My Loot, Your Tears

With the recent completion of the 3rd installment of the Hulkageddon last month, @CyberinEVE, author of Hands Off, My Loots!, asks: “Griefing is a very big part of EVE. Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming are all a very large part of the game. What do you think about all these things? You can talk about one, or all…but just let us know your overall opinion on Griefing, and any recommendations you may have to change it if you think it’s needed.”

Now, normally I don’t do the Blog Banter competitions, because, well, I’m lazy. However, seeing as I’m one of the “public faces” of the hi-sec Griefer scene, I’ve gotten about a dozen requests for my thoughts on this.

Most of the responses I’ve read to this Blog Banter have actually ignored the question entirely. Instead of posting their opinions on Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, Trolling, and Scamming, they’ve posted pages of text about how none of these activities are “Griefing”.

So I’m going to do something similar and ignore the actual question. Instead, let’s talk about words and what they mean. I’m thinking of a particular word: Piracy.

When an Eve player self-identifies as a Pirate, you know EXACTLY what he’s talking about: A player who hangs out in lowsec, looking for “good fights” against other “Pirates”. Sure, once in a while a foolish carebear stumbles into their domain, but for the most part Pirates are merely engaging with consensual PvP with other players of the same class. I’m not knocking it because I know it can be fun, but piracy it ain’t.

Being a pirate means preying on the unsuspecting, the weak, or the foolhardy. It seems to me that Ninja Salvaging, Suicide Ganking, and Scamming would fall neatly into the definition, while e-honor “good fight!” piracy would not.

So we call ourselves Griefers because our actions cause grief, not just as a byproduct but often as a primary objective. The truth of the matter is that a better term for us would be pirates, but that term was hijacked by low-security PvPers who had no real reason to use it. Folks are trying to deny us the title “Griefer” because our actions are within the intended mechanics of the game. This is missing the point entirely.

I understand the confusion, since in most MMOs, ruining someone else’s game is out of the question due both to rules and the game mechanics. In Eve, the universe is such a cold and unforgiving place that such behavior is not only allowed, but is required by a certain segment of the population in order for successes in the game by the law-abiding to have any meaning.

We’re Griefers. If you come up with a better title for those who prey on the weak in Eve, I’d love to hear it.

From my most recent exchange with GMs:

As we have stated in our replies, what you are referring to is not an advertised or supported feature. It may, at our discretion, in the future be declared an exploit. Current available information indicates that this is not as it should be, until we have more information we will not be announcing anything nor taking action against those making use of this.

Our actions have been fully within the boundaries of the EVE Online reimbursement policies which are available to you on our website.

URL: http://www.eve-online.com/pnp/

If you have any further questions or concerns then please do not hesitate to contact us again.

Best regards,
Senior GM Spiral
EVE Online Customer Support Team

CCP Spiral,

So it’s a bug. Why all the pussyfooting around? Why state that it’s “not an advertised nor supported feature”, a statement that is open to interpretation? If it’s a bug, call it a damn bug and be done with it. Instead you continually leave us wondering if it’s an emergent mechanic that is valid, or something that we really shouldn’t be doing. It took a week, thousands of words written on the subject here and elsewhere, and no doubt dozens of petitions that your staff had to deal with, and NOW you give a half-confidence “current information indicates that this is not as it should be”. Well, do you know how your game is supposed to work, or not? Do the other GMs?

I strongly suggest a memo to all your GMs informing them that this is a bug and reimbursements are valid for it, because there have been as many different answers to these questions as there have been GMs responding to petitions on it. I know that it only takes a GM 30 seconds to produce a noncommittal answer to an exploit petition, but for us it impacts the core of our gameplay. Next time, hold a damn meeting, decide on a stance, and start responding appropriately. These milquetoast responses from folks that are supposed to be authorities leave a tremendously sour taste in our mouths.

Phew. Sorry you all had to see that.

So if CCP won’t say it outright, I will. Aggro extension is a bug, and if taking advantage of it isn’t an exploit now, it certainly should be. I’m considering this “resolution” for my purposes, but I’m very unhappy with the way CCP has handled this. Customer service fail, CCP. Maybe the GM training program is taking an 18 month break just like development on your flagship software product?

