Ninja Salvage and Bait Is Dying
This is an opinion piece. I expect a lot of disagreement in comments; please do. Both Paul and I like to see the blog as a place where people can freely express opinions, even when we don't agree with them, or you with us.
Commenters have recently asked why Paul and I are living in wormhole space killing sleepers instead of playing in hisec and ganking mission runners. Part of the reason is Paul's new business which keeps him extremely busy; and the Advanced Emergency Medical Technician class I had been taking this summer. Another reason was that we wanted to get Space Rich, and sleepers are one good way to do it.
But for me, there is another reason: The Ninja Salvage (plus Bait & Gank) play style is no longer anywhere as enjoyable as it once was. When I first started, it was possible to kill two or three ships a night, sometimes even more. And a strong possibility of tears. Now it takes time and effort to get even a single kill. Here's some of the reasons why this play style, for me, has gone downhill:
When I first started, way back in Quantum Rise, probing was an entirely different affair. It was more difficult to scan down a player, and players had no expectation of someone showing up in their mission and plundering salvage and loot. As a result, shock factor led to shooting. The new scanning system - which I love, don't get me wrong - makes it fast and easy to scan mission runners down. Combined with a rapid rise in the ninja play style - thanks to visibility from Suddenly Ninjas - today's mission runners expect to see people popping in on their missions. They know it's not that hard, and they learned that we can and will come back and blow them up if they decide to shoot us. Suddenly Ninjas have said often, and clearly, "If you don't want to get shot, don't shoot ninjas". They listened.
Changes to missions have also made the ninja/bait lifestyle harder. The Level 4 mission loot nerf sharply reduced the value of looting these missions. As a result mission runners aren't as eager to loot their missions; many just speed through them to get more ISK/hour from loyalty point rewards. So why shoot at those stealing it? Even if they do decide to salvage and loot, the Noctis has made it all but impossible for a ninja to out salvage a mission runner. The speedy Vigil can't keep up with 70km tractor beams and salvagers with cycle time bonuses.
Mission runners also used to be congregated in a few places, all well known - Dodixie, Ruvas, Ichiyora to name a few. Changes to missions since then have included missions now being spread to surrounding systems more often and the changing of agents to all of the same quality. Now mission runners don't need to stay in one place for those L4Q20 missions, and those missions are spread all over the surrounding area. With more diffuse targets, it's harder to find targets, and if you travel you have to bring your ship collection with you.
I'm not saying you can't still get a Raven Navy or Rattlesnake kill - people can and do - but it's not the same fun per hour that it was when I started. This is why I'm not doing this right now. Like Paul, I'm pleased to see people carrying on in the emails to us.
The general decline in the communities around this playstyle are a final reason that I am not highly interested in going back. Suddenly Ninjas and TEARS was at a high point around 18 months ago, but has steadily declined. I am sorry to say that the group which I thought had a lot of intelligent, classy people, now seems more like 4chan's /b/ section.
As always, comments welcome.
41 comments
I'm sorry to hear that your entertaining schadenfreude will no longer be available to read, it's always been my guilty blogging pleasure. Can't you find a new way to farm tears? I hear there's plenty of bored Russians in null-sec.
Re: Advanced EMT training, don't do it! Healthcare will eat your soul. Only kidding, I suspect you already know that, good on you.
In fact, now I think about it, this explains a lot about your behaviour. The constant demands of society for you to show infinite compassion and patience can only lead to some kind of backlash. You're a genius, perhaps I should change my playstyle, this might be the coping mechanism I've been looking for...
Paul will likely still get some tears via proxy - and I haven't given up entirely on ninja life; it's just not as fun as it was, and the reasons posted are why I don't do it right now.
If I recall correctly, 18 months ago is also about the time you were getting burnt out in SN. I'm afraid you may be looking at the past through rose-colored lenses, dear Khalia.
The character of the message may be different in some places, but I can assure you that not much has *really* changed in the last year and a half, aside from CCP making the ninja game both harder and shallower.
As long as its still possible though, I'll be championing the cause. If you think the ninja community declined, I think you have as much to do with that as anyone else. It doesn't help that you've spent most of the last year and a half not really contributing to ninja stuff directly in any way.
You might want to take that view into perspective.
<3 Z
The death of the old forums, and the passing on of a lot of the older names had something to do with this as well.
im confused, does that mean that you are old and past it?
