Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Scouring of the Shire

Sigh.

Ripard Teg has become uncharacteristically strident.  It's a bit shocking.  Usually he's so calm and methodical.  (And compulsively productive, curse him!)  But over at Jester's Trek he's gone 'old testament' on us.  It's all 'Doom is ye-comen unto thee!' and 'Smite the abominations' and 'Suffer not the Carebears to dwell in thine rumpus room'.

Seems Rote Kapelle, Jester's alliance, is the big fish in Syndicate.  Of course Syndicate, being NPC nullsec  and having a number of lowsec entry points, is sort of a tidal area between empire and SOV nullsec.  It's a good place to learn the ins and outs of nullsec PvP and much more prone to small gang fights than SOV nullsec.  As such there are a lot of transient corporations and alliances just in the neighborhood for a while as they transition to or from nullsec.  There are also a lot of entities residing there more or less permanently for the sharp combat and larger (than empire) ISK faucets.  And, as this is shallow nullsec, a lot of Syndicate's citizens are in learning mode and not what one would call 'elite' PvPers.

Rote, however, are elite. Despite their small size relative to other Syndicate alliances, they are both experienced PvPers and well organized.  And, by all accounts, they can beat any other floozy in the Syndicate bar.  Now, one would think that membership in this august band of killing machines would have Mr Teg feeling pretty good. You'd think he'd be all smiles and rainbows, and handing out free puppies to the neighbors' children.

Alas.  There is a fly in the Syndicate ointment; a floater in the nullsec kiddie pool, so to speak. 

It seems some of the other alliances aren't playing the way Rote thinks they should.  They aren't fighting by Rote's rules.  They do things like ambush Rote pilots with t3 cruisers gangs supported by ECM and logi ships.  Then they run away when Rote shows up in numbers.  They won't come out and fight honorably, but cower in station when Rote comes to call, which makes station camping for Rote very dull indeed.  And they moon mine.  Did I mention that they moon mine?  The nerve, I tell you.

This has displeased both Rote and Ripard.  Displeased them full sore. The Syndicate neighborhood, they argue, is going to hell in a hand-basket, and there's only one way to fix it:  Cleanse Syndicate of such pests.  

So, ethnic cleansing by Rote against these Carebear alliances (for, who but a Carebear would fight Rote Kapelle in a manner displeasing to Rote Kapelle) has commenced.  The offending alliances are to be harried and killed; their miserable hovels and pestilential vegetable patches burned and their ponies relentlessly defiled, until the offending alliances see the error of their ways and fight Rote as Rote wishes to be fought, or depart Syndicate altogether.

Of course, some rational minds have held forth on Mr Teg's blog.

Some have pointed out that combat is ... well combat.  And combat, by its nature, assumes you're going to use strategy to fight with an advantage over the foe.  And fighting on the enemy's terms is, as Sun Tzu was given to say, 'crazy-ass stupid' (it sounded much more elegant when Sun said it).  I mean, it's great to have a code of honor when you fight.  Bravo on you.  But to say that everybody in a nullsec region has to fight according to your code or else you'll kick them out of the region is a bit like threatening to push a piece of string uphill because it insists on being limp and therefore hard to push uphill.

Others have pointed out that Rote Kapelle may have become too good at PvP to draw decent fights in Syndicate any more.  Perhaps Rote has outgrown their small pond and needs to seek deeper waters with bigger fish who will offer better fights.  Or perhaps they could annoy one of the SOV nullsec alliances that occupy the high-value Syndicate moons in hopes the landlords send a security detail to punish Rote for their cheek.

And still others have said it takes an awful lot of brass to dictate to an entire region of capsuleers how they should play Eve.
 .
All for naught, I'm afraid.  Mr Teg has Rote Kapelle's bit in his teeth and has told all and sundry that he will not entertain any further comments or discussion along this line of thought.  That loud 'snick' you hear is the sound of a good mind snapping shut.  Rote Kapelle snaps the leash, and Ripard Teg comes to heel.  

Happily, while Mr Teg has shut the doors at Jester's Trek to the above lines of discussion, the floor is open at Fiddler's Edge.  Feel free.

