Sunday, March 13, 2016

SUSU is Recruiting


Lets do this!

"So what you wanna do, sheeeit, I got a pocket full of rubbers and my homeboys do too" -- Snoop Dog

For those of you who have been reading my blog for a long time, or simply looked at older posts. :P

SUSU or Semper Ubi Sub Ubi was the corp I started shortly after being in Narwals Ate my Duck years ago. The corps focus was pvp 1st. Scouts get all the loot, we bite all bait and we try our best to fight everyone. We thanked those who we fought, we never broke our words and we respected everyone, especially our targets.

I've had my alt holding the SUSU corp for me, I have a wormhole, I've got the money for the towers/fuel. I bought a Team speak server, got a slack team and even dusted off the old kill board banner. Fuck it, why not?!

Our Goal:

 SUSU's focus will be what it always was, a place for pilots who want to pvp/scout and micro gang in lower class wspace. Rolling holes for pew. Fighting EVERYONE! I for one don't want to die a space billionaire. 

Wormhole Type: C4, static C2/C3, no effect. Not the most ideal hole but its a good starting place. Our end goal will be moving to a C4, static C2/C4 for the monster chains. 

Asset Security: For those who don't own their own tower or don't want to share a tower with a friend. We will be using a divisional access setup.

Mapping Software: Tripwire.

Voice Coms: Team Speak 3 

Requirements:  

1.  A desire to fight more than bear. Plain and simple. If your burnt out on scanning, don't have a lot of time that day, plan just don't feel like it, thats cool. This game can be intense and a break does the body good.

The question I'll ask you when I hear you came across another group is. "Did you try and fight them?". If yes, good job. If no, you should have a good reason. That's all that matters to me at the end of the day.

I don't care if you won, though winning is good, but I care more if you charged in and exploded laughing like a crazy person. WITNESS ME!

 2. You need to be a mellow person on coms. Critical peeps, try hards, can keep on walking. My goal is for a minimal drama corp. I know that's a big ask, but the only way you can get into the corp is if everyone online at that time says "Yes". We will conduct interviews together as a corp, not behind closed doors and everyone will vote on it.


 3. O yea, ship skills. You must be able to scan, warp cloaked and tackle. Everything else we can improve or lead you through. Even a 3 week old newbie in a griffin is useful. Hell I've seen a newbie ship loaded with ECM that was critical to engagements. With that said, newbies are welcome, but you need to be able to warp cloaked/scan and tackle.

4. Ships required. Armor T2 and T1. Kite ships are secondary. Creativity and fun fleets take priority. Lets fly some MJD rail brutix! Lets fly some cruise missile raven gangs... Smart bombing hyperions! YOLO/solo/pvp Kronos! Falcon gangs. You can't kill shit but sure is funny as hell!

Leave the T3/T2 logi/bhaalgorn garbage at home, I'm after quantity of fights, not super dank KMs.

Expectations:

If you're on coms and you hear there are targets in the chain. You drop what your doing and form up to fight (within reason of course). Loaner ships can be provided, but your goal should be to give our targets hell!

I want to be the little guys that people want to be connected to, because we are little but we fucking bring it! We may die in a fire.. but god damn it, we had fun doing it.

If you don't like losing ships (within reason of course) we might not be good for you.


Recruitment: Contact me in game. Longinius Spear. Drop into our pub channel. "SUSU-Pub"

We can chat and go through the typical Q&A. Get to know each other and the people in the corp, find out if you want to throw down for no reason other than to see something explode.

1v1 is your entrance fee.

Special Thanks: 

I dedicate this post and my new found inspiration to lead people into dumb fights to Tard Athonille.

He is the pilot I dream to become and its because of him I'm reminded about what truly matters when playing a spaceship game. No fucks given!

"You kids going to do the man dance or what??!" ---  Tard Athonille







Tuesday, March 8, 2016

Moving on from Isogen 5, again.

Well I said it, there for I must accept that its real.

I've left Isogen5 three  times now. I'm going to refer to Isogen5 as a her at times in this post because this is exactly like a real life love affair relationship you can't get out of.

Lots of analogies to follow. This post should get super weird, so be prepared. 

 Each time I tell myself it will be the last time, but I find myself evaluating why I'm with her, what she brings to the partnership and what my expectations actually are. 

Isogen 5 to me is the manifestation of all my ideals, goals and achievements wrapped into a corp. Just like that perfect women you think you want, but after you get her, you find it was the chase that you loved more. You wake up and find her sleeping in your bed, you think to yourself, 'been there, done that, whats next' and she snores.

Recent drama has taken hold in the corp, some could say it was inevitable with such strong personalities, conflict was bound to happen. I think we just flew to close to the sun. We were blinded by our own magnificence. We focused too much on kill boards, fits, winning fights and stopped looking at what made the game fun, which was suppose to be each other. Each of us began to fly differently, caring just enough about our spaceships and records that we didn't commit when we could have.

I found myself giving a shit way too much, not accepting fellow pilots for who they were. People I called friends would piss me off for one thing or another. I found myself angry with something they didn't do or did do. I didn't want to be on coms, I didn't want to work it out, I didn't want to do what they were doing.  No logic behind my feelings, just perpetual angry.

I've always had the principal that we should be thankful for the people who fought us, the people who logged into the game, warped out of their towers to face us on the battlefield but had the eventual outcome of their loss. These players should be thanked for what they did. Thanked for their explosions they brought to us. Iso5 stopped saying thank you for your gift of an explosion and began expecting it.

