Eve is easy vs Web exploit

Over at Jester's Trek, Jester wrote a post about the Web exploit, tying in a reference to the new site "Eve is Easy." It is true that one of the contributors for the site is Garmon, but he is doing his "thing" over there with the co-support of two other successful PvPers, Willl Adama and Duncan Tanner.

While the exploit certainly drags Garmon's name in the dirt let me respond to certain parts and implications of Jester's post.

Jester says - "The website, http://www.eveiseasy.com/, includes a box to put in your e-mail address.  Once you do, you're given access to several initial videos.

One can only assume that further videos will follow, but that those videos won't be so freely available."

How can I put this... WRONG! As a subscriber to Eve Is Easy, I can say that two more video's have been released, one about 0.0 Shield Rupture soloing and the second about 0.0 Wolf soloing. These video's, contrary to Jester's statement, were also made freely available to the public and were released March 17th, before the webbing "scandal" broke. Not likely that they were completed as a damage control move by Garmon.

The focal point of these 'instructional' video's is actually learning how to deal with, and engage certain types of situations from people who have evolved tactics to do just that. The instructors disclose their use of boosting alts when it happens, but the more important focus of the video's is showing the method they use to engage camps and up engage against superior numbers. If you are watching those video's and thinking that you can't do that without those advantages then you are missing the entire point of the video's in the first place. Learn how they separate out tacklers, see the mistakes that other pilots made to get put into those situations, learn from those mistakes. Get better.

The singular complaint about Garmon's "Garmonation" video's seems to be "He uses boosting alts and 5 bil isk fitting and faction/t2/expensive ships to be successful. That's not 'real' solo! QQQQQQ"

So it's not your definition of solo, and if that makes it less impressive, then don't watch it. The assumption seems to be that any "above average" player could, with the boosting alt, the overpriced ship, and everything else, do what Garmon does(or any other soloer) is equal parts insanity and stupidity. Garmon is a skilled pilot and player, exploiting weaknesses and strengths of in game mechanics, his fit, his support, and psychological nuances in ways that most of the rest of the player base can only hope to. 

In one way, Garmon is identical to the rest of us his mistakes are fatal, often times the error margin is even smaller for him. The following point can't be stressed enough. For each of the "good fights" that make it into a Garmonation video, there are tens, if not more, of fights that go badly and end up with Garmon dead. Not every fight he gets into, is he successful. Usually it is a high-octane mix of skill and opponent stupidity that allows any soloer, including Prom, Willl, Duncan, Sard Caid, Garm, etc, to be out classed, out manned, out gunned, and still end up with a victory. Not nearly as linked to "fit" as it is linked to decision to engage, and how to go about engaging.

In this case Jester comes off a bit like a gossip columnist. Claiming loudly that Eve is Easy is a for-profit venture (it's not yet and shows no signs of becoming one, just seemingly tracking who is interested in their video's to see if the time is worth it). Second, damning Garmon for an exploit used to kill Jump Freighters. Failing to pass the same judgement on PL, or maybe it is expected from PL? But just not from an upstanding member of the community like Garmon?

To put it plainly in reference to the exploit, am I defending Garmon's use of the exploit to get kills? No. It is underhanded, an unintentional mechanic, wrong and a exploit, not to mention down-right mean? Yes, but seriously? If your belief is "oh god that never happens in MY EVE" You're clearly a little out of touch with this game! Is this actually a CCP issue, YES. They should (have) fix(ed) it and(or) in the mean time, have declared it an exploit as soon as it was discovered(months ago), not waited until the noise level on the exploit got past a certain point. Bug report failure.

Vote Match and CSM7

Well, I've been avoiding typing up this post for at least the past few weeks. Trying to make an informed decision and not just a knee-jerk vote for my corpmate Leboe. A while back I was going to ask some specific questions of the CSM hopefuls and see who responded, and with what. In the end my questions seemed hollow and contrived so I scrapped the idea. I wish had fleshed out the idea and asked those questions, it would have been interesting to see people's responses to small gang combat and NPC 0.0 questions.

Instead I have been listening to all of the excellent podcast coverage of debates, while simultaneously attempting to keep track of who said what, when, and why. Hell, even if I kept notes of who said what I think I would be lost by now. All for the effort of trying to keep up to speed with the upcoming CSM7 elections.

Then I just went back to the same site that has led me through every single other CSM, that is Vote match for CSM9 provided by Dierdra Vaal. Now not only does this site provide useful information, it also gives a chance to see, side by side, views of who best represents your idea's.

To do this, Dierdra has setup a simple statement based system, for example

"The core combat model of EVE lacks complexity and is too simple." And then gives five options to the right, ranging from Strongly Disagree to Strongly Agree, the middle option being "No opinion" or more accurately, "don't care."

