A number of players thrive on ruining the game for other people – and this seems to be generally accepted and even applauded by the community.
Mottos like “We’re not here to ruin the game, we’re here to ruin YOUR game” are rather common place in these circles.
Is this healthy for a game?
You might try comparing the size of the player base of other MMOs to the cripplingly small player base in EVE. That should tell you all you need to know.
Mr Epeen 
I don’t find that most people who play Eve are out to ruin anyone’s game. Playing the game involves being in a universe where people may want to blow up a ship that you may happen to be flying, but few people will put in a concerted effort to mess with you unless you give them a reason to dislike you.
I played Eve for ages as a relative nobody who dabbled in industry and I found far more people willing to help or protect me than I found wanted to kill me once they knew who I was.
Strangers are going to shoot you. Many of them signed on to play Eve to shoot at stuff and I think that shooting stuff is good for the game. I’m sure some people do take things too far, but in my experience they’ve been the exception that literally nobody likes.
Be cool, and other players will be cool. If you give people a hard time for playing the game and shooting stuff, expect players to want to shoot you specifically for that reason instead of ‘just because you’re there’.
Can you define this for clarity?
Also, can you provide an example of this in other games for comparison?
How’s that 72 hr hole control going 
Can I venture a guess?
Its pretty obvious you’re a bad faith troll
Just wondering whose alt you are at this point. But I don’t wanna distract you from your hole control…
See: Goons; Mittens. circa 2009-Present.
Is this part of that “no nut November” thing everyone keeps talking about?
Yeah, the general consensus in the past - that was Goons motto…
However, any Capsuleer that’s been here for a long length of time can see that it’s not actually Goons motto, it’s CCP’s motto…
Course now that I think about it, CCP has hired a lot of Goon members…
Maybe it is true…
No. Make the game better for everyone. Love is the light.
It is difficult to say, really, for EVE at this point. It’s well-known within the MMO gaming industry that open-world, non-consensual, full-loot PVP drives away many more players than it attracts. It’s also believed among social scientists that people are evolutionarily wired to move away from dog-eat-dog, “only the strong survive” environments and towards more cooperative situations.
So from that aspect, EVE’s design from the beginning was bound to be a niche market that would fail to appeal to the majority of it’s potential playerbase. Appealing to only a fraction of your market while actively driving market share away is not in general considered “good for your business”.
On the other hand, CCP has never been able to craft anything with mass market appeal. Or in fact, craft anything at all successful other than EVE. So if you can’t appeal to a mass market, it is a valid strategy to appeal to a niche market. CCP has marketed EVE for years with a slant towards attracting “people who get off on being buttholes to other people”.
You see it in the videos, you see it in the social buzz about EVE, you see it in-game, you see it in the forums. You see it in some of the cleverest, most talented videos and fan-created content put out by EVE players. (Just because someone enjoys being a dick at times doesn’t mean they can’t be talented, creative, funny and interesting.)
That’s not to say they’re the only group in EVE - EVE has tons of wonderful, generous, funny, helpful players. Even some of the people who want to be dicks at times can turn around and be super helpful a few minutes later. It’s just that EVE’s “niche” gathers a higher percentage of the “we’re here to piss on your cornflakes” crowd.
EVE has spent almost two decades weeding out the ‘kumbaya’ crowd, and catering to “come be a space bastard”. Some of those people are still here only because EVE still allows that sort of behavior when the vast majority of other games do not. It may well be that at this point, servicing that niche is the only real advantage EVE has and the only thing still keeping it going.
So, for wider appeal, that sort of gameplay is contraindicated. But for EVE as it is and has become, it may be the only lifeline it’s still hanging onto.
(Note: it would have been possible to design EVE differently, to allow for both Space Bastards and White Knights, in a sense, but that ship sailed long ago and the current devs haven’t the ability to do much more than tweak things.)
Sadly no haha. but the OP loves his hole controlled thats for sure.
I think it does tho. Often times people have a hard time not accepting things aren’t black and white.
Don’t fret, friend Arcturen, they are working hard to give you what you think you want.
Show me on your avatar where the bad goon touched you.
Sigh. I suppose I should provide a less snarky response.
Salt farmers actually make a small portion of the community. They only seem so pervasive because they tend to make a lot of commotion.
And it’s funny to me how many people complain about the salt farmers, while forgetting about all the people that are kind and helpful to one another -like all the teachers and instructors from Eve University, OUCH, social media, and the entire ■■■■■■■ game, all the people that offer help, guidance, and words of encouragement to newbros, the guys behind broadcast for reps, and all the people that give to Plex for Good.
I don’t know man. It’s just weird to me how people can look at our community and only see the bad, and none of the good. I dunno, maybe you should take another look.
Speaking of which, Mike Azariah is looking for donations again.
Probably the focus is more on gankers because the damage a griefer can do can destroy your entire game play experience, wipings out dozens of hours of work in minutes and is one of the most common reasons people quit.
No amount of community niceness can make up for such an incredibly damaging, selfish act.
Citation needed.
Also, you do realize that this is a PvP-centric game right? I dunno man, I’m at a loss. It’s like getting pissed off because someone killed you Counter Strike.
I don’t even know what else to say. It’s such an alien perspective to me -to fault other players for engaging in PvP in a PvP game.
I can’t even.
Ganking is not PvP.
Its low-effort griefing.
Nah, not a morality thing, or a “what you call terrorists I call freedom fighters” thing. Just simple game mechanics.
The game mechanics support playing a pirate/ganker/griefer. There are more PvE targets than PvP targets. PvE targets are worth more and are easier to kill with cheap ships. There is a payment mechanism due to drops. Someone only used to playing PvE makes an easy, often unprepared, target.
For white knighting, there is no payoff, and the hunting mechanism is harder. If you’re hunting gankers/pirates, in general their ships are very cheap, and they’re only available in them for a short time. The gankers essentially always get to choose the time and place, so in essence they’re only exposed when they’re ready, and they know they’re about to take fire (from Concord if nothing else). So should someone show up to start shooting they are either going to lose very little or they’re ready to bail.
Of course not all PvP is like this, but it’s the general trend. EVE has mechanisms that reward being a space bastard, they don’t have mechanisms that reward white knighting/playing cop.
The difference isn’t in player choice (we have players choosing to play either way, and some players play both), the difference is that the mechanics of the game make one playstyle easier and more rewarding, and the other playstyle requiring far more effort for much less reward.
It’s not a good/bad, black/white difference. It’s simple design imbalance. And it’s imbalanced because the original devs thought ganking/looting was cool and edgy, and white knighting was lame. Also, because it takes way more work to design a system that supports both sides. I can’t think of any game that’s done it really successfully, except maybe City of Heroes/Villains and then only in a limited fashion.
The fact that no one’s done it right yet doesn’t mean it can’t be done, or that there isn’t value in doing it half-right. But EVE basically didn’t even try.
What about when you die in LS gate camps? Is that a gank?
It’s not if it’s mindless which 90% of the time it is.
Yes, things like trying to prevent suicide irl, donating to help people affected by the Australia fires, helping science sort through a vast amount of data for irl space knowledge, etc, etc, etc could never even begin to compare to jumbling pixels in a video game…