EVE Online 2017: We are the Alphas, the Omegas and the Gankers.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > EVE Online 2017: We are the Alphas, the Omegas and the Gankers.

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Let's see, enemies declaring victory and leaving (TEST, other random garbage), enemies fighting each other instead of us (Snuff/Shadow Cartel, TISHU vs Culture), increased desperation from Horde as they can't decide between us being totally ineffective and begging for PL to save them (or now having PL beg to get bailed out from 'the next BR-5'), GSF and friends retaining the ability to flashform 3 fleets to facefuck overconfident bad guys with.

It's almost like we spelled out that we'd be executing a Fabian strategy and have done exactly that since the C02 backstab, and all what we've predicted is coming to pass.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 05:32

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:08

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Regrettable Drunk posted:

Fair point, I thought it started off as a slug fest.

but really though if you guys start having fights with us now it's going to be great

I'm sure you'll come to love our strategy of weaponized sadism, since its innocent precursor - weaponized boredom - got so much screaming and howling about lack of fairness and a dearth of self-esteem trophies for your whole class that it was all you lot could whine about for years.

That, then, was us being gentle and good citizens.

# ¿ May 17, 2016 06:03

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Glory of Arioch posted:

did jabber just die

I severed the last bit of nonsense so hard it killed jabber. Sorry!

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 01:12

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Rhymenoserous posted:

The Ordo Garr Equation.

EDIT: I'm actually glad my rant helped kicked this thing off. While I realize that the directorate can't be 100% transparent, I've found firesides and elysium to largely have been "More of the same meaningless hurf blurf in smaller doses" which I guess is great for some mindless pubbie that shovels everything up that you hand them with a big spoon while saying "Please hand me more pointless platitudes sir I just can't get enough."

Getting honest to goodness real talk in the midst of legitimate grievance airings and people freely admitting that maybe they didn't do the best job at THING honestly tickles me pink. We literally survived a coalition ending event, everything should be under the microscope. Basically what I'm saying is this is all very good, and has resulted in good posts. If it results in some changes that will be even better.

There's a desire among a demographic in every organization to be told the 'real truth' who are always disappointed with, as you call it, 'meaningless hurf blurf'. This is probably because of a conspiratorial frame being more satisfying than the horrifying reality of 'poo poo happens and sometimes things go wrong for no good reason', it's more comforting to imagine that there's a byzantine plot behind actions X, Y or Z. We don't bother trying to appease this demographic as it is impossible; they do not /want/ to accept the truth as it is, as that truth is unsatisfying and the more you attempt to convince them of the truth, the more they will reinforce the belief in a conspiracy. Backfire effect c&p goes here.

Suas left an idiot who sold us out in charge of his corp so it got kicked, in addition to their pap stats legit blowing, then Suas tried to kill us. I suppose that counts as a byzantine plot because it has more than two steps. This is something that has been discussed at length over the last year and was only a secret for the first three months post-purge.

Endie didn't do work but was great at acting in front of everyone and posting that he did, like an endless validation-seeking posting sponge. He wanted power without responsibility so gunned for Sion in hopes that I'd boot Sion and promote Endie; when that didn't happen he tried to destroy everything + schism, but that failed as his tradecraft is 3rd grade level. He's great at sowing division though, PL's a great spot for him. Somehow GSF has survived and grown stronger without him, Kismeteer, DJ, or Angelique: there seems to be an inverse relationship between an individual's actual utility to the organization and a need to post reddit AMAs.

Sion and Mirana are not actually in charge of the alliance or coalition policy; I am. Endie went after them merely because he couldn't easily go after me, until he realized he truly wasn't going to be The Guy and tantrumed as above. This managed to convince the conspiracy demo that I'm not really in charge, which is peachy as it helps expose the problem children for me to dispose of. Edit: This is something Sion refers to as my "Tee hee, flounce flounce" mode.

If TSC ever leaked all it will expose is my sex life, which doesn't matter now because I got a divorce: again a boring explanation for my being quiet the past couple of months.

Numismancer fucked around with this message at 17:21 on Sep 15, 2016

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 17:17

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

poo poo's going p. well for GSF. Vegas is going to be obscene.

# ¿ Sep 15, 2016 19:02

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

facultas posted:

Alright, time to sit down and go through this.

So basically, Endie is the Kim Kardashian of EVE. Famous for being famous, image conscious, big on appearance, thin on substance, etc. It�s one of the reasons you don�t see GSF people responding too much to him since he feeds off attention and notoriety. I�m a nobody now, he can have my undivided attention if he so wishes and it doesn�t impact in game or alliance stuff at all. The more time he spends swinging at my irrelevant ghost, the more overall time he�s wasted in general. Regardless, buckle up, this is going to be long.

And yeah I guess makes GSF Ray J, and PL Kanye.

The one nice thing about Endie is that he's predictable and only has a few tricks up his sleeve. Finely honed due to practice, for sure, but once you get used to it it's always the same general rotation of stuff. In this case, it's his classic "I'm going to mis-characterize what someone said and argue that rather than argue what was actually said" thing. Drove Kazanir up a wall, I mostly just rolled my eyes.

Note to keep in mind as you read, GSF 2010 was different from GSF 2016, but I'll get to that eventually. Until I get to that point, some of this is going to read a bit strangely to those who were unfamiliar with GSF internal workings during that era.

In 2010, I'd just made my way back to EVE following my hiatus after our victory over BoB in Delve. I'd done Theta and Blackops pretty exclusively as my in EVE activities, so was disappointed to see that Blackops had left due to some drama while I was away from the game. Figured I try applying to CD, Vile Rat accepted my app, and was greeted with a weird new world of how EVE and GSF worked.

What soon became apparent was that The Mittani had a right hand, a left hand, and what was sometimes called the voice. Those positions were Chief Diplomat, Head of the GIA, and Skymarshal. Respectively, Vile Rat, Endie, and Rydis. Vile Rat I knew from the Syndicate days onward, Endie was a new face I'd never heard of, but was apparently now the GIA guy. Rydis too I'd never heard of, but would come to respect a great deal.

