I kindly ask everyone to suspend The Hunt until further notice. I’ll update the original post.
So many good points have been raised - this has become quite a productive conversation! So a few points I would like to address. The points are not addressed toward or in response to any particular statement or person:
- On “preventing Komi from running for CSM”:
- Komi indicated prior to and very explicitly during the election via interview she would biomass if podded, so this is basically an open invitation to all of New Eden to test this commitment. It would be absurd for CCP to step in and say “hey guys you can’t band together to try to pod Komi” when, bounty or not, she knowingly and unambiguously painted a target on her own back. Can you imagine the outrage if CCP tried to prevent or punish the community from podding someone who self-imposed a biomass rule on themselves? Private hunters and Discords would be chattering about testing this even if there was no bounty just to see if it would happen.
- The NDA indicates OOC Komi the player is running, so unless Komi voluntarily chooses to drop out due to “dying” before being elected (a self-imposed limitation), there’s nothing we can do to stop a hypothetical election. I think pretty much everyone knows that by now, so the hunt is more along the lines of biomassing on a standalone basis.
- Consider all of the possible, very similar behaviors which are permitted in EVE that provide grounds for a coordinated bounty operating within reasonable parameters:
- Constant wardecs and ganks, including those operating on the basis of extortion: “we will continue to wardec/gank you unless X occurs” or “we will continue to wardec/gank you because you don’t like you” - why would CSM candidacy or CSM membership pose an exception to this rule? In real life, if a candidate runs who you vehemently oppose, then you launch a campaign against them (I opened this thread to keep Komi’s thread clear), except that here we have the opportunity to constantly attack their ships, pods, POSes, and “kill them” RP-wise, and this by itself is not considered griefing in violation of CCP’s policies.
- There is already both a Bounty and a Locator Agent mechanic in game, so CCP already has set a precedent such that bounty hunting, especially against large bounty targets, is already a thing - and one they encourage. The existing bounty mechanic kind of sucks and could use some love, so having some versatility via forums - although not enforceable via game mechanics - makes the bounty hunting profession more exciting and worthwhile. To better regulate player conduct on forums, in-game, and out-of-game (CCP enforces behaviors out-of-game per policies), they could have a Bounty Hunting subforum where policies are pinned to make it very clear what is and is not acceptable behavior to prevent lines from being crossed. (Or they could add a “Bounty Hunting Policy” pin to the existing Crime & Punishment subforum, whatever.) I’ll issue this as a feature request at a later point in time when things settle down.
- One potential issue demonstrated raised by The Hunt isn’t so much whether or not it is acceptable for it to have been initiated and followed through, but the manner and extent to which it has been executed.
- At what point does “this is EVE” turn into outright harassment? CCP already declares that constant wardecs and ganks (outside of Rookie Griefing), for example, are acceptable behaviors, so why - when conducted within certain parameters - wouldn’t coordinated non-stop hunting be?
- Without question, players should never engage in behaviors such as making racist or sexist remarks, barraging with private messages in or out of game, etc. - if you are currently doing this, cut the crap.
- A smear campaign is also unacceptable behavior. Does this make me a hypocrite? On this I defend myself (I will not speak for others): a thorough evaluation of my statements on Komi’s thread indicates they have been grounded on inquiry and constructive criticism - any degeneration into frustration and mockery near the end and ultimately on this one was merited (in my opinion) by the absurdity of the established dialogue. Harsh criticism has not arisen from disagreement, but from non-existence of substance or merits even from which to disagree on anything despite NUMEROUS opportunities to enumerate points of substance and merits, and from only RP as a vehicle on which to operate on. As stated previously, I am not anti-RP; I am actually very pro-RP and even recently submitted RP-feature requests here and here, but I find it completely inappropriate to run entirely on an RP basis when the RP character itself is unqualified to run.
I’ve already stated I’ve engaged in diplomacy with Komi - I’m not going to get into details as to what the diplomacy is or why I’ve engaged in it until the efforts have concluded for better or worse.
(Note: the above commentary is written from a “pre-diplomacy/non-diplomacy” perspective.)
I kindly ask everyone to suspend The Hunt until further notice. I’ll update the original post.