EVE General Discussion

In 2006 nobody would pop a noob unless it was necessary or the noob was doing something to really deserve it.

If you want to see a spectrum of decline in the quality of people (and therefore players), look at the long pirate story threads in C&P. The posts from long ago (from the old forums anyway) have details of great capers and exploits perpetrated on players who were in a position to know better, who should have known better, but got greedy or complacent. The threads degenerate into "so we got this noob to join our corp, then we led him out to lowsec and blew his ship up, then scrammed his pod - oh the tears were delicious!!!1!! Once we popped him we kicked him from corp and took what little stuff he had".

Now, if anybody thinks that's "helpful", I would wonder if they post from a basement bedroom, walls adorned with "Saw 1 - 5" posters, and having some arrested development issues.

People who have to deal with griefers don't leave because "they can't handle it". They leave because they are made to feel like they just got stuck babysitting someone's alpha aspie they don't log into a game (something people CHOSE do to) to "put up with " certain kinds of people.

Nothing will change that. Though the game mechanics and knowledge cuts off the greifers very well. How can we know? Simple. Every time some new means of informing or traning noobs is proposed, or new failsafes from "aggro fu" deployed, the griefers will scream and cry all over the forums about the game being "WoW-ized". They will hide behind every tenet of what a sandbox this game is supposed to be, all the while gleefully making it their litterbox every chance they get. That is their game, ultimately, to drive others from it.

But that game is still legitimate, to "drive people away from playing the game". The only problem is, when the "sandbox" becomes all about bonking kids on the head with the pail and shovel and then pointing and laughing, it ends up being more about that than about sand. A sandbox that's not about sand loses it's purpose. So what happens? Mommy has to show up and take away the pail and shovel. The same kids causing the problem will scream and cry the loudest, knowing what the real truth is, and then figure out way to make kids eat sand, or throw it in their eyes, or dig pits, or whatever.

The only upside to all this is that the players, if they are ever ready, are capable of handling this, but that day has not yet come. But this is just a reflection of the way people are elsewhere.

That's not what it says at all. Don't twist the words of a good post.

How about taking the newbie out to go explode someone? Death is an inevitable consequence of doing almost anything, so why not lay the foundation for them by satiating their blood lust as a precursor to understanding the relative fragility of our possessions? If they die thereafter, all the better; two birds, one stone.

I killed and podded my wife the first time I taught her how to play the game. She's still not much of a PvP player, but she got used to the concept of dying first, before she got used to the concept of killing.

I found teaching them how to gracefully lose is a good first start.

Sounds like you're just trying to justify something you feel bad about doing deep down inside. No need to go after newbies, and I'll explain why it's bad.

The problem with EVE and new players is that such mentioned playstyles and attitudes are not very accessible out of the box. There are very few games that offer this kind of freedom, even less where the community takes advantage of it to an almost sociopathic extent (not saying that as an insult).
You'e expecting new players to know this, to accept this, and to push through it when they really had no proper indication that this is what they were in for. Consider what you're saying here.
Person A goes out attempting to mine ores and meet new friends
Person A gets blown up when they thought they were safe, followed by being told rude, sarcastic disrespectful things by the people involved.

Why is it surprising that someone like this would quit? They came in expecting a fun interesting space sandbox and they ended up being the laughing material of petty adults acting childish online. I would quit. You would quit. Your mother would quit. Your uncle Dale would quit. My uncle Dale, he would quit too.

The reason why you and I don't quit when this happens is because we know this is what the game is. We expected it and therefore accept it when it happens. When griefers come for me, I joke around with them and laugh it off. That would not have been the case in my first month or two. I likely would have quit entirely if I experienced one of the typical grief experiences.

CCP needs to properly relay this information to players at the start. They essentially ignore the darker aspects of the game in their advertising platforms because they know a large amount of people will be instantly turned away from the game because of it. That is WRONG. If they want to keep this dark, borderline sociopath stuff in your game that's fine and well. The onus is on them to make sure that new players fully understand this the moment they launch the game. Hell, before downloading would be even better.

What you and so many griefers are doing here is taking advantage of the fact that CCP does not relay this information to new players as a means of getting them to signup for a month or two before they realize it and quit. CCP is wrong to do it. Griefers are wrong to take advantage of it.

If CCP ever wonders why their subscription numbers are pathetic compared to the quality of game they've created, they need not look further than this post.

I said nothing about changing the game to accomodate new players. And if you can find new players who fit in then by all means retain them, they belong here. I was just saying that Zappity is right, EVE is in many ways socially engineered to appeal to sociopathic tendencies. A very large % of the population of the world wll be more interested in playing something else rather than staying in EVE to exercise their inner demons or be the target of someone else doing the same. Those other games will hopefully appeal to those people and the closet sociopaths can have their own private sandbox here. Everything could be fine all around if those new games in the pipe turn out all right.

I am not saying all EVE players are even remotely sociopathic! I am saying that because of CCPs social engineering agenda EVE probably does have a higher than average incidence of that kind of people in its player base. And it does not take that many to change the entire tone of either a civilization or a game.

+1 great post. :)

the thread title gave me an idea.

Actually this reminded me of a thought I had.

Thinking of world PvP in general in MMOs, there is usually two sides to the coin. The side you are on, and the side you are against. In these games, you know anyone on your side is a friend - they can't kill you. So you only worry about the other side. If someone griefs you, ganks you, or is being a jerk, you could always reach out to your side to help out.

But this kind of thing doesn't exist in EVE really. When you go into low, literally everyone you see is a potential enemy. The only help you could call in, are actual friends. And even friends in EVE might not be actual friends.

Going to a gatecamp scenario. In a camping scenario in a more traditional game, you could probably ask "your side" to come help clear it out.

In EVE, what do you do? Unless you're in a corp or connections, what can you do to get a gatecamp cleared up? Nothing, really. Just wait for it to go away.

Kind of rambling, I guess. But it was just a thought that struck me.

I still think this should be handed out to every new pilot created.

Funneling noobs into the Ivy League and directing people to the Uni Wiki would also be a fairly good way to help new players find the right new player experience for themselves. Sometimes we want to be "hands on", so to speak, and take ownership of the responsibility. On the other hand, all birds learn to fly the hard way. There's a lesson there somewhere.