Ripard is out again against despicable behavior in EVE Online. He is as wrong as one can be. Not because the player he mentioned isn't a despicable filth, he is. Not because - just like in the previous case - the victim could easily protect himself by not being completely dumb. Not because I easily repelled the very same despicable player and refused the singing humiliation despite losing in-game assets (something Ripard claims to be impossible).
Ripard is dead wrong because CCP cannot help the mankind with this. Sure, they could ban anyone who wants to humiliate others by demanding them songs or lingerie photos and such. That would help us if we define "us" as "EVE players". But he didn't write his posts against some bad EVE players. He wrote it against bad human beings. If these filth-men would be banned from EVE, would they be any better man? Would the EVE players be more resistant to such filth? Would we (defined as "mankind") be any better? No. We would be the very same mankind as before, just these filth-men had to find themselves another playground with another victims. They would succeed, have no doubt.
The reason why nothing would change is how these filth-men see the world: "I can do anything to anyone because I'm stronger than them. All I have to avoid is the few men who are stronger than me." CCP is a "strong guy" in EVE, so being defeated by CCP doesn't challenge their philosophy.
Now imagine the alternative: the little guys, the ones the bullies despise, would fight back. That would hit them badly. They wouldn't lose an EVE account they can't care less about, they'd lose their imaginary superiority. They would see that "people who I thought to be my prey are hunting me!". Also, people would see that they aren't powerless victims, they can fight back and win. They would also see that they aren't alone in the fight against filth-men.
Dear Ripard! Less QQ, more pew-pew! That "despicable, vile, evil human being" has a corp which is in an alliance. Why don't you go and hunt them, until they agree to fire him? It wouldn't even be hard as they are non-solo suicide gankers, you can completely shut down their operations with a single Falcon.
I put nearly 40B/month into fighting against griefers and their lackeys, with stunning results. What are you doing? Writing posts that they consider tears? Congratulations! Let me give you an advice: form a corp "Ripard's avengers" and recruit people from your blog. You'd be over 1000 pilots in a month (Lemmings grow to 450, despite only propagated them outside of official forums and I'm not really popular). Wage war against those who behave despicably. Make them be the hunted weaklings!
Ripard is dead wrong because CCP cannot help the mankind with this. Sure, they could ban anyone who wants to humiliate others by demanding them songs or lingerie photos and such. That would help us if we define "us" as "EVE players". But he didn't write his posts against some bad EVE players. He wrote it against bad human beings. If these filth-men would be banned from EVE, would they be any better man? Would the EVE players be more resistant to such filth? Would we (defined as "mankind") be any better? No. We would be the very same mankind as before, just these filth-men had to find themselves another playground with another victims. They would succeed, have no doubt.
The reason why nothing would change is how these filth-men see the world: "I can do anything to anyone because I'm stronger than them. All I have to avoid is the few men who are stronger than me." CCP is a "strong guy" in EVE, so being defeated by CCP doesn't challenge their philosophy.
Now imagine the alternative: the little guys, the ones the bullies despise, would fight back. That would hit them badly. They wouldn't lose an EVE account they can't care less about, they'd lose their imaginary superiority. They would see that "people who I thought to be my prey are hunting me!". Also, people would see that they aren't powerless victims, they can fight back and win. They would also see that they aren't alone in the fight against filth-men.
Dear Ripard! Less QQ, more pew-pew! That "despicable, vile, evil human being" has a corp which is in an alliance. Why don't you go and hunt them, until they agree to fire him? It wouldn't even be hard as they are non-solo suicide gankers, you can completely shut down their operations with a single Falcon.
I put nearly 40B/month into fighting against griefers and their lackeys, with stunning results. What are you doing? Writing posts that they consider tears? Congratulations! Let me give you an advice: form a corp "Ripard's avengers" and recruit people from your blog. You'd be over 1000 pilots in a month (Lemmings grow to 450, despite only propagated them outside of official forums and I'm not really popular). Wage war against those who behave despicably. Make them be the hunted weaklings!
