EVE General Discussion

Well, for starters, make a decent cup of coffee for them. Nothing beats a home made brew from freshly ground Arabica with some Mocca beans tossed in, steaming hot in a large mug. Black of course.

That said, I have removed a rule breaking post and those quoting it.

The Rules:
4. Personal attacks are prohibited.

Commonly known as flaming, personal attacks are posts that are designed to personally berate or insult another forum user. Posts of this nature are not beneficial to the community spirit that CCP promote and as such they will not be tolerated.

5. Trolling is prohibited.

Trolling is a defined as a post that is deliberately designed for the purpose of angering and insulting other players in an attempt to incite retaliation or an emotional response. Posts of this nature are disruptive, often abusive and do not contribute to the sense of community that CCP promote.

Thread re-opened.

If you read the Art of War, Sun Tzu's thoughts on loyalty are quite clear:



In brief, 'do unto others' is a major factor of effective leadership: if you're an egomaniac, your employees will resent you. If you're an autocrat, they'll stop listening to you. If you apply discipline unevenly, they'll bicker amongst themselves (the so-called 'Dungeon Master's Girlfriend' scenario).

Basically, if you expect people to follow you, the first question you need to ask is 'why should they follow me?'. If the only answers you can come up with are self-serving or ego-stroking, you need to reexamine your suitability for leadership.

In my experience, you create loyalty by making friends. I've been flying with the same group of guys +a few additions for over a year, through 2 corps (long story.) We talk outside of game, lots of us are FB friends, several of us text each other all the time... you know, just like your AFK friends. These guys have helped me through the death of a loved one, and a relapse into pretty severe alcoholism. Like I said, just like "meatspace" friends, and lets face it, some of us (myself included) spend more time hanging out with the friends Ive made in Eve than I do with my "real" friends.

The flipside to this is that not everyone you meet is gonna "mesh" with you in a way that leads you to becoming good friends. A few months back I went on a recruiting spree. I recruited something like 25 people, give or take. Three or four of them are still with us, not because of how well they play the game, but because they fell in naturally with the rest of us. As a wise vet once said to me, "I'll take 1 good corpmate over 50 mediocre ones." By good I dont mean good at the game, that can be learned, I mean someone who's personality meshes with the rest of us.

I guess this isnt what some people want, and I understand that, too, but I will always be loyal to my friends here, just as I still keep in touch with my friends from that stinkin' Kung Fu Panda game.

It's a good thing, then, that the OP wasn't comparing this or threatening to QQ to another game in any way. Reading is hard, isn't it? Anyway, all she's saying is, "I've done this elsewhere so I thought I'd try it here." Naturally, what works elsewhere probably won't work for EVE just by virtue of it working elsewhere. Likewise, what works for EVE won't just work elsewhere for the same reasons.

Here, however, it appears to work, and demonstrably so. What she's done is create positive discussion about how to build a group of people in this game. She hasn't complained about mechanics, she hasn't called for a nerf this, or buff that. She's actually managed to post something that has the potential to generate healthy discussion, and personally... I don't see her suggesting that we should pay people to join, it looks like you came up with that on your own. I will note one thing the OP said:



It seems to me she has learned whatever lesson she thought she had to about posting because, this is the first actual content discussion this forum has seen in a long time. Unfortunately, it is nature of a small minority to be perpetually pissy.

I have to confess, I did leave some hooks in the initial post to chide the Goons on one of their recruiting requirements (being a poster on SA forums), which is why I played up the silly Tim Hortons angle, but also left enough on the table to see if a reasonable discussion would break out.

I am actually surprised that the community took up the latter and made a good discussion of it, and many people made some very valid points that I agree with.

As an aside, I do find the EVE community to be very cerebral and fiercely loyal and elitist over other gaming communities (the latter, I would say rightly so). You're all going to make it very hard for me to be an evil forum person because I really like the forum personalities here.

I hope can find some objectionable players that I can subtlely torment.

The last time someone did that to my internet guild I was in it came down into everyone calling out the leader and the drama was so bad. Then again our guild leader would micromanage us so much that we even have to follow how we actually play our characters to the word.

I think trust and mutual survival would be the best motivators for corp mates.


I will freely admit I am confused (a failure at) both of these concepts in EVE.

My own personal opinion...

Make sure everyone feels equal in the sense that you are willing to listen to them when they whine even if they are brand new or they only log in once a month.
Of course you dont have to make changes or similar, no matter how convinced said person is that "i did this when i was a CEO in x y and c so i know better then you", but often people just need to get stuff off their chest, and feel that their suggestions are at least listened too.

But this also goes for other things then random corp members whining about stuff. Talk to them, get to know them, make them feel like they are more then just another number. Pay attention when they talk about their kids, dogs, fetishes, favorite book.. whatever. That way they suddenly feel like you actually do care about them as a person, and not just someone who can fly internet spaceships.

Yell at them when they screw up once in a while, but remember that everyone makes mistakes, let some slide unless they are serious enough to cause a larger amount of distress and harm that will reflect on the corp and the other members.

Beyond all else, show patience and try to be fair towards everyone. Its impossible to not pick favorites, and this will be noted, and there will be some that pisses you off to the point that as soon as you hear their voice on TS you want to strangle someone.
Even those people have opinions and feelings, and your own personal opinion of them should not dictate how you treat them.
So again, unless you get constant complains about them from other members, treat them as equals. Give them responsibilities they might be suited for, encourage them to participate in conversations and get to know everyone (including your self).
If your dislike towards the person is so strong that you are no longer capable of making a rational decision that is not influenced by your own personal feelings have someone else in the leadership be that persons "go to person".

Last but not least.

Respect your members.
If you show the members that you respect them, they will respect you and your leadership capabilities. Dont be a pushover, but dont be the kind of person your members are afraid off. You need their honesty, just like they need yours.

I'm just going to spring board on this post and offer another insight.

Vyl was saying not to force corpies to do things they don't want to do. When your corp reaches a large enought size you start to lose track of what people want to get out of the game. This is especially true if corp is very busy, for example, in a war zone and you have your head in a tornado every day.

What we used to do in order to manage this is to take time once in a while to do a *gasp* corp mining op. During that op I would have what I used to call "peace pipe" sessions. Everyone on comms was given time to speak their mind about anything they wanted. No interruptions aside from asking questions and when the person was finished they "passed the peace pipe" to someone else in comms to speak their mind. Rules of the game were *no concequences no matter what was said*

As a leader in corp I didn't often speak on these ops. I just listened, heard what people wanted, what they liked, what they didn't like etc. Some of our planning, including the (difficult) decision to leave Dead Terrorists in order to create new content were direct results of listening to corp mates speak their mind.

I used to say "it's easy to lead people when they tell you where they want to go". This saying became a fixture among corp leaders and when we didn't know "where they wanted to go" anymore, we held a mining op.

T-

Thanks my friend.