There are two boisterous segments of the EVE community that I do my best to ignore. The first are the piously obnoxious, and the second are the stridently uninformed.
Frankly I find them cringe-worthily embarrassing.
You can see perfect examples of both groups in this forum thread, which is the focus of multiple recent blogs and tweets and so on from the EVE community:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=369871
If you are feeling the slightest bit bitter about EVE, I suggest you don’t read the thread.
The abridged version is that a player accepted at least four separate courier contracts in Jita to move goods to a system 14 jumps away. While the contracts seemed to pay well, they required substantial collateral (a bit over 7B ISK from the screen captures posted to the thread).
The player chose to accept the contracts using the pilot who transported them, chose to move them all at once, and chose to move them (based on the time stamps) immediately after accepting them.
The target system was Ono – which lies at the end of a very easily monitored dead-end pipe.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to most readers than this story ended with the pilot in his pod under the guns of a Tornado, and more than 7B ISK poorer. I couldn’t force myself to read enough of the thread to verify the exact circumstance –but it was suggested the target station was one where you dropped just out of docking range when you warped to 0. (Something I have come across before.) It could also have been lazy flying or bumping or what not – I don’t know, and I don’t particularly care.
https://zkillboard.com/kill/40889925/
So he got scammed – in part through the smart use of game mechanics, social engineering and patience, in part through his own less than ideal decisions, and possibly in part through an almost bug where warping to zero doesn’t mean zero.
Now if he had posted the story to the forums as a way of highlighting his own mistakes and warning the rest of us, you’d be left thinking EVE is an interesting and unique sort of game.
But no – instead he came to the forums to cry about the situation and complain that CCP allows this to happen. As you would expect – a lot of the responses (of which there are 51 pages in the locked thread) were filled with mirth and derision. This swirling mass of the witless and the repugnant is enough to prompt any sane person to ask themselves why they associate themselves with such a game.
So how does the Community Manager, CCP Falcon, decide to respond?
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4958992#post4958992
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4964171#post4964171
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4964192#post4964192
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4964200#post4964200
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4964217#post4964217
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4966760#post4966760
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4967472#post4967472
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4972885#post4972885
With cheers of support ringing in his ears, he basically calls the player out for his stupidity and lack of understanding of the game.
Here are some selective quotes:
“Why should CCP provide protection for your haulage in high sec?”
“If you want your haulage to be safer, bring the guns.”
“Welcome to New Eden, you just learned a very valuable lesson”
“Being unprepared and putting all your eggs in one basket to make a nice juicy target for a suicide gank is the joke here, not highsec”
“I’d rather not be working on the project regardless of how many subscribers we had, than sell out the core principles that New Eden was built on”
“profit from someone who’s half-assed a ship fitting and AFK hauled across space with a sizeable chunk of ISK in their hold.”
“it’s not rocket science to protect yourself and fly with a little common sense”
“Sorry to burst your bubble, but EVE hasn’t changed in this respect.”
“Don’t need to buddy, what I said is fact. Sorry if you don’t agree”
I know they are selective quotes – but that is a summary of the tone I got from reading them. A touch of exasperation, a splash of scorn, a squirt of troll. It also seemed to mistake the core of this scam, which wasn’t about the drop from a suicide gank, but the profit from the collateral. Otherwise I don’t specifically disagree with the sentiment, but I feel the message was mismanaged and unprofessional.
The thread should have been a page long, with a handful of replies saying “this is how that scam works”, “here are the mistakes you made”, “this is a more appropriate fit for your ship”, “this is how you might have been able to deliver the packages without loss”, and finally a comment from CCP saying “you fell for a well-planned and patient trap which was within the rules of the game”. While I did see most of that covered in the pages and pages I read, it was buried and effective lost under the elitist diatribe. It is hard to say who is more likely to kill EVE – CCP or the players.
(I would suggest you read the last link above. CCP Falcon redeemed himself a little with that image of EVE.)
Evehermit 
Personally like to see them getting exasperated and slapping down the stupid from time to time 😛
Say what you like about the tone but this is basically what we need, isn’t it? Highsec has got a little safer over the last 2-3 years and while yes, highsec ganking is a bit stupid and biased atm most of the SAVE US CCP!!! stuff had no merit.
