Yesterday, Saturday 3rd January 2015 saw an in-game player organised event take place in the system of Ishomilken. As ever with player events Ganked attended.
The event itself was titled “Titan Smash” and was hosted by Nashh Kadavr with the backing of the folks at iwantisk.com. The event was to publicise the upcoming EVE_NT EVE meet that Nashh also organises. As is obvious from the name, the entire premise was that a titan would be sacrificed somewhere in space with a hefty of prize of 20 billion ISK being awarded to the character with the final blow upon it. Coincidentally this event was to take place on the same day as Ganked 150 and very close to Spectre Fleet’s First Birthday, as a consequence of this fortuitous alignment Douglas Aurelius, Jayne Fillon and myself decided to have our celebrations together and fly something ridiculously special.
Golden Fleet was born.
We asked for our communities to wherever possible bring Navy Apocalypses, Apocalypses, Armageddons and so much more. On the day all three of us were blown away by the response we had received. We ended up with several fleets as Ganked and Spectre’s respective channels hurled x after x at us. Doug took one fleet, I took another, Jayne handled the capitals he had arranged to support us. Other folks started third, fourth and even fifth fleets to come along with us to the event.
The Titan Cometh
Arriving in the event system, we were greeted by the event titan – an Erebus – sitting in a large FW plex (unlike other FW plexes these do not have gates so can be warped into by anything) with a defence fleet consisting of many, many tech 3’s, t2 logistic support a small number of carriers. To our utter surprise (not really) it was our old friends in Snuff along with Shadow Cartel, Dead Terrorists and others. Groups who have in the past proved very tough to fight, but from whom we have never shied when taking that fight.
All our fleets – hostile and friendly – got stuck in to the subsequent engagement and it went back and forth for hours upon hours, with hundreds of ships dying across the grid while the Erebus sat majestically in the centre of it all. NPSI being NPSI we couldn’t quite push them away from the Erebus – despite a tremendous numerical advantage overcome the awesome organisation displayed by the defending force, even though we were inflicting horrendous losses upon them (and any other fleets stupid enough to land around us – say a prayer for CFC Harpies & CO2 Ruptures everyone!) especially their logistics and carrier support.
Now, you may be wondering what I mean when I state we were unable to own the field, this when we had multiple fleets and they had one fleet. Basically, NPSI fleets are often made up of people who do not fly together a lot, who have a vastly different amount of pvp experience and even massive SP differences; and in this case we were engaging a fleet consisting of some of the best that lowsec has to offer, flying a composition they do very well when operating as individual entities, let alone as the voltron they had formed. However, despite this we in the NPSI fleets gave it an amazing try and in my opinion we performed very well considering the patchwork job we had to do for organisation of the multiple fleets. Yes, we yielded the field to the defenders but not without seriously bloodying them.
I have said it repeatedly this weekend, but seeing what the NPSI community pulled together for this event has yet again reaffirmed my faith in our communities and their future in EVE. We have grown so much from small groups of pilots getting together for drunk roams in shit ships.
Drama llama
Now, the titan itself did actually die. Golden Fleet had pulled off – as it turns out a couple of enemy guardians too early! – and the defending fleet turned their guns upon it. Doing so caused tears of rage from so numerous parties, many of whom are part of the NPSI communities of EVE. Claims of “rigged” started to whirl around iwantisk and EVE_NT, especially when the titan died while fitted with civilian modules and the pilot with the final blow was in the defending fleet; Claims that EVE_NT / iwantisk supplied ships to the defenders appeared; Generally a stupid amount of butthurt over people’s apparent lost opportunity to whore a titan/win 20 billion ISK.
With every new claim and accusation I have seen, I have also seen Ganked and Spectre name-checked specifically as being butthurt about how the event ended, which frankly has annoyed me and continues to annoy me. Speaking for myself as the Godfather of Ganked, and for my close friends in Sash/Spectre command, last night was truly spectacular. We took our numerous fleets along to this event fully intending to get you all into a fight, a fucking HUGE one at that and thats what we did. We killed, we got killed, we had fun, we got stressed (sorry Encord!), we came away exhausted but satisfied. Somehow, we all thought you felt the same way too.
Below I address several of the complaints levied at EVE_NT and the defenders by people purporting to represent Ganked and Spectre:
We expected to simply get there, own the titan and leave with our pockets jingling.
