EVE General Discussion

There's really two separate questions here

1. is it right/rational to feel bad when you lose something digital?
2. even if you do inflict a bad feeling, is it still wrong?


1. I say yes, it's fine to get upset. Something digital doesn't mean it's not valuable.
2. I say no, because everyone is in the game by choice.

So if we use a matrix of these factors we can get

Inflict Digital Bad Feeling + Wrong = hacking someone's deviantart and deleting their photoshop art

Inflict Real Life Bad Feeling + Wrong = defacing mt rushmore

Inflict Digital Bad Feeling + Fine = Logging into eve, blowing up a spaceship playing eve

Inflict Real Life Bad Feeling + Fine = Stepping into a boxing ring, smashing someone's face while in a boxing match

STFU Donnie!

Mostly what it comes down to is one group of players thinking they are playing a completely different game than the one they're actually playing.

The "Sorry!" analogy is close, but incomplete. Imagine a vast Sorry! board extending to the horizons, with thousands of people playing. Some are alone, others play in groups. Some focus on just advancing along the board, others go out of their way to knock pieces back. Both are valid playstyles under the rules.

Imagine you had a player or group of players that focused only on advancement, never knocking back. In fact, the area of the board they are in has special rules where knocking other pieces cause stiff consequences on your own. They can advance for months in peace, with only some dim idea that pieces can be knocked back, and a vague assurance than the penalties in their location prevents this from happening to their pieces.

Then seemingly out of nowhere, in spite of the consequences, another player knocks back someone's piece.

The "victim" has no idea what to do. He'd been playing what is more or less an entirely different game than the other player. It's possible that in months of play they never, ever saw a piece get knocked back and so felt the game was the kind of game where that sort of thing didn't happen. And, angered by the shattering of this illusion, he goes off on a verbal tear on the player that "attacked" his piece.




This long and drawn out analogy is pretty much what happens with hisec carebears. By virtue of playing in an environment with relatively little PvP, players can go months without having to deal with PvP. This lulls them into thinking they're not playing a PvP game, which causes them to go AFK in an untanked mining barge, or autopilot a multi-billion freighter, or run a blinged out missioning ship with no ability to tank alpha, and BAM! Huge loss all at once. Because they let themselves forget, or never knew, what kind of game they were playing.

Thus, in the interest of public service...


ATTENTION CAREBEARS!

You are playing a game that includes non-consensual PVP in every game area. If you are undocked and not a day-old newbie in a newbie system, you are fair game. Losses may occur. In the event that you are affected by player-driven loss, you have the right to remain entertained, or at least silent. Anything you say or do can and will be laughed at in a court of players. Thank you.

Good point. I mean, getting ganked at all is a questionable thing. At best you simply ignored it when reds popped up in local, hoping that you weren't the target.

At worst, you were outright afk or you were botting.

Moreso if by chance they got the pod.

Summarily, if you do get ganked, everything about it aside from the choice to press F1 on the part of the ganker, is entirely your fault. Since we're playing armchair psychoanalysis, is the desire to not have to face this unpleasant truth the root of all the hateful sentiment directed at the ganking community?

Wall street is case in point.

Offtopic:

Wait, your great aunt is called Zelda? Seriously? FKN cool points for you sir (and one for your great aunt)

I prefer stomping on turtles and squeezing down narrow pipes, myself.

Another one of these.


Well in the end, it's griefers who have some feeling that can take with them when they log out, and they can wreck someones day not through space pixels but by being a snarking ass-hat in the process.

So this "it's only in game" stuff is BS. Do they force themselves not to continue enjoying the grief they brought on when they log out? Of course not. They post videos of it instead. If it's expected that someone must HTFU for a loss of billions if ISK, then why not ask those being gleeful about causing it to grow up too? Add in any factors over which such loss was at some level of backstabbing or other subterfuge, and the matter is even more lopsided.

All I have ever asked was for some people to be honest, while forgetting that part of the sociopathy is to deny the true intentions. It's more about the lie than the deed in these cases.

But there is an upside to this. This game is a lot like the Spectral Containment Field from Ghostbusters. Remember that scene when the EPA puke had it shut down? That's what would happen to other MMOs if this game ever shut down. The owner of this game is "Crowd Control Production".

And as society continues to collapse and people see their hopes and futures die while having what they already have taken away, their last resort is to game a construct and "screw unto others" as they have been screwed in real life (but are helpless in real life and cannot screw back or undo the screw).

Yes, "Crowd Control" indeed.

And all those "boosts" to carebears - tanking industrials, concord and all that, is NOT really catering to carebears. It's to keep the schadenfreude fresh and challenging lest the griefers get bored and move on.

They, at least, are just a little smarter than drones so for those of us who would rather push these people into fire pits with a 10' pole than play with them, they keep things interesting enough.

I'm not even thinking about goons. Heck goons are not the worst of the worst either. Goons outright say what they are into and do not hide their intentions.

I refer to people who are worse than goons. The kind that have every installment of "SAW" running alongside their computer, over and over, and wear black eye shadow for no understandable reason. They are usually found in basements.


The kind that even the goons would kick out.

Yeah hard to believe that's possible.

The internet in general and Eve in particular brings out people's real selves the same way any anonymous situation does. The guy who won't give up his seat on the bus to an elderly lady when alone, but does so if he's in front of his family or friends springs to mind. We've all seen it. People cursing and flipping the bird because they are safely in their car. Eve is no different.