please don't confuse PvPers with griefers

[ReaperAlex]

this seems to be a reoccurring theme on these boards, if a player shoots someone and it's not for profit, then it must be to cause grief.

that is simply not true. i've played eve-online for years, both as a carebear, and a PvPer. now eve is well known for its griefers, but what you might not know is there is also a very large community of PvPers who are not griefers. in fact if you head out to lawless space where it's effectively open PvP you'll be hard pushed to find a griefer.

you see PvPers love nothing more than to have a good scrap then laugh about it after. sure sometimes the loss might hurt, and they will just drop a "good fight" in chat then go lick their wounds, but they will laugh about it later. other times the fight might be so good that they start chatting with their enemy right away. if a newbie wanders into this dangerous zone and gets blown up and stops to talk to the "evil pirates" what they will invariably get is a ton of advice and help on what to do next time.

you see these players are not out to cause grief, they are out to have fun scrapping. if you go into an open PvP world in any game then you have to assume there will be people there who just want to have fun scrapping. not to cause you misery, but to enjoy a fight.

and no they will not pick a honourable or fair fight. they will run away when the odds are against them just as they will give chase when the odds are in their favour, because it's all fair game in open PvP (ok, sometimes they will run when the odds are suspiciously in their favour as they might suspect a trap).

if you get to a place where you accept that just undocking means you might never dock in that ship again then the open PvP world can be a lot more exciting than the controlled NPC world.

you see when an NPC interdicts you, it can be quite a boring affair, it's either a fed or a bounty at your feet. when a player interdicts you then suddenly you might be fighting for your life, hammering the boost button as fast as you can praying the FSD will spool up in time.

in short PvP can give you more of an adrenaline rush than an NPC ever could, that is why it's a great thing in such a game and that is why i play open (unless an outpost is full *mutters*)

what we really need is some way to chat after the fight. that is how communities form. it's no good being able to chat during the fight, take your finger off the stick and you might just as well hit self destruct. we need the ability to talk after the fight when one player is in station a few jumps away.

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i'm adding a post to this that further explains the pvpers mentality, touching on why pvpers will run away from a fight and why the will chase weaker targets. this is a quote from a post i made on page 9


look at it this way, generally players of any type dont want to lose their ship. so when i'm playing i don't pick up the 150K hunting missions as i don't feel ready for an elite anaconda yet. though i do hope to get an average anaconda spawn at my hunting grounds especially if there are some feds to soak up the turret fire. i gravitate towards fights i can win and avoid ones i feel are too risky


the exact same happens in pvp. players will make a judgement call as to if they think they can win. if they don't they try to escape.


as for the seal clubbing, that comes from another problem. when i log on tonight i know that i can rock up at a nav beacon and be pulling in the bounties within 5 mins. a pvper on the other hand might go all night looking for a fight, so that newbie in a sidewinder might be the only fight they get that evening. i've spent plenty of nights in eve not getting into a single fight in the lawless regions of space (thankfully in eve those who do not want to pvp can stick to the lawful regions of space, we've got a bit of a problem in that regard in elite as things stand).


heck one night in eve some of us took industrial ships (think something the size of a type-9 with regards to cargo capacity but with the defences of a hauler) and went out looking for a fight. there were about 10 of us and we were hoping to find a few smaller ships or a lone bigger ship to surprise. the only thing we found was a fleet of about 100 players, some in cruisers (think viper/cobra) and some in frigs (thing sidey/eagle). the thing to note about frigs is they are much much faster than cruisers and industrial ships and they can be built to stop a ship from escaping.


