You two should PvP...
Question for Open players who don't like PVP/ganking... help me understand
- Thread starter Danquememe
- Start date
You seem to be trying to get the thread closed by posturing rather than actually addressing any points raised.
Well, I'm back in Colonia sooooooo
I would never. This thread is magical.
I hate that I agree with you.
We'll be back there soon...maybe Riverside can hitch a ride with me on my FC?
You and Riverside are more than welcome to get this back on track and address whatever points you think I've missed.
83 pages and the question still isn't answered?
Probably not.
But in any case we long ago moved on to all the issues raised when conflicting ideas collide.
I think very generally speaking ganking is the single most divisive issue in Elite. Based on the experience of myself and others, I think one side falls more easily into problematic behavior and views than the other, especially when you consider the reality of the game Frontier has made.
My side, the ganker/troublemaker/outlaw side, generally keeps things in game. We realize this is all for fun and that none of it really matters. It's leisure. You wasted your time, so to speak, the moment you booted up the program. Can we be jerks to other players? Sure. But it ultimately doesn't rise far above trash talk between a couple of teams on the field of sport. In hockey, they call this "chirping." Other sports have their own slang.
As far as the shenanigans in game it's all leisure and no harm ever really comes to anyone. Your pretend spaceship gets blown up, and even if it's completely one sided and you have no chance to escape, no actual harm comes to you the player behind the monitor. You're fine. You're OK. You agreed to play the game. You agreed to play in Open. These are the things that happen in Open. Life goes on.
Which brings me to why the other side, the anti-ganker side, are so troubling.
Elite is the way it is. It's been this way for nearly six years. SIX. We've been going round and round in circles about ganking this and ganking that and yet here we are asking if the questions have all been answered. Well, if you're a long time Elite player and haven't figured out the score with Elite I honestly don't know what to say to you. You must enjoy hitting your head against a brick wall, especially when you've got the man behind the original vision giggling about causing trouble for other people as a core gameplay loop. As far as new people are concerned, the game isn't exactly shy about what's going on. It's on you to figure it out.
Basically what I'm trying to say is one side accepts the game as it is and plays it on its terms. My side. The other side does not and to their endless discredit takes this perceived slight against their person to any sympathetic ear they can find across the breadth of the entire Elite community.
As I've said before: complaing about ganking adds zero hit points to your ship health pool.
Choose your mode. Prepare accordingly. Everything else is rubbish.
Gankers are gankers and non gankers are non gankers.
My issue is griefers. Fk those guys. I recently lost my vette to ganking. I did my best. I was outnumbered and lost. Oh well.
Another time I was griefed...That guy was a d*ck. Unarmed and was only in it to destroy my unarmed python.
That is where it is for me. If I don't feel like entertaining the possibility of getting ganked, I play in Solo/PG...Simple as that. Currently it's been open but I'm also running a ship that is equipped to at least give an honest try.
I've never been anit ganking but I have been anti griefer and that sucks when you want to play in open is being griefed.
If all they did was destroy your unarmed Python... you were not griefed.
I do think we're getting down to the heart of the matter.
As we've seen, there are lots of different expectations brought to Open. Some are here for the joy of exploring the unknown. Some like to have a job as a space trucker or asteroid miner. Some like participating with other players in helping paint the galactic map with their PMF or PP faction's colors. Some are looking to make new friends, or at least have pleasant interactions with other players as they go about their business. Many like participating in a little bit of each of these things.
And, well, some are murderhobos.
When it comes to players killing players in Open, the opinions are clearly divided, but there is some common ground.
Most everyone who have responded seem, as a basic point of agreement, OK with the concept so long as there's some kind of in-game reason for it. Whether that's to collect a bounty, or to attack a PowerPlay or BGS enemy in the furtherance of a larger political goal, or because both parties have decided to have a competitive duel or wingfight. Generally speaking, within the context of Open, these and related types of "consensual" player killing appear to have at least a token amount of legitimacy among those who have responded.
Where it all goes off the rails is when the subject of "rogue commanders" is brought up, aka gankers. Ganking seems to widely be recognized as something that is not against the rules of the game, per se, even if it is literally deplorable for many players (deplorable in the sense that there are negative thoughts and feelings directed not just about the play style, but towards the player who engages it). Many of the respondents here don't like it, for a variety of reasons: it ruins their sense of immersion, it causes them to lose progress, they worry about how new players might take it, or they just don't want to be hassled by some stranger in what feels to them like an unfair fight. Some of them strongly dislike it, and there have been some heated interactions to be sure.
I've obviously been giving this a lot of thought since starting this thread, and I do think it boils down once again to the expectations that are brought to the game. In this case, it's expectations about how other players can or at least should be expected to act when they are encountered. Some players feel like some basic social norms and niceties - the kind that prevent spontaneous cold-blooded murder in the real world - should be adhered to in the game world of Elite. Other players... are murderhobos and don't see things that way at all. For them, any player is a valid target, for any reason or no reason at all.
Insofar as the game, as we've discussed at length, provides no clearcut moral imperative other than some token punishments for player killing, neither "camp" in this discussion is necessarily wrong. For that matter, how can someone be "wrong" for having expectations about a video game? We all have them, and how well the game meets those expectations - especially initially - has a big bearing on whether we find ourselves invested - dare I say, immersed - in the game and its world.
