First brutally honest feedback. I'll word it as politely as possible without sacrificing honesty.

This is the biggest knife in the heart of EVE's gameplay and culture of 'spies and deception are everywhere' since the Incarna debacle. I have no confidence in the ability of the people behind this change to understand EVE, let alone implement reasonable policies or rules.

It appears that any deceptive behaviour at all that involves a declaration that "X is my alt" or "I am working in conjunction with X" is against the rules, and by extension, and outsourcing of core activities of a corporation, alliance or 'entity' now has CCP enforcing the honesty of such dealings.

For instance, under the new rules Goonswarm Federation retain the CCP endorsed right to scam people interested in renting space from them. However, in the unlikely situation that Goonswarm were to appoint me (a non-member of the alliance) as a third party to act on their behalf in rental deals, I would not be allowed to scam and and deliberate scamming by me of renters would be an account-ban offence. (A similar situation would occur if I were to collude with a 'renter' that intended to not pay but instead use their 'rented space' as a staging ground to attack GSF interests).

Particularly relevant to sovereign nullsec is that one of the major vectors for inserting spies into hostile entities, applying to multiple corps saying "I am XYZ's alt", fishing for one that is not vigilant enough to API verify this information, is no longer legal.

What you should be doing is the following:

- Ban names that are deceptively close to existing character, corporation or alliance names. GM discretion applies when it's unclear (Currln Trading is clearly deceptively close to Currin Trading; while 'Avengers of the South' would not be deceptively close to 'Southern Avengers')
- Ban deceptive conduct carried out on CCP hosted websites other than the official EVE forums
- Change the font so that capital 'o' and 'zero' look more different ingame than the presently do. Likewise for capital 'i' and lower case 'l'.
- Remove all reference to 'entities'. The game client recognises corporations and alliances. It doesn't recognise coalitions, the New Order or other such 'entities'.
- Explicitly allow players to lie about their affiliation to in-game corporations and alliances and to other characters, as long as they do not do so in ways that 'trick' the in-game methods for checking this information. Disallowed would be misuse of CCP websites and any form of API falsification. (Providing information and saying 'this is what my API says' should be fine; altering what the API actually says should be a banhammer).

So, if we all impersonate someone we all get ourselves banned and CCP loses tons of money.

So, if we all impersonate someone we all get ourselves banned and CCP loses tons of money.

Help me understand this then:

I, Abdiel Kavash, run a legit 3rd party business. Over the years I gain the trust of hundreds and a multibillion empire.

CASE 1: A new character, Joe McScammer, completely unaffiliated with me, decides to make some extra money. Joe McScammer convoes a customer of AbdielCorp and claims to be an alt of Abdiel Kavash. The poor mark falls for it and gives Joe McScammer ISK thinking he's sending it to Abdiel Kavash.

In this case, Joe McScammer is guilty of "[using] the character name of another player to impersonate or falsely represent his or her identity", and if petitioned by the unsatisfied customer is prone to getting banned.


CASE 2: I decide that I want to make some extra money off my past customers, without necessarily having to provide any extra services. I create a new character, Phill McScammer, on my account. I then go talk to a past customer of AbdielCorp and I claim that Phill McScammer is an alt of Abdiel Kavash. Customer falls for it, sends me their money and never sees it again.

Since different characters are treated as separate entities, is this judged the same as case 1? Is Phill McScammer prone to getting banned for impersonating Abdiel Kavash? I.e. can I get banned for claiming that Phill McScammer is an alt of Abdiel Kavash?

If CCP would simply come out and say "We will only enforce the TOS change and it's associated rules solely upon request/petition of the impersonated party, and none other, " I am sure the great majority of the intelligent and mature player base would be satisfied and the game would continue unchanged!