Oolite Bulletins

1) Oolite gives me joy. EVE gives me an ulcer.
2) Jihading is impossible in OOlite (A pastime where you insure your ship up to the hilt. Head into protected space nail a few traders. scoop the loot and get fried by the auto spawning "safe area" defence ships)
3) When I make something for OOlite it is for Kudos from my fellow players; not something to embellish the profits of "the man".
4) Corporate wars do not exist in oolite
5) 0.0 (a pvp region of EVE space) Doesn't exist in OOlite.
6) Personalities in Oolite are made on what they can create, not what they can destroy, screw-up, take over or misappropriate.
7) Mittani (and all his evil little elves) or BoB (whatever that dysfunctional bunch are called now), Would not give old fuddy duddys like us the time of day (believe me however supportive you are of "young bucks" there are some pocket Bonaparte's who really REALLY are beyond help.)
Nothing in Oolite is forced on me by "the man" I pick and choose and make my own world.
9) I have enough pVp during every day life than you very much (hey EVE why do you think 80% of your Johns. (yes you heard me correctly) Stay in "safe space"). Is it because that maybe with the other 20% your catering to societies psychopaths?

Hell, who cares if their turning cheerleaders into daisy chains in their spare time as long as their playing each month? Right? It's a pity their Jihading your paying sheep now and screwing with your profits during a recession..... Might have to take a look at that "hands off" policy.

10) If I'm making a ship, I want to fly it. Not spend 6 months working out the system maths, then get it out of the space dock to have it cooked by the first Pester pounder that EVE has ripped through the pockets of, looking for loose change. Leaving them feeling "entitled" with a laser.

11) Espionage is as to Oolite as Virus is to Apple. It's heartwarming to realise that all the money you make whilst trading. Isn't going to be ripped off you because someone fooled some one else 10 galaxies over.

12) Through individual gaming experiences, shared only by our manipulation of the game itself, we retain our inherent individuality and "viewer god" monopoly. We are no ones pawns. EVE cannot say this.

13) Oolite has a natural c*** fire-wall by nature of it's construction. To play is easy. To use others oxp's is easy. To make oxp's is hard and all oxp's are filtered by each user by preference.

14) It's free.

15) We were here first.

16) I'm a father, a husband and a contributor both politically and economically to Great Britain. I find the thought of being "Powned" by some basement 10 year old, who doesn't even know how to wipe his own rear; quite frankly offensive. If there is a game to be played. I will help make the rules or there will be NO GAME.

17) Despite EVE's petty victories the same sequence will repeat itself:
Corp will rise.
Corp will have a pissed off member who goes to parasite corp with the "keys to the kingdom".
Parasite corp will infect and kill existing corp.
Parasite corp takes it's place as New Corp.
New Corp will have pissed off member....... rinse and repeat.

18 ) Nothing personal but any more humans around would quite frankly "ruin my sunshine". Oolite is like a day dream, it's a personal thing. AND NOONE should be able to p*** on those wheaties.

Sorry for all those who get a great deal out of EVE. Sure it's pretty. But it's social anarchy and an object lesson in why you should not give the wider societies misfits ANY power what so ever.

I cannot agree nor disagree with anything you've said (I've not played Eve Online) but the fact that no. 8 came out as a "cool" emoticon is serendipitous - is it not?

With the exception of No1, I agree with everything you've said. I do quite enjoy EvE, but the social side I tend to observe rather than participate in. After all, there is something morbidly fascinating about watching a societal train-wreck happen, you just don't want to be part of it.

Funny how Eve space can feel more empty and less interesting, thanks to all the vacuous non-entities, than an Oolite system filled with decidedly more personable (and interesting) AIs.

DaddyHoggy wrote:

I cannot agree nor disagree with anything you've said (I've not played Eve Online) but the fact that no. 8 came out as a "cool" emoticon is serendipitous - is it not?

