Jita Park Speakers Corner

WOW...and couple of hours ago you were all in favor of the TOs

The burned hand teaches best apparently.

That of course means you jammed it in the fire.

Making a character named "Chribbe", a corporation named "SOMER Blimk" or an alliance named "Red.Frog" should definitely not be allowed and result in a rename and reversal of any scams deemed to be a result of that level of impersonation. Claiming to represent CCP employees or ISD volunteers should also lead to a ban without question. However, convincing somebody that you work with a specific organization to arrange supercapital trades or otherwise managing to convince a mark that you represent somebody that you do not in reality shouldn't result in any GM interference, at all. You should also not face potential punitive action for representing yourself from an alt even if you're scamming.

Why? Because if I was somebody like Chribba, Somer or Darknesss and wanted to go any length to protect my reputation, I'd start by listing my alts in my bio, alongside a disclaimer noting "Anybody not in he above list claiming to represent me is invariably lying and looking to scam you." All of Chribba's characters are in his personal alliance as well, which is another step he takes to authenticate his identity with other players. There is no in-game tool for players to verify whether somebody is an alt of another player, but that does not mean that they lack the means of figuring it out when they're dealing with people who take steps to protect their reputation.

tl;dr: Ban people who claim to represent CCP/ISD, don't allow impersonation through names, but don't prohibit false representation of player entities. NPC entities are a bit of a shaky area because that might imply CCP approval, of course.

Simply put, don't allow this 'rule' to be used on the victim's side.

If someone gets scammed, then it is their fault for not validating information.

However if you find out someone is using your reputation/name wrongly, then perhaps you have a case.

I'd still prefer to toss out this 'rule' in the first place, if the above situation is hard to 'differentiate'.

I'm not particularly fond of most of your post, but I do like this idea.

In EVE there is a very prevalent "tough s**t" attitude around that makes EVE a very "real" and "adult" game.

Things in EVE matter, you can pay for your account with ISK or you can buy that shiny faction ship which you will then die in a fire inside of. Many games dont have that visceral connection to your stuff that EVE has.

However I think we as a player base and CCP themselves need to step back here a bit and look at the bigger picture. CCP is using the income from EVE to fund at LEAST 3 other projects. DUST514, EVE VR and Vampires Online (World of Darkness). The game has 500k subs that took 10 years to reach, while completely terrible MMO's like Age of Conan or Warhammer hit nearly 1m and then fall off the map due to complete lack of content or whatever else cause them to crash.

The likely hood of a newer player coming into EVE, spending months / a year plus mining, ratting or trading in EVE to have 90% of that effort wiped out by a scammer is a problem for CCP. I know many of you, us, me included realize that dangers in EVE of getting ripped off are just like the dangers in life. Verify that what your doing is legit, triple check, ask 10 other people if doing x or y is a good idea etc..

However you have a huge market of sci-fi, fantasy or fps players that CCP is looking grow into EVE subscribers and DUST514 bling buyers. If they come into EVE and 4 months later get robbed of all their goods and hard work a vast majority of them will just say **** it and quit.

I know that many people think thats LOL AWESOME GJ NOOB and not think twice about it, but the reality is CCP has probably done a ton of internal investigation on what is causing new players to stop playing EVE and I am going to wager that one huge issue is the scamming that occurs in the game to newer players.

Almost every group in EVE I can think of is welcoming to new players... why? because they are as f*****g rare as a unicorn. Even when a "new player" joins your corp or alliance you cannot tell me you arent extremely suspicious of that "new guy" for a god damn year after he joined.

EVE has a major issue with market penetration. The tutorial is shakey at best, finding a good home for a new player is extremely tough BEFORE you take into account scammers, the game is hard to learn and harder to get good at and dont forget how extremely boring EVE can be if you have a new account with limited options on what you can do.

I am betting that this is just one step CCP is taking to mitigate new player losses. We as a community should be taking a hard look at how new sub's to EVE Online are treated before we get our pitch forks and torches trying to burn down CCP HQ.

Use an account-wide API key with an empty permission mask, that'll do exactly what you're proposing.

I think the important thing here is how things are worded. And that's fixed by a simple change to the language used in the ToS.

