Wrong equation. That's the industry one.

The ganking one is destruction + tears = joy

Mr Epeen

Or you could actually try to help other people enjoy the game instead of looking for tears...imagine that.

"whispers"?!?

What the **** is this? WoW? Get out...

Reminds me of a joke I can never quite get right when I'm telling it to someone without the internet in front of me.

two guys are hiking thru the woods when they come across a blood thirsty bear. The first guy starts taking off his boots and putting on running shoes. The second guy says " hey, what are you doing, you can't outrun that bear!" and the first guy replies " I don't have to outrun the bear, I only have to outrun you"

Never been a fan of the Walking Dead. I do enjoy Breaking Bad though, that's a Barium, Neodymium, Tungsten, Silver, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Sulfur that I can jump on.

Except that for many gankers the sole reason they gank is "tears." There is no in-game benefit, they know the ships are empty. It's done specifically to elicit as much anger and upset as possible, and then used to mock and humiliate the victim. It is the precise opposite of civility, and not really an "in-game" activity at all. Rather it is using Eve to attempt to inflict emotional harm on people, and the more vulnerable/unbalanced/impaired they are - the better.

That's the difference between ganking for a legitimate purpose - be it isk, territory, killboard padding, or what not, which I am fine with, and ganking to intentionally inflict emotional distress, which I find abhorrent.

It's pretty impossible to know real intent....so I tend to focus on actions.

1) At least in my view, is clearly fine. People are entitled to play Eve just to try and burn things down and cause mayhem, just like they are entitled to mass wardecc highsec corps, to pad killboards, etc.....

2) This is closer, but still fine in my view. When people blow up empty ships with no real killboard value, I strongly suspect they are doing it in the hopes of getting rage/tears, but as long as they don't actively start baiting for it, there is no conclusive evidence, and I think you have to give the benefit of the doubt that they are getting in-game value from it, maybe just the entertainment value of blowing things up.

Now this doesn't mean I agree with the ability of -10 sec status gankers to just blow up ship after ship every 15 minutes without stronger action by CONCORD....but at least in my view merely performing in game actions (whether its ganking, awoxing, scamming, etc...), even if those actions are likely to cause upset, is not a EULA violation/harassment or whatever.

To me it gets problematic when the situation gets escalated to back and forth chat or coms, especially when one party is clearly losing control (as opposed to a song ransom of a CCP Dev when everyone is entertained).

Now personally I think that some of the people ganking are specifically looking for the tears/anger, and are going to do their best to actively elicit them, and that's where I think the crackdown is (and should be), not on the actual in-game actions.


Edit - I think a big factor is also why there is such a movement to target "carebears" in highsec, as opposed to killing the people who are looking for a fight in low/null. Is it because

1. They don't tank ships properly and ganking is good isk (legit)
2. It's really easy to kill them (legit)
3. They fly blingy ships that look good on a KB (legit)

or is it

4. They are "carebears" and wan't to avoid PvP, and grrr.... we are going to force them to realize that Eve is a PvP game even in highsec (borderline)
5. Since they live in highsec, try to avoid PvP, and think they are protected by the law, they are much more likely to have an angry metldown when you blow their ship up and will then rage all over local, providing great entertainment value (in my view, not legit - but hard to enforce unless there is active baiting)

What I find unfortunate is that such a learning process has to take place for some people in the 1st place. Even after it does, some people react to it the wrong way.

The right way to react is to say "wow, didn't know that could happen, I better be smarter next time so that there is no next time". What we usually get, however is "this is BS, I pay for this game and the game makers shouldn't let this happen to me, off to the petition system and/or the forums I go to falsely threaten to quit unless they change this game to prevent this kind of thing!!!!".

Am I the only one that, as a miner, enjoy the risk of getting attacked, even in high sec. What is the game if there is no risk to it, wouln't that be plain and boring in the long run?

Meh ... not happy with this new portrait.

Going back to your original question the first couple of replies seem the best as alot of the others have drifted off-topic.

For me it was never about cost vs. benefit although it makes sense to go for a higher value target when you have a choice.

Some people just have alot of isk to burn. Back in the days of Hulkageddon when i was -10 both myself and some corp mates would buy 100 thrashers and fittings at a time and Red Frog them to a staging system then hand them out fitted to anyone who wanted them.

It's not an attack. That's a statement of fact, anyone who thinks that videogame actions justify real life threats probably has sediment between their chin and their hair.

Nor is it an attack on "real people". I am characterizing them entirely by their expressed beliefs, and by their actions taken in a videogame.