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How killboard efficiency encourages blobbing
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Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#21 - 2012-01-30 20:12:35 UTC
Indeterminacy wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
EDK, the most popular corp killboard (and the one being used on eve-kill.net) has this one feature called efficiency. It is a basic calculation of [kill_values / (kill_values+loss_values)], and gives a way of comparing every person, corporation, and alliance in PvP matters. This engenders competition, and everything that comes with it, good (competition itself, combat motivation, etc) and bad (elitism, "pro" PvPers, etc).

But what does it have to do with blobbing? A "blob" is a gang of PvPers who aim to achieve victory by relying on outnumbering their enemies, rather than relying on superior tactics, piloting skill, etc. However, while superior numbers is a good way to win fights in Eve, it provides extra benefits on the killboard in the event of a lost fight.

Suppose 10 Drakes attack 4 Typhoons. The Typhoons ultimately kill 3 of the Drakes (say, 150 mil ISK, 50 mil each), but lose one Typhoon (say, 110 mil ISK). What does it look like on the respective personal killboards?


  • Flew a Typhoon, did not die: +150 mil ISK for 2 pilots. Efficiency increase.
  • Flew a Drake, did not die: +110 mil ISK for 7 pilots. Efficiency increase.
  • Flew a Typhoon, died: +40 mil ISK for 1 pilot. Efficiency increase.
  • Flew a Drake, died: +60 mil ISK for 3 pilots. Efficiency increase.


I have highlighted the issue. The dead Typhoon, although he was more successful ISK-wise in the engagement, gains less in KB efficiency out of this than the dead Drakes. The multiple dead Drakes all gain in efficiency by the fact that their own ship loss is being compared to the one ship they killed collectively. From a brief glance at one of the Drakes' killboards and their efficiency, you might think that they sacrificed a Drake for a Typhoon kill -- which is wrong and gives the wrong impression.

I did not pick Drakes at random. The "Drake blob" is (in)famous for this sort of thing, for the very reason of the Drake being cheap enough that even if you do lose it (unlikely as it might be due to its massive tank) you will still usually come out in the positive.

Edit: Suppose another scenario: two Drakes fighting a solo Typhoon. One Drake dies, and the Typhoon dies. The killboards look as such:


  • Flew a Drake, did not die: +110 mil ISK for 1pilot. Efficiency increase.
  • Flew a Typhoon, died: -60 mil ISK for 1 pilot. Efficiency decrease.
  • Flew a Drake, died: +60 mil ISK for 1 pilot. Efficiency increase.


This is a reasonable small gang fight, and the Drake pilots are being duly rewarded. However, compare the highlighted numbers you see above to the numbers in the "blob" scenario I showed earlier. The net win is the same, while the chance of being killed in a blob is much smaller. From a KB perspective, what reason is there to not be in a blob?
(end edit)

The use of "efficiency" as a competitive metric for PvPers is thus unfairly penalizing those who prefer to fly solo, or in smaller-than-usual gangs. As throwing around numbers in Eve is never going to stop, and is going to continue to be what drives competitive PvP, is there a way to fix the efficiency metric to not disproportionately reward blobbing? And, if not, is there a better metric we could be using for measuring our ePeens?

Before anyone suggests it: KB "points" are not valid, as killing a Rifter with a Taranis gives the same amount of points as killing a Dramiel with a Taranis.


So, if we remove the efficiency stat goons will stop bringing 1k duders to save/take a moon (of which they have scores just like it)?

Goons do not care about killboard stats, at all. We care about having our reimbursable ships (which comes from having sovereignty claims and tech moons), and we care about having stuff to do to keep people logging in and joining fleets (thus why we are always either at war or doing some other thing).

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Petrus Blackshell
Rifterlings
#22 - 2012-01-30 20:12:44 UTC
Lyris Nairn wrote:
~Measuring "competitive PvP" is hard, and KB efficiency is BS~

I agree, but either more people in Eve need to think like this, or there needs to be some manner of zero-sum mechanic for calculating "success".

Accidentally The Whole Frigate - For-newbies blog (currently on pause)
Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#23 - 2012-01-30 20:15:55 UTC
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyron-Baktos wrote:
I wonder if something like this would work:

If 20 people shoot and hit a ship that is killed, the only ISK efficiency they get would be a % of the damage they did. For example, if a 1M ship is blown up and 1 attacker only did 10% damage, then he would only have access to 100K efficiency isk, not the full 100%


If the damage on killmails actually worked, that would be one solution. However, killmail damage is often inaccurate/bugged. Also, a change like this would unfairly penalize tacklers/ewar support.

