"Gamers don't want any more grief"

[bhodi]

No kidding.

It references the Eve betrayal, the WoW funeral griefers, and a choice quote by Lum. Not a lot there that we don't know about or have already beaten to death on the forums, but it's a surprisingly well researched article for a non-devotee site.

[WayAbvPar]

Thanks for the link. Interesting read.

Lum, how do they contact your for this sort of thing? Is it through your publisher, or through NCsoft, or your website, or what? I have often wondered how that works.

[HaemishM]

That was an incredibly well-written article for a "mainstream" press outlet. I didn't want to stab the writer in the eye.

[Nebu]

Lum, how do they contact your for this sort of thing? Is it through your publisher, or through NCsoft, or your website, or what? I have often wondered how that works.

I think they pray for Lum intervention. 

[bhodi]

They probably ply him with bagels.

[Soln]

well, he is a Heavyhitter.

[stray]

I've dealt with a lot of silly shit in games, but you know what I consider the number one grief?

Player economies in general.

Lum talks about the solution to many problems is giving power to the community (and I mostly agree), but in this particular case, I think the community is the problem.

IMHO, there should always be prices and availabilty set for certain items and resources on NPC vendors. For the sole purpose of undercutting anyone who wants to spiral the economy out of control.

Remember. It's a game. Not an experiment in economics. People should be allowed to play the game without anyone getting in their way too much (that's the definition of griefing right there).

[Venkman]

I find the Guardian Technology section usually pretty good at this sort of stuff, insofar as translating it for the masses.

In any case, I love how player policing comes up again. Full circle eh? And what are the tools?

It's nice to talk about this shit in theory, but the implementation is the deal breaker, the reason why the more popular games get more contrived in what they allow (read: don't) players to do. The average gamer doesn't want to give that much of a shit about this stuff yet wants the freedom to not have to be some elected leaders servant.

The SEED thing (as previously discussed) will be interesting to watch, but I gotta wonder how much more relevant that role will be than, say, a SWG City Mayor.

[Lum]

Lum, how do they contact your for this sort of thing? Is it through your publisher, or through NCsoft, or your website, or what? I have often wondered how that works.

The reporter emailed me, I assume through the email listed on my blog (which comes up near the top when googling Scott Jennings, but behind some painter guy).

Edit: nope, I'm the top Google for me now. VICTORY!

[sinij]

Now next step is defining grief. I'm afraid that doing this is covered by ? ? ?  right before Profit! People will claim to get griefed by about anything that doesn't go their way.

[sinij]

Edit: nope, I'm the top Google for me now. VICTORY!

You finally high level enough to go camp Web 2.0

[HaemishM]

The SEED thing (as previously discussed) will be interesting to watch, but I gotta wonder how much more relevant that role will be than, say, a SWG City Mayor.

Or it would be if the game wasn't a steaming pile of monkey feces.

[Toast]

One thing that really troubles me about Eve is how accepted and encouraged that griefing, stealing, and being an asshole is. Being a jackass is so incredibly easily and low risk.

What's more troubling is that the community doesn't care one bit. There might be one person offering sympathy with 20 other applauding the griefer and condemning the victim. This sounds care bearish, but there should be huge drawbacks to being a criminal and a griefer, especially if these play styles are allowed by the game. Why is it so easy for known griefers and pirates to get rid of their KOS status? Why are they allowed to dock in stations and avoid easily avoid persecution?

[Soln]

Well Gate Jacking was a legitimate tactic for how long?  aye.  Eve is one big petri dish for everyone to eat or be eaten,

[Rhonstet]

One thing that really troubles me about Eve is how accepted and encouraged that griefing, stealing, and being an asshole is. Being a jackass is so incredibly easily and low risk.

What's more troubling is that the community doesn't care one bit. There might be one person offering sympathy with 20 other applauding the griefer and condemning the victim. This sounds care bearish, but there should be huge drawbacks to being a criminal and a griefer, especially if these play styles are allowed by the game. Why is it so easy for known griefers and pirates to get rid of their KOS status? Why are they allowed to dock in stations and avoid easily avoid persecution?

You're asking the question that a million old EVE players asked for years on the game forums.

It's not that the community doesn't care.  Its that the elements of the community that thought as you do left in the first year, when they realized that the leaders of NPC empire space were, basically, totally insane, and there was no way CCP was going to allow them any real control over the content of the world beyond 0.0 space.

[Big Gulp]

One thing that really troubles me about Eve is how accepted and encouraged that griefing, stealing, and being an asshole is. Being a jackass is so incredibly easily and low risk.

