EVE General Discussion

Making my first post on the forums ever, so bear with me here...

I'll admit I have my faults, but seeing someone comment on a Reddit post, and the massive sh*tstorm that followed, got me thinking...

This is a game where we cannot die for good, and where the rules are pretty much removed, which gives us a lot of "creative" freedom.

Why is all of that creativity and freedom being used to harass new players? I just don't understand it.

We want this game to thrive and succeed. We want big things for this game. It's gone on a year, with more people joining and staying every year than the one before it. We have statistics that prove this.

... But do we have any that show how many have left? Or why they left? Why doesn't CCP have an exit survey for those who never finished their trial, or who subbed for a month but never came back, or who played for X years but stopped altogether?

I have in my very long Eve career seen some of the most venomous, most vindictive people in gaming. Bear in mind, I played Ultima Online back when it came out and for many years following that, and that was THE game that started the open-world community-driven content MMO genre. Eve may be more polished and may have a greater following and has lasted a HELL of a lot longer, but UO was where it allllll started kids. I remember when Lord British was murdered. I wasn't there, but I remember the ICQ messages from my guild mates telling me what happened the next day.

Even in UO where you could kill anyone you wanted and where craftiness could get you around the in-game NPC guards (Think CONCORD) after stealing **** or killing someone in the middle of town, there was a code of honor or ethics or whatever you want to call it. I am not talking about a bunch of neckbeard-stroking nerds crafting official decrees, I mean just PEOPLE who had an agreement that being dicks to one another ALL THE TIME just isn't fun. Even the PK's who'd run around Fofofofo'ing while flinging explosion potions and hurling energy bolts at new players, one-shotting them, would ressurrect the ghost of the player and give them a bit of gold. Maybe I have a selective memory, but that's what it was like.


Enough with that old dinosaur game though, let's talk Eve.

We have thousands of people online at any given time. Of those thousands we have a good portion of them who want to play the game the way they want to play it, be it exploring, mining, PVE, market stuff, production, etc. They can be casuals, they can be hardcore, they just generally don't engage in PVP unless THEY WANT TO or if they are forced to defend themselves. These people keep to Highsec, occasionally daytripping to low/null/WH space for fun/adventure or to fatten their wallets.

Then you have another huge portion who enjoy PVP, who reap the benefit of living in dangerous space and living around dangerous people, but who help one another and who actually try to make the game fun for others, while engaging in fleet or solo warfare for the purpose of fun or conquest.

Then you have the a-holes, as the gentleman on Reddit so adequately phrased it. I can see why people wouldn't take kindly to being called a-holes, but when you go around with the sole purpose of "harvesting tears" as you guys call it, it's not easy to find a more fitting name than *******.

... You guys are the reason people don't want to play this game. You are why on news posts about Eve you see comments like "I love reading about Eve, but I never want to play it". It's not always the learning curve, folks.

Yeah it makes content, these "jihad fleets" and Hulkageddon, but really, you're just crapping on the parades of hundreds/thousands of people who just want to enjoy the game they're paying a sub for, or who are just starting out.

Case in point: Destiny. This guy, a SCII commentator (Whatever the hell that is, is that an occupation these days? You mean I waste my time managing a server farm while this guy gets paid to talk about Starcraft?), decided to stream his new entry into Eve, and people camped his starting station, suicide ganking him every time he'd undock. And high-fives were thrown around, cheers were had, Jabber broadcasts were made with "DUNK THIS F*GGOT" as the closing line, etc. I read dozens of threads here, on Kugu, on Reddit, and on *other message boards* where people were actually cheering because someone was being driven out of the game, a game they'd never played.

What kind of attitude is that? This IS a game that takes pride in being reckless and rule-free (Mostly), but are we as a community going to accept that as writ and let it slide?

Then you have this guy, Daionnis. He complained on Reddit about how this game is full of assholes who love nothing more than to ruin peoples' gameplay experience. An apt observation! But the comments on his post just made my jaw drop. Not a single positive comment or really anyone agreeing with him, it was like standing knee-deep in a pool of juvenile insecurity and chestbeating. I've never been more ashamed of this community. I know Reddit's Eve community doesn't represent all or really any significant part of Eve's population, but it's still a damn shame when someone making a valid point (There is no such thing as "leave me alone" in this game) is getting trampled in the comments below him because the little children cannot bear to be called out for what they are, assholes who like to hurt people for fun.

Now, I am not calling anyone here an *******. I was just using his word. But really, c'mon. Are we as a community really that freaking self-absorbed that we cannot say "Hey, maybe purposefully ruining peoples' experience in-game should be where we stop short and draw the line"?

