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Spies, and Identity Masking
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TheFourteenthTry
Unicorn Balls
#1 - 2017-04-17 19:08:18 UTC
I have recently gotten back into EVE like many people because of the carefully planned and executed changes CCP has been making to EVE over the last few years, so first off THANKS CCP!

I also got back into EVE through watching it on Streams, and recently one of them was commenting on an issue they have. For a well know character finding a good fight or getting around unnoticed these days is not all that easy.

There is also this "issue" of corpses having no purpose other than as locker trophies.

So, what if...

you could assume the name, and show info of a character's corpse you have, by reanimating it

- Reanimate a frozen corpse
- Assume frozen corpse's former identity (not skills)
- Go kill freely, or Spy carefully

Maybe you would leave a rotten corpse with no identity if you were podded to indicate 'you' were not who they thought you were.
Maybe if you jump back out of the corpse it is render rotten as well, so there is some added penalty for switching back.
Maybe you should still be able to plug in implants, but jumping out of a reanimated corpse would destroy them

There would need to be additional cost to do this process, which could be implemented through the jump clone cost. Something like 10x - 100x more than creating a new jump clone.

Things you could do with this feature

- Hide you infamous face and go about your business unnoticed
- Gain blue rights to fly through various alliance space depending on corpse's affiliation
- Change all names in your fleets to one character making calling targets for FC's more chaotic
- Infiltrate corp's or alliance's facilities and fleets
- Move war assets veiled as blue or neutral into position
- Pretend you are Spaceship Barbie, and scam a few people without tainting your own fine name
- Pretend to be a old friend returning to EVE to fill the lonely void in someone's heart, or rob them for all they are worth



Thoughts?
Merin Ryskin
Peregrine Industries
#2 - 2017-04-17 19:29:18 UTC
No.
Cade Windstalker
#3 - 2017-04-17 20:49:58 UTC
Search function OP. Someone posted about this a week or two ago.

Among other issues that were brought up, impersonation is actually against the Eve TOS.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#4 - 2017-04-18 01:01:38 UTC
Pretending to be someone else is a no no.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs
Old Pervert
Perkone
Caldari State
#5 - 2017-04-18 15:29:54 UTC
Eve is very much a game where your identity matters - that's one of the reasons why you effectively will never be able to change your name unless it violates the TOS in some way.

Allowing someone else to smear your name, with all of its permanency, would be severely detrimental.

If you want something to do with your corpses, remember that people in space need to eat eventually... most people don't carry any food in their cargo.
TheFourteenthTry
Unicorn Balls
#6 - 2017-04-18 17:01:24 UTC
thanks for the feedback so far.

Obviously if it is violating terms of service than a feature would not be implemented, but before rolling out that reasoning. Take a few seconds to think about why that rule currently exists. Terms of Service guidelines are almost always in place for reasons other than gameplay experience reasons. Could someone link the impersonation line in the CCP ToS? (can and probably will look up myself if too annoying)

There are already spies in EVE, and they do so legally, or at least I assumed they did. I never realized you could get an account banned for identifying it as a spy. So this is a bit confusing for me. If instead the rule is solely about account protection (which seems to be valid reason for a ToS rule) than what I am suggesting doesn't break those terms at all, since no one's account would be affected.

As for it being OP, I didn't see the old thread, if anyone would be so kind to link it I would love to see some of the hurdles that have been identified already noted. I looked already for awhile, and couldn't find it

I think what most people seemed to miss is that I was calling for Spying and Impersonation. but as a game mechanics, not a emergent mechanics as they are now. Would this stop people from creating Spy accounts? no but that wasn't the point anyway. The point is to give people the opportunity to deceive/hide information with identity.

I believe the biggest OP factor of what I noted above was that a player could essentially be the new character forever. I limited timer before a reanimated corpse turns rotten could help mitigate that problem. I also think its weird that no one realized how hard it would be to actually impersonate someone using the mechanic I am discussing.

If a person logs in that is already on the server as a reanimated clone, no one is blocked or booted. The reanimated clone is not really even that new person they are still themselves, appearing as another character to everyone. But if both the pilot and reanimated self were logged in at the same time and in the same chat log (ie same system/station) than you'd probably see a spy outed pretty damn fast.

