Open letter to Frontier

[Sandmann]

Same as almost all the content of this thread. All we know for a fact is that a bunch of pew-pew kiddies signed on (not 'infiltrated' please - it took no effort) to a private group, and acted like the pathetic bunch of trolls they clearly are. All this talk of so-called 'combat logging' is an irrelevance - though par for the course when the behaviour of some PVPers (almost certainly a minority) is brought into question. Evidently some people would rather drag the discussion off-topic rather than have the central issues actually discussed...

Yup, can't argue with any of that, other than that I'd also call the talk of combat logging attempted apologist distractions.

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Which is what I've been saying.....

You're the one who wanted to say they make them due to "ethics".
Truth is, we do not know why FD do what they do - unless we start getting invited to some of the internal meetings, it will always be speculation / conjecture.

I not only "wanted" to say it, I -did- say it... in response to the vicar remark that implied that they couldn't or shouldn't make ethical rulings. They can make rulings for whatever reason they want, INCLUDING ethical ones.

 

[Kristov]

... Not if their opinion isn't covered by the EULA for the game.

The only clause in the EULA that's even close to "don't grief a private group" is section 4.1, but that seems to be more towards don't be malicious and fraudulent in the game code.

To be honest, reading the EULA of Elite Dangerous, it's very, VERY weak; there is no clause similar to Blizzard's EULA:

• Blizzard reserves the right to terminate this Agreement at any time for any reason, or for no reason, with or without notice to you. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most Account suspensions and terminations are the result of violations of this Agreement. In case of minor violations of these rules, Blizzard may provide you with a prior warning and/or suspend your use of the Account due to your non-compliance prior to terminating the Agreement or modifying or deleting an Account.

To be clear, the Elite Dangerous EULA basically says that you have to violate the EULA for them to take away the game. Technically, you can be an ass, but you can play the game.

Technically, Blizzard can revoke your right to play the game because you got arrested for a DUI. Or your last name is Poopsmith. Or that you're a total ass ruining the game for the community.

Blizzard is a US company and operating within US laws, FD is a UK company and has to operate within EU laws, and that's the problem, the EU gives a lot of rights that people have made applicable to ANYTHING, so if FD were to include that standard US EULA clause in their EULA, the fecal matter would be hitting the rotary air moving device in the massive proportions, and people would sue over it, raise holy hells and so on. Not worth the negative PR it would garner or the legal costs that would ensue.

For my part, FDev's definition of acceptable and unacceptable behaviors takes a back seat to my own. I'd be unlikely to combat log to a pvp'er, if one came across me in Mobius (which is itself incredibly unlikely), but that's only because I'm confident I could space the loser without breaking a sweat. Whether I treat someone fairly and on even terms is determined entirely upon whether or not I think they deserve to be treated fairly and evenly.

So if it happened and I wanted to combat log, then I'd combat log. What's he going to do? Report me? What's going to happen then? FDev will eventually investigate the report. They will find that I have no history of disconnects that look like combat logging, and so that particular disconnect could be coincidence and the investigation will come back as inconclusive. FDev might send me a warning message about combat logging, and we'll all have a bit of a laugh. And then it will never happen again because a pvp'er is unlikely to ever come across me again, and if he does, as I said above, I'd probably just take him out.

Here's the thing Sapient, you don't get to decide what is and isn't acceptable in FD's game, they do, so your thoughts and opinions on the matter are the ones that take a back seat, not FD's. Your option if you don't like that is, as has been stated many times, to not hit the Play button.

 

[1984]

I love the idea put forward that because I am in a PVE group that A. I could not cut it in open. B. I am going to hate the improved AI. Wrong on both counts.

 

[Jockey79]

I not only "wanted" to say it, I -did- say it... in response to the vicar remark that implied that they couldn't or shouldn't make ethical rulings. They can make rulings for whatever reason they want, INCLUDING ethical ones.

I never said or implied they "couldn't or shouldn't make ethical rulings" at all.
I said they are not here for spiritual or moral guidance;

Frontier are a business not the local vicar, they are not here for spiritual or moral guidance - they are here to make money, by providing a service.
They care as much about what is morally right as an ant cares about the situation in the middle east - not one iota. As long as people pay for the game and the extras, they will carry on.
They will only look at the black and white "legally" of each situation. Sort any problems according to it, and carry on.

