Ryan Murdoc

RenraikuThis tells you absolutely nothing about the person in real life at all. You are deluding yourself if you think this. Playing a video game is automatically not reality and therefore the same rules do not apply as the real world.

The very moment you play a game which has other people playing it alongside you it becomes Reality for everyone involved. You as well as everyone else are responsible for the things that are said and done and will be judged accordingly by others. Same as what you do or say outside of any game that involves a community of people. Trying to play it down or making it sound as if that doesn't apply to you doesn't change one bit about it being fact.

And regarding how certain types of Personalities of people are reflected in the way they play games you might want to check the Internet. It can be quite enlightening.

Sakashiro

Aleksander MajjamThe biggest thing out of all this that pisses me right the F off, is someone who apparently had dealt with depression before whom then goes on to call someone who is experiencing depression pathetic because they write about it online as a form of explaining that they're basically getting in-game cyber-bullied?

It's important to understand that not everyone who threatens to kill themselves is actually suicidal. Some people use the threat for emotional blackmail.

Suicide as Emotional Abuse: When Threats of Suicide are Used to Control

If I received an in-game message by a player trying to solicit playstyle changes from me via the threat of suicide, I would report them, regardless of whether I consider the threat credible or not. Because if they're serious about it, they're in need of help and probably shouldn't be playing the game, and if they're not serious, then their behavior is abusive towards other players.

Aleksander MajjamI've done enough military funeral details where the cause of death is suicide that I will always err on the side of caution when coming across such. I know this is the internet and you can never really know, but it costs me nothing to give the benefit of the doubt. Use your judgement, no?

Ryan Murdoc

RenraikuThis tells you absolutely nothing about the person in real life at all. You are deluding yourself if you think this. Playing a video game is automatically not reality and therefore the same rules do not apply as the real world.

The very moment you play a game which has other people playing it alongside you it becomes Reality for everyone involved. You as well as everyone else are responsible for the things that are said and done and will be judged accordingly by others. Same as what you do or say outside of any game that involves a community of people. Trying to play it down or making it sound as if that doesn't apply to you doesn't change one bit about it being fact.

And regarding how certain types of Personalities of people are reflected in the way they play games you might want to check the Internet. It can be quite enlightening.

MarcOmega

Renraiku

A PvP Flag is a bad Idea and will never be implemented. The whole point of open play is to be part of a dog eat dog environment in a dystopian future galaxy where everyone is subject to the same treatment and the same perils, where the strongest and/or smartest survive. There are already two other modes that essentially flag you as non PvP (Solo) and Selective PvP if desired (PG where the organiser chooses the rules). The decision to use this option was not made lightly.

The thing PvPers need is more meaningful PvP, give PvP a better reason to be a proper career path and you will find more people engage in it and Ganking will become less of an issue.

I started a new Epic account recently and found myself not realising I had left the Newb zones and ventured out too far, I didn't get ganked but I realised how easy it is for someone new not to notice the potentially disastrous mistake of entering an open system. The implementation on FDevs end in my opinion should be much more informative and even restrictive, there was no notice telling me if I jump to this system I am leaving the safezone, or if there was it was too minor to notice, there was certainly no prompt asking me if i was sure.

You have failed to encompass all PvPers in your speech, there are some who just don't care how others play the game, whether they gank noobs or not it makes no difference. Everyone is entitled to play their own way as long as it is within the EULA and ToU. I have attempted to help noobs previously with extremely limited success. Was it my approach? maybe, but it certainly wasn't hostile.

It doesn't matter to me whether they create a flag or not. I was simply pointing out how I "think" that it could benefit the game that ED actually is and not what people try to twist it into. It is NOT an MMO. The net code and instancing of ED does not support massive numbers of players fighting each other and every time a group tries to twist it into that, they basically just have to fall back on complaining about why the net code is crap.

PvP is also, an end game activity. ED is not a casual game in the best of circumstances and pretty much everything that you have to do in order to be a good PvP opponent is locked behind a grind wall, including ships, outfitting, engineering, rebuys, tactics, and skills. Given that there is already a learning curve for players to get into ED and given the grind that awaits them as they work their way up and the fact is that, tossing new players into any dog eat dog environment is going to push some of them right back out of the game. I am familiar with 2 other people that started ED and gave up within a few hours just because of the difficulty docking. So, adding in all of the issues with tossing those players into Open without understanding how bad the entry neighborhoods are going to be is just going to make that issue worse. That limits the player base and it limits options, money for FDev, and the potential PvP base.

The instancing code is what it is and is very unlikely to get better, short of FDev going to a subscription model to support infrastructure necessary for the type of server based code that is required for large scale network games. Large scale events such as those in Eve are simply not going to happen in ED.

