So please explain where I should point at myself…
I’ve never stolen, scammed or deliberately caused anyone any grief. Never shot a ship unless they fired first.
But i’ll always have an issue with players whos only goal in game seems to be to hurt a fellow player as much as they possibly can, as in the op.
You don’t like someone disagreeing with you? Tough.
Feel free to flag as much as you like, my conscience will always be clear.
For something to be clear, you have to actually have it. Not existing != clear.
PS: Have the last word. You clearly need it to get your anger out of your system.
I honestly do try to avoid that myself too… but sometimes the line between trying to keep it short, light & punchy to emphasize your point & that can be a bit slim, & we all slip up occasionally 
Just stroke it gently on occasion instead… to provoke fellow feeling so they’ll be more likely to consider your point of view favorably? 
Why thank you 
synonymous with “clever” (mostly)… but not with “intelligent” 
subtle 
I did want to say something there myself, but after you just called me out as a (subtle) troll I was a bit concerned anything I might say would then just look like you were right & I was just baiting all sides regardless of their position… you’ve covered it now though.
My comment about emergent gameplay wasn’t meant to be aimed at you, just at the term in general.
I saw it used far too often in the old forums as an excuse by people who really where (in my estimation) just trolling… so it is perhaps a bit of a trigger word (words?) for me as a result.
My apologies if you took it otherwise.
You’re good ! 
Exactly what we need around here!
I’ve editted my above remark about you, btw. 
PS: i don’t stroke for favours. interpret that statement as you like… 
what not disagreeing with people
youre flaming people
telling them to quit the game
and being generally hostile
look at yourself before labeling others
I mean it can happen just like a god old fashioned isk doubling scheme. I have linked a story showing just that. There’s no extra tricks or anything especially sinister about how it happened.
No you see that’s the point and the issue. CCP is NOT clear on exactly what is and isn’t allowed. If you take CCP Phantoms message and actually read it you will find examples of what is not ok. Then we get to a part where he says you can’t encourage him to spend $ for you to scam.
That’s where he needs to elaborate.
I understand you must be upset that someone plays the villain and my goal isnt to ruin anyone’s game, but to simply play the game.
It honestly does seem pretty clear & straightforward to me?
Can you perhaps elaborate any on precisely where you think the confusion lies?
What does CCP consider encouraging? The answer or opinion that you, I, or anyone else here is irrelevant. The only answer that matters is CCP’s.
Dang! gotta go, right now 
I’ll come back to this & try to give you a coherently worded response later
For now I’ll just have to leave you with the short version…
If you really can’t figure out for yourself where the line might lie with this scam stay away from it for now, there really are so many other good scams out there where the ground has been well & truly tested by others for you, use one of those instead for the time-being o7
“Falcon’s concern is that players could go right up to the line without crossing it. In other words, they might come close to breaking the rules, but not break them. Personally, I don’t consider that a problem. When people don’t break a rule, that is normally seen as a victory for the rule. You know what you call someone who comes close to the line but never crosses it? A law-abiding citizen. Police don’t get upset when they see people driving exactly the speed limit.”
-James 315
Listen to you carebear apologists bristle at the radical idea that CCP should clearly communicate the rules of their game. Disgusting.
Quality tears in this thread, though! Thanks Drago!
The fundamental problem CCP has it that CCP has marketed the game towards sociopaths, and then wants those sociopaths to act with ethics and empathy. Not going to happen.
I am curious how one goes about marketing to sociopaths. Is there like a ‘Sociopath Weekly’ magazine CCP has been buying ads in? Or can you click ‘sociopathic’ as part of the demographic when buying Google Ad Words or the like? Or maybe they do like the pharmaceutical industry and bribe psychiatrists with trips to Iceland in return for making their sociopathic patients aware of Eve Online?
I think we all wish CCP were a little more clear on the rules. They can just ban people for any reason they want anyway. They of course cannot anticipate everything, but it would definitely have a less chilling effect if rules were specific and precise. It is completely unfair to expect players to divine their intent from broadly worded notices, like that terribly worded ‘Delaying CONCORD’ notice (and often also ones that change or have contradictory statements over the years). Just make the rules as clear as possible, and then use warnings and temp bans to correct people who have stepped over the line, and permaban repeat offenders.
In this case though I think @CCP_Phantom was perfectly clear. Scams are largely fine but do have restrictions which he enumerated several of, one of which is the “purchase PLEX” clause. If you can engineer a situation where you trick someone out of skill points via extractors without going near real-money purchases, then all is well. Skill points = ISK now so it is just like any other asset that can be metagamed away from a mark. If you are in a ransom situation though, it is hard to imagine doing so without real money becoming involved given, or at least it is easy to imagine that it does become involved, so tread carefully.
No tears here, just a failure to understand how someone can think up a scam that could utterly destroy another player.
We’re not on about Jita scams, or losing a ship, or losing a few mil isk, or a corp getting asset stripped by a member.
We’re talking about skill points, which, if they were successful would take months or billions of isk to recoup, so pardon me for failing to understand why players seem to find this acceptable behaviour from anyone.
The whole “we can’t give you a clear line because you’ll get too close to it” idea is ridiculous and the apologists who buy into it are ridiculous.
Just draw the bloody line where you actually want to it to be, CCP. That way we can toe it and everything will still be fine. We want nothing more than to be as bad as we’re allowed to be without breaking the rules.
In conclusion: HTFU carebears.
That moment where your playstyle borderlines on permabans -the actual ingame death and loss of everything- should give you quite the hardcore PVP experience you so asked for. Right? 
Ikr?! Gankers are just bad people so who cares!
#carebearindifference
Funnily enough regular old school gankers are not at any risk of a ban though.
The people who are at risk of the bans are going way past what was done back in the day.
For example, AWOX’ing, if you go back to the old school awox’s were done in low sec.
Gankers used to actually own their ganking and just be like 'Yea man, I was looking for someone to gank and you were convenient, I am a ganker."
Not all this double speak and blaming the target that they try and come up with these days, or these elaborate push the line schemes. That’s just cowardice to try and make the target feel responsible.
The whole reason CCP aren’t & also can’t give a clear line is this is not a ‘speed limit’ rule. This is personal interactions, and you can’t put a hard narrow line on where something turns into stuff like harassment and griefing. A behaviour that might be ok as a once off thing turns into griefing when it’s done repeatedly. Something that might be ok in most peoples cases turns into harassment when you know the person is already in a vulnerable state due to a RL event recently and you choose to take advantage of that.
So yeah, I’m all for good clean ganking fun where people can own their own actions on the gankers side, but push that kind of griefing line and I will never have any sympathy for you when it catches up with you.
Dude, I don’t give a fedo fart what ‘old-school’ gankers did ‘back in the day’.
You guys keep asserting that it HAS to be this way, but I don’t believe you. It’s really not that complicated.
“If you have to ask, you probably just shouldn’t” is an asinine way to run a game, not to mention operate a business.
In a game where the playerbase is more creative than the developers can ever imagine, giving hard fast rules and letting people toe the line is simply stupid. You need vague rules and expect people to follow the spirit behind the rules.
In conclusion, HTFU scammers/gankers. Stop whining so much. The scammers/gankers in this thread are whining more than carebears…