They are a business, they act and behave like a business. Yet this seems to be a surprise to some who expect Frontier to hold some sort of moral ground.
If Frontier were to start imposing moral judgements and not just their plain rules, imagine the fall out as people with different morals clash and the arguments over what is morally right and wrong.

CL'ing is against the rules, whether it is in open or in Mobius - it is still wrong, despite the reason or location. What SDC did, wasn't according to rules, wrong.

Perhaps people should refocus their efforts from whining about what has happened to getting Frontier to reconsider either a PvE mode or PvP/PvE flag system.
Wouldn't that be more constructive ?

 

[fossil]

After reading the thread, or more specifically ZacAntonaci's official response on reddit about last nights invasion of Mobius by the SDC, a group that was recently featured by Frontier, I'm done. Unfortunately, I can't withhold money from Frontier, as I've paid everything up front. However, there will be no future support unless these problems are addressed. The community has asked for a dedicated PVE mode, only to fall on deaf ears. Well, this is why it's desperately needed, and not a limp-wristed Jimmy Carteresque reply that's it's "unfortunate to see players taking pride in this experience." Really Frontier? A group you feature invades a private PVE group with the admitted purpose of griefing, gloats about it and taunts said PVE members about their lack of combat acumen, and your response is a weak-kneed "it's unfortunate" dismissal? Disgusting.

No worries - bye bye

 

[Sandmann]

I never said or implied they "couldn't or shouldn't make ethical rulings" at all.
I said they are not here for spiritual or moral guidance;

Again with the hair splitting and semantics?

 

[Kristov]

I never said or implied they "couldn't or shouldn't make ethical rulings" at all.
I said they are not here for spiritual or moral guidance;



They are a business, they act and behave like a business. Yet this seems to be a surprise to some who expect Frontier to hold some sort of moral ground.
If Frontier were to start imposing moral judgements and not just their plain rules, imagine the fall out as people with different morals clash and the arguments over what is morally right and wrong.

CL'ing is against the rules, whether it is in open or in Mobius - it is still wrong, despite the reason or location. What SDC did, wasn't according to rules, wrong.

Perhaps people should refocus their efforts from whining about what has happened to getting Frontier to reconsider either a PvE mode or PvP/PvE flag system.
Wouldn't that be more constructive ?

You are correct, morality isn't something FD should be imposing on anyone, especially not in a game that has a culture that embraces slavery, other cultures practice slavery, and drugs and killing people for money and oh my, the list of immoral things that the game has as viable and legal options, really, FD shouldn't be imposing any morality on anyone, that would be rather...confusing and silly.

Now, a PvE mode, not going to solve the problem, especially THIS particular problem, as members of SDC and other groups would go into it and grief people even more often as they wouldn't have to wait to be added to that massive list Mobius has. Same with flagging, they'll grief you no matter what, and the louder you are about how bad they are for being griefers, the more often they'll target you. I've been a server admin for a hosting company, one game, Battlefield 1942, a team PvP game, we could set Friendly Fire off or on. Me, I prefer it on, makes the game a little more realistic and makes people think a bit more before they pull the trigger or toss that grenade. The company decided to go FF Off however on a few servers, to avoid TKing and griefing issues, and left it On on another server, sort of a test. We banned 5x the people for griefing on the FF Off servers than we did the FF On server, people went out of their way to grief others with FF Off, it was just a total charliefrank all the time. The FF On server, rarely a problem, and that was only when they thought no admins were around on that server, not realizing we could watch all the servers at the same time, not to mention we had TS servers for our players and were always listening in

So that doesn't really solve the problem, makes it worse in most cases, especially when you have people who seem to enjoy insulting and provoking the people who grief as is the case with this playerbase. Want to avoid the griefers? Stay out of Mobius, don't advertise your private group as being PvE and don't insult or provoke the groups like SDC, you won't have any issues with them. What other group besides Mobius has had this issue?

 

[simulacrae]

This really sounds like it would have made an interesting Educating Ed episode...

 

[Nyres]

You are correct, morality isn't something FD should be imposing on anyone, especially not in a game that has a culture that embraces slavery, other cultures practice slavery, and drugs and killing people for money and oh my, the list of immoral things that the game has as viable and legal options, really, FD shouldn't be imposing any morality on anyone, that would be rather...confusing and silly.

