Jita Park Speakers Corner

no worries, I can give and take - but really appreciate your tone.

It's definitely a worst case scenario and a bit over the top because there just is not enough information. But by playing devil's advocate and spinning the stuff further perhaps we will get some definitive answers fast that show that I just misunderstood (Edit: see Dolan's/Karidor's post).

But it really is a question of what CCP wants to do with this game. It's great as it is and does not need much change in my opinion. But if you want to open to new player segments (e.g. casual gamer) you might want to add/change stuff.

Vague clauses in legal documents encourage self-censorship with regard to in-game content (good and bad player actions alike) and will be misinterpreted the more you try to micromanage and change parts of them for the sake of individual cases - that has never been good for the overall document. So there should be a clear division between ccp vs player in contrast to player vs player interaction - and change for the second group should be introduced in the game and not through external legal documents (sry it's just RL speaking here ;) )

• Concerning player vs player interaction why not just add a warning (that one can disable) that there are very similar characters similar to what I get when I try to link chars?
• Or warnings that link to external sources where I can check players... that would perhaps even add to the game and provide a new way besides kms to get rankings (based upon trust)... sort of like an intelligence database or whatever.

*ok it's late - don't take all of this too serious*

The awful thing is talking about "no in-game way to verify"

Even for the vaunted ChrLbba, i can type "Chribba" into a text box, highlight it, right click and autolink character name and compare the bios.

It's what, seven keypresses and a few mouse clicks? If you can't be bothered to do that you're asking to be taken like a fresh prison inmate.

I generally agree, but then again the old "Charon / Carbon" contract scam is similar in that it relies on players' inability to read properly. Should those be banned too?

Personally I don't see why any form of impersonation-based scamming should be prohibited with the exception of representing yourself as a representative of CCP or its official programs / entities.

Scams reliant on clever "imitation-naming" of characters should be avoidable due to the game using legible fonts that allow users to distinguish between characters.

The more you consider these rules, both the old and the new, the less reasonable and enforceable they seem. I had supported the old name impersonation and alt impersonation rules because they did not seem "excessively" restrictive. However, upon actually considering them, and given that everything is more or less on the table now, even these original rules seem ill-placed and ill-considered.

The simplest solution is to revert to the rules about impersonating people in an official capacity in any way and just drop everything else, which never should have been in there in the first place, and which have never been clearly and consistently interpreted or enforced.

Finally, there should never be some division between something that is a violation if done "maliciously" compared to something that is otherwise alright to do. You should not be able to impersonate a GM even if you're flying around showering ISK on people. The purpose of the action should have no bearing on its adherence to the rules, given that it is otherwise not breaking the rules. The attempt to set this GM capacity to distinguish motives needs to be squashed here and now, as all actions within the game that do not otherwise break the rules are equally valid, whether that is saving princesses or stealing candy from babies. Just the fact that a GM had a distinction in his mind where "scamming" was an action that necessitated a different set of rules is extremely troubling, and demonstrates a critical failure in the GM training process for this game, where the defining feature in the rules is the blind eye turned to actions that are usually violations of the rules in most other games.

The issue with this is when you feel that verification is unnecessary -- after all, if Chrlbba is advertising his services in Amarr local, indistinguishable from "that guy you heard about who does third party trades", you're not going to necessarily go through any additional verification steps-- he looks and sounds exactly like what he's selling himself to be. Obviously, if you're looking for a supercapital broker, you won't find Chrlbba, or he won't be much of a threat, but in the case where *he* approaches *you*? While Chribba's reputation isn't the GM's to manage, this kind of scam takes advantage of quirks of the game client itself, and thus is an appropriate area for intervention IMO.

This, I think is another one of those places where there are two similar issues that need to be untangled.

There are naming similarities based on font similarities:

Chribba vs Chrlbba

and there are naming similarities based on typos (or whatever):

Chribba vs Chriba


I think font similarities are pretty clear cut, and I think that scams based on your mark not being able to see the difference between a tittle and the top of a line. I think banning them is reasonable.

Typo/whatever similarities are less clearly identifiable (i.e. how close is too close), and I'm not all that sure where I stand on it (though it's been against the rules for a long time, so I'm not that bothered by it remaining against the rules).

There are, however, problems in enforcing either ban, since CCP shouldn't get into the business of determining what the difference between a "scam" and a "legitimate" business deal is, so the rule can't be predicated on any sort of "malicious use" doctrine, and I don't think you should be penalized by CCP for wanting to name alts something similar to your main (though I think this is more an issue with the second category of similarity).

There's also the Carbon/Charon scam, the "fully fitted Hulk" contract that contains everything except the actual ship itself, contracts for selling bulk ore/minerals at 10 times their unit cost (hard to distinguish because counting zeros with no separators can be difficult), the "1m isk Navy Slicer" scam (several contracts are created selling faction frigates for 1 million isk and one for 1 billion isk, and the quickly completed 1m isk contracts appear to make the 1b isk contract legitimate and highly desirable), and the "fully fitted T3" contract that contains subsystem skillbooks instead of the actual subsystems.

You make a good point, but I still maintain that any scam should be legal as long as a player has some option available to them for determining the legitimacy of a transaction, whether they may usually think it necessary to do so or not.

So what's a useful definition of a Scam in EVE that clearly distinguishes it from "a business deal that one party regrets."

Margin trading scams depend on the mark not being familiar with the value of the items they're buying, which means that they don't know what the item they're buying is needed for. Trading should have its risks.

Impersonating, claiming any relation to or affiliation with CCP, GMs, ISD, etc should definitely be bannable. Impersonating another player via the name (i for l etc) should also be bannable.

However, if I contact a ceo or director and say 'Hey I'm the alt of the guy doing alliance reimbursements, could you let me in corp and give me roles etc' That should in no way be bannable should I happen to immediately take everything I can grab and then kill everyone in corp if they do that.

The reason is pretty simple, eve players are not CCP, Gms, ISD, etc. They are eve players and have no reason to be protected from eachother should one of them lie. Saying 'I am chribbas alt so you can trust me' and scamming a super away from someone should be fine as long as you dont use a character named 'Chribba Veldspur' or something to imitate him.

Similarily saying 'hey let me in im averagejoes alt' and then awoxing or stealing should be fine. If you dont bother to ask for confirmation and they dont do something like alter the wiki or convo you on a character named 'avaragejoe' then there should be no reason at all for any action.