10 of us vs 100, and they had the speed to pounce on us and stop us from escaping


but the 10 of us were a close knit team. the time it took us to race from system to system even in our lumbering ships was faster than that massive fleet just due to our efficiency as a unit. the lumbering fleet was taking an age to get organised for each jump to the next system. what they should have done is let the frigs lose on us then caught up with whatever they managed to catch.


that nicely sums up open pvp. you want a fight, once in a blue moon you get a fair fight, but most of the time one side is going to out match the other side, and despite the unfair odds the better side will give chase as that might be the only fight they get that night.


so, does that explain the mentality somewhat behind why a pvper might attack a sidewinder? it really is not about lording it over the weak, or about ruining some ones day. it's about being a fish in the big ocean hoping to catch some prey you can take down while avoiding the bigger fish that can take you down.


that's what i'm trying to get across here. it's not that i don't understand the way pvp can upset people, i have been there myself. it's that those doing the hunting are just looking for a fight, and with slim pickings they will take what they can get, and no you can't expect them to roll over and play dead when they meet a more powerful opponent.


it's not malicious, and right now the mechanics of the game supports the pvp play style far more than it does the coop play style. solo is catered for, but we don't play MMO's for the silent solo experience.


so by all means call for a proper coop mode beyond player organised ones. but please stop calling pvpers griefers and assuming they are getting kicks from ruining your day. that's really not fair to a group of players who would gladly teach you how to fight and be happy to fight by your side. most pvpers are friendly people. i'm fighting to have their name cleared from the association they currently have in elite with griefers. also the mechanics suck for both parties.

 

[technophebe]

Coming from a PvEers point of view, I think the problem is that many (not all) PvPers fail to grasp that PvP is an unpleasant experience for many people. I think it's that character trait that allows them to enjoy PvP at all I think (think of a cat playing with a mouse, it's enjoying itself but do you think it has any grasp of what the mouse is feeling?).

Many of us just don't want that "adrenaline rush" as PvPers so often refer to it; it's not enjoyable and it's not what we want to experience during our leisure time. Being forced to experience something unpleasant by another person who *is* enjoying the experience is the essence of forced PvP to many of us. It's not that we lack a sense of humor, it's that being forced to do something unpleasant by someone else who thinks this is all a great time is just inherently not fun.

Telling us we "don't get it" or that "it's all a bit of fun" fundamentally misunderstands our point of view; and being forced to talk to our abusers (from our point of view) afterwards isn't going to make the experience more enjoyable, but less so!

Having said that, I'm all in favor of improved chat tools in the game.

 

[Dabba]

This is why there needs to be a pvp toggle. If you don't want to engage in pvp you shouldnt be forced to, and unless / until there is a pvp toggle I think youre going to find open a lot less populated than it could be.

Personally I don't care what your motivation is, if you are shooting at someone that doesnt want to participate in pvp, and you continually chase them and harass them despite them making it clear they aren't interested, then yes you are a griefer.

 

[technophebe]

Personally I don't care what your motivation is, if you are shooting at someone that doesnt want to participate in pvp, and you continually chase them and harass them despite them making it clear they aren't interested, then yes you are a griefer.

Dabba just said what I was trying to say but much more clearly and in about a third of the space, good job ^^

 

[Aeolusdallas]

You sound sincere but quite frankly you are using the same excuses that griefers always use when defending themselves. What you need to understand is that most people do not want or like forced PVP and even more so unfair or dishonorable ones.

 

[Sanguisaevum]

This is why there needs to be a pvp toggle. If you don't want to engage in pvp you shouldnt be forced to, and unless / until there is a pvp toggle I think youre going to find open a lot less populated than it could be.

Personally I don't care what your motivation is, if you are shooting at someone that doesnt want to participate in pvp, and you continually chase them and harass them despite them making it clear they aren't interested, then yes you are a griefer.

This option already exists.

By playing on OPEN mode, you CONSENT to player interaction by default.

Just saying...

 

[Cmdr Snuffler]

This is why there needs to be a pvp toggle. If you don't want to engage in pvp you shouldnt be forced to,

It's called Solo mode.