Anyone expecting this was – and continues to – deluding themselves. If previous experience has taught us anything is that there is always a defence fleet. Given the chance, I would take you all along as a defence fleet on a similar event (oh wait…)!
Our numbers should have made it easy.
Try herding around 1000 pilots, across several comms setups, and multiple fleets, many of whom do nothing but complain about tidi, or shoot the wrong thing. Yeah….
The defence fleet should have rolled over and let us kill the titan/there should have been no defence fleet.
Originally I “think” Nashh planned to have the titan supported by a few friendly carriers flown by his Bastards, however we threw a spanner in that plan by being the largest groups to confirm attendance shortly after the event was announced. Can you imagine how quickly 1000 pilots would have destroyed the Erebus and its support had he gone ahead with that plan? Then can you imagine trying to find a fight from someone in lowsec for our hundreds of BS and support? As seriously I would have let none of you go home without getting my blood up.
The event was rigged
No one in the defence fleet wanted prizes. They wanted killmails, which they received. They wanted to test themselves against the blob, which they did.
Bloo, Bloo, the titan was civilian fit.
As I understand it the titan was fit out of Nashh or the titan pilots own pocket, so taking the fit off when it was to be killed by its own defence fleet made perfect sense. Especially in an environment where the killmail may not even generate (sounds familiar yes?). Frankly does the isk value of the titan matter when its a god damn titan on your killboard? No. Unless its a Leviathan as those things are like fucking unicorns.
As to whether iwantisk should be accountable for any issues arising from this tiny bit of drama, I really do not care enough to give it thought beyond saying that sort of decision should be between Nashh and themselves. As far as I am concerned, iwantisk provided something fun for an event run by Nashh in whatever way he wanted. Reading his own coverage of the thing, he basically got what he wanted, which nicely dovetailed with my own ambitions for last night too.
As for iwantisk, you guys have heard the saying “Any publicity is GOOD publicity” right?
Everything ends sometime
The tl;dr here is that the vast majority of the attendees in the NPSI community were there to celebrate G150 and Spectre’s birthday. A titan killmail and/or some isk would have been icing on top of icing on top of icing on an already awesome cake. That some people are complaining simply shows they were not there for the fight, they were there to get them dollar bills, which is entirely the wrong focus to have in such events.
Thats enough of that though, let me leave you with more awesome screens from last night and a great video too:
21 Responses to “Of Titans and Golden Fleet”
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Well said Mango.
Super sad I had to leave before the titan died. That said it was an amazing time, Spectre and RvB Ganked did some seriously tough work in coordinating everything. In the end, there was an amazing fight despite the tidi (CCP thank you for not letting the node crash), tons of killmails, and a fun time all around.
Thanks to all the FC and coordinaters involved, I can’t wait til the next event or even the next NPSI fleet I go on.
o7
You cannot lure players in with “kill a titan, make 40bil isk” and then give them nothing but a “good fight” and think no one is going to complain. This is not good publicity for IWANTISK, in that the event broke trust. The whole event stinks of being rigged – Not something you want to be associated with, especially a gambling site.
It only takes one squealing idiot to run to the press, and 1 journalist without the professional integrity to fact check a story & first get the opposing sides commentary; To create a shit-storm in a tea-cup.
The pope himself could have run an event to feed the poor and there would be crowds of people finding problem with it.
also fake edit: There was no 40bil prize. It was 20; If you didn’t even know that; don’t fuel the idiocracy with misinformed commentary.
there were 2 prizes of 20 billion. That was the lure – 40 billion if you were in specter. The point is, and it is lost on you, that you cannot lure people to something, and then take it for yourself, without causing a firestorm.
EN24 article got (at this time), nearly 400 comments, and the sponsor will not use that Host again. That is not 1 squealing idiot.
Well its a good job no one did that then isn’t it. Nashh didnt get it, none of the defending fleet got it, in fact we (I’m a member of Shadow Cartel just to be clear) specifically said we didn’t want it. As far as I’m aware the prize, singular because there was only one, is going to some random I’ve never heard of from a corp I’ve never heard of who got it by virtue of being in a drake and thus being too unimportant to kill before we declared ceasefire.
As for that EN24 article its a masterpiece of non-existant fact checking, inflammatory wording and pure page view grabbing shit stirring that bears about as much relation to reality as a chocolate firegaurd. It honestly pisses me off that a good friend of ours is getting fucked over because some EN24 goob cant be arsed to check his shit properly.