The safe highsec stuff seems to be picking up steam again in GD and it felt quite reassuring to see such a definitive no.
The Falcon punch meme might be amusing – but don’t assume that pilot or those like him feel as though they have been put in their place or learnt anything from this. Stupid doesn’t get slapped down. If it is not carefully educated, it just gets more stubborn.
I have no issue with that scam or how it played out. The player had numerous opportunities to avoid the trap, and shouldn’t have expected CCP to protect him from his own poor decision making. He should have just been told that in a straight forward manner, instead of being given every reason to feel disenfranchised with the game.
well, well, well… the whole situation with Crius and Hyperion and all of that is heating up and is not simple. Agreed when you say “I don’t specifically disagree with the sentiment, but”… Yes, the guy should know better. But i just read crynig post of “l33tpeveper” that Hyperion changes has made life in WHs – can you imagine it – “unsafer”. Well, i guess we all have to take “not100%safe” “darkcold” universe more seriously. Not just some ignorantcarebears ih highsec… So much of l33tness…
Good point on 1-page thread. But seems CCP is equaly l33t and equaly crybaby. But, actually, it is good to know what someone really thinks, than to read some shugar coated words.
While the WH community tears are a little ironic, I do have sympathy for the smaller groups which have had life made generally more difficult for them.
A post of a different mindset. I like it.
Anyone with 7+ B Isk of contract cargo is not a newer player. The player should have known better. Perhaps too much of a sense of entitlement? Anyway, makes me wonder why CCP Falcon would proffer such dogmatic responses. Eve is rarely (if ever) “harsh” or “frightening” to the more experienced players but it certainly is to we newer players.
Your post was superior regardless of the player’s status.
“Sense of entitlement” probably sums up the main issues around EVE players and their differing opinions.
The “elitist diatribe” is still the product that CCP is selling–a tough game for tough people–but in an age of falling subs, why is Falcon making such tone-deaf responses under his main? In the last post he finally acknowledges an official effort to lower the bar of entry, and that undercuts his thesis. He’s admitting that EVE isn’t supposed to chew *everyone* up and spit him out–just the people who have already been lulled into paying for a few month’s sub, I guess.
Falcon is trying to have it both ways, but I suppose that does indicate some forward thinking from a company that now has only one game to sell that isn’t selling quite as well as it used to.
I expect EVE would be healthier if the communication from CCP was better managed and more succinct. There are too many train wrecks that harm the health of the game. You don’t have to placate the person complaining – that might not even be possible. But you need to ensure the more rational minded people reading such threads see no need to get up in arms.
Well, first somebody able to pay 7 Billion in collateral is not new to Eve. Second the day where things like this are not permitted to happen any more in Eve, will be the day I quit. Reason is not I am doing this scams, but Eve is for me a real life simulation.
The blog post wasn’t about the right or wrong of the scam, or if Hi-Sec is too safe or not safe enough, or if suicide ganking is balanaced or not. The post was about how ineffective and mismanaged the conversation was, how it unnecessarily disenfranchised players, and how poorly it reflected on the game and CCP’s representative.
I’m not sure the real life simulation card should be played with EVE. My news feed this morning discussed the civil war in Southern Sudan, the inept diplomacy and sanctions against Russia and the Islamic State’s joyful use of beheadings. I would prefer to think of EVE more as just a very complex game.
With null sov mechanics broken, pvpers have nothing better to do than come to highsec. CCP is trying to have the best of both worlds. On one hand they’re trying to keep the people have multiple subs going with their HTFU attitude. On the other hand they don’t want to continue to bleed subscribers. If the complaint from nullsec dwellers is that pvp is broken for them because of the N+1 problem, why not fix that to give pvpers a real place to focus their efforts? In short, CCP needs to HTFU and fix their own game, instead of browbeating paying customers. I’m sick of their terrible attitude toward people who pay their salaries.
You read those kinds of responses every day on the EvE forums, there is nothing on that thread that I have not seen before. Even on the features and suggestions, I’ve posted a few things on there and the flames would warm a small house in Wintertime.