It was a strange dynamic for a new diplomat like myself, particularly since VR and Endie loathed each other. To be fair, I don't know for certain that Endie loathed VR, but VR detested Endie. During their numerous spats, he frequently kicked Endie out of CD until Endie would whine to Mittani about needing access because he was spy guy and Mittani would tell VR to let him back in. This cycle repeated about every six to eight months or so. In what I assume was a proxy power thing to this, the GIA and CD had a massive internal turf war, much of which I found out only later as I spent more time as a diplomat and VR would talk about it more, and then later as I got to it see first hand.

One of the biggest flare ups of this bit of drama was when Mittani had to go to Iceland for some CSM thing or another, and "had to" leave someone in charge while he was away. I can't remember who ended up 'winning' that particular round between VR and Endie, but it was weird at the time, and served to drive that animosity deeper. It was also the last time Mittani explicitly left someone in charge of the alliance during a brief absence due to the drama fallout from it all.

Shortly thereafter, the VR-Endie drama flared up again when VR got his way for the Branch invasion, the first offensive war the CFC attempted. Endie was convinced it was doomed to failure, and that the war was a terrible idea. To this day, I don't know if he was actually against it, or merely against it because VR was pushing for it. In any case, GSF and the then CFC won that war, and the follow-up credibility VR gained from that and from how CD had helped Rydis manage allies during the effort gave him huge say in how we handled the victory and the spoils. Again, VR and Endie clashed, Endie wanted to keep the bulk of branch (including one entire constellation for BAT) and VR insisted that we try to divide stuff fairly to give allies resources to grow. VR reasoned that we already had a region, and that strong friends meant we were all stronger collectively. Again, likely an outgrowth of hands on time with BoB and the NC. VR won that round, too.

2010 to 2012 was full of this sort of stuff, more than what I can remember offhand without sifting through my logs. Endie wasn't always going after VR, but Endie did always have to have a Big Bad--someone who was threatening his position, threatening his ego, threatening his access, whatever. For a while, it was VR. Then it was Rydis. Then Kazanir. Then the then-Mrs. Mittens (this one was super awkward). Then Zarks, then Rydis again. Then Kazanir. You get the idea. Eventually, inevitably, I became his new Big Bad. It was always the same old, "so-and-so is trying to convince Mittani to listen to them, I can't have that, they�ll bring the alliance to ruin without my sage input" and he'd run around behind the scenes sabotaging stuff. You can see it in his posting here, the "if only Mittani had listened to me" and the "I did so much work for him" and basically variations of "sempai notice me." Gevlon Goblin did an excellent and on point write up about just this, actually. Anyway, without fail, he'd accuse whoever his current target was of trying to be "the grand vizier", not having Goonswarm's best interests at heart, and how only he could fix whatever real or imagined problem there was while he ran around behind the scenes setting things on fire.

This naturally led to all kinds of drama, some of which made it public, most of which didn't. Endie, in a testament to his incredibly thin skin, holds the second place all time record for being trolled out of Illum, just behind Boat. Rydis once trolled him out single handedly. Each time he would come back only when Mittani personally requested he do so. Odds are high that's what he thought would happen that final time he left, too.

From my position as a line diplomat, it looked like a struggle between two vastly different world views. Vile Rat, with his general famake people a better version of themselves. Like I've said, he had a way of bringing about the beith in people, his good faith dealings, and his uncanny ability to teach people, help people, and st in people. And he enjoyed doing it, enjoyed watching people succeed. And then there was Endie, who in contrast is exceptionally talented at spotting insecurities people have and using his command of language to exploit those insecurities. As one member of the CSM would later say, and which I think well sums it up, �he�s the most casually cruel person I�ve ever met� and that he would �use any words you say in any context as a weapon against you if he thought he could gain from it.� Or to put it another way, VR built people up and set them off to better use their talents, Endie brought people low and crushed them so he could better control them.

It wasn�t exactly a struggle between good and evil, or light and dark, it was just dramatically different takes on the world, how it should be, and how it was.

Anyway, from 2010 to 2012, this was all going on behind the scenes while we were building the coalition, and in early 2012, VR told Mittani that Mittani needed someone to help sort out the piles of drama within the alliance as it was taking way too much of Mittani�s time. He suggested, based on my by then two years of work, that I�d be a good fit for the spot. And that�s how I went from anonymous behind the scenes line diplo guy to what was essentially the director of directors, or as Tector immediately dubbed the position, Illuminanny. It was, no doubt, seen by Endie as yet another VR victory, as I don�t think he ever saw me as anything other than another pawn in a game I clearly didn�t understand played amongst my better. That, as far as I know, is still true of his opinion of me. It�s another one of his weaknesses, his necessity for control over other people dictates that he always be the smartest person in the room.

After about three months, I�d sorted out a large portion of the problems that had been given to me, and so Mittani gave me the biggest task of all--fixing the GIA. I was given control of the GIA due to Endie being largely inactive doing it, and the other director at the time also being mostly MIA, a gentlemen named Hratli Smirks. The reason this was the last major project given to me was because it was such a broken organization, nearly to the point of uselessness. This was of course never made public, because it suited our needs that it be considered a highly effective spy network. Once I got the logins for the accounts, what I found was that spies hadn�t been paid, we didn�t have anything resembling an accounting of assets, even generally, and that the GIA dropbox hadn�t been checked at all in a about a year. In the dropbox itself there was piles of actionable intel that was missed, simply because Hratli and Endie didn�t bother to check it. At the time, I was appalled, and had to confirm directly with Hratli that they hadn�t been checking it though some other means, and that the unopened mail had indeed been read or forwarded or something. It hadn�t been, all the tips and intel people had sent in the previous year from early 2011 until early 2012 had just been straight up missed. The grim reality was that during Endie�s tenure, the GIA had suffered even while it�s reputation soared, he was so effective at convincing people that it was A Thing that only a couple people knew just how bad it really functioned. Or more accurately, that it didn�t function.