Eve24 is like the Fox News of eve.
Fox News is trash news and wouldn’t want to be associated with anything that resembles it.
Everythings cool between the sponsor and the host now.
after the dust settled they realised the storm was due to shoddy one sided reporting and not the fault of Nash.
If I had my alex jones issue tinfoil hat on I’d say this drama was coming straight out of the wantisk camp. I heard literally no complaint on the fleet apart from fatigue after many hours. Them suddenly news sites have these articles up today straining out the publicity, hmmm.
Its 20B for final blow. Getting final blow on a Titan? I think you have better odds at the lottery. If people can’t be bothered reading, its there problem. Seriously HTFU or even better go play Star Citizen.
Thanks for the level headed article Mangala.
Been a part of the npsi community for 1½ years, and I must say I had a blast.
This has to be the greatest accomplishment npsi has ever done by itself, the fact that people can form up their own fleets aside from the major ones, just to join up, and still be a part of the whole thing is still a mystery to me, of how that was even possible.
I had so much fun, and dropping a bowhead as Vhuby Tenku’s 25th loss made the day even better for me.
What makes me sad is to see how people complain because “we” did not get the final blow on the titan. I came for a fight, like many others did, and that hope almost seemed impossible now that we had way over 600 people in doctrine ships (a wild guess), I feared that probably nobody was able to actually fight us, and it would end up in us shooting a titan and go home, or a fight between our fleets with one fleet being superior.
We however got a fight, an amazing fight, and the guys we fought did a damn good job, fighting the odds, and showing up against our huge numbers, I would bow in the honor of those bros.
I also have to say this, it seems as people always rage in these big public events, because someone is able to shoot back, and the only event “those people” has not raged upon was the wyvern in highsec.. C’mon people we can do better than that, and expect glorious fights, where we don’t always win? and not highsec carebear fights, with concord behind our back.
So thanks for an amazing evening, with lots of fun, and we all love you Encord o7
Unfortunately I DCed just after the bowhead and with full fleets, and only a shiny (very shiny) loki rather than N.Apoc I logged off.
I have been part of NPSI for most of my PvP life. Mostly it is great. But recently i have noticed a lot of bloody ungrateful bastards in fleets. Even for this event the tears over having to switch to mumble, when they know full well others can’t get into coms because TS limitations. Or fleets being full. What the hell is a FC suppose to do about limits EVE has on fleets since forever?
Even worse is when they complain about not getting the perfect fight. Honestly i think previously we have done too good a job. As a result people have very unrealistic expectations when fleeting with us. Also many of these people have never really organized anything and don’t realize how much work something like this is.
However NPSI is still my fleet version of PvP i like the most. (small gang pvp is the best however)
But lets not forget the Drunk roams in Shit ships. It is fun dammit. And well solo drunk roams is just not as much fun.
Very good post. I totally agree. As someone who couldn’t get into the NPSI fleets, I shrugged, made a mental note to get there earlier next time, and got on with life. But there have been a whole bunch of idiots of varying degrees posting nonsense that I (considering myself a member of NPSI community on various characters) feel frankly embarassed about.
This is Eve – not all of the events go according to plan (far from it) because of the way the players interact with the game, and the way that everything is so unpredictable (except doctrines haha). You can’t expect any plan to survive first contact with the enemy, doubly so in Eve.
Even though I didn’t make it, thank you to Nash for organising the whole thing, thank you to Mangala and Spectre fleet and all those behind the scenes for organising the fleets and getting the fights to happen, and thank you for everything you NPSI leaders continue to do for those of us who want (generally) no-strings attached content when we get home from a day of taking responsibility for ourselves.
One day I’ll try to step up, but I am not ashamed to admit that I like having this stuff served up on a plate for me. I do, however, appreciate the effort that goes into it. Because Spectre and Ganked in particular does such an awesome job (hey, we’ve had more than our fair share of “Holy shit, how the hell did we hold the field there!?!” moments over the last year or so) I’m genuinely a happy bunny whenever I get to go on these fleets.
Thanks for the content – and here’s to many more.