There could also be plenty of reasoning for other mechanics that prevent certain alliance/corp accesses so that it is not about robbing corps with ease, but about hiding and gathering information.

Sorry, if i am just considered poop posting at this point, but I for one think this would be interesting, and again thanks for the insights
Cade Windstalker
#7 - 2017-04-18 18:34:24 UTC
There is a distinct different between pretending to be friendly and then stabbing someone in the back, and pretending to be someone else and then stabbing someone in the back.

The TOS line in question:

The TOS wrote:
8. You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself to be a representative of another player, group of players, character or NPC entity.


And for added fun the other thread that proposed something almost identical.
TheFourteenthTry
Unicorn Balls
#8 - 2017-04-18 19:00:41 UTC
Cade Windstalker wrote:
There is a distinct different between pretending to be friendly and then stabbing someone in the back, and pretending to be someone else and then stabbing someone in the back.

The TOS line in question:

The TOS wrote:
8. You may not impersonate or present yourself to be a representative of CCP or an EVE Online volunteer. You may not impersonate or falsely present yourself to be a representative of another player, group of players, character or NPC entity.


And for added fun the other thread that proposed something almost identical.



Situation:

I am in an alliance and I start a new account and character.
I get that new character into another alliance
I send information about the new alliance back to my other alliance to help their on going war efforts


am I breaking the rule?

I think not, I am not pretending to be a NPC, another existing character, representing a character, or CCP employee.

So, again I bring us back to why does that rule even exist?

CCP employee impersonating, is about taking advantage of other player's by making them think you have GM abilities.
NPC is similar here since you could have additional manipulative control by assuming the role of an NPC

But
A representative of another player is the most tricky one to regulate. The reason for this seems that it is to avoid people saying "hey I am representing Billy, he said to trade me the minerals this week he's out of town". But shouldn't you have already arranged with Billy what would happen that week.

This part of the rule seems to me is really really really similar to spying. In the situation above I was a representative of one alliance while pretending to be affiliated to another to steal information. essentially I was falsely representing a group which is not allowed by the above rule. So is spying actually not allowed via the ToS?

I also find the not representing a character a bit weird for a game that allows scamming. For the record I got no problem with scamming.


thanks for linking that btw
Merin Ryskin
Peregrine Industries
#9 - 2017-04-18 19:50:59 UTC
TheFourteenthTry wrote:
So, again I bring us back to why does that rule even exist?


Because they don't want a situation where Bob Smith is a powerful alliance leader, and someone makes a character named B0b Smith to pretend to be the real guy and scam people. Yeah, in theory a person should be able to notice the difference, but that 0 and O often look identical without extremely careful observation. And that kind of obsessive staring at every tiny detail is not fun. Scamming/spying/etc should be about social engineering and persuading people that they should trust you, not exploiting the interface to prevent people from realizing that you aren't who you say you are.

The situation is much less obvious in the case of claiming to be a representative of a group, and IMO that part of the ToS needs to go. If you're dumb enough to trust me because I say I'm the CEO of the Caldari Navy and we need your ships for the war effort then that's a failure by you, not impersonation.
TheFourteenthTry
Unicorn Balls
#10 - 2017-04-18 19:59:46 UTC
Merin Ryskin wrote:
TheFourteenthTry wrote:
So, again I bring us back to why does that rule even exist?


Because they don't want a situation where Bob Smith is a powerful alliance leader, and someone makes a character named B0b Smith to pretend to be the real guy and scam people. Yeah, in theory a person should be able to notice the difference, but that 0 and O often look identical without extremely careful observation. And that kind of obsessive staring at every tiny detail is not fun. Scamming/spying/etc should be about social engineering and persuading people that they should trust you, not exploiting the interface to prevent people from realizing that you aren't who you say you are.

The situation is much less obvious in the case of claiming to be a representative of a group, and IMO that part of the ToS needs to go. If you're dumb enough to trust me because I say I'm the CEO of the Caldari Navy and we need your ships for the war effort then that's a failure by you, not impersonation.


I think you are wrong, CCP could care less if you can't read. and you almost sound like you never played EVE with this comment "And that kind of obsessive staring at every tiny detail is not fun. "

teasing you, sorry

but seriously the rule exists for other reasons than in this particular situation CCP actually cares about preventing a certain type of unsavory behavior. It actually seems like we partially agree, that the gameplay mechanic effecting elements of the ToS should be reconsidered to enhance the greatness that is EVE.

