EVE General Discussion

I understand that there are people who would never scam, grief or blatantly be a total ass, even in a game.

But you have to understand, this game is by design allowing you to do just that and CCP makes no secret of that fact.
As soon as you know that this game allows these things, you have to make a choice for yourself.

I have no doubt many people left because of what this game allows, some accept it for what it is, for others it's the entire reason they play this game.

Everything you decide in this game has a risk attached to it, even trusting someone who has been your friend is a risk.

When you log in, you automatically accept the consequences this may have.

Fixed that :)

Every corp theft I've seen was the fault of the corp allowing someone access to assets they didn't need access to.

OK, this is part further musing on the subject, partly indirect response to Malcanis' comments on my last post, partly in response to some of the other posts here.

Someone made the argument that people are just roleplaying space asshats. Of course many are, but it's also pretty obvious some aren't. It's just that the rules that allow people to roleplay space asshats also allow people to come into the game not respecting the roleplaying/simulation aspects of the game, but using the ability to do virtual evil with the deliberate aim of hurting other players, not as part of the game, but rather as standing aloof from the game - e.g. mocking the "seriousness with which they take their pixels", for instance.

But if you don't take your pixels seriously, why the **** are you playing a game that gives you so many pixels designed to make you feel as close as possible given the current state of entertainment technology, that you really are flying a spaceship?

This game has a creative tension between being a simulator and a game. The simulator side of the game is supposed to draw you in, and fool your brain momentarily into believing that the pixel spaceship is a real spaceship, that you really are flying through space in star systems, jumping through gates, docking at space stations, building things, equipping your ship, etc., etc. Of course you're supposed to take it seriously, taking it seriously is part of the game. It's nothing to be ashamed of, it's something to be proud of that you have the imagination to immerse yourself in such a way.

On the other hand, the game side of the simulator puts certain constraints on just how much of a simulator the game can be. Obviously there are many more things that could be done to make the game more "realistic", including some representation of being able to track identity in a high tech society (e.g. it's nonsensical that a high tech society such as represented by New Eden wouldn't be able to track pod pilots and their "crimes", and largely prevent them); but they would make the game more sluggish and less capable of providing jags of entertainment for average playing times (an hour or two or three) - and not just one kind of entertainment, but several kinds, several ladders of achievement, ways of interacting with other players and competing with them.

Now one aspect of the gamey side of EVE is that it's a game of consensual hurting. Like Boxing, or S&M, it offers a way of hurting people that's socially sanctioned, but in a manner that has almost zero serious RL consequences.

That hurting is part of EVE. But it's also tied in with the simulation side. There would be no "hurt" for someone who didn't take their pixels at least a bit seriously.

So you can't have it both ways. The worst type of response to all this is to say "lol dude takes his pixels seriously". That's a cop-out. The other person is supposed to take their pixels seriously, as are you. If there's no taking pixels seriously, there's no hurting, and there's no game of EVE. The "sport" of it is to hurt and be hurt, but if you're hurt to take it on the chin and recover quickly, and if you hurt others not to cross the line into griefing.

But that's also why there's no game of EVE when someone plays it who doesn't take the pixels seriously, but who's in it just to grief people for laughs using the medium of the game.

So Malcanis, are you telling me you don't recognise the difference between someone playing EVE, with all its consensual hurting, on the one hand, and someone being vindictive and gloating, and just taking advantage of the happenstance that the game rules for the consensual hurting have to be such that very little can be done to prevent griefing, on the other? Are you saying you've never encountered the latter type of behaviour in-game? If not, then you're just lucky. Or maybe you just joined EVE a long time ago.

But I can assure you, the griefer does exist. They come to EVE like flies to ****. They started coming a few years before I joined (2007) as they got wind of the possibilities EVE offers to griefers (I've observed EVE for longer than I've played it). And the trouble is, more and more of them come. They don't last, but they do muck up this glorious game/simulation for everyone else - they detract from it, they are bad players, bad sportsmen - not even sportsmen.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, their money is as good as anyone else's - CCP just has to strike a balance between sticking to loose rules that happen to also allow griefing, and tightening them up so that the lucrative casual players aren't totally put off, and some of them can get into the game on their own terms - including making allowance for the consensual hurting.

PLEX is a part of the sandbox. Prove me wrong. Maybe in another thread so this one isn't derailed from its retardedness.

When I sit down to a game of poker with friends, we are all playing poker.
If I am playing a game of trickery and deception, then I will trick and deceive.
It’s a game and we all know that. Are you good enough to play with your peers?

Eve is different games to different people and all have their own peers in game.
If you want to lord over someone not playing your game, then you set your goals low.

I participate in this game with other players who play the same game as I.

It is ludicrous to hear “Oh.. I’m role playing a bad guy and just blew up his stuff and set his dog on fire then he quit the game and cried.. but I’m just role playing man.. I’m not like that really.”

What a load of crap.. yes you are. Can we say denial? Oh lets drag psychology into it or religion or dogma or feng shui if you want to but it’s still just crap.

Eve will let you be as big an ass as you aspire to be but be real.. take responsibility for being the ass you aspired to be like a great big grown up or stuff a sock in it before someone thinks you’re just simple. It’s not like we don’t have a whole flock of them already in this game.