:trollface:
I'm with Khalia on this one. I quit for a year and came back to find the new breed of player in SN to be pretty low-calibre (the remaining old guard being very obvious exceptions). After dusting off my ships and alts for a month I found that the whole MR baiting game had gone downhill, and frankly I find the rest of the game too mechanistic and a bit sull without the TEAR factor. It just wasn't the same. Ended-up selling all my stuffs, selling all my toons, and moving on (except it's still fun to check out the blogs).
this hole posting makes sence to me and i sadly agree with khalia on this.
lo sec and 0 sec game play get's borin g after 6 months or so aswell so i
guess going into wh space is the next logical step and is very different from
all the other way's of life in eve, youre also right in saying it's the best way to
get rich fairly quickly and actually not beeing able to see who is in the system
adds a lot of possibillity for interesting things that might happen and at some
point surely will happen, ive been living inside a c4 after doing 0 sec blob fights
for more then a year and got tiered of doing it and had 0 suprises left for me.
it's way more fun to live inside a wh and pop in next door and get some (most of the time)
good pvp and make a epic load of isk any day of the week, so i understand were
youre comming from with this post.
it's a bit of sad news tough to see you guy's without tasty tears from either newb or
veteran player's but that's life i guess.
i just hope i won't see a lot of mistakes coming from you guy's in the future tough.
o/
Onigen, did you even pass 8th grade? My head hurts from trying to read that.
awwww, did i get you to cry???
[...] So that kinda leeds me to why I left. A mixture of boredom, too much to do, poor time managment (ingame), and too much stuff in too many places. As Khalia Nestune wrote here [...]
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm surprised that no one mentioned the highsec orca nerf yet. The ninja dojo was particularly outraged by this
There is that, but we got along without Orcas for a long time.
I just recently embarked on my own mission ninja career (or rather, more of a side job). Fit a few gank tempests out in various systems that seemed to be good mission hubs. Grab a vigil or probe (for the extra cargo space and scan strength) and head out after missioners. Having lived in wormholes for most of my Eve life, scanning comes easily. While getting the first bookmark, warping in, and looting/salvaging, I'm generally able to scan down one or two other targets.
Occasionally I'll run into other ninjas, and very few times will I actually get a bite on my bait. Groups of missioners do tend to shoot at the bait more often, but if there are more than 2 or 3, it can be quite challenging to take them all on. But that's what makes it interesting. The recent removal of session change timers when switching ships in station helps quite a bit for when I do get a hit. After exhausting a system of all its current missioners, I'll fly a few jumps to another system where I'm set up.
I'm sure it's not as good as it used to be in the Good Old Days™ (I wouldn't know). I only get a good fight or kill every couple days. But I do make pretty good isk, especially when I come across the fields of blue wrecks or empire navy wrecks with tags. And when I'm not having good luck with any of that, I can easily incorporate my other favorite side job of exploration. Radar sites = free isk. Scan down a wormhole and shoot some sleepers, bother the local residents, or better yet, drop bookmarks in abandoned cans off the station undock and shoot them up when they pop inside to have a look around.
So while the 'pure' way of the mission ninja may be falling by the wayside, there are plenty of other things to keep busy and variety to spice it up.
Dude, i was right there with you until that last paragraph
Shitting on the corp that gave you your name, about how its all 'gone downhill' is lame and blatantly wrong
All you did in your 'last days' of SN on the forums was try and sell us your investment schemes, and when they werent as profitable as you thought, tried to sell us your wormhole operation as a whole
dont even start with the carrier loss, HAHA
ok, fair enough, somebody straightened me out that you wrent sellign your WH operation, but you were selling a WH of some type...
the point is, as zav has said already. An innactive member of a corp isnt in a great position to critique about it
I'd like to make clear, that i dont want to disrespect you in any way really, its quite possibly this blog that got me into SN in the first place.
I just think your bashing of SN and TEARS is a little unfounded
You might ask yourself why Paul left, and why he hasn't posted on the forums in.... ever. It's not just me.
By the way, I was 'out' of SN/TEARS for a long time prior to actually dropping corp. I've been living in wspace for close to six months. I'd maintained my corp membership only because I'd worked out a plan with Aiden to set up a POS tower for ninjas in our space.
Then I realized no one wanted to come; and I didn't really like anyone who would be coming, anyways.
the funny part was where you thought ninjas would want to come kill sleepers in a WH
Actually, the original plan was to hire the ninjas to help us evict our neighbors. We had a fleet of PvP ships staged and everything. The neighbors ended up packing up without any face-shooting required. I'm surprised you didn't hear about this plan.
[...] « Ninja Salvage and Bait Is Dying [...]
You have made a mistake with this blog and your appearances on podcasts. If your playstyle relies on trapping the unwary, you don't go and publicize your methods lest you create awareness about them. Basically you guys have made it more difficult for yourselves by bragging about your exploits and now you are complaining about it.
