yoda said "Hell, I remember a time when I stole samoflange from a guide, and with all their powers, they could not take it back..."

You mean he/she chosse not to take it back :)

No, I mean, I died lots and lots, but I was too fast ;)

[edit]

Last time I checked, this was a role playing game, stuff like "gankers and griefers" is how stories develop, and how action develops, anyone remember Cro-bo Yoman? Or how about Unknown Player Node? Or maybe English Schoolgirl? These where all chars that were "loved to be hated" and these chars would have loved to upset such an event.

[edit 2]

Oooh ooh. sod guides, we need some event managers if this is going down, or maybe Inc. could just retract his statement and return to the status quo? :P

For almost the last three years that i have been playing this game, Guild software has never taken the side of player who organize events. I think that's the status quo yoda was talking about. Unless someone really, really broke the rules badly we were told to handle our own affairs. Even if they did to really bad they were usually just asked to chill and not do it again. And i don't think anyone who EVER disrupted a player run event was ever even reprimanded.

I guess I, we, want to know what has changed? Why change your long standing policy now?

I'm fine either way as long at it applies to all not just one event.

Edit: yoda a guide could kill you with a key stroke (not like they would) but they could. Not even you are that fast :)

I don't wanna brag, but I can dock faster than you can type /oper /kill yodaofborg :P

[edit]

Back then, they would have needed to have a bind like /oper /kill %target% and have me in range to kill me with a keystroke(oh yah, and %target% didnt work properly back then ;) ), I don't know what drugs you are on jess, but you really should not talk about things you know nothing about ;)

[on topic]

Yah, whats up with all this recent care bear stuff? You all expecting 1000+ Wrongdoze users soon?

Yoda: You can't bind /oper commands, so they couldn't have had a bind anyway. :P

RegisterUserCommand("operkill", function() oper(substitute_vars[[/kill "%target%"]]) end)

I'm disappointed to see the devs take this stand, in the past we've been free to fly about and blast whatever we can find. I find myself in complete agreement with Lecter when he said "Uh, any guide who interferes with the killing of your miners should be shit canned at once."

That being said, I've not been one to try and disrupt events, though I will gladly try to shoot down racers in the deneb run, especially when a guildmate is in the race. But that is part of the race.

Actually, I've said several times in the past that we need a better way of matching up guides with events, I've even publicly mentioned having some sort of guide signup system where users could submit events and get a guide to sponsor (and this goes back years). I've usually said this stuff in threads where people are complaining about how evilly things have gone awry, and now we're actually getting closer to implementation. You guys have a selective memory. In general, I don't think of this as that great of a digression from previous behaviour. Yes, I do think players should try to take care of things on their own as much as possible, but I also want to start getting more events going in the game, and getting better communication about them with the userbase (email list, etc), and some level of dev/guide involvement will probably be necessary for the moment, or for certain special events.

For another, I know that once the new faction/FF system is in place, some of these current issues will probably go away on their own. If it were in place, and attacking people in nation space were, say.. very difficult (but not impossible), I'd be ok with that. But since it isn't, for the moment I don't see it as a big deal for us to help a group of people go off to some random corner of our giant galaxy and mine rocks for a couple of hours, as a special thing.

This does not make VO into some sort of carebear fest. I was recently mailed the question: "Mining and trading are apparently frowned upon by many and I have to ask is this a kill other players game or one about economy and groups?".. to which I bluntly replied: BOTH. I don't take sides in the events that have previously occurred, and I'm not going to penalize players for operating within the context of the game. But that doesn't mean we can't move forward, and define special contexts for certain events that happen well outside of the mainstream. Maybe let some people have some fun and try out different types of gameplay. As you have all noted, we don't have a whole lot of guides (or devs), so if we have more events than sponsors, they'll be on their own, but hopefully we can work towards some happy medium (and yes, perhaps we'll get more guides eventually, but one topic at a time here).

Look, people, we want VO to *grow*. Stuff is going to change. Mostly for the better, I think, and I'm not sacrificing my fundamental tenets, but we would like our struggling-ass company to get off of the ground. TGFT having a mining-fest off in some distant sector does not mean that you won't be able to go hunt confused newbies in grayspace (or.. miners, or whatever). Or that you won't be able to hunt those same miners from the event for the entire rest of the week. Big deal. I intend to keep things as flat and self-regulating as humanly possible. I do not see this as an obstacle in that regard.