What's more troubling is that the community doesn't care one bit. There might be one person offering sympathy with 20 other applauding the griefer and condemning the victim. This sounds care bearish, but there should be huge drawbacks to being a criminal and a griefer, especially if these play styles are allowed by the game. Why is it so easy for known griefers and pirates to get rid of their KOS status? Why are they allowed to dock in stations and avoid easily avoid persecution?

To me, that's one of Eve's strong points, and I'm by no means a griefer.  Most of the time I don't even like PVP all that much.

Eve is a horse of a different color, though.  You're led to understand from the very beginning that this world is dangerous, and players are not to be trusted.  The entire world, including the economy, is built on this ethos.  You can also toss in the fact that Guiding Hand did what they did in a RP-appropriate manner (ie, not saying, "LOLZ, U SUK N00B!!!!11!!") and I have no problem with it.  As to why they're not ostracized?  It's because they're known to be incredibly dangerous and many people admire such a great heist/assassination.

[sarius]

One thing that really troubles me about Eve is how accepted and encouraged that griefing, stealing, and being an asshole is. Being a jackass is so incredibly easily and low risk.

What's more troubling is that the community doesn't care one bit. There might be one person offering sympathy with 20 other applauding the griefer and condemning the victim. This sounds care bearish, but there should be huge drawbacks to being a criminal and a griefer, especially if these play styles are allowed by the game. Why is it so easy for known griefers and pirates to get rid of their KOS status? Why are they allowed to dock in stations and avoid easily avoid persecution?

To me, that's one of Eve's strong points, and I'm by no means a griefer.  Most of the time I don't even like PVP all that much.

Eve is a horse of a different color, though.  You're led to understand from the very beginning that this world is dangerous, and players are not to be trusted.  The entire world, including the economy, is built on this ethos.  You can also toss in the fact that Guiding Hand did what they did in a RP-appropriate manner (ie, not saying, "LOLZ, U SUK N00B!!!!11!!") and I have no problem with it.  As to why they're not ostracized?  It's because they're known to be incredibly dangerous and many people admire such a great heist/assassination.

Don't scare me away so fast!  I'm 18 days into Eve, where the only thing I want to grieve is the person that makes me wait days for a skill now!

Making Industrial unavailable to trial accounts did make me pay on day 8, though. :)

[hal]

Eve is truly wide open PVP. Understand if you like me don't love it, at least understand where you are.

[sinij]

One thing that really troubles me about Eve is how accepted and encouraged that griefing, stealing, and being an asshole is.

I wish devs would do something about damn griefers everywhere! Today I logged into BF2 and all I wanted to drive the bloody tank but some asshole griefers keep blowing me up. Do they think the game made only for them?!

[Threash]

I don't think its griefing if the rules allow it.  Theres people in wow who roll on a pvp server then call it griefing when someone kills them.  Getting scammed in wow would be griefing, getting scammed in EVE is part of the game therefore its not griefing.

[JoeTF]

sinij: PvP vs. griefing, I think we were there a while ago.
since you're insisting then yeah, spawn point camping would be griefing in my book.

Now, back to EVE. Recently CCP seem to have changed their policies and refunded victims of an IPO scam. So maybe the Guardian author was right after all.

The EVE's world is dangerous rhetoric - I don't buy that. World of quake is much more dangerous - you die faster than your HAC reloads and there is no no-shooting zone of the size of the half the map. Problem with EVE (and any other mmorpg) isn't danger, it's lack of consequences. In a *real* hard SF, nothing would stop me from going to other end of the universe, to shoot and kill those Guiding Hand fucks, to bribe my way through officials and finally get them. Even if it would took years, I would get them and when I got them, it would be game over for them. You can run, but you can't hide.
In EVE, we have account selling and empire space bullshit. Right now problem is that victim can't do shit to retaliate or otherwise punish the griefer, while stays protected by empire space and can even sell his character and stolen goods on ebay(perfect crime, omg!*).
For a starters, let us buy intel and kill permits from npcs and tie the damn accounts with person ID. Don't have an ID, you don't play (you need CC anyway, eh?).

Dict words: griefer, griefing, npcs, EVE's , ebay, intel.

