Crime & Punishment

Throughout this thread, I've heard the plaint repeated by miners that "These bumpers are infringing on my game play". But what about MY game play??

As a new player, I recognized early on that there were two distinct paths I could take: I could become a combat pilot to blow things up; or, I could become a miner/industrialist to make ISK. I realized each path had its trade-offs: fighters were a blast to fly, but they were expensive and took ages to skill; miners/industrials were lucrative and easily skilled, but vulnerable. I weighed my options, and found it so hard to decide between the two that I made what was to me the most obvious choice.

I did both, by creating two accounts.

The result is a symbiotic relationship that should have worked quite well. The first character is an industrial toon that can mine, refine, and manufacture to support the expensive needs of the second. That second character is a combat toon that can rely on supplies from the miner, while providing protection against infringement of resources and retaliation for attacks on the more vulnerable character. This should have led to a production surplus that could be traded for-profit on the open market.

Yet every time I get close to reaching this goal, I get derailed. That'd be fine, if it was the result of the cagey, inventive play of others, but it never is. Instead, it's the result of endless petitions and forum posts.

Five obvious alts in Macks show up in my system and start ripping the belts to shreds so fast my lone miner can't compete. I weigh my options, and decide my response should be to bomb up my fighter and blow them away. Right?

Wrong. It's not 'fair' that my inexpensive catalyst should be able to blow up expensive exhumers. I don't agree with this argument, since it dismisses the steps I took to prevent this from happening to myself, and devalues the training time and practice invested in my combat toon to provide both defense and payback. I'm apparently wrong, though, and Concord responses are shortened to protect miners who feel they shouldn't have to either protect themselves or enlist others to do it.

I learn to live with the greater threat from Concord. My ganking gets better and more efficient as I pile more skills on my fighter's queue and sacrifice more ships to honing my tactics. It's costly both in time and ISK, but I can still exert some control over my access to resources.

That's not enough to satisfy the five-miner-alt guy and those like him, though. They engage in another round of petitioning and forum debates. They have no appreciation that my continued ability to blow them up has little now to do with the ship I'm using and everything to do with the HUGE skill investment I've made in the toon that's flying it. And I know it's multiples of the investment they've made in their miners, because I have a miner alt myself. Their arguments seem patently absurd to me.

I'm wrong again, though, and the reward for their campaigning is that not only are their exhumers made even harder to pop, they're equipped with ore holds that make it even easier to mine without their input. They add more ships to their strip mining retinue, making it even harder for me to compete.

Once again, I weigh my options (and by now, I'm wondering why I seem to be the only one who has to do this!): I can enlist the aid of others to assist in blowing these people up - this requires close co-ordination, greater expense, and exposes me to the risk of betrayal; I can ship up to a larger gank-mobile - this requires another HUGE investment in skills and multiplies several times my cost to solo gank them; or, I can use game mechanics and bump their ships out of the way in the hopes of cutting in on their mining cycles and getting in some of my own. On my part (AGAIN on my part), there's more effort, more selective skilling, and even more interaction required, but ultimately it's the most reliable and cost-effective solution for me.

Not if they get their way once again. My bumping might be considered aggro. This would make no difference, since their ability to attack me would be of no use to them anyway. No, such a stop-gap measure would lead to another round of protests, and they'd only be happy if bumping was bannable. And what would that leave me? "Move to losec," they say, "where that kind of thing is acceptable."

Right. Once again, I'm the one who has to adapt, I'm the one who has to HTFU, I'm the one who makes the investment, and I'm the one who'd better be right on the edge of my seat in order to protect myself. And all this so that they can essentially click 'Mine' five times every 40 minutes or so, then do whatever it is they do while they're totally oblivious to the 'game play' that they've fought so hard to defend.

Changing the policy toward bumping would, in my mind, be a change to a dynamic that DOES work (but only just barely) to mitigate several dynamics that clearly DON'T, as a result of this habit of repeatedly bowing to pressure from petitioners and forum posters outside of game, who refuse to compete in-game.

