Geez, go to sleep for a little while and all hell breaks loose.
I was originally going to post the body of this in DoubleSkull's thread but it has been closed.
OK first of all, everybody who's tooling up to go avenge one of our own, I ask you to throttle back, take a deep breath and relax.
Then, please stop posting bounty posters and the like. You're messing up my thread.
Now, grab a glass of Indi Bourbon or Lavian Brandy or Leestian Evil Juice, whatever your poison and listen to the news:
There’s a scene in Field of Dreams (an American baseball movie. Stay with me) where a young player has to dive to the ground because the pitcher deliberately tries to take his head off with a wicked hard throw. The kid gets up and looks to the umpire (referee) who saw the whole thing. “Hey, ump,” he says, glaring at the pitcher. “How about a warning?”
“Sure,” the umpire says. “Watch out you don’t get killed.”
That’s Elite: Dangerous Open in a nutshell. But this is not a “quit whining” post. I hate those. They show a distinct lack of empathy and there’s a lot of legitimate gripes about crime and punishment in the game. The problem is no there’s no justice and no way it can be effectively doled out in situations like this. The perp in this case is doing it out of boredom or a need for attention. He’s already gotten his reward because people are talking about him. You’d like to think that means he’s gone into hiding, fearing for his ship and scrambling to save up enough insurance money to cover the impending conga line of deaths from the pilots posse coming to gun him down, but odds are he’s not scared at all. Having his own ship destroyed probably doesn’t matter, and he might arrange for a friend to do it so they can claim the bounty assuming he’s not a logger or cheater as well.
(edit: looks like he's already self-identified, and yes he's thriving on the attention.)
The worst thing you can do is give him a title and reputation. That’s a reward. It’s not even worth calling people like this a certain waste orifice because even that body part serves a valuable function. If you’re going to give people like this any kind of label, make it "hemorrhoid." An inflamed blood sack that dangles from that particular orifice that serves no purpose. It only irritates. You can try to scratch it, but all that really does is make it hurt worse and get blood and fecal matter on your finger.
In cases like this, naming and shaming shouldn’t even be a factor. All of them should be referred as a single, interchangeable, faceless entity. "Welp, CMDR Hemorrhoid is at it again." "Got rammed by CMDR Hemorrhoid at Leesti." "Got a hemorrhoid hanging out at the CG station." CMDR Hemorrhoid wants to be special, but he’s not. The sad thing is CMDR Hemorrhoid isn’t even self-aware enough to realize it. He’s a dime a dozen, and when he gets bored and goes away, he’ll be replaced with an identical model. Imagine the scene from the Avengers, when Loki is telling the crowd to bow to him, feeding off of their fear. But instead of Loki, it’s a giant talking hemorrhoid. "There are no hemorrhoids like me," he says. Then an old man stands and says, "there are always hemorrhoids like you."
Griefers are living bugs in the game. Report 'em and maybe they’ll get dealt with in the next patch, but don’t hold your breath.
Until the developers enforce consequences it will keep happening. What you don’t want to do is dwell on it and keep you from enjoying the game, or let it change how you play. And you certainly don't want to feed the trolls.
But what's this mean for the Buckyball? Can we run in solo now?
Nope. "Watch out you don't get killed."
In all seriousness, the challenge was laid down in open. Like it's laid out in The Rules, though, there's nothing I can do to stop you from switching to solo at the end or even flying solo the whole way. I'll never be able to find out, either. It's entirely up to you what to do. It will just haunt you every time you look at the bumper sticker you took under false pretenses... Do you really want that?
Finally, I do that any further discussion about bounties and revenge be taken to a dedicated thread. This ain't the place for it. As the board zips by and people might not see this post, expect to see it again...