I’ve been asked recently in public comments and private messages by friends and detractors alike why I am so butthurt about the recent aggro extension kill reimbursement fiasco playing out in forums, blogs, and dozens of separate petitions. I feel that an explanation is in order for the Griefer Tears that I have been giving during the last few days. This comes in the form of an explanation of what I think makes Eve great, and why I think that even minor encroachments on that are worth fighting passionately.

Eve is a Sandbox

Eve is a single-shard game where every single player has an opportunity to interact with every other player. There is no segregation according to time zone, language, or play style. If you have a problem with someone in this game, there is nowhere to run. You can scamper off to 0.0 to avoid an opponent, but if he is competent he will pursue you. You can join an NPC corp and be immune from wardecs, but you dare not undock in anything expensive and fragile for fear of suicide ganks. If you’ve pissed off some aggressive player, you have to deal with him, either by fighting back or by making hunting you more trouble than his anger is worth.

(It should be noted that for now, the Eve China servers are an exception to this unity. New rumors are circulating that CCP may be merging the Chinese player base into Tranquility. The thought of thousands of new potential victims is super exciting. I wonder if there are many Chinese mission griefers? It’s possible that I may have to change the Jerks logo to avoid confusion.)

In Eve, Your Decisions Matter

The “Butterfly Effect” promotional video presents the story of a rifter saving a mining barge from pirates and then joining miner’s alliance in a fleet fight that very day. While hilariously unlikely, the idea of a world where what you do has impacts far beyond your personal avatar is indeed another of Eve’s distinctions in a genre dominated by MMOs full of predictable, scripted, endlessly looping events. In Eve, you are the content for other players, and the other players are the content for you. The things that happened in your little corner of space today impact the game for everyone, forever.

In Eve, Your Actions Have Consequences

In World of Warcraft, the consequences of failure in PvP involve little more than a quick trip from your respawn point back to where you were when you died horribly. Usually this means less than five minutes of time lost. In Eve, failure in PvP can mean anything from the loss of a disposable ship to the destruction of the basket into which you’ve placed all your eggs, so to speak. This means that if you’re foolish, you can transform in moments from a badass flying a state-of-the-art ship capable of incredible force projection to a pauper who can barely afford to fit a cruiser.

In Eve, Knowledge is Survival

Knowledge is more than power in Eve: Without a thirst for it, the gameplay experience becomes worse than mediocre. The five-year-old character in a multi-billion ISK faction-fitted marauder will fall every time he engages a six-month-old character who has 100 million ISK to spend on the right tool for the job. This works both for the ninja and against him: Witness my billion-plus ISK JerkTengu being slaughtered by a handful of cheap battleships. With knowledge of what you’re facing, any ship can be killed.

Not only must one understand ship fittings and damage types, but the mechanics of combat aggression, gate jumping, and station docking/undocking must be understood if one is to escape a life as a pod-pilot punching bag. Most lowsec pirates can tell you about the first time they died to sentry guns before they fully understood criminal flags. Most nullsec players can tell you about the first time they encoutered a warp disruption bubble. I bet that nine out of ten of my mission gank victims will tell you that it’s the first time they’d dealt with the PvP aggression timer. Most will never make the same mistake again. Knowledge of little gotchas like these are the real power in Eve, not fancy ships or piles of ISK.

In Eve, There are No Takesie-Backsies

In most MMOs, the fact that time is a one-way street and you can’t revert to the last save point isn’t all that big a deal. The worst case is that your party wipes in a dungeon, and you get to start back where you died to try again. In Eve, because your actions have consequences both for you and your friends, mistakes are permanent and whether the price is high or low, it must be paid.

Without These Distinctions, Eve is Just Another Crappy MMO

If you take away the sandbox, the significance and consequences of player actions, the importance of intelligence, and the finality of events, what does Eve start to look like? WoW? I haven’t looked into the new Star Trek MMO, but I imagine that there would be parallels, and by all acounts Star Trek Online sucks.

