EVE General Discussion

Well it looks like we may be coming to the end of thread with the personal attacks and mudslinging now so I just wanted to say Thank you, 5 stars, was a great read and will read again.

Hey, it took 15 pages to get to that point. For a moronic thread posted on GD, I would say it did well to get this far. Here is your cookie for visiting, have a nice day!

*gives cookie*

Rules that can result in bans should not only be clearly defined, but enforced by the game itself. Having these evolving subjective rules posted on a web site and hoping all will read and follow them is simply non optimal implementation

If the root issue is 'wrap rookies in bubble wrap until they are older than 2 weeks' then do that in the code. Make their ships indestructible (and unable to fire on other player ships) while in hisec, make their jet cans un-lootable, issue a CONCORD warning whenever someone attempts to can loot or engage a less-than-2-week old toon....WHATEVER, but do it (and all rules) in the CODE.

The 'but people will always find ways around code' argument is just lazy programming practice. If an issue is important enough to post about and enforce, its important enough to code a rule for. Period.

Now the *morality* of popping newbs can be debated, but don't ask me to glean acceptable behavior restrictions from a frakking web page -- if its not in the code, and i'm playing an evil character in a self proclaimed 'sandbox', I don't give a flying frak what anyone else thinks of my behavior...I decide, not you.

Having strict lists of things you can and cannot do just invites griefers to find ways of violating the spirit of the rules while not technically breaking them.

For example:
Strict rule: You may not shoot players in newbie systems. If you do this you will be banned, if you don't do this you will not be banned.

Griefer: *endlessly bumps a newbie preventing them from warping anywhere at all or doing anything else* "Hey! I'm not shooting at them! You can't report me. I'm not technically breaking any rules"


Keeping things general allows GMs to enforce the spirit of the rule "Don't harass brand new players".


I agree that once a player gets their feet wet, they're fair game, and that teaching players the harshness of EVE early is good.

In other words
If a hostile ship locks a player who has no chance in a fight and they don't warp because they still aren't familiar how to do it quickly...they're too new to pop.

If that player knows perfectly well how to warp and chooses not to because they think they're 100% safe in high sec; fire away.

Confirming I am partially sighted - please feel free to CAPS LOCK at will.

Keeping things 'general' allowed dictatorships, communists, et al the ability to keep their population, store owners et al constantly 'in violation', so that based on purely whim and abstract desires a substantively innocent person was pwned as a 'criminal', because a friend of a politician wanted his store location.... Those that don't learn from the past, are doomed to repeat it, at either the country macro level, or online game micro level...

i.e. Did OP get a warning because of an objective game enforced rule, or did he annoy a newb friend of a Goonswarm exec who then got on the bat phone and called a GM to mete out some retribution? Not saying this happened, but if the game didn't deal with the situation in an automated manner -- how do we know, for any such 'general' circumstance?

All rules must be clearly spelled out and enforced uniformly by game code, not based on abstract or subjective means. If 'bumping' griefing is rampant enough to warrant enforcing against, you put code in place to detect it and provide a consequence....

Point is, you can either evolve a TOS web site and its generalized rules, having many people never know about them or read them; or you can continually polish the CODE of the game to be better each year. My opinion is to keep evolving EVE code, not fricken websites and psuedo Zar's proclamation powers.

Two week old player in a badger hauling stuff like moon reagents or capital component blueprints or something that a rookie would /not/ generally have a reason to haul (i.e. a veteran using "younger" alts with an idea that he might shield himself that way)

Fair target?

This one right here would make a pretty valid argument as to why they DO NOT draw a line and instead go on a case by case basis like they have been trying to explain in futility to a crowd that has more density than iridium. The same would go for all those day old 'noobs' who sit at low sec gates.

1. Not everyone running the SOE arc is a noob. I ran it on my main after 2 yrs. old.
2. Not all X day old characters are new players, many are alts.
3. Since when did crashing any mission space become prohibited? If the issue is noobness, does that mean I can't invade level 1 mission space? Level 2? Is this limited only to the SOE arc? If so, why?
4. Not specifying rules is an excellent way to do whatever the **** you want. It also makes it impossible to verify that the rules are being enforced equitably. That's a problem.

It sure does sound like, if this actually happened with a GM, you should escalate it. I can't think of what rule/policy could be used against you.