News Support update - Reiteration of player harassment rules

[Agony_Aunt]

Ahh I see. A dangerous policy to put in place.

Well, its not called Elite: Dangerous for nothing! You guys just misunderstood the meaning

 

[Tuub t Tute]

Ahh I see. A dangerous policy to put in place.

Isn't this the point when someone would normally quote the name of the game badly out of context to justify their position?...

Ha, ninja'd by a Mod!

 

[Chance-]

Well, its not called Elite: Dangerous for nothing! You guys just misunderstood the meaning

That I did! I thought it meant the players would be in danger but instead it meant they'd put themselves in legal danger. They don't seem to understand that if you start banning people based off what they view as MORALLY ok and not based off of objective facts, they will find themselves on the wrong side of any legal proceedings.

 

[Agony_Aunt]

Isn't this the point when someone would normally quote the name of the game badly out of context to justify their position?...

Ha, ninja'd by a Mod!

Heh, I win!

 

[Alex Traut]

And why should they not do it as long as they enjoy playing Elite this way ?

Because your right to play the game your way ends at the point where your entertainment explicitly comes from depriving others of theirs and enjoying their distress. It's very much the online equivalent of the old saying, "your right to swing your fist ends at my face". There's nothing wrong with PvP per se. But unrestricted PvP is not a license to be a jerk.

It's time for those who take pleasure in "mining salt" and think other people's "tears" are "delicious" to come to terms with the fact that these are just cutesy euphemisms for a much uglier but more blunt and accurate statement: "I enjoy having fun at the expense of others and laugh when I inflict distress on them".

That kind of abusive mentality and behavior has no place in society, and those who engage in it have no right to expect their toxic behavior to be tolerated just because the mechanics of the game allow it.

 

[Aigaion]

Well, its not called Elite: Dangerous for nothing! You guys just misunderstood the meaning

lol please, stop with that argument, the game should be called Elite: Mostly Harmless, not Elite: Dangerous, even more now with this positive harassment and negative harassment .

 

[xondk]

You may also want to rethink your stance on this as this goes against the fair use act which can and very likely will result in legal action should you decide to do that.

You clearly have no legal experience. They can not pick and choose what content is put up and remove any content that goes against what they think. That goes against both US and UK law.

Ahh I see. A dangerous policy to put in place.

I don't quite think you know how fair use works, fair use is only about how you may use others content, a short cut from it and similar, and not the entire thing.
But frontier is not talking about that, this is the reaction to said video being put online in order to harass others belittle them what have you, frontier will react accordingly in cases such as that, since they clearly state it isn't allowed, in short they aren't allowing people to try to defame other people with videos, which generally is illegal anyway, which given your statement I would think you knew?
So no, it doesn't seem like a dangerous policy to put in place, as it is the same policy that is in place more or less anywhere else, online and in the real world?

 

[Agony_Aunt]

That I did! I thought it meant the players would be in danger but instead it meant they'd put themselves in legal danger. They don't seem to understand that if you start banning people based off what they view as MORALLY ok and not based off of objective facts, they will find themselves on the wrong side of any legal proceedings.

Hmm... i'd hazard to guess that before making any changes to the rules and policies they consult with their corporate lawyers, who probably have a lot better idea of what FD can and cannot do that your average forum user....

 

[Tuub t Tute]

This must be a big legal area in some territories? Players suing video games companies for banning them? Wonder what the lawyers make from representing these cases?

 

[xondk]

There have been multiple instances where players have admitted to hacking and continue to taunt the players that they hacked against boasting that they weren't banned. Go on reddit for that.

"Admitted" the term hacking is thrown around a lot these days, and again, what people claim online can be anything, even if they are hacking, why would they ever admit that they were shadowbanned or such if they were?

 

[Aigaion]

Because your right to play the game your way ends at the point where your entertainment explicitly comes from depriving others of theirs and enjoying their distress. It's very much the online equivalent of the old saying, "your right to swing your fist ends at my face". There's nothing wrong with PvP per se. But unrestricted PvP is not a license to be a jerk.

It's time for those who take pleasure in "mining salt" and think other people's "tears" are "delicious" to come to terms with the fact that these are just cutesy euphemisms for a much uglier but more blunt and accurate statement: "I enjoy having fun at the expense of others and laugh when I inflict distress on them".

That kind of abusive mentality and behavior has no place in society, and those who engage in it have no right to expect their toxic behavior to be tolerated just because the mechanics of the game allow it.

