Serious Question: Is Betrayal TOO Powerful?

Communications Center General Discussion
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I know I know. But hear me out.

Eve is a game about greed, cruelty, and conflict. I do not want this to stop. Betrayal and espionage have been a part of Eve since the beginning, and if they were removed then it wouldn’t be Eve anymore.

Buy you have to admit, it’s a bit absurd that one person who gets bored can lock down an entire empire by changing a password, or closing the doors on tens of thousands of players. Theft and betrayal are almost too powerful.

I feel weird arguing this as I spent a good portion of my time in Eve stealing and griefing, and I still do. But Eve requires balance in ordee to stay alive. Conflict needs to happen, or Eve falters.

The ease with which one person can bring down seems to be actively stopping conflict. Now make no mistake, theft should be permitted and encouraged. Emptying an empire’s coffers with the push of a button? Hell yes. Offlining defenses and cutting supply lines? Yep seems fine to me.

The issue to me isn’t the stealing of assets, but the complete shutdown of any ability to mount even a token defense. One person wills it, and the war ends and everyone goes home.

Betrayal and theft need to drive the creation of conflict. But too often it abruptly ends it.

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It has happened in all games and it is not something that can be stopped.

In WoW you got people causing drama and spying to try and dismantle them because the hardcore raiders strive to be either First to take down a new raid or break a new record Or, back in vanilla, ninja loot that rare drop that was meant to go for someone else

In EvE you got the general power of the corporation/alliance, wealth, assets, territory, member count, everything, and to reach to the point where you can take it down it takes a looong time. So for the time it takes to get there it is well justified.

When an alliance or guild or whatever is broken down, it all abruptly ends, there is no conflict, nothing, just the life of thousands that now had a sudden change of course.

The art of creating conflict is to be able to device moments that justify the declaration of war, either through spies finding where mining fleets are to raid, weak spots to attack suddenly, incite members to join the other alliance, drama, so on and so forth.

If all ends so suddenly, one only has to blame the person who got the spy, someone with a grudge, someone with ill intentions, in charge of things out of ‘trust’.

You have to remember, when one falls, others will rise, you have major alliances that hold most of the power, sure, but eventually it will all change, whether we like it or not.

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The reason one player was able to cause so much damage was because so many players put their trust in him. The way to avoid that is not to join big alliances where you don’t have a personal relationship with the people running it.

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Con, lie, spy, and betray for me and the game is fair and you are a hero. :medal_military:
Con, lie, spy, and betray me and the game is flawed and you are traitor. :rage:

Funny on how what side of the equation you are that the same facts result in a different answer. :balance_scale:

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Fair, but those alliance wars drive conflict and create content for the rest of us. I don’t have any stake in this personally. I live the soloist life. People shoot at me when I go into null or low. People will continue to shoot me no matter the sov politics of the time. My content is safe, and I will always be in a state of conflict with other players.

I consider it somewhat analogous to old school doomsdays on titans. For the most part, they shut down nullsec because they were a single element so powerful they decided conflicts by themselves. CCP eventually realized this was bad and changed it.

If any single mechanic obsoletes or negates large number of other mechanics, to the detriment of conflict and player content, it is bad.

Consider the following possible modifications:

What if citadel access changes had a 24 hour grace period? Basically if a player is kicked from a corp, or has rights revoked, or any other change, that player retains access to that station for 24 hours. They can’t access corp hangers, or alliance assets, but they can still grab the shotgun above the mantle and stand their ground. Or make a frenzied rush to evacuate what assets they can, before the noose tightens.

Suddenly, instead of an instant win mechanic, we see the aggressors shutting down all alliance assets, stealing all property, emptying accounts, disabling defenses, and the defenders rallying what they had for whatever purpose they deem appropriate.

The victim still is defeated, but now players are looking to relocate their assets for the next 24 hours, causing a mad scramble and lots of violence. Maybe they rally and try to punch a hole to lowsec with an industrial fleet. Maybe some JF pilots move goods for them. Maybe they move to non-sov stations nearby to rally an offensive.

Anything would be better than the current corp hijacking mechanics. We need more pvp and less care bearing in eve, but we also need to make sure our content leads to more content, rather than shutting down other content.

