Jita Park Speakers Corner

A couple thoughts on the ToS as feedback for CCP:



The first part I wholeheartedly agree on, as players we have no business impersonating CCP or ISD's. I don't want to touch that.

The second part, it is somewhat tricky. As a whole, I would say no, but this sentence combines many elements. For instance:

Impersonating players - I interpret that as impersonating unique individuals
Impersonating a group of players - this can be interpreted as corporations and alliances, but also social based groups that have no clear membership such as e.g. bombers bar, incursion running groups, etc.
Impersonating characters or NPC enitites - this could mean factions such as Amarr, Gallente or Sansha, Guristas etc.

The problem lies with the fact that each of the above groups have huge differences on its own.

For example, the rule that you cannot impersonate or represent NPC groups can be interpreted that role playing is not allowed, e.g. no pirates impersonating Guristas, or faction warfare groups representing one of the four factions. Not even to mention CVA representing the Amarr Empire in Provi and Ushra'Khan representing the Minmatar Empire.

I know it sounds far fetched, but if you literally interpret the ToS it does forbid the above. And for those who have been in New Eden for a long time, role playing has been a huge backbone driving New Eden.

Now for impersonating groups of players, this slides to a more grey area, as many EVE capsuleers are aware of the old school "join Goonswarm" scams etc. I personally have nothing against these scams, but opinions might differ here. Still, my belief is that not allowing people to imitate or falsely represent a group of players creates the possibility to severely limit metagaming, and metagaming is the driving force behind Eve Online fame.

Impersonating a unique individual is something I frown upon. This might be a case where I would say that CCP involvement would be desired as it harms one specific person and not a social construct that represents players.

My feedback to CCP would be to scrap their addendum as a whole or be very, very specific in rewriting it while keeping an eye on not hurting the sandbox.

The ToS update is insane and makes completely no sense. There you have my feedback.

There needs to be actual disincentive to start breaking the rules

Nah, the news was on TMC on the ninth of this month. That link is an opinion article.

Do you really have to ask?

Yes, i knew someone had wrote it somewhere in the thread. You can have my hauler full of strippers etc.

Soon (tm).

Oh wait, is that bannable, 'cause I'm mimicking CCP? I hope that no-one feels that I'm impersonating them, by answering a question posed to them with an answer that is typically given by them...

Which is the fundamental issue - the language leaves it up to the wronged party to present the situation to an opaque enforcement body. Optimally, we'd have clear rules that excluded only technical exploits (Chrlbba) and pretending to be CCP. Worse, but tolerable, would be the "existing" enforcement made transparent, such that the community could review and understand precedent.

I don't scam but I want other people to be able to in whatever manner they choose. Without diverse risks the sandbox loses all meaning.

The ToS offer us an opportunity to discuss how we optimally want CCP to handle such clever hacks of the system in the future... Now for the ToS situation and how it should have developed: Clever scam involving messing with CCP info ressources triggers the following responses:

1. CCP publishes the exploit in a big story with player/scammer interviews etc <- THAT'S positive publicity!
2. If the method is problematic, then the transfer has to be undone (in this case mixing out of game with in-game approaches)
3. All parties get a pat on the back in the form of a (limited) hauler full with quafe and dancers for finding the exploit/falling victim as a proof of concept
4. The exploit is fixed in RL (wiki editing tools - proofed stable vs latest versions for example)
5. ...and in-game through game mechanics
6. As a LAST step ToS etc are changed to reflect the new situation

If we break down the scammers approach, two situations have to be "clarified" in the new ToS:

* don't use ccp as a cover for your scams
* don't mix official ccp rl ressources with in-game roleplay while ...
* all the other rl ressources that are not ccp controlled are fine to mess with: have fun with the meta game

Hello everyone,

I just want to clear up one little misunderstanding here once and for all.

You cannot impersonate yourself.

Telling others that you’re an alt of a character you own or telling them what other characters you own is not a EULA/TOS violation and will not get you banned.

With the possible exception of using your own alt to mimic your character using spelling trickery in order to trick people into accepting duels with a high skill monster when they thought they were going to duel with puny noob or something like that, and possibly some extreme weird and outlandish edge case we haven’t thought of yet – you cannot impersonate yourself. The example above would not even be self-impersonation as much as it would just be a simple spelling trickery type of deal where it doesn’t really matter who owns the characters in question.

Impersonating yourself does not follow good logic since you are yourself and that is not a violation of any policies we have.

Thanks for reading.

Lead GM Grimmi

It's good to know that the most circular and pedantic consequences of this change have been addressed.

If your fellows would be so kind as to revert the overly ambiguous and patently unnecessary change, that would be most appreciated.