Crime & Punishment

To be clear, the controversy over bumping is about the New Order of Highsec bumping mining ships out of range of asteroids to deactivate their mining lasers

www.minerbumping.com
http://proveldtariat.wordpress.com/

I don't feel bumping should be disallowed when the bumping is being done for a reason. (e: To me, extortion and 'within-the-EULA-harrassment' are good reasons to bump someone, as well as the more normal bumping during fights or as a way to stop someone warping off.) There are some options the pilots being bumped can take. Anslo's blog says quite clearly there are ways to stop yourself being bumped, just as there are ways to not be ganked. There is little reason to disallow something that you can defend yourself against, is there? e:then again james 315 claims none of these work but whatever

In the case of bumping for extortion, the entire point of extortion is that the extorter (is that a word?) won't give up bumping unless money has been paid. This does mean that one player is repeatedly targeting another ('harassing'), but if they had to 'just go away' after fifteen minutes or something there's no reason for the victim to pay up

You quoted me and said 'this, pretty much', but you don't agree with me at all!

I don't think the practice of bumping during actual fights is under review, though? The topic appears be be about bumping for extortion in highsec

Can it be made clearer which instances of bumping are in discussion here? 'Meta' bumping like miner bumping, freighter bumping in prep for a gank, bumping to control enemy movement in battles, bumping for extortion? All bumping everywhere? The actual bumping mechanic?

Or is this discussion about the whole 'miner bumping' player group and all their activities?

I don't really see any problem with miner bumping. Over time mineral prices will keep going up and it will all even out.

Awesome thread!


Repeatedly bumping freighters for the sole purpose of bumping them has been labeled an explolt in the past (If needed I can come up with examples)



I appreciate your clarity on the issue :)




Edit: Rule 24 - Off topic posting is prohibited - ISD Tyrozan


I really apreciate your work. You're truly adorable and my favorite dev :).

[edit] if you feel the need to punch me for no reason, please not in the face. Thank you.

The thread here is about miner bumping. It's not clearly stated by CCP Falcon in his actual post content, but it says so explicitly in the actual Subject line of the post.

Foremost: what I'm going to be talking about below is specifically with regards to the situation Benny Ohu mentioned here. Combat bumping, freighter bumping, etc. is a different situation (IMO).

I am a firm believer that the situation at hand is a social problem and should not be solved by technology. By this I mean: I do not want to see EVE's game mechanics changed in any way to address this problem. I feel very strongly that this situation needs to be dealt with by CCP by talking to the players involved and making it crystal clear that the behaviour in question is too aggressive and falls under harassment classification. I believe changing the game mechanics would upset other players (for example if bumping was nerfed in some way, or that "ship anchoring" module folks have proposed), not to mention would just cause the harassing players to find some new quirk/loophole to abuse. This is why I feel it's a social problem that needs to be dealt with by CCP via social means. I have a lot of justification bullet points for this view and am happy to list them off if needed.

It is true that there are ways to minimise -- but not completely solve -- being bumped while mining. But this does not solve the actual problem that's occurring. I do not have a problem with extortion or scamming -- these are absolutely a part of EVE gameplay and should be retained. But there is something very malicious in nature about multiple players (and likely with multiple alts -- so we're talking 5-10 characters at once, possibly more) swarming to a single system to constantly bombard a single player with demands in Local chat, inciting arguments/vulgarity, and proceeding to bump (and later suicide gank) the individual before moving on to the next person (where this can go on for 12-16 hours). Meaning: the driving force behind this movement is not financial (which is what extortion is), it is "for teh lulz" or general griefing, but on a larger scale and on a much more individualised level. Again: I am happy to provide bullet points for these, as well as reference actual situations which have already transpired.

Furthermore -- and I want to make this crystal clear to everyone reading -- wardec and bounties do not solve this problem. I have bullet points proving that as well, and like above, will be happy to list them off if asked. The fact that the harassing players operate under the knowledge that neither of these work (as a way for the miner to retaliate), IMO, is further evidence that what is being done is harassment and not "general pirate tactics" (for lack of better term).

This is something new

This has been done.

Hey Benny, thanks for the website shout out!

Anyway, I'm glad to see this thread in place. Long overdue in lieu of bumper derailing attempts. You're right though, I try to help miners get off their butts and get behind a gun and teach these people a lesson, but current mechanics just really are in favor of the bumpers here. The bumpers run 0 risk, while the bumpee takes all the risk (gank, dec, etc).

