Greedy Goblin

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Beyond my wildest dreams

"Beyond my wildest dreams" is a new gimmick in TEST, coined by an awoxer who stole a smartbomb from the fleet hangar of a titan and awoxed some retrievers. He explained his actions as the value of the loot was beyond his wildest dreams and couldn't resist it.

For more than a year I was suggesting that alliances should finance themselves on player contribution. I mean players already donate huge amount of time to their alliances, like flying stealthless-bombless stealth bombers grinding structures. If 200 people flying such crap for 2 hours without personal benefit is OK, 200 people ratting/mining and giving away the income (200*2*0.05 = 20B) should be equally OK.

But it's not, because shooting an IHUB is awesome PvP fun, while mining is a horrible PvE activity that only carebears do. And no self-respecting PvP-er would tolerate filthy carebears in his alliance. Goons surely not who gave the order to their pet SMA to kick half of their members for being carebears. TEST is probably the only exception, with official squads for industry and ratting and people openly discussing ISK-making.

I recently rejoined TEST and suggested to have a killboard-like toplist for donators. It was built in record time. You can see it too, it's not passworded, it's open like the killboard. So, I offered 10B every month if they make it and foolishly offered to match any donations.

I expected people to give a couple ten millions. After all 1000 people donating one hour of ratting fruits is 50B. Corps may give a billion or two. Well, the results exceeded my wildest dreams. Members gave billions with ottawolf donating his whole saving for a supercarrier, 40B. Matching that was felt even by my wallet. Anyway, in the first few days of this running, 160B was collected, almost as much as the monthly moon income of Fountain. The list isn't even complete, as many donated goods and not ISK, that needs to be manually added to the system.

This is just the beginning. Lot of people can and like making ISK, they just have no reason to. They farm enough to PLEX their account and buy a ship or two and that's it. Unlike fleet PvP, there was no reward attached. No killboard, no people around to defeat or fly with. Now it became a badge of honor, these "carebears" are keeping the SRP running. Many will pick up their ratting or mining ship, pull out PI pilots out of the mothball or reactivate a highsec moneymaker. Because making ISK is no longer "spending unfun time for pixel money" but the mean to win the war. Also, moneymaking isn't bound to fleet pings, you can do at any time, so it can overall increase activity. Please note that 1/3 of the donated money already came from the "long tail", lot of little guys giving a few millions.

The propaganda of TEST bankruptcy will end just as fast as "N3 is destroyed by the sov-dropping director". TEST can no longer bankrupt. Moons can be taken, members not. As long as there are members loging in, there will be ISK in the chest, therefore there will be SRP. As long as there is SRP, there will be PvP-er to fly them. As the funds increase, more will be available for "get your first battleship for free" or "hourly pay for structure grinders" or free slowcats.

The "Goon idea" has lost the war. Goonswarm may not as they shown fast adaptation skills. Maybe the next Mittani move will be evaluating corps based on ISK given to the war chest and everyone will be expected to recruit carebears. But the idea of "grr carebears, kill them all, PvP forever" is as dead as the master-pet system of BoB and -A-.

If you are not in TEST but want to support us in our sacred war against the Band of Bees, you can donate too:

PS: The donation board will also make the "you just made up your 0.5T" posts pointless. After all, it's irrelevant how much I have. What matters is how do I use it. I think most of it will slowly but surely go to the TEST coffers. Also, my Ragnarok pilot will soon complete his skill plan, so I must get liquid for that too.

PS2, personal note: all services set up and logi pilot joined, stratops here I come again... too bad that most of them are US TZ which I can't attend at weekdays. But there will surely be fleets in the EVE time 16-21 range.


Bobbins said...

Ref. Tip of the hat

What about the adding commentary to the donation board it would add a bit of flair to what is a set of numbers. It could go along the lines of linking it with a 'victory'.

Also if you are confident that the donations are going to be sustained set up a forum post to counter the general 'test is broke' feeling. It will attract goon trolls but as long as your facts/donation are correct it will be difficult to counter.

