Monday, August 25, 2014

Does Eve Online Make You Mistrustful?

I play a few games currently. One of which is Stronghold Kingdoms. Its a MMO strategy game. You start off with one village and a castle and rise up the ranks from Village Idiot to Crown Prince. As you go along you found new villages (or capture them), research technology and improve you parish(es) whilst fighting off NPC's. Of course you are surrounded by other players who might seek to attack but for the most part its a village management/farming/PvE game....

Until war comes.


I had joined a Faction (corp) who were part of a House (alliance) after falling in with a group. At the weekend our House went to war with another House. Unfortunately for me, my cluster of villages and castles was located right in the middle of the house we went to war with. I was utterly surrounded. No help, near I was buggered. It was sort of like going to war with the CFC where you yave one system right in the middle of Goon territory. Not good!

The war came out of the blue as I slept. On waking up Saturday morning I found an army already advancing on one of my castles. I was able to play some cards (think burn cards in Titanfall) and being online meant I was able to defeat the attack.

I got an email from the guy as another army started to advance.

He was apologising for attacking me saying it was nothing personal!


I started to interdict my own villages. This is basically using monk units to 'reinforce' a village and castle so it cannot be attacked. As a bit of a newb I was sending monks from one village to the other. I got an email from the same guy again telling me there was a way to use the monks in a village to interdict that village and therefore didn't use travel time.

A war target, attacking me, was giving me advice during the attack on how to stop the attacks!

A while later I got an email from a different guy from my war targets. He was wanting to know how we could work together so I didn't have all my villages razed and pillaged. Seriously, my war targets are helping me in the war? WTF?

Obviously this is so far removed from Eve its unbelievable. In the past I've chatted to a guy I've killed and given him advice, but never during the fighting. I've never been battering a guy and then posted in local "If you get in a tight orbit I won't be able to hit you. Try it!".

Its not the first time I've seen such a massive difference between Eve and other MMOGs. Joining a faction in SK was simple apply and accept. In Eve, well....


Is it because I've played Eve for six years I am now a paranoid gamer? I have no trust in my fellow gamer and expect everything to be a trap and them to shit on me at every possible opportunity?

Not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing?


4 comments:

  1. No. Yes. Maybe? I had the same reaction a few weeks back when I tried some other browser based game, I was totally leery of making friends at first. I figured they must be out to awox me. Turns out they just wanted to give me things to help me. So weird. I still don't trust them, gotta be a long con.

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  2. EvE doesn't make me mistrustful, it does the opposite. I really like the response I get when helping someone out in the game. They are really paranoid, usually down on themselves, and are completely gobsmacked by generosity out of the blue. A small ISK gift, or ship gift, or friendly advice to a low skill player goes a long way, and they never expect it.

    I've gotten eve-mails and chats in local from folks I helped out years ago, that I don't remember at all. But they didn't forget.

    The small kindnesses we distribute without a thought have a wide ranging impact. Like pebbles tossed in a pond. Especially in a place like EvE, where trust is more valuable than gold and paranoia reigns supreme.

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  3. EVE doesn't make me mistrustful... real life did that years ago. =\

    I used to work as a PI... for real... and you should be glad you don't know half the shit folks really do to each other IRL.

    I have never had the depth of 'issue' with the A-Holes in the EVE playerbase that many others, Jester and Mabrick for example, seem to. I mean sure, I dislike the amount of scamming and griefing of course, but I undocked the first time expecting it from some, and lo and behold, humanity once more did not let me down in proving the depths to which anonymity can drag some people.

    But, please understand, I have also met and flown with far FAR more good, decent people than A-Holes... again, same as IRL. It's just that humans love drama so drama will always make better news than any good deed or act of kindness...

    It's just the human condition. You can't have 'good' without the 'evil' to show you what good means you know.

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  4. It's fairly natural if you're playing a game about ganking, stealing and scamming for some years to become wary of such in other contexts, but I'm not sure that's the main point here. Whether players decide to assist opponents during a game is probably more about how "serious" it is. In a causal game of something, you might start swapping teams around if they're not fair and fun, but in a proper competitive match it would be rather inappropriate to start offering tactics or substitution advice to the other team... (yes, your WTs totally dissed you ^^) Or it may simply be unsuitable to do so, e.g. it's not often in a 1v1 t1 frig brawl that convo'ing the guy in the middle of the fight makes much sense

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