There is no penalty to any change that happens with regards to killboards, because killboards are purely an out of game thing that arose from outside culture. Fleet engagements will still require tacklers, and if people want to win engagements at all (and thus have their circle jerk efficiency ratings) then people will still have to bring tacklers. Alternately some of the smaller or solo outfits could merge into larger groups and blap their enemies with Alpha Fleet Maelstroms.

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#24 - 2012-01-30 20:16:38 UTC
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
~Measuring "competitive PvP" is hard, and KB efficiency is BS~

I agree, but either more people in Eve need to think like this, or there needs to be some manner of zero-sum mechanic for calculating "success".

What is the benefit of changing the way people think about it?

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Zimmy Zeta
Perkone
Caldari State
#25 - 2012-01-30 20:26:22 UTC
Lyris Nairn wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
~Measuring "competitive PvP" is hard, and KB efficiency is BS~

I agree, but either more people in Eve need to think like this, or there needs to be some manner of zero-sum mechanic for calculating "success".

What is the benefit of changing the way people think about it?


No more overzealous paranoid CEOs that bar fighting unless you ridiculously outnumber your enemies because a good killboard is more important than a fun and challenging fight?

I'd like to apologize for the poor quality of the post above and sincerely hope you didn't waste your time reading it. Yes, I do feel bad about it.
Petrus Blackshell
Rifterlings
#26 - 2012-01-30 20:29:37 UTC
Lyris Nairn wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:

If the damage on killmails actually worked, that would be one solution. However, killmail damage is often inaccurate/bugged. Also, a change like this would unfairly penalize tacklers/ewar support.

There is no penalty to any change that happens with regards to killboards, because killboards are purely an out of game thing that arose from outside culture. Fleet engagements will still require tacklers, and if people want to win engagements at all (and thus have their circle jerk efficiency ratings) then people will still have to bring tacklers.

Meh, I've been told to my face before that being frigate-specialized is useless because scouts and tacklers are useless in 0.0 CTAs. That's when I stopped caring about CTAs.

Lyris Nairn wrote:

Alternately some of the smaller or solo outfits could merge into larger groups and blap their enemies with Alpha Fleet Maelstroms.

Nopenopenope. P

Accidentally The Whole Frigate - For-newbies blog (currently on pause)
Petrus Blackshell
Rifterlings
#27 - 2012-01-30 20:31:24 UTC
Zimmy Zeta wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
~Measuring "competitive PvP" is hard, and KB efficiency is BS~

I agree, but either more people in Eve need to think like this, or there needs to be some manner of zero-sum mechanic for calculating "success".

What is the benefit of changing the way people think about it?


No more overzealous paranoid CEOs that bar fighting unless you ridiculously outnumber your enemies because a good killboard is more important than a fun and challenging fight?


Also more willing-to-engage FCs, fewer dumb corp admission requirements ("you must have X SP and Y efficiency on eve-kill"), and hopefully less blobbing.

Accidentally The Whole Frigate - For-newbies blog (currently on pause)
Kessiaan
Sebiestor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#28 - 2012-01-30 20:31:41 UTC  |  Edited by: Kessiaan
Battleclinic is also very popular, and biased 180 degrees the other way. Points are divided up amongst the ships on the KM, so a blob kill is worth almost nothing compared to a solo kill, especially if both ships were of the same general class.

People like to win, KBs are secondary to that. People blob because it works, and unless CCP changes the pvp mechanics dramatically no amount of KB tweaking will ever change that.

KB Link
Petrus Blackshell
Rifterlings
#29 - 2012-01-30 20:38:20 UTC
Kessiaan wrote:
Battleclinic is also very popular, and biased 180 degrees the other way. Points are divided up amongst the ships on the KM, so a blob kill is worth almost nothing compared to a solo kill, especially if both ships were of the same general class.

People like to win, KBs are secondary to that. People blob because it works, and unless CCP changes the pvp mechanics dramatically no amount of KB tweaking will ever change that.

Battleclinic is closer to getting it right, but their interface is godawful. Not only is it extremely loaded with ads and unnecessary crap, but it's hard to browse old kills, or browse by ship class, see engagements, etc. Also, I don't know if their point system differentiates between Rifters and Dramiels.

