Pirates, terrorists and PvPabuse

[Vogel]

Vogel: while I agree that a lot of pirates do stupid things, I have to disagree on asking more than the trader makes is unreasonable. And yes, this thread didn't have quite a pleasant reaction, for different reasons. Personally, I don't like more limitations. Again, saddens me to see people do some things, but I won't be the one to tell them not to...never. I'd rather "make him pay" in game, rather than via OORP limitations and sanctions.

The limitations in place thus far are good in theory but don't fit all scenarios. They never will.

I disagree on the "more the trader makes" bit because let's face it: you spent 40 cumulative hours going from point A to B and you get 500,000,000 bucks. A pirate stops you and demands that much. Are you really going to pay it? Can he expect you to? At that point it's a blatantly obvious attempt at finding an excuse to simply shoot you. The pirates don't need your money; chances are they have enough in-game bucks stashed away to pay for multiple dreadnoughts. You can't be expected to react as if your life is in danger every single time, because it's not, and acting that out gets old fast. The kicker is that instead of joining the RM and shooting LN, or being an Outcast and slagging Corsairs, they chose to be a "pirate" and target things which cannot possibly fight back under anything save for the best of circumstances. That is somewhat insulting, because then the player behind the transport doesn't feel like he's being involved in a roleplay session, but is being preyed on by some other guy who got beat up in school and decided to become the bully himself. Hence, false advertising: it's not about roleplay when that happens.

But what's the alternative? How can you "make them pay" in-game if you can't attack again for 4 hours? If you suck at PVP or if you suffer insane amounts of lag which makes the game unplayable? Best of all, how can you vent when the only response here is from people saying "Whiner, deal with it, it's just a game, don't take it so seriously!" The truth is you have to take it somewhat seriously, at least in a game like this. You're investing a HELL of time in trying to do something, only to have it rebuffed, deleted, destroyed, etc. The consequences of loss, or of people denouncing its worth, results in a very natural form of anger, no different than if somebody splashed paint on your masterpiece, or if some jerk kicked over your sandcastle at the beach.

Which brings it back to the logical conclusion: this place will not change, not only because of how it's built but because people literally suck and are more than capable of abuse. If fighting fire with fire is no alternative, and if sanctions are no alternative, then the only thing that remains is to pretty much leave. That's hard to do when you count up the total hours you pissed away into it, but ultimately it's true. Having done so, that's around the point you laugh at people who tell you to "Stop whining", because you just know that if all of their stuff, be it their fake ships, or fake money, or fake reputation just poofed away, they'd be the same ones to flip out to one degree or another; many of the people here have vested interests they don't want to admit. The only ones who can say otherwise have stopped playing for so long or have become so bored of it all that they just haul out and leave. The rest don't have that alibi.

To be honest this whole community is like a societal petri dish. If you sit back and watch, the trends you see are eerily familiar: it's how the rest of Western society seems to work, only in a nicely condensed form that is easily seen as a whole.