer attention".

In EVE everything I get is mine until I lose it by being bad in the game. My Orca will be just as useful a year from now as it is now, the only way to lose it is to fly it to Rancer or something. Caldari Navy standings won't get obsolete like Baradin Wardens. But in WoW the general rule is that everyone must get everything. The raid content I want to see and farm gear for will be completed by literally AFK people in a few weeks when players run out of votekick charges.

I canceled my WoW subscription. Unfortunately I had a 6-month plan so I'm paid until late December. You know what was the most shocking? Upon cancelation there is a questionaire wanting to know why I'm leaving. Half of the options were various wording of "the game is too hard for me", another 1/3 is "my account was hacked". The closest to the reason of my leaving is "There is nothing I can do", which is not true. I could do so much in WoW: I could level fishing to 600. I could get max rep with Gina Mudclaw. I could level up archeology. Hell with these, I could be really awesome and great by having the best battle minipet on the server yay!!! There wasn't a single option about "the non-trivial content became a twitch game" or "whatever I get will be inflated into baseline in a month". They don't even want to know about those who - you know - wanted to play an MMO. All they want to know how could they salvage those who want to play their storyline-comedy single player game that needs constant internet connection for DRM and as a bonus got a shared capital city with other players. We aren't simply out of the core audience anymore. We no longer exist in the eyes of Blizzard. We are not even a niche group for them.

I said that I will probably resubscribe on the next expansion to see new content. I probably won't. At the end of the questionaire there was a question about "do I plan to resubscribe". They didn't ask for a reason here or I'd write "because of your damn questionaire that can only imagine that one can leave because he is too dumb for even current WoW".

A "farewell gift" from WoW were Cheats and Kargim. The first was OK-ish, Kargim did 9K!!! DPS and died in the fire. However we couldn't kick him because his guildmate did not let it. Now what else can we do than boost him to more valor points? Misdirect the boss on him! After we did, his mage friend ran off and pulled the whole instance. He died and the swarm came on us. The 2 days old 90 tank held the whole instance and we 3-manned all with the boss. So World of Warcraft: boost retards in piss-easy content.

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PS: about an MMO where your actions has consequences, check out the nullsec warfare report of EVE Online. One of the larges alliance just lost their capital city to us.
And to avoid looking a fanboy: I was still 4 days away from being in the fleet that did it.

For EVE trade and industrial discussions join Goblinworks channel.
If you want to get into nullsec, go to the official forum recruitment thread and type the name of the alliance you seek into the search and start reading. I'm in TEST by the way.
Tuesday morning report: 178.3B (5.5 spent on main accounts, 4.8 spent on Logi/Carrier, 3.2 on Ragnarok, 2.7 on Rorqual, 2.4 on Nyx, 2.8 on Dread, 17.4 sent as gift)

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