EVE Search - A Plea for Rationale in the System of Natural Consequences

Oddball Six wrote:

I do not live in my mother's basement.

I am fortunate enough to have full time employment as a fairly successful Solution Architect for a Global consulting firm. I play from a custom built home office and hotels all over the United States. My identity is defined as a father, a husband, and a businessman. Eve has woven itself in as an on-again, off-again diversion where for the last three years I can apply business acumen and some custom tools to build an industrial marketer and manufacturer.

Eve is a fun low pressure environment where I make the conscious choice to forgo combat and low sec rewards to maintain the low stress nature of this pursuit.

Recently, I was killed mining and even podded in high sec. Losses in my ship of 300mil plus, implant losses of something on the order of a billion and change. Why? Because CCP has chosen by its inaction to allow a loose coalition of players to reward collective behavior against the engineered system of penalties and policies that are intended to make high security zones a low risk, low reward environment.

I petition CCP to consider the policy and natural violations that the inaction to date represent, and also suggest a system of natural Consequences which may be of use in curbing such competitions like 'hulkageddon' - or at least limit them to the low- and null-sec systems where they belong.

Recognizing the Violations of CCP Policy

An external competition like hulkageddon depends upon players allying and indeed competing to determine which player is most willing to ignore the disincentives engineered into the game which protect players who participate in high security systems. Indeed the competition organizers have created systematic logs denoting and ridiculing the expressions of distress or outrage by affected players:

Quote:

" The same cannot be said for the 5000 poor fools that have been deshipped in the first half of this yearGÇÖs Hulkageddon, with over a trillion isk in damages done so far. This hulkageddon has exceeded our wildest expectations. I am so very proud of all our great competitors, and remember the race for the gold is not yet over!"

- http://hulkageddon5.machine9.net/?p=96

Yet CCP has denoted conduct such as this which determines to interfere with the operation of the system and the enjoyment of other players as verboten through at least two provisions.

Quote:

"Role-playing is encouraged, but not at the expense of other player. You may not create or participate in a corporation or group that habitually violates this policy. "

-http://community.eveonline.com/pnp/terms.asp

The terms of service at http://community.eveonline.com/pnp/terms.asp specifically forbids role playing that interferes with others enjoyment of the game as well as forbidding conduct which disallows others to enjoy the game.

By organizing large scale operations to eliminate players engaging in high sec mining operations, and entire sector of game play is disrupted. By CCP's own statistics, thousands of players have already been affected in this way to date.

Quote:

"A grief player, or "griefer," is a player who devotes much of his time to making othersGÇÖ lives miserable, in a large part deriving his enjoyment of the game from these activities while he does not profit from it in any way. Grief tactics are the mechanics a griefer will utilize to antagonize other players. At our discretion, players who are found to be consistently maliciously interfering with the game experience for others may receive a warning, temporary suspension or permanent banning of his account."

-http://support.eveonline.com/Pages/KB/Article.aspx?id=336

In the Knowledge Base published by CCP, as well, we find a definition of griefing and its specific prohibition of players deriving a significant portion of their time to game tactics that derive their enjoyment through the harassment of other players ourside of genuine pvp conflict such as corporation wars.

Recognizing Inaction as Counter to Real Life Analogs

One of the other clear guides CCP has applied to player conduct is the consideration of the real life treatment of the analog of the player conduct in a real society.

Were a real life band to conspire to affect markets by systematically attacking mining operations, there is ample precedent to recognize that governments and international organizations would act.

The grounds to do so are numerous.

Systematic attacks on the unarmed
Collusion to manipulate market dynamics
Collusion to destroy an entire class of entity

We would see concerted action on multiple fronts from the US, the EU, and the UN. Antitrust hearings. Courts and tribunals. Resolutions and committees.

CCPs response in the role of the international arbitration? Absent.

A Simple Response

I would suggest the response is simple and two pronged.

Concord notices the drop in the markets and in order to ensure the supposed stability of the universe, have placed a couple of concord ships resident in high sec asteroid belts only in addition to their current locations.

CCP begins warning and taking action against blatant high sec offenders.

Anecdotal evidence has already started to surface of player discontent with allowing these actions to remain unpunished and indeed unrestrained. I question how long CCP will wait to allow bands of players to flagrantly collude to ignore intended game mechanics and deny greater segments of the player base the enjoyment of the chosen virtual profession that keeps the real-life game revenue coming in.