Wednesday, May 13, 2009

But I Won't Do That...

I’ve been reading up on the dust-up between Goonswarm (fuck you, Monsters and Sociopaths!) and BoB (You’re just as bad as Goonswarm, you elitist fucks). It’s been interesting, but it brought up a point of contention with me and an online bud. See, he thinks that “cheating” is wrong but sees nothing wrong with running scams on people. I think that “cheating” is fine, but I think that scamming people is immoral and sociopathic.

It came up because my bud wanted to join Goonswarm. He applied to Merch Industrial (Penny Arcade's corporation) and got in and afterwards he started telling me about the little games that the Goonies play. For instance, they’ll invite someone to join, but tell them there’s a 500 million ISK application fee. There isn’t, my bud got in for free, but they’ll lie if they think the mark is rich enough. Then, once the mark has paid the fee, they blow him up, laugh, and move onto the next one.

See, to me that is in an entirely differently league, compared to AFK Gaming. Yeah, sure, I have some impact when I use Agent EVE to mine for me. I won’t argue. But, I have an impact no matter what I do in game and since I don’t use Agent EVE 23/7 (more like 4 hours a day) my individual impact on the game is small, if not entirely diluted. Find me one person in EVE who can tell me exactly how I’ve wrong him or her personally and I’ll quit.

But this…this is monstrously immoral. I mean how sick, how sociopathic, how deranged must you be to lure someone to 0.0 (causing them to risk being blown up and taking time from their life) with a false promise, and then take their money and destroy their ship? What possible excuse could there be for that?

I will do anything for ISK, but I just won’t do that!

6 comments:

  1. Frankly, working as intended. By the way the rules of the game are written, they permit what some would term griefing and ganking, or others consider piracy and scamming. You, on the other hand, are breaking the EULA. And please understand, I do not intend in any way to be judgemental as I am fascinated by your efforts.

    If somebody is dumb enough to apply to Goonswarm without doing any research, then they deserve to be scammed. The corp recruit/kill scam is not limited to the Goons and is also well-documented. One just has to do some research. Ditto for contract scams and any other player interaction in EvE.

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  2. Understood. I'm not saying it's against the rules, or even the spirit.

    I guess the way I see things is that the rules and spirit are irrelevant, or at least not as relevant as my own internal moral code. I'm not this way just in EVE, it's in real life too. I have a lot of viewpoints which run counter to the rules because I don't really respect authority.

    So when you say that it's ok to scam dumb people, I have to say that no, it's not. I don't care what the rules say is ok. I don't care what the spirit of EVE is.

    Where do you think the spirit comes from? People with attitudes like yours. I don't intend that to be a judgment, I just think it's accurate. You say that's the way it is, I say that's the way the players have made it. For better or worse, we've been given a sandbox and, simply because we can, we've ok'd scamming dumb people.

    That can't be a good commentary on our spirit.

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  3. Well,actually, I'd have to say the structure of the sandbox, unfortunately, limits what "good" guys can do. While I would love to find one of the scammers in space or be able to assist somebody in an unfair fight in low/hi-sec, the game's mechanics do not permit me to do so. It also forces people who may want to seek out help to be paranoid about asking for it and rightly so, again because of game mechanics. So, knowing that the mechanics support such nefarious activites, it behooves all players to understand the limts of the help they can expect, either from the GMs, mechanics-based, or other players of various statuses, i.e. neutral, corp-mate, or Alliance.

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  4. "Find me one person in EVE who can tell me exactly how I’ve wrong him or her personally and I’ll quit"

    Personally, by reading your posts and knowing you obtain what I obtain, but without the sacrifices which I must give to obtain it, has directly detracted from my enjoyment of Eve.

    I doubt this will actually make you quit, so I'll kinda just blow off some frustration by going on a pychoanalizing rant. Here we go! weeee!

    As Latrodanes pointed out, what scammers do is within the rules. What you do is break the rules. Judging from some of your previous posts, you seem to have contrived some line of rationalization that what you do is ok.

    Your post above is a typical example of how someone will use another facet of the system in which he cheats to justify his behavior. Your argument is reasoned superficially, giving just enough appearance of validity to satisfy your actions, while avoiding any real issues.

    You select an occurrence in game which seems easy to rework as being much greater a crime than what you participate in. You point out that this is completely immoral. You then draw the conclusion that your behavior is acceptable in comparison. By using your "morals" instead of "rules" you allow yourself to effectively create a new system of rules which suits yourself. But this system has no regard for the system which everyone else has agreed to, invested in, and relied upon.

    You perceive yourself as a sort of righteous rebel because of this. You try to wholly justify your system in your head, but you're still left with that annoying fact that you still might be, in actuality, just cheating everyone else. To resolve this, you over compensate by condemning other players on the basis of your morals, taking a vehement stand against any action which hurts another player. It's a Robin-Hood complex. Which exemplifies who Robin Hood really was. He stole for himself, at the expense of others.

    That was fun!

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  5. Lol, I'm glad you enjoyed it because I did too!

    I don't really have much to say about it, I'm not really in psycho-analysis via the web for obvious reasons. But I did think this line was spot on:

    "By using your "morals" instead of "rules" you allow yourself to effectively create a new system of rules which suits yourself. But this system has no regard for the system which everyone else has agreed to, invested in, and relied upon."

    Yeah...that's how I am in real life too - I have a sort "moral code" that exists independent of the rules and I use that to judge right and wrong, not the system everyone else has agreed to, invested in, and relied on. So when the moral majority tells me that gay people are evil I can say "Uh...that's just dumb, no they are not." And when George W. Bush says it's ok to torture people I can again disagree, because I am disconnected from the system that washes away everyone else's free thought and free will.

    And thus, why change here? Why would I give up my awesomeness just because some company tells me that I have to in order to be considered a rule-biding player. And what's the punishment for not being a rule-biding player? I'm still here...still using my agents. Still raking in the cash.

    I'm not like you. You can hate, or you can elevate. Your choice man, but don't be mad just because I invested a LOOOOOOOT of time and energy in learning how to do one-up a game company...in order to play their game more...and pay for the experience.

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  6. Ahaha. I think the gay, middle-eastern Eve miner community might disagree with you're "claim" against torturing them. How torturous is it when they haul 50m of trit to market to find it's @ 2.8? Like silly torturous. You're just a virtual G. Bush to them.

    Monster.

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