I�m not a spy guy, not really. It�s not how my brain works, and I never enjoyed it even when I did spy back in the day myself. But org work I could do, and I set about trying to clean things up as best as I could to make it at least semi-functional, all while facing pushback from Endie about how �impossible� something was or that something �couldn�t be done� because he either hadn�t done it, or thought it couldn�t be done. But before I could sink my teeth into it all for more than a couple months, VR was killed and in short order I had to drop the GIA to focus on CD and Chief of Staff duties.

Also during this time, prior to September 11th, CD had itself hit a rough patch. VR was aware of it, and one of the last conversations I had with him was about the sorry state of CD and him saying that to fix it, he�d have to �get off my rear end and actually direct.� So in addition to the tragedy that I outlined earlier in this thread, I had the additional challenge of rebuilding the organization itself.

When I dropped the GIA, Endie did not resume running it. It was first handed off to Gicer, then Midge was added, and later, Psychzz (which I think I�m misspelling). Gicer is a stand up guy, and he and I had worked together as diplomats for some time as well prior to this. With the passing of VR, and with Endie no longer in charge of the GIA, the GIA-CD feud came to an abrupt end, although it remained true for the rest of the time Endie was around in GSF that a sure fire easy way to get a rise out of him was to insult the GIA. Only quicker way was to say that Amok. was better than BAT. A close third was �Kismeteer is going to be running stats.� Heh.

The reason I know who was director when was because I was still doing Chief of Staff director staffing and kept meticulous records, and at no point from my time as CoS starting in 2012 until Endie left for PL in 2015 was he ever in charge of the GIA. He liked to claim that he was, and perhaps he saw Midge, Gicer, and Psychzz as proxies or puppets that he controlled, but he was not himself running the show or the day to day, and not responsible for the condition of the organization. In fact, he directly requested that his name be taken off the GIA director list because people �kept bugging� him about spy stuff.

Which itself led to it�s own hilarity. After his name was taken off the GIA director list, Endie wasn�t anywhere on the director list at all. He had no purview, no responsibilities, no area of authority. But he would routinely say �I�m Mittani�s number two, you have to listen to me� to new directors, who mostly didn�t know him and were like �who is this guy then?� This led to numerous Endie flip outs, and eventually he was given some kind of fluff title to make him feel better, something rp like �high inquisitor� or something. He was all �no no, I don�t need a title, I�m just a polite WHY AREN�T THEY RESPECTING ME.� It was awesome, and Endie is to this day the only Goonswarm director in the modern era to have had a vanity title with no associated director duties. Caused no end of confusion as the years went by, either. �So uh, what does Endie actually do?� was one of the most common questions I got when I�d onboard new people.

This was also around the time when Endie starting making noises that Mittani should step down as Waffe CEO, and that he he should be put in charge. At the time, Endie had �renounced� his BAT affiliation and was in Waffe, but was still very much running BAT. It was a transparent charade, but one people generally didn�t poke at because it would set off Endie�s delicate sensibilities and at the end of the day who really cared anyway, we were all in the same boat. At the time, he argued that someone with experience running a corp, someone in The Star Chamber, and someone already in Waffe should be made CEO of Waffe, and that Mittani should focus on the alliance. There was, quite unexpectedly, only one person who fit that description. When confronted on this point, he said something like �oh, well, I mean I�d never want to do it anyway! Not unless you asked me.�

Which brings us to another enduring cornerstone of the Endie playbook, Endie as reluctant only if you ask me three times no really I defer you have to ask me at least three times guy. Closely related, but distinct, from Endie as martyr. It�s a sort of genius trick if you can pull it off as Endie could, make drama, create a need that conveniently only he could fill, then defer endlessly so that it didn�t look suspicious, then be like �okay I guess I�ll do, but I want it clear that I�m doing this under duress.� It created what amounted to a false scarcity, and worked for years. This is what you see in his recounting of tales of how he was begged or coerced into doing something he didn�t really want to do, or didn�t have time for, or whatever, like the TMC gig or the recruitment posts. Endie himself named the site, he was pretty personally invested in it for a while because he wanted the prestige of it all. I was asked to work on it at launch as an editor as well, but I�m a grown rear end man, and I said �no� instead of �only reluctantly because you asked me the required three times and ps I�m going to trot this out as an example of how selfless I am for the next four years after I dabble in it for a few months and wander off.�

No one could make Endie do anything if he didn�t actually want to do it, as we found out repeatedly when he was asked to fill various positions that took actual work instead of the meaningless title he then had. Which made the whole �I was press ganged into doing this thing� charade all the more laughably transparent every time he pulled it. Mostly, his need to have his ego stoked was indulged, and it�s very likely that he was never aware that people were wise to that particular game of his. The only way to get Endie to do something was if he wanted to do it. The only real question was how many hoops he would make someone jump through before finally doing what he wanted to do anyway while ideally making the other person feel guilty and that they owed him something. Like I said, kind of genius in a way.

Anyway, so Gicer, Midge, and Psychzz kept running the GIA for a while, and were content to let their CEO take public credit for doing so. But they eventually moved on, and a dude named Vicki Rail was hired on to do the GIA thing, along with Darkstarwarrior, both of BAT. Vicki can best be described as a kinetic ball of hyperactivity. The dude ran riot (heh) and swiftly accomplished all of the things Endie had said were impossible back when I was trying to fix it. Between the two of them, Vicki and Darkstar managed to develop a coalition spanning unified spy network, place a poo poo load of agents, fix a stack of tech problems, and generally work magic. Instead of being being proud of his corp members and all like �that�s my boys�, Endie opted to be pissed that Vicki wanted to rename the org to �The Black Hand�, which better reflected the coalition (now the Imperium), and had a snazzy logo to boot. But nope, those realities of the changing nature of the org and the sweeping reforms instituted aside, what it really meant in Endieland was that Endie could no longer coast by on the GIA reputation and his tenuous and passing relation thereof. And it was suddenly blindingly obvious that--whatever Endie said--he was totally detached from the spy game.

