The EVE blogs and forums are exploding with the new ToS “not”-change where impersonation of other players and organizations were banned – even if it’s true.
I’ve protected the ToS change and still do. But it needs clarification, explanation and maybe more changes. It clearly needs accepting the fact that changes have been made.
Many people claim that the ToS change is an attempt to decrease scamming. I don’t think it’s the case. The case is about a fundamental MMO-problem: alts. In theory if you do something in game, you suffer the consequences in the game. Practically it can be avoided by alts. You do something with a character, who will suffer the consequences, but you, the player don’t care as you are enjoying the benefits while playing another character. Despite EVE is marketed as a living world, it’s not. Pilots come out of nowhere with money and knowledge no newbie can posses, do things and disappear in the shadows forever. For example, I (the player) gank miners. The game says that such actions are to be penalized by low security status and kill rights on me. However I, the player can safely haul billions around – as another pilot. There is absolutely no way for the ganked miner – or rather the white knight fighting for him – to retaliate. Me, the player could hurt his progress in game, he can’t do the same to me.
Alts are both unavoidable and necessary. CCP income comes from subscriptions, they can’t just ban alts. Even if they did, players would avoid it by proxies and virtual machines – like botters do to protect their main accounts from banning when the bot account is found. Sure, CCP does some alt-hunting in bot ban cases, but they often fail to find them all. If you can’t enforce a rule, you shouldn’t make the rule, or you instantly reward those who can break and get away with it.
I suggest the following set of rules to achieve what CCP tries to achieve:
The above rules wouldn’t outlaw having secret alts (that can’t be enforced), but would ban you from mentioning their existence. You always have to watch your mouth. If you slip just once and reported, the GM will warn you to add the alt to your page and if you are unable to – because you lied – bans you.
Sure, I could roll new ganker pilots to prevent my main getting security status hit and kill rights, but I couldn’t blog about their adventures, couldn’t link their kills to anyone. Or I could roll new secret trading pilots but then I couldn’t blog about trading. One way or another I, the player, would have only one in-game identity: the upstanding trader who generates GDP by mutually beneficial trades and cutting down margins or the ganker who kills anything that isn’t tanked.
This change wouldn’t disallow spying and scamming, there are spies and scammers in real life despite lack of throwaway alts there. You would have to build up an identity from scratch and be very careful not to slip once, mentioning your outside connections. Similarly, if you join a corp, all your listed alts join, becoming wardeccable. You can’t be a “nullsec PvPer who doesn’t give a damn” and run 4 Retrievers on the other screen. The corp recruiter will ask why do 4 non-listed pilots send you ISK. If you answer “they are my alts”, the recruiter can report you if you turn out to be a bad recruit, forcing you to make the Retriever pilots linked, therefore wardeccable if your main is in a player corp. You either have to fully commit yourself to the corp joining with all alts or you have to find a corp which doesn’t care why do 4 non-listed pilots are sending you ISK.
My point is that in EVE you can be an upstanding citizen, a warrior of a cause or a pirate looking for booty, but you should have a singular in-game identity. Your actions (performed trough one pilot) should have consequences on your whole in-game existence and not just on that throwaway pilot.
Another non-hate mails from miners:
I’ve protected the ToS change and still do. But it needs clarification, explanation and maybe more changes. It clearly needs accepting the fact that changes have been made.
Many people claim that the ToS change is an attempt to decrease scamming. I don’t think it’s the case. The case is about a fundamental MMO-problem: alts. In theory if you do something in game, you suffer the consequences in the game. Practically it can be avoided by alts. You do something with a character, who will suffer the consequences, but you, the player don’t care as you are enjoying the benefits while playing another character. Despite EVE is marketed as a living world, it’s not. Pilots come out of nowhere with money and knowledge no newbie can posses, do things and disappear in the shadows forever. For example, I (the player) gank miners. The game says that such actions are to be penalized by low security status and kill rights on me. However I, the player can safely haul billions around – as another pilot. There is absolutely no way for the ganked miner – or rather the white knight fighting for him – to retaliate. Me, the player could hurt his progress in game, he can’t do the same to me.