From these statements and your responses it gives you a list of all the candidates and how their responses compare to yours. Even to the level of looking at things you strongly disagree with and see who agree's with them so you know who to root against.

Well my results are below, and it looks like it was a good thing that Leboe decided to fire up his own CSM candidacy otherwise my vote would be wasted by yet another vote for Elise!

I say wasted because I am fairly certain that he has a great chance to make it back in already. Leboe on the other hand is for sure a longshot. I see Hans Jagerblitzen on there as well, and a great candidate, representing lowsec and facwar very well from what I have heard of him. Korvin, was not well known to me, being a "Russian bloc" candidate, but turns out he holds more than one of the same views I do as I read his CSM page, coming in third of my suggested people I should vote for. I've read and reviewed all their campaign posts and I will once again follow Vote-match into the void and select Leboe with my accounts, hoping that a true small gang pilot can make it onto the special 7. I wouldn't mind seeing any of the other three on there as well.

I suppose it helps that Leboe is a Rote Kapelle alliance member, not that my opinion of him is based just on his alliance membership and Corp membership.

Surprise(to me)absentee's from my top five - Prometheus Exenthal (45%), and Alekseyev Karrde (60%). Both self-nominated small gang candidates, but yet so different from my responses. Very eye opening to see them nailed down on some topics that obviously we differ on in significant ways.

Really interesting for me to take a look at some of the "Big names" out there as they pertain to myself. My fifth ranked candidate is another very good one, Meissa Anunthiel (63%), of Rooks and Kings, who has a ton of experience in both the CSM as well as in game. The Mittani (Goonswarm) manages to have 48% of my views, not that he needs my vote. Trebor Daehdoow (51%), honestly thought he would be higher, he's had a vote of mine before. How about Seleene (56%)?

All in all, I will be supporting my alliance mate Leboe! Should you find yourself with some extra time and are still wondering who to vote for, you should go check out vote match and give it a shot for yourself!

BB #33 Left Adrift in Space

Blog Banter 33: The Capsuleer Experience

Like mana from Valhalla (yes I know I'm mixing my religious metaphors), the latest Dev Blog by CCP Legion asks questions which make for perfect Blog Bantering. To quote him "...we want to make the first days, weeks and months in EVE enjoyable and not just something ‘you have to plough through in order to get to the good stuff’" and the newly formed Player Experience team will focus on "...where and why people lose interest in EVE...".

"We invite you to pour your heart (or guts) out and tell us what you think is good or bad with the current new player experience and what you think could be done about the problems."

Blargle, yeah that's how this post started. I know I want to write stuff in here, but that was the first thing that came out.

Are those Lasers on your Merlin?

Now more on topic;

I think that we could add the following to greatly improve the new player experience and leave them less "in-the-wind" after the tutorials are completed.

1. The first good step a player should take is to get out of the damn NPC corp as fast as possible. Even if the players end up in corps that aren't really what they want to do, they will make friends, gain confidence and have an audience, a mostly captive audience, to ask each of the one million questions they have about the game. Perhaps what is needed to facilitate this is for CCP to add Corp recruitment tutorial IE "This is how you find your first corp" Making it optional, or have them join to their first corp through the tutorial just to get a taste of the corp recruitment interface, and get them exposed to other active corps and people quickly. This would be a whole new tutorial as it is not covered in the NPE at all.

2. Provide further guidance at the end of the second line tutorial missions, perhaps something like "If you enjoyed this type of this go talk to XXX security agent, or XXX distribution agent or whatever for the appropriate agent type. I think this would be pretty straight forward and send players towards other "like" and nearby agents. For that matter provide more tutorials for game features, ie exact scanning tutorials, not the really basic stuff they have out there now. Or maybe d-scanner tutorials or instructions. This is really just a logical extension of the current tutorials, linking them back into "regular" missions and gameplay by giving the player a next step to take into Eve.

3. Skill tree suggestions in conjunction with #2. IE: If they liked scanning and WH, link the skills they should look at getting, what level they should get those skills to, and warn them about sleeper damage. Just overall provide a basic guideline of skills they should try to focus on to head down the path that interests them, be it PvP or PvE combat, mining, exploration, hauling, or WHATEVER. Give some guidelines in game so that the new player isn't just dropped off at that point and expected to know or learn the ideal skills all for themselves. This would be brand new content, but not terribly difficult to drum up, in fact a ton of blogs already have suggested skills posts that would be great templates to start generating from.

