What I've learned about griefers/gankers across the board.

[Evanitis]

I despise them as much as anyone can be despised.

I wouldn't ever try to make assumptions about my fellow players in a videogame.

But it gets very tempting when one of them claims to despise his fellow players as much as anyone can be despised based on their habit of shooting internet spaceships in a videogame. That's how one presents himself as a paragon of maturity amongst all them snotty brats, right?

 

[Rubbernuke]

Assume everyone is out to kill you, and you are half way to staying alive.

 

[Aashenfox]

People need to get this right ...

Ganking is the short form of "gang killing", so the activity of killing a single ship with a group of ships.

If my squad an I go against a single Vette or Cutter from the 13th Legion in our own home system, we are ganking it (for a good reason... 13th is trash...)

Griefing is the activity of ruining somebody else's fun by shooting them or destroying them by any means just for the sake of doing it and most of the time, repeatedly.

And as Cosmic has pointed out a few times, it's a game, you die, you lose a few credits and respawn. It's not like you lost something really valuable and important in you RL...

Well said, as for the griefers, kill me if you can. My daughters will be thrilled when I show them a video of me shooting the bad man down.

 

[iFred]

In ED they hang around noob game starting points, and CG's, etc, in SC they basically ram folks ships on the landing pads in the armistice zone, and they exist in every online game.

Do they shoot folks up out in the open, no, folks who engage you in the open whether you are expecting it or not are fine, they are playing as intended, a loss to them might cause a momentary bit of salt, but as far as actual griefers and gankers, I despise them as much as anyone can be despised.

And one thing I have noticed, during times where most youth are in school in the US region, and you are on a US server, same for EU, AUS, etc, you see very little ganking at all, if any.

I shall preface the rest with not all kids are gankers, many kids are excellent kids and will be great future leaders, and most are average and will provide great homes for their families later on, then there are those destined for prison.

There is a small window on a week day where on a USS server it is likely that most kids are in school, and that is the most relaxing time to play almost any online game in the US region, because as soon as kids have time to get home, the ganking starts and continues until a short bit before school starts again.

The weekends are gank fests, including holidays.

Anytime kids are out of school there is going to be massive amounts of ganking.

Heck, in SC there are whole crews of them.

Adults who like gaming for the most part are respectful of others, and we grew up in a time when being a little snot nosed foul mouthed heathens with no respect for others or themselves in general got knocked out of us, but sadly, the world is full of bags now with participation trophies and this is what we get.

Immature little disrespectful smart alec trolls with no discipline in their lives that cannot even play an online game without trolling everyone.

Don't believe me, get on in open during a week day, when school or juvenile detention is in effect your time, on a server in your region and see how often you are ganked as opposed to all other times.

The great thing about ED though isd that it is so huge you can even visit populated area's and never get ganked, but in CG,s and noob area it is more prevalent.

Thank you, to all of our future leaders who do the right thing and are not sociopaths or rotten to the core, to the rest...

So basically: Gankers are Retards, sociopaths, they stink and have no GF. Correct?

 

[Morbad]

Out in the open, fair game, on pads and in armistice zones, CG's that are peaceful, etc is ganking.

Not sure I understand the distinction, but I'm pretty sure I don't agree with it.

People need to get this right ...

Ganking is the short form of "gang killing", so the activity of killing a single ship with a group of ships.

I think that's the newest of several common uses of the term.

First one that comes to mind is ramming, because it's currently a cheat: the attacker does not identify as hostile, thus you're not able to defend yourself without becoming wanted. Basically, anything that exploits holes in the C&P mechanisms built into the game is griefing.

All sorts of situations can get a CMDR wanted in self defense or retaliation. Takes a little more than not initiating hostilities with weapons fire to be griefing, IMO.

C&P is riddled with holes, and asking everyone to go out of their way to accommodate them is asking too much. Habitually going out of one's way to abuse C&P mechanisms is one thing, largely ignoring them is another.

 

[fu9ar]

 

[Aaron T]

People need to get this right ...

Ganking is the short form of "gang killing", so the activity of killing a single ship with a group of ships.

If my squad an I go against a single Vette or Cutter from the 13th Legion in our own home system, we are ganking it (for a good reason... 13th is trash...)

Griefing is the activity of ruining somebody else's fun by shooting them or destroying them by any means just for the sake of doing it and most of the time, repeatedly.

And as Cosmic has pointed out a few times, it's a game, you die, you lose a few credits and respawn. It's not like you lost something really valuable and important in you RL...

You lost the time you had invested in preparing for the mission, you lost credits, you lost faction rep that will take hours to build back up, and all for nothing but the whim of some idiot.

You wasted a lot of time for nothing when a griefer rams you on a landing pad or hits you from out of the blue with a huge missle for nothing but kicks, period.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

...

Do they shoot folks up out in the open, no, folks who engage you in the open whether you are expecting it or not are fine, they are playing as intended, a loss to them might cause a momentary bit of salt, but as far as actual griefers and gankers, I despise them as much as anyone can be despised...