40 comments:
Hello
Players *are* fighting back, using *gasp* social means. They are speaking out against E1's behaviour, and if the voices are loud enough, CCP will do something. Perhaps CCP wasn't aware how far E1 had gone?
I'll note that this is far, far, more effective than "fighting in space". How do you fight E1 in space? He has no sovereignty. He might not even undock, and had alts do his biddings.
I'll also let you know, incidentally, that the goons have banned E1 for being a creep. Mynnna even spoke out against him on the EVE-O forums (over an incident involving mayonnaise... sweet baby jebus!).
Lastly, I wish you would stop comparing NO-HO asking for a song and the complete garbage E1 does. The song this is silly, and may be a bit embarrassing for some but doesn't involve the outrageous levels of coercion, manipulation and cruelty that E1 displayed.
I'll even note that people in RvB were *eager* to sing since it was such an easy way to overcome the problem (because let's be honest, if NoHo wanted to deny us entry, they easily could have.)
I put nearly 40B/month into fighting against griefers and their lackeys
No, you put nearly 40B/month into fighting Goons, by sponsoring griefers. You, yourself, engage in griefing. Honestly, here, Gevlon, let's not gild any sow's ears and call them silk purses, hmm?
But I do agree that the person Ripard's talking about is utter human filth, and taking things outside the game is going too far - that starts getting into issues of real-world fraud and harrassment, and is clearly beyond the pale.
I also agree that CCP can't help us rid humanity of such scum. But I don't really think the way to achieve that goal is to fight back w/in EVE - there's really not much you can do to fight back, all you can do is drive those players to use NPC-corp alts to do it. What do they care if that alt gets ID'd as scum? They just move the assets to a different alt, biomass the one tagged as scum, and keep on keepin' on.
Really, the options are pretty binary in nature:
a)put up with them, while making every effort to teach your children to be better human beings and hope others do the same, or
b)buy 7.2 billion bullets, and don't miss.
I'm personally opting for (a), but I have to admit that I wouldn't necessarily root against anyone opting for an extinction agenda, as long as they were willing to prioritize the people I know (including me) pretty far down on the list.
I mean, let's face it, we're not exactly the most benevolent of invasive species, you know?
Why should I try to shoot a man who never undocks?
http://eve-kill.net/?a=pilot_detail&plt_id=1411995
I went one better: I set 2000 EVE players on him. They're blobbing the 14 or so trying to defend him quite satisfactorily for my taste. For my taste, that's EVE players policing the community.
CCP need merely seal E1's fate, not decide it.
I almost suggested the same thing on reddit. "He who must not be named" belongs to a corp that does a lot of ganks in lemmings home system. Seems like Ripard should be getting in touch with Tora for a contract.
@Jester, Arrendis and LR: I didn't say shoot him (his replaceable alt) but the alliance that shelters him. Such men are nothing without audience. They do it for being the "hero" of their "community". If we make it clear that no community can continue to exist that harbors such behavior, the audience disappear. Destroy their lackeys and you destroy them!
@LR: NOHO asked for something that wasn't in the game. Not ISK, kills, assets or space but a humiliating song and "kudos". Sure, they aren't as severe as that filth, but they were on that way. The only reason they didn't get that far is that they couldn't.
Gevlon, while you are right, yes, they both asked for something out-of-game, that doesn't make them the same. That's akin to saying a bodyguard and a serial killer are the same just because they both used a gun.
Also, for me, the out-of-game argument is artificial, considering there are many games where voice communication is integrated. The change of medium is important regarding the despicable one, because it was in order to avoid consequences. I don't see that with NOHO, the medium simply seems to fit their pranks.
Or, even simpler, the obvious difference between them: NOHO are known to honor their ransoms.
@Jean-Mira: so if Erotica 1 would honor his ransom too (pay the bonus round as promised), would that be OK too?
"Prank" is a politically correct term for "harassment".
..This one of the few times that I've agreed with you Gevlon. Erotica 1 is what he is and does what he does. He makes Eve a worse place for doing the things he does.
