Delegates, And Old Battles

It has become infinitely clear to me over the years that I cannot do everything. More so than that, I cannot do everything right for that matter. There are limits, even as I work to the bone to haul fuel for four to five hours a night for a week straight, to what I am capable of withstanding insofar as administrative duties are concerned.

Because of this, we have begun to branch out responsibilities, asking for all takers to hoist a torch and carry it in the name of the corporation. Alone, most of us could never hope to accomplish what we have done together while also enjoying the process itself. I found myself not enjoying it recently after having hauled fuel and modified POS setups every night for almost two weeks, so I took a little break, just a few days, for a few hours, playing Warcraft with Rasnow's wife and her friend. Talk about revitalizing. Though EVE holds its weight in gold for me now, and I have a place here that I would not want to give up for all the tea in china, I was raised on fantasy games, and they are in my blood. It was quite the throwback, to roll around, smashing things with sharp objects.

But when it was all said and done, I came back, rejuvenated, even more proud of what I have been able to do in EVE, and ready for more. The catch is, I need to delegate roles. I try really hard to keep people safe from responsibilities, burdens, or adminsitrative issues, because this is after all, a game, and I would like to believe that most people can just hop on every night, pair up with some corporate members, and go have fun. The reality however, is that this game has a high degree of committment required to build anything of lasting presence, such as POS, or 0.0 operations, or even simply being in a corporation or alliance itself. So while I have diligently tried to keep most of the administrative stuff behind the scenes, I have not always been able to do so.

I am reminded, talking about burdens, of what occurred when we placed our first POS in Mamet courtesy of Fogwlker's tireless efforts to grind rats in 7Y until his fingers bled, and we had all the fixings for a full fledged POS in space. However, much to the collective chagrin of the leadership, and honestly not really at any fault of Fogwlker's, a misunderstanding occurred upon successfully deploying the POS those many months ago.

Yes, I am sure quite a few of you remember, but let me spell out the culprits just the same; Rishal, Krill Arborshate. More so Rishal than anything else, as I will be explaining in full clarity for the first time I am sure.

Ok, so the basic idea was, let us throw a large POS up in low security space, and we can utilize it for blueprint research that everyone can make money from. Not only that, but just the mere deployment of a POS in low security being a milestone for a corporation relatively new to low and null security, as we had only been in the Domain area for a couple of months at this point, becomes an issue of progress and confidence that the corporation does in fact set and meet goals.

Well, it cost Fogwlker 600,000,000.00 ISK for his own personal investment, and initially the corporation and members also funded some 200,000,000.00 ISK overall to fully fit and establish the POS with maybe one or two labs, and some other miscellaneous goods. The initial agreement between Fogwlker and myself was that A) the corporation would literally be indebted to him until said debt was recompensed and that B) the corporation would set one mobile laboratory for public use only and the other labs would be for corporate use to progress the corporation and pay him back. Fogwlker attempted to run some jobs the evening following the deployment of the POS and found that he was unable to do so. He simply asked in the corporate mailer, if the lab was going to be set to public use soon because he was under the impression it was going to be available for all members as he put it. Unfortunately for us, his honest and deserving question, got twisted into a big dramatic scene by Krill and Rishal. Suddenly the leadership was being affronted with all sorts of demanding questions about why we were suddenly locking down the POS and that no one could use it and how is it going to help the members.

Let me paraphrase what occured in a nutshell after dozens of hours of meetings over vent for a period of a few days straight. Fogwlker simply did not realize that the deployment of the POS was very tiring to the point that I had not gotten around to messing with the lab access, and Rishal took it upon himself to take up the fight for the little guy as he saw it, basically in the end asking me a series of ludicrous questions about the basic use and purpose of the POS.

If Rishal had his way, the POS would have been set for open ended, total public access at all levels, and that not a dime from the POS would go to fueling it, or progressing the corporate interests. He actually asked, literally asked, "How is this POS going to make the member's money?" implying that it would somehow start showering people with ISK the moment it was onlined. I just shook my head at this point, I mean seriously, the guy was basically telling me that I should spend countless hours of my time fueling a POS. It would end up being with my own wallet because at this point the corporation had 40,000,000.00 ISK to its name, was generating maybe 20,000,000.00 ISK/wk and the POS required 200,000,000.00 ISK/mo to fuel, I mean I told him this, it is simple mathematics. Yet he persisted in arguing that the POS be used publically so individual members can line their wallets. I mean, we already owed Fogwlker 600,000,000.00 ISK and we were well in the red on paying for fuel to keep the POS online let alone paying him back, so where was the money supposed to come from? My wallet? I had enough time finding a single day of the week at the time and sometimes still now to do anything to line my own wallet, let alone repaying 600,000,000.00 ISK to Fogwlker and purchasing hundreds of million ISK worth of fuel to keep the POS online while everyone else got rich, or so Rishal thought. I think he believed the POS was some sort of easy button that you just pound on and ISK shoots out like a slot machine.