In addition to this, part of being a kinetic ball of hyperactivity meant that Vicki was utterly immune to Endie�s usual insecurity games. He was also, though newer to the job and younger, a spying savant and easily outclassed Endie at his own game. And worse yet, he had Independent Ideas. In the space of about four months, Endie went from �you should promote Viki to head spy guy� to �Vicki is going to be moving soon. You should use that time to fire him.� When I asked him why, he said that it was because he was disloyal to Goonswarm, surprise surprise. Why he really wanted to fire his own corp member from the directorate but not kick him from corp is beyond the scope of my knowledge, but it was a classic Endie response to him feeling like his status and position was being threatened.

As an aside, unlike from 2010 until 2011 when Endie ran the GIA, the new Black Hand isn�t just a creature of reputation. It�s a fearsome organization that far surpases what the GIA was even in reputation during those two years, let alone in fact. Markonius Porkbutte helped run it for a while after Vicki wandered off, and I�m told that now Sadus and DSW run it. Sadus used to be a diplomat, and met him in vegas. He�s a literal giant of a man, highly intelligent consultant type. I�d not be surprised at all if he�s the next big name to come out of GSF�s intel apparatus.

I think this is around the time Endie started making plans to leave to PL. The organization of GSF had changed a lot from 2010 to 2015, had grown by something like 12k people, a pile of space, and heaps of squads and SIGS. From 2012 onward (and likely earlier, that was just the first time I was in a place to see it), Endie insisted that GSF was like Nazi Germany, and that Mittani was Hitler in that a bunch of advisors must lobby for Dear Leader�s favor and in-fight with each other in order to push agendas. If you didn�t infight or maneuver, you were doing it Wrong, capital W. Presumably since he saw it that way, that�s why he played all the messy internal political stuff, why he spent as much time trying to look good instead of be good.

But 2015 had long moved the alliance past that, though it probably was in fact that sort of situation in 2010ish. But the alliance evolved. A director position was a spot with duties attached, clear lines of purview, and clear lines of authority, given out based on merit and desire to do the required job. GSF had no number two, there were no agendas to push, only a sprawling, complicated, and growing organization to run. He was increasingly out of touch with that reality, and significantly, the reality that upper GSF leadership had been working closely with each other for over half a decade. He kept treating it like some kind of Nazi political larp rather than the mutual friendship and respect that it had become. As time went by, as relationships evolved, and as the organization changed, he had less and less room to do his usual run around and divide people thing. Endie was either unwilling or unable to change with the organization, and as far as I or anyone else could tell is still stuck in the 2010 mentality. At the end of the day though, I think Vicki and Darkstar knocking the Black Hand revamp out of the park sealed his bitterness for good. They�d inadvertently shown him up in spectacular fashion, and there was no way whatsoever to hide it.

That�s likely when Endie decided to leave GSF, predictably for PL, despite his initial claims to the contrary. It�s the only place he could ever personally end up, and people still with BAT say he bludgeoned Midge into going there despite Midge not wanting to, because a the end of the day, Endie runs BAT and is their CEO. PL was the only place that Endie could go that wouldn�t be a straight up loss of credibility due to alliance ticker, and for a guy with a fragile ego that�s desperate for validation, it was always a forgone conclusion.

What was hilarious about this whole departure event was that Endie went off on a tirade about how there was this mass conspiracy to kill BAT�s supercaps when they left, and that he had proof due to all the API calls or something. To anyone who knows how our system works (like in theory Endie would, or certainly the other BAT technical whizzes like Midge would) or how API�s work, this is pants on head retarded. GSF requires full API�s and regularly polls those API�s and caches the results. If there had been a plan to kill BAT supers on the way out (there wasn�t), they never would have been able to tell. Could have just used the cached results and they�d never have know the difference. My pet theory is that someone inside BAT with access to the API�s hit those calls themselves for fun just to wig Endie out. If so, it worked beyond this prankster�s wildest dreams and we all had a good chuckle at a self proclaimed super spy being played so badly and so publicly even until the last.

I also have no idea why Endie is still clinging to the whole �used to be number two� and �Mittani once told me I was his successor!� He was always big on badge flashing and telling people how space important he was, but uh, he left. So I mean I guess it�s a historical badge and he wants to show that no really, he was at one time important in a spaceship videogame? Desperation? A yearning and persistent desire to finally be recognized by His Fuzziness as his one true soulmate?

This is why Endie leaving was barely noticed by GSF leadership as a whole. He�s stopped being an active member of the directorate before my time, so at least not from 2012 onward. Instead of spending his time trying to better and serve the alliance, he spent his time on infighting, on stupidly blatant plots to poach SMA members, trying to get Mittani�s attention, and wowing people with his posting. To be fair, he�s does post pretty. So I guess if that�s what does it for you, that�s cool. But for those of us running the space org, his departure sucked a shitload of drama out of GSF, nearly all of the director level drama, and represented the last departure of the final hold out who really enjoyed setting people against each other internally.

And again, to be fair, Endie is excellent at it. He�s fantastic at managing his external and internal image, and managed to skate by on hurfed blurfs for years in a generally demanding spaceship directorate while collecting reddit upvotes and pubbie adoration of all kinds. He�s a pro at getting people to believe what he wants them to believe, spinning situations and words, making people feel self conscious, and setting up crisis situations between people that he can then step in to resolve. He�s well read and has a great grasp of written language.

