Kalir
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Posted - 2003.06.21 23:33:00 -
[1]
The GM action today against M0O was totally unacceptable (warping them in mass out of a system). I am not a pirate, and I do not support M0O in any way. I have only fired on 1 other player in the month plus I have been playing. I have been attacked by M0O and one of my corpmates was podded on his second day in the game by lord zap. So "in character" I hate them, but you cannot take this sort of OOC action against them, and you didn't see us on here complaining about what happened. Death is part of this game. The danger that they provide to the universe is something that is sorely lacking. The NPC pirates have been nerfed down to the point that they are utterly useless. I can fly a newbie ship across the world through low sec space with absolutely no fear. This isn't right. The only thing prividing fear in the world is pkers.
I recall reading press about eve before buying the game. I recall a quote from the lead designer along the lines of "this is an unrestricted pk environment, and may not be for everyone." I read that and was sold on the game. The level of tension and excitement that sort of environment provides is unmatched. Please do not take this away. The whiners on the boards that seem to be winning the war of hearts and minds with the GMs are just the sort of people that the game isn't for.
That being said, something does need to be done about M0O as their mass murder is out of proportion with what would be allowable in a real empire situation. However this really needs to be approached in game through code, not by the unjustifiable actions of a GM. Here are a couple suggestions.
- When you look at pod kills w/in the last 24 hours you see passari with 101 vs about 3 as a max anywhere else. In empire space, why not have the concept of a "current" security level that is affected by the rate of pod kills and ship kills in an area. Say for example a system has a base security rating of X. Every ship kill adds 0.01 to the security rating, and every pod kill adds say 0.03. Every hour the rating drifts back toward X by say 0.05. So if there is mass murder like in Passari, the 0.4 will shortly become 0.8 or so, and require hours to drift back down to low sec. If this rating is used to determine police response in a sector it would reduce this gate camping. It would also be realistic. Police enforce more heavily in areas where there is more crime.
- Put a cap on the number of containers in an area. Once the Nth container is created, just destroy the oldest one in the area.
- Exempt people from being pk'd until their player has existed for some number of hours in the game world. I used to play hardcore PK text MUDs back in the old days. I can only recall 1 that was unrestricted pk from minute one. Almost all of them had a min level for attacking or being attacked by players. Since Eve doesn't have levels, time makes sense to use. Say for the first 8 hours of play time, you cannot attack or be attacked by a player. This should be based on a player's account, not a specific character, because you don't want old vets creating invulnerable mules to transport items/etc. You'd also want to clearly communicate this through the HUD/etc - have a countdown timer on the HUD until you are "legal."
Anyway, I think Eve has the potential to be something truly amazing, but the direction things are going at the moment worry me. Being a GM is a difficult job and one that involves a lot of responsibility - I ran a pk MUD at one point in the past, so I have at least some idea where-of I speak. The sort of action that was taken today is totally unacceptable. Today was the first day I thought seriously about not renewing my account next month. Please make Eve an exciting and dangerous world. "Sim-mining" will not be any fun. The unrestricted hard core pk nature of Eve is what makes it stand out amongst the masses of MMOG's these days. Without it, it may well just be an also ran. In many ways Eve is the game I have dreamed of for years. Please keep it that way.
Thanks for reading. |