49 replies to this topic

[Weeks]

Tell us what you think! Feel free to leave constructive criticism, since we're always striving to get better at presenting the material.

[Littlebob]

awesome class. very well instructed, good info. even learned a ouple things i ve never heard off before and the roam afterwards was also good fun. i'll definately be around in some future classes as alumni. just too bad i cant join wolfpacks next weekend due to work i ll keep my eyes open for the next wolfpacks ^^

[Sekh]

To be honest, I think CCP should sponsor you guys. This was an excellent class, hours went like minutes, instructions were clear, support all the time, awesome 100%.

Congratulations to Weeks for the excellent class, to Bamar for running an excelent corporation, and guidance through the battlefield.

I just hope not to spoil you with this "... oh, what a fantastic this... awesome that..." mail... 8)

Best regards,

Sekh

BASIC - 1403091800

[Crusader King]

Really professional, lots of things I thought I knew, but didn't! Look forward to the next class.

[Nunea]

Great fun. Really boosted my pvp confidence.

[-PRCP- Shias]

Good class, lots of fun and also very informative. Learned a few things tonight. In future classes, I would suggest to try and use some of the EW on a stationary friendly target. I had some dampeners, ship scanner and tracking disruptor, but never came to use it, since my start out fit was AB, Warp disrupto and webber in mid slots. Maybe use one of the bio breaks to refit ships to other roles, so youd try a bit of everything. I also definately consider coming again for the roaming, as learning by doing beats theory. Thanks for a good class and see you at wolfpacks. /Shias

[Dax E]

To sum it up: The course was fantastic.

Weeks did a great job explaining the ins and outs of fleet operations so that when we got to the 0.0 roam under FC Bamar I did not feel the least bit lost in following the orders that were given and understanding the tactics that were being used.

FC Bamar did a great job focusing the Hydra on its victims and orchestrating the destruction of about a score of ships. All the Agony pilots were a great asset to learning how a fleet operates - listening the recons and skirmishers reports and the FCs orders gave me a much better understanding of the intricacies of fleet operations.

Thanks a lot AU.

Dax E - Dax Ee'nnach[DCMI*]
ALUMNI
BASIC - 1403091800

[Yuto Kang]

Great class. Learned a lot about using guns. How to get in on top of a BS in a small frigate without getting blown up before getting there. The instructor knows his stuff, and is very good at getting the information across in a way that you can understand it. (Not an easy thing for a teacher to do, having been 1 myself in RL.) Am looking forward to the WolfPack next weekend. As well as the FlyBy and any other course they offer that I can take. Well worth the isk, and it's time well spent if you really want to get a foundation for PVP.

[Nunea]

Not every day you get to blow up over 4 billion ISK worth of stuff. Edit: Great props to AGONY recon and tackling.. very good job.

[Lady Nynx]

Class was Great! I want some more of that!

[DarkDragonMyth]

Best 7mil I ever made my alliance spend but was fantastic class can't wait for all the upcoming classes, great fleet commanding from Bamar and Weeks hats off to you guys.

[Vora]

It was an epic night! Weeks is a teacher at heart with angel-like patience !lol His lecture was easily comprehensible, the speed was just right. Bamar was a hell of an FC, his precision is really remarkable. First I thought it would be difficult to understand Bamar's relative low voice, but it turned out to be an advantage... easy recognizable among the other voices. I was quite surprised that our noob cloud actually turned into smooth running fleet, and a dangerous one. I guess you have one more alumnus... 8)

[bow_duke]

Absolutely brilliant - I couldn't fault the course. No mean achievement when it lasted over 7 hours, with so many of us numpties to heard around.
My time on Eve is limited, and I've tended to think of PvP as a good way to lose ISK to a gatecamp and end up grinding for ISK in the remaining time I have!
But the course shows it can be done with cheap frigs (with a good fleet leader), and be even better fun for it.
Someone in the post above suggested CCP sponsor/work with you guys to run these courses and I agree - its a great way to get people playing as CCP intended.

