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KenZoku: We Don't Make Mistakes, Ever

Nothing is as fatal to an alliance as a refusal to admit fault. KenZoku (RKZ) is a prime example of this. RKZ recruited from its vassal alliances over many years, seeking two prime attributes in prospective pilots: killboard statistics and shameless sycophancy. Of any of the forums I've read, I've never encountered a group of people more averse to criticism. The core of their identity as an alliance is being "the best", which apparently translates in practice to being utterly unable to admit or even discuss fault without flinging ad hominems willy-nilly. The irony piles on when you read the following thread, where a director and leading light in the member corporation Evolution - whose entire gimmick is evolving, adapting, and making Darwin references - gets progressively more upset at the regular membership daring to point out that Something Is Wrong in the aftermath of losing the Great War. Rather than confronting the problem, the RKZ directorate begins kicking those who voiced dissent out of the alliance.

Fibrewire, a regular member, tries to post an analysis of reasons why KenZoku lost the Great War:

/me puts emo hat on

Well, here the story... I was this close -> || <- to calling it quits in EVE due to fundamental strategic problems our alliance was facing (and not fixing), as well as RL problems combined with disgust for what goons have done to this once fine, respectful game (As well as other games). But at work today, I was browsing the forums and read Molle's post about Pulling the Plug, and did some long, hard thinking. I've decided to keep playing EVE to experience this new chapter in our alliance's long, long history. I couldn't agree more with Molle's decision to pull out. We need a completely new fresh start, and need to forget about old tactics that don't work in EVE today.

I've debated and argued back and forth with people within my own corp about problems this alliance was facing and decided to make a proper post about what we need to do to fix it. Originally this post was supposed to be a farewell thread and to go to BNC's forums only. But since then I've had a change of heart, and I feel it's important enough to share with the whole alliance...........

1. BoB needs to either make some drastic, drastic, changes to the way it startegizes or close the doors on the alliance. This is very hard for me to say, because I know, and will always know, that BoB are the most talented smartest pvp'ers in the history of this game, and to close the doors would be a real shame. But either we need to fix our problems and stop spinning our wheels, or stop wasting everyones time and just part ways.

(Molle, please don't think I'm calling you out, I'm only trying to give constructive critisism...)

2. Molle needs to pump people up. Molle and Molle alone can do this, people look up to him, and respect whatever it is he has to say. None of this "full regroup - bs > dictors > else" crap that doesn't pump people up. He needs to (as well as other leaders) explain fully what we are doing wrong and how to fix it, as well as what's at stake. Flashy text required

3. We need to work much, much, closer with our allies. Look at how goons work with rzr, pl and nc. They don't distance themselves from each other and run on different ts/gangs. This is key to forming up the numbers we need to combat the hostile blobs.

4. Enough of this cap alts on standby bullshit. BS dont win wars, it's not 2007 anymore. The days of winning wars with BS is over, this is pretty evident with how many titans the hostiles have. We were able to win back Delve in the first war with bs's because the hostiles had a total of maybe 3-5 titans or something. Nowadays they have more like 30, and we lose more bs fleets to dd's than to proper fights. Showing off a massive cap fleet to your enemies face is crucial to beating their morale, and we all know goons (As well as us tbh) only login when their morale is high.

5. You cant tell people 1 day before an op to get your caps on your mains, it takes longer than that to move caps around. You need at least a week. FC's wonder why we get 20 dreads online when they call for dreads on mains. Well that's because only a few select people have the schedule and ability to move their dreads in position on such a short notice. Leadership needs to give the rest of us at least 1 week to get corp/personal dreads in position and ready to attack. It takes alot longer than most people realize to move caps around, due to RL schedules, hostile camps etc.

6. Capitals need to be used on mains in all major offensive and defensive operations in BoB, GBC, -A-, S-E, ROL-, and atlas. This needs 110% commitment on everyone's part. That in turn leades to..

7. No more 50% commitment on things, not 80% not 90% not 100%, but 110% commitment on everything we do. We have a shit ton of enemies to fight and the minute we start loosening the grip on what we're trying to accomplish, the enemies are going to pounce on that opportunity with everything they've got.

8. No more only pinging once for an op... People come home and see there was a ping 30min ago and no one talked after that on irc, so they figure we either have enough numbers or we disbanded. Pinging constantly might be an annoyance but if you all want to start winning, and I know you do, it's necassary. Some people complain that pinging for an op in the middle of the night is annoying to the people that want to sleep, well I say to them that maybe they should leave the #bob channel or mute their speakers at night so they arent woken up... Common sense. We may also try creating an emergency channel for people to join while they sleeping and that channel can only be pinged when a titan is tackled or something. Also, some people complain that we shouldn't ping constantly for an op in the middle of a Saturday afternoon... that's rubbish, no one's asleep, you can ping all you want.

