The purpose of asking ESI scopes is to get data from those ESI scopes.
You either agree or don’t agree with the other party seeing those scopes.
Why do you think it is an improvement for the game if players can agree to a scope but give fake data? This undermines the entire purpose of ESI scopes and makes everything built on those ESI scopes unreliable.
Again, if you disagree with a scope, just don’t give access. Simple as that.
Now that’s a valid reason to have fake data: to develop tools without production data.
Still, I don’t think this use-case is enough to undermine the entire idea of scopes with fake data. After all, if a developer doesn’t want to test with ‘production data’ they can simply make a new character for some test data.
I trust my corporation to x-ray other characters like they did mine, so that I have fewer blue spies around.
They still exist, but it’s considerably more effort if people have to make a clean alt with no ties to their main to do blue scouting, spying and killing blues.
Yes, I give up some privacy, but get a group in return that I can mostly trust, because they too have given up that privacy.
Sure, you could just ‘trust’ everyone who applies based on trust instead of ESI scope history, but then you get situations where you get killed by blues all the time (there’s no way to stop malicious hostiles from putting spies in your corp) or you have to stop taking in new blues. Neither is a better alternative to what we have now.
If it happens “all the time”, you are clearly doing something wrong. If it happens once in a while, screw it, take the loss and expel the dudes (which then have effectively burned their chars), blacklist them and spread the word, even amongst your enemies. Those who are good at it you won’t catch anyway, as it is pretty easy to make a new “clean” char or just “buy” one and claim you are the “new” owner and have no idea wht the “old” owner did.
In the end it’s a personal decision, but I can’t really understand this mindset. I mean, you wouldn’t hand over your phone- and social media passwords and last 10 years tax records for a real-life employer, right? And that one even offers you to pay ten- or hundredthousands of dollars per year for your position. An ingame alliance offer you… what? “Content”? “Opportunities”? Yeah, they can get an active, skilled and valuable member in return, thats a fair deal.
But as said, we won’t come together here. EVE was a better game with all those “tools” being inexistant and the relations between the players simply had to be on a personal level. It even offered situations where empires could crumble over betrayal, grown mistrust or forceful dissolvement over personal disagreements. And this was great, because everytime a giant falls, a dozen ants can use the corpse to create something new. Currently, too few people hold too much power (asset control, access control, data control) in their hands. And for me, I consider that bad for the game at all, it’s part of the reason we see year-long stagnations in the ingame politics.
Luckily it doesn’t happen ‘all the time’ because with ESI scopes it’s non-zero effort to make a new character for spying without ties to your main character.
It takes some time to make a new alt, make it believable and apply.
As a result, you see fewer spies than if every application was accepted ‘on trust alone’.
You mention you can kick spies and their alts when they have ‘effectively burned their characters’, but how would you determine which characters are of one person without ESI scopes? Based on their honest word that ‘no this backstabbing spy I supplied with ISK and ships is not my alt’? Good luck!
You are long enough in the game to know that ESI is completely useless against serious attempts.
Whenever I want to make an alt not tied to my main, I just drop him a few billion ISK in blueloot or redloot which he can then sell over the next few weeks (while training the skills I want him to have for whatever purpose) and then he can easily claim that he was daytripping WHs or running abyssals. Then have him a Gila in his Jita hangar bay and what’s there to doubt?
It’s a 2 minute effort with no traces at all. And if even more money is needed I can simply repeat that as often as I want.
Create another character on that account, give that character an amount of Plex you could also buy from the store, drop Plex into vault, delete character, sell Plex on spy stating you “just wanted to get a head start”.
And then play for a couple of months on that spy character to create a believable background to get into the SIGs that require a longer time in the group, activity and no suspicion.
Suddenly a believable low-effort spy becomes quite a bit of effort? All because of ESI scopes! I like it.
A come on, you won’t take a fresh corpmember after 3 days as your “BlackOps Hunter” and jump a 50 Redeemers on his cyno into a waiting hostile fleet just because he had an “unsuspicious ESI check”? Or use him as scout or cyno for moving a supercapfleet? He probably would need to play for months in your group without suspicion anyway to do that, right? If not, thats exactly what I mean with “doing something wrong”.
But well, you made your point. I made mine, it’s nothing we can come together, we value things simply different, but thats okay. Have a nice day!
That’s why I said ‘SIGs that require a longer time in the group’.
Yes, you can make a fresh new spy alt circumventing ESI check capabilities by giving them some PLEX to sell as a start, but that fresh new spy alt won’t enter a capital or blackops SIG if it doesn’t also play for some time.
Doing no backstabbing for a month isn’t hard, just don’t log in to that spy for a month. No effort, easily scalable.
Making a believable alt character that does things in the game but also doesn’t trace back to your main character takes a little more effort than that, if your activities can be checked with ESI.
That’s why my point is that ESI checks are useful to increase the effort of spying.
Great debate guys. Can I revoke access of this third party application to my character’s data if I change my mind? How exactly if possible? Thanks again.