Mind, I am very interested in seeing how this plays out.  As most of you know, it's very hard to keep someone out of NPC space.  Rote plans to attack their enemies' industrial infrastructure, but that provides only limited leverage against someone determined to hang around.  And while elite, Rote's smaller membership may limit their ability to project force spatially and across all time zones.  Of course, if Rote can gather like-minded neighbors into a coalition, they could make things very uncomfortable for their tormentors.  And it may well be that the offending alliance(s) might just move on after a spanking or two rather than endure the unwanted attention from Rote.

We'll see.  Someone pass the popcorn. 

26 comments:

  1. You so silly Mord. As if Rote has a leash on Teg, or any of us for that matter.

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    1. I know. That's what got my attention. See, the tone and style of the first post is a departure from Ripard's usual. In fact it paraphrases extensively from the Rote Alliance Failheap post it references. Which Ripard didn't write.

      Now, that would suggest Ripard is allowing himself to be made a sock puppet for his alliance. But that would be weird, right? Crazy talk! I mean, Ripard's all about the integrity.

      And yet....

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  2. Yeah, I'm obviously biased but you've misunderstood both my and Rote's intent here.

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  3. Dunno Jester, I think you were pretty clear. Not a lot of room for misunderstanding in either post.

    I mean, go out and smite the heathen and stuff. Enjoy. I watch with interest. Just don't dress this up as something it isn't.

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  4. But he's so much smarter than everyone else. Just read his posts. He's a prophet for CCP. He came up with their good game mechanics before they did. And the bad ones, well he warned them. He's never wrong. If what he said sounds silly, you must not understand it.

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  5. This sort of thing happens all the time -people know that Eve is a sandbox where anything, short of a EULA violation, is allowed. Doesn't stop them from putting other players down for not building the same sand castle though...

    I'll just leave this right here: Sandbox: An enclosed area filled with sand for children engaged in open-ended, unstructured, imaginative play. Also a place for cats to urinate and defecate...

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  6. I hope for RK's sake, that none of the dishonourable warriors of endless guardians and falcons and devious Tier 3 BC vileness turn out to be 'Warriors of PLEX' with no industrial backbone to hit.

    In an era long past when people actually had to employ activities they didn't enjoy to make ISK for PvP, RK's plan might have had validity.

    In the age of instead of having 4 accounts (1 pvp, 1 falcon/links/covops and 2 more to support the first 2) their plan to hit income might have had merit. In the age of I pay €30,- a month for my PvP accounts and another €30,- for the 2 billion ISK those accounts are going to burn through this month in PvP, RK may find they have no stick to hit these people with.

    Frankly I find the notion that Syndicate is meant for a certain type of play to be on par in validity with the notion that highsec should be safe (which for the record I think is crazy).

    But RK are welcome to try of course. My opinion that they're behind the times doesn't change that.
    When you get tired of fighting the tide though RK, I believe Hydra, Outbreak, Born-2-Kill and Team Liquid have been keeping themselves entertained by being nomadic and using 'leet pvp' to decimate SOV Fleets for some years now, maybe you could try that? :P

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  7. It's just conventional Eve smack, isn't it? Hurf blurf you're so bad/evil/terrible, we're going to kill you/take your moons/drive you out of the game. It's to motivate the troops and of course some of the troops end up drinking the cool-aid.

    I can remember people doing this before Eve was even a notion in a developer's mind.

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  8. Sandbox is only sandbox when it's the sandbox as defined by the biggest bully on the block. How is Rote's ultimatum on style of play any different than the ultimatum from so many players on how miners should play, or high sec players in general? There is no difference. Obviously, their way is the only proper way. Eve is full of elitists, whether it is actual skill or just attitude.

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  9. Unfortunately, Mord, you are completely wrong. Syndicate actually IS the ancestral home of 'elite ' pvp. The only reason people moved (or at least used to) to syndicate is for the small gang pvp. Shit true sec, shit moons, and really hostile neighbors. All in all, there are much better places to go if you want a scrooge mcduck sized pile of money to swim in. Hell, go be part of the provi bloc, that really IS null sec lite.