I respect people who play the game, however harsh they wish to play, but not the ones who hide behind it. My children know that.. why do some of you not?

not everyone thinks like that .. but the problem is that what you are up against is the more vocal forum bunch are hardcore sandbox (amoral) proponents - and they will shout you down.

I mostly leave miners alone these days.. but back in my null sec youth I strickly defended our home space.. meaning that even lone miners were ruthlessly shot down if they trespassed.. I do remember one miner however that came into our space for whom I offered the option to join one of our sister corps in order to stay and mine. but when you realize that all aspects of eve are governed by pvp you understand that an attack is the sole form of enforcement you really have.

this said there are all kinds in the game and many I suspect were the school yard bullies, the kids that pulled wings off of insects or shot be-be guns at dogs and other pets... who gank and kill because it's "fun" to cause pain. these folk will never be convinced they are wrong in the way they "play" and ultimately finding a way to hit them back may be the only thing you can do that may discourage their behavior in any way.

you choose who you want to be in eve.. for many that means choosing to be the under-crust of eve humanity.. how you play when all others around you are corrupt is how you measure personal honor and integrity. find principles you like and adhere to them but don't expect others will adopt them.

Perhaps you should look at who originally created EVE and why. EVE was very much designed to allow scamming, ganking, piracy, theft and so on. It was a deliberate design choice, not an oversight.

I mean ffs, CCP even recently put out a advert specifically advocating corp theft within game, and others show piracy, there's a thread started by a Dev in the new players section about scamming.

Yeah, no: you're flat out wrong.

Of course I recognise the difference, but I attach different weights to that difference.

A few points:

(1) Why does it matter so much to you who destroys your ship? What difference does it make if you got popped by a perfect gentleman or a total asshat, other than to your pride?

(2) I've met (and flown with) some of the so-called "asshats". They're mostly extremely nice, helpful, usually very generous people. Most of them aren't teenagers; they have jobs, families, lives. They've simply divided EVE into two groups: a small one of people they like, and everyone else who is fair game, because that's the way they want to play. Does that make them "asshats"? If so, then I guess that makes me one too; I nailed my colours to the mast here where I explain that mindset.

(3) In my experience the "asshat" labelling is at least as much a childish ego-defence by the guy who just lost his ship as it is anything to do with the kind of person who just killed it. "Oh yeah well maybe you just killed my faction BS and looted the X-type mods but AT LEAST I'M NOT AN ASSHAT". Yeah, whatever, buddy, they just won, you just lost. Yelling like a kid on the playground won't change that.

(4) The "sadist" who "does it for the tears" thing started around 2005-2006, so far as I can tell. But it wasn't because there was a particular influx of "griefers", it was because there was an influx of players who were incredibly, ignorantly, extravagantly, hilariously pissed off that they lost a ship. To the existing community for whom ship loss was a daily reality, these people were simply ludicrous, and how else could they react but with (initially) benused amusement and later by baiting these drama-queens into further histrionics. And of course the meme grew and metastasized to the point where it's the bedrock of discourse on these forums these days; simply disagreeing with someone is enough to elicit the "om nom tears" response. New players jumped on the memewagon without understanding where it arose and you have what we have today.

(5) I have never been "griefed" in the sense that no-one has ever done anything to me in-game that has caused me grief. Some of the things that have happened might qualify as griefing to some people, but for me they're part of the game. Additionally, whilst I suck a bag of dicks at PvP, the one great advantage I have decided to grant myself in EVE is that I play the game as it actually is, rather than as some imaginary version of it that might suit me. The practical upshot of this is that I strongly limit the scope I give for other players to "grief" me. Whether by never autopiloting a hauler full of T2, by making sure I can get my stuff out of a conquerable station, by only lending ISK and assets I can afford to lose, to maintaining opsec when I'm moving valuables or doing something lucrative, by reading contracts carefully, by always using a scout, by not fleeting with people I don't trust, by making sure that my capital is always the fleet owner when I have to jump to a cyno lit by someone else, making ping spots, etc etc etc. In short: I accept that EVE is a game where carelessness and ignorance are extremely dangerous, and I make considerable efforts to mitigate that danger by not being ignorant or careless. And finally, when I do lose a ship, I work out what *I* did wrong to allow it to happen, and make sure that I don't do it again. Or if I have to do it again, to do it in a cheap ship I can afford to lose.

As you might expect, herefore, I have very little sympathy for people who don't make these efforts, who refuse to accept the game as it is, who insist on trying to play an imaginary version of EVE, and then cry about how they've been "griefed".

You keep stating that humans are like animals and our instincts are ancestral remnants, but I can't think of any animal that tortures and kills for the sake of enjoying the suffering of another animal. So I'm failing to see how this even relates to the human enjoyment of someone's suffering.

I love that "prove me wrong" stuff.

If you run out of ships....and re-ship by simply running some plastic through PayPal, you turn the game from a sandbox to no more than an arcade shooter.

If you don't mine, mission, ransom, loot, manufacture, etc., you're not indulging in the 'sandbox' that is envisioned. Any fool here with some real world liquidity can replace ships with real money.