Bumping is not an exploit. It is a game mechanic. What James 315 and minerbumping .com has turned this mechanic into an exploit to harass players he views as playing the game in a manner he does not like. His targets are players that prefer to spend their time in the game to mine resources. There are no other targets.

Definition of Harassment: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harassment)
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behavior intended to disturb or upset, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is intentional behavior which is found threatening or disturbing.

New Order claims to go after AFK and bot mining. There are plenty of screen shots on their site that he goes after all miners. “Mining Permit” is not a game mechanic. It is not something CCP offers on Eve market. It is a tool invented by James 315 to justify the harassment. He is not CCP. He is a player of Eve, customer of CCP, like everyone else in this thread. If CCP does not like AFK mining, they will put an end to it. Creators of the game are the true judges, not other players. This thread would never exist if “minerbumping” was practiced in low/null sec only. Any players that play the game in low/null sec has accepted a very high rate of interaction with other players that is not “Carebear” style. Those that want a very lively game will go to these systems. Those that want to play Eve in a vanilla style, stays in high sec.

I believe this is a social problem that CCP needs to fix at the customer level, not the game mechanic level.

I've read the website, and had one on one conversations with followers of the site. I noticed I'm on it as an example of one that does not follow their views. Take the content of the site anyway you want, bottom line is James 315 is using a game mechanic to harass other players that is playing the game in a fashion he does not like.

You're entitled to your opinion, as is everybody else.

In this case my own opinion, and that of a lot of others, disagrees with yours, and that of the other people who think that what James is doing is wrong.

I have heard about the bumping of miners, sounded interesting so I just bought a retriever in jita and headed for kamio, 81 in local, I hear its quite a hub but I have yet to encounter any of the new world order bumping me or any of their ridiculous demands.

I figured they would have every hotspot camped down, I have to go out of my way find them 20 jumps in the one system they are camping.

The universe is realy dammed big, if people are looking for a way to avoid them that is even more passive and effortless then all the other ideas proposed, just fly somewhere else, a different hub, maybe not a mining hub.

Over all, this seems to be a non-issue, it makes things at most mildly more interesting. When is the next ice interdiction?


Update: made it to abudban, still no bumping, some jetcan has jameswhatshisname15 on it but little chatter local and no bumping.

This is one of the major problems with miners. Instead of using the same tools available ingame to mitigate the risks, they beg CCP to make the game easier for them or threaten to unsub. This has happened over & over again. Continual buffs to make it safer for them while everyone else has to adapt. I believe it's time that the miners adapt to changing circumstances for once & as a result, enjoy EVE for what it is: A dark & harsh world.

If someone wants to mine all day then fine, but they shouldn't do it with the expectation that no one will interfere with them. If they're interfered with, instead of threatening mass-unsubs they should adapt to the situation at hand like many others already do. During the last hulkageddon I came across many miners who used their initiative to make gank attempts against them unsuccessful, but I came across even more that just outright quit EVE over it & that is the wrong line of thought for this game. Then there was the miners begging for a higher tank capability. They eventually got it, but I rarely see Mackinaws with tanks equipped.

It's about time CCP stops catering to the lazy players with this sense of entitlement for fear of losing money. These aren't the people making the game better, these are the people wanting you to turn EVE in to a game that is like most other MMO's.

To play any game, you must consent to the premise that your actions alone will not determine the ultimate outcome. Player A chooses to make Decision X in an environment where Player B can choose to make Decision Y. Likewise, Player B chooses to do Activity N in an environment where Player A can do Activity M.

