So I’ve been playing for a decade now. And for that entire time I’ve always heard grrr goons. But for the life of me I can’t figure out why?
What exactly DO they do that makes them any worse than any other alliance out there?
Sure back in the day they where notorious for miner ganking. But they where hardly the only group (and that mantle has since been taken up by code) but come on people. A decade is more than enough time to adopt some basic precautions. And barges have been massively buffed since then making it even easier to have more tank than a wet paper bag.
Hulkageddon(rip) burn Jita. Those are always a lot of fun, and announced well in advance so you can prepare for them.
Ice interdiction was pretty badass to see in action. And again it was announced in advance, so you could easily prepare for it.
Now I’ve heard that back in the day some members ran recruitment scams. Targeting newbies with those is kinda shitty. But afaik those have also been forbidden for a long time.
So really why the hate? Is it because they didn’t fight fair with Bob? That was a ■■■■■■■ decade ago. Let it die. No one is owed a fair fight, even sun-tzu advocated for retreat unless the odds are in your favor.
In fact, the only thing I can see about goons that I find at all discouraging. Is that they have gone from anti-establishment rabble rousers to being the establishment. Which is dissapointing to see them become exactly like everyone else.
You either die a hero or live long enough to become a villain… Some alliances have surpassed goons at being “baddies” long time ago but still keep the “goons are bad, we are good” narrative for some reason.
CODE. is pretty much dead and irrelevant at the moment.
What irks me the most about CFC is their legacy, their hypocrisy with everything they do and say, and their size. If they want, they can just roflstomp anything they set their sight on and you can’t do anything to prevent it. That goes for other alliance like PanFam. There are simply too many too big groups in the game that stifle good and fun activities – and CFC have always done that since I joined the game and before. And when it comes to hypocrisy, just listen to people in their group complain about how boring the game has become but they stay in the biggest, most content stifling group there is. And yes, it is content stifling if you need 100 supers/faxes/carriers/titans to be able to keep an opponent in check. I can count the number of groups who can do that sustainably on one hand.
Before someone mentions the recent sorry excuse of a war. That’s not in any way relevant to what I just wrote because it was a sad joke. Relevant conflicts that CFC ruined were the several evictions of me living in Delve, Querious or Catch. Every single time they just steamrolled over the smaller groups living there, which was not enjoyable to fight against at all. Granted, the last eviction from Delve didn’t come as a surprise because NCPL really screwed up and DARK back then attacked despite better knowledge (yay for sort’s infinite wisdom), but it felt again just like a tsunami washing over everything.
(someone is probably going to come storming in momentarily and puts a remark in that there is no CFC any more. Wait for it. )
Everyone loves to hate them. They are the go to people to blame if you want to complain something about the game. Like if the plex price is too high blame the goons. If there is too much isk in the game blame the goons. My ship got ganked blame the goons. It is easy to assign blame to them and you can just say grr goon RMT to any issue in game. Some will take it serious and agree some will take it as a joke, but most importantly it works and it is easy
I dunno, i’ve been starting to look at expanding into capital manufacturing. and npc null just isn’t quite cutting it for my needs anymore. its making the large alliances seem much more appealing.
There is a thing in some peoples heads about any large groups that they are inherently evil and it goes way past eve (think large companies) specially when they need to compete with them. That way they dont have to face the facts that large groups of people actually takes fair amount of organisational and logistical skill to keep together that they might lack (this is where I have to give goons props) or that they might need to hop off the cushioned bandwagon and realise that they might actually not be the bad guys.
I’m not saying goons or any other large group are the good guys. I just wanna say you should not avoid them just because they are large. There is generally a reason why they have managed to grow that much. They should go through the same process of detemining their alignment as any large or a small one.
I think for fun we should just have a Grrr Goons day every year where everyone hunts Goons down for the hell of it. At this point the whole who is good and bad thing is kind of subjective right?
oh I know they still scam, I would be quite dissapointed if they did it. but really this is eve, a little scamming here and there is to be expected. hell I made a good couple billion running “discount plex” scams right after the change to nuplex.
but afaik the recruitment scam of “pay me x amount of isk and I’ll get you into goons” has been forbidden.
There is another one where they create a fake website to authorize yourself with to join the Goons that results in a security deposit. They have to get pretty creative with it but it works when done correctly.
TIL, still it seems they have some pretty strict rules surrounding it these days that means they can’t go out of their way to target new players (which was one of the bigger complaints I heard about their recruitment scams 8 or 9 years ago)
The funny thing is, I have played with the Goons in other games, and they are fun. But people often get too butt hurt over what they do. And that is the source for much of the hate to the Goons.
Thats just it though, what exactly DO they do that isn’t also done by damn near everyone else.
sure a decade ago they may have mixed things up. but these days they are the status quo. the last time I can remember them doing anything big and innovative to shake things up was the ice interdiction, and that was what, 3 or 4 years ago now?
Hell PL even beat them to the punch with their perimeter wars to control the offshore market. thats the kind of shenanigans I would have expected from goons.
this isn’t intended to ■■■■ on them or anything, just saying that their behavior hasn’t really matched up with their reputation, at least it hasn’t for many many years.
So they are in a slump. It happens to all of us.
There may also just not be a reason to do anything right now. Not like there is a big fight for anything, no real conflicts going on. Just some minor skirmishes that are kind of heating up but nothing major.
)