9. Titan pilots need to get the shit smacked out of them, and if they can't be online anymore give the titan to someone else to use, they are dead weaght in our alliance. This is pretty obvious I think, and if they are personal titans, whch most are, there should be someone you consider a friend in the alliance that you can give the titan too, and possibly the character, for the time being. Having 1 or 2 titans at our disposal is useless. We all know that titans work best in groups and can protect each other from getting tackled in this way. Lets shape this up, without positive titan support we can't make much of defense or offense.

10. Lastly, and most importantly, there doesn't seem to be any sense of urgency when we schedule a regroup. It's sort of like... "be there if you want guys." While this may be a game and we don't want to sound like its serious business, people put alot of work and effort into making sure logistics are kept up, and we need to follow through on that. If more time and effort is put into making sure everyone knows what's at stake, you will get alot more people to show up.

In conclusion, fixing 1 or 2 of these problems won't fix the overal crisis our alliance is facing, we must fix all of them. If this gets leaked on CAOD, I don't give a shit because I want you all to know and understand these problems we are dealing with. Leadership needs to fix these problems and work more closely with the rest of you, telling you what the problem is, how we're going to fix it, and to get off their high horses (I'm sorry, it's only a select few of you) and make sure YOU, the grunts, the powerhouses of the alliance, can make it happen.

I really want you all to think about what I've stated above, and disagree with me if you want, but we need some positive, constructive conversations about how we are going to fix the crisis this alliance is in.

And is immediately shot down by Waagaa, the Evolution director:

Man, that's some pretty long post. 50% of it is incorrect and 50% is trivial.

Some of the membership refuses to be spoofed:

i don't think 50% of it is incorrect, maybe we should get our head out of the clouds, and actually start realizing that our so called 'pvp elite alliance' gets lead into traps, our reinforcements picked off by PL and generally torn apart on regular occasion, what happened to evolution?

and why are we so ridiculous in the way we use allies, the NC arent a single alliance rather a collection of well oiled alliances working towards a goal, im not saying we nap the whole of eve and lets face it not many want us, but we've always been about BOB first allies secondary, and its just not realistic anymore. I for one wouldn't mind having a strong ally as an equal, and achieving things together, theres no room for a single space holding alliance these days with part time allies.

But sycophancy is a hard habit to break:

Guys we did nothing wrong here, we had good days and bad days, we were playing outnumbered and many times outgunned. I think it was the first time that Bob actually needed a good ally-partener.

We gave up max for many reasons, but in conclusion we went to help AAA to fight goons. When we lost delve sov and our capital fleet trapped into PR, AAA never came and said hold we gona work together later. We took 49-u so AAA and allies can stage there and start the offensive, they didnt stage there but were comming and leaving. In my eyes it is simple, they didnt wanted to engage with full commitment and couldnt be better for them having bob fooling around querius and use us as meatshields.

Hail to molle and other directors that took the decision and pulled out that plug that was killing us.

I will be more than happy to see dead weight from bob corps leaving. Bob are still one of the best alliances among the game with holding space or without.

Waagaa seems a little mad:

I for one think that we need to be more elitist, not less.

Becoming less elitist has alienated a bunch of really good players that used to lead us to victories.

So fuck weak allies, be lean, small and effective instead of bloated, generic and stupid.

When I joined BoB, you got shouted down for being stupid, now I'm being shouted down for calling people stupid. That's where we went wrong. We started accepting mistakes from people.

Fucking weak to be honest.

Hence the OP is shit, it addresses the symptoms, not the root-cause.

The proles aren't buying it:

It's thinking like you are that got us to where we are now Waagaa. Welcome to 2009. It used to work, but this isnt 2007 anymore, get over yourself.

Yaay, one of KenZoku's primary Fleet Commanders through the Great War, posts something critical of the leadership. We don't know what it was because it was immediately censored, the entire post deleted. Waagaa rages in reply:

Oh by the way, impressive rewriting of history Yaay, I might just dig up some IRC logs at home, because you're contradicting yourself on the hilarious way you fucked up and managed to suicide 10 dreads knowing full well that the enemy had caps undocking about 10 minutes before they actually jumped in on you.

You held your ground and warped down to the jammer, knowing their caps were undocked because you wanted the jammer down and thought you were going for a titan kill, not because you didn't know they were undocking.

Dianabolic, another KenZoku leader, joins Waagaa in freaking out and kicks Yaay out of his corporation for his temerity:

Suffice to say I have revoked Yaay's access and he shall shortly be finding himself corp-less.

Which is a shame, because I'll at least try to remember yaay as someone who enjoyed playing, not specifically winning, the game, but between his posts here and on CAOD he can find somewhere else to trample his finger diarrhoea.

Apparently they took themselves so seriously when they dubbed their alliance 'omnitpotence itself' that even the slightest criticism from the membership is an existential threat to the alliance. Rather than evolving, RKZ seems to have cornered the market on stagnation.

That's it for this excerpt from the Archive; we have tons of this stuff lying around. War just isn't the same without delicious chatporn and the tears of your foes.