Wednesday, March 21, 2012

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.

13 comments:

  1. To be fair, I never said a word about Garmon's use of boost alts. It's an extremely common solo tactic and I have no complaints about it.

    And I cheerfully admit that my speculation about what the cost will be for future videos is pure conjecture. It's entirely possible that all future videos will be free in perpetuity. It doesn't strike me as very *likely*... after all, why ask for people's e-mail addies? Why not just put the videos up on the main page of the website? But sure, it's possible that all future videos would have been released without any obligation.

    Your statement that I don't indict PL for use of the same tactic is ridiculous. I absolutely do, right in the blog post.

    The simple fact is that Garmon could have gotten just as much fame out of this incident AND maintained his reputation by producing a video of him using this tactic to destroy a JF on Sisi, then explaining how it works. He obviously did that as a test run before committing to it on TQ; the first kill is too clean to believe otherwise. Publishing such a video would have gotten him just as much fame, AND there's good reason to think that CCP would have rewarded him for it in some fashion, for instance by linking to his website from their Facebook wall.

    Instead, he specifically *chose* to use the tactic to get himself some cheap kills.

    Choices have consequences. The consequence of this choice is that he sullied his own reputation. He didn't sully it with everyone, to be sure. Garmon will always have his defenders, no matter what he does. But there's now going to be a percentage of EVE players that can't think about Garmon without thinking of his use of this tactic.

    To me, that loss of reputation wouldn't have been worth a couple of JF kills. But hey, that's just me.

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    1. I agree, you didn't say anything about Garmon's booster alts, I also never said that you did. I'd think anyone in RK wouldn't have a problem with it :)

      As for PL v garmon, you spend ~3 paragraphs lining up Garmon's past, his video's, his history, extolling his sites, and ventures, all to line up his abuse of this mechanic, to condemn his supposed good reputation. PL's condemnation happens in ~3 lines of text. Small matter of volume there.

      I also don't follow your line of thought that Garmon's reputation is one of being a 'good guy.' His reputation is being a PvPer. Not joe-by-the-rules, as I remember he jumped one of his alts into a different system during the AT after his ship was lost and was banned from further using that alt in any further part of the competition. With that in mind, for me, I do not see how, or for that matter, why, his reputation would be changed. One way or the other.

      I suppose that is a personal opinion of his reputation, and can be argued either way. I agree that choices have consequences, but I never defended his choice. To quote directly "am I defending Garmon's use of the exploit to get kills? No."

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  2. It might be just me but stuff like this only enhances a reputation. IMO.


    MB.

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    1. Well, this will definitely enhance fame. I dispute that Garmon's reputation is one that will be hurt by this. imho he's not had a "good" rep for a long time. Other than as a solo pilot. But never as a good-guy pilot. or e-honour pilot.

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  3. Anyone who doesn't realise Garmon is a massive troll is fucking stupid. Yeah, he is pretty chill to chat with. But he is still a massive troll.

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  4. "In this case Jester comes off a bit like a gossip columnist."

    kind of like this blag post? zing?

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    1. Come talk shit when you update your blog, slacker.

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    2. I enjoy the original content, and typically think that internet drama not immediately applicable to my favorite blaggers should stay on E-O.

      Given that I'm streaming nearly 10hr a week and starting podcast projects with the community, I think the blag can stagnate a while longer. The good content is still coming, just in another medium.

      Re post: if you don't like a video, hit fast forward. If you don't like a service, don't sign up for it/use it. Not sure what the big hoopla is about.

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  5. Aaaaand they just transitioned to a subscription site... $19.00 a month.

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  6. Let me tell you my experience with garmon as an noob i got wardecced by players who let's say it like this had years more of experience then our little corp members. They where looking for easy kills i guess. For a while they got their kills until... I turned to the forums like all any good noob should do and asked for some advice what to do as flying an cruiser vs opponents in hacs. One day i got an ingame message that an knight in white wanted to join our little corp to help us out... The white knight that joined was Garmon, the deccing corp had 189 million isk out of us in ship/module cost Garmon god he did 4 billion in kills back. The leader of the corp that declared war upon us even wrote an evemail that we should have used the isk we paid to him to fight them... (we never paid any isk) Learned heaps , and yeah he brought me to some ungodly amount of warps to 0.0 (looking back it was russian space) to learn pvp he said here is the fastest way to learn ... and he was gone laughing very drunk on teamspeak. That's how i remember him and no matter what he has done since then it took me on a path to learn a thing or 2 about pvp although i am still bad at it i don't loose every encounter anymore..

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