"Unfair" PVP

[onca]

No. Dab was a dysfunctional staff member and not smart at all.

Well he was a kid at the time so his hubris was excusable.

Anyhow, lacking anything better to do during lunch, I skimmed thru that post and a couple of things stuck out:

1. The problem is not so much people ganking on each other, but the blatant OORP involved. Eg, a couple of pirates in low-level ships appear in a house system, looking to cause mischief. They are challenged by a couple of local police. A good fight ensues. Then *bam* a half-dozen military types, including caps, suddenly appear and blow the pirates to hell. Not only do they charge in without so much as a by-your-leave, but it also smacks of meta-gaming ("ooh look, i'll log out of my trader and go join the feeding frenzy!")

2. Ganking can ruin fun on both sides. Eg, said police characters are looking forward to an epic battle with a couple of evenly matched pirates. But then the caps show up, and the original police guys just cruise away shaking their heads as the caps blow everything to hell.

3. There is a time and place for ganking... when it's bloody Roleplayed properly.

These points are as valid now as they were 13 years ago.

Now @Karlotta you took the liberty of highlighting the statement: "Your fun is not as important as someone else's fun". I submit that statement shows a level of humility and empathy which, if more people applied it in their gaming here and their lives in general, would make Disco and the world at large a better place.

Conversely, ridiculing the above statement denotes a complete disrespect for other people, the kind self-centeredness that says "I don't give a crap about anyone's gameplay experience but my own." Oh, it also leads to the rulebook bloat we enjoy today.

I remember back in 4.79 (yeah here we go) when you could print the rules on a postage stamp, and there were virtually no in-game restrictions on what factions could fly what ships mounting what weapons, in whatever bloody systems they chose. As long as it was properly RP'd. We didn't need a lot of rules, because we played by a set of ethics which placed everyone's fun experience as paramount.

Buuuut then along came the powergamers and lolwuts, who only cared about their own personal fun and egos, rudely pushing at the envelope of "what's permitted" (not to mention good taste); and so the admins, such as you admonished, were obliged to reign them in. (TBF, many PvP servers shutdown around that time, leading to a lot "I don't care about RP I just wanna kill" players streaming to Disco. And some of those players actually smartened up.)

And so today, it's the reason we must navigate the byzantine array of game-enforced restrictions on ships, weapons, weapon types, cargo, bases, and associations a char can avail themselves of. It's also the reason the rules are imprinted with things like "no hate speech, no racism, no sexist remarks, be respectful". Stuff which should be obvious to anyone with half a brain; which, sadly, is all too often not the case.

Anyway back OT. Ganking can be cool, but not all the time, and only when it's RP'd. If you don't want a bunch of ganking QQ leading to yet another insertion in the bulging book of Rules & Regs, apply Onca's Law of Good Gaming: "Don't be an insufferable douche".

Here's another saying, stilted though it is, you might want to take away with you:

"It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game."