But you and I probably agree. There will not be a PvP flag mechanism, more is the pity as I think it opens up possibilities to improve PvP play given the reality of ED, but it is unlikely to happen. And, thus my actual original point where I suggested that new players should simply block gankers, ignore them, move to Mobius PG orSolo where they can avoid them. Those things will also have a negative effect on legitimate PvPers, but all are legitimate and allowed within the ToU for players in ED. For my purposes, if it keeps them in the game, whether they engage in PvP or not, all the better. But advising them to go out and seek PvP revenge is simply foolish, again, IMO.

Ryan Murdoc

ZentzlbYou are kind of missing the point of this game. I hear so many people complaining that gankers dont get punished for their actions, it is up to the player base to punish the gankers. If half the people I hear complaining actually learned how to fight and joined together against the outlaws the galaxy would be a much safer place. Saying "gankers bad" on reddit or on Inara or on the forums does nothing for anyone. Here go join the fight.

Thats a PvP PoV, and it makes sense you try to strengthen it. Reality however shows that PvP in this game was, is and will remain to be done by a minority of players, albeit the most vocal one. Maybe Odyssey will change that though it'll be more of a Ego-shooter then.

ZentzlbAside from that, bad game mechanics have lead to the "ganking problem" if you want to call it that. Most traders and miners will just combat log instead of handing over 10t of cargo which has lead to almost every pirate giving up on piracy to become a ganker. The name of the game is killing the ship before it can log. Ironically clogging almost never saves noobs, the most clogs I get are from developed players flying corvettes condas and cutters. For example of the large ships I engaged 'legitimately' in the CZs during the last community goal, almost 90% of them choose to clog rather than die. Additionally there is almost no incentive for PvPers to play for the lawful side, as you can only collect 2 mil of a player bounty.

I could write a whole essay on this but in short your thinking on this topic has not gone much further than "gankers bad" and in reality it is a much deeper problem.

So you're blaming the "bad game mechanics" now. Last I checked a reasonable person knows what a certain action entails, so if someone decides to become murderhobos for the heck of it just because the game isn't to their liking the way it is, what does that tell me about them as person and character? Quite a bit imho.

Mind you, I am not talking about the type of people who actually try to roleplay a bad guy. There are plenty who say they do so but only camouflage their selfish needs to dominate others due to their inadequacies in RL. Which led to the current problem that only very few will stick around after they got interdicted, not expecting to be treated "fairly" but having their ships blown up under their rears. And as far as Roleplay goes that is called "Godmoding" and is frowned upon. For RP means that each side gets equal chance to play their "Character" in this game at the given moment in time, anyone who doesn't abide by that rule doesn't RP at all.

While being at the topic of RP, The Code was once known to be good sports with decent RP qualities, but over time respectful people were pushed away and down by those who only wanted to kill, dragging their overall Rep down. And when push came to shove these toxic cowards bailed out and formed their own SQN, leaving others to deal with the fallout.

MarcOmega

Sakashiro

MarcOmegaSome of your experience can probably be attributed to blocking and the implementation of instancing. If even one of the gankers that you evaded decided to block you as a waste of their time, because you evaded, then you will likely not instance with any of the other players that they are friends with either. That is exactly why PvP players complain so much about the block function, because of the way that it creates cascade blocks and inherited blocks among a larger group of players than just the specific players that were actually blocked.

While this might be playing a part, I still see plenty of gankers in supercruise when I go to Deciat. I'm just getting the impression that I get targeted less frequently.

On the other hand, I failed to get into the Hollatja instance where Tony was doing the "seal clubbing"...

Well, another factor, you are in an Imperial Courier. A lot of the gankers in Deciat are looking for new players that are trying to unlock Felicity Farseer. Since the Courier is locked behind Empire rank grind, the mere type of ship you have makes it much less likely that you are their chosen target type. You might have more luck in a sidewinder.

MarcOmega

Zentzlb


"You just have their best interests at heart." As far as I am concerned it is in everyone's best interest. Id much rather be fighting lawfuls with engineered ships than clubbing noobs.

That is really the primary point.  If you would rather be fighting lawful's, there is absolutely no reason to be clubbing newbs in the first place.  Clubbing newbs does not HELP your desired role in any way.  And spare the me the tired "I am just trying to motivate them to 'git gud' speech."  Trying to say that a ganker serves any purpose in encouraging players to engage in PvP is like saying that an effective marketing tactic for a guy running a dojo is to run around punching people in the face and then telling them they should join his dojo to learn self defense.  

