Wednesday, April 1, 2015

Bee Curious

The following is an adaptation of an essay I wrote Wednesday night. I wrote it to clarify my own thoughts about why I used to be happy in Brave Newbies, and why I haven't been for some time, and why I thought I wanted to be a goon. In fact, I ended up showing it to a GSF recruiter, so it turned out to be both useful and practical - that would be a lot of typing in a chat window, especially when its harder to take your time with what you want to say.

It captures how I feel right now about my time in EVE, which is pretty much my time in Brave Newbies from Barleguet to abandoning Catch.

My few edits are mainly intended to remove unnecessary details.

I have been in EVE for a pretty short time, a little over thirteen months. I had been reading /r/eve over the holidays, and got pretty excited reading about all the excitement and exuberance to do with Brave Newbies giving no fucks in lowsec. Every day it seemed like some new and awesome thing was happening. Even though I had decided long ago not to get involved in another MMO, trapped in a time-consuming grind with little to show for it, I couldn't resist. I signed up for EVE. 
At that time there were conflicting skill plans so I started "Cribbit's" - doctrine Talwar in 9 days! - and did the tutorials. Then I did the SoE epic arc as advised. I got into Estel Arador and made a couple of clones, flew to Stacmon, put Ostingele on avoid, and accepted the invite. I headed "down the pipe" for Barleguet. 
That evening, surrounded by chaos, I decided to get on fleet comms just to hear what a fleet sounded like and get used to it. They were still pinging. I asked in fleet chat if I could fly my atron. Of course the answer was yes. It was a Xenos FAF fleet. We roamed Black Rise and I got on some kills and died having no idea how I was killed. 
That period was the best time I had in Brave. I was buying parts, fitting doctrine Atrons, and putting them on contract for pocket money. I didn't know there was a "fit" button til much later. We did FAF roams, I learned about right-clicking in space to get a list of things to align or warp to, about heating modules, having them armed before targeting and how that can go wrong (double click the FC when the last target died before you could lock him - oh, sorry about that). I even got to fly that Talwar I trained for one time, whoring on an Archon when we got "invaded". 
Then one evening I logged in and the anthill was in an uproar. "Deploying" to Sendaya, a staging system for our contact to burn Catch. I flew my Talwar to Sendaya that night with some of my more expensive meta modules for Atrons.
Sendaya market was absurd. Couldn't buy anything, couldn't afford what was there. How can you roam? And fleets were now for a reason, srs bzns out in Catch. I got in some of those fleets, and also flew to grind weird structures with Catalysts and Coercers. I took a Titan bridge - all super opsec, no idea that we even had access to a Titan until we landed on the pos. So we put lots of things on timers and laughed about being in these dingy ships and fighting -A-. 
This was when I started feeling that sense of accomplishment that comes from being on a team and doing something that's not that fun, but that makes everyone better off. We were achieving something hard for us to do, doing it our own way. 
Since that time, I've been a lot less active. Part of that is down to real life - busy at work here, lost a job there, etc. Part of it, too, was down to some disenchantment about what was going in on BNI. There were doctrines marked as official that were long expired, or announced and never used, that sucked up a lot of my training time. There were fleets that welped just because when we didn't find a good matchup. I don't care to be too specific because, especially with Brave conducting its business in public, it becomes too much like finger pointing. 
There were other areas of confusion, disarray, and disorganization, as is well known to all. I was willing to put up with all of it, even though it sucked, because I was on the team and we were all trying in the best way we knew how. I started thinking about joining a sister corp, maybe go live in a wormhole. Those people have to work together. 
The last 30-60 days though - the disjointed and confusing leadership recording with talk of multiple coup attempts and little communication - the terminal bitterness about being farmed - the surprise  deploying / abandoning catch that was done almost as badly as you could set out to do it - people I respect quitting - it's just been over the top bad. As I said in a reddit post, I enjoy pew pew, the short-term gratification kind of fun. I also enjoy the accomplishment kind of fun, the kind where you make something good as a team. By bailing on Catch, I feel I am being told that there's no place for that kind of goal in BNI. You can grind a system, you can establish system upgrades and industrial corps and jump bridge networks and endless bookmarks, but if fun-per-hour isn't being served then see ya, we out.
(And, edit here, that might not be fair, but that's not my problem anymore. The abysmal herky-jerky communication about something like an evac or "deployment" is as important as the thing itself. If you make it impossible to guess why decisions are made or if there is even a process for making them, you get to have other people infer their own ideas about it.) 
So, I quit Brave. No announcements, corp mails, or shit posts. I dropped corp, killed my API, and deleted my core auth entry. I'll say it now - I'm glad to have flown with many of you, but as you see it's not the right place for me anymore.
During my skill queueing with Brave, I used my holiday skill training gift to make a ganker and joined CODE. I had a blast. I got to fly with some miniluv guys in Uedama and you know what, no grrr. Fleets jumped through their paces like clockwork. Battle comms were quiet and clear. Scout reports were concise and standardized. After the engagement, people were friendly and fun. When I had read about goons before, it was never with an idea to join because I barely knew the SA name before EVE. I would be as j4g as it gets. Then Porkbutte broke off and it was open season to join if you could take a deep breath. I thought about it a lot. But so many good memories in Brave held me back. 
The other day there was a leak - deliberate or not, I don't know - in which goons were explaining to another goon the facts of warfare in the CFC. The goal of warfare, by their lights, is to deny the enemy his goals and to achieve your own. If you give him fun fights and that's his goal, you'll be doing that as long as he can push your buttons. Dunk him or dodge him. 
I love that. I understand that. We can all go have fun in Uedama and put some isk in our pockets as well. We can day trip a wormhole and maybe find a fight or some sleeper sites. There are a million things we can do in EVE for fun. Then there are the things you do to keep your group healthy and happy. That includes putting it down on people who try to take your shit. 
So now I think I understand something about being a goon that I didn't before, and that thing makes sense and shows me something I was missing in Brave. It's part of the organization's DNA to need to not care, which makes it very hard to build things. I know fozziesov is supposed to be a big win because there are a lot of asses in seats, but I guess we'll see whether a group that can act in its own long-term interest is better equipped to achieve things that one that can't. 
Following CFC guys like Endie and Wilhelm Arcturus on reddit and their blogs makes the picture clearer, too. Like when Endie says this:  it pushes my buttons. 
I'm not sure what I want to do in the GSF. I know I like to gank. I like to roam in a gang and I imagine it's fun to BLOPS bridge in with a bomber wing, too. I think I would make a good fleet scout with some guidance, I'm very patient and I always enjoy sneaking around in games. I'd like to have a pile of isk. I guess I'd like to talk to people in different SIGs and see if I could do a ride-along or what have you, see where I fit in. It's probably a good idea for me to assume I don't know anything about EVE and just ask for a mentor bee.


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