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Meh I’m a career soloist. I just found the recent incident left a bad taste in my mouth. I’d rather the defenders forced into a fighting retreat and a rout, with isolated pockets of conflict as they tried to save their asses. I’m all for theft and griefing, but only if it generates content.

Miner ganking and bumping generates content. It generates drama and occasionally incites a response. Ninja salvaging is a massive content generator, or was at least. Sometimes mission runners fought back. Sometimes they lost. Sometimes they brought a friend and suddenly a guaranteed gank went south. Either way, content was generated.

I’d just rather victims of a corp theft be at least able to access their personal resources, because then they can fight, and are forced into a really bad position where they are forced to fight, or lose almost everything. That would be good for the game.

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I disagree about citadel access. I think they are too safe as it is already. I actually think all asset safety should go away. If you put something in a citadel and it’s destroyed, you’re kicked from a corp, revoked access, if anything happens, you should lose those things.

That’s part of the attraction of living outside of places with NPC stations, you have to trust people you play with. Only keep enough ships to do what you need out of NPC stations, haul anything valuable somewhere safe whenever you can. The fact that anyone can scam, betray, etc. is a good thing. 0.0 especially is based on building empires, politics is essential to it. If you don’t trust your corp, don’t keep things you can’t afford to lose somewhere that you need the corp’s blessing to get to.

I’ve had days where I was convinced someone was going to awox (no concrete evidence, just a strong feeling) and I spent a long time clearing anything valuable out to places I could get to it if anything happened. Having that little bit of paranoia is one of the entertaining parts of living outside of NPC null, LS or HS. Saying that, this is just a game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If someone scams/betrays/awoxes you and you’re actually getting upset beyond a “damn, I guess he won that one!” reaction, relax a little. You lost one, so try harder next time. It’s just a game, it’s not real life.

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Yeah I know the feeling about paranoia. I’ve always operated under an extremely paranoid mindset from the outset, which made the few friends I got close to in Eve that much better in my book. I don’t think individual players should be unaffected by a betrayal, just that I want content to be generated. From what I read of the fallout of these recent event, it basically involved complete asset lockdown and a bunch of bubble camps.

Anyways, I actually agree about Asset Protection. It’s a wonky solution imho, and kind of against the philosophy of Eve in many ways. I mean it’s based on projected item value, so I’d be willing to bet there’s a potential exploit that could be used with it to haul goods between regions if you picked an empty station and traded the item to yourself for .01 isk a billion times then activated asset protection.

I’d much rather the defenders get a day, or maybe a week tops to claim their things. Suddenly the decision tree branches substantially. Do they try to call in an outside force for aid? Do they try to design a fleet strategy to counter the enemy and undock all at once? Or maybe they start setting up Jump chains to get out, you know? Basically instead of this “there is only marginal risk to assets in citadels” it goes to “you will lose literally everything, unless you FIGHT for it”. I think my proposal fits a hell of a lot better than asset protection. :wink:

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Was some of the trust based on him being in the CSM?

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Was he? I’m not sure it would matter tbh. CSM shouldn’t extend greater trust in individual game matters, though CSM should in theory act for the betterment of the game as a whole. Either way, more power to him if he leveraged that to get into the position to rob people blind.

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Yes, it is too powerful on multiple levels, what CCP has to do is enable something like the three key lock in terms of transfers etc. Anyone who has done the Thieves Guild story in Skyrim will know what I mean by that.

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Well, hang on. They already have something similar to this with shareholder voting. I don’t think they should make it impossible for a single person to pull something off. The idea of multiple locking would just make it so that low level infiltration of small corps would be much less common(which is bad for the game). Essentially such a solution makes the current concept of corporate theft a much more binary system. Harder to pull off, but still 100% fuckery if it does go off. I’m more shooting for, say, 80% fuckery with the same level of risk currently present.

If you put someone untrustworthy in command, you rightfully should be ■■■■■■. My goal isn’t to decimate the rewards of infiltration. I’d just like that last 20% be a bit more open to circumstance. As is, once an infiltration happens there’s no real way to save it. You’ve lost. But, if you had a chance of saving 10-20% of your value through a last stand, or a desperate escape, that’s creating content for players on both sides. Stressful, nerve-wracking content, but content nonetheless.

