Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Cry Baby Cry

The whole tradition of whining in the forums after you take a beating is getting a little old.

Folks, sometimes you're going to lose. Sometimes the enemy is going to bring the wrath of god down on your fleet, nail your collective ass to the wall, burn the remains and dance on the ashes. It's never an happy occasion, but it's going to happen.

Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.

It doesn't matter whether or not they pwned your sorry ass "fairly". It doesn't matter if you were outnumbered 500 to 1,  if they brought half of nullsec to the fight, hired Pandemic Legion's Supercapital Fleet using RMT cash, infiltrated your coms and fleet channels with spies, lagged the system, and SirMolle showed up at the last minute with all of IT Alliance in tow solely for the purpose of whoring killmails and making you look bad. Doesn't matter. At the end of the day, you lost. They won.

Now man up.

There's no such thing as e-honor. Don't even start with me on e-honor. In nullsec you go out there and do your level best to defeat the enemy. You reach deep into your bag of dirty tricks and, even before the first shot is fired, make sure that your guys have every advantage you can give them. E-honor was invented by nasty men like me to keep idealistic rubes like you from developing your own bag of dirty tricks. This isn't Camelot in space. This is nullsec. Leave your moral outrage, your righteous indignation in highsec - or go join CVA.

If your side loses, your enemy is going to take to the forums and trumpet their win. They are going to call you names. They are going to laugh about how you got yourselves owned. They're going to play psyops games, try to get into your heads and under your skin which, immediately after you've taken a drubbing, is not to hard to do. 

Do not respond with a bunch of cry-posts about how they didn't win "fairly" (see above), or excuses for your loss. It doesn't matter if your FC was wild-eyed drunk, taking spousal aggro, screaming at his/her kids between calling primaries and bitten by a K-9 dog while being dragged off by the police at the onset of the battle. Your side lost. Cry-posts do nothing but make your side look even more pathetic. Let alliance leadership handle the forum responses. If you can't control your post-loss impulse to whine, stay out of the forums. 

The best response to a loss is to look honestly at why you lost and take steps to make sure you don't lose the same way twice. Be ruthless. Look at what your side did wrong as well as what their side did right. Don't waste time blathering on about how you had the moral high ground. Find and fix your weaknesses. Find and exploit the enemy's. Next time, it's the bear's turn to get got. Winning, after all, is the best revenge.

Stay frosty.

9 comments:

  1. Amen! I am glad you said this, because it's very annoying when people say "it's a game and you cheated" after losing but happily shout "internet spaceships is srs busns" after winning.

    The campaigns in 0.0 are prosecuted much like real wars. As we've all seen war isn't exactly pretty and why would anyone expect virtual war to be less ugly?!? Spies, underhanded tactics, taking the high ground by getting to the fight first; these are all real tactics and more importantly effective ones. If someone doesn't like it the best approach is to find a way to counter move, not to cry about it. EvE is a wonderful game and some people just need to HTFU :)

    Love your writings btw!

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  2. lol.

    Y'know... heck I don't even know where to start. As usual, I agree. Partially. It could also be argued that "whining" (at least to a certain degree) is also part of the psychological aspect of this crazy game. A face-saving process that allows the loser a chance to deflect blame and rally the troops around a common enemy, namely someone other than themselves. Having experienced more than my fair share of losing I've seen plenty of examples of this in action. (Not by me, I couldn't care less one way or the other)

    Personally I play to have fun and drive my enemies crazy, both in-game and in other ways. I don't like whining and I don't care much for the forums honestly, but I suppose it is all part of the great unwashed universe.

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  3. Valid point.

    I think complaining about having your out of game coms server DDOS attacked at the beginning of a capital confrontation is pretty fair. If no one communicated about the Pandemic Legion "Sphere" hacks that allowed them to easily gank people, it would still be a huge issue.

    I guess a cheating Pandemic Legion clause is required to bring me to full agreement with your post.

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  4. Rixx - Trouble is, "face saving" whining does more harm than good when it comes to rallying the troops. If the leadership does it, it makes them look weak. If the rank-and-file do it, it makes them look undisciplined. It focuses attention away from the primary task at hand, which is figuring out why you lost and how gut the enemy next time around. If creative whining it to be done, it should be done with a targeted goal in mind (misinforming the enemy, for example).

    Shrink - How much do you benefit from complaining on a public forum about your oog coms being DDOS attacked or "Sphere" hacks? Maybe it's smarter to keep the enemy in the dark about what you know while you take measures to mitigate the problem or trap the enemy using their own scam. Communicate what they've done, but do it on your terms and on your time-table.

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  5. Could you link to the some 'cry post' examples, or possibly show some here? Purely for educational purposes, of course.

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  6. Oh Oh. Mord, have you been unexpectedly sucked into EVE's complaining and complaining about complaining culture?

    Although I don't disagree with you post, I'm afraid such words only contribute to the absurd ranting and counter-ranting that poison EVE forums.

    Your blog is so wonderful and refreshing to read exactly because you stay out of all that nonsense, and rationally analyze the meta game and other things that are truly fasicinating. Please don't become like all those other blogs out there!

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  7. Great Post. Your best point was your comment in response to Rixx that said whining accomplishes nothing but makes your leadership look weak (if it comes from them) and your troops look undisciplined (if coming there).

    You should edit that part in someplace.

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  8. This thing should be general knowledge to anyone playing this game, keep my forums clean damned *shakes fist*

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