Much Ado About Something

Now, for the aggro extension reimbursement thing. To be quite frank with you, I don’t really care for the mechanic. It’s confusing and unreliable, but the same could be said for a dozen other Eve mechanics that get ships killed on a regular basis. A lot of folks are mistakenly assuming that I’m crying big Ninja Tears over the aggro extension mechanic, when my problem is really with a senior GM that granted a petition from a carebear who had a warning from the game that he could be blown up, undocked a faction battleship, got blown up, then asked for a replacement. Yes, this is a minor issue, but allowing it to stand speaks volumes about what the GM staff and CCP as a whole think makes their game, in my opinion, the greatest video game ever launched.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It would take ONE GM 30 seconds to fix this, and not a byte of code need be involved. Just like the POS RR mechanic, all it takes is a forum post either declaring it an off-limits exploit, or working as intended. To say that it is not a bug, not an exploit, but that they’re still going to reimburse players who fall victim to it is to cut a neat little chunk out of the very things that keep Eve from being just another short-lived niche MMO.

“But Paul,” you say, gazing longingly at my stunning physique, “How is ONE freebie from ONE GM worth all this stink?” Do you really think that this is an isolated event? Stop and think for a moment about why you know about even this one occurrence. It’s because the carebear in question posted his petition and the results to his public blog. How many more victims featured on this blog have had their mistakes forgiven, to cost them no more than the proverbial graveyard run? It could be half, or a quarter, or one in twenty, or one in a hundred. It could be any number and we’d never, ever know, always assuming that CCP was doing the right thing. Yeah, it could be an isolated event. The odds, however, of this being the only incident of a carebear entering into PvP and losing more than he wanted to lose, then having a GM crap a new faction battleship into his hangar are absurdly low.

But why raise such a fuss over such a minor encroachment? Because there is nowhere else to go. If Eve isn’t the harsh, unforgiving world that CCP says it is, then where can I go where what the player does matters? My entire game revolves around causing players to put more on the table than they wanted to lose, and then lose it. If I can’t do that here, or if, as it appears is the case, CCP is slipping ships to players who lost them because they weren’t aware of some game mechanic, then I’d just as soon cancel my accounts take up woodworking. At least then I can count on nobody coming behind me and feeding a portion of my finished work into a wood chipper.

To CCP: All we want is a statement from you on this. Is aggro extension an exploit that will cause reimbursement? Is it a valid tactic whose victims are worthy of no mercy? If it’s not an exploit, but reimbursements are still an option, then in what other cases can a player request reimbursement after he ignored in-game warnings and lost big?

Eve is indeed the greatest game ever made, but the temptation to discard the ideals that made it great when nobody is looking is surely strong. It is important that CCP present a unified front when talking about the policy decisions that make Eve distinctive, or the game will slip into mediocrity and die with a whimper. The little things matter.

Carebear loses a CNR to aggro extension from a ninja. Carebear admits that he saw the aggro timer and undocked anyway, but still petitions his loss. A senior GM gives him his ship back.

Since aggro extension has been a valid mechanic for some time, I petitioned to see if it was now considered an exploit.

This has come to my attention:

http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/2010/08/eve-exchange-of-views-with-ccp.html

A missionrunner undocked with aggro from a ninja salvager, lost his CNR, petitioned it, and got it back. Is extending aggro now considered an exploit? Will my future targets now be reimbursed after I kill them? It is very important for me to know if carebears are getting unequal treatment: It may well determine the future of my subscription.

Hi,

At this point in time we will not take any action against anyone using this. Please be aware however that we reserve the right to change our policy on this in the future should we deem it necessary.

Best regards,
GM Kaliastra
The EVE Online Customer Support Team

Hey there,

I do appreciate your swift response, but it does not answer my question. Is it now policy to reimburse ships lost due to ignorance? Will my targets have their losses replaced by GMs?

Hi, senior GM Spiral here.

We are currently not taking action against anyone doing this at the current time although this is not an advertised nor supported feature. We at CCP do reserve the right to adjust this policy at any given time in the future should the situation warrant it.

Customer Support does consider this something that may be reimbursed for pending an investigation into the situation of a given incident.

If you have any further questions or concerns regarding this then please do not hesitate to ask.

Best regards,
Senior GM Spiral
EVE Online Customer Support Team

So the summary is that CCP is giving ships back to players for losses that are not due to exploits.

On the Stabbed Up blog, “Reasoned Discourse” has broken out, and the author in question has started deleting all but the sympathetic comments. As an aside, note that we have not and will never squash comments from those who disagree with us, provided those comments are on-topic and don’t break any laws in our jurisdiction.