Accidentally The Whole Frigate - For-newbies blog (currently on pause)
Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#30 - 2012-01-30 20:44:46 UTC
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:

If the damage on killmails actually worked, that would be one solution. However, killmail damage is often inaccurate/bugged. Also, a change like this would unfairly penalize tacklers/ewar support.

There is no penalty to any change that happens with regards to killboards, because killboards are purely an out of game thing that arose from outside culture. Fleet engagements will still require tacklers, and if people want to win engagements at all (and thus have their circle jerk efficiency ratings) then people will still have to bring tacklers.

Meh, I've been told to my face before that being frigate-specialized is useless because scouts and tacklers are useless in 0.0 CTAs. That's when I stopped caring about CTAs.

While realizing that what I am about to say is going to sound very arrogant and smug, I would like to assure you that I do not mean it to sound that way and that it is my honest feelings and understanding of the matter. If you were in an alliance where you were told to your face that flying frigates made you useless, then you were in what I and my compatriots would consider to be a really terrible and unfun alliance. Speaking solely from my own experience, I have 67 million skill points and the ability to fly all racial subcapital ships to various degrees of proficiency; but, for the past several months, I have flown nothing but Rifters in fleet engagements and frequently lead Rifter-only or Frigate-only roams that get 20-80 people attending. We have literally booed people off of our voice comms, including our allied fleet commanders, and negrepped the hell out of their posts on our forums, for statements which disparage Rifters, newbies in general, and other cheap stuff. Our culture recognizes that it is better, both in terms of what's less morally offensive and what's more advantageous to our fleet participation and force projection ability, to have a guy in fleet flying a Rifter and having fun than it is to make him fly a battleship, and then him unsubscribe from the game.


Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:

Alternately some of the smaller or solo outfits could merge into larger groups and blap their enemies with Alpha Fleet Maelstroms.

Nopenopenope. P

That you refuse to do it does not remove the existence of that option. Fifty dudes worth of alpha strike is a good solution to many problems in EVE Online.

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Rath Kelbore
Caldari Provisions
Caldari State
#31 - 2012-01-30 20:46:03 UTC
Kill mails are what they are and people/space nerds are what they are. For whatever reason people like to win even if that means winning a fight with 100 battleships versus one noob ship(ridiculous example of course). I'm "guilty" of blobbing, ganking, tactical movement(running away), ect. However, I'm down to go into a fight that I pretty much know I'm going to lose because sometimes fighting in eve is fun. Most eve players are not this way.

More to the point, would people be less risk adverse if there weren't killmails keeping track of their record ect? Doubtful, because it still takes time/isk/rl money for some people to buy their ships ect and they don't want to lose them, or they'd be keeping a tally of their efficiency on their own anyways. People must have something to epeen about.

All in all, I agree with you on many points but nothing is going to change in that regard, so whatever.

I plan on living forever.......so far, so good.
Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#32 - 2012-01-30 20:48:32 UTC
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Zimmy Zeta wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
~Measuring "competitive PvP" is hard, and KB efficiency is BS~

I agree, but either more people in Eve need to think like this, or there needs to be some manner of zero-sum mechanic for calculating "success".

What is the benefit of changing the way people think about it?


No more overzealous paranoid CEOs that bar fighting unless you ridiculously outnumber your enemies because a good killboard is more important than a fun and challenging fight?


Also more willing-to-engage FCs, fewer dumb corp admission requirements ("you must have X SP and Y efficiency on eve-kill"), and hopefully less blobbing.

I like to "blob" with Rifter fleets and suicide them into smartbombing PL Typhoons, nbd. The most hilarious part of this is that the four Typhoons into which I suicided 50 Rifters, in the engagement I am referencing, all died under the combined weight of too many people dog piling onto them. There is very little in this game more satisfying, for me, than to throw horribly fit ships that are worth next to nothing and which are literally free to the people flying them at "Elite PVP" ships or ships designed to farm those cheap ships we're using. Even if we lose the engagement, we've had fun and we all feel rather smug that the amount of money it took the bad guys to kill us was less than the amount of money the Alliance lost to give us the free Rifters.

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#33 - 2012-01-30 20:50:06 UTC
Zimmy Zeta wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
Petrus Blackshell wrote:
Lyris Nairn wrote:
~Measuring "competitive PvP" is hard, and KB efficiency is BS~

I agree, but either more people in Eve need to think like this, or there needs to be some manner of zero-sum mechanic for calculating "success".

