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My name is Hallan Turrek. This is my blog.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Killmail Whores

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says
“It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?
Bob Dylan - Ballad of a Thin Man

I had an interesting interaction with someone in my fleet chat Sunday that really irked me.

I'd said over comms that the killmails don't mean anything to me, and that I just want the NC to get it's moons back in Venal. What I got in reply was this:

Name Redacted > I care about KM... f**k moons.. and pve

Do I really need to explain everything that's wrong with that statement?

Say it with me guys: PvP does not mean killmails.

PvP means beating the guys you're fighting. Beating the guys you're fighting means denying them the goals they've set out to achieve and succeeding in the goals you've set out to achieve.

I've often wondered about the killmail culture of EVE. What kind of small minded person started the trend that merely killing another ship was important?

Are the the scouts, the probers, the logistics, the people who aren't actually doing the shooting somehow less than you because your ship got active modules on a target before it died?

There is so much more to EVE. Honestly, if all you go for are killmails, you're denying yourself a wide expanse of PVP in EVE.

That isn't to say that killmails aren't an integral part of EVE. Lets face it, even winning a battle and holding the field while losing 20-50 carriers is a terrible win. But you did win that battle. You might not win the next battle, and you might lose the war, but you won, for the moment.

A killmail is not itself success or failure. Instead it is one indication of success or failure.

Don't worry about beating the guy in front of you, worry about beating the other guys.

Oh, and I've bumped my scheduled post to Tuesday(yeah I'm publishing early), to better accommodate my work schedule. The ENN posts'll still be up on Saturday. Have a nice day.

13 comments:

  1. This crap drives me insane. The guys I fly with are mostly decent guys, but to see ships getting one gun worth of damage on eight different KMs while I'm focus-firing really irks me.

    Don't even get me started on the loot whores.

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    1. We regularly engage a corp that spends their whole existence in eve killmail whoring and loot whoring. It annoys me greatly. They make a pretty penny at it and I am confident it is a mostly alts of more aggressive pvp'rs.

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  2. Well.

    Especially in a competitive alliance, if your corp had to prove that they are useful to get in, maintaining your corp at a high killboard rank within the alliance may be a matter of corporate pride. Similarly, getting your corp on the eve-kill top 20 is a pretty big deal.

    Or, if your killboard stats are scraped for participation and shiptypes and that data is used to define alliance tax on corporate moon gold, there is also an incentive to get on moar killmails.

    For me, getting on as many kills as possible, in the best ship possible, is tantamount to doing what is best for the corporation. 8 guns on 8 targets is not okay, but I do separate a gun or two from my main group for those times when targets are going down faster than my cycle time, and might admit to being a little quicker on the ECM burst than is recommended to be most useful.

    Of course, being an a-grade FC or part of the command team is more important, but I'm just a grunt.

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  3. Don't get me started on the corporate and alliance CULTURE that leads to this either. Ugh.

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  4. I do it for the fight, nothing else. I would trade 1000 KM's and another 1000 moons for a decent fight.

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  5. Curse that corporate and alliance culture that encourages people to show up for ops and bring the right shiptypes. Shakefist.

    On the other hand, we're one of the more successful alliances in the game and none of us bring f*ing ~draeks~ to armor fleets, so I guess it's working out for us.

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  6. The issue is with the culture that values killmails OVER participation. As with other things, those two are not equal.

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  7. From what I took away from your article it seemed that winning was far more important, "PVP is beating the guys you're fighting", and that having fun and killmails should be ancillary.

    I see no value in any of this, even if you do lose 50 carriers what's the lesson to be learned?

    I relish my losses as much, if not more, although granted I don't deal with 0.0 politics and typically have less than 500 people on my lossmails.

    tl;dr What I'm saying is that PVP isn't about winning any more than it is about killmails. Thoughts?

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  8. Losing a ship doesn't mean losing a battle.

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  9. Pirating/Gate Camps and small roams are for KM. Strat Ops are for killing the other guys and KM should be a secondary concern. The KM as a primary goal results in no one showing up at Ops with logi/hictor/dictor/ewar. DPS is awesome, but dps isn't much good if it can't stay on the battlefield for very long.

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  10. Where did he say that "HAVING FUN and killmails" should be ancillary? Nary a word about having fun.

    Now, if you can't have fun unless you've whored your way onto a dozen KMs, then I guess that might be an issue... But that's an entirely different set of mental issues.

    Any corp who doesn't appreciate the need for logi pilots, and that logi pilots don't get KMs, and STILL judges you solely on KMs... Well, that's not a corp that's going to be successful in large-scale action. Period.

    But the culture can't explain it all. People flying less-than-optimally in order to get on a KM may be explained away. But people asking for KM links in fleet chat while a battle is still going on, or ignoring FC orders to try and get on a KM... That's just bad pilots. I'll leave it at that and not go into my more colorful opinions of such pilots.

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  11. Hictors and dictors can actually be good for kill whoring, since their pilots get on killmails of anybody who tries to warp in the bubble. Ewar also gets on kills with point, web or jamming. The trouble, of course, is that these types of ship tend to get primaried.

    Logi can actually get on killmails by carrying light drones and assisting one to somebody, but they would be more effective if they were to carry rep drones. This has been a issue of some debate in my alliance.

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  12. Interesting thoughts - thanks for sharing them.

    Drew
    http://lettersforfun.blogspot.com/

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