CCP: If I wanted to play a game where my actions in PvP had no consequences, I would go play WoW. If aggro extension is an exploit, then call it such and fix it. If it’s not an exploit, then don’t coddle players who fall victim to it. If in this case the ninja had lost his ship due to combat derived from aggro extension, I have trouble believing that you would have been so sympathetic. I play this game because actions are meaningful. If you remove the meaning, I will take the money from my subscriptions and go do something better with my time.

Related links: Crime and Punishment Thread – Likely to be locked. Note plenty of carebears calling it an exploit, which CCP has explicitly denied. Also note the “tears” accusation, which is true. When one sees that his successes are being invalidated and his failures are being allowed to stand, there will be tears. Why should I risk ships that won’t be reimbursed to kill ships that will be replaced by a GM?

By way of my own insignificant protest, I will not be ninja salvaging/ganking until either aggro extension is called an exploit or I receive assurances from CCP that my victims won’t get their mistakes reversed by CCP. I’ll still work my infiltration alts and wardecs, but I have no motivation to continue my primary profession when it’s so likely that the work will mean nothing.

This will be the post where everything comes to close, where all the fun stuff we’ve been storing up for later gets to come out and see the light of day. This has been delayed a bit, but we do have real lives… amazing, isn’t it?

Our wardec against Ludi Sacerdotales is still active, but we have suspended most activity against them. Why? We reached one of our end-game goals: The target is disbanding. Ludi has shed more than half it’s membership in the last few days and is down to 14 members from an original high of 40.

In case you think that I’m speculating about their disbanding, let me explain: We had an alt on the inside the entire time. Both Captain Charismatic and I applied and joined the corporation. When Charismatic’s character was outed, Ludi believed they were in the clear and my spy character was able to follow every move they made. With my access to their corporate chat and Paul’s new intel sharing tool, all of Jerks was able to listen in on the corporation in real-time.

We had a blast seeing all of the internal tears, horrible fits, completely wrong statements about game mechanics, and the reactions to our manipulating them from the inside. I will be posting a new series called “The Ludi Files” from time to time – because the amount of material is just too large to cover in any single post.

I’ll start off the series now by talking about Ludi’s attempts to determine our alts. They correctly identified a few of our very obvious alts, but they fingered a number of characters as our alts which were either (a) only people we were friends with or (b) characters that had no relationship with us at all!

This list has all of the actual Jerks members, but that’s pretty easy to find. It has three of our actual alts and one former alt (character now sold); none of this is too difficult to figure out if you read this blog and checked out some corporate history.

Now the lols start: BM Dublyoo, Clantyn, Elias Tarmarr, Kel’airy, and Merktlhu are either friendly with us, or from our days in Suddenly Ninjas – but these guys weren’t involved in our war with Ludi and most likely didn’t even know about it. The real hilarity is the rest of the list: Britney Tears, Casiella Truza, Eliason Phasmatis, Miyamoto Mushai, and Novail. These guys are ENTIRELY UNRELATED to us in any way. At all.

Essentially what happened is that if someone in Ludi saw one of the Jerks on a gate, with a neutral also there, they assumed it was an alt. *facepalm*. They harassed some of these guys, including poor Britney who just wanted to ice mine in peace.

Finally, they missed a very obvious alt character. During our kill of the CEO’s Scorpion we warped in one of my alts with ECCM fitted up. He was on the field long enough for the CEO to have noticed, and would have turned red to him. No mention of this guy ever shows up. Fail corp is fail.

While CCP are trying to put the magic smoke back in the servers – which apparently are now on a 36-hour downtime instead of a 6-hour downtime – I have been reading the Eve Blog Pack.

Mail Lite over at The Beginnings of Piracy has written about his alliance leader who was permabanned for being associated with another player who was ISK buying:

A few weeks ago Gilgamesh1980 and his other 2 accounts got banned for 14 days for breaking the EULA. When he first started the game he had a RL friend who asked him to put up some hard earned ISK to go towards a POS network in exchange for monthly/quartley payouts down the line.

He missioned, saved and bought a few GTC’s to donate to this friend in return for a stable revenue to help him in his EvE career. So far so good. It lasted a 3 year period.