So finally, I got tired, and reached my limit of dealing with him, which says a lot because I have a somewhat ridiculous tolerance level, and I told him the following. I said, "Look, the corporation cannot afford this POS if the POS does not make money for the corporation, so here's what I'll do, I'll leave the fuel we have now in there, it's about two weeks worth. But I will stop fueling it, and set the fuel hangar to public, and the members themselves can pay for, fuel, maintain, and upgrade or manage the POS entirely, and I will have no part of it." All I get from him over vent is an immensely sarcastic response full with indignation in the form of a "OH WELL THANKS, THANKS FOR THAT!" So yes, he was basically telling me with that statement that I work for him, and everything I do should be to line his and every other member's wallets, so neither he nor anyone else has to do any of the work. Shameful.

I mean seriously... seriously, I'm supposed to fuel the POS with my own money so everyone else can get rich? At this point it was laughable, I mean we now know exactly how much research can yield, and it is an investment of about 250,000,000.00 ISK/mo which you can turn into 500,000,000.00 ISK/mo but we are talking a team of 3-4 researchers keeping 4-5 labs going 24/7 for a month, then someone like GAT has to be in charge of selling those BPOs to buyers. But at the time we had no inkling of our profit margins, not only this, but we had two labs, two. And I knew that two labs were not going to make every member in the corporation rich, this was pretty obvious to anyone with half a squirt in their head. We are talking 250,000,000.00 profit per month split between 4-5 people which may take them individually 4-5 hours a month to maintain. So that is 50,000,000.00 ISK per person for 4-5 hours of work per month. That is 10,000,000.00 ISK/hr which is about what you can make mining veldspar in a Hulk. Not exactly a recipe for getting rich and famous. But surprisingly that 250,000,000.00 ISK/mo is just about as much as it costs to fuel the POS so surprise, surprise, the POS breaks even thus far, being able to maintain itself solely through blueprint profits while the officers work hard to find ways to increase those profits over time by branching out activities or researching more effectively. This is how it is supposed to work.

But needless to say, Rishal moved on, claiming we did not have enough PvP opportunities for him and that he wanted to pirate, all the while when he never participated in the PvP opportunities we did have because he was too busy doing L4s and being a carebear. So what was done was done. Everyone was on board with the way Fogwlker intended the POS to be used, and though Fogwlker did absolutely nothing wrong in asking honest questions, others took those questions and turned them into some sort of turf war via scandalous drama that was never there to begin with.

These types of things, the immense work involved, and the occasional spat on the actual work, are one reason why delegating responsibilities helps everyone in the long run. Rishal had lifted one finger to show up in a T1 cruiser and sit around picking his nose while we deployed the POS. I however, spent 7 hours the first night, 6 the next, and 4 the following just hauling fuel and modules to the POS, and setting it up. If Rishal had done some of this, maybe he would not have assumed everything was so easy as "Let's all get bloody rich by waving our hands in the air and saying some magic incantations!"

Now, I think it is pretty rare that you stumble upon someone as bullheaded as Rishal was about the issue, but I think responsibilities are a good thing for a group of players who want to set group goals. Thus far, the officers have pretty much been working to the bone to provide opportunities for the members, and while countless members have also contributed in their own way, Merthe with donations, Meatay with his Orca, Rayth with his donations and projects, Fogwlker with his constant ratting tax revenue and POS investment, Kematian with his donations, etc. the actual hauling, maintenance, fret, worry, and time keeping this stuff running or a schedule going, or a training regimen provided, has been at the mercy of the officers.

This will of course, change shortly, as we are introducing management positions and new gangs at the corporate level, such as diplomat, quartermaster, commissioner, guide, foreman, rearguard, network, and logistics.

What is the lesson here, after I have recounted a period in the corporation where I wanted to throttle one or two former members until their eyes popped out of their heads?

Some things looks easy on paper, but are vastly different in practice.

I have found myself overwhelmed with duties in the past three weeks after having deployed our third POS a little more than a month ago, and this must end. I refuse to burnout! I have the highest burnout threshold of anyone I have met thus far in MMOs, granted that I do not always go around asking everyone what their burnout rate is, but I was one of the last to burnout on Warcraft in my guild as all my officers slowly tapered off into being in a position where enough was enough, I finally caved myself, and admitted defeat, when I found myself sitting atop buildings ingame for hours a night, just staring at the screen, paralyzed to deal with any administrative responsibilities or even answer simple questions about policy or scheduling.

This must not occur again, and I am here to say, that I will be devoting more energy to that end, than I had in the past when I thought that I could withstand anything.

In closing, I should remind you, please remember to kick me out of this rut, and tell me to post something cheery next time, as the last three posts, although one was very sentimental, have all been fairly serious in nature, this must also stop!

WTB [Cataclysms] WTS [Some Responsiblities, Stress, and Rewarding Work]