What is the benefit of changing the way people think about it?


No more overzealous paranoid CEOs that bar fighting unless you ridiculously outnumber your enemies because a good killboard is more important than a fun and challenging fight?

Sounds to me like your problem is with "paranoid CEOs," not with killboard efficiency; though, please don't mistake this statement as an endorsement of killboard efficiency circle jerking. The only kind of circle jerking for which I am a strong advocate is one that involves negrepping all of my posts on Goonfleet dot com.

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Andski
Science and Trade Institute
Caldari State
#34 - 2012-01-30 20:57:08 UTC
You're only starting to scratch the surface. Nobody blobs to kill some roaming gang unless they already formed up a fleet and were blueballed. The reason alliances throw full fleets of battleships at things is because of the nature of the objectives - control towers, infrastructure hubs, TCUs and stations have millions of hitpoints to chew through, and it's one structure per timer.

Twitter: @EVEAndski

"It's easy to speak for the silent majority. They rarely object to what you put into their mouths."    - Abrazzar
Lyris Nairn
Perkone
Caldari State
#35 - 2012-01-30 20:59:44 UTC
Kessiaan wrote:
People like to win, KBs are secondary to that. People blob because it works, and unless CCP changes the pvp mechanics dramatically no amount of KB tweaking will ever change that.

This is pretty much it right here. As long as my twenty dudes can beat your fifteen dudes, I have motivation to bring all twenty of my dudes to fight your fifteen dudes, or to call in some more dudes if I can. And if I don't call in all twenty of my dudes, what's to keep you from calling in more dudes yourself? I might suddenly find myself going into what I thought was going to be a 15-on-15 "good fight," when in fact you, anticipating that I would bring 20-30, called in help and now you have twenty. Now you're the one fighting my fifteen dudes with your twenty dudes, and winning because you have twenty dudes and I only have fifteen dudes. And not only does having more dudes make you more likely to win, but it's also a matter of convenience. The reason there are 1,000-man blob fleets for strategic ops in null sec is because there are multiple structures, each of them a multi-million hit point wall that have to be torn down, every time you want to do anything with regards to sovereignty, player owned starbases, or outposts, and that takes a lot of time unless you use a ridiculous number of people to do it. Even then, it takes a lot of time.

In short, people blob because blobbing is effective.

Or they drop supercapitals on the blob, and suddenly everyone starts complaining that supercapitals are bad.

Sky Captain of Your Heart

Reddit: lyris_nairn Skype: lyris.nairn Twitter: @lyris_nairn
Dbars Grinding
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
#36 - 2012-01-30 21:04:41 UTC
Killboards and stats are the same as Call of duty , bf3 , SC2 stats. They are all dumb as fk.

I have more space likes than you. 
Lyron-Baktos
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#37 - 2012-01-30 21:28:20 UTC
My suggestion was just the beginning. Tackle/other ewar could use a similar process. For example, if you have 2 tackles and 2 webs, then the available ISK would be split 4 ways, or 25% each. Logi/Scout modding could be done as they are now

Say what you will about KB/stat whores but the truth is they are very popular. I am surprised Eve has such a poor mechanic in place for tracking battles. They basically just provide the kill mail and thats it. Would be nice if they offer some kind of killboard guideline to the public.
Tian Nu
Ministry of War
Amarr Empire
#38 - 2012-01-30 21:39:14 UTC
what is KB ?

Father O'Malley about Darius III begging for whelp: “Hows that working out for ya ? I make it 02:21 and all I see is you begging Riverini to get numbers and trying to recruit from the incursion public channel.”
stoicfaux
#39 - 2012-01-30 22:24:28 UTC
Kill/Death ratios are pretty hard to take seriously unless perma-death is involved. Even then, people seem too fixated on the gunslinger's career kills stat while ignoring the train barons.

Pon Farr Memorial: once every 7 years, all the carebears in high-sec must PvP or they will be temp-banned.
Krios Ahzek
Royal Amarr Institute
Amarr Empire
#40 - 2012-01-30 22:42:18 UTC
Dbars Grinding wrote:
Killboards and stats are the same as Call of duty , bf3 , SC2 stats. They are all dumb as fk.


Actually, in those games k/b stats are the ONLY metagame. Unlike in EVE. Here, k/b stats are meaningless when you control half the conquerable universe, for example. The end justifies the means.

 Though All Men Do Despise Us
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