EVE is a unique gamefield, where one player can basically be a ballerina and another one can be a sumo wrestler. One player can be a brain surgeon. One can be an arsonist. One can collect seashells and one can go fishing with dynamite. It may be true and unfortunate that arsonists have certain advantages in this gamefield, and it may also be true that the proprietor of the gamefield has a vested financial interest in making seashells valuable and dynamite expensive. At the end of the day, though, you knew what you were getting into, or you do now. The question is: Is it fair to make everyone wear a tutu just because some sumo wrestler sat on YOUR chest and lit YOUR face on fire?
Think about it.

For one thing, hardly any agents of the New Order are, or have ties to, goons. For another, no-one has yet explained how bumping is bad for the game; they've only explained why it's bad for me, which is the highest level of in-game society that many highsec miners are prepared to care about.

How is it bad for Eve, not for you (they're not always the same thing), that we use game mechanics and extortion tactics that are, and have been for many years now, acceptable gameplay?

And at this point we will see these "protection rackets" in unrestrained "gang wars" blowing up each others ships, having to buy new ships and fittings, and stimulating the economy, all of which is GOOD FOR THE GAME. Yes, a massive scale high security gang war would be an amazing time to be an industrialist. Think about it -

Mining in some backwater high, low, and null systems, producing goods in a POS or a station, shipping them to the battlefield in a blockade runner, and slowly raising prices and limiting supplies. Man, you'd make a killing.

Hmm. Mining with no skills is a stupid waste of game time.
Skillful mining is not a waste of time.
The time invested in maxing out your mining skills for either the Orca or Hulk is substantial and the cost of the implants to top those skills off is in the billions at this time.
The return for the time and isk invested in Max mining skills and implants/ships is the ability for a single individual with two accounts to pay for both accounts using plex earned from mining, provided enough time is spent in game. Such players are generally not interested in pvp and CCP knows this. Else they would not have included mining as a profession in the game and just made Ore available on the market for manufactures to buy at fixed prices.

Mining ore is the base of the game economy. No ore or ice means no manufacturing etc . The economic ripples are game changing. (No pun intended)
The generally passive activity of mining is essential to the game. For most miners it is marginal in income until the much higher skill levels are reached.

So, YES, it is a fact of life miners unsub rates are higher than any other group or style of player in the game and if that rate climbs the game is negatively affected. CCP income is affected so they take action. Or had you not noticed the last "balancing"?

Honestly, stop with the hand wringing and panic about potentially losing your clever exploit of a game mechanic. Since this exploit of existing conditions of permitted play also has the potential to severely affect the entire game if left unchecked
then the liklihood of CCP addressing the situation is very high.

Mining in HiSec is a marginal profession at best for most players, or a major investment for others. Disrupt it sufficiently and lower skilled minerplayers will leave the profession and possibly the game. And higher skilled and heavily invested players will simply withdraw from the game entirely since their enjoyment is ruined.

HiSec was not created to be a totally safe sandbox. It was created to be a safer sandbox than low or null and even then has degrees of safety built in from 1.0 to 0.5.

HiSec was also created to allow even the passively inclined player have a place to learn about Eve and be persuaed to invest real dollars and personal time in the game. Is CCP ready to abandon that market share of the gamers on the net? Is CCP so socially naive as to be blind to the affect uncontrolled protection rackets can have on a society, especailly and artificial one Like EVE?

The disdain aggressive players have for "carebears" is foolish. They are an essential segment of the player base and the game economy depends on their predictable and steady production.

So enjoy this kind of extortion while you may. But please, stop with all the self justifications. They aren't necessary. What bumpers are doing is perfectly permissible currently. However if not corrected by CCP eventually more and more players will get involved in bumping and fewer and fewer players will be involved in mining. It is a social inevitablility. And, as in real life it will ulitmately cause a huge economic disruption, both in the game and of the games viablity in the pc gamer marketplace.

It might be interesting to start a pool betting on how long it will take CCP to make some kind of adjustment. Or alternatively, how long will it take for the application of this exploit to cause visible effects on the games economy. Maybe use the benchmark of Trit hitting 10 isk?