You’re probably right. Simply deactivating high sec gates or putting in a mechanic that kills pods for low sec players would be enough.
Does “griefing” have to pass the categorical imperative test? Would it still be “griefing” and would the offender still be punished if they act this way toward a player who is looking for that exact experience, and isn’t feeling “griefed” by such behavior?
How about doing the work yourself instead of asking for NPCs to do it for you?
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Hence why it’s dealt with through the reporting mechanic. If a target doesn’t want that experience they report it. If they enjoy it they don’t.
Everyone’s definition of griefing will be different. They point I’m making is blowing someone up is not griefing. Making the game unplayable for them is. The line is somewhere inbetween
The problem is that whilst we can all cite cases that categorically would be griefing, there’s still quite a large grey area. For example I podded a 21 day old noob carrying no cargo…which technically would fit CCPs definition. But they were not in any noob system, and they were flashy…having actually just attacked someone else and lost. Which to most people makes them fair game. Is seems griefing also includes attacking noobs on missions…but how the blazes is one supposed to know if someone is on a mission ?
How do you punish someone for a crime if everyone’s definition of the crime is different?
Take murder for example. It doesn’t matter how people define it; one person killing another is considered an illegal act and is penalized, even if it can be proven that the latter preferred it and asked for it. There really are no grey areas for murder, just maybe degrees of it, depending on where you live.
As such, using subjective metrics for determining if an interpersonal offense took place simply doesn’t work, even in EVE. If I get destroyed on my 2-day-old alt in Kisogo, the act itself is illegal, despite how I personally feel about it, because the killer has no way of knowing for sure whether or not I’m an alt (claims of such by myself are hearsay).
So it seems to me that instead of relying on a reporting system, they should simply automate the process, like for example preventing any player under 31 days old from being attacked in those specific systems, and from being able to acquire any sort of timer in those systems. Everything else would be allowed (e.g. a 25-day-old becomes a suspect 2 jumps away from Kisogo, goes back to Kisogo, and gets killed there by someone who follows them). Then the response to accusations of griefing would be a very simple “if you can do it, it’s not griefing.”
Have new characters complete a quiz upon trying to exit the rookie systems for the first time as extra liability insurance (e.g. "If you leave this system, are you able to be attacked by anyone, for any reason, with various consequences for those acts, in accordance with the engagement rules posted at [link]?)
Even then, self-defense would technically fall under your definition and exonerate you if you could prove it.
There’s obviously an “in anger” component that needs to be present in the calculation. Self-defense isn’t murder, because it’s an act of trying to prevent someone else from committing murder on you. But excessive use of force can and in many circumstances does get treated as murder by the law, like if someone attacks you, you win the fight, and then proceed to punch them in the head repeatedly when they’re already down.
I stopped reading at this point.
Did I forget to provide a trigger warning? Oopsies!
Finger guns along with pew pew noises might scare them miners away but won’t do squat to those nasty npc pirates.
That’s just called being thorough and making sure they won’t do it again…
Sure, but in many places you’d go to jail for that.
First of all, it’s called “High security” space - not “Absolute security” space. And the security is pretty high. Compared to null security space you have:
- NPC guns at gates which will shoot pirates;
- faction police and customs officers;
- CONCORD;
- The right to shoot anyone below -5.0 security status;
From pirate side, the consequences of being a pirate are:
- You can be shot at by anyone if you have security status below -5.0;
- Gaining security status requires either a lot of time ratting or a lot of ISK for CONCORD tags;
- Even if you have security status above -5.0, faction police in highsec limits the size and type of the ships you can successfully fly in highsec, because you need to be agile in order to escape them;
- When someone tries to help you, they will be flagged as “suspects” and anyone can shoot them without any penalties;
So, the punishment is already there. Learn more about it here: Security status - EVE University Wiki
And no, you can not use RL legal action because TOS/EULA clearly states that you are not legally owning anything in the game, including ISK, ships, modules and any other in-game items… you don’t even own your character, for that matter. This will never change since passing such a law where you actually own in-game digital assets would kill gaming industry.
Now, if you are getting constantly ganked, there are two possibilities:
- You have a griefer on your back, which is punishable by ban. If that’s the case, submit an in-game petition and report the player who’s harassing you. Of course, you will need to be sure that a specific player has an agenda of chasing and ganking you specifically.
- You are doing something wrong (for example: flying expensive cargo in a weak ship, using autopilot, hanging around gates in highsec choke point systems for too long (or in front of highly populated station, like Jita 4-4), flying expensive ships in mission hubs,…).
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Yeah…like longer term players aren’t possibly gonna exploit that, are they. That method of doing things is wide open to abuse, as nothing in the systems says whether a person is genuinely a noob. I can just see lots of fake ‘newbies’ using this invulnerability to their advantage.
And it would be hard to resolve that by preventing the noob from attacking anything else, in addition to being invulnerable, as that would prevent any PvP during the duration of it.
I’m not seeing any tangible way of exploiting that. There’s just nothing and no one in those systems to exploit. The combined factors of needing to be under 31 days old character-wise, and limited to the confines of such systems, means there’s no practical gain or advantage to be derived. Is a veteran player going to taunt their rivals by telling them that they moved all their assets to a 1.0 university system and are repeatedly rolling new characters to be able to use them in total safety? Let them.
If everyone under 30 days is now gonna be invulnerable…all gankers then need do is set up a fleet of ‘newbie’ Catalysts that nobody can attack. The noob systems are not isolated from the rest of Eve. Many are on the main highyways into trade hubs.
I’d find it absurd if a noob in a Catalyst had any invulnerability anywhere. If a person undocks in a combat ship…they can’t complain if combat is exactly what they get !
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The good thing about designing game systems is that as a designer, you’re not locked into being forced to be 100% true to the first version of the original idea that was proposed. If edge cases, like the example you made, start arising, they can be easily addressed. For example, it can be made so that the protection doesn’t apply to anyone with outlaw status, and kill rights can work normally against players that would be otherwise protected.
Remember, the ultimate goal of such a system isn’t to protect new players as much as it is to establish clearly-defined rules of engagement for new players; the latter accomplishes the former.
The sum total of all the starter systems, training systems, SOE arc systems, etc is 35 systems…which oldbies are somehow expected to remember, and it seems they have to check the bio of every player to see if they are under 30 days old…which in turn is no guarantee that they really are an under 30 days old noob and not just one of thousands of alt accounts. And that’s just the loony way things currently are. I’m not holding out hope that any new design is gonna be saner.
No need, it’s an easy design fix: just clearly label the systems while in space and on the map as being of a specific protected type.
No need, it’s an easy design fix: just clearly label the players as rookies while put in space.
Doesn’t matter; everyone gets the same benefits. Let veteran players playing on new characters receive the same protection, because in the grand scheme it just doesn’t matter. They won’t be able to derive any tangible benefit from it.
When people criticize ideas, they are under the impression that finding a single exception to the idea invalidates the whole thing, but that just isn’t true, especially when the exceptions can be effortlessly addressed.
It would have to be a combination of new player and assigned systems ( both would have to apply )…and those assigned systems would have to contain zero ore, otherwise alt account oldbies could just mine there ‘protected’ in ‘noob’ accounts. In fact there would have to be no ore, nothing to rat, no wormholes, or indeed anything that a fake noob could exploit while ‘protected’.
To my mind, a far better method is to just have noobs kept in an isolated training system until ready. The minute they leave it…they cannot return. So they can leave before 30 days but cannot re-enter. And nobody over 30 days can enter.