But CCP removing him from Eve would make Eve a worse place, because Eve is Eve, does what Eve does.
Erotica 1 scammed a bit of ISK out of a pilot who for whatever reason with inclined with trusting him and freely giving him his assets and time.
Louis Robichaud, what if CCP comes knocking on your door next for "terrorizing" RvB's next war target? Wouldn't you and the likes of RvB be guilty of the exact same things that you are so quick to convict Erotica 1 with?
Remove Erotica 1 and then what? Where does it stop? Where is the line drawn?
Boys boys boys. This is Eve. People get scammed. People get hell-camped. People and whole organizations are trolled with insufferable propaganda, and then harassed because of said content.
This is Eve. HTFU. And if you don't like what Erotica did to this naive pilot, then put your money(ISK) where your ban happy mouth is. Reimburse this poor tormented soul and teach him the ways so he is not subjected to this sort of scam again.
Even if he was kicked out of his alliance and lost a bunch of pods, the issue would still be there:
Erotica1 would still be able to go about his business, with absolutely zero fucks given.
Jester's actions directly throw a wrench on his plans, as (a) CCP might do something about it (I doubt it) and (b) more people than even know what kind of piece of shit he is (and can protect themselves).
@Jester, Arrendis and LR: I didn't say shoot him (his replaceable alt) but the alliance that shelters him. Such men are nothing without audience.
Right, but my point is: all he has to do is do the actual dirty-work on NPC-corp alts, and he can still provide the recordings for giggles to his alliance. He can still get alliance-mates in on it. And then he can do it with complete deniability.
Such men require an audience. Unfortunately, such an audience will always exist - it's where such men arise from.
@Jean-Mira: so if Erotica 1 would honor his ransom too (pay the bonus round as promised), would that be OK too?
If he were paying out as promised, then yes, he's still a douche, but he doesn't rise to the level he does now. Because you know what you're getting out of the deal, before you ever set out to get your payment.
It's not all that different from the lamentable, but totally legal 'sign up for free' sites that require credit card info, because the extremely fine print says that if you don't cancel within 30 days, they'll bill you. Or there's something else on the site that's really tiny that says 'agreeing to X terms also means Y, and we'll bill you for Y'.
Distasteful, but legal. What he's doing now is well past that point.
CCP can't fix this for humanity but they can absolutely (and should absolutely) take a stand against their game being used as a vehicle for this level of nonsense.
I don't like what a lot of people do in game. I don't like what you do in the game or your attitude towards the game.. but you, and most others, don't cross the line between being an in game jerk and being a real life bully.
CCP can't fix Erotica, but the players cannot fit him through in game means either. The measure of whether or not someone has gone to far is whether or not in game means can be used to retaliate.
It is also worth pointing out that in a lot jurisdictions, what Erotica did would be considered Cyber bullying, and could result in a criminal conviction.
@Arrendis: no he cannot. The hunted action is "being associated with the filth-men". If the alliance hops on comms with him and listen to his filth, it needs just one decent man in the alliance who records the coms, screenshot the list of people on comms and send it to the Avengers. Then the alliance will be wardecced/AFK cloaked for a week.
Next time they won't.
@LR: NOHO asked for something that wasn't in the game. Not ISK, kills, assets or space but a humiliating song and "kudos". Sure, they aren't as severe as that filth, but they were on that way. The only reason they didn't get that far is that they couldn't.
The difference is that NOHO don't hold assets to ransom and then humiliate you for hours. In most instances people volunteer to sing for NOHO. This is literally their gimmick and they are well known for it.
And you sing a song, then have a casual chat on their TS for as long as you like while they probe you a way home... they have a reputation for being true to their words. They are nothing like Erotica 1.. not even a little bit.
@jean-mira
that analogy is bad, what unites them is not that they have a "gun" its what they do, which is outgame actions, so to structure it in a way that makes sense, one is a serial killer the other is a random street thug.
thats their relationship.