This is indeed one of the facets that always fascinated me about the VR-Endie dichotomy. They were in so many ways so similar, but also so very different. I always knew why VR did what he did, he wore his principles on his sleeve. I to this day don�t know why Endie did what he did, and my best guess is that he enjoys power games and dominating people. It would certainly explain his frustration and befuddlement when people simply stopped playing those games inside GSF.

I think the clearest way this is seen is in the way people talk about VR and Endie. Endie is invariably �a good poster� or something along those lines. VR is invariably �a good guy� or some such. One description speaks to what a person does and how they wish to be seen by others, the other, to who the person is. Endie�s finest moments are all about posting, vulgar public displays designed to garner attention and adoration in public. VR�s finest moments we all quiet and behind the scenes, frequently between no one but VR and whoever he was trying to help. Or more succinctly, Endie is dedicated to appearing, VR was dedicated to being. If nothing else, I�m thankful for that insight and for having such extreme examples of both to see the particular life lessons in that nugget.

At any rate, I�m professionally curious as to how much inadvertent damage he can do in PL�s structure. Unlike GSF, there�s a lot of big personality types rather than quiet work behind the scenes types, and PL itself closely mirrors the reputation and appearance pursuit that Endie himself craves. Or maybe he�ll remain focused on �that one time Mittani said I was #2� and �I ran the GIA� thing as vestiges of relevance for another half decade. Maybe his new thing will be coasting on �I�m a big deal in PL.� Maybe next he�ll go after Querns or Aryth, who I have on good authority Mittens consults with regularly. Don�t know. Whatever the case, unless he actually does something new and noteworthy in game he�s going to be relegated to rehashing history of past mostly made up glories with washed up has-beens like me. And I�m pretty sure that takes you from Kim Kardashian to Corey Feldman right quick.

One long time diplomat and good poster, Particle9 (who infamously banned Solo from our own forums and would regularly troll Endie into raging flameouts) said to me back in 2012 that �Endie is not your friend. He never will be. He only cares about himself and his image. The sooner you realize that, the better off you�ll be.� I didn�t believe him, I figured it was just space drama stuff talking. Right up until the last real conversation on Skype that I had with Endie, who at that point I�d been working with for half a decade, and flat out said that a lot of the stuff we were arguing about was petty and dumb, and that given our working relationship and status as bros we should be able to talk and work through it all. Silence. So more to the point, I was like �dude, do you not consider me a friend? We�ve been doing this for ages, I thought we were.� More silence, then an eventual--but exceedingly final--deflection. It was at that moment I realized Particle9 had been right. I relayed this anecdote to someone in BAT, who said �yeah, that�s Endie. I don�t think he has any real friends, just people he uses.�

This is all true.

In many ways the advancement of GSF has been bottlenecked by my growth as a leader; there are certain eras of drama which in hindsight are hilarious/lovely/totally avoidable if I'd known more earlier. The Imperium is larger than most multinational corporations in the real world in terms of number of 'staff', so being the leader means confronting challenges that more typical player organizations never encounter. A lot of this comes down to gritty org poo poo that will bore everyone not in charge of providing entertainment to tens of thousands of people who have myriad interests and often conflicting ideas of fun, but I'm weird so I like this poo poo.

(This is where either I'm too serious and hurf blurf yet I'm simultaneously a degenerate #luv2cluber who doesn't pay attention to anything but chasing tail, flip a coin)

If I had known about deliverables in 2010 when I started CEOing it up, none of this Endie poo poo would have happened. I've gotten a lot better about setting boundaries and severing in general, the past few years.

The arrival of The Deliverable (tm) was the thing Endie despised the most - Trello + actually being held accountable meant that no sidebar bullshit or effortposts could hide a lack of activity. To avoid the Deliverable (tm), he hurfed a tremendous amount of blurfs about crushing evil corporate bureaucracy and tried to bring the whole shebang down (SECRET SHAREHOLDERS IN TMC, CORPS JOINING GSF TO FUND TMC) because otherwise the total lack of doing-actual-work would have been exposed. The idea that membercorps in GSF should be also held accountable for minimum standards of activity and behavior was blasphemy.

The deliverable came anyway, exposing a whole class of directors who felt entitled to the title or claimed they had been doing work for the common goon and were lying to themselves or to me. Endie wasn't the only casualty, there was a brutal shaking out where bullshit walked. Many of the loud 'you can't fire me I quits' came from this shakeup.

The reality is simple: when tens of thousands of people are looking to the directorate to both protect their hobby while providing maximum entertainment to the most possible people, every directorate position filled by a do-nothing or a my-title-my-ego is literally a drag on the opportunities and success of the line member. A logistics director who doesn't fuel towers or won't adopt superior proven practices is a drain on every line member who could enjoy a rapid, effective logistics team with bridges and better towers, plus a drain on the military who cannot rely on optimal POS configurations. That's why a lot of 'oldschool' GSOL people (not actually oldschool) got shot. An intelligence director who doesn't do poo poo but post on reddit about how smart he is isn't managing agents, and when talent comes into the org and volunteers to do poo poo for the common good, that talent is wasted and burned out by not being handled and mentored by an intel director, which impacts every level of the org.

Entitled directors who don't do their job and thus serve the line aren't merely an endless source of drama (as they do no work they have lots of free time to distract from the lack of work done or make excuses): they are literally hurting every aspect of the organization they are supposed to be managing by failing to fulfil their duties and thus hurting the line members, which are the very people and purpose the directorate exists to serve.

The other big org thing that would have nuked all Endies had I known about it was banning/discouraging sidebar dialogues as he exists pretty much exclusively in sidebars (see his Xander pastebins, etc).

In case Videogames really, really wanted to hear from me, the most exciting books on my reading list this past year include such page-turners as 'Managing Humans', 'The Lean Startup', 'Start With Why' and 'High Output Management'.

I'm the life of the loving party.

