It’s a dark and stormy night.
Let’s watch YouTube!
One of the most important tasks facing a Saviour or Saviourette of Highsec, is the sacred duty to save Highsec (by defending ganking). Frequently, carebear crusaders portray ganking as unbalanced, overpowered, or as some variant of griefing, bullying, harassment, or unfair plane. Recently, after being bumped, HateleSS has posited himself as a modern day Ripard Teg, railing against the nefarious evils of gankerdom.
“What I want to talk about today is suicide ganking. What they actually look like, and what they actually are.” Even though HateleSS is a miner, he claims special insight into a community of people who do something other than mine all day. How does he have such knowledge? It’s simple, he got bumped, and he even tried to convince me to gank someone that was shooting ‘his’ rats. He ‘knows’ us.
“I’m gonna show off a couple of occurrences where I kinda came out on top.” Yes, ganking is totally unbalanced, but ‘ol HateleSS knows a few tricks that will help YOU, dear reader, to come out ahead of those overpowered griefers.
“I’m not gonna speak about my feelings on, uh… actually I will… but I’m not gonna speak about my feelings on game balance.” UH huh.
“I do believe that ganking should exist in the game, however… I believe firmly that suicide ganking relies very strongly in favour of the ganker…” If you are looking to become a carebear leader yourself, note how Hateless retains his cool status by endorsing the idea of ganking, before arguing that ganking needs one more nerf.
“Right now there is no consequence to suicide ganking…” That’s right. Nevermind the fact that gank ships explode, even if the gank succeeds, and nevermind that gankers are chased by faction police, antigankers, and random passersby. They also have active killrights, and can’t mine in Highsec. There are no consequences!
“I find the best response you can have is to say good fight!” Hateless thinks he is virtue signalling atop a viper’s nest, but if he actually read the CODE. he would realize this was the whole point to begin with. Gankers might laugh at salty miners, they might even enjoy the tears, but all gankers really want is for miners to calm down.
“I know that you are frustrated, angry, upset, irritated, outraged, whatever you want to call it. But as long as you don’t send that through the keyboard…” HateleSS urges miners to channel their rage in another direction, but James 315 knew this would inevitably be directed at children and stray cats. It’s better to rage in-game, just let it out, and the gankers will listen. If you can’t calm down in real-life, it’s unhealthy to stifle it. Trust me, the gankers will always listen. We are here to help!
“…more often than not, they won’t come back. The people that do this, do it purely to get a reaction out of you.” This is just false. We will gank a target day after day, even if they say nothing. Just ask Gruzilka, the Highsec mining bot.
“They’ll initially target you for the profit…” HateleSS envisons gankers who are greedy for quick isk, but settle instead for emotional drama. In fact, gankers just want you dead. They don’t care about the isk, or the emotions. Sure, they are vaguely aware of these things, but fundamentally they just want to enforce the law. You are trespassing, you are illegal, you are a criminal – the gankers are here to put you down.
“They’ll target marauders, just because people are more likely to get upset or angry…” Wrong! We target illegal marauders, because they are marauding our High Security zone. We also shoot Ventures! Who would cry about a Venture?
“If you have an alt next door, you can see them. If you watch local, you can see them pop into local. If you watch D-Scan… if you pay attention to your ship. You can be aware.” This is true, but it runs counter to the argument that ganking is overpowered. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of players are ganked whilst AFK. If you aren’t AFK, it’s pretty goshdarn easy to warp away.
“They can cause you harm, unless you are being protected by others…” HateleSS tells an endearing story about the time his family was stalked by a ganking cougar. He doesn’t seem to recognize the main lesson of this story, which is that miners are perfectly capable of forming self-defense fleets. This does require social skills.
“The ganking game is fought before they ever land on your head.” There is some truth to this, but it doesn’t reflect poorly on gankers. Erwin Rommel, the German Field Marshal, observed that battles are decided before the first shot is fired. This is common sense. It is irrational to take unnecessary risks, and competent individuals ascertain a likely outcome before taking action. Gankers generally succeed because they know when they can succeed, and they logically avoid failure. Furthermore, there actually are things you can do once the gank fleet lands, but I’m not here to provide tips.
*****
HateleSS proceeds to play two short clips in which he manages to avoid being ganked. In the first video, he “moonwalks” away, and in the second he manages to survive an attack. Both of these contradict his thesis that ganking is over-powered. Curiously, he ignores consequences to the gankers, who lost ships, time, and isk.
“I lost a Noctis the other day… I wasn’t paying attention.” There’s the issue. If you aren’t paying attention, you are far more likely to get ganked.
*****
Ultimately, HateleSS appears to have talked himself out of his own argument, at least for now. The video started off with an edgy vibe, revealing the gritty truth about space griefers and the unbalanced nature of ganking. However, the longer HateleSS talked, the more he thought about all the times he wasn’t ganked. He remembered how his family evaded a cougar. He recalled how gankers landed on his head, and he escaped… again and again. He looked at his cat, and shook his finger, “You naughty griefer!”
Ultimately, despite his claims, HateleSS offered no evidence that gankers are evil bullies, nor did he demonstrate that ganking is over-powered.
***AIKO THOUGHTS***
HateleSS, if you are so interested in ganking, why don’t you try it?