Very many thanks (especially to Weeks and Bamar).

bow duke
BASIC-1403091800

[Kieler]

Fun, fun, fun. Time flew by, worth every last minute of prep and well worth the course fee, and then some. Thank you

[Tokatu]

The class met my wildest expectations. Unfortunately my net gave out for about the last hour of the roam. I didn't get an opportunity to thank everyone at the end. The lecture material was well organized and well presented. The pace was aggressive enough to cover things with a high level of detail, but not so fast that you can't keep up. It was clear from the answers that all the Agony pilots were well prepared. The roam was awesome. Our hosts did a fantastic job of keeping us all together. I expect seats in the next pvp basic to be in even higher demand, what with the news coverage of the carrier kill forthcoming.

[Deckerd]

most enjoyable time i have had in game in quite a while !lol Instuction (Weeks) and FC (Bamar) superb traded 7 mil and 1 Tristan for lots of learning and participation in .75 bil of km's (missed the carrier due to getting too close to smart bombing Raven) .... i definitely got one heck of a bargain! have to really try hard to find any constructive criticism ..... battle coms could have been better (Agony pilots know each other and thus are inclined to shortcut the instructional guidelines i suppose) but this is definitely not a serious shortfall. looking forward to future classes

[Invenio]

A genuinely fun adventure. Agony deserves a lot of credit for offering these classes. It was apparent that substantial time, expertise, and effort went into creating and presenting the class. No egos, friendly interaction and respect - this is how Eve should be. Kudos.

[bcg]

the class was the most fun i've ever had in eve. i even got my first kill mail, and my battleclinic stats went into high orbit since we got an archon! will definitely be taking more classes, and look into applying. Weeks and Bamar (and other agony members) were great. thanks for the awesome class. edit: someone might look at the reading, one place it offers that you should bring x-type ammo, in my case EMP for rifter which gave about 980m opt. range, and in another it says to have an optimal range of about 9km, i think the articles were fleet fitting using the hydra principle and basic checklist. again thanks

[DaDutchDude]

TL;DR: Awesome class, some minor constructive criticism, will be back for more pew pew

School's out and I just flew back home ... well, to Nonni V ... while trying to get my heart rate to lower, try to get the adrenaline to stop affecting me, trying to get the tension out of my muscles, just trying to calm down. And I know it isn't working .... I'm shaking with adrenaline, and I know I'll still be awake for at least another hour, although the clock is certainly telling me it's 3AM in my time zone.

Well, I have to admit I made a couple of errors preparing for the class. I read all the articles well in advance, but I should have perhaps reviewed them once more to get the details out. I had all my stuff in Nonni V a week earlier. But there were some things I should have done better. I was a bit low on ammo and didn't connect and do all settings on Vent early enough, nor had I taken time to set up the overview 100% perfect. In the scramble to get the last details sorted out, I messed up my overview settings, which caused me some problems later. This was my mistake, I should have taken more time to get prepared. :@

At the same time, I don't think the material on the overview is very well written to be honest. The 2006 article 'Configuring EVE for PVP' by Rells seems a bit out of date, while the 'Overview setup' piece gives a lot of recommendations, but doesn't seem to be quite specific enough. With the overview being so important, and actually the entire screen layout being so important so you can work efficiently (which means either kill or be killed in combat), this could use a rewrite into 2 or 3 separate pieces:

* Setting up client configuration: this could be based on Rells piece, but just updated, and also leaving the overview out

* Setting up your windows: all mandatory configuration for students of the class of things such as
a) where should all the windows be (including fleet, which will be new to most of us)
which tabs have to be in overview, how should they be named / configured / tested to be correct

* Optional: advice on how to use the windows, make them work for you, adjust to your personal needs
I know it might sound very silly to vets, but being very specific is good for noobs like us when we start out, explaining the way to improve from there should allow us to understand why it should be like you say it is and how we can improve upon it.

On to the theoretical / practice part of the class: BIG props to Weeks for being very clear spoken, explain things very well and take just the right amount of time on things to keep speed up and things interesting for all. Really, to you it must seem like herding cats, but it worked great. Since you asked us for constructive criticism, I will add two points, but overall, it was great.