I agree with Khalia on this one. I have griped for some time that the "Ninja Dojo" just doesn't have the same feel to it as the old channel did. Personally, I feel its partly that people I learned the ninja lifestyle from like Khalia and Paul have left it, and partly that the game was too easy in regards to ninja salvaging/ganking.
Easy in the fact that one week old players were ninjaing like pros and one month old players were bringing down battleships flown by mission runners. I noticed some SN members have flamed Khalia for how he feels but if they took a look at their ranks now and what they were say a year ago, I would wager that the skill level of their average member has gone way down. I would think part of that is from how easy ninjaing became and how attractive it was to people starting out as opposed to drawing experienced combat pilots into it. It took me a bit to figure out the ninja game but I didn't come into it with zero combat experience like I see most of the players doing it now.
The Orca nerf made my decision to go back to the wormhole lifestyle all that much easier. I live a busy life outside of EVE and personally, spending hours baiting in high sec just isn't appealing to me to gank yet another drake. If you haven't experienced small gang warfare in WH space, then you are missing out. While you do have people that play games on the entrances, most of it tends to be fast and heavy fleet engagements, whether you are the predator or the prey.
Lastly, I don't think this post is a place to bring out grudges against Khalia or Paul. I myself have benefited immensely from the knowledge and help they took the time to give me personally or through a post/how to guide. I know for a fact many others feel gratitude towards all of the Jerks and will continue to read My Loot, Your Tears regardless of whether they are missioning, ganking or killing sleepers.
Glad to see you come around. Good for you.
Ninja'ing is a long dead profession, and no where near as cool as it used to be. The remainder of Suddenly Ninjas are just wannabes and hangers on. Good riddance.
You know, I never thought I'd be saying this, but it still sounds like you're mad. Why don't you put on a robe and wizard hat over it bro?
You used to be a pretty cool dude and didn't afraid of anything, but nowadays it looks like you're just being all bittervet and fishing for self-justification. That didn't used to be like you. Who peed in your cheerios?
And I suppose you'll call me mad or bitter too, Zav? Is everyone who disagrees with you now a 'bittervet'?
I'm still not sure what VP was thinking when he hijacked The Ninja Alliance (other than a fuck-you troll, if so, well done); but I can't disagree here. With a few exceptions the current forums and members are awful.
A bunch of people privately emailed or convo'd me to say 'your post was right on the money, but I don't want people pissed at me, too'.
Meh.
Haha, no. I would generally reserve the term bittervet for those who dont play much, don't have an overriding reason not to play, and come up with :reasons: for doing so.
To be honest, I think you two left the ninja playstyle because:
1. CCP seems to like making it harder
2. You like attention. Thus, the ninjas dont fit you anymore like it did a couple years ago when it was 'new'
3. There is more to Eve than mission runner ganking.
SN & TEARS basically stands for finding ways to package and deliver wonderful little bundles of grief to those whom think they should be safe from it. In that respect, we do quite well these days, I think. CCP has thrown us a real curveball with incursions, so we've branched out some. Sure, its not easy PVP in nullsec or wormholes, but we still go after those tears, and we're still pretty good at it.
I could be running SN like a 'cool kids' club, which I suspect would make you all happier, but I'd prefer to keep ninjaing accessible to any newbie who looks around. That has always been the real charm of SN to me -- showing people how you can play with the sandbox in alternate fashions.
Khalia, you've obviously grown into different preferences than the usual ganking, thats great for you, but when you write a long-winded rant on how ninja bait and salvage is dying, I think it just deserves a pointing out that your perspective is possibly ill informed. I've always known you to make your points and let them stand. No bittervet there.
Veeps, TBH I wouldn't be surprised if you have a google alert for +EVE +ninja, or something like that. What it looks like to me is that you had had some idea of the ninjas going down a certain path when you left them, and you chose to throw a temper tantrum when they went another way. The way you show up in here and on forums whenever someone mentions something ninja just makes you look obsessed.
Now granted, I'm no PR whiz like you guys. I just like to teach new ninjas how the game and mechanics work and help them catch up with everyone that's thinks grinding and age make them invincible. Making some l33t class corp is missing the point that was behind SN when I joined, I think.
Is there something I'm missing there?
Zav, I have to refute your post because a bunch of it just isn't true:
> CCP seems to like making it harder
Regardless as if it's deliberate or not (I figure not), it has gotten harder. Or more correctly, less fun per hour. And beyond some point I lose interest in spending three days just to get someone to shoot at me.
> You like attention. Thus, the ninjas dont fit you anymore like it did a couple years ago when it was ‘new’.