Numismancer fucked around with this message at 14:05 on Sep 16, 2016

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 14:03

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Massasoit posted:

Man why do people take spaceships so seriously idgi

I understand the possibility of not taking a thing seriously in the abstract sense, but who has time for that poo poo. Now if you fine gentlemen will excuse me, I have some crunches to do.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 14:38

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Xolve posted:

You're pretty poo poo at this whole "I don't care, seriously- I don't" shtick.

Treading on psychotic ex-girlfriend territory now.

I don't think you want to be throwing stones about mental health, especially when defending Endie - the guy who takes it so very, very seriously if you say someone is crazy (or a traitor) on the internet.

Also, you're the stolen valor guy who invented a bunch of personal stories about your ~military service~ while you were in The Suicide Kings. Don't step.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 15:34

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Rhymenoserous posted:

W-hat.

Yep.

Xolve makes poo poo up about himself and got his hand caught in a cookie jar a long time ago. When I found he'd somehow been let into GSF last year, I banned him immediately.

:commissar:

If memory serves, he blamed someone else for his purge and howled on the old thread for a while about it.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 15:44

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Morris posted:

Plenty of "ordinary" people can turn tribal given the proper psychological nudges. The high effort invested in Eve is itself a pretty good nudge. I'm the guy who shits on political parties and jingoism but even after a few months of Eve I found myself getting defensive of GSF in WWB on le reddits

hosed up if true

really hosed up if not true

like Gorski Car x10

It's drat common on the interwebs even though everyone gets hot and bothered when it crops up. He will, of course, deny. That's the thing about the spy game, you see a lot of common lies and inventions repeated to the point that they cease to outrage and then you're a little surprised when other people, confronted with the same common bullshit, react with total outrage.

People create double lives on the internet, claiming you're a vet is standard Mary Sue fanfic poo poo. My outrage circuits are burned out after a decade in the trenches with the best and worst of human nature, it takes a lot to raise my eyebrows.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 15:58

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Rhymenoserous posted:

I'm a veteran of the space war on the internet. Give me a medal.

Please submit your request to the Director of Medals, Kcolor~

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 16:01

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Blazing Zero posted:

im still curious if mittens has the proof that xolve faked his mil records. as a vet myself, i hate when people do this

Besides 'Draesun told me, and it fits the profile of Xolve's behavior and I believe it enough to purge Xolve from GSF, ban and blacklist him,' nope. This ain't space court - Xolve is a great match for PL, along with Javajunky, Endie, Kismeteer and DJ. I think he's found his people and that makes me happy for him - they'll all enjoy the best of luck in their future endeavors.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 16:31

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

CEOs talk to each other about crazy members they've kicked out of their corps. "Draesun told me" is good enough for me to act on, especially given how erratic Xolve has been over the years.

Rhymenoserous posted:

Elysium is open to every dumbfuck in the alliance and filled with X if baka poo poo from the likes of stunt. It's SGBS with mandatory director presence, so no it's not really filling that need of an old boys club where once upon a time important people can say "Hey you can probably do this better".

On top of that I'm sure a lot of those ex-directors/diplos wouldn't mind being tapped for short term projects that didn't require the level of attention that say: Being a diplo, or what not entail, so it would give you a ready list of smart people, who are active enough to still log into jabber and may be willing to do small things along the lines of their old purview provided it didn't eat too much into their LOL time.

The whole point is that it's open to 'every dumbfuck in the alliance' so we can get feedback on what our 'dumbfucks' think. There's not actually a need for an 'old boys club', those are toxic as hell in practice. Someone who is new to the alliance often has a perspective that is as valuable as a vet; the needs of a Thetan are wildly different from those of dudes on that Real poo poo who zucchini, wow.

This is the core assumption that is flawed and it crops up constantly: GSF if you count vacationers has upwards of 40,000 unique humans cycling in and out of Eve and the other poo poo we play together. Elysium is not filling 'the need' of an 'old boys club', but there are more 'needs' of each demographic among our people than you can conceive of.

We don't call on directors who were spacefired and took it well precisely because they're recharging and relaxing and will return to the directorate later. It's a sine-wave of service to the line.

We don't call on directors who were spacefired and took it badly because their ego was stung by the horror of accountability and their reaction to being removed for cause is a major indicator about their drama factor and maturity level/dedication to the line.

Some of our best directors are those who got fired, then fixed their poo poo and came back even stronger/more effective - Kilgarth is an excellent example of this.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 16:45

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

dreamin' posted:

Too bad the exciting concept of deliverables was never applied to the people charged with keep the war room running

Coord is a goddamned recurring nightmare, even when you have 'one guy do everything' then they flame out and become the nightmare. A lot of the coord issues I think I could have solved but I was taken off the table between June and July due to personal stuff which is now public. Apple Pear and Thomas Lear have done a fantastic job turning poo poo around.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 16:50

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

dreamin' posted:

I am aware it doesn't matter one bit whether GSF has one more remaining tiny ally in delve with them or not, but if you asked me for one single main reason for why we left, it's this: as wibla says this all started so much earlier and, while every couple weeks some other grand plan was published and started on, fixing the war room never happened because there was always something else in the way. And the integration into coord was a step that would have been so easy to implement with the only thing preventing it that I can see is probably GSF falling into the "can't let the allies know anything because they are riddled with spies" trap.

I wanted to see if I could fix a coord system by starting with a GSF-only org and experimenting there with a team system, which ended up Not Working - that had nothing to do with spy security. Sometimes (many times) you try an org thing and it doesn't work. I don't blame EXE going their own way and eventually we may blue up and be snugglebuddies again~

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 17:22

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

goninzo posted:

Funny you say that...

Now seems like an optimal time to quote this post for posterity; click the link to see the context and be amazed.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 19:32

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

goninzo posted:

I do know that The Mittani's full resources are aimed at me now, based on other things happening out of the forums. So wish me luck, I am but a small cog against large machine.

Posting "Ha ha ha you lost your dog in your divorce nyah nyah nyah" may not have been your most optimal available method of getting welcomed back into the embrace of GSF, I'll admit.