Gevlon heres what I think: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/a-post-where-goons-are-right.html
The victim knew it was a scam. Said so right at the very start. Went ahead and signed over all his stuff anyway. Over the next 2 hrs we got to see just what a low life he was too. Hes a moron and Im amazed so many people are getting so riled and angry about it. I thought this was eve? you know, the birth place of HTFU?
It is hardly a secret who is in those comms, there are plenty of eve-mails about with names and chatlogs, especially for the more notorious ones (The mayonnaise incident for example)
for me personally there is one thing... ...lets take it to a RL-kind-of:
You officially win some Money. Kind of a Big one. You are contracted, that you can multiply your Winnings by 5, everyting you have to do is follow some stranger to a conference room and:
- Give a full all your Belongings
- Sign a Contract to transfer all your Disposable Belongings
- Realise all your Bank assets, Stocks, ...
Two things are horrible here. Two things must be fought to end this behaviour. a) E1 b) stupidity both is a community-task.
@Nightgerbil: taking the money of the stupid is completely OK. Toying with him and humiliating him is not OK. You should teach the dumb AFTER you took his items.
@Anonymous: honoring or not honoring the ransom is in-game thing and both are officially valid in the game. So two actions (E1 wanting a song and NOHO wanting a song) are equal if their only difference is something that are deemed equally right.
@Nightgerbil: taking the money of the stupid is completely OK. Toying with him and humiliating him is not OK. You should teach the dumb AFTER you took his items.
@Anonymous: honoring or not honoring the ransom is in-game thing and both are officially valid in the game. So two actions (E1 wanting a song and NOHO wanting a song) are equal if their only difference is something that are deemed equally right.
@Anonymous: honoring or not honoring the ransom is in-game thing and both are officially valid in the game. So two actions (E1 wanting a song and NOHO wanting a song) are equal if their only difference is something that are deemed equally right.
No, honouring something is distinctly a metagame construct once it leaves the game. There is a social contract which is formed - you are ceasing to "play a character in a game" and moving towards a real world payment for an in game outcome. Honouring such a deal is distinct from not honouring it.
I'm a bit puzzled - people are using "this is Eve" as an excuse for Erotica's subhuman scuminess.
Why isn't "this is Eve" enough reason to not get upset about the rather modest verbal kicking he's getting. And a private individual calling for another private individual to be banned is surely just part of the meta - not something to get wound up about and not especially unusual.
The real issue here is that there's a terrible human being that is part of a community. The majority of the community, if polled, would probably agree that he should NOT be a part of the community.
In game actions will not remove him from the community. He should be removed from the community for the good of the community and the game. The place to start that is removing him from the game permanently. Only CCP can do that.
To those that then ask, "Where is the line?" There's no clear line. But certainly we can agree these particular actions are reprehensible and shouldn't be allowed to be associated with a game we all enjoy?
@Anthony: this isn't about the scam. This is what happened *after* the scam, after E1 got the poor sap's isk. That's where the problem is. Even the goons couldn't put up with E1's antics and banned him. (Gevlon, what alliance exactly are we supposed to fight?)
People who can't distinquish the problem between the scam and what happened after the scam are either not thinking very clearly or intentionally obscuring the issue
@ Anon 14:17
"The real issue here is that there's a terrible human being that is part of a community. The majority of the community, if polled, would probably agree that he should NOT be a part of the community."
The problem is you cannot ban a player simply because people don't like him. There needs to be a breach of the game's rules. If there's sufficient agreement that the rules are inadequate for dealing with a new situation, such as the bonus room, then the rules need to be update as appropriate.
Problem: If a change to the rules is indeed necessary, what rules can be introduced that effectively ban "bonus room" scams without negatively impacting other areas of the game? In order for any change to be effective, the problem must be adequately defined.
This is a major hurdle that those who want Erotica 1 banned must face and unfortunately, "I don't like him" is not an acceptable definiation of the problem.
@Tor Norman: on the other hand "I don't like him" is completely acceptable reason to start camping his alliance until he is fired.
Agreed. That's what this game is all about, after all. Player-driven conflict.
"@Jean-Mira: so if Erotica 1 would honor his ransom too (pay the bonus round as promised), would that be OK too?"