    The point that Jester and rote are making is that there are too many people who have moved to syndicate not to fight, but to pew rocks and gank people flying solo. Therefore, they need to be evicted to bring in new blood who hopefully share the same love of small gang fights that are the soul of what syndicate is.

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    1. Yeah, you've got it exactly Hoarr.

      As I as telling someone yesterday on Teamspeak, while it's fun to hurf-blurf on forums over this, in reality RK has no emotions associated with this maneuver at all. We're not doing this because we hate people but because we love a certain type of play style and we don't want to see it (quite literally!) ganked.

      Outside of Syndicate, fights only seem to happen any more because there's a reason for them. Well as the old Billy Crystal(?) joke goes, "Women need a reason to have sex, men just need a place."

      Syndicate has always been a good place. ;-)

      Mord's article is built partially on the false assumption that bigger is better and RK has somehow "outgrown the pond"... even though we're smaller than we were a year ago. In truth, but that's never how RK OR Syndicate has operated. One guy contacted one of our "diplos" yesterday or the day before and basically argued that instead of pushing out all of these alliances, RK should be trying to build a coalition out of them to go take null-sec space.


      Something more foreign to an alliance that has lived in Syndicate for YEARS, I can't even imagine. We don't want to NAP our neighbors, we want to shoot them!

      Last night, the first Damned Nation POS timer was up and for the first time in memory, I-RED showed up in a fleet with no logi to help DAMN. Of course, they did it three hours before our TZ and they left system the instant our pilots started logging in in any numbers, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere.

      In the meantime, RK soloists and one small gang zipped around a system where we were outnumbered 3:1 assassinating stragglers and having a grand old time. I-RED even got themselves a nice kill out of it. Maybe they'll find that addictive and come back, and just maybe next time they won't flee the moment the POS is restronted and they'll take their logi-less fleet into a fight with us and get even more kills.

      That's what this is about.

      At the end of the day, we don't give a shit if people moon-mine, rock-mine, run sites, or grow tangerines, as long as they form up to fight us about it occasionally. But if they WON'T do that, then we're going to do something about that other stuff until they do. The RK campaign really is just that simple.

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    2. Dunno Hoar, sounds like you've just supported almost every point I made in the post.

      You aren't really informing the discussion further so much as repeating Jester's statement that Rote is going to scrub the place of anyone who doesn't fight the Rote way. You want Rote to impose their flavor of PvP orthodoxy on everyone else in Syndicate and evict those who doesn't meet their PvP purity standards.

      Now I'm sure this goes down easier because the declared target is the cancer of carebearism in Syndicate. But note carefully that Rote has changed the definition of carebear to mean anyone who fights in a manner of which Rote does not approve. Thus, as Kaeda points out, even 100% PvPers can be called out as carebears if Rote decides they don't like *how* they PvP. Which is all fun and games until that smear is pointed at you.

      Now, none of this is against the EULA and I say go have fun with it. Embrace your inner fatwa-declarer. I'm interested to see how it works out for you and/or Rote. Interesting times.

      However, don't attempt to drape the activity in the mantle of virtue (as, you'll note, most perpetrators of ethnic cleansing do). All the lipstick in the world isn't going to make this pig any prettier or make Rote look less silly for dating it.

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    3. @Jester:

      "Mord's article is built partially on the false assumption that bigger is better"

      That's incorrect. I do not say that bigger is better. Never have.

      I merely summarized a number of comments from your own post saying "Others have pointed out that Rote Kapelle may have become too good at PvP to draw decent fights in Syndicate any more."

      When I say you've "outgrown the Syndicate pond" I don't mean you have gotten too many members. In fact I point out you are a small but elite alliance. And at no point do I say you need to grow larger.

      As Kaeda pointed out, you don't have to be big to get good fights in SOV nullsec.

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    4. Hoarr, you have ofc considered that to some people flying with 4 guardians and 4 falcons might be *their* idea of fun ofc I presume? Who is RK to tell them they can't?
      RK sounds like the 85 year old grand dad complaining; "we don't want them new funny looking people livin' in our neighbourhood, back in the good old days..." with this silly new Syndicate rhetoric.

