Whatever floats your boat.
I wasn’t necessarily talking about you. But gank victims are a good example. They might perceive ganking as griefing (even though it’s not), and demand a certain response or a set of changes as a result. But can you imagine what the game would become if CCP were to listen to the least-informed and least-capable players?
Players who are deficient in skill and knowledge need to work on raising those attributes, because their perceptions of the game will change after they do, and what seemed like a good idea (e.g. removing ganking because it’s “griefing”) will seem like a non-issue, and a downright ridiculous notion after they learn the deeper workings of the game.
Well, to be fair, I’m not the one going there. The people claiming that CODE. members are all coming off the short bus, and can’t possibly be the same as those venerable and elite 0.0 warriors, are the ones going there. All I’m saying is that truth is sometimes very inconvenient for one’s moral position.
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You misunderstood me, I’m not saying all ganking is griefing, however some of it is. And I would be heavily opposed to any changes CCP would bring as a result of someone crying over a lost ship. Fortunately that would never happen. I firmly believe any Dev that glances this forums gets a good laugh and that’s about it 
I’m not opposed to PvP even though I never seek it out, I think Eve would be way to boring without it.
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lol zaenis
Only if it’s someone who’s repeatedly targeted over and over again with the intended purpose of making them quit the game. That’s more or less by CCP’s rules.
“Griefing” is a term that’s generally misapplied to actions performed in games. For example, in some FPS games I’ve played, I did a very good job of completely locking down bases with a tank or a chopper, mowing down players the instant they spawned. They would rage in chat and call me a griefer, but all I was doing was my job, to the best of my ability, by clearing out the area, and allowing my team to move in and capture the base. But in their view, I was still a spawn-camping griefer, simply because I wasn’t giving them the opportunity to fight back, and nothing I said would change that perception.
It’s kind of similar in EVE. Some people consider the act of suicide-ganking as “griefing,” but in reality, it’s just players doing their jobs. If it was against intended game design, it wouldn’t be possible, or would at least be forbidden by the rules.
Good examples of griefing would be intentional and repeated friendly fire, because a player can’t respond to it without either engaging in the same behavior against their will, or leaving the game. That’s for my FPS game example. In EVE, the closest analogue to griefing would be what Erotica 1 did.
Griefing, by definition, is something that’s expressly prohibited by game rules. It’s a form of activity that doesn’t necessarily interfere with the game on a programming level (like cheats), and as such is possible to do through normal gameplay (because preventing it is impossible from a mechanical perspective), but is still not intended and allowed by the developers.
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I’m not sure this qualifies as ‘griefing’ in the EVE context. As far as I can tell, EVE is a zero sum wargame. Your goal is to eliminate the enemy. This creates animosity which provides good content and revenue. Some people inevitably decide to PLEX their accounts, to fund a stronger navy, and that’s how CCP makes money.
If campaigning to remove someone from the game is griefing, then we might conclude that right now Vily is trying to grief poor Mittens!
I do believe that many years ago, CCP explicitly defined it as such. Like if a player has nothing left, and you’re still camping them in 24/7/365, they could receive intervention. Also if you specifically say that your goal is to get someone to quit, as opposed to it being an incidental consequence of your actions. It wouldn’t be an instant ban, though; CCP would likely send you a GM ticket telling you to knock it off.
I disagree, griefing is not forbidden or against any game rules, it’s just actively trying to make other players miserable, for the sole purpose of making them miserable. That is where I draw the line at least.
It is not doing their job if there is no percievable gain to be gotten from it. But hey to each his own.
And many players should learn to handle situations like that instead of doing the same faulty action over and over and than crying about it.
It’s actually not that gray. If it were, a person who is miserable simply because they lost (and there are many such people in the world), could make an accusation of griefing. “You’re making me lose, and that’s making me miserable, you’re griefing me!” But obviously things don’t work like that in real life, because no one can make the claim that one person’s intent to win is rooted in an honest desire to win, while another’s is rooted in the desire to make someone miserable, if the act of winning involves the same criteria in either case. So “being miserable” simply doesn’t work as the sole consideration for whether or not griefing is taking place.
I think the statement you are referring to involved following someone around with no real purpose other than to ‘harass’ them. What is harassment in this context? I don’t think this referrs to in-game mechanics, such as repeatedly destroying their pixels, but was more focused on someone who simply spams local chat with annoying messages.
If Goonswarm decided to evacuate the Delve and flee into a wormhole, I don’t think it would be “harassment” for their enemies to follow them.
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I think the words were along the lines of “if they have nothing left, and you’re still doing it, you have to stop.” I don’t remember whether it was a forum post, or some Q&A somewhere, but that particular phrasing has stuck with me. It will be difficult to track it down, so I can’t offer concrete evidence.
If we can get a senior GM to chime it that would be great, but I doubt it’ll happen.
Well, as long as they’ve got a Corvette, they’ve still got something.
Yeah, cant really lose everything, there’s always the free corvette 
I never said there aren’t people who cry about everything.
There are players with “I don’t care if I win, I just want you to lose” attitude, that is what I’m considering a griefer. Not really there to play the game and has no interest in it other than harassing others.
If they’re doing it within the confines of the game’s rules and mechanics, it doesn’t really matter, since the legitimacy of a specific action doesn’t change with its intent.
For example, let’s say player A is acting the way you’re describing, and keeps targeting and killing you while you’re mining in a certain area until you leave and go somewhere else, just because they want to hurt you and make you miserable. Now let’s consider player B, who keeps targeting and killing you while you’re mining in a certain area until you leave and go somewhere else, but they’re doing it because they want that area all to themselves, and aren’t willing to share. You would define player A as a griefer, but would you define player B as a griefer as well?
I don’t believe that doing so would be sound logic, because, for one, it would require the hostile player to explicitly state their intent, without which you’d never be able to make that distinction. As such, griefing can’t be judged solely by intent, but by the validity of the actions being performed.
I did mention it is not against game rules.
In Eve case, (in my opinion) griefers can only exist in HS regions, otherwise they would actually have to invest them self in the game to be viable for PvP on even grounds.
Someone who keeps explicitly targeting new players who do not yet know what to do. Proceedes to type all manner of profanities in local once someone got annoyed with him and killed him…
So there you have it. Highsec miners are griefers.
I disagree. Griefing can exist anywhere. For example, a person can make their way to null, set their clone there, then get robbed/tricked by the group they joined, lose all their stuff to the point that they have nothing left, and aren’t even able to leave in a Corvette because they’re locked down in that area. That would be an exceptionally rare, but still viable, example of griefing.
The perception of griefing is similarly not limited to high-sec alone. I’ve personally been called a griefer multiple times after I killed players in low-sec, wormholes, and one particularly memorable example in 0.0 when I one-shot some carebear’s bling Ishtar with 1400mm as he was trying to ninja the local anomalies.
This is indeed an example of griefing, and is explicitly unallowed.
This is also an example of griefing, and is also explicitly unallowed.
Well I must admit I did not know it is
kinda figured anything goes in Eve, as long as you don’t break the EULA