Alts are both unavoidable and necessary. CCP income comes from subscriptions, they can’t just ban alts. Even if they did, players would avoid it by proxies and virtual machines – like botters do to protect their main accounts from banning when the bot account is found. Sure, CCP does some alt-hunting in bot ban cases, but they often fail to find them all. If you can’t enforce a rule, you shouldn’t make the rule, or you instantly reward those who can break and get away with it.
I suggest the following set of rules to achieve what CCP tries to achieve:
- an official alt-following page on character sheet. Call it “family” for roleplaying reasons.
- same-account alts are automatically listed. It’s not really a change, as CCP already provides account-wide API keys which every corp recruiter will ask for anyway. Also, this is easy to enforce by CCP.
- accounts can be linked by the player on the management site, upon linking, all characters show up on the “family” page of each other
- you can’t un-alt an alt except for open character bazaar sale, where it’s automatically done
- watchlists, chatroom and personal bans affect all alts
- you are not required to connect all your accounts (CCP couldn’t enforce if they’d require it), but claiming to be an alt of someone without your family page supporting it is bannable. The GM first warns you to fix your page by linking accounts in case the claim was true, if you can’t, you get banned. Temporarily if the lie was casual, permanently if it was used to scam/spy (so “I’m very rich, because I’m actually Chribba” is temp-ban, “trust me with this business, as I’m Chribba” is permaban).
- even claiming to have an unnamed alt is bannable. If you say “I have a highsec missioner alt to get ISK” or “my nullsec main will hunt you down” and someone reports you, the GM will request you to add an alt fitting the description to your family page, and bans you if you fail to.
- These rule applies to in-game chat, forums, and any third party media that you call your own in-game, so I can’t claim on my blog that Botslayer Goblin and Gevlon Goblin are both my pilots without the in-game family page representing it.
- kill rights and security status is shared by all family members
- family members must be in the same corp (NPC corps count as one). This would make a player unable to dodge wardecs by out-of-corp alts, except by leaving the corp for the NPC corp completely. When one family member is accepted to a corp, all of them automatically follow. When one kicked or leaving for NPC, all do.
The above rules wouldn’t outlaw having secret alts (that can’t be enforced), but would ban you from mentioning their existence. You always have to watch your mouth. If you slip just once and reported, the GM will warn you to add the alt to your page and if you are unable to – because you lied – bans you.
Sure, I could roll new ganker pilots to prevent my main getting security status hit and kill rights, but I couldn’t blog about their adventures, couldn’t link their kills to anyone. Or I could roll new secret trading pilots but then I couldn’t blog about trading. One way or another I, the player, would have only one in-game identity: the upstanding trader who generates GDP by mutually beneficial trades and cutting down margins or the ganker who kills anything that isn’t tanked.
This change wouldn’t disallow spying and scamming, there are spies and scammers in real life despite lack of throwaway alts there. You would have to build up an identity from scratch and be very careful not to slip once, mentioning your outside connections. Similarly, if you join a corp, all your listed alts join, becoming wardeccable. You can’t be a “nullsec PvPer who doesn’t give a damn” and run 4 Retrievers on the other screen. The corp recruiter will ask why do 4 non-listed pilots send you ISK. If you answer “they are my alts”, the recruiter can report you if you turn out to be a bad recruit, forcing you to make the Retriever pilots linked, therefore wardeccable if your main is in a player corp. You either have to fully commit yourself to the corp joining with all alts or you have to find a corp which doesn’t care why do 4 non-listed pilots are sending you ISK.
My point is that in EVE you can be an upstanding citizen, a warrior of a cause or a pirate looking for booty, but you should have a singular in-game identity. Your actions (performed trough one pilot) should have consequences on your whole in-game existence and not just on that throwaway pilot.
Another non-hate mails from miners:
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