And again I ask is spying in violation of the ToS? because it certainly seems like it should be based on the wording
Cade Windstalker
#11 - 2017-04-18 20:46:24 UTC  |  Edited by: Cade Windstalker
TheFourteenthTry wrote:
Situation:

I am in an alliance and I start a new account and character.
I get that new character into another alliance
I send information about the new alliance back to my other alliance to help their on going war efforts


am I breaking the rule?

I think not, I am not pretending to be a NPC, another existing character, representing a character, or CCP employee.

So, again I bring us back to why does that rule even exist?

CCP employee impersonating, is about taking advantage of other player's by making them think you have GM abilities.
NPC is similar here since you could have additional manipulative control by assuming the role of an NPC

But
A representative of another player is the most tricky one to regulate. The reason for this seems that it is to avoid people saying "hey I am representing Billy, he said to trade me the minerals this week he's out of town". But shouldn't you have already arranged with Billy what would happen that week.

This part of the rule seems to me is really really really similar to spying. In the situation above I was a representative of one alliance while pretending to be affiliated to another to steal information. essentially I was falsely representing a group which is not allowed by the above rule. So is spying actually not allowed via the ToS?

I also find the not representing a character a bit weird for a game that allows scamming. For the record I got no problem with scamming.


thanks for linking that btw


There's one *major* difference here between me creating a new character and going spying and me making my character look like a character that belongs to someone else and that's that the way the game works now you're trading on no one's reputation but your own. Even if it's under an assumed name it's still "yours" and will follow that character around.

I'm not pretending to be someone else, I can't run around being a ****-head under the name of, for example, an Eve University Director and then disappear into the night and let them catch the fallout, and any attempt to do so would be punished severely by CCP.

There is nothing weird or contradictory here, and there is a *very* clear line between what is allowed in the game now under the TOS and what you and that other thread were proposing. In both cases the ideas proposed are clearly disallowed under the ToS, while making a fresh character and deceiving others as to your intentions is not.

TheFourteenthTry wrote:
I think you are wrong, CCP could care less if you can't read. and you almost sound like you never played EVE with this comment "And that kind of obsessive staring at every tiny detail is not fun. "

teasing you, sorry

but seriously the rule exists for other reasons than in this particular situation CCP actually cares about preventing a certain type of unsavory behavior. It actually seems like we partially agree, that the gameplay mechanic effecting elements of the ToS should be reconsidered to enhance the greatness that is EVE.

And again I ask is spying in violation of the ToS? because it certainly seems like it should be based on the wording


You're incorrect, if you have a character named similarly to another character and you attempt to impersonate that character then CCP will rename your character to "__________ Citizen 12345" and you'll be issued a warning against impersonating another character. The same thing has been happening recently with Citadels with similar names. CCP even disallowed special characters in Citadel names as a result. If you lose your ship as a result of trying to dock at a deceptively named Citadel you can petition CCP and get your ship back.
Teckos Pech
Hogyoku
Goonswarm Federation
#12 - 2017-04-18 20:46:54 UTC
TheFourteenthTry wrote:

And again I ask is spying in violation of the ToS?


No, the wording of the ToS does not imply spying is against the ToS.

Am I falsely presenting myself as another player? No.
Am I falsely presenting myself as representative of another player? No.
Am I falsely presenting myself as representative of another group of player? No.

Am I misrepresenting who my character/alt is and/or his intentions? Yes. But look that is not in the ToS.



"The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design."--Friedrich August von Hayek

8 Golden Rules for EVE Online
Merin Ryskin
Peregrine Industries
#13 - 2017-04-18 21:38:39 UTC
TheFourteenthTry wrote:
I think you are wrong, CCP could care less if you can't read.


Lolwut? CCP have explicitly banned the use of deceptive names like that, explicitly mentioning the difficulty in telling the difference between those similar characters.

Quote:
And again I ask is spying in violation of the ToS?


No, because spying is not impersonating another character. Seriously, what's so complicated about this? You can join a group and work against that group's interests. You can't make a character with a very similar name and pretend to be someone else, hoping that nobody will notice that you aren't really who you say you are.