This is so hilariously off base I'm not sure how to respond. Paul started MLYT to share stories of people dying in funny ways and raging; because he thought other people would find them funny. He asked me to contribute because we work together well and I have half-decent writing skills. I think. =) Bringing attention to ourselves is so far from why we do this that I... don't even... what? People occasionally evemail us to say "thanks I like your blog" and we're both like WOW PEOPLE READ US?
> There is more to Eve than mission runner ganking.
Well, yeah, that was one reason I branched out into WH space; but the decline of ninja playstyle pushed me that way.
> I could be running SN like a ‘cool kids’ club
I would be happy with a "people with a clue" and "people who act with age over 12", honestly. Go read the responses of Wee Girl and Clantyn; it ain't just me.
> but when you write a long-winded rant on how ninja bait and salvage is dying, I think it just deserves a pointing out that your perspective is possibly ill informed.
I'm ill informed? Paul and I ran weekly ninja ops for months, I write guides on finding mission runners and how to scan for them, and rack up hundreds of kills, and I'm ill informed? What world are you living on?
we need to go deeper
Not mad, Zav. Just enlightened.
I'm still a "pretty cool dude", and "not afraid of anything", but I guess it all depends upon your point of view now, doesn't it? I imagine from the point of view of a person stuck within the ninja salvaging machine (if you can still call it that), it must look like I am quite the anomoly. I mean after all, why would the former (and dare I say the greatest) CEO of Suddenly Ninjas turn his back on his former mates and the organization that he helped to build?
When you figure that out Zav, you'll be ready. Until then, enjoy trying to conjour up new and exciting ways to grief people, while desperately trying to get someone to shoot at you in the retard repository known as Suddenly Ninjas.
when did VELOCITY PRIME turn into PRIME RETARD?
dude, you USED to be "a pretty cool dude", but you let your ego get the better or yourself, and now you just sound stupid in your blatant attempts to still be important.
What does falling from grace feel like, because it looks messy.
I bet leaving the 'griefing game' to start a carebear booster pill industry corp was a good idea rite?
I’m out of the game right now so here goes.
Aiden and Zav are trying to keep to the original charter of SN/TEARS: to collect tears. Plain and simple. Noob friendly. Pilots come and go and its welcomed.
Paul and Khalia have moved on to greater e-fame through JERKS. and other means. I applaud them. This blog supports SN/TEARS.
I don’t feel Khalia’s comments were a knock against SN, but against the game mechanics that CCP is constantly nerfing and is in direct conflict to TEARS interests. So he has moved on.
VP- STFU. You left SN and did nothing. Let me repeat that, nothing.
Original Sin didn’t want you. Misfits? Who? Ninja please!! You aspired to nothing!
Don’t leave Greater Goon, no one wants you. They need a village idiot.
Even more pathetic is that you blog on other people’s blogs and not your own. Where your blog?
I think I figured it out VP. You are jealous of Paul, Khalia and maybe Kahega. You rode their e-fame coat-tails. You needed SN more than SN needed you.
Your right on one thing, Good riddance
I can feel your love radiating over the vast expanse of the internet.
Who are you? You mad?
Mad? Typical response from a lounge act.
Did I hit a nerve? What? No response to my commentary on your EVE life?
I claim to be no one. Unlike you, who makes grandiose claims. You left no mark on TEARS let alone EVE. Your a legend in your own mind.
C'mon, tell us some of your greatest exploits in New Eden? The readers are eagerly awaiting.
BTW, how is the "New Eden Underworld" channel going? "Misfit Cafe"?
Two more failures. LOL. You must be going for the record.
Fill me in on the grandiose claims, if you will.
VP
I see there is no real or direct response to my commentary on your EVE career.
Classic deflection by asking questions.
OK. Here's one: 'Greatest CEO of SN" - Sept 24, 2011
So, now man up and answer my questions. Don't quit now.
I don't see a problem with that statement. 100% true.
Of course you're free to disagree with me, but you'd be wrong.
Interesting. Still no response to my description of your EVE career.
Then we have no choice but to conclude that you have amounted to nothing. Your best days are behind you.
What about my EVE career bothers you? I mean seriously dude. I'm 100% satisfied with my experience. What are you not happy with? Why are you concerned about how I choose to play the game? Did I make you sad?
Seriously man, you're starting to sound like a psycho stalker. In fact, I might have to get off my ass and post this whole conversation on my blog so others can see your failed attempts at a troll.
No one forced you to read this or reply.
I am not concerned about your play style. You shouldn't concerned about another alliance's play style. Be concerned with your own alliance.
Lets not forget that you took a quite few shots. I shot back. It goes both ways. Now your butthurt.
You've been exposed. My last post to you.
Out.
lol no my friend, I am not the one who is butthurt here. Not by a long shot. Do you even read what you type?
I think Galmarr needs a hurt feelings chit.