Originally by: Scrammer

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Edited by: Scrammer on 11/01/2006 06:49:19

I'm going to speak in the sense of a roleplaying aspect.
I know everyone doesn't roleplay, but I think that the kind of PvP this game provides has roleplaying built into it a little bit.

In a roleplaying outlook, you have all sorts of different types of players.
You've got your miners, your pirates, your traders, your market manipulators, information control roles, bounty hunters, organized military members, and so on and so on.
On a PvP standpoint, there are many ways you could justify the reason for killing someone. To ransom them, or eliminate a war target, or to grief them (which, oddly enough, people want to refer to as a 'lamer' player...griefer is apparently not politically correct).

Now, I'm fine with all of this so far. I may think it's lame for someone to kill just for the sake of killing, but hey I guess that's a role...being the murderer, the insane criminal spreading fear and chaos through the EvE galaxy...daring bounty hunters and players playing 'cops 'n robbers' to come after him.

And now we come to the root of the problem.
Public killboards.

An artificial, player-made creation using spliced game code & mechanics for the purpose of boosting ego and promoting everyone's own self worth for all others to see and worship.

For the role of a "lamer," the killboard becomes the only incentive to kill. And not even in a roleplaying sense, in terms of what EvE provides to it's players.
The more kills that are accumulated, the more 'glory' these types of players seem to think they gain for themselves.
For people like me, I know that this game isn't about just killing. If it was, there wouldn't be a market, or an economy, or trading, or mining.
EvE would have just given us pre-fitted ships and had us go at it within a last-man-standing environment.

But, it isn't like that. To reinforce that viewpoint, CCP didn't even give us an official killboard. Players, needing that CounterStrike aspect, created them...and from what I hear most of them don't even work correctly...kills not updated, or deaths not being counted.
This tells me that CCP never meant for EvE's coding to be used for the purpose of a working killboard.

Casting aside CCP's view on this issue, I'll tell you what I think...and this is completely my opinion.
I think killboards ruin the gameplay of EvE.
I hate the fact that some 'pirate' will come after me not because of my cargo, or because of my faction or race, but because my death will result in his score going up just a little higher on his public killboard, further adding to his own self-righteousness.
What's righteous is keeping to the theme and game mechanics that are allready provided for you.

Again, in terms of roleplay, I don't think game was ever meant to have killboards.
Unless CCP develops some universal CONCORD 100 most wanted list or something of that nature, the concept of a killboard, in my opinion, completely and utterly degrades PvP and all that it encompasses.

/puts flamesuit on
Go at it!

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