So really, at the end of the day, the game is presenting us with a moral vacuum. It's a fantasy world where we can do basically whatever we like, and there aren't really many consequences.
Where the gulf seems widest is in what these choices mean about each of us, as players. Do they actually mean anything? Are we taking some of these things in this videogame too seriously, or not seriously enough? Are people who refuse to gank good guys? Are gankers bad guys? Are there extenuating circumstances that could make these parties switch sides on the good guy / bad guy spectrum?
These kinds of questions are what, I believe, we're left with, once we strip back all of the superstructure around game rules and mechanics and the rest.
I'm not pretending to have an answer, and there may not be one, but I do believe these factors lie at the true heart of the debate.
As we've seen, there are lots of different expectations brought to Open. Some are here for the joy of exploring the unknown. Some like to have a job as a space trucker or asteroid miner. Some like participating with other players in helping paint the galactic map with their PMF or PP faction's colors. Some are looking to make new friends, or at least have pleasant interactions with other players as they go about their business. Many like participating in a little bit of each of these things.
And, well, some are murderhobos.
When it comes to players killing players in Open, the opinions are clearly divided, but there is some common ground.
Most everyone who have responded seem, as a basic point of agreement, OK with the concept so long as there's some kind of in-game reason for it. Whether that's to collect a bounty, or to attack a PowerPlay or BGS enemy in the furtherance of a larger political goal, or because both parties have decided to have a competitive duel or wingfight. Generally speaking, within the context of Open, these and related types of "consensual" player killing appear to have at least a token amount of legitimacy among those who have responded.
Where it all goes off the rails is when the subject of "rogue commanders" is brought up, aka gankers. Ganking seems to widely be recognized as something that is not against the rules of the game, per se, even if it is literally deplorable for many players (deplorable in the sense that there are negative thoughts and feelings directed not just about the play style, but towards the player who engages it). Many of the respondents here don't like it, for a variety of reasons: it ruins their sense of immersion, it causes them to lose progress, they worry about how new players might take it, or they just don't want to be hassled by some stranger in what feels to them like an unfair fight. Some of them strongly dislike it, and there have been some heated interactions to be sure.
I've obviously been giving this a lot of thought since starting this thread, and I do think it boils down once again to the expectations that are brought to the game. In this case, it's expectations about how other players can or at least should be expected to act when they are encountered. Some players feel like some basic social norms and niceties - the kind that prevent spontaneous cold-blooded murder in the real world - should be adhered to in the game world of Elite. Other players... are murderhobos and don't see things that way at all. For them, any player is a valid target, for any reason or no reason at all.
Insofar as the game, as we've discussed at length, provides no clearcut moral imperative other than some token punishments for player killing, neither "camp" in this discussion is necessarily wrong. For that matter, how can someone be "wrong" for having expectations about a video game? We all have them, and how well the game meets those expectations - especially initially - has a big bearing on whether we find ourselves invested - dare I say, immersed - in the game and its world.
So really, at the end of the day, the game is presenting us with a moral vacuum. It's a fantasy world where we can do basically whatever we like, and there aren't really many consequences.
Where the gulf seems widest is in what these choices mean about each of us, as players. Do they actually mean anything? Are we taking some of these things in this videogame too seriously, or not seriously enough? Are people who refuse to gank good guys? Are gankers bad guys? Are there extenuating circumstances that could make these parties switch sides on the good guy / bad guy spectrum?
These kinds of questions are what, I believe, we're left with, once we strip back all of the superstructure around game rules and mechanics and the rest.
I'm not pretending to have an answer, and there may not be one, but I do believe these factors lie at the true heart of the debate.
This is pretty much where I draw the line of what is and is not acceptable. When you start blurring that line, going after someone in-game for what they do/say out of game, or going after someone out of game for what they do in-game, that's where I start to lose sympathy. Especially if you specifically go out of your way to target any one person in particular.
That's not to say hopping on discord and being like "hey, this guy we don't like is in open in our system right now" is a problem, but stuff like stalking through someone's forum posts to see if they mention where their home system is, or watching their twitch channel and waiting for them to go out in a noncombat ship, crosses the line from "fun spaceship pewpew itimes" into "okay now you're just e-stalking them".
My initial expectation was kind of simple. If I have no really valuable cargo, or I do not have big bounty on me, or not partaking in PP or any political stuff I would be left to run my business. Sadly that is not so. Learned that pretty soon.
Also the lack of comms can be disappointing: I have been attacked in my taxi dbx while landing at an engineer for example: I thanked the ganker for speeding up my landing and sent a friend request, that was ignored. Sorry, but for me that is unacceptable, at least let me get a shot back. On the other side, making moral judgements about other players and going outside the game to do it is also unacceptable. If we could avoid these two extremes open mode would be better for everyone.
I'd go with different people are different.
True story:
A long time ago I was in my Python in a CZ and a new player flying the newly released DBX came in and started kill stealing. I sent messages saying stop, I can help you etc until I just blasted this fool. Then he sends me a message saying schtap u gankr- I'm like: why did you not respond before?
Yeah, a lot of players don’t notice the comms at all, when I do pvp piracy it happens all the time. An in game text to voice feature wouldn’t be a bad idea.