EVE General Discussion

No one needs to know how much ISK I have.

I'll give a near-full API, but sorry you don't get to peek into my EVE wallet or journal.

I wouldn't let a prospective employer look at my bank account.

Your prospective employer doesn't generally have to worry about you receiving payments from their competitors in exchange for your corporate theft, espionage, and betrayal. Since generally these things are illegal (or at least considered highly unethical and if you're discovered nobody will ever hire you again).

I find CEO's have an easier job limiting their roles and titles and having a good grasp of what they actually do. My rule of thumb: never apply roles to titles without the Wiki next to it in order to fully see the implications of that change. Never hand out roles, always full titles so permissions stay concise. API keys do not offer protection against :awox: per the game's actual rules and actually drawing usefull intel from them is so time consuming it impedes your enjoyment of actually playing the game. Then, try to provide content more thrilling then awoxing the CEO in his Battleship. Worked like a charm so far!

API keys however are very usefull when giving people SP advice. I once wrote a script in PHP that would crunch some API XML, which also showed some interesting data on the characters actual play time. I might get around to writing a prototype that discloses more usefull data, but I'm a little pressed for time to be using those skills for an MMO.

just because they ask for it doesn't mean they check it.

If someone really wants to get in your corp and steal and awox, they will and you can't really stop them.

That said, the API check makes it enough of a pain in the ass to do so that it at least cuts down on the instances of it happening to people who have gone through the trouble of specifically setting up spy/awox/thief accounts as opposed to someone who feels like doing it one day on a whim.

Meh, they can have mine... I have nothing to hide and it's not like they can seize my assets...

From a gaming and accessibility standpoint I agree that API checks and long application forms are completely insane. Try explaining to a random MMO player that joining a player 'guild' in EVE Online requires filling in a form, sometimes paying a fee, waiting to be approved and giving up information that would be considered private or not very important. They would either laugh or not understand why you'd want to play a game like that. Probably both.

However in a game like EVE, where the metagame is often stronger than coded mechanics, where entire alliances have fallen because of spying and backstabbing, where being the *sshole is encouraged and rewarded, it really is a necessary evil. It's needed to prevent all your hard work from being wrecked by a single person.

This is something that, in the future, deserves to be looked at and improved. As it stands right now it's not very user friendly to new players who often don't have a clue as to why this stuff is being done.

Full API checks have become redundant and more so done out of paranoia then actual usability. With the ease and profolition of alt accounts anyone who is really looking to awox or corp theft will do so on a unlinked account, something that the API can't track. Most important information about a character can be found out publically, KMs for Awox, EVEO Posts, bought characters, and corp history.

Asking for a full API just seems like a formality now in the same way limited API was a few years ago. The downfall however is it deters people from joining corps due to the hassle.

Hopefully not.

I mean, I ran a corp and the interface sucks, but I think having your **** vulnerable to where a spy can **** you over is a cornerstone of EVE and CCP should never make it easier to secure your assets or protect yourself

Agreed. I've never seen a corp, nor would I want to be in corp, that didn't require full API.


And the reason is obvious... because of the damage you can do.

While I'm not a fan of reducing that damage that can be done, it is the reason that so many people are very careful about who they let in.