One thing I didn't really like was the pop quiz: I was just laughing my head off at 5 to 30 people talking at the same time or typing in channel. I understand why you'd need something like that to keep us sharp and make sure we've read the material, but I just felt silly joining in and just kept quiet. Perhaps you could just call on some people to answer the questions instead of it being a free for all.

My overview mess up made me miss half the "spiraling in" practice, which I regret, since it is one of the less obvious things to learn from a course such as this. I'd also like to have more of a way to get feedback if I am doing it correctly, since I wasn't sure I did. Perhaps splitting up the group in 5 with a separate instructor each, with students spiraling in on them and getting feedback on their work, although this could be very time consuming and complex.

The roam was excellent, I had a blast. I did loose 2 Rifters & pods: the first because I was just WAY too eager, switching afterburner on and moving straight to target into bomb range. The second one caught me off guard, because I stayed out of 6k but was again taken out by a smart bomb, lagging too bad / being too slow to save ship or pod once I noticed taking damage. At this point I was getting frustrated: :grr: Vent decribed a great battle taking place and again I wasn't there. After this, I would be VERY careful of staying out of range. I still got hurt quite badly by a smart bomb on a disco Rohk (still no clue how I even ended up in his range ), but not enough to take me out or that a quick dock & repair couldn't fix. After that, it was al gravy. I got on several kill mails, although very often only scratching paint due to my high orbit (> 6km) and having the wrong guns + ammo for that. But to see my first carrier ever on Tranquility and get on its kill mail ... I mean, what more can you ask for?

I was amazed by the professionalism of the FC, scouts and skirmishers. They all were on top of things when (from my point of view) it was total mayhem. Big props to them. Some of the scouts might want to speak a little louder, but then again, if the FC could hear them, that was good enough for me. There was a slight bit of confusion about what to do when you were killed, podded or needed armor, and discussion on Vent told me I wasn't the only one. It would have been nice to have some documentation of what to do and what to expect when this happens, so you could read it before the class and know what to expect. Again, this is a minor comment, but something you might want to take into account.

We had a great class, and at almost all occasions, students were very much up for it, taking things seriously, following orders and being disciplined, so also big compliments to my classmates.

Last of all, I want to thank the people we killed ... although they'll never get to read this, I enjoyed their guts and perhaps hubris to mix it up with an angry swarm of killer bees and I salute them for it.

I'll conclude by saying this: this ol care bear has tasted blood ... and he likes it! !lol

[AlarDarkwind]

Absolutely brilliant class. It is really refreshing to see a corporation take teaching to heart in Eve and strive to not only give their student's basic information about a topic, but also to pass along new material and tactics that the teachers themselves are constantly developing. Agony truly is at the front of PvP training and I got ten times more out of this class than any other PvP class I have taken, even so called "Advanced" courses done internally by my Alliances. The way Agony handles the roaming gang even further reinforces the teaching as the student feels safe in the FC's hands and doesn't need to worry about what the gang is doing, but instead gets to focus 100% on their own ship and how best to fill their specific role in the fleet. Even with this however you get a good sense of what the FC and Agony members are doing to track down targets and keeping the fleet moving, enough that you can go back to your corporation and at least get the seed planted for a similar setup in your own roaming gangs. I want to thank Weeks for being the most patient Eve Instructor ever, Bamar for being an excellent and calm FC, and all the other Agony pilots for the behind the scenes work and setting up some amazing kills. You have reignited my longing for PvP in Eve and made me look at combat in Eve in ways I hadn't thought of before, and for this I greatly thank you. Please keep up the excellent work in teaching new players the joys of Eve Online, and helping old players rediscovering them. Sincerely, Al'ar Darkwind

[Shadowdorn]

First off I would like to thank Instructor Weeks and also Fleet Commander Bamar. The both of you did such an amazing job being patient with us students and for quickly explaining some complex concepts in a short and easily understood way. I was afraid that with 100 people on vent, it would be difficult to hear anyone and there would be chaos. I was pleasantly surprised that I could hear and understand both of you.