Duke of O said...

Total war entails the mobilization of the home front to support the war effort on the front lines. Bravo for pointing this out to TEST and working out peer driven ways to recognize contributors to the war effort from the home front. And way to put your money where your mouth is too, by matching donations.

Looks like it's going to be a long war - look forward to reading about it!

Anonymous said...

Goons do, in fact, have official squads, subforums, ratting/mining fleets and channels for ISK-making.

SMA members didn't get kicked for being carebears. They got kicked for being leeching wastes that DPS below the tank and use "but I'm an industrialist" as an excuse. There are plenty of carebears and industrialists in CFC who don't get kicked.

Péter Zoltán said...

Are you sure that these donations are real and they aren't just scamming you into donating more? :)

Also, if the donations are real: are there any plans to motivate donors in the long run? The novelty of the toplist will wear off in a few months, then people will stop donating (and fighting for toplist spots) in my opinion.

Unknown said...

In my opinion, you just won EVE. Changing a long-lasting idea in a lot of players, which was not true at all, is a great achievement I think. I think you will be remembered for this, and this is the only way to win in this game, to be recognised by the community. I think this article should go on the Latest News of the EVE Launcher.

Gevlon said...

@Péter Zoltán: did killboards get old?

Biggles said...

It could still be an elaborate scam. If they get you to donate as much as they can get out of you and then go 'thanks, bye', making that 'ISK-board' is a very small price to pay. Did you do anything to prevent this from happening?

Gevlon said...

Who is the scammer? The leadership? How do they prevent enthusiast line members donate too? Are they scamming everyone who donate? Do you think everyone in TEST is involved in some elaborate scam with no Goon spy around to catch them?

Anonymous said...

Great move. I think some people out of TEST would love to donate too...just to see Goons losing this war. Maybe you should advertise this war effort donation to everyone who maybe want to help. Every isk counts.

Biggles said...

I'm not saying it would be easy, hence the 'elaborate' part. It is possible that a top few in Test, knowing your history, decided to see if they could get you back in, create the ISK donation board you've been talking about for at least 6 months just to see what they could get out of you before you catch on to what's going on. Usual scams aren't this elaborate, but there have been quite a few that are way more sophisticated then this one (if it is one).

How can you tell a member donation is real? And even if I were a Goon spy, what good would it do to expose this to you?

Anonymous said...

What keeps anyone from scamming you by taking your cash and then returning the money of all members except you? The site seems pretty simple and afaik you have no wallet approval of any transactions except yours?

It seems simple to fake some transactions to lever money out of you and then return all enthuiastic peoples ISK after bailout after milking you dry.

Keeping line members uninformed about the scam would be understandably disclaimed to be a spy protection mechanism.

At least, after more than a year you understood that ISK is worthless without a cause.

This also renders your ps obsolete, no proof of wallet transactions... which in turn could make it a reverse scam to prove a point you do not have.

Life isn't as simple as that. Only proof would be to release an API key or give it to a trusted third party for validation.

Anything else would probably be downsided as scam or unproven.

And from this side, above scam is a lot, but not elaborate... just a variation of misdirection and an I'll double your isk trap you set up yourself by overreaching, perhaps by grabbing you by your rational ego and feeding you the words you needed to hear.

Anonymous said...

Addition to my post before: Understand that I don't take any sides in this, neither TEST nor Goon nor yours.

I'm just pointing out my observations, and possible loopholes.

What it also shows is that,if real, obviously there are TEST people with isk to spare, e.g. not piss poor as claimed by you in general.

Anonymous said...

There is also a double sided advantage on TEST leadership side. If it doesn't work out line members get reimburses and you scammed. If it does, ISK comes in and after establishing you get kicked, or moderated into silence.

Perfect definition of win-win here: I pull you over the table so quickly that you think the friction heat feels like nest warmth.

Gevlon said...