I'm hoping "full resources aimed at me" is actually a sexual innuendo and he's suggesting we make a porno.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 19:39

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Blazing Zero posted:

did this actually happen though? i must have missed it

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3773671&pagenumber=505&perpage=40#post464291519

# ¿ Sep 16, 2016 19:43

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Never again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4UqMyldS7Q

Numismancer fucked around with this message at 14:56 on Oct 12, 2016

# ¿ Oct 12, 2016 14:51

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

facultas posted:

Since it's been cleared and I think it fits within the rules, the story of how a love triangle brought down a coalition.

I'm guessing that most of the people in this thread are at least casual EVE observers, and so are familiar with the lead up to the casino war thing involving Eep, the guy who runs IWI, and SpaceMonkey's Alliance. The basic public story was that SMA infiltrated IWI to out it as an RMT operation, and that Eep got made and declared a vendetta to kill SMA. While that's kinda true, it's nowhere near the whole stupid tale that I've been able to reconstruct.

Back when IWI was first spinning up, Eep wasn't the only guy helping to code it. There was another guy, not sure on his in game name and no reason to give his real one, who also was helping him code it. From what I gathered, he was either the husband or boyfriend of one of SMA's diplomatic directors, Widget Zombie. He didn't play EVE, but she did. As near as I could tell, she steadily rose up through SMA's leadership structure by playing up the "giggle I'm a girl" act endlessly. There were numerous odd exchanges between her and our people, including several super weird ones where she hit on Digi to try to get CI favors.

Unlike Widget, her man had long ago quit EVE and didn't really have a stake in things. He was just working for Eep for fun I guess, not really sure why they linked up in the first place. But at some point early on, he brought in Widget to do IWI stuff too, and the presumably the couple had a merry time banking, coding, rolling in isk, and otherwise being looped into the dev and day to day of IWI. During this process, Widget did her usual "giggle I'm a girl on the internet" flirting thing with Eep--who I'm told is a handsome fellow--and this is where it gets messy. As for Widget, I met her briefly in EVE Vegas, she seemed friendly, happy, and is on the big side. I'm not saying that in a judgmental way, I don't care what people look like, but because it's important later on in this.

Eep got sucked into it, and is I guess a swinger of sorts, so he agreed to meet up with Widget and her guy at their home for sexy funtimes. Except when he got there, instead of sexy funtimes, he walked into a mess. As in a literal mess, stuff everywhere. So instead of sexy funtimes, he set to cleaning the place up. No idea why, maybe he thought it would help, maybe he felt it was awkward, couldn't say. At some point the awkwardness level or whatever it was became such that he eventually left, having traveled who knows how far, with no funtimes had.

That would probably be the end of it except that Widget was livid about the whole ordeal. The combination of the rejection and perhaps the embarrassment of the guy she invited over for a threesome moonwalking out after doing a bit of cleaning set her off. She took it personally, blamed Eep for not finding her attractive enough (through presumably they'd shared pictures, so this seems unlikely) and set about soothing her fury by getting revenge. Revenge for being snubbed, not for his cleaning job, probably.

Her husband/boyfriend/whatever was still coding on Eep's thing, and she had him build in a backdoor to it. Which I'm told is illegal, but I'm not a lawyer. Then she brought in a stack of SMA bankers, and started using the backdoor to siphon away billions of isk to individuals in SMA. Eventually, she straight up robbed Eep. At this point, he kicked her from banking stuff, but Widget's guy was still working on it. Which doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, but I guess they bonded. So after Widget robbed Eep and they'd both technically defrauded him, Eep started funding people to hit SMA. Initially, it was likely less about pride, and more him just wanting his money back. Why he didn't just ask for it from the guy coding his stuff, I don't know. Best guess is Widget was playing them both.

It's unclear at what point SMA leadership as a whole learned of this, or how much they ever knew. Sidebar on this is that the three brothers who had been running SMA and who are standup dudes had been largely out of game due to family stuff and business stuff. So the vast majority of the day to day stuff was run by an Aussie named Winet, and Widget. Increasingly, they were running the alliance, and for better or worse, the brothers trusted them to do so.

Given all the stuff behind the scenes, it made for a bad situation. Instead of looking into it airlocking Widget immediately, they bought her story about how Eep was wrongfully harassing her, and vowed not to negotiate with terrorists. Then they went to war, either Widget or the SMA guys had the bright idea to infiltrate IWI to prove that it was an RMT operation while staving off the mercenaries hired to kill them. They used the backdoor, the coding loopholes, and generated a pile of data that they sent to CCP, who already had an investigation ongoing with IWI.

Eep knew about this in relatively short order. Not sure how he found out, but he wasn't super happy about it all. The backdoor was closed, the CCP investigation stalled, and suddenly SMA's plan to deal with the Eep issue didn't seem so masterful. SMA leaders were furious, both at CCP and at IWI for slandering their beloved Widget. Widget still refused to back down and talk about what really happened, Eep still wanted his money back from her. He'd also extended his retaliation in general to SMA at this point since they tried to prove IWI was an RMT shop, and said now he was going to destroy them too. It was the same line he'd take post-war with GSF when Mittani talked about IWI enabling underage gambling and being an RMT thing, vowed to destroy GSF for besmirching his good name. Given recent events, heh, well, anyway.

After that whole SMA expose blew up and fizzled out, Eep redoubled his efforts. SMA circled the wagons. Eventually the conflict started spilling out to reddit, then into bigger war stuff, and eventually became the casino war, though I'm of the opinion that threesome gone wrong war is a better name, but I digress. What makes this all the more sad is that, even unto the last, as the coalition was losing it's space, Widget and her guy were in direct contact with Eep. Eep had contacted her regularly, and and one point he let her that he'd stop funding the war, but only if she returned the isk she'd stolen from him. It was a paltry amount, and perhaps it was a scam, but given how the war was going it would have been dumb not to try. She, of course, refused. Alliance and coalition be damned, Eep had wronged her. This mentality is totally alien to me, so I can't even speculate as to why her getting vengeance over a botched threesome was more important than the thousands of people in her own alliance, or the tens of thousands in the coalition. But it was.