Now, a PvE mode, not going to solve the problem, especially THIS particular problem, as members of SDC and other groups would go into it and grief people even more often as they wouldn't have to wait to be added to that massive list Mobius has. Same with flagging, they'll grief you no matter what, and the louder you are about how bad they are for being griefers, the more often they'll target you. I've been a server admin for a hosting company, one game, Battlefield 1942, a team PvP game, we could set Friendly Fire off or on. Me, I prefer it on, makes the game a little more realistic and makes people think a bit more before they pull the trigger or toss that grenade. The company decided to go FF Off however on a few servers, to avoid TKing and griefing issues, and left it On on another server, sort of a test. We banned 5x the people for griefing on the FF Off servers than we did the FF On server, people went out of their way to grief others with FF Off, it was just a total charliefrank all the time. The FF On server, rarely a problem, and that was only when they thought no admins were around on that server, not realizing we could watch all the servers at the same time, not to mention we had TS servers for our players and were always listening in

So that doesn't really solve the problem, makes it worse in most cases, especially when you have people who seem to enjoy insulting and provoking the people who grief as is the case with this playerbase. Want to avoid the griefers? Stay out of Mobius, don't advertise your private group as being PvE and don't insult or provoke the groups like SDC, you won't have any issues with them. What other group besides Mobius has had this issue?

Nice, victim blaming on the Mobius group, the group is PVE its that people are going in and breaking the rules of the group by PVPing who are then being removed. This isn't Battlefield 1942, the most "griefing" someone could do if you didn't allow for players to interdict or damage each other's ships is to block a port entrance, which would get the ship blown up for being there to long, or filling up all the pads all are things that can easily be avoided by going to a diffrent station or switching to solo real quick then leaving the station and going back into the open PVE/ PVE only group. Your solution isn't much of solution either as your basicly telling people to ignore the community they made friends in and have been part of for a while and go to incredibly small barely populated groups that can still suffer from the griefing that Mobius gets.

 

[Banana's_Are_Good_For_You]

You can't fix Human so stop already.

Mobius has it's own rules subset which was broken so the offender got ejected from their group. That should have been the end of it.
FD had nothing to do with it and the issue is since resolved so why are you guys still banging your drums about it.
Such behaviour in the main game is allowed unless deemed inappropriate and this is at FD's discretion when it comes to those trying to farm the newbies which is fair in my opinion.
Get over it for crying out loud and stop trying to make cases against different player groups.
It's fine as is but if you manage to destabilize the game due to your incessant whining then you will only have yourselves to blame...though I believe FD care too much to let any amount of whining and lobbying for any particular play style to damage the game.

Man, the levels of crying is too damn high.
If you aren't prepared to purge humanity yourselves then you better be nice to the Thargoids because they may be your only hope.
Oh yeah, and if you log for any reason while in combat for fear of dying, I can only suggest you learn to play because that's pretty weak sauce right there.
There is never a justification for it because dying in this game is very much a part of it.

 

[Arjin]

This really sounds like it would have made an interesting Educating Ed episode...

Or a failed social experiment.

 

[Pluvialis]

motivation noun

Oh, ye gods. Are we really down to throwing dictionary definitions at each other?

 

[Lestenio]

It's fine as is

Fine as is becasue you are not affected, a rather selfish view.

Oh yeah, and if you log for any reason while in combat for fear of dying,.

Then again, I feel combat logging is fine as is and FD shouldn't waste their time enforcing it.
Guess I am selfish too.

 

[Jockey79]

Oh, ye gods. Are we really down to throwing dictionary definitions at each other?

No, I was not sure if they had used the right word for what they were trying to say, leading to a misunderstanding.

While a misunderstanding did take place, it soon came to light that we both agreed, FD do not have to justify the reason they make any rules.
They just make the rules, we can either agree to them and play their game, or not agree and not play their game.

But at the end of the day, it is *their* game and they have spoken.
Now it is time for people to swallow that chunk of pride and entitlement and make a choice...

Either accept this is a PvP game and carry on accordingly (moving to what ever mode suits you) - or refuse to accept it and quit.

 

[Kristov]

Nice, victim blaming on the Mobius group, the group is PVE its that people are going in and breaking the rules of the group by PVPing who are then being removed. This isn't Battlefield 1942, the most "griefing" someone could do if you didn't allow for players to interdict or damage each other's ships is to block a port entrance, which would get the ship blown up for being there to long, or filling up all the pads all are things that can easily be avoided by going to a diffrent station or switching to solo real quick then leaving the station and going back into the open PVE/ PVE only group. Your solution isn't much of solution either as your basicly telling people to ignore the community they made friends in and have been part of for a while and go to incredibly small barely populated groups that can still suffer from the griefing that Mobius gets.

