My EVE

Good read, would read again.

Excellent read.

This whole fiasco is what happens when you start banning people with "common sense" and no actual rules, investigation and reasoning. "common sense" is the thing that tells you the sun goes around the earth.. not a very accurate tool to do anything important. Also judging from CCP's past and present behavior it does not seam they actually have a lot of it in the first place.

I mean the only good thing they ever did and what made EVE the game it currently is, is when they DIDN'T ACTUALLY DO ANYTHING and let the sandbox on it's own. If they start to deconstruct this single success story of no intervention by banning with "common sense", I hope they realize that they may actually kill off the only cash cow they currently (and probably for a long time) have.

An MMO is a hobby where you invest a lot of time and sometimes even a lot of money. If you have to play in constant fear that CCP may revoke your access to your hobby for a personal whim, how likely are you to continue or even expand your investment in that game?

I bet there are a lot of people who think killing off miners in Highsec should be a bannable offence. So all they have to do is employ one of them as a GM and it's good bye, bannhammered because I had the wrong "common sense" of what's acceptable.

Not even close.

*Snip* Removed reply to an edited out part of the quoted post. ISD Ezwal.

Second, I'll bet every last isk and real life cent I had that Drago didn't read a word. That article applies to everyone playing EVE, carebears and BUs alike. Not reading it not only automatically disqualifies your opinion on the subject, but it also disqualifies you as a caring and contributing member of the EVE community. The same community that EVE truly thrives on.

Without that community, EVE dies. To oppose that community, by virtue of ignoring it, you take an active role in killing it.

What's that you say? EVE won't die, it'll just be more carebear-friendly? Then it won't be EVE anymore, hence, EVE will die.

And finally, do you know how I can tell he didn't read it? Because it's not as simple as 'keep it in game'. The article explains why and leaves no room for uncertainty on the issue, that issue ironically being uncertainty itself. Are you sure you've never been in a chat in EVE where something untoward has happened that someone might define as 'psychopathic behaviour' just by virtue of not liking it? Are you certain you cannot be held in association with unliked behaviour?

Because that's what it's boiling down to.

What a big surprise! A rack of unsubstantiated accusations, unfounded declaratives and a collection of
worn and trite hyperbole! It's not surprising such outstanding journalism would find it's way onto the Mitanni site
(such a venerable venue that it is!)

Nothing here. Move along.

You should consider actually reading it.

By this definition, EVE is RL too.


Anyway, as for my 2 cents, while it's a bit long it provides value in that length by being an excellent article to bring anyone up to speed if they don't remeber the details of the various ways CCP has screwed up over the years.

So that's what happened to Darius III
As I recall he was just down the road from where I used to live.


Anyway, since this is such a sore point, what would be a better solution?

We know that if CCP tries to come up with specific rules, people are going to game that and the rules will grow and grow and grow. Need an example? The federal regulations of the USA with over 200 years of "lawfare" games behind it. Do we want to go there? Those books are very very thick now and to do anything of significance that deal with these regs you need to hire lawyers.

A 4chan style anything goes without rules approach will devolve into every player who is not crazy or is over the age of 12 feeling like they are logging in to babysit.

What would be the middle ground then?

IMO a kind of jury system might help - provided that the jury can "judge both the case and the law" meaning that for a specific case or incident the jury can toss the laws. Think of it as a pirata codex which are merely suggestions. But who would be on this jury? The peers of the player and I don't mean their corp/alliance. That is, I would not put a carebear's case before highsec wardeccers or put carebears on the jury of a griefer. (This is what fails in RL jury systems, actual demographical peers of a defendant get weeded out first now and then two legal technicians play a game of "who can dupe the jury better")


Sounds tedious and I don't think anybody is going to like getting hit up for jury duty either. Can you imagine what that would be like? And because of what? See option 2, feeling like we were babysitting.

The system we are having now might be the only way. But how hard is it to check with the petition system to find out ahead of time of some activity is bannable or not? Would that work? Or is there too much liability on getting a pass in writing now that the next employee might overlook or override later - and that situation would erode the system terribly.


Guess I can't think of a way to solve this. We all know what's at stake here. Maybe this is only an issue because the game is stagnating.

Rubbish. There are things called books, of which I have many and enjoy reading. I also enjoy reading opinion pieces in the NY Times, which can consist of up to 7000 words or more.

One reason why books and NYT articles are worth reading is because of a thing called editing. Editing cuts out the verbiage. After reading 12 paragraphs of James 315's article it was clear that it was poorly written and unedited, and therefore not worth reading.

Also, you should not be doing :this: in any post complaining about other people's writing assaulting your eyeballs.

Btw the article was only a 10 minute read. Have EVE attention spans fallen that much?

Very good article, if too long.



Very much this! The article raises a lot of problematic questions.

I do not see why CCP cannot post somewhere "Toon(s) X was banned for Y". CCP state they cannot prescribe all the rules but clearly communicated actions done ASAP after the fact enables ppl to discern where the lines are, given it is impossible to clearly draw them. This is only fair.

"Aaah, but it should be common sense" No, we come from different societies with different cultural norms. If you come from Call of Duty instead of Wow you will have very different expectations of what is reasonable on voice comms in a video game. Or on voice comms outside a video game. e.g. to me, singing ransoms are far worse than comms raging -- ppl rage then get over it five minutes/a day later, but to me the burn of singing for a ransom would be a hundredfold worse. Then again, ppl who are willing do karaoke or fancy dress *) vs those who never ever would (me) will never understand each other.

Anyone with any knowledge of sociology, semiotics or physics knows "Common sense is not so common." (Voltaire, Dictionnaire Philosophique) and arguments relying on it are indefensible and probably disingenuous. Having worked for a global web company with a large customer care team, they cannot simply go "that's common sense soz" and ban paying customers without telling them why. You cannot punish a dog or a child without telling it why.

"Aaah, but this prevents rule-lawyering" No, CCP correctly reserve the right to lay down and revise the laws as and when they please.

Don't get me wrong; I do not endorse the actions (or understand the motivations) of the vast majority of players mentioned in that article, I don't know any of them and have never flown with them. I do sympathise with CCP's difficult position and recognise this is a tough job. But it would appear ppl got permabanned for nothing which leaves a real sour taste and makes me disinclined to be a part of this enjoyable game much more than the actions of those players.

CCP policy here is demonstrably inconsistent, confusing, unreasonable and ineffectual but -- if the policy is the way it is for e.g. legal reasons, then if CCP just said "Hey it's for legal reasons" we could say "OK then" and respect that. But the way it has been handled sees CCP repeating the mistakes of the past, and I hope they fix this situation, both for the benefit of the playerbase as a whole, and Eve!


*) = *Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.