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The fault lies with people who give others enough access to ‘screw over thousands of people’. It’s ironic in a game where ‘trust no one’ is a motto.

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That is control of corp only.

So you have thousands of fed up players who were about to get involved in what was looking to be a very interesting nullsec campaign based around citadels all ruined by one egotistical person and the Goons skillful playing of him at a CSM meeting. My alliance is in the Legacy coalition and many of us were upset to miss out on such an interesting campaign win or lose.

What I would propose is that the transfer of a citadel could require the agreement of others before it is executed and that should be built into the control of said citadels, for a game that is supposed to be based on spaceships being blown up this is poor game design. The rest of it I don’t care about.

That was where the fault lied, however at alliance level you have to trust some people, you have no choice based on TZ requirements, therefore sign off on such things should be included in the control of Citadels imo.

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No, you are just a traitor actually, even for the one who convinced someone to betray. Traitors cant be trusted.

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Ahh yeah. Shows my lack of knowledge of alliance level security features. I’ve never operated at that high of a level. Still, let’s not get all buttmad man. Egotistical? This is Eve! We’re all arrogant and out to screw each other. If we weren’t we’d be playing world of carebears or something. He played the hand he was given same as everyone else. Perhaps the other players at the table shouldn’t have given him such a great hand, no?

Anyways, I think the best approach to this sort of thing is to basically allow all “non-critical” functions to be screwed with by an opportunistic player. That is to say, defenses, wallets, and corporation assets. So he could screw things up such that the victims couldn’t rely on static defenses(anything that isn’t a ship), would be effectively broke, and could have all corporate assets transferred to the perpetrator, effective immediately.

That alone can easily turn the tide of a war. Complete collapse of the logistics and supply chains for said alliance or corporation. They’re operating purely at a militia level there, based only on the wallets of their players, and their willpower and ingenuity. That will, in almost all circumstances, not be enough to avoid their fate. They played poorly, and eve is an unforgiving game. But it means they can still choose their fate. They can choose to run, or fight. They can become part of their own demise, rather than having it happen “off screen” so to speak. I don’t think this is a particularly unreasonable suggestion. I don’t want theft or espionage to stop. They’re damn great. They make this game what it is.

For lack of a better way to put it, I want players to be “present” for their own demise. Because then they at least get the experience of getting destroyed, which is what drives the game. Suddenly losing everything without a battle or even a semblance of a conflict is not exactly the same thing as the usual fare. Even when you get jumped on in a WH anom by a cloaky proteus, who never showed up on d-scan, and didn’t launch probes, you still get to at least TRY to fight back, even if you’re guaranteed to lose.

Eve is driven by a bitter determination that drives its player base. Eve is a game about looking at impossible odds, and saying “I will win.” This is the same story that has been told in every major conflict in Eve. Locking players out of their assets entirely means that story never gets told. It’s not like they’re going to get far when the exits are all camped, but they get to try. They get to make a choice to fight back, and that’s worth a lot in a game like this.

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That does not stop them from playing the game the way they want, CSM only has a VOICE, keep that in mind, he speaks and reaches out to the community to see what needs to be addressed so they can go over to CCP and say “Hey, they want this to be better”, the position of CSM is far from stopping them from playing the game. CSM is a normal player above all else, but with a much higher chance to be heard by CCP by interacting with the community.

If you really want conflict, do so, bring down the big alliances so the smaller ones start brawling for land, or like I mentioned above do what is needed to stir up conflict between them.

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Are we actually disagreeing here? I’m not sure. I agree that being a CSM doesn’t stop someone from being able to play the game. Stealing and screwing people over, even their own alliance, is part of the game.

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I know, I am just stating it because some people tend to confuse what being a CSM is, I’ve only been playing for a few months and already I know they are just players with a voice, people get this illusion that they are these diplomats that can be trusted and that do not have any flaw whatsoever and then they get mad when something like taking down an alliance happens.

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Roger that. The only trustworthy player in Eve is Chribba. Chribba being trustworthy is like a fundamental force of the universe. If he stopped being trustworthy, all of lowsec would suddenly be a carebear haven, and highsec would be only nullsec alliances. Rails would shoot missiles, and launchers would shoot cap boosters.

…and one day he’s probably going to pull off the greatest heist in Eve history, and it’s going to be goddamn beautiful.

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