If people don't want to be attacked, then all they have to do is to stay in solo mode, I did not buy this game and it's extension at full price to get banned because FDev is bowing in front of care bears that can't assume that they are playing a game with PvP interactions. If I want to kill someone in game, there is no TOS or whatever to stop me from doing it, and if they do so, well, then all they have to do is to refund the people that they screwed.

 

[telperion]

Thats exactly what some people would want the game to be like. Sadly the truth is if the game was like that it would probably a bigger following / online community.

Gamers live for the gank, its what games like EVE, Ark, DayZ etc. are based on.

You should check out the relative numbers playing EVE and playing ED. I have some good news for you! Rejoice for ED has a MUCH bigger following and player base than EVE has! [cue heavenly choirs and such]

Wow. Diving into the realm of harassment on an Internet mmo. Here comes the class action suit followed by mass refunds.
There is a thread on these forums right now inciting inflame harassment against a specific group. It calls for members of mobius and others to actively undermine SDCs player faction in wolfburg. It also incites many slanderous insults toward the player group SDC. Will you please take action against everyone participating in that thread. Thank you.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart! I've had a tough day at work so the laughter generated from reading your comment was a lovely release. You should probably check out the legal side of things before making claims of impending class action lawsuits. Seriously chortle-worth!

As for the claim that people are trying to "actively undermine SDCs player faction" I think you may well be incorrect there. I believe it's actually a non-player faction, as in NPC faction. It has the same name as SDC players but the SDC players, short of engaging in the PVE (yes, that's Player versus Environment) BGS, have nothing to do with it. This is why people in solo and group can affect the SDC NPC minor faction. Because it's PVE on an NPC faction. Not PVP. The fact that the SDC players are getting upset because other players are attacking the minor faction with the same name because some of the SDC players are actively trying to harass the Mobius players, by Frontier's own definition, is a different matter.

Hi everyone, etc.

Thanks a lot for the update. Doesn't affect me but it's nice to know you guys are looking after things sensibly.

 

[Chance-]

That kind of abusive mentality and behavior has no place in society, and those who engage in it have no right to expect their toxic behavior to be tolerated just because the mechanics of the game allow it.

Please keep in mind that both the Terms of Service, the EULA, and the mechanics of the game allow for the hunting and killing of other players and that them taking action against players for that has no legal basis. Deciding whose motives were pure and whose motives weren't is not an objective way to express your rules and won't ever hold up.

 

[Silk]

Hi everyone,

In light of recent issues relating to the way a small collective of players have been approaching and targeting specific private groups and other community events such as charity livestreams, we wanted to reinforce an important part of the existing rules regarding in-game harassment that every player agrees to when creating their account.

We wanted to reiterate some examples regarding the rules of Player harassment. If a player has been blocked from a private group, or a group/individual has taken every step possible to remove a player from their gameplay, then attempting to circumvent this in any fashion is a serious offense and action will be taken accordingly. Attempting to re-establish contact with an individual who has blocked a player through secondary accounts or other methods of attempting to evade the block are against the rules. Action can and will be taken against both the accounts in question and the main accounts of players that we deem to be harassing players through this method.

In addition taking action such as seeking out and targeting specific players purely for the purpose of being disruptive, to cause offence, or to upset players within the community can also be considered harassment. A perfect example of this is deliberately attempting to disrupt public livestreams such as the charity ones mentioned before. This includes, but is not limited to, the capturing of footage and releasing it publically in an attempt to create upset or gain notoriety through the actions listed above.

We have previously stated, and it remains true, that Frontier are not able to manage group specific rules. Players considered to be breaking these group rule sets as established by group moderators should be removed from those groups by said moderators. In addition, running a livestream in Open does invite the potential for players to approach and impact your gameplay and running a livestream in which you are declaring war on another group and they come and take action against you is reasonable and should be expected.

Ultimately it’s about context. The support team can and will review these kinds of offences and will be taking action against accounts that set their entire purpose on harassing players and groups in this way. They are currently investigating a number of incidents and will be dealing directly with any parties involved.

The Frontier Support team take the protection and safety of the community very seriously, they strive to ensure that the game remains fair and friendly. If you feel the need to report an incident, please do get in contact with support via our support site at https://support.frontier.co.uk - please include as much detail of the event as possible.

You can see a copy of the rules that everyone signs up to by creating an account, including harassment, here:
https://www.frontierstore.net/ed-eula/

Thanks for reading.

Hey zac, the solution to this entire issue would be to actually make highsec systems HIGH SEC, basically meaning that the NPC reaction time to an illegal interdiction is immediate and their AI is basically godlike (but still killable) and they come in swarms. High sec police should be military equipped instead of vipers/eagles. on the flip side, lowsec and Anarchy should be absolute pirate havens with no rules and no police response (Anarchy) or very slow/weak response in lowsec. This would protect players in secure systems and protect pirates/smugglers in systems that matches their profile. On the HUD we can have an indicator as to what security the system that we're in is or the system that we're about to jump to is.