Oh, and for reference, all this leadup stuff happened between last summer and last October or so. Long before anyone in GSF knew what an Eep or an IWI was. SMA concealed this stuff from us as well, that there was anything happening, the real scope of it, or why it might be happening. By the time we saw and understood what was really going on, it was far too late. We'd been getting our info on the IWI stuff from SMA initially, and trusted that they were being up front. It wasn't until it became clear that they were trying to snow us to protect Widget and/or that they didn't know themselves and had been suckered by her that we really started digging. By the time we'd figured out what was really going on, we'd already lost the war and no apology, no Widget execution, nothing could stay that headsman's ax. Had SMA been open with us in the beginning, we could have headed the whole thing off easily, and would likely still be burbling along happily in Dek.

So there you have it, the root cause of the war and a great study in the price of revenge and unintended consequences. Widget's desire for revenge brought down a coalition, Eep's desire for revenge drew the public spotlight that contributed to him being banned and gambling being banned from EVE.

For me at least, it's kind of fascinating that Widget Zombie is the real reason this war kicked off, a space Helen of Troy.

This is all true.

Swinger threesome drama gone awry is also one of the tamer 'what really happened' Eve stories, that's the funny thing.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2016 17:54

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Something about how we operate on a different timescale than our enemies goes here, which we said over and over again during the earlier phases of the war, just as we said they'd cannibalize each other and that preserving our supercap fleet was critical regardless of outside howling for content.

Vegas is going to be a blast.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2016 18:55

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

I think there's an assumption that goonfuckers get banned by 'random people in the directorate'. The directorate has no such power; these bannings are done and examples are made through yours truly when they go beyond the remit of the ~Director of Goonfucker Affairs~ Innominate.

I banned Kimsemus and JustSharkbait when the toxic drama bullshit level reached a pitch that I was fed up with it and it revealed he didn't belong among us. Angelique loudly betrayed us and has now vomited forth a bunch of reasons why she should be allowed to return, and is waiting in the antechamber for the winds of my whims to change. Perhaps she will wait forever, perhaps not.

Those who betray our guys are my absolute and utter lowest priority. The reason you guys want back in is that our little space-gang is in fact a people, and you've been exiled from that people for drat good reasons, and now you've realized that there's nothing like Goonswarm anywhere in gaming. That tells me not that you deserve mercy or sympathy; it tells me that we have done a fine job of defending and protecting our guys from bullshit and that we're light-years beyond the garbage random publord orgs in everything that matters.

Goonswarm and the Imperium as a whole are an empire of outlaws; that's why in the 'Eve is a lot like the Breakfast Club' analogies we are always the drug-dealing delinquent smoking behind the gym. We are not the popular kids; we're more like a biker gang or a mafia family. Our heroes are scammers, silver-tongued diplomats, and spies. Our closest allies have always been rather shady Russians. In the old CFC the ally our people despised the most was FCON - because they were the earnest preppie no-scamming, no-ganking straights. To us, honor among thieves matters - which is why there's nothing lower in our society than a goonfucker, where the common Eve-playing pubbies forgive and forget and backstab one another and think nothing of it, with no consequences.

With us things are different. We do not answer your pleas because we are a 'disconnected directorate' who don't know who you are as 'random innocent victims randomly banned'. We don't answer you because I pulled the trigger on your exile and ban and you don't deserve a reply, except when you get to the point of whining about the directors and implying that they somehow were responsible for the justice I so gladly dispense. You don't get or deserve due process because you're not one of us.

Our people.
Our rules.
Our way.

:commissar:

Here's a tilde ~ now settle in for a long wait in the queue for me to feel a twinge of sympathy for the bullshit of the past few pages.

Numismancer fucked around with this message at 00:40 on Nov 12, 2016

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 00:38

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

We screw stuff up constantly, like all the goddamned time. Not sure where the idea that we never admit failure comes from - besides the assumption coming from a kneejerk gently caress-you-dad attitude - when GSF has been faceplanting around the galaxy for more than a decade. That's why we get better; we're willing to go 'well that didn't work at all' and try something else.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 05:42

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

If you guys want to have a thread on GOONFLEET DOT COM where you ask direkkktors to talk about their biggest 'whoops' moments you can simply make one and it's cool, the only reason skulls got fragged in the bad thread was babby agitators thinking I was born yesterday and wouldn't identify, isolate and exterminate them.

# ¿ Nov 12, 2016 06:18

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

World War RMT is drat good, ngl.

# ¿ Nov 16, 2016 21:50

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

Reverand maynard posted:

Lol, I've been blacklisted twice. I'm still here because when some dipshit pisses off mittani and gets his entire corp kicked, within an hour I've stolen their corp wallet and shares and within 24 hours I've become CEO and disbanded it. Because I do funny things like getting PL Titan and NC. super to jump to my cyno. Because I was a supercap spy in NC who scammed the absolute gently caress out of their renters. Because I god drat pioneered recruitment scams. Because I've stolen more supercaps than your alliance has killed.

Get hosed.

You're pretty awesome, random misbehavior aside - which is why you belong.

# ¿ Nov 19, 2016 09:55

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:08

Numismancer: Sep 15, 2004; by sebmojo

We're now entirely convinced that the NETC has nothing to do with PL, so I anticipate no issue with us blowing up the entire loving thing while Suas rages and Lenny weeps. That's two out of the crew of four people who started the Casino War, nicely tied to one enterprise that has no fleets of its own.

At least we won't need to worry about PL defending these NETC shitpiles, so it's full speed ahead into formal campaign mode~

# ¿ Dec 15, 2016 00:35

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > The MMO HMO > EVE Online 2017: We are the Alphas, the Omegas and the Gankers.