 

[sun_tzu]

I'm happy for anybody to try and pick a fight... I dont fly what I can't afford to replace and I never spend more than 25% of my spare cash on cargo so I can always afford the loss... And if I think I'm in trouble I'm fairly adept at running away.
So whilst I don't go looking for a fight I'm generally happy to engage in pvp (unless I'm running out of time on a mission and then I'll run and probably come looking for the fight after)

 

[Crumplecorn]

i've played eve-online for years, both as a carebear, and a PvPer. now eve is well known for its griefers, but what you might not know is there is also a very large community of PvPers who are not griefers.

Well, EVE has no griefers, as logging in is your consent to PvP.

But, as has been pointed out, this game offers solo mode, not to mention private groups, which I assume gives a small number of players a private instance as well.

 

[ReaperAlex]

Coming from a PvEers point of view, I think the problem is that many (not all) PvPers fail to grasp that PvP is an unpleasant experience for many people. I think it's that character trait that allows them to enjoy PvP at all I think (think of a cat playing with a mouse, it's enjoying itself but do you think it has any grasp of what the mouse is feeling?).

Many of us just don't want that "adrenaline rush" as PvPers so often refer to it; it's not enjoyable and it's not what we want to experience during our leisure time. Being forced to experience something unpleasant by another person who *is* enjoying the experience is the essence of forced PvP to many of us. It's not that we lack a sense of humor, it's that being forced to do something unpleasant by someone else who thinks this is all a great time is just inherently not fun.

Telling us we "don't get it" or that "it's all a bit of fun" fundamentally misunderstands our point of view; and being forced to talk to our abusers (from our point of view) afterwards isn't going to make the experience more enjoyable, but less so!

Having said that, I'm all in favor of improved chat tools in the game.

i do understand your view, but many posters are claiming PvP for no financial reward is just to cause misery in others, that i think is unfair and not representative of most PvPers

now, i claim to understand your view point, so let me run you through my first experience with this. i had got out of my starting ship in eve, i was in a vexor, which in terms of cash could be compared to a viper or a cobra (it's very different now in eve, back then a battleship was the biggest which would be similar to the anaconda in elite). so it had taken a while to get my ship and i'd decided to venture out of safe space to try making more money.

i was in an asteroid belt enjoying the bigger bounties on the NPC's out there when 2 players came in and locked my ship down. i utterly and truly panicked. i made several terrible mistakes that saw me flying about like a headless chicken. i neither set myself up for a mistake, nor did i get stuck into the fight with a chance of knocking out the smaller ship that had me locked down while the bigger one hit me

it was not a nice experience and for 2 years after i stayed in safe space.

so i do understand you.

but here is the thing, i deliberately flew into an open PvP area. i could have stayed in safe place playing my game, but instead i flew into their game.

in elite we have solo, group and open. solo is safe space, group is multi-player coop and open is open PvP. we are in the PvPers game when we click on open. it's not them forcing us to submit to unwanted PvP, it's us clicking the button that joins the open PvP game

now, fast forward 2 years after my first unwanted pvp experience and i decided to join my girlfriend out in the unsafe space with her alliance. they were one of the few alliances that didn't shoot at random players who wandered into their turf. only at players who were known to attack. that is when i discovered what the other side was like. those PvPers were a friendly bunch, but so were their enemies. we had a strict code of conduct, no "smack talk" in local, no trash talking, just a friendly "good fight" or the like after. years later when i returned to eve i joined factional warfare, another open PvP much like combat zones in elite. it was nice to see that all the players would drop a "good fight" into chat after a scrap. the open PvP eve community as a whole is a friendly one.

 

[Dabba]

It's called Solo mode.

So if you want to engage socially you can only do so by putting yourself at the mercy of griefers. Great. Thats a lousy option, but I imagine its the one that most people looking to avoid the twerps trying to work out their frustration at having their proverbial lunch money stolen all their lives by ruining other peoples fun are taking. Just remember when you see the posts complaining about not finding enough people in Open play that the lack of a pvp toggle is the primary reason.