With all due respect, you have some really strange priorities!

 

[Camulus]

when a griefer rams you on a landing pad

Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the assumption that a ship was invulnerable on a pad.

 

[Krash]

Correct me if I'm wrong but I was under the assumption that a ship was invulnerable on a pad.

The griefer is on the pad?

 

[Aaron T]

ED is not the only space game, and every game has griefers, so I meshed them by mistake, in another game pads are in armistice zones, you cannot fire any weapons, so griefers ram ships on the pads and blow them up.

 

[Camulus]

The griefer is on the pad?

Okay, that's plausible.

 

[Krash]

In ED they wait for you to squeeze thru the mailslot

 

[Aaron T]

Here is why I get so fired up about griefers, I broke my neck and I am always in pain, and preparing for missions takes time, time I sit in paiin, but I set a goasl of completing said mission, and I am a goal orinted person.

So any time I spend in this or any other game is time that I could be in less pain in an easy chair, etc, so when the goal is almost complete and some charming griefer takes it all away for nothing it is a waste of my time, my pain, etc...

Now, if I want to rebuild my rep with the faction, I have to painfully grind hours and many missions, because of one griefer having a blast.

 

[Mephane]

In ED they hang around noob game starting points, and CG's, etc, in SC they basically ram folks ships on the landing pads in the armistice zone, and they exist in every online game.

Do they shoot folks up out in the open, no, folks who engage you in the open whether you are expecting it or not are fine, they are playing as intended, a loss to them might cause a momentary bit of salt, but as far as actual griefers and gankers, I despise them as much as anyone can be despised.

And one thing I have noticed, during times where most youth are in school in the US region, and you are on a US server, same for EU, AUS, etc, you see very little ganking at all, if any.

I shall preface the rest with not all kids are gankers, many kids are excellent kids and will be great future leaders, and most are average and will provide great homes for their families later on, then there are those destined for prison.

There is a small window on a week day where on a USS server it is likely that most kids are in school, and that is the most relaxing time to play almost any online game in the US region, because as soon as kids have time to get home, the ganking starts and continues until a short bit before school starts again.

The weekends are gank fests, including holidays.

Anytime kids are out of school there is going to be massive amounts of ganking.

Heck, in SC there are whole crews of them.

Adults who like gaming for the most part are respectful of others, and we grew up in a time when being a little snot nosed foul mouthed heathens with no respect for others or themselves in general got knocked out of us, but sadly, the world is full of bags now with participation trophies and this is what we get.

Immature little disrespectful smart alec trolls with no discipline in their lives that cannot even play an online game without trolling everyone.

Don't believe me, get on in open during a week day, when school or juvenile detention is in effect your time, on a server in your region and see how often you are ganked as opposed to all other times.

The great thing about ED though isd that it is so huge you can even visit populated area's and never get ganked, but in CG,s and noob area it is more prevalent.

Thank you, to all of our future leaders who do the right thing and are not sociopaths or rotten to the core, to the rest...

Anecdotical as these things go, I can add a very concrete story to this. When I was a teenager, I was like that. If anyone remembers the game Freelancer, it had an open-world multiplayer mode. Now there was a choice of PvP and PvE servers, so at least we got that going for us. Anyway.

I was a ganker.

I was part of a small group of players, all around that age, 14, 15, 16, and we mostly did PvP. While we also fought against others like us, a lot of the time we just shot down players in freighters, minding their own trading business. When one of the victims asked why we shot them down, we would only answer "Because we are TDF", pretending like we were famous or infamous and people should recognize the initials of our group. Anyway. It was immature, I was immature, as we all were, but at that age, coupled with the relatively consequence-free deaths in Freelancer (we even used to suicide crash into planets for a free respawn to save on repair bills after a fight!), it felt like a fun thing to do.

Now of course there are a lot of people who get that enjoyment from ruining someone else's day, or stroking their ego by going after those weaker than them, at a mature age, but I can't deny that this probably occurs disproportionately often among teenagers. See also the various trends of PvP-survival games (DayZ etc), and these days battle royale, which all to some extent revolve around the sentiment of "showing those noobs who is boss" in a kind of lord-of-the-flies scenario.

 

[Valorin]

Here is why I get so fired up about griefers, I broke my neck and I am always in pain, and preparing for missions takes time, time I sit in paiin, but I set a goasl of completing said mission, and I am a goal orinted person.

So any time I spend in this or any other game is time that I could be in less pain in an easy chair, etc, so when the goal is almost complete and some charming griefer takes it all away for nothing it is a waste of my time, my pain, etc...

Now, if I want to rebuild my rep with the faction, I have to painfully grind hours and many missions, because of one griefer having a blast.