So TEST leadership has two options:
- return tens of billions to members and cut all further donations
- happy that money comes in

Very hard decision.

Unknown said...

It could be a scam, but it would be silly. People are actually donating, there's no reason to scam when the truth is better.

Phelps said...

I'm with LeBlanc. A lot of things like this might start out as scams, but then it becomes obvious quickly that the real deal pays better than the scam.

Running the scam for the lulz when the real deal pays better is a goon move, not a TEST move.

Anonymous said...

I think this was a great concept and it seems to be executed fairly well. I'm sure there are many features that could be added to further motivate the line members to contribute.

My suggestion would be to show donations from outside TEST as well (I am in N3). I'd like to donate to the effort and having a public record of the action would be awesome.

Gevlon said...

It shows donations from outside (see many NPC corps).

However you can start the same in N3: send money to the executor corp of your alliance, printscreen your wallet transaction, post on your forum and motivate others to do the same!

Anonymous said...

Great idea! If we would like to participate, where do we address our ISK to?


Gevlon said...

Post updated with details how to donate, if you want to support the holy war against the Band of Bees!

Babar said...

First of all, congratulations on raising over 160b. That's a significant amount, and will help Test a long way.

However, more people would take you seriously if your "facts" actually had some substance to them. As someone has noted already, CFC already has jabber channels for isk-making, whole corps who specialize in mining, corps that do industry, and there's even a squad that specializes in "jewing". There are many threads on about how to rat the most efficient, how to mine, how to do PI (Which was even in the old 60 day plan) and so on. Saying that Goons/CFC hate people who don't pvp is blatantly false. You will never be kicked, humiliated or called out anywhere if you choose to mine or rat or do whatever you want while a stratop is going.

I'm sure most other alliances have similar things. Nobody cares what you do in CFC, and it's pretty much the same in Test I'm sure. Until the donation drive has been going on for months, and keeps up the momentum, it's far too early to say that someones way of handling a coalition is surely over, especially when you clearly don't know how other alliances run their things.

Gevlon said...

@Babar: not officially. But if your corp (other than Goonwaffe) or pet alliance doesn't bring the proper attendance, it'll be kicked. So they will make sure to keep the carebear ratio down.

Anonymous said...

Errrr... there a lot of inaccurate statements in this article. CFC doesn't use stealthless bombers for ihub bashing. The only difference in the stealth bombers is that they don't use bombs and are torp fit for max DPS to structures. If this is such a bad thing, why is TEST trying to adopt the same strategy of using stealth bombers to put timers on structures now?

You might have found some ways to make isk in this game, but you know shit all about sov grinding tactics. You'll fit in well with TEST (again) though. Goodluck.

Sugar Kyle said...

Kicking people who join a corp/alliance and accept that corp/alliances requirements to do something like defend the corp or alliance who does not is not rabid care bear hatred. In Eve, people sign up for things and they are expected to follow up on that.

Just like a renter corp is expected to pay rent and not PvP their rent away and then go to the people they rent from and say but we PvPed it all and that was more valuable than our bearing. Its not the agreement.

I would never join a PvP corp with minimum activity requirements. I might find another writing contest to spend a months energy on. If my PvP corp that I application in and join with full knowledge of its requirements kicks me for not living up to them because I was writing I don't get to rant about how they hate people who write for fan fiction contests.

People have to enforce their corp/alliance rules or they will just be a mess. Most of us join these groups for that groups goal or purpose. We are expected to contribute to that goal. There are plenty of laid back, relaxed groups one can join that loosely work on this or that. Focus is how a group becomes well known or even famous and it is certain lay how it becomes successful.

Anonymous said...

Good to have you back, Gevlon. I might not always agree with you, but the donation board is a brilliant idea.

Oh, and it's funny to see some people suggesting that this might be a plot to scam People. Um, what? Who's the scammer then, TEST leadership? Yeah, alienating all your members sure is a great idea when you're trying to win a war. This theory's even dumber than chemtrails, sorry goonsies.

