Poll : Does anyone enjoy being taken as another player's victim

[Thorvald]

Interesting, stats would show that majority of players so far don't enjoy "ganking". If think if you merge these poll results with the "average age" of an ED player, you will see that the co-relation between 40-50 year olds as the majority player don't put up with the antics of a much younger or smaller percentage gaming generation.

We are into ED for the history of the game and the technical aspects among others, not to run around and beat down other players for kicks. Interesting.

 

[Rampant]

...
I was just thinking it might be interesting to see how many players enjoy being the aggressor, compared to the numbers in other categories.

More importantly, you can't stop those players answering the poll, and without their own option, they are most likely to pick the "in favour" option if they do answer, and that would then skew the results of the poll.

You see, I did already consider this part really carefully. On the one hand you may well be quite correct that an option for those who engage weaker prey doesn't appear. First point I'd make on that is I thought that would be incendiary. More importantly, however, is that if an option appeared such as "I enjoy being the predator, not the prey", then this would skew the results even more. Come on, honestly, who on this forum isn't going to say that they prefer to be the big man, top dog, greatest pilot in the game? Even some of the respondents who keep out of Open for their own reasons, might have selected such an option, even though they have never played like that or ever even intend to. That would be an honest response from them. A fifth option like you suggest would therefore skew the results much more than even the person who has said just above ^^^ that instead of answering honestly, that they chose the option they thought would mess up my results the most. There are some weird thought processes going on in this thread.

The bottom line is that I am not being manipulative. In the slightest. The poll is an honest question based on how much enjoyment people gain from being taken as weaker prey. Taken as a victim. There is nothing inherently wrong with using the word victim, but to read some of the responses here it would seem I have unintentionally upset some players - angered them, even - just from the choice of words used to describe a real context.

I knew there would be a range of feelings. I knew some people would say they enjoyed being challenged into a little-chance-of-winning combat engagement. I have Poms to prove this is true. Hence option 1 was included. I also knew that some avoid Open solely as a direct consequence of the potential for being placed in a combat scenario they can't win. And it is a truism that some people can't ever win against even an equally equipped opponent simply because they have no interest in that style of gameplay. Of those people I'll wager that plenty would stay in Open for the social aspect but only if there was zero chance of being challenged by more experienced and more powerful players.

Ultimately the poll isn't about Open versus Solo or Group, or about PvP versus PvE, or of ganking prevention.

Just a straight up, honest, open question, strictly for my own personal interest. No agenda. I am surprised that option 4 is quite so highly subscribed. I knew people would feel that way, but really thought that most who do feel that way would not be very highly represented on these forums.

Thanks for the civilised discussion, anyway. Which is clearly more than some on here are capable of if they don't agree with someone's point of view...

Cheerz

Mark H

 

[CariadocThorne]

You see, I did already consider this part really carefully. On the one hand you may well be quite correct that an option for those who engage weaker prey doesn't appear. First point I'd make on that is I thought that would be incendiary. More importantly, however, is that if an option appeared such as "I enjoy being the predator, not the prey", then this would skew the results even more. Come on, honestly, who on this forum isn't going to say that they prefer to be the big man, top dog, greatest pilot in the game? Even some of the respondents who keep out of Open for their own reasons, might have selected such an option, even though they have never played like that or ever even intend to. That would be an honest response from them. A fifth option like you suggest would therefore skew the results much more than even the person who has said just above ^^^ that instead of answering honestly, that they chose the option they thought would mess up my results the most. There are some weird thought processes going on in this thread.

The bottom line is that I am not being manipulative. In the slightest. The poll is an honest question based on how much enjoyment people gain from being taken as weaker prey. Taken as a victim. There is nothing inherently wrong with using the word victim, but to read some of the responses here it would seem I have unintentionally upset some players - angered them, even - just from the choice of words used to describe a real context.

I'm starting to think I've been completely misunderstand your purpose here all along. I thought you were trying to gage how people felt about players in strong combat ships who interdict total strangers without regard for whether their target wants to PvP or for whether it is a fair fight. Under that assumption, victim would be a totally inapropriate word, as the players who do enjoy being the target of these interdictions do not consider themselves to be victims, and are actually offended by anyone (except perhaps the attacker, who they hope to show how wrong he is) considering them to be a victim.