Approaching newbs with actual encouragement and assistance, helping them to rack up successes in the game, encouraging them to learn new tactics, etc is much more likely to encourage new players to embrace PvP.  Smacking them down in a completely one-sided fight and harvesting the salt is not going to encourage them to do anything other than, leave the game/switch to solo/pg.  Legitimate PvP'ers should be denouncing the griefer/ganker as a dishonorable player, refusing to associate with them, declaring yourself to be apart from them.  Even "bad guys" who engage in piracy and other forms of PvP should be denouncing gankers as beneath them.  

And again, I will point out that it makes no difference to me one way or the other.  As much as I enjoy the positive interactions with commanders in ED, I can find that just as readily in Mobius PG than I am likely to find it in Open.  Since I play PvE, my enjoyment is not dependent on others in the game.  I would think that the PvP members, specifically, would be more apt to focus on ways to actually encourage players to play in Open and engage in legitimate PvP, weird how it seems that is just not the case.

And I am not painting all PvP players with a broad brush, but between the toxic ganker/griefer community and the apologists for those same members, and adding in the PvP'ers that tolerate/condone that antisocial behavior,  and then adding in the "legitimate PvP groups" that use loaded terms like carebears, and you are all your own worst enemy when it comes to the game.  I have never seen a worst set of ambassadors to a specific and minority version of gameplay in any game, although I imagine there are more toxic games that I have just not taken part in.

The reality, unfortunately, is that there are simply not enough of you. PvP is a very vocal minority of ED and that is me being generous.  If we subtract the toxic ganker/griefer crowd, it gets even smaller.  So, I get why it is that most of you are loathe to denounce the more toxic of your crowd but the fact is that it makes you your own worst enemy.  

What your crowd should have been lobbying FDev for, from the very beginning, was an actual PvP flag.  Let those that want to engage or who want to be engaged by other players declare themselves openly.  At least that way, it would have been possible to actually address some of your other complaints.  For instance, setting the PvP flag could have removed the ability to turn crimes on, so that unscrupulous PvP'ers couldn't use that shady tactic.  FDev could have increased the menu log timeout for players with that flag set to make it last longer.  FDev could have implemented an increased timeout for lost net connections in conjunction with that flag to combat CLogging. It might have even improved instancing as they could have implemented likely instancing between PvP'ers in the game to make it more likely to encounter other PvP players.

But, every time that suggestion has come from the PvE crowd, all I hear from PvP'ers is "carebear."  Forget how it might benefit your gameplay, obviously, we can't do anything at all that would detract from the ability of gankers to club seals.  

Technically, at least some of the issues could have been addressed already. Much like Mobius created an extremely large group of players for PvE, it was certainly possible for the PvP community to do the exact same thing for PvP. That would have, in all likelihood, handled the instancing issues that are so prevalent. And it would have focused PvP players on other players that were there for that same purpose.

So, I will again impart my own opinion.  Play the game the way you want to and don't fall for any BS from any other player that suggests that you should play in a different way than you actually enjoy.  The secret to really enjoying ED is to play your own way, make your own path and don't let anyone else get in your way.

ZentzlbHowever, from my own experience most gankers are actually quite nice people.

Renraiku

Ryan Murdoc

RenraikuThis tells you absolutely nothing about the person in real life at all. You are deluding yourself if you think this. Playing a video game is automatically not reality and therefore the same rules do not apply as the real world.

The very moment you play a game which has other people playing it alongside you it becomes Reality for everyone involved. You as well as everyone else are responsible for the things that are said and done and will be judged accordingly by others. Same as what you do or say outside of any game that involves a community of people. Trying to play it down or making it sound as if that doesn't apply to you doesn't change one bit about it being fact.

And regarding how certain types of Personalities of people are reflected in the way they play games you might want to check the Internet. It can be quite enlightening.

No. it is still make believe, the internet affords a significant amount of anonymity and as long as you are playing by the rules of the game you can ignore the rules of the world except those that overlap or your own moral code if you so choose and do what you like.

How I play in game is not how I am in real life. This is true and different for each and every game I play. You can spend your entire time in E:D not communicating with anyone else ever. My actions in game says nothing about me in real life and never will. I make a decision in game based on the games rules and not real life rules.

The variables are way too numerous to conclude that what you are saying is correct.

Studies are generally performed in controlled environments, it is not always easy to find the specific control group criteria a study used, depending on the subjects tested and the questions asked of that data, the result may not be accurate from other points of reference.

DescartesC'mon guys, these long anti-ganker rants have been getting longer and longer, quoting an re-quoting interminable amounts of text. Changing nothing.


Surely better, and more productive to Play The GAME and find ways to outwit them?

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