That happens when you number your lists in the format '#)'

I've never played Eve myself, but ClymAngus's points are excellent.

Never in my life has someone summed up the online gaming experience so succinctly.

I've played Everquest, Anarchy Online, Dark Age of Camelot and EVE - all of them were the same old muck. Kids txtspeeking all over the place, flying around you like flies on poo and generally being about as much use as the selfsame flies on poo. The "features" list always seems to expand to become more restrictive to the player and usually take away most of the fun element. From what you say it would seem that EVE has gone down the same route!

I hate them all. Yes I do. Give me Oolite or give me death! Ain't no AI gonna "pwn my s0xx0rz", not as long as my arse looks south.

Did the free trial, it tried to inject stuff into my computer. (good thing I kept the install log) spent most of the time just watching other people and reading up online. It's all the same; most people stay in safe space the people outside safe space thing the people in safe space are cowards.

With that mind set they take any and all opportunity to screw each other and the safe spacers over. It's like one giant catastrophically bloated game theory experiment, with monthly payments. Yeah that's it;

Computer against player is victim less crime. PvP has great profitability if you godding the world. The games industry is so far shirking ALL psychological responsibility for renting out virtual circus maximi to the gladiators!

This s*** hasn't been done "Real world", with this level of cynicism or for this level of profit since the fall of the Rome.

EVE is fundamentally a PVP game (the designers stipulate that the survivability odds in game are actively stacked against Solo's). Oolite moves the social aspects away from the game and toward development where it can be channelled into useful action.

OOlite is a single player experience and I think we're psychologically in a much better place because of that fact.

ClymAngus wrote:

Computer against player is victim less crime. PvP has great profitability if you godding the world. The games industry is so far shirking ALL psychological responsibility for renting out virtual circus maximi to the gladiators!.

The scary thing for me is not that the developers distance themselves from this kind of behaviour, but the sheer number of players who distance themselves from their own behaviour, usually through the caveats of "its only a game" and "I'm not like this in real life."

Eve is a wonderful game for RPing in or at least it would be if it had a separate server for that purpose. In an RP setting a person can play an Amarrian slave trader or general pirate scumbag or a scavenger who harvests others salvage and have a plausible background which divides the characters activities from the player. Nothing wrong with playing the bad guy, as it adds flavour to an RP game and the player is not conciously trying to hurt/inconvenience the other players, just their characters.

But the sheer number of idiots in EvE (who, although not the majority are still a noticeable minority) who derive pleasure from annoying other players, for no purpose other than to derive satisfaction from spoling anothers fun, is staggering. Never been a victim myself, but I've seen plenty who have and plenty who have, perhaps foolishly, tried to argue with their victimisers about this.

The thing is that these individuals, whose sole raison d'etre in game is to get pleasure from knowing they've made others unhappy (and they will go to some lengths to get a record that they have pissed someone off) then claim that this is "nothing what they are like in real life."

That, to me, is quite frightening. These individuals will, in a largely consequence free environment, effectively bully others but then claim that this is completely separate from the rest of their psyche.

I just can't get my head from the enormity of that kind of ignorance.

Sendraks wrote:

The thing is that these individuals, whose sole raison d'etre in game is to get pleasure from knowing they've made others unhappy (and they will go to some lengths to get a record that they have pissed someone off) then claim that this is "nothing what they are like in real life."

That, to me, is quite frightening. These individuals will, in a largely consequence free environment, effectively bully others but then claim that this is completely separate from the rest of their psyche.

I just can't get my head from the enormity of that kind of ignorance.

I think you've got the reason right there. The online game is a consequence-free environment; real life isn't. That's why they're not like that in real life. Maybe if they were physically bigger and stronger, they would be. Essentially they're just bullies trapped inside the bodies of 9-stone weaklings. Which is a good thing, really, since they'd be a hell of a lot more unpleasant if they had the same ability to throw their weight around in the real world too. Although maybe then they wouldn't feel the need for the constant psychological boost.

