Saturday, June 16, 2012

Whining bitches . . .

     After the hulkageddon 5 gank fest, the princess of the goonderps claimed they just might make the miner bounties a permanent thing, but only on T2 exhumers that they can get about 10x the profit to bounty ratio on.  They might be assholes, but they aren't STUPID assholes . . . per se.  Of course, this provoked some fairly healthy forum posts all over the intar pipes, but for about 10,000 goon muppets to go about ganking non-pvp interested players, in un-armoured ships, and encouraging other maturity compromised griefers to do the same, is just good l0lz farming.

     Bring in the war dec changes at the beginning of the month.  As part of the goonderp's plan of harassing (just about) anyone who speaks ill of their muppetry, they war dec'd The Star Fraction alliance, of which Jade Constantine is the CEO and founder.  I know a little about Jade.  An old player, role player, was CSM chair a few years back, opinionated, speaks intelligently (from the things she's written) and she's anti ass-puppet, anti-drone, in other words, no respect for the kind of mindless asshats that collect under the goon banner.  A lot of players don't seem to like Jade, apparently many goons and wanna-be's who can barely string together three words they thought up on their own.  Big surprise they were dec'd by the goonderps.  Jade planned to try out the new ally feature of the war dec system to even out the odds of 9000+ to 100 by inviting anyone and everyone to become their ally to help blow away the goonderps.  Jade made the war mutual (which means the war dec is pretty much permanent) and gave the goonderps the surrender condition of 5 bisk per ally.  As of right now, if you check out the handy little monitoring tool that is build into the corporate war dec panel, the goonderps are having their asses handed to them to the tune of 3 to 1 in ships and 10 to 1 in isk.  Now, to a bunch of isk fountain drinking drones like the goons, money is pretty much irrelevent.  BUT, the interesting thing is, that the much vaunted goonderps don't have the 100 to 1 lolz ratio that they apparently need, so mittenzez and his TEST ass puppet on the CSM immediately ran to CCP crying about how UNFAIR it was that they were LOCKED into a war dec that THEY STARTED, were getting their asses handed to them (and still are) and they would have to PAY to get out of it.  So, 4 days into the new war dec system, CCP changes the rules so that allies can't be part of a mutual war dec, allies have to pay increasing amounts to be part of the war, and the ally "contract" resets every 2 weeks.  The money it takes for a 9000+ alliance to war dec a 100 man alliance is still insignificant.  In the end, it costs hundreds of times more for defenders than it does for attackers, and the overwhelming bully advantage goes back to the attackers.  Back to the goonderps, which is how they like it.

     So, what is the term for spineless bullies who have great belly laughs when they can encourage blowing up unarmed players, but immediately freak out when a hugely imbalanced playing field is evened slightly and they start getting their asses handed to them by people actually willing and able to shoot back?  Whining bitches.

Friday, June 15, 2012

Interpretive dance

     Since the goon derps, or more accurately, mittenz, declared that causing shit is so much fun, he's thinking of sponsoring the 100 million per 10 miner kills event, indefinitely.  Actually though, it's only T2 boats like hulks and mackinaws, because those are the ones they get 10x the 100 million bounty on in profit from tech sales.  Not surprisingly, non-ADHD players, who don't mind mining, think this blows chunks and are complaining loudly about it.  I believe, that is warranted, but mining types need to understand what they are up against though.

     Since lil Alex shot his mouth off in Iceland, mining-type people have been quick to pull bits and pieces out of the AUP and EULA in attempts to justify their positions in the same way that CCP did to ban the asshole for a month, and it's no news flash who that asshole is.  Problem is, trying those justifications from a player position is never going to work.  CCP did that because at that very time, they were trying to hype DUST and sell the idea of it and Sony to the gaming world.  Some big mouthed player rep attempting to get other players to try to get a fellow player to commit suicide, is bad PR.  Bad for sales.  Bad for getting new players on board, even for a free console game.  CCP likes the notoriety their game has produced and generates.  As far as the bottom line goes, so far, "notoriety" is paying the bills just like "popularity" would and it's still printing their accounting books in the black, so it's all good.  In the MMO world, they're the sort of the dangerous guy that it's cool to "know", but not really to talk to much.  In the MMO world, there's not much news aside from updates.  In Eve, most of the news is generated by or from the players, either from actions inside the game, in the meta game, or from updates that don't cut the mustard.  Controversy in the news is CCP's bread and butter when it comes to Eve, so when there are big rip-offs, scams, battles or general uproars in the player community, that is good Eve press.  "12 man mining fleet gets ganked for billions in high sec" is good game PR.  "12 man mining fleet drains a 9 belt system in record time" doesn't mean shit to CCP.  At the same time, all the negative player related press may be great for notoriety, but it isn't great for getting new, non-griefer players interested in electronic spaceships.  It's actually fairly shitty.

     At the same time, CCP is well aware of the player types and roughly how long their fuses are.  The ADHD griefer types who take all their problems from the real world and like to bring them in game to bully other players, especially in un-armed ships, have relatively short fuses and short attention spans.  When they lose the ability to cause shit, or get their electronic adrenaline shakes, even for a short period of time, they leave.  Miners, industrial types and likely even a number of mission runners have much longer fuses.  They're more patient players and their fun doesn't come from adrenaline fixes.  If they lose the ability to play their style of game in a more open game like Eve, it'll take them a lot longer to get pissed off enough to leave.  CCP knows this.  Unfortunately for players that aren't assholes, you aren't only up against the assholes and CCP, but you are up against your own nature too.  For anyone that can sit there and mine for hours, run around checking on and setting up BP activities, or doing PI, or even running missions, that takes patience.  The kind of patience that acts FOR CCP when it comes to the point where a "carebear" is pissed off about the assholes in the game.

     So, in a game that is run by a company that favours the behaviour of short attention span assholes, and is also conveniently the final arbitrator in player conflicts, they will do the interpretive dance and favour the news makers, the assholes, over the patient players who will take a lot more shit than they should.  CCP tosses the "patient" players a bone every once in a while, like art or graphics updates, or like the new mining barge proposals.  Even the patient players have a limit though and i guess time will tell how well CCP juggles the griefer's ADHD and the "carebears" patience.