*I actually wonder when police will start prosecution such thefts (where loot gets sold for RL cash). Technically, they are even simpler to solve(logs, ah logs!) and work wonders to police statistics:P

[Venkman]

No really, it is that simple. Eve is dangerous. But it's dangerous in a way old UO truly was dangerous (and not as reported by the whiners). It sucks to get griefed, but it doesn't happen nearly as often as some think it does, at least not if you play conservatively (like don't fly shit you can't afford to lose and run at the first sign of a skull, particularly if you're in a Corp/Alliance at war).

The other challenge for players is that one's skills and chances in battle are far less defined. In some diku iteration, you pretty much know your chances in a fight based on the level you have and the equipment you wear. You know, for example, that you won't walk through Eastern Plaguelands at level 10 and expect to live to tell the tale. You could try, but the whole world is built to clearly indicate where you should be and what you should be doing at any given time. The very essence of "game".

Eve, ehh, not so much. There's no clear progression through skills, ships and space. It's not like you can expect to live in 1.0 space in a Frig, 0.3 space in a Cruiser, 0.1 in a BC and 0.0 in a BS. You don't get magically informed that at 2mil skill points you should be flying a HAC. The game provides very little direction unto itself and punishes you royally for making mistakes.

Some people accept this and do what they're suppose to (and what most do everywhere): seek out the advice of other players. Wisdom of the Crowds type stuff.

It's more immersive by far than many of the popular games, but it also is a great example to use when talking about just how much immersion people really want. Eve is too much for most (or it'd be much more popular). That doesn't make it better or worse or "advanced" or not. It just is.

[Numtini]

Eve is dangerous. But it's dangerous in a way old UO truly was dangerous

I would disagree there. Eve is far more dangerous and interesting and far far less subject to grief. I found grief era UO to be completely unplayable and I feel quite the opposite about Eve. I can't think of a single time in Eve when I was killed that I hadn't done something stupid or something risky or both.

Quite the contrast to setting foot out of the guard zone and having a shower of cor por's rain down on me.

[HaemishM]

One thing that really troubles me about Eve is how accepted and encouraged that griefing, stealing, and being an asshole is.

I wish devs would do something about damn griefers everywhere! Today I logged into BF2 and all I wanted to drive the bloody tank but some asshole griefers keep blowing me up. Do they think the game made only for them?!

Stop being retarded. Seriously.

[Engels]

What people don't seem to acknowledge about PVP in Eve is that even if your 4 billion credit megapeen gets asploded, starting up again and reentering the game is built into the system. You have insurance for your ships, for starters. Secondly, although your Laser Mark II cost you 3 million, the Laser Mark I costs a pittance and is only slightly less uber than the Mark II.

Its expensive to be top dog in Eve, and you can't stay top dog if you are griefed, that's for sure, but that's the game. That said, the game rewards the players who have played the longest. A new player with only 4 months training, even with the most expensive ship in the game won't defeat a player with 2 years of game time, even if he's flying the 'cheapo' model. The accrued skills will take eliminate the disadvantage of having 'inferior' equipment.

[Soln]

the cost of failure is very high Eve, which is why it's really punitive on newbies

but like everyone's said, the risk is distributed, so the richer you are, the more you risk

[WayAbvPar]

I can't think of a single time in Eve when I was killed that I hadn't done something stupid or something risky or both.

This is absolutely true. Every time I have lost a ship, I was doing something I knew to be dangerous. Apparently it takes me longer to figure it out though- I lose more ships than almost anyone in the corp for the amount of PvP that I actively seek  :-D

That said, the game rewards the players who have played the longest. A new player with only 4 months training, even with the most expensive ship in the game won't defeat a player with 2 years of game time, even if he's flying the 'cheapo' model. The accrued skills will take eliminate the disadvantage of having 'inferior' equipment.

In identical ships with identical setups, the more skilled (older) character will win the vast majority of the time. However, a younger player can specialize their skill path to make the most of their 5M skill points- if they are flying a t1 frigate, then all the older player's HAC, BS, BC etc skills won't come in to play.

Ship setups are also a huge factor. If a newb with a PvP setup finds an older player set up for PvE, for example, then the older player is in for a real fight.

[Toast]

The PVP gate-ganking is just one aspect of it. The lack of repercussions for Empire pirates goes with this.

Why is the Escrow system such a festering pile of scams (renamed items, etc)?

Player missions are 99% scams.

Corp theft is a huge issue. Corps get cleaned out of thousands of
man-hours of items, and there is no consequence.

Fake bookmarks to death camps.

Offering to help someone with a mission, joining gang, and ganking them.

Cargo container switching to gank people.

IPO scams.