We had a CSM chairman literally stand on-stage and tell people to harass an ISBoxing ice miner, who had voiced concerns about suicidal thoughts in a message to him, with the hopes that the guy would actually hurt himself. (Cont'd)

You have written an excellent post and I applaud you for taking the time to put forth your opinions about a subject you appear to feel strongly about.

I wish this thread and you the best of luck and I hope that your experiences are overall positive and make you happy.

That's like going into a vegetarian convention while eating a hamburger. What do you expect when walking to the section for EvE players?

-1

Yeah lol. Hanging with some guys who are trying to set up a non kill everything in siight area in Stain. We have up to 7 perma-residing hot droppers at various times who's only goal is to annoy. They don't even drop lol.

One was today suggesting I'm a pedo watching childporn because I ignored it in local. We just ignore them but that's pretty much the mentality that CCP has fostered in its memberbase.

Few months ago NC. lured a guy recovering from cancer on the pretext he could join their alliance and blew him and all his stuff up for lols.

Another group humiliated some guy on team speak, recorded it and posted it to the general public.

Some of these people are literally the shitestains of humanity and seem incapable of separating real life from a video game and they seem proud of it.

You're equating a niche of players, however broad, to the entire community.

That's a fallacy.

Mean people will always be more vocal than the ones that mind their own business and even strive to be helpful toward others. You're doing yourself no services by projecting the action of one category of players on everyone else.

People get that this is how the game is and live with it.

And in waltz you throwing accusations at everyone indiscriminately, insulting everyone because some people have a personality you don't like.

This is why we can't have nice things.

I feel like I've learned more about the game in the 6 months that I've been playing than you have in your seven years.

And now to address the Mittani incident as you mentioned it. BECAUSE **** ME IF WE HAVEN'T BEEN OVER THAT A BAJILLION TIMES YET.

I confess, this fallacy was so horribly blatant that I just stopped reading right then and there.

Because no matter that you go on saying that those are the people that are most visible and blah blah.

You're making EVERYONE here responsible for the audience's reaction. To a guy's drunken words. At a game convention. Some years ago.

TL;DR stop playing with a-holes

The last mention I can think of is in the CSM9 summer minutes, iirc. It's usually a pretty big part in any discussion about the NPE.

Incidentally, the leading cause for people quitting is trying to go it alone and treating the game as your average content-consumption themepark game.

…and I think that's where the disconnect is: this is not WoW. What people think of as griefing and harassment is vastly different in EVE than it is elsewhere. If you start actually drilling down into the complains made about EVE and its environment, you will inevitably find that it consists in large part of people who simply had their preconceived notions shattered in regards to how they think an MMO works.

They somehow miss that this is a full-PvP multiplayer sandbox, and assume that it will work exactly the same as a PvE-centric themepark game, and when reality intrudes on them, it's a rude awakening. This is not a problem with the game or its players — it's a problem with those preconceived notions.

*Snip* Removed reply to an edited out part of the quoted post. ISD Ezwal.

>>CSM Chairman two years running (I think?)
>>Leader of largest organized group of gamers in gaming history
>>Has been featured on legitimate news publications

Yep. "A guy".

Not to give Mittens an even bigger ego for his minions to stroke, but he's the most memorable name in the entire community, and a name more non-players can easily run into if they read the occasional Eve-related news article. Especially recently.

Sorry, are we supposed to take the words THE MOST PROMINENT EVE PLAYER IN EVE HISTORY let spew forth from his mouth and just cast them aside BECAUSE HE WAS DRUNK?

Like, I know this is a videogame, but this **** happened in real life*Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal.

Would that be excusable since he was drunk?

Is there also a statute of limitations on how long ago we can hold someone accountable for advocating harassing a player to the point of possible suicide?

It's not that I hold a grudge, I wouldn't buy the guy a drink certainly, but it's not like he's some Joe Average random Capsuleer whose cheese slipped off the cracker during the Alliance Panel. That's inexcusable. It was an embarrassment to the community *Snip* Please refrain from discussing GM decisions. ISD Ezwal.

I enjoy playing this game. My characters are each specialized to their roles and each have their spots in various corporations and alliances in New Eden. I play the Meta very well as well. I pay a sub for my accounts because I support the development of the game and it's side projects (Dust, Valkyrie).

I never said I am waiting for it to die nor did I say I hope another game takes it's place, I said I am looking forward to the day the bittervets *Snip* Please refrain from personal attacks. ISD Ezwal. realize they don't have anymore carebears to harass because they all got sick of their **** and moved to brighter horizons.

Also, I am not trying to revive "Mittanigate" (Why does everything have to end in "-gate"?), that was just the most obvious example I could think of.

I'm getting some goddamn sleep. I'll see you all tomorrow.

The thing is, if they wanted to do that, they could have done so a long time ago. So the implied threat of people leaving en masse has very little bite to it. If they haven't already, why would they suddenly make a completely different decision?