EVE General Discussion

Just leave the rookies alone, just seems so hard for some to bare.

And there we have it. A perfect, 100% sensitive rule for protecting newbies. Calling Everyone in a newbie system a newbie is an acceptable result, since all we're asking for is a Concrete answer to "What constitutes a newbie, in a Newbie system." This is to avoid landmines. We don't like landmines; we like mines that have big blinking lights. If there's no way for you to clearly define a newbie to the public, then say EVERYONE is, and enforce that.

Hulk gets ganked; enforce it. 9 year old ibis gets ganked; enforce it. 2 day old ibis with a plex gets ganked; enforce it. Keep enforcement as regular as humanly possible so that it's crystal clear.

If you can spare the Dev time, a Here Be Dragons popup for older players entering newbie systems wouldn't be out of sorts.


Basically, One way or another, the GM team needs to create a crystal clear definition of a protected character (newbie) using publicly viewable information. If that's everyone in the system, so be it. That's an acceptable, though not ideal, result.*

EDIT:*Hopefully this result would be temporary until the NPE guys can spare you some dev time for a better result. Some newbie flag or sommat so that the information needed for specificity will become publicly viewable.

Why not? What about him precludes him from being a rookie?

No, I'm explaining to you why your categorical statement is useless: because it either offers zero protection or it protects the wrong people by creating massive exploits that are far bigger a problem than the ganking of newbies could ever be.

You're trying to forbid something without defining what is forbidden. That's a horrible and untenable solution that only creates more problems.

And no, discretion isn't really needed. You can easily create a rule that offers the required protection while still being crystal clear and without creating all those exploits and loop holes.

1) A million grains of sand is a heap.
2) A heap of sand, minus one grain is still a heap.

Repeated application of premise two to premise one results in one grain of sand being a heap. Zero grains of sand being a heap, and negative grains of sand being a heap.

This is Sorities Paradox.

1) A person with 10,000,000 SP/25billion ISK is not a rookie.
2) A non-rookie with one fewer SP or ISK is still not a rookie.

Repeated application of premise two, yadda, yadda, yadda.

If there is a bright line between rookie and not-rookie, please, Montressor, point it out to me, because I don't see any such bright line using publicly viewable information.


As for trusting the GMs, that's not the issue here. The issue is not knowing if I am going to be banned for shooting someone because there is no way for ME to know if my target is someone the GM's consider to be a rookie or not. I may have different interpretations of what is "obviously" a rookie than the GMs because we are working from different information.

This works. A bit dracnionan, but entirely functional, easily understood, and no rules-lawyering.

If what makes that character definitely, for sure, 100% not a rookie is so easy to define, why don't you simply do that instead of insisting that one should "just know"?

Define a "Rookie." Stop with the red herring examples of "Not Rookie."

Define what it IS.

Why is that? What about him precludes him from being a rookie?

…and I honestly think that you can't answer the question and are stalling. This rather highlights the entire problem with your rule: it arbitrarily and for no apparent reason lets me gank some rookies but not others, even though both are equally new, with equal (lack of) knowledge about the game, and with the same result of the gank (them being fed up and quitting before their third week).

For that one, you could arguably say that he has managed to get himself into a corp and is now fair game since he'll be a valid target of wardecs anyway.

I'm thinking more along the lines of…

“Oh hai newbie. I'm from GoonWaffe — maybe you've heard of us? Want to join? It's not hard — you just have to haul this package from A to B as a kind of test that you're past the tutorials, and if you make it, you're in! Go to goon-newbie-scamhaulers.com and check out where to go and whom to talk to.”

Genuine newbie; know so little about the game that he doesn't even spot the obvious scam; attacking him is a horrible offence because he's still just barely able to use jump gates. So either people don't and the goons get free/safe hauls, or the guy ganking him is tossed out of the game. Win-win.

…alternatively, the GMs have to not apply the “don't kill newbies” rule in this case and have to allow people to kill them. But only some… because not all genuine rookies are to be treated as genuine rookies.

No. Unlike me, you have no imagination when it comes to the huge room for exploitation your useless and undefined rule opens up.

You're also having problems seeing that a far better solution can be had by simply not even trying to make any of these distinctions, but rather let the same — ridiculously clear — rules apply to everyone equally.

Naa, you r just good at speewing words all over the place to mask you personnel short comings.

I will say this, if a weak ship went by me anywhere, that wasn't friendly, say a (2) day old player with 5B isk in his cargo hold, he would be KABOOOM, just like that. I'd do it for the ISK period. I can think of dozens of situations where I personally wouldn't think twice bout killing a newer player. I personally feel I could make a mistake, and would live with the warning, or consequences. But I feel pretty confident in my ability in identifying who's actually new, and who is pretending.