You don't play much do you? There's many ways to grief in this game right now, more than you know, that's for sure.

And yes, the group and the man, Mobius, is responsible for this situation. He doesn't vet the applicants, even after over a dozen of these events, and he doesn't tell the members of the group to stop provoking the people who do this crap, so they keep provoking them and it just keeps happening because he still doesn't vet applicants knowing that more will get in and do this again and again.

Mobius has the tools to take care of the problems, vetting applicants and kicking people who break the rules, which is exactly the same tools every MMO and online game out there that allows groups to form gives the players to use for those purposes. NO developer polices the groups, that's on the group, as their rules are NOT officially supported by the developers and can't be. FD has no place supporting any singular group in the game, they don't either. People are all upset that SDC got a community spotlight bit, guess what, they applied for that! FD didn't reach out to THEM, THEY reached out to FD. Mobius can do the same, ANY group can do the same. FD doesn't condone any group's actions by this, they are simply bringing a group from the community to the playerbase's attention, pushing the whole community bit, that's it. Some people in this community have serious entitlement issues, they need a reality check, and some of them just got one.

 

[xondk]

But at the end of the day, it is *their* game and they have spoken.
Now it is time for people to swallow that chunk of pride and entitlement and make a choice...

I think there's some confusion on what they have actually said though.
Because they are saying the players aren't doing anything mechanically wrong. And that is entirely correct, there is nothing mechanic wise that prevents it.
However they've also clearly stated that there are currently no consequences for such actions and they are looking into changing that. Because a consequence system that actually hurts players when they do actions that are their own choice, is one of the few good ways to affect griefers and not the rest of the entire pvp orientated players, there's a ton of non griefer pvp around, however, griefer pvp has a very disproportioned affect on the victim compared to the killer, fix this and the problem will be reduced, since they would end up, for example being unable to enter a system they've griefed a lot, or able to land there, or hunted by a significant system force there.
So yeah, I don't think they are saying they approve of griefing, but that it is something that happens and they are looking into making appropriate responses to it?

 

[bigity]

It is not FDevs job or responsibility to police the actions of players in a private group. If they are exploiting, it would be. PvP - even non-consensual PVP in a private group - is not exploiting.

Get over yourselves, manage your group, and move on.

 

[Jockey79]

....
So yeah, I don't think they are saying they approve of griefing, but that it is something that happens and they are looking into making appropriate responses to it?

You clearly did not see the community manager Zac on Reddit, here let me help;

However, "griefing" in itself isn't against the rules. There is no evidence that I can see that suggests that the players in question altered the game in any way in order to gain an unfair advantage. In addition, groups are made in a way that allow players to join together and play in a way they want. However, it is the admins of those groups that manage which Commanders have access to the group and which do not.

https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDange...ling_dog_crew_presents_okinura_community_goal

So, in short;

"Griefing" is fine, Mobius is to blame for letting them in to start with.

That is the official response from Frontier I'm sorry to say

Also, while I'm here, should Leto be about, just like to say sorry for blocking you for saying Mobius is to blame - turns out you were only saying what FD was thinking.

 

[xondk]

And yes, the group and the man, Mobius, is responsible for this situation. He doesn't vet the applicants, even after over a dozen of these events, and he doesn't tell the members of the group to stop provoking the people who do this crap, so they keep provoking them and it just keeps happening because he still doesn't vet applicants knowing that more will get in and do this again and again.

I have to ask to this because while, yes, Mobius is at least slightly partially responsible, but also responsible in believing in other people, that they want PvE without getting overrun by so called "PvP'ers" that aren't looking for a challenge but just easy targets.
However, those that did it, invading Mobius specifically to disrupt it, are significantly more to blame, they decided that for fun to go into a private group and disrupt those there.

That behaviour is not something that I think should be defended, regardless of them being able to mechanically can or cannot do something, they chose specifically to go into a known PvE group and attack people, that is deplorable behaviour, immature behaviour at the very best, why are people defending this behaviour? I don't really understand this. Because they have a "right" to behave as they want? yet that doesn't count for the mobius members? if they want to play as they do in a private group? how does the attackers have any more right then the mobius members? Mobius affects no one but those that are part of it, but these people decide to push what they want onto others? and they get defended?

 

[KaizoMK]

Oh, ye gods. Are we really down to throwing dictionary definitions at each other?

I was going to throw out definitions of "circular logic" and "irrelevant" to jockey, but then again I'm not a bad kid.