Policy on 1.0 'Ganking'

[BMF]

Some are flying into a numerous enemy fleet, guns blazing, then say "you ganked me".
Love the clarification the comunity was needing this.
Thank you so much for your time and hard work.

[Wesker]

This is a pretty dangerous move by the administration. I think in addition to the already slow process by which the staff carries out player requests (whether they be reports, SRPs, PoB Rqs, etc) this will just bloat the system even further. For the entire existence of freelancer ganking has been something that players have to hash out at the player level. Now with this, more cases of lobbying, behind the scenes influence, & people using the rule to skeet the system from or for encounters will just amplify dramatically.

I know now I fall into the category of a player who does not play but comments on stuff, but I felt the need to speak to this since when you stamp a rule on something it's near irreversible. For example, when policies by the staff were made that regulated piracy - piracy plummeted to nothing on the server in the span of days. Now the concept of a gunship facing off against myself, haste, and Antonio being illegal will just open a pandora's box for more issues and reports and instances of oorp spite between playergroups at both the player level and the staff level.

Take this as you will. I understand you guys want people to treat other people like people. But that has to happen mainly at a player level. Similar to this, military staff IRL believes if you slap training or rules in front of every aspect of your life in and out of work - it mitigates it and checks a box. But the reality is that this is so far from the case. Mitigating hazards, dumb decisions, or in this case - poor sportsmanship; comes from the lowest level.

You can bring the horse to the river, but you can't force it to drink - no matter how hard you try.

---

[Barrier]

This is a pretty dangerous move by the administration. I think in addition to the already slow process by which the staff carries out player requests (whether they be reports, SRPs, PoB Rqs, etc) this will just bloat the system even further. For the entire existence of freelancer ganking has been something that players have to hash out at the player level. Now with this, more cases of lobbying, behind the scenes influence, & people using the rule to skeet the system from or for encounters will just amplify dramatically.

I know now I fall into the category of a player who does not play but comments on stuff, but I felt the need to speak to this since when you stamp a rule on something it's near irreversible. For example, when policies by the staff were made that regulated piracy - piracy plummeted to nothing on the server in the span of days. Now the concept of a gunship facing off against myself, haste, and Antonio being illegal will just open a pandora's box for more issues and reports and instances of oorp spite between playergroups at both the player level and the staff level.

Take this as you will. I understand you guys want people to treat other people like people. But that has to happen mainly at a player level. Similar to this, military staff IRL believes if you slap training or rules in front of every aspect of your life in and out of work - it mitigates it and checks a box. But the reality is that this is so far from the case. Mitigating hazards, dumb decisions, or in this case - poor sportsmanship; comes from the lowest level.

You can bring the horse to the river, but you can't force it to drink - no matter how hard you try.

Ironically, if you have played, I think you would come around to the "gank" ruling. There have been plenty of large fights, during events and both organized and impromptu raids. People are more cognizant of the group numbers (I know they aren't perfect information, but it's better than nothing). I have seen people discuss switching sides and doing so. People are also willing to apologize for inadvertent ganks, and even if you assume this is disingenuous, it's still a step in the right direction.

This has resulted in reduced amounts of salt I see during and after big engagements, which is a big win. For example, we are able to run continuous PvP event configs without worrying as much about people abusing them to gank or stop playing the event because they got ganked. Because the gankers know they can be reported and sanctioned for this. Or perhaps because this made everyone more aware of how the fights are playing out, resulting in more sportsmanship (there's an optimistic take)...

[Madvillain]

Until there's a similar rule for ace stacking, it remains vague and difficult to explain. And just to be clear, even though I absolutely despise ace stacks since they ruin the game just like ganking, I also think having a rule about it won't be a great idea.

It's really the community shooting itself in the foot in both cases.

---

Baila Morena | Toilet Trouble | Elder Presidente[TBH] | The Titan Combat Manual | Confession
♰ Join the Corsair Brotherhood ♰

[Reeves]

This rule is well intentioned but ultimately really misguided and is in the long-term going to cause more grief than it prevents.

---

[EisenSeele]

As I see it, I'd personally only advocate for its use on groups of people forming doom stacks to just go about killing people that can't fight back - the threshold for what isn't acceptable is pretty high, and we've reconsidered past sanctions to apply this rule as conservatively as possible

Of course, this is just my personal opinion

---

FEEDBACK

[Vlaicone(Ted)]

This is meant to make a clear point about what constitutes a gank and what not as up until this point very crazy situations would slide and it would be a case of whatever the staff team at that current time had in their mind

---

[Kauket]

Until there's a similar rule for ace stacking, it remains vague and difficult to explain. And just to be clear, even though I absolutely despise ace stacks since they ruin the game just like ganking, I also think having a rule about it won't be a great idea.

It's really the community shooting itself in the foot in both cases.

ace stacking counts if its like 4 aces vs 4 newbies for example, cus realistically you'd only need 2 aces to win. sealclubbing shouldnt be allowed period

---

[Lemon]

Now with this, more cases of lobbying, behind the scenes influence, & people using the rule to skeet the system from or for encounters will just amplify dramatically.

Whole problem of 1.0. it's all good if you trust in staff and they can avoid bias. If you don't then you just always play with fear. Or rather, don't play because who wants to play a game knowing you can be publicly called out, hundreds of people seeing that you are selectively called "a dick" and made an example of at any time by the arbitrary system.

[EisenSeele]

Now with this, more cases of lobbying, behind the scenes influence, & people using the rule to skeet the system from or for encounters will just amplify dramatically.

Whole problem of 1.0. it's all good if you trust in staff and they can avoid bias. If you don't then you just always play with fear. Or rather, don't play because who wants to play a game knowing you can be publicly called out, hundreds of people seeing that you are selectively called "a dick" and made an example of at any time by the arbitrary system.

Staff has been between a rock and a hard place - there's definitely a change in the culture with regards to grudges and resentments resulting in some pretty bad faith unsporting play, and also the ever present seal clubbing. Trying to nail down a good, workable definition of gank that still allows for people to play flexibly without feeling the need to have forced completely 'fair' duels has been the topic of actual hours of argument - but we have decided to err on the side of reserving gank sanctions for only obvious cases.

I definitely have seen people exercise restraint more in uneven fights - though there's definitely an element of not wanting to be sanctioned, instead of just a pure desire to be sporting. I don't know if this will start putting things back to when we had a more prominent culture of people playing for fun rather than 'to win' - we'll have to see on a longer term and reassess our approach accordingly.

I'm coming to see that while the ideal case is that we change how people approach playing the game to maximize a healthy environment - it could potentially be more effective just to remove toxic people that consistently pop up wherever we notice a problem. Granted, that's not a great solution either - but making more and more rules eventually becomes just treating the symptoms at the expense of everyone's sanity rather than getting at the disease directly.

---

FEEDBACK