No that's a fallacy, because A=>B doesn't imply B=>A. I only need to provide one counter-example to show they are not the same. But eliminating it doesn't show they are the same.
"Prank" is a politically correct term for "harassment".
That's an invalid generalization. Don't know about your experiences, but there are pranks that don't involve harassment. Which are even funny for the victim, too.
Whether NOHO's ransom is considered harmless enough or harassment probably lies in the eye of the beholder and the context. I didn't got the impression RvB felt harassed by having to provide a song in order to get access to your WH. Probably not being able to enter beforehand made them feel more harassed.
Long story short, if you are only willing to give a drive-by answer using killer phrases, I prefer no answer at all.
Gevlon:
If the alliance hops on comms with him and listen to his filth, it needs just one decent man in the alliance who records the coms, screenshot the list of people on comms and send it to the Avengers
That's a big 'if'. After all, this guy knows who his friends are - his direct, complicit, enabling friends. Those are the only people he'll allow directly on comms while he's doing this. It needs to be a comm system he controls - or like-minded people control, after all, or he couldn't get the victims in during the scam.
And it's very likely that the people who don't stand for this sort of thing already have nothing to do with him. Maybe they haven't all left his alliance, but he's probably not in a corp with many of them.
Also, another important difference between NOHO and these guys, re: songs?
NOHO does it as a way to have fun with people - if you prefer to fight, they'll fight, if you prefer to be social and sing and chat, they love it.
They're not doing it out of malice. It's not 'let's fucking humiliate this guy and laugh about it later'. If you sing for them, you're a good sport, and they'll do the EVE equivalent of buying you a pint at a pub (hell, if you run into them at Fanfest or EVE Vegas, they might do that, too).
I think we need a double approach to this situation. As Gevlon suggests, we need to hit people and alliances that are related to this scumbag with everything we have. If James315 keeps on posting E1's tales on the miner bumping site, then the New order should be hit. Whatever alliance and corp he is related to should be hit too.
But also, we need CCP to make changes that allows disgusting people like this to be removed forever from the game. His assets should be frozen, his main and alts banned. his acomplices and associates should have the same fate.
CCP needs to make changes to the game for this to be possible. Thinking as a developer, I would make it mandatory to have a payed account in order to have plexed accounts. Having this relation, it will be very simple to get someone and all of his alts removed from the eve community.
In the meantime, I would love to see the lemmings wardec the new order until all posts about E1 are removed from their web page.
I would make it mandatory to have a payed account in order to have plexed accounts
Since a PLEX merely pushes back the next time your account is billed, every PLEX'd account is technically a 'paid' account. How would you change this? Tell people they can't PLEX all of the accounts on the same credit card? This might penalize married couples who both play, and use a jointly-held card to simplify their own bill tracking.
Nor can you know that every account someone has uses the same identifying information - I could have two different cards, with two different addresses and accounts. How can you tell this is the same physical player?
It opens a nightmare scenario. And that's without even getting into 'I pay for a year of game-time up front. Am I not allowed to PLEX during the last month of that? Can I PLEX all but one of my accounts, throwing my billing schedule out of synch?'
Headaches, headaches, headaches. CCP won't make that mistake - PLEX have the advantage of making things easier for people who're space-rich, and not so RL-rich. Reducing the usefulness of a PLEX is never going to be something CCP wants to do.
@Satori
Feel free to pay for their destruction, as Gevlon suggests.
I'm not sure a wardec is wise, or necessary though, considering their typical sec status.
"The real issue here is that there's a terrible human being that is part of a community. The majority of the community, if polled, would probably agree that he should NOT be a part of the community."
I would very much doubt that
"To those that then ask, "Where is the line?" There's no clear line. But certainly we can agree these particular actions are reprehensible and shouldn't be allowed to be associated with a game we all enjoy?"
We obviously don't all agree hence the discussion about it. And there has to be a clear line. If there can;t be then noone can get placed either side of it. Who want to play a game where the rules are such that at any random point you may get banned because someone you are playing against didn't like it, and that was arbitrarily decided as "the line" on that occasion?
