Mithrasith
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Posted - 2011.01.24 20:32:00 -
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A couple of not-so-quick observations.
1) The concept of pain: Are we causing others pain by immoral/unethical actions in the EVE universe? I would answer a resounding YES.
Why?
For the average player, it takes many many long grinding hours in many cases to ethically acquire a fortune in EVE. We then take that fortune in invest it usually in assets. Those assets are then typically used to make even more isk, and thus build out our empire.
When someone steals/destroys and scams our hard won isk and assets - its a loss of REAL LIFE hours of work. Hours that you cant get back, but have to re-grind them all over again. That hurts.
I recently had the misfortune of having about 2.5bn isk worth of assets blown up in front of my face. It freaking hurt, and there will be no reimbursement. It hurt because that was my investment of hours of hard work to build up my empire. I still have billions in assets left, and yes I could rebuild, but I may not, simply as its too much work to do all over again (and I have a busy professsional and home life). So when the scammer or pirate asks "u mad bro?" - they already know the answer as that was usually (and definately in my case as there was 0 payout for the destroyers) the whole point - to p*ss someone else off - and even in a game, its immoral, juvenille, and just plan socipathic - which brings me to my next point.
2) EVE is an intesting experiment - it allows people to truly operate in an evironment where there are no real consequences for their actions, with an ability to destroy many hours of someone elses work.
2a) Supporting the claim: EVE has a relatively unique ability to create a new character quickly, and build up Skill Points with ease without much actual time invested by the player. Simply buy the skill books, and queue them up.
In contrast with other sandbox style MMO PvP games, there is little time required to create and build a new character. For instance, Ultima Online had a true sandbox style, however the diffrence is, in order to advance skills in Ultima, and Mortal Online - the player is requred to repeat actions over and over, which requires a person to sit behind the keyboard in order to advance skills (some used Macros but they were being detected and banned). This is a considerable time sink, and many players think twice before violating their own "sec status" or "red blue status" and there are real repurcussions if one does become a pker.
This is not the case in EVE. Anyone with a bad sec status has an easy to create alt that simply makes the run up to empire to buy skills/ammo/trade etc. EVE Online is well known for players that have multiple accounts, as it makes it easier for people to operate in the game, get more complex tasks done at once, or have an "alternate ego" that can steal, kill and scam.
2b) So what? So the conclusion. EVE is truly an environment where players have no repurcussions - is it any wonder then that a good portion of players or the majority of players behave in the most sociopathic and chaotic fashion possible? I think not. I think EVE is a mirror that people should look into, as it shows, at least imo, how the vast majority of people would behave if there were no rules at all. Morality and ethics are being abandoned in our "western" society as fast as marriage and monogamy. I could cite numerous examples in other online games, and the internet in general of the increased prevalence of griefers, hackers and overall trouble makers that invade games (and other medium), perform completely selfish acts, ruin it for others - for the lolz, and then justify it ("It's just a game, it's just a program, it's just a movie, it's just digital medium!.." etc) when the truth is, this is who they TRULY are. if given the chance in r/l to have the same type of rule set as in EVE (no repurcussions) they would do the exact same thing as they do in EVE.
That is truly the mark of whether someone is actually mora
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