If you actually want to find out how many ED players actually enjoy being a victim, then all my previous objections are completely invalid and I apologise profusely.

I'm not sure whether there is any point in putting such an option in the poll, as I doubt any players who ARE masochists would want to discuss it or publicly acknowledge it in this manner, even with the semi-anonymity of the internet.

I also suspect that gaming would have very little appeal to a masochist, so I would not expect there to be any playing ED, although I'm no expert on this, so I could well be wrong.

That effectively only leaves 3 option on the poll, which only tells you whether someone is neutral, slightly dislikes it, or strongly dislikes it.

I knew there would be a range of feelings. I knew some people would say they enjoyed being challenged into a little-chance-of-winning combat engagement. I have Poms to prove this is true. Hence option 1 was included.

This comes back to what I (and many of the other posters on this thread) have taken issue with, as these people do not consider ourselves to be victims, and your option 1 was only applicable for people who enjoy being a victim. So you did not give us a valid option to pick unless we consign ourselves to the role of victim, which is directly offensive to us.

If there is no option for those people because you only want the opinion of victims, that is fine. But then you say things like this about option 1 being included for these people, which contradicts wanting the views of victims because people who enjoy taking on a stronger opponent are not victims, and will naturally be offended by being reffered to or treated as victims.

Thanks for the civilised discussion, anyway. Which is clearly more than some on here are capable of if they don't agree with someone's point of view...

Cheerz

Mark H

My pleasure. I can start off as fired up as anyone, but I always enjoy civilised debate over namecalling and flaming.

 

[Rampant]

So what you are telling me now is that you are offended by the word victim, because you do not "consider yourself" to be a victim.

I thought my context was quite clear that it was the aggressor who was choosing you as *his* "victim". The act of being victimised...

It was never my intention to offend or upset anyone, so if anyone has taken offence then that is regrettable. Should we call it an ambiguity?

Cheerz

Mark H

 

[Koren]

I've chased a few times by bounty hunters, was a lot of fun escaping and hiding. Admittedly, it is much more fun from my point of view to want to participate in dangerous activities like PvP when you are in a smaller ship with a rebuy that doesn't really matter at all.

If I see suspicious behavior (lining up behind me, pirate messages or aggression) and I am in my mining Conda, I am generally rolling out of there because it's not worth it to me to risk a 7M rebuy, which is days of play for me.

 

[CariadocThorne]

So what you are telling me now is that you are offended by the word victim, because you do not "consider yourself" to be a victim.

I thought my context was quite clear that it was the aggressor who was choosing you as *his* "victim". The act of being victimised...

It was never my intention to offend or upset anyone, so if anyone has taken offence then that is regrettable. Should we call it an ambiguity?

Cheerz

Mark H

Well, the implication of victimhood (is that a word?) in the option being about encouraging them to blow us up. And it's not so much about being offended, and more about the wording directly deterring people from choosing that option (like several people have specifically stated as being the reason they refuse to select an option) which then skews the result of the poll in much the same way you think a fifth option would, but for almost the direct opposite form of the same reason.

Or to put it another way, people who do enjoy being the target of this kind of hostile interaction refusing to pick the option most appropriate precisely because they DO consider themselves to be the predator rather than the prey, regardless of respective ship size/power, which skews the results of the poll towards the idea that people don't like uninvited hostile interaction.

I personally never thought you were deliberately skewing the poll that way, but confirmational bias can be an unintentional byproduct of wording questions/options etc in a way which fits the authors view, rather than finding wording which fits the view of people who might choose that option.

Since you see these interdictions as people in bigger ships blowing you up, you worded the option that way.

However to the people who would choose that option, it is not about getting blown up at all, but about getting to enjoy a challenging fight, so we see an option which not only fails to reflect our opinion, but actually opposes our opinion only slightly less than the other options.

Are we really being victimised if we are being given exactly what we want? You see a player choosing us as his victim, we see a player making himself our victim (even if it doesn't actually turn out that way☺).

Admittedly, it is much more fun from my point of view to want to participate in dangerous activities like PvP when you are in a smaller ship with a rebuy that doesn't really matter at all.