I would also like to thank all the Agony scouts and skirmishers that made sure we had targets to kill. Putting yourself out there alone till we arrived takes guts and confidence I hope to have some day!

After graduating and looking back on the class there are a few things on the training material that would be awesome. The articles on configuring the overview could do with a bit of reworking. I went through the material about 5 times before I meshed together the two articles into an overview that worked well. Secondly an article on "what to expect in pvp" would be nice. Your going to lag slightly, you may have to hunt for the main target so listen well, what to do if you get destroyed, what to do if you get podded. Just things like that in a frank manner would be amazing to study for those who have NEVER been in pvp before besides having a ship blown out from under you in an unlucky jump through low sec. I would also perhaps suggest an article on how to spiral into a ship, this confused me because of how my camera was set, by the 3rd or 4th engagement It made sense to me but having some reading before hand would be awesome.

I'm not sure how many people in the class took it because they were pvp'd and wanted to fight back but that is how I ended up here and I can say that my confidence is much higher now that I know how to escape those situations and now fight back! Nothing feels better than taking people who have fun off of the suffering of others and turn it back on them!.


Once again, thank you Agony. this is the most fun I have had in eve. I am going to badger my corp and alliance into taking your classes and pay for it if I have to! Thank you again Great job guys.

[Tea]

We'll update the overview article with the new stuff recently added and clarify anything that needs a tweak. Hopefully with the export and import options (if they fix them, seems broken at the moment) we might be able to provide templates - watch this space. I'd say wolfpacks is even more fun, except I can't promise as many kills (this has to be one of the most successful pvp basic gangs yet).

[Infensuss]

I will more or less echo everything said already. The class was excellent. Although I have been playing for quite a while, and had a working knowledge about many of the subjects covered, it was nice to learn about a few things that I had never heard of. In my opinion the most impressive aspect of the class were the instructors and Agony members. Recon and coordination was great. Weeks was an excellent instructor and Bamar was a great fleet commander. I have a good idea of how challenging it can be to organize and lead people in this setting, but to organize and effectively lead over 90 people while answering some of the same (very basic) questions over and over is truly impressive. Looking forward to more classes Infensuss

[Ro Jo]

TL;DR: Awesome class, some minor constructive criticism, will be back for more pew pew

School's out and I just flew back home ... well, to Nonni V ... while trying to get my heart rate to lower, try to get the adrenaline to stop affecting me, trying to get the tension out of my muscles, just trying to calm down. And I know it isn't working .... I'm shaking with adrenaline, and I know I'll still be awake for at least another hour, although the clock is certainly telling me it's 3AM in my time zone.

Well, I have to admit I made a couple of errors preparing for the class. I read all the articles well in advance, but I should have perhaps reviewed them once more to get the details out. I had all my stuff in Nonni V a week earlier. But there were some things I should have done better. I was a bit low on ammo and didn't connect and do all settings on Vent early enough, nor had I taken time to set up the overview 100% perfect. In the scramble to get the last details sorted out, I messed up my overview settings, which caused me some problems later. This was my mistake, I should have taken more time to get prepared. :@

At the same time, I don't think the material on the overview is very well written to be honest. The 2006 article 'Configuring EVE for PVP' by Rells seems a bit out of date, while the 'Overview setup' piece gives a lot of recommendations, but doesn't seem to be quite specific enough. With the overview being so important, and actually the entire screen layout being so important so you can work efficiently (which means either kill or be killed in combat), this could use a rewrite into 2 or 3 separate pieces:

* Setting up client configuration: this could be based on Rells piece, but just updated, and also leaving the overview out

* Setting up your windows: all mandatory configuration for students of the class of things such as
a) where should all the windows be (including fleet, which will be new to most of us)
which tabs have to be in overview, how should they be named / configured / tested to be correct

* Optional: advice on how to use the windows, make them work for you, adjust to your personal needs
I know it might sound very silly to vets, but being very specific is good for noobs like us when we start out, explaining the way to improve from there should allow us to understand why it should be like you say it is and how we can improve upon it.