It didn't help that we began recruiting like minded pilots, tag alongs looking for easy kill board bumps. People who brought nothing to the corp other than hate and n+1. I can recall countless conversations with one pilot in particular who I attempted to interact with on a human level, but over and over again this person would stun me with the amount of venom they could spread. That person poisoned the general friendliness of the corp, was so out spoken in nearly every communication outlet anyone with any breath of logic or compassion was extinguished. The definition of a bully, someone you can't get away from and seems to only want to torment others. (Before you ask who that person was, they aren't worth naming, because they were just a single nail in my coffin for leaving iso5)

We as a  corp began evaluating everything, every single misstep in both our opponents and in ourselves. Even when it wasn't warranted at all, it became a matter of process. Constantly trying to be the best, no matter the cost. If we had 5 fights in a night, we had 6 conversations about what we could have done differently to achieve perfection of execution. We analyzed everything, everyone, anything that may or may not have contributed to us winning an engagement in a more spectacular way.

 If one single pilot screwed up, the entire group had to endure 10 minutes of ridicule on what that person could have done differently, even if that mistake didn't result in a ship loss. It began to be so common that I began recording the conversations, but they made me hostile to edit together, so I stopped. 

Doctrine began to be god, creativity and spirit took a back seat. If we encountered a situation were doctrine didn't fit, and expectations of an engagement didn't match perfect outcomes, we drop kicked the fight by blobbing our opponents or simply flying things that didn't commit to engagements, any tactic that would result in us being ISK positive in an engagement. 

I found myself acting the same way as everyone else and hating myself for it. I would lash out at my feelings of 'try hardness' and attempt to just yolo ships into a loss just to prove to myself it was just a fucking game and I should enjoy it. I wanted to prove to myself and my friends that I was above all that. Above risk aversion, critical flying and to just be a noob again. I wanted to make myself an example of 'fuck you, its my stuff, I do what I want and you can't fucking stop me".  In the end I was told to stop, no reason was given, no solution was found.

Eventually I just disliked everyone on coms. To hear their voices brought back memories of them fucking something up or them ridiculing someone else for fucking something up. Being on coms made me hostile, the pilots made me hostile and I don't want to be hostile when I play a game I love. 

I took about a month off, took some me time, played other games. Got a fresh perspective and I've returned. I don't know what I want for the future, but I remember my past,  and I don't want that. 

I've found a place to land, with a group that has some good potential. From what I've been told so far, they have a bright pvp future. I hope my experience in their goals can be an asset for their own rise. There are some challenges to be sure, but no corp or relationship is perfect. I've found perfect in the past, and its lack of imperfections pissed me off. 




Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Recent "Team Security" EULA Releases



Those few of you who have read my blog in the past know that I have had my issues with the EULA interpretations.

(Props up the dead horse)

Notably the Erotica1 bull shit, and I'll still go on record calling it bull shit, because it was.

To summarize my stance on the issue. Any time a game creator attempts to dictate how a game is played via negative reinforcement the game is effectively homogenized the edginess and interest in it follows. This type of conduct by game designers and "Management" hinders overall creativity by not making the rules of conduct 100% crystal clear.

Creative "villains" of the game, play it with the ever present sword of Damocles hovering above their heads. Those villains actions may one day be deemed "undesirable" by the mob and all their hard work could suddenly be for not. In the past, the EVE game designers used to say to the mob "HTFU"... this is becoming less common. 

Many creative minds simply won't bother, which hurts us all. In other words, whats a story without a protagonist?

Answer: Boring.

(Puts dead horse back down again.)

Well, fast forward to present day.

This dev-blog was released last week or so.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/overlays-isk-buyer-amnesty-and-account-security/

Key bit I found.

"if any third party application or other software is used to gain any unfair advantage, or for purposes beyond its intended use, or if the application or other software violates other parts of the EULA, we may fully enforce our rights to prohibit such use, including player bans. Please use such third party applications or other software at your own risk.”

This indirectly touches on the type of game play I was highlighting in my last blog post.

One wormhole group using another wormhole groups 3rd party wormhole mapping software for the reasons to get some dank KM's and 3rd party into nearly every fight they have in their chain.

The infiltrating wormhole corp/members could be banned for using another wormhole groups 3rd party mapping software. "Out side of its intended use" "Used to gain an unfair advantage".

Whelp. Those of you out there who may or may not know a person, who knows a guy with some other corps Siggy information via absconded API keys, may or may not get banned for using it for devious reasons or "an unfair advantage".

Curious if this activity will actually get you banned? Me too.

 See the thing is for me, even if this type of activity was used on me and resulted in me losing a digital spaceship or two, I'm happy it exists. I'm happy the person who figured out to do this to me, did it on me.

The idea, or thought process wouldn't be there if that pilot who did this, didn't think of it in the first place. This I would like to point out, is just 1 idea this player had or will have, that player will have countless more if allowed to play. That player brings value to the game, brings the 'danger' of EVE to life.

Knowing that player is allowed to continue being a threat to my wallet, put a fear in my mind and a fear in the hearts of all those who were ever 3rd partied and didn't know how or why.  That fear gets me emotionally invested in the game. It gets others invested and those others will tell others that this happened to them, people will come looking for the danger.

No one wants to shoot rocks while big brother CCP keeps us safe. 

Everyone wants to hide from hostiles, question allies, question friends, hide secrets, be covert... because to not be means you explode.