This also makes a difference. I would probably be less keen on uninvited PvP if I was in a big ship where I had a lot more to lose. So while being in a smaller ship puts you at a disadvantage, you aren't losing as much if you are blown up.

Not much of a comfort to anyone who doesn't want PvP in the first place, but for people who do, it helps make the fun of the challenge outweigh the potential costs.

 

[Rampant]

So here's the crux of my viewpoint. It comes in 2 parts.

Firstly, you just said that you are less keen on uninvited PvP if you have a "lot more to lose". Really, my poll was aimed more squarely at players with less assets, who are flying smaller ships because that is absolutely all they can afford and constitutes the majority of their total assets.

I never really thought about it in your terms of being a player with a huge pile of Cr who chooses to go out in a smaller ship - because the outcome for you of being blown up is actually insignificant. It is a "disposable" ship to you. Not so true for the player who is flying his only ship and can't afford anything more...

Put yourself in the shoes of that player. Now answer the poll honestly.


Secondly, the wording I finally opted for in option 1 reflects how a quorum of this forum feel about Open play - namely that if you choose Open, then you have automatically submitted to be my target. (My victim). Those same people also usually use the term carebear, in a strong derogatory sense, to describe players who choose Solo or Group. Witness some of the responses in this very thread.

Now place yourself in the shoes of the same guy above, and now add in that you are faced with this kind of biased language used by the - shall we call them "Aggressive Open Players" - because it is biased. "Come be my prey, or you are a carebear". Damned if you play Open, damned if you don't". Now answer the poll honestly as best you can through the eyes of an infrequent player, who has nothing but a D grade Cobra or Hauler and a few measly Cr in the bank.

As a player with modest assets myself, I was never really in a position to comprehend that players with fleets including upgraded Anacondas would take offense, or that they would rather choose something less expensive to fly in search of hostile engagements purely because it risks less of their considerable fortune. By the same token, I never realised that this would make you less of a victim, because playing like that for you guys has insignificant consequences if you do get blown up, so I guess now I can see that the victim word does not fit the self-categorisation of players who do this. Thanks for being the guy who finally explained this to me rather than just saying "poll sucks" (or placing a bounty on my game death).

Conversely to my own experience, or rather the lack of it, players like you still have the tools to place yourself in "my" shoes. Perhaps they'd rather not remember you first few tens of hours in game. Perhaps they never felt the precariousness of their total progress hanging in the balance of the outcome of a combat engagement. We often hear that from players, who clearly haven't felt that precariousness, that E: D is "not dangerous enough". For some players who just dabble here and thre in E: D it actually already is relatively dangerous. Can we seriously, in all good conscience, expect those less committed players to have to be the target (victim) for those who want the galaxy to be more dangerous, and expect them ALL to enjoy that. Some players will enjoy it, even if it wipes out their assets and a great deal of progress. Some not so much. My question, therefore, is what proportion are those who gained enjoyment out of being blown up.

Make more sense to you now?

 

[Halp]

what's the point of this thread ?
*puts some high quality ''combat logoff'' on windscreen and turns on the wipers*

 

[CariadocThorne]

So here's the crux of my viewpoint. It comes in 2 parts.

Firstly, you just said that you are less keen on uninvited PvP if you have a "lot more to lose". Really, my poll was aimed more squarely at players with less assets, who are flying smaller ships because that is absolutely all they can afford and constitutes the majority of their total assets.

I never really thought about it in your terms of being a player with a huge pile of Cr who chooses to go out in a smaller ship - because the outcome for you of being blown up is actually insignificant. It is a "disposable" ship to you. Not so true for the player who is flying his only ship and can't afford anything more...

Put yourself in the shoes of that player. Now answer the poll honestly.

Sorry, I should have been clearer there. I have a DBS worth around 5million, and around 3 million in the bank. Since I got my DBS fully fitted, my bank balance has fluctuated between about 2 million and 8 million, although it has rarely gone above 5 million.

I don't consider it as less to lose because I can afford a near infinite number of replacements, but rather because even if I lose everything and drop back to a stock Sidewinder with 1k credits in the bank, it will only take a few days to get back into a mostly kitted out DBS. A few days of grinding to get back to where I am now is an acceptable risk.