When dealing with player characters/entities, rather than "impersonation" it would be far better to word it as "Plagiarism of name".

So:

"You are not permitted to misrepresent yourself as a sanctioned member of CCP."

"You are not permitted to knowingly plagiarise the name of another player or player entity."

This totally blocks any and all impersonation of CCP folks and "name theft" of players, but leaves the door open to claiming to be someone else.

I don't think I could improve Mynnna's specific proposal in any way, but I want to talk about some possible reasons that may have led us into this mess in the first place, and some broader remedies that could possibly avoid similar fiascos in the future.

The greatest interest of both the playerbase and the enforcers is for simple, brightline type rules. Either scamming is part of EVE, and viewed as a favorable aspect, with as few restrictions as practicably possible; or scamming is bad, and prohibited in every way. The impersonation/naming policy, as I had always understood it, was not implemented because of certain type of scamming was seen to be bad, but because this type of scamming became akin to chat flooding--exploiting limitations in the UI creating an inconvenient and unpleasant game experience was the problem being addressed, not concern for the impersonatee. If people are allowed to fake other people's names and pictures with extremely similar versions, it creates a similar, uninteresting, waste of time as that seen in chat spamming. Obviously, examining someone's name on a screen to count b's and check whether i's are actually L's is extremely boring and immersion breaking, and this was the rationale I had always thought of when I knew that making similar names was not allowed. This concern for the limitations of the UI over seeing scamming as a problem was reinforced as, in my understanding, the rules were enforced in all of the above cases whether or not they were used to scam, or just annoy--which is why I believe that my understanding of the above situations was reflected in the general populace. Apparently, over time, this limited UI based concern over impersonation morphed into a complicated concern for the interests of each party in any impersonation, through a decade-long process of the 'telephone' game--or however you say that technically. Cumulative iterative error?

I believe that returning EVE to its original vision, at least the original vision as communicated to players and generally understood by them, would be to reform the impersonation sections of all relevant policies and documents back to a concern for the smooth workability of the UI, and away from these new concerns for the macro-level happenings in the EVE universe. When I GM's post about issues like these, referencing only enforcing these rules in cases of "malicious trickery", it makes me wonder how seeing 'malicious trickery' as a negative could creep into the GM department without players becoming aware of this shift. CCP cannot have it both ways: either malicious trickery is encouraged, and rules about chat-spamming and making similar names are enforced merely as a way of keeping the UI experience clear and readable; or malicious trickery should be banned completely, with scamming completely expunged from the game. Any middle ground one could find between these two areas is needlessly complex, confusing, and contradictory--I don't think I've ever seen anyone even attempt to justify occuping such a midline morass. As far as I can tell, we have merely blundered into this morass over years of gradually forgetting why certain rules were implemented in the first place, and broadening them to cover additional ground in a way which has gradually become incoherent and inconsistent.

Is there anyone at CCP who still remembers exactly why the first impersonation rules were enacted? Can we do better than say "It's always been done this way", while actually referencing only the generally unknown policies of the last few years? Secondly, whether or not the answers above are yes, can we all agree to examine this issue not from a narrow pro/con analysis of the impersonator and impersonatee's interests, but from the larger perspective of what the EVE universe is and should be? The awkward farce that occurs when we debate what the rule is and should be, without first remembering or discussing why the rule was and is, should be a powerful reminder. Perhaps what we should take from this is that these rules documents need to include an explanatory document where the reasoning behind the rules is given. If the lack of such a document is what enables the slow creep over time of these rules, only noticed when they happen to cross a fault line in the general opinion, then that is the real issue here for the CSM and CCP to hammer out.

You're disturbing the sandbox by catering to the gullible and the lazy.

(I would be convoing the artist behind the alt and offering a prize for being able to capture your chin right.)

You can also dedicate your bio, your corp's bio, etc. -to presenting known scammers directly targeting your operation. However, that's BEEN an in game mechanic you could/can use.

Priorities, CCP makes you juggle them, and is NOT here to roll out the red carpet for Chribba or anyone else looking to run a fine operation (Ex-BoBbits, I'm looking at you too). There is support for you, but it doesn't cater to the lazy.