In your case PG or Solo might really be the place to go. I can't really take gankers serious and when flying in Open I am aware of the risk and what I would lose. If I had a condition like yours I wouldn't fly in Open so much. I'd rather choose Mobius or Solo before I'd risk such a setback because of one kindergarten jerk.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

Here is why I get so fired up about griefers, I broke my neck and I am always in pain, and preparing for missions takes time, time I sit in paiin, but I set a goasl of completing said mission, and I am a goal orinted person.

So any time I spend in this or any other game is time that I could be in less pain in an easy chair, etc, so when the goal is almost complete and some charming griefer takes it all away for nothing it is a waste of my time, my pain, etc...

Now, if I want to rebuild my rep with the faction, I have to painfully grind hours and many missions, because of one griefer having a blast.

A PG or solo might be the best choice then.

As a former chronic pain sufferer, and one who helps people in pain for a living, I hope you find relief.
Much of the information being passed on is outdated and in some cases, entirely inaccurate.

Pain neuroscience education(PNE) has been shown to give better outcomes than many interventions.
If you're not being or have not been prescribed any, I have a bunch of resources to share if you are interested.
It will give you better chances of full recovery in many cases, and the risk is pretty much non-existent.

o7

 

[IndigoWyrd]

I’ll dare to try to stir up some actual discussion and thought here.
I will preface this with: Yes, it IS a game, and no actual, physical, harm is done.

However... time spent is still spent and cannot be regained. While many of us have refined credit-making to an art, not everyone has, or wants to spend what time they do have on chasing credits. It does not matter what your rationale is for engaging another player, you’re still costing them time, if nothing else.

Some people enjoy this, welcome it, and that’s fine. You’re both enjoying yourselves, no harm done, and I’ll wager the overwhelming majority of player contact falls into this broad realm. It’s those cases where the player contact is unwarranted, unwanted and unwelcome that are the problem. This is especially true of those who insert themselves into private groups to force their play style on others. I have to suspect there is something fundamentally wrong with those who do this. These are, I suspect, the same sort of people who think “The Knock Out Game” is either a game or funny. It’s not.

[video]https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zjP39MS_GYk[/video]

I cannot find any sympathy for this fellow at all, and feel he got exactly what was due. Make no mistake though - I am not advocating violence against anyone, even those who act up in a game, because yes, it is still just a game.

But I would strongly recommend considering WHY you engage in a particular activity.

Are you a station rammer?
Do you “invade” Private Groups?
Do you repeatedly attack the same person over and over?
Are you a Griefer?

Why? Are you just bored? Do you have some deeply seated emotional issues you need to work through? Do you simply have no regard for other peoples’ time? Is it just because the consequences are genuinely meaningless? Do you lack discipline or respect? I’m genuinely curious, because my thought processes are different. It never occurs to me to inflict myself on others, even when I couldn’t disagree more.

So what are your motivations for such actions?
What would it take to make you think about those actions first?

 

[Sylveria]

What I've learned is that although there really is an attempt to distinguish "griefing" from "ganking", there is an obvious acceptance of said "gankers" in the PvP community, regardless of behavior. In short, it's about as complicit as you can get- and the terms become synonymous.

All the language arguments simply don't matter- Frontier isn't going to address it, because it's defended by the majority of the PvP community as "acceptable/valid gameplay".

That's the cold hard truth, and the reality- and at the end of the day, the only question is...

"Which mode are YOU going to choose for your own personal style or preference?"

After all- they've already chosen theirs.

 

[Bob Lighthouse]

I’ll dare to try to stir up some actual discussion and thought here.
I will preface this with: Yes, it IS a game, and no actual, physical, harm is done.

However... time spent is still spent and cannot be regained. While many of us have refined credit-making to an art, not everyone has, or wants to spend what time they do have on chasing credits. It does not matter what your rationale is for engaging another player, you’re still costing them time, if nothing else.

Some people enjoy this, welcome it, and that’s fine. You’re both enjoying yourselves, no harm done, and I’ll wager the overwhelming majority of player contact falls into this broad realm. It’s those cases where the player contact is unwarranted, unwanted and unwelcome that are the problem. This is especially true of those who insert themselves into private groups to force their play style on others. I have to suspect there is something fundamentally wrong with those who do this. These are, I suspect, the same sort of people who think “The Knock Out Game” is either a game or funny. It’s not.



I cannot find any sympathy for this fellow at all, and feel he got exactly what was due. Make no mistake though - I am not advocating violence against anyone, even those who act up in a game, because yes, it is still just a game.

But I would strongly recommend considering WHY you engage in a particular activity.

Are you a station rammer?
Do you “invade” Private Groups?
Do you repeatedly attack the same person over and over?
Are you a Griefer?

Why? Are you just bored? Do you have some deeply seated emotional issues you need to work through? Do you simply have no regard for other peoples’ time? Is it just because the consequences are genuinely meaningless? Do you lack discipline or respect? I’m genuinely curious, because my thought processes are different. It never occurs to me to inflict myself on others, even when I couldn’t disagree more.

So what are your motivations for such actions?
What would it take to make you think about those actions first?

Who are you talking to?
I don't think anyone here has identified as doing any of those things.