In this instance, E1 has not broken the EULA, and so shouldn't be banned regardless of what the outcome is. You shouldn't get retroactively punished for new rules. That sad, the outcome probably should be a solid ruling one way or the other to state clearly if this is to be allowed to continue or stopped.
@Gevlon
"on the other hand "I don't like him" is completely acceptable reason to start camping his alliance until he is fired."
Isn't he in CODE? I'd be very surprised if they would ever do anything about that. Most of their actual chars are in NPC corps, so effectively untouchable. And E1 is pretty much their financial fountain.
Problem: If a change to the rules is indeed necessary, what rules can be introduced that effectively ban "bonus room" scams without negatively impacting other areas of the game? In order for any change to be effective, the problem must be adequately defined.
A change of rules is actually not necessary - CCP can ban anyone, for anything they wish, at any time.
And in this case I think if you took a straw poll of eve players they would be supportive of this banning.
@Lucas: CODE could be defeated by a single guy in a Falcon. They suicide gank as a group, so a they can't outrun or out-AFK a white knight like I did as a solo player.
@Anonymous: while they can technically ban anyone, if they do it, they can lose lot of customers. The clear line is needed so everyone can be sure that he won't find his account banned for no reason.
"CODE could be defeated by a single guy in a Falcon"
Go on then, defeat them. Hundreds have tried and failed.
My hands are full with Goons and their servants.
And no, no one tried it. Or do you have a name of anyone trying it?
No specific names, but go to the Anti-Ganking channel, and that's pretty much their goal in life is to track and stop new order, not to mention all of the miners who actively do the same without being in the channel.
If you really think it's doable, put your money where your moth is. I honestly don't think you'd be able to impact a group like new order, since they aren't an organisation as such, they are an idea. You might b able to impact some individual pilots, but to impact enough to make a change would take you and a lot of followers considerable amounts of time and effort.
@arrendis
"Since a PLEX merely pushes back the next time your account is billed, every PLEX'd account is technically a 'paid' account. How would you change this? Tell people they can't PLEX all of the accounts on the same credit card? This might penalize married couples who both play, and use a jointly-held card to simplify their own bill tracking."
That's technically incorrect, and let's take myself as an example. Only one of my accounts has a credit card registered, all the other ones have been activated with plex so CCP can't say who's the real owner of that account with certainty, as even when they can use th IP address to correlate those accounts, it will be impossible to do with people that is behind a NAT, as most of the subscribers of cable networks are.
If when activating an account with plex I was forced to:
A: Enter a valid credit card for the account, even if I plex it all the time.
B: Relate my plexed account to my account that has a registered credit card.
Then I couldn't be an anonymous player, and in the case of a ban being applied to me, I can definitely be terminated and the only way to come back is registering another credit card. Once I've been an asshole enough times, I'll run out of CCs and then terminated from the game for good.
To make it clear, I'm not implying that you have to pay with a credit card at least one of your accounts, no way, you can plex all you want, but you need to have a registered CC in at least one of your accounts and all the non cc accounts have to be related to it.
That solution is pretty simple and easy as pie to implement, it basically means adding 2 fields to your database.
Jester was dead right.
Even if CCP can't cure the world of scumminess, what they can and should do is to push the scuminess as far as they can away from their game.
It is in their interest to do so.
Your argument in this post is not convincing.
It will be of little help to EVE online new/vulnerable players that someone is exacting revenge on the scumbags after they got their taste of harassement.
Doesn't slow them on their way out of the community one tiny bit.
I strongly commend you on your efforts against Goons but your self-promoting tendencies are achieving little except making it harder to apreciate your crusade.
As for the "stupid deserves to be treated badly" point, I'd say it's a pretty shallow reading of what is at stake.
Goons could just as easily use it to justify their stranglehold on the whole game.
Regardless of what vulnerable players deserves or not, in a game context, the question is about what make sense to provide them as gaming experience.
"Your stupidity will be punished" is not a very good marketing slogan.
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