What all online games need is some incentive to either encourage social behaviour (although not to the exclusion of everything else: like you say, there's nothing wrong with playing the bad guy), or to encourage the active hunting down and destruction of the antisocial. I don't know enough about the economics of these games – the real-world economics, that is – but I've often thought that it would be a good idea to allow players to "work" within the game, possibly for free, and build up credits of game-time, or a discount on the subscription or something. So you could do X hours as a cop, and earn Y hours of gametime for your "real" character. Your activities as a cop would be seriously curtailed: basically, in the case of EVE, you'd have to patrol a danger zone and take down griefers. The cop ships could be pretty mean, with weapons set so that they won't fire on innocents.

Disembodied wrote:

The cop ships could be pretty mean, with weapons set so that they won't fire on innocents.

A great idea, but I don't think CCP would ever go for an officially sanctioned player "cop force." Sure they're perfectly happy to allow players to police their own systems (which has proved effective in certain low sec systems), but they won't sanction anything for hi-sec space.

One of the problems there involves the mechnics around suicide ganking, where an individual sacrifices their ship to destroy a cargo vessel and then another party (or second account) not involved in the attack, makes off with the cargo dropped. While the second ship is effectively involved in a theft, they are not flagged as a criminal for attack either by the ingame police or attackable by a player who may wish to reclaim the stolen cargo (at least, not without then being destroyed by the police). That to me is a broken mechanic. Suicide attacks themselves are fine, but being able to then make off with someone's cargo in a totally risk free way is just not right.

Eve is also a wonderful example of a broken PvE system. I do like Eve missions, but they don't even come close to how engaging the combat with the NPC ships in Oolite can be. In Oolite, fighting a single ship can be a tense and rewarding experience. In Eve, you need a dozen NPC ships or more on screen before it becomes even mildly interesting to a pilot in a well fitted ship.

it's odd, an on-line game should be an opportunity to test your psychological id in a place of no consequence. Truly then you can see yourself in the dark mirror, flaws and all.

I worry about those who revel in uncontrolled immorality. A rift could develop between the cruel, powerful half and the perceived powerlessness (in comparison) of normal life. I also don't like the idea of the real world powerful stepping into an online game just so they can legitimately whip the proletariat, further justifying their perceived "mandate to rule".

In short, these games are highly profitable honey pots for the psychologically damaged to revel in behaviour that polite society actively discourages. It's power porn, play with care.

ClymAngus wrote:

In short, these games are highly profitable honey pots for the psychologically damaged to revel in behaviour that polite society actively discourages. It's power porn, play with care.

That is a wonderful summary.

ClymAngus wrote:

In short, these games are highly profitable honey pots for the psychologically damaged to revel in behaviour that polite society actively discourages. It's power porn, play with care.

True, but that's not to say that there shouldn't be the chance to create an online game-world that's interesting and functional. The only way any sort of police force can function in an online game is if it arises organically from the playing community. Providing the more decent/less obnoxious with some sort of incentive to do a bit of in-game cleaning might be a way to get it started.

There are other in-game "duties" that people could be employed to do: in a fantasy RPG, for example, people could earn game-time through monstering. Play so many hours as an orc or goblin, and gain time to advance your real character. Or take a slot in a crowd scene, or work behind the bar for a bit. If nothing else it would vastly improve the quality of the internal AI. Except it wouldn't be A, of course.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if, before long, people get actual paying jobs – probably on a franchise system – working as virtual blacksmiths or virtual engineers and the like. There are already people making real money selling non-existent crap in places like Second Life: it can't be too long before that spills over into online games. Of course, then you have to worry about galloping in-game inflation – but presumably games do that already.

Disembodied wrote:

True, but that's not to say that there shouldn't be the chance to create an online game-world that's interesting and functional. The only way any sort of police force can function in an online game is if it arises organically from the playing community. Providing the more decent/less obnoxious with some sort of incentive to do a bit of in-game cleaning might be a way to get it started.