 

[Tettric]

As far as Elite goes if you want to Pirate someone (regardless of current jurisdiction) then fine!
Additionally if you want to attack someone whilst you're in Anarchy space then go for it!
However, if you pick one player and continually harass them or you decide to kill a player to the detriment of your cr balance in a policed system then things start coming into question.

Personally I don't really care, I'll take what combat comes my way regardless of jurisdiction. I've never instigated PvP combat by I've certainly finished it!

 

[ReaperAlex]

This is why there needs to be a pvp toggle. If you don't want to engage in pvp you shouldnt be forced to, and unless / until there is a pvp toggle I think youre going to find open a lot less populated than it could be.

Personally I don't care what your motivation is, if you are shooting at someone that doesnt want to participate in pvp, and you continually chase them and harass them despite them making it clear they aren't interested, then yes you are a griefer.

would you define that as chasing you all the way to the station, or waiting outside station for your return trip?

i'd expect a PvPer to give chase, then if i get into dock i'd expect them to fly off and look for another target. if they hang about the station for me to undock then that's starting to approach the grey area.

 

[Puck]

This is why there needs to be a pvp toggle. If you don't want to engage in pvp you shouldnt be forced to, and unless / until there is a pvp toggle I think youre going to find open a lot less populated than it could be.

Personally I don't care what your motivation is, if you are shooting at someone that doesnt want to participate in pvp, and you continually chase them and harass them despite them making it clear they aren't interested, then yes you are a griefer.

The PvP toggle is clicking on Open Play.


Also, do people really get an adrenaline rush from PvP? I've never experienced such a thing. What about PvP causes an adrenaline rush? Do people really fear dying in a video game? :/

Anyhow, I imagine playing any of the NPC roles is viable. Some want to play the pirate, some the bounty hunter, and of course you're going to have those who want to play the "psycho/maniac", what people call those NPC's that attack on sight without a scan of any sort. I personally don't get the point of it, as I have more fun fighting for a reason other than just fighting... But then, I don't get an adrenaline rush from PvP, so I guess if some people do then there are going to be adrenaline junkies.

 

[Lanatir]

Well, what relaxes me a bit about it is that most pvp-griefers will be gone pretty soon once they realize that their usual shtick wont work in this game. They'll be stuck with people who are ready to face them, on even grounds, which will probably scare the poop out of them cause they dont like fair fights and their usual victims will be in solo, waiting for them to be gone off to SC or EVE.

 

[Shepard]

Griefing is considered when one player attacks another player multiple times without any specific reason. In games like ED though if you belong to one faction and attacker to another faction it may be justified. But then again second time may be a coincidence but the third time becomes suspicious. There are after all NPCs and other targets of the opposite faction. I am not sure if ED has a griefing rule or not because of factions etc. but you can always go to main menu and switch to solo to cool off that PvPer, let him find some other targets. Or switch to cobra and stand up to him. If you just wanna space trucking - solo is peaceful enough.

 

[Dave Lave]

I find the problem with PvP is when it is mixed with PvE objectives so I'm happy to play solo/group most of the time but I'll play open in conflict zones. What does annoy me is PvPers who whine about people not being willing to play the role of wildebeest while they play the lion.

 

[lardarz]

You can't really grief people in Elite though can you?

I mean its not like you actually really lose very much if you get shot as you get it covered by insurance, unless you have a cargo full of very expensive stuff, in which case you're fair game anyway. Plus, the old rule "dont fly what you can't afford to lose" is surely relevant here.

For me it's the risk of losing stuff that actually makes a game fun.

 

[Sete]

I like pvp, but im avoiding doing interdictions on players because so many people are not cool with it. Unless they have wanted status, then its fair game.

 

[Shepard]

In warzones if you fight for opposite factions - it's normal and justified if player from opposite faction that is red to you attacks you.