I've said it once, I'll say it again. Eve isn't TOTALLY risk free. It never will be. When miner ganking was around, miners had the option to tank to prevent themselves from being popped, or even placing logi ships in belts too. They had options. There is no option with bumping, at all. To top that off, the "blog" they have is really just a harassment center where predatory PvP'ers, in my opinion, go in, have a laugh, harass "non compliant miners," and even dec them into submission. To me, it's targeted, and that makes the whole situation even worse.

The fact is this. Eve is a game. It is meant to be enjoyed. Eve is a sandbox. People can play how they want. But when does one person exercising that freedom exercise it to a point that's just irresponsible and malicious and just really ruining someone's fun all day, every day? With great power comes great responsibility etc. Raining on someone's parade has always been an aspect of Eve, but there was always a way to fight back.

Got ganked? Tank and prevent it.
Mission ninjas? Warp out and let them get aggro or shoot wrecks.
Low sec pirates hunting you? D-scan and warp around to safe points.
Ransomed? Take revenge by slipping an alt in their corp and awoxing or jacking their wallet.

There's always been so many ways to counter what happens to you. What's the counter to bumping? Yes I outlined a few ways, but none are sure fire and are, at best, duct tape fixes. More active miners can deal with it and handle themselves, but not so active miners suffer. And this is where I have another issue.

I don't like bots. No one does. But this bot-aspirant crap is a problem. People have lives, kids, family, wives, husbands, friends, work, chores, etc. We're humans, we have things to do. The argument the bumpers use is "don't play if you can't be at the keyboard." I'm sorry but, people have things to do, they have lives, and need to go afk at times. Why should they not be "allowed to chill," as so pointed out in the Proveldtariat Manifesto? Why can they not do as they want? Why do the bumpers have the right to inflict grief on miners who may afk?

Even worse, they assume they're afk because they don't respond...when they could be on voice comms, reading something online, in another chat, multiboxing, I could go on and on.

Bottom line, this is simply wrong, and is rather detrimental to the casual gamer. Despite vocal minority decrees and shouts, Eve does not NEED to be "hard core." It's a game, let people play it. If they have to rain on their parade, let them. But don't let them so easily get away with it. I'm still in favor of an anchor module that could let people not be bumped, but impact overall tank or yeild unless they use mods to help one or the other, not both. Risk vs reward etc.

PvP and piracy is one thing, it isn't done maliciously or targeted unless it's some kind of war dec. Bumping, from what's been seen, is malicious and detrimental to Eve.

Miner bumping is a pain to the miner but they have options. They can generally still warp away and go to another belt ect.

Edit: Rule 24 Off topic posting is prohibited - ISD Tyrozan

I see several situations where bumping is featured in EvE.

1: PvP to break someone's align, move them out of dock/jump range or prevent them from Pos'ing up. No one, to my understanding, is questioning this use. This is a relatively high-skill, potentially high-impact activity that makes pvp more than just a matter of hitting orbit or manually spiraling around someone.

2: Bumping freighters/orcas to make it easier to suicide gank them. First off, it's not like they can't just be warp scrammed anyway. Second how do you fix it so that colliding with a ship in high sec is punishable without adding tons to GM workloads and/or turning jita undock into a charlie foxtrot. Additionally, the changes to stealing loot will make this substantially harder come Dec 4th.

3: Bumping miners. If you're at your computer being bumped is a manner of manually piloting to weaken them bump and you can likely keep yourself in range of your mining lasers without to much trouble. If you're afk, you're engaging in a playstyle that CCP shouldn't make easier, or support, so who cares what happens to you? Bumping active miners, aka new order bumpers, is part of the kind of crazy emergent game play that makes eve awesome. Don't get me wrong, I hate then new order. It's funny, but I have an ice mining alt and don't see why I should pay 10m isk to someone just so that they don't fly their ship into mine. Here's the thing. It's eve. You make your own fun, oftentimes at the expense of others. With the bounty changes on Dec 4th there will be a great way to punish the new order.

3: Bumping miners. If you're at your computer being bumped is a manner of manually piloting to weaken them bump and you can likely keep yourself in range of your mining lasers without to much trouble. If you're afk, you're engaging in a playstyle that CCP shouldn't make easier, or support, so who cares what happens to you? Bumping active miners, aka new order bumpers, is part of the kind of crazy emergent game play that makes eve awesome. Don't get me wrong, I hate then new order. It's funny, but I have an ice mining alt and don't see why I should pay 10m isk to someone just so that they don't fly their ship into mine. Here's the thing. It's eve. You make your own fun, oftentimes at the expense of others. With the bounty changes on Dec 4th there will be a great way to punish the new order.