Sure, this is the reality of the game and there are paranoid countermeasures. This begs the question, why do the players choose to live in such an asshole of a society? Wouldn't most people benefit with some degree of safety or trust allowable in the world?

I think players take the lead from CCP because this is a world where it is a suboptimal play style to not cheat. Min-maxing trumps decency (as a person) almost every time, apparently.

Regarding the BF2 example, that game has way more controls against cheating and a-hole behavior. There are actually community standards against things un cappable base camping and TK'ing. You'll get server kicked in moments for shit that is encouraged and applauded by the a-holes in Eve.

[Viin]

When talking about Eve, I think you need to seperate the assholes from the pirates. They are two completely different things.

Just because some ass takes advantage of a noob and joins his gang to "help with a mission" and then ganks him doesn't mean that everyone with a skull mark thinks that's an OK thing to do.

I agree that there's no lasting consequence for some offenses (defrauding corp, ipo scam, etc) - but I think you have those issues with any online game. Until there's a game with permadeath out there, you aren't going to find it. You can't expect the company to hold your hand and fix your problems because you aren't careful in a *known* hostile environment.

[Toast]

I think most of my complaint is that people are broken jackasses.

I'm disappointed in a game developer that facilitates and enables elevated levels of jackassery. I'm disappointed in communities that have no standards for general decency.

This is a tired old discussion, but there is just something about the anonymity of the internet that brings out the absolute worst in an already shitty pool of people. When they find that this behavior is actually encouraged by their game (ala EVE), they get even worse.

[Hoax]

Actually the fact that EvE is more "wild west" players make their own rules style I believe is a large part of its success.  If you want a game that holds your hand and soulbinds everything to your character and trivializes pvp encounters to the point that you have to go out of your way to grief somebody if you want them to go away there are plenty of options for you.

Also you seem to be taking a naive view of things many countermeasures have been built up within the community.  To get into some corps your resume will be checked some will go as far as mailing leaders of other corps you have been in.  Membership in a known pirate corp can often exclude a player from getting into some corps even if they have positive security standing.  Alliances rule their space with an iron fist and are constantly on guard against corp thieves and scammers.  Large-scale wars have been started over bad trading practices and the community keeps fairly good tabs on who is a scammer. 

On the more personal notice you can set your personal status to any other player as well as keep notes on him/her.  The more you pirate/cheat/steal/lie the more likely you are to have your cover blown every time you jump into a system by one of your ex-victims.

I think the lawless behavior is applauded to some degree because it keeps things fun, EvE isn't about whacking foozle and getting magical loots it is about surviving and thriving in the depths of space protecting yourself and making money often by stepping on others.  Every area of space has its own personal vendettas and grudges played out on a daily basis, when a new pirate group moves in the locals often will attempt to organize to kick them out.  I think I appreciate that dynamic more then the sanitized alternatives.

[sinij]

Sure, this is the reality of the game and there are paranoid countermeasures. This begs the question, why do the players choose to live in such an asshole of a society? Wouldn't most people benefit with some degree of safety or trust allowable in the world?

I don't think most EVE players want safety. There are safer games out there if it isn't your thing. Scams, random ganks and 'negative' things add to 'there to be dragons' atmosphere PvP players enjoy a lot.

Most fun I ever had in any game is when people *attempted* to jack me and *failed*.

[Venkman]

Bad Things(tm)
...
This begs the question, why do the players choose to live in such an asshole of a society? Wouldn't most people benefit with some degree of safety or trust allowable in the world?

Because they take the good with the bad. The thing about Eve is that it has the depths and heights of both. True to form, a few players can royally ruin the day of a lot of people; however, this does not happen nearly as much as some would think. It can happen though, and that's usually the biggest turn off.

Losing in Eve can hurt bigtime, particularly when insurance on ships no longer covers anything but the ships. When your components get uber, their pricetag can be pretty high.

But what you call "paranoid" countermeasures is really little more than a light version of the requirement we all have in the real world. How many times did you get suckered in by the Nairobi Prince 55mil scam or let a total stranger off the street into your Poker night or walk through the bad part of town at 3am in your Sunday Best? Games attempt to protect players from themselves and others to ensure everyone has a chance at some modicum of pre-programmed fun. Virtual Lifestyle experiences do not.

[Flood]

Interesting read thank you.


Atta baby Lum.

[WindupAtheist]

Much as I'm loathe to agree with Sinij, to an extent I have to in this case.  This isn't 1998, and we're not all walking into UO for the first time.  You knew what was up when you bought the game, so take your azzrap0r with a smile or find something else to play.  /shrug