Then one day a few weeks ago he got a message from GM Nova. His accounts had been banned as his ‘friend’ had been selling and buying ISK for real money out of game. He had also been selling high end items for real life money.

Gilgamesh knew none of this and when he got banned for the 14 days he asked the GM for a full investigation to clear his name. The outcome? Permanent ban of all characters.

So to follow the connections:

1. Gilgamesh1980 gets ISK from missioning
2. Gilgamesh1980 buys GTCs with ISK
3. Gilgamesh1980 donates GTCs to Other Player
4. GM Nova contacts Gilgamesh1980 and informs him of ban, due to Other Player buying ISK

I’m going to first assume Gilgamesh1980 is totally innocent (or believes he is innocent – no attempted bad behavior). The question that arises here is the EULA and mechanics of “buying GTC with ISK” and “donate GTC to Other Player”. Was what was done here a) possible and b) EULA allowed?

All the Eve Online forums are currently down, so I’m linking to this cached copy of the “Secure GTC trade 101 – Updated” thread in the Time Code Bazzar.

Q) What do I do?
A) If you are selling a GTC for isk, you open your account management page;

https://secure.eve-online.com/login.aspx

My account >> Account services >> Securely sell GTCs

# Select the character selling the code (receiving the isk)
# Enter the name of the character you are selling to.
# Enter the code.
# Enter the amount of isk you want to sell the code for.
# Confirm the selection

The seller will see an open sell order in the account management page as well as finished orders.
The buyer should receive an EVE mail detailing the offer. (Could be bugged at the moment) In any case, all the buyer needs to do is log into the account management page and accept the trade. It should be listed under, “Common Tasks.” The offer is valid for 48 hours.

This confirms that Gilgamesh1980 could acquire GTCs, by buying them through the Time Code Bazaar – another character sends him the offer and he accepts. So far so good. The next question is about “donate GTC to Other Player”. As far as I can tell, there is only a few ways this can happen:

1. Gilgamesh1980 converts GTC into 2 PLEX via the ESC menu “Convert ETC” button, and then trades/contracts the PLEX directly to Other Player
2. Gilgamesh1980 “sells” the code to Other Player for 0 ISK, the same way he purchased it

The first method is clearly EULA allowable. Buying a GTC for ISK, reconverting it to PLEX and transferring the ISK does not break any rules of which I can find. I might wonder why Gilgamesh1980 just didn’t buy 2 PLEX and trade, but I guess in 0.0 stations are more of a pain to get into.

The second method also does not appear to me to be any sort of EULA violation. Gilgamesh1980 has a legally acquired GTC that he is legally reselling for 0 ISK. Other Player can then do with the GTC whatever he wants.

This brings us to Gilgamesh1980′s ban. The reasons behind this was that Other Player was buying ISK outside the GTC system (EULA violation) and also selling game items directly for real currency (EULA violation). Nowhere is there any mention of Gilgamesh1980 acquiring any ISK or real-life currency from Other Player as a result of these sales.

We might include Other Player giving ISK back to in return for a stable revenue to help him in his EvE career because of the line “in return for a stable revenue to help him in his EvE career”, so it seems likely ISK was transferred from Other Player to Gilgamesh1980 at some point – but the usual penalty for goods acquired from ISK buyers is that the unfortunate player has the ISK directly removed from their account.

So to conclude, I first of all see no EULA violations by Gilgamesh1980. I also do not see why, if illegally-acquired ISK was transferred to Gilgamesh1980′s account (without his knowledge of the source), it was simply not subtracted from his account as is usually done.

A permanent ban for this is, as we say in the computer world, a chilling effect. If this can happen to him, can I be banned for buying an item (PLEX, ship, anything) that was bought with illegally-acquired ISK? Apparently so.

Every purchase in Eve just became an excuse to ban your accounts. Petition for it to be escalated, and the result is apparently permaban. CCP, you need to make this right – or explain exactly how Gilgamesh1980 was breaking the EULA.

I will be listening really carefully.

This bug is merely annoying for industrial users of Orcas, but it can be catastrophic for those who use Orcas as mobile bases out of which to stage combat ships. It happens to me about one in ten ship changes. CCP, two suggestions:

1. Fix the bug.
2. Add an “Online All” button to the fitting screen.