Oh and yes, another vote that we don’t forget the drunk roams in shit ships. It’s our history and whilst we have been proving ourselves adept in other doctrines, we should still occasionally pay homage to Dong fleets and so on IMO :)
Thanks for writing this up. I saw the Drama “news” on en24 and was confused by how they were representing it. The hosts of the event gave us a good fight. I didn’t see people in our Ganked fleet bitching about it during the event. All the people on both sides deserve a ton of credit for the effort and isk that was put in to organizing so many people/ships.
I can see where expectations regarding the Titan got a little messed up, but I honestly wasn’t even thinking about it during or after. Previous “come kill a big ship” events have had similar issues. I recall that Marlona Sky 1000 rifters super carrier event (which was also fun/amazing) had a weird ending (it self-destructed after someone’s [PL?] repping prevented it from dying as expected). To be honest, the whole idea of putting prizes on the kill of a big ship is fairly dubious, given the history. What actually happens is more complicated than what people expect. Most of us tend to just see these events as big battles with lots of TiDi and maybe you get on the big kill, maybe not.
From my perspective, flying a logi, we definitely struggled to save stuff (incoming dps was high and often we could no lock and get a rep cycle in before they popped). We did have some great saves, but I think more “too late”‘s especially as we got closer to the end. Even so, I managed to whore on 5 Archon kills and the Erebus with a handful of light drones I had in my Guardian. I have to assume the main dps ships killed a lot more than that (lots of T3s and Guardians). Anyway, it’s too bad people are unhappy. I guess more effort could be put on setting expectations in the future.
Expectations. What can we expect? What may we expect?
I (L) RvB ganked. It always delivers much fun on my saturday nights, on which I now gladly stay home as a fresh dad. Although I was very dissappointend this time…
When Mangala first popped the magic words “Golden Fleet” i was hyped to be part of it. Waiting for the day ***dramatic music*** this Ganked mail would land on my door mat. When it did, I ofcourse had to spend a shit ton of ISK and to much time prepping it… As waaaaaay to many pilots did.
Just to find out (myself) that the fleet already closed 45 minutes early and I was screwed!
It pissed me off no one of the RvB officials took the time to communicate this (or even update the MOTD). So an X fest begun in the RvB channel and we all got ignored in our shiny ships.
Don’t get me wrong. I do understand it was a shit storm attraction and probably no one had forseen this big ass hype. But a lesson can be learned for a !(@$&@#(& free community.
And that is that some expectation management could help build a better community. Because we all have those, as we all feel to be a part of this. It makes this community so much fun.
excuses for dcamming/rigging
Le drama!
Back in the days of early ganked we went looking for hours and I really mean 6-10 hours waiting for people to form up, or blob us or basically DIAF (all of us!) out numbered, outgunned and with a terible FC (Some Mangalala bloke) but the thought of getting capital kills was stupid and unrealistic.
The actual sight of a capital (usually tackled by the best ceptor pilot in the game Green Gambit 14 systems away) was enough to make the newer guys get a stirring in their pants.
Then we got better (not me or Mang but everyone else did), people like Daneel and a host of others taking the time to work on fittings and explain piloting skills to people and then, one dark Winters night …. suddenly CVA dreadnaughts and capital kills. A night I’ll always remember as a turning point.
On this event just as any other, every pilot had the chance to come in what they could afford and the turnout was awesome. 2 years ago the thought of a 6 month old or younger pilot being able to even see let alone be involved in a fleet attacking a Titan was ridiculous.
I thought the turnout was awesome, I think the ungrateful few are a tiny minority who probably would have called fixed even if there hadn’t been a defence fleet and we had “held the field” and killed the Titan simply because that’s just how people are.
Ganked is Ganked. It is and always has been a stress busting, rip-roaring ball of fun where anyone bringing a ship and expecting to take it home shouldn’t have logged in. I had a Vindy and an Archon on different characters and perfectly prepared to lose both but chose to go with the archon because flying a logi and a dps ship can end up with some hilarious but disastrous results.
Well done to all 3 of you guys for doing the best effort of herding cats I have ever seen and it was a blast.
To the whiners ……. there’s always mining belts on a Saturday night.
I have been away from EVE a long time (RL reasons) But even when I have the time I just come here to read the GANKED news… I IS A LOT OF FUN. I went all the runs I could with the goal of having FUN and enjoy cool times provided by Managala Efforts. Not to win something, other then friendship and good time. So stop winning, and start tanking for having people that cares, and organize events such as this. Some events are better ther other.. that’s life. Take Care, Fly Safe…. Sorry for my poor english!