Lucas Kell said...

Interesting indeed, but I'd really question what this means in real terms. For starters 160b sounds like a vast amount of money, but in real terms it's about 14 days of war paid for. Wars cost in the trillions, and that's not the kind of isk that can be generated from player donations in a short space of time.

Secondly I'd question why this is being treated like it will be an ongoing amount. 80b of this came from 2 investors. You are unlikely to see a sustained income of the level of these initial donations. They guy that donated the 40b (that you matched) no longer has 40b to donate, so he won't be doing that again, and I'd doubt there are many people that are that generous in any alliance. (This part is unconfirmed, but I also heard that 40b of the donations went to paying backlog SRP, so is not in the pot going forward already - not sure if you can confirm or deny this)

Thirdly I'd question what impact the industry and ratting will have on the war from a defense point of view. CFC puts a lot of pressure on attendance, that's right. But that's because attendance is much more valuable than isk. Having 1 more battleship on the field for 2 hours is worth WAY more than 2 hours of that same pilot ratting, so it sounds to me like TEST are going to be losing front end pilots for this. CFC rules allow ratting but its encouraged to only do it during non operational time and without pulling from deployment, which is a sensible plan. You can't wage a war if your soldiers aren't available to fight, no matter how much isk you have.

Overall, it's nice to see, but I doubt it will impact the war much.

Madlof said...

FWIW I did something similar to this in the aftermath of 49- when reimbursements were hurting - except instead of a swanky leaderboard site, I had big numbers in a forum thread and one of my friends wrote the top contributor's name on his girlfriend's back - I got something like 54b with a top donation of 20b in a week or so.

I agree with you that you have to give people a reward to donate, or otherwise they just won't bother - you're just taking the tack of using people's pride to get donations, I sold nudes.

Pride is a pretty much infinite resource so it works quite a bit better than nudes, heh

It's a fundamentally good idea, and I'm glad to see you executed it well~

Unknown said...

So... Gevlon... Are you going to match the 85b deposit as well?

Gevlon said...

In a few months yes. Can't do faster, a week ago I did not know I'll be in TEST so made no preparations.

Unknown said...

One thing that is overlooked by commenters is the positive outlook this has on TEST membership.

Activity from a PvE/ISK-making standpoint doesn't exclude PvP activity. In fact, an active donation board says, "Hey we're making a lot of money so we can fund SRP more easily!" Active income flow that is clear and visible tells the combat pilots that the PvE guys have their back. This is emboldening! It makes people want to log in, show up to ops and make the most of that isk. Seeing other people show up and "fight," especially when to you, their "fight" is boring as fuck, is empowering.

The influx of cash for TEST will encourage more people to log in to fight, because they know the "homefront" is supporting them. That's way more important than the ISK itself.

Yes, there are people that won't CTA and will rat or trade and send cash or loots instead. These are not people you really wanted in your fleets! You don't want people that don't want to CTA, you want the people who want to go in and get some pew pew! The logistics guys (not heal beam pilots, but actual logistics guys) get to do what they enjoy in EVE and support the war effort in their own way and be recognized for it. This is 100% win-win for everyone.

It is only not win-win if you pursue personal wealth accumulation, but what are you doing in a military alliance when you could be solo trading? Even Gevlon is supporting TEST because he realizes that money doesn't mean shit, it's about what you can do to change things in the world. Money's just a way someone can do that.

Anonymous said...

The complete and utter lack of understand of how 0.0 works, isk is never the issue moral is. Making your members do unfun things will stop them logging in and lose the war.

Anonymous said...

This is so damn amazing. Even if we lose Fountain, but can keep this donation leaderboard going, we could actually lose Delve as well, and still be a powerhouse. We wouldn't be bound to any SOV and could afford to go helicopter-dick whenever we wanted. And for the tinfoil hats who think this is a scam, I'd offer to post my donations (just a joe line member) but you'd think I was part of the lie too, you live a sad life.
- Testie