I see a certain pattern repeating in the current Karma discussion. Watching Isinona's latest video, the words of a certain infamous commander directed towards Isinona made me realize just how much the similarities ring true: "Oh look it's that ____ FA off dude"
Now you might say that it was just said in jest, but was it really? Or isn't that just an excuse?
But thankfully we now have a discussion about a Karma system. It was long overdue. There's a group of players whose playstyle and behavior is under threat by that system, and they are trying their best to keep consequences away from their "playstyle".
I've experienced a similar thing before. Way back when, I ran a little internet service which was based on social interactions and chat. And after laying the groundwork and getting things going, a staff of maintainers was recruited to keep order in the house.
At some point I received reports of people getting harassed and cussed at right after joining. A small group of users were acting aggressive towards anyone outside their own little group. I did a little experiment and connected as a new user from a different IP and sure enough, the first things I was told was to "get the X out" and other nice things. I saw that they basically derived joy out of other people's grief and anger. They deliberately picked soft targets and used sockpuppet accounts to amplify what they were saying, the whole nine yards.
When eventually confronted with these findings, they claimed that they were:
1) engaged in sophisticated roleplay
2) providing depth and entertainment
3) enriching the environment with conflict and uncertainty
Sound familiar?
I am convinced that the same thing is going on in this game at the moment. Oh sure, we have people who just want to play a dangerous lifestyle, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's impossible to deny that some players just want to see the world burn in ED, and they don't care about anything other than "the lulz". That's why they hang out not just near CGs, but also near spots which in no way have anything to do with any faction or bounty: Generation ships, nebulae, basically any point where lots of non-hardcore players are likely to be found who just want to visit the sites they've heard about in a newsletter. I'll be the last to say that you should be completely prevented from doing such things if you want - but it should have in-game consequences for you, and anyone claiming that they should be exempt is someone the playerbase should be worried about.
Using exploits, combat logging, it's all part of the game for some people. You won't have much luck organizing wings against them because they pop once the odds are not in their favor. People who report exploits and money multiplication bugs receive threats, because that's what enables them to do what they enjoy the most: Make others miserable. That's really the whole goal. It's about Lulz, not "emergent gameplay".
So when you read the discussions in the karma threads, keep that in mind. Some of the responses are not written with legitimate motivations, but with the sole intent of detailing the debate, to divert attention from certain weak spots. So next time someone claims that X or Y would "ruin Elite Dangerous" and the chain of arguments doesn't seem to make much sense, take a step back, and keep in mind that this post might well just be an attempt to distract and dilute the debate.
Remember how certain people claimed that the ability to block people from appearing in your instance was "basically cheating"? That's exactly the kind of argument I mean: Makes no sense (there's solo mode too), but hey, let's just throw it out there, maybe it'll distract a few people.
We need consequences for player actions in this game. This includes players who combat log as well as players who do the ingame equivalent of running through a shopping mall with fully automatic rifles trying to get as many people as possible.