Losing something like a Fer de lance and having (at a guess) several weeks of grinding to get back there, and then yet more grinding just to cover enough insurance to feel safe taking it out again would be a very different matter.

So yes, I choose to stay in a small ship for the challenge, but I also choose not to allow myself a massive reserve of credits, to give the challenge meaning, in the form of genuine risk.

Secondly, the wording I finally opted for in option 1 reflects how a quorum of this forum feel about Open play - namely that if you choose Open, then you have automatically submitted to be my target. (My victim). Those same people also usually use the term carebear, in a strong derogatory sense, to describe players who choose Solo or Group. Witness some of the responses in this very thread.

Now place yourself in the shoes of the same guy above, and now add in that you are faced with this kind of biased language used by the - shall we call them "Aggressive Open Players" - because it is biased. "Come be my prey, or you are a carebear". Damned if you play Open, damned if you don't". Now answer the poll honestly as best you can through the eyes of an infrequent player, who has nothing but a D grade Cobra or Hauler and a few measly Cr in the bank.

As a player with modest assets myself, I was never really in a position to comprehend that players with fleets including upgraded Anacondas would take offense, or that they would rather choose something less expensive to fly in search of hostile engagements purely because it risks less of their considerable fortune. By the same token, I never realised that this would make you less of a victim, because playing like that for you guys has insignificant consequences if you do get blown up, so I guess now I can see that the victim word does not fit the self-categorisation of players who do this. Thanks for being the guy who finally explained this to me rather than just saying "poll sucks" (or placing a bounty on my game death).

Conversely to my own experience, or rather the lack of it, players like you still have the tools to place yourself in "my" shoes. Perhaps they'd rather not remember you first few tens of hours in game. Perhaps they never felt the precariousness of their total progress hanging in the balance of the outcome of a combat engagement. We often hear that from players, who clearly haven't felt that precariousness, that E: D is "not dangerous enough". For some players who just dabble here and thre in E: D it actually already is relatively dangerous. Can we seriously, in all good conscience, expect those less committed players to have to be the target (victim) for those who want the galaxy to be more dangerous, and expect them ALL to enjoy that. Some players will enjoy it, even if it wipes out their assets and a great deal of progress. Some not so much. My question, therefore, is what proportion are those who gained enjoyment out of being blown up.

Make more sense to you now?

I understand, even though I am not in the group you are placing me in (my fault, should have been clear about my own in-game financial situation).

Again though, I see it from a different point of view.

The potential to lose everything I have (softened by the knowlege my modest resources will only take days to replace, rather than weeks or months) is part of the excitement of it. If I had massive resources and was in no danger of running out of insurance money, it wouldn't be exciting. If I was at risk of losing it all, and facing weeks or months of grinding to get it back, it also wouldn't be exciting.

But when you are in a small ship because that's all you can afford, to me, is exactly when the threat of losing everything can be exciting.

One of my biggest complaints with this game is how easy it is to make money. After I got my DBS kitted out to my liking I stopped trying to make money and just wandered aimlessly, doing whatever seemed fun, whether it was a mission on a bulletin board taking my fancy, following a sudden urge to take out the wanted NPC I just saw or whatever. But I couldn't stop making money (albeit relatively slowly), even when I wasn't trying!

But it is still not being blown up which is enjoyable. It is the risk of being blown up, and the real consequences that could bring (not if I get blown up once maybe, but a bad run could quickly eliminate my cash reserves and dump me back in a sidewinder).

 

[shambles1980]

Interesting, stats would show that majority of players so far don't enjoy "ganking". If think if you merge these poll results with the "average age" of an ED player, you will see that the co-relation between 40-50 year olds as the majority player don't put up with the antics of a much younger or smaller percentage gaming generation.

We are into ED for the history of the game and the technical aspects among others, not to run around and beat down other players for kicks. Interesting.

I think its more likely that 40% of the people were given a valid option that does not try and subtily lead you to vote for something else, whilst the rest of us were given self depreciating options, which aren't at all reflective of what we really think.

 

[Drelthar]

Why the biased polls every time?

The first option is just badly worded. It should really say something more like

"Yes, I actually accept that PVP is an interesting element of the game, and enjoy the excitement of potentially being outgunned and outclassed."

The way it's worded now might as well say "Yes, I love griefers" because that's what it implies.