      To some (to many in fact imho) people EVE is about 99,9% killboard efficiency and not about 'gud fites'.

      And as I pointed out earlier, moons, truesec, isk income are things of an era past they'r irrelevant to being able to PvP in EVE anno 2012. Over 40% of people in my own corporation fund their PvP exclusively through PLEX sales, they never pve in any form for a second in their EVE life, and if they had to they'd just quit.
      And that % is only the people who's wallets I saw during background checks, if people use alts for their plex sales... It seems reasonable to assume this is true of many people in 0.0 too (we're a lowsec corp). Anyway these people you won't able to touch be reinforcing moons they're prolly just in syndicate because they like to splode shit and some of them will like to that in as low risk a fleet composition as they can come up with vOv

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    5. Mord, if you want to get all hyperbolic about it, then I have no problem calling it an ethnic cleansing, I don't give a shit what kind of designer dress you think I want to put on it. Maybe you need to have lived in Syndicate to understand it (I perfectly understand how overused this argument tactic is used), but that place really has always been about gud fites. It's about the kids in the sandbox who love picking stuff up, smashing them together and watching them go boom.

      I could wax rhapsodic about how rote are defending the life blood of a place many of us love dearly, but the reality is this. Rote are seeing a growing prevalence of a play style they despise. Like every conqueror ever, they have two choices, they can either do nothing about it and try to cope with this change, or they can force them out at gunpoint.

      I, for one, obviously applaud this decision that rote has made.

      Kaeda, I understand that some people really like their no risk pvp and they are perfectly entitled to that option. At the same time, rote are perfectly willing and able to camp the opposition in station and make their lives miserable until they either leave or change.

      What gives Rote the right to enforce this on people is their ability to do so. They either will be able to or they won't be able to. As in everything in eve, eventually might makes right.

      As to your point about isk making, this isn't a fight about isk, it's about morale. If you can make an opponent's life miserable enough that they don't want to log in, then you've won. It's the same way every alliance ever in eve has collapsed. Fail cascades are always and have always been about morale.

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    6. The behavior that rote is fighting for is the very nature of the place. It's like Udema and freighter ganking, Jita and local spam, Rancer and gate camps. Such things are so prevalent, they're axiomatic. That's how syndicate is with small gang honoureable pvp.

      If you want to get a better feel about what I'm talking about go read the old syndicate threads in FHC, you'll see what I'm talking about.

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  10. Don't think less of Jester, where we come from smiting heathens is practically a national sport. The only thing missing: yelling "Freedom! Democracy!" while smiting.

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  11. I have vast respect for Mr Teg. If I didn't I wouldn't have called him to task of his post.

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  12. Fiddlers Note: Rixx has provided an interesting post on the matter at hand. http://eveoganda.blogspot.com/2012/10/eveotorial-sandbox.html

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  13. What if Rote had phrased their intentions in a more positive way (we are trying to build a "fight club") than negative (nobody will stand-up fight us so we're evicting them). Then suddenly they are building a sandcastle, rather than tearing them down.

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  14. This is a Blog done by one of The Nyan Cat Pirates. Our perspective on the events unfolding in the Outer Ring. We live in the area.. http://blog.nyanpire.net/?p=281

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  15. we heard that excitement has returned to Syndicate so we are strolling down there to see what's occurring...

    :)

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  16. If you can't PvP with guns, PvP with words. Carebears have been doing this since the very first highsec nerf was proposed. ;-)

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    1. Few (if any) actual carebears involved in this. Just NPC nullsec denizens who PvP in a way that makes Rote unhappy.

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  17. I love how genocide, ethinc cleansing, and racisim are being used as arguments against us.

    Syndicate got boring. So we are making it not boring. Adapt, die or leave.

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    1. I love how our behavior in Eve is so often an analog for how we behave in real life.

      Oddly the current hoo-ha is caused by Rote's inability to adapt to a changes in Syndicate.

      I will grant you it's interesting. We'll see if Rote does better than Cnut when it comes to commanding the changing tides.

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