On to the theoretical / practice part of the class: BIG props to Weeks for being very clear spoken, explain things very well and take just the right amount of time on things to keep speed up and things interesting for all. Really, to you it must seem like herding cats, but it worked great. Since you asked us for constructive criticism, I will add two points, but overall, it was great.

One thing I didn't really like was the pop quiz: I was just laughing my head off at 5 to 30 people talking at the same time or typing in channel. I understand why you'd need something like that to keep us sharp and make sure we've read the material, but I just felt silly joining in and just kept quiet. Perhaps you could just call on some people to answer the questions instead of it being a free for all.

My overview mess up made me miss half the "spiraling in" practice, which I regret, since it is one of the less obvious things to learn from a course such as this. I'd also like to have more of a way to get feedback if I am doing it correctly, since I wasn't sure I did. Perhaps splitting up the group in 5 with a separate instructor each, with students spiraling in on them and getting feedback on their work, although this could be very time consuming and complex.

The roam was excellent, I had a blast. I did loose 2 Rifters & pods: the first because I was just WAY too eager, switching afterburner on and moving straight to target into bomb range. The second one caught me off guard, because I stayed out of 6k but was again taken out by a smart bomb, lagging too bad / being too slow to save ship or pod once I noticed taking damage. At this point I was getting frustrated: :grr: Vent decribed a great battle taking place and again I wasn't there. After this, I would be VERY careful of staying out of range. I still got hurt quite badly by a smart bomb on a disco Rohk (still no clue how I even ended up in his range ), but not enough to take me out or that a quick dock & repair couldn't fix. After that, it was al gravy. I got on several kill mails, although very often only scratching paint due to my high orbit (> 6km) and having the wrong guns + ammo for that. But to see my first carrier ever on Tranquility and get on its kill mail ... I mean, what more can you ask for?

I was amazed by the professionalism of the FC, scouts and skirmishers. They all were on top of things when (from my point of view) it was total mayhem. Big props to them. Some of the scouts might want to speak a little louder, but then again, if the FC could hear them, that was good enough for me. There was a slight bit of confusion about what to do when you were killed, podded or needed armor, and discussion on Vent told me I wasn't the only one. It would have been nice to have some documentation of what to do and what to expect when this happens, so you could read it before the class and know what to expect. Again, this is a minor comment, but something you might want to take into account.

We had a great class, and at almost all occasions, students were very much up for it, taking things seriously, following orders and being disciplined, so also big compliments to my classmates.

Last of all, I want to thank the people we killed ... although they'll never get to read this, I enjoyed their guts and perhaps hubris to mix it up with an angry swarm of killer bees and I salute them for it.

I'll conclude by saying this: this ol care bear has tasted blood ... and he likes it! !lol

This is EXACTLY what I was going to say.

Overview articles were confusing a bit. A straightforward, set-it-up-exactly-like-this section would be a welcomed addition to the class prep material.

I felt the same way on pop quiz questions, never answered because of the chaotic replies that ensued whenever a question was posed.

I prepared weeks in advance like DDD did, read material like a dirty romance novel and moved pretty much everything I owned to Nonni V for the class. Needed to brush up more than I did, but the fact that the articles are still available I found myself rereading class materials immediately following the 7-8 hours we were in class. Kind of insane, figured I'd be clawin at the door to get out of here by then haha.

Died twice with no regrets, was good to lose cheap ships than costly ones...and was much easier knowing that you went down in the same battle a 2 billion ISK Carrier did too

AU Staff was excellent, I loved every minute of the class and further cemented my desire to be a combat/pvp pilot. Polishing that app now, I really envied the skill, organization and overall professionalism exhibited by AU today. About halfway through class today I realized I wanted to be a part of that.

[astrodemos]

This was an amazing experience - both the theory section and the roam was very informative and (most importantly) extremely fun - I learned a lot. Thank you for taking the time to run the class.