4. Give an advanced PvP tutorial, create a special NPC just for this tutorial. Make it similar to a sleeper frigate, give it sleeper frigate AI, and a 100% chance to web and scram. Teach things in video form like transversal, tackle, optimal range vs falloff. make the advanced PvP tutorial difficult, force new players to die, provide a fully fit high-end frigate just for the mission. Give the player that ship at the outset of the mission and take it back afterwards. Eve if it is a "close, but not quite" simulation of PvP, at least introduce the basics. The would be the truly new and probably difficult addition, it would require a new type of NPC, using of sleeper AI in regular space, and a high difficulty and loss of ships for the player just to get them started in PvP. Even if that start is PvE in nature.

5. Auto-populate the "saved" fittings of new pilots with some "decent" starter fits. name them appropriately, IE for the Caldari line, give a merlin PvE fit, and PvP fit pre-saved, also the same for the Kestrel and Condor, even if they are jus tthe idea of basic tackle, use all tech one, unnamed mods, but have it there ready for the new player. So they can go use these basic setups as a baseline to build new fits off of. They don't even have to be 100 percent correct, but at least something close would be nice. Mining fits for the Bantam, etc etc. Just having some examples is key to letting new players focus on other things at the get go instead of "how do I fit this ship." Instead they can look at the skills suggested in #3 and the baseline fits and be able to try the things they want to. This would just be adding some fits to the tool already in place, just an extra thing that gets initially installed. Easy to remove in game if you are done with/past the starter fits, but it ties in well with #3 to help point players in the right direction initially.

Other bantererz:
Blog Banter: The Capsuleer Experience by Gilbert Hamilton @ Diary of a Garbageman

Improved Mini - BWAHAHAHAH Just Kidding PvP Tutorial by Corelin @ Haberdashers Run Amok

Blog Banter 33 - NPE by Lockefox @ Hell's Librarians

The First Five Minutes by Marc Scaurus @ MALEFACTOR

I Heart Newbies Too by Shalee Lianne @ Living a Lie

"The Capsuleer Experience" by Evehermit @ Evehermit's Blog

Pain by blastradius1 @ Blastrad's Tales

Blog Banter 33 by Drackarn @ Sand, Cider and Spaceships

The Capsuleer Experience by Kody Gloval @ Electronics Evangelist

The Capsuleer Experience by Ender Black @ Pod Goo

That Universe is Mine? by Emergent Patroller

Keeping the (New) Newbies by Ugleb @ Ugleb's Journal

Capsuleer is the Key Word by Mabrick @ Mabrick's Mumblings

Give the new guy a friend by Jac @ Dying in Lowsec (One Hauler at a Time)

More Options by Grimmash @ Warp to Zero

Needs More Cut Scenes by Orea at Notes from New Eden

The Capsuleer Experience by Urziel99 @ Urziel's EVE Chronicle

"So How Was it For you?" by TurAmarth ElRandir @ A CARBON Based Life

The Capsuleer Experience by The Scientist @ A Scientist's Life in Eve

The Capsuleer Experience by Crash @ Obfuscated Reality

How I Became a Capsuleer by Kat Robspierre @ Chasing ISK

Left Adrift in Space by Logan Fyerite @ Eve Opportunist

SRAT Finals and Wrapup

Last weekend closed out the first Syndicate Regional Alliance tournament. Previously I interviewed Apathetic Brent, but now on to the results of the final weekend.

Unfortunately replays of the fights seem to be few and far between and the killboards are scrambled due to many matches in a short amount of time.

The second weekend allowed previously losing teams to turn their luck around, Groon in particular made a strong comeback after practicing for the week with Rote Kapelle, as neither were able to easily field a second practice team.

• Match One : Qualifier last match, the two undefeated teams;

Rote Kapelle(STUGH) vs Flying Dangerously (FIGL)
Rote's Sleipnir team battled on a razor edge for this fight for a long time, only managing to pull out a clear win later in the fight.

Replay from Rote Sliepnir, Piloted by Ben Booley

• Match Two : Losers bracket qualifier.

Clockwork Pineapple(GROON) vs Flatline.
Flatline's second loss here eliminated them from the competition, Groon advances to the semi-finals to face FIGL after getting revenge on their first loss in round one against Flatline.

Flatline. final killboard link here.

• Match Three : Semi-Final, winner fights Rote Kapelle for the Championship!

Flying Dangerously vs Clockwork Pineapple 
Groon pulls off a solid victory here, knocking FIGL out of the tournament.

FIGL final killboard link here.

• Match Four : FINAL MATCH

Rote Kapelle vs Clockwork Pineapple

Replay from Rote Sleipnir, piloted by Ben Booley.

Groon overall killboard link here.

Rote Kapelle final killboard link here.

Final standings were:

RK : 4 wins and 0 losses, SRAT Champions

Groon : 3 wins and 2 losses, SRAT Runner-ups

FIGL : 1 win and 2 losses

Flatline : 1 win and 2 losses

Narhwals. : 0 wins and 2 losses

Click here for Ripard's version of the events and commentary identical to what I was going to say in my own wrap-up.