THIS is what the players want and THIS is what will fix our issues. A REAL crime/punishment system.

 

[xondk]

This must be a big legal area in some territories? Players suing video games companies for banning them? Wonder what the lawyers make from representing these cases?

....Maybe? I honestly really can't think of a case where it has gone to court for....fairly obvious reasons, most of them being the people themselves broke rules or caused the issues themselves.
Course there are cases you hear about but they are luckily rare.
http://gizmodo.com/sad-man-sues-game-company-after-losing-wife-and-job-to-1749135676

 

[Roybe]

How do you know this? I've seen and heard precious little about hackers being an issue, and as for combat logging again how do you know nothing is done? do you keep running into said people that did the combat logging after FD has had reasonable time to respond to a report? and are you expecting frontier to tell you "We have banned that person"? because that's generally not how it works.

Identification would be fairly easy done by ip's? that people have played through?

I don't believe anything was said about closing account, I am fairly sure the common method is shadowbanning, allowing people to keep playing the game they bought, but disallowing them interaction with other people? I've seen people write about the issue so shadowbanning clearly does exist?

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I suppose, but if that is the case, someone joining his private group to attack him, is fairly well covered, and should result in them being booted from group?
But in this case I believe it is referred generally to open.

I had re-edited this...I need to edit on the fly better! <derp>

My point on the second statement really is pointing out the problem....who defines the 'context'. A pirate streamer sniped by an unknowm Bounty Hunter..good or bad? A Bounty Hunter that has declared this Pirate as a target...good or bad? The Pirate sniped while doing an informational stream on 'How to be a Pirate'...good or bad?

I understand the 'context' idea...but whose 'context'? Will the player 'context' be the same as the devs 'context'? Will players have 'reasonable expectations' to an outcome from a report.

As far as identifying someone via an IP...a player group administrator does not have that capability. So, how do they know when they have one person doing multiple bad things, rather than a group doing it as seperate individuals.

It would be nice if the 'block' feature we have in the game ACTUALLY blocked the player by IP..but that can lead to other types of abuse.

As I said, I find some comfort in knowing that the devs are clarifying their stance to this poor example of gamesmanship. I am interested in watching if their enforcement of these rules will prevent anyone from doing these 'things' in the future. I've seen some expected responses that this will be problematic within this thread.

 

[telperion]

If people don't want to be attacked, then all they have to do is to stay in solo mode, I did not buy this game and it's extension at full price to get banned because FDev is bowing in front of care bears that can't assume that they are playing a game with PvP interactions. If I want to kill someone in game, there is no TOS or whatever to stop me from doing it, and if they do so, well, then all they have to do is to refund the people that they screwed.

And you can kill people in open to your heart's content. Where is the problem? What you seem to be complaining about is being banned from a player group for breaching the player group's rules? Am I right or do you have some other complaint?

 

[Chance-]

THIS is what the players want and THIS is what will fix our issues. A REAL crime/punishment system.

This exactly ^
Threatening to ban players for doing things that you don't agree with but you allow will not result in a better community. I can't imagine how they thought this would be a good idea at all.

 

[Roybe]

Hey zac, the solution to this entire issue would be to actually make highsec systems HIGH SEC, basically meaning that the NPC reaction time to an illegal interdiction is immediate and their AI is basically godlike (but still killable) and they come in swarms. High sec police should be military equipped instead of vipers/eagles. on the flip side, lowsec and Anarchy should be absolute pirate havens with no rules and no police response (Anarchy) or very slow/weak response in lowsec. This would protect players in secure systems and protect pirates/smugglers in systems that matches their profile. On the HUD we can have an indicator as to what security the system that we're in is or the system that we're about to jump to is.

THIS is what the players want and THIS is what will fix our issues. A REAL crime/punishment system.

Take out the line I struck through and you have true prevention. Leave it as you did, then it just becomes a bigger challenge to bother someone faster than the police can respond. Basically, creates a harsher system for the innocent player...and more competitive one for the PvP'er. Not a good economic situation.

 

[Aigaion]

This exactly ^
Threatening to ban players for doing things that you don't agree with but you allow will not result in a better community. I can't imagine how they thought this would be a good idea at all.

That's what Braben did in the Lave Radio interview, he clearly said that he is willing to shadowban "griefers", once again, listening to the majority of crybabies to roast the minority of people that want to play the game as criminals.