There are other in-game "duties" that people could be employed to do: in a fantasy RPG, for example, people could earn game-time through monstering. Play so many hours as an orc or goblin, and gain time to advance your real character. Or take a slot in a crowd scene, or work behind the bar for a bit. If nothing else it would vastly improve the quality of the internal AI. Except it wouldn't be A, of course.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if, before long, people get actual paying jobs – probably on a franchise system – working as virtual blacksmiths or virtual engineers and the like. There are already people making real money selling non-existent crap in places like Second Life: it can't be too long before that spills over into online games. Of course, then you have to worry about galloping in-game inflation – but presumably games do that already.

Well true, the ultimate fix would be to inhibit pVp play. Thus forcing co-operation. Or a much reduced ability to damage other players that would allow escape. If you created a Humans vs all other life forms (Human's = endangered species). Then weapon inhibitors could be justifiable. You could even make a trivial game of it. Psychopaths are relegated to point scoring, causing no "real" damage.

as for inflation, well you'd need an economist to look at it. But it could probably be done.

Disembodied wrote:

ClymAngus wrote:

In short, these games are highly profitable honey pots for the psychologically damaged to revel in behaviour that polite society actively discourages. It's power porn, play with care.

True, but that's not to say that there shouldn't be the chance to create an online game-world that's interesting and functional. The only way any sort of police force can function in an online game is if it arises organically from the playing community. Providing the more decent/less obnoxious with some sort of incentive to do a bit of in-game cleaning might be a way to get it started.

There are other in-game "duties" that people could be employed to do: in a fantasy RPG, for example, people could earn game-time through monstering. Play so many hours as an orc or goblin, and gain time to advance your real character. Or take a slot in a crowd scene, or work behind the bar for a bit. If nothing else it would vastly improve the quality of the internal AI. Except it wouldn't be A, of course.

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if, before long, people get actual paying jobs – probably on a franchise system – working as virtual blacksmiths or virtual engineers and the like. There are already people making real money selling non-existent crap in places like Second Life: it can't be too long before that spills over into online games. Of course, then you have to worry about galloping in-game inflation – but presumably games do that already.

Oh yeah Inflation in online games is rife Dupes dont help, but players WILL always find the best currency earners in game and milk it. Even without the infamous gold farmers players will accrue money, the more hardcore and knowledgable the player the more their resources grow, the more they can bid up the price of trifles and trinkets they want . Of course you also get investors and speculators in game as well.

In star wars galaxies at one point I could barely afford to pay for repairs to my vehicle, I drove instead of taking a shuttle because I couldnt afford shuttle fees etc (a few hundred credits a time), but by the end I sold off 1 billion credits on E-bay for a few hundred pounds - I actually managed to cover all my subscriptions up until that point , AND had sizeable resources still left in game . Changes to the game turned on the credit faucets and in game rarities reocketed in price, some went from a million to 50 million to a billion .

It's interesting to see how capitalism works when divorced from reality (or at least, more divorced from reality than it is in reality, if you see what I mean). I suppose the big difference in a game is that there is no limit to the money supply, really. There's this constant influx of gold (or whatever) from outside the game. It's a bit like Renaissance Spain: discover the New World, steal staggering amounts of gold and silver from the inhabitants, return home in triumph and then watch rampant inflation kick lumps out of your domestic economy.

There would need to be a method of extracting game-money out, permanently. Having people who inhabit the game-world, who use it to make a living in the real world, might be a way of doing that. Every gold zonker or Imperial Credit they earn they take out of the game into the real world, to eat with or pay rent or whatever. It would stop the game-worlds filling up with ever-larger amounts of pretend money.

Hmm... maybe the solution would be to trade in-game currency on the global market. Have an exchange rate for, say, the Linden v the US$. Then it would be in the games companies' interests to keep their game currencies cheap, but not too cheap, and reasonably stable.