As for future events, it will always be the responsibility of the player organizing the event to secure a guide to sponsor, and schedule the event around when the guide is available. If this cannot be worked out, then the event is on their own. Also, expectations of guides as sponsors should be kept reasonable, they have lives too, and sometimes unforseen conflicts may arise. Worst case, the event is no worse off than they've always been.

Again, hopefully we'll build a mechanism to automate this a bit, and let guides volunteer and so on. Some sort of web-form that submits to a list the guides can browse. Etc etc. One thing at a time. [EDIT: This is now a trac ticket]

I have advocated for a long time having guides present at events, and sometimes it's happened, and sometimes it hasn't. The truth is we are mostly very good at regulating ourselves as players, and it's a very rare occurance for a player to willfully disrupt an event (dag NW) and be able to keep doing it without the players stepping in.

In the case of the most recent mining event, I was there, I was the "disruptor" but, and this is a key point, I WAS INVITED.

This is a case where a guide presence would not have changed events in any way. The issue here was a miscommunication between several members of the guild running the event. I was invited to pirate the event by one of the guild members running it.

One of the things I've also posted about before was creating another class of player accessable powers for event runners. I don't know anything about what it would take to implement them, but giving the event runner the ability to remove/ban disruptive players from an event would make guide presense unnecessary. Some kind of web registration of the event, followed by guide or dev approval and time limiting of the event powers would mean abuse of the powers would be easilly policed. (as an aside, having the web register the event should also place the event and it's rules in the station news to get the word out)

Yeah, I've thought a little about having a separately empowered "event organizer" class, maybe only empowered for one sector for a fixed period of time (pre-registered) in a limited way. If anyone has any specific ideas on this, feel free to start a thread on Suggestions.

Tumblemonster is right , this was to a large extent a result of internal miscommunication . It was the hosts first go at running an event , and from experience I know that can be surprisingly difficult. I feel we can rectify this within TGFT .

The topic of greater powers for event hosts has come up before , and I am generally against it ( see posts passim ) . VO is a game in which a self regulating community works very well the vast majority of the time . Let us keep it that way for as long as possible.

We would all like to see VO grow both in content and playerbase . I think that by making sensible suggestions with realistically implementable solutions we can help the devs achieve that goal without resorting to an unrealistic external control of player activity . If the devs have to continually police the game itself their rate of progress of development must suffer .

Ecka Estenk.

incarnate: I think we all just wanted to know what has changed an I think we learned that. Thanks for your post.

Last I checked tumble was invited by one of the aforementioned aggressive players, NOT the event host.

I think Ecka just admitted to inviting Tumble. He invited me to the last mining event to stir up some trouble. Mining is boring, but i agree with guardians and assault bots no player pirates are needed.

First off no pirate was invited; no one was invited to do anything other than mining or escorting.

Funny thing about this is I seem to have opened up a repressed issue that is hotly debated. However the bottom line remains that if everyone acted like adults then adult supervision would not be needed at all. We would not be asking for dev/guide intervention if this stuff did not happen. I have requested the news to be updated to include the no piracy or harassment part so the bottom line is DON’T. There is no place in the event for this type of behavior and it is not welcome. With the conduct of this last one I had no choice but to ask for babysitting intervention and to use whatever means needed to keep those select few in the community in line and out of the event.

Right now there is a serious shortage in this area and I was hoping to fill in this area by starting the events. The goal was to go into heavy bot sectors and mine there. When you have 30 or more assaults and guardians buzzing all around you and you have several low level players and all the miners with no weapons in slow ships you have your hands full. Now when you add in other players harassing the group you throw the event into an impossible situation, the only outcome will be in favor of those who are the heavy hitters and excel at PVP. When/if it's possible to clear the sector for the duration you are in there and not have more bots keep jumping in then the other players issue would be considered and possibly welcomed.

As for the event organizer thing we have charted over 260 roids containing rare ore in this one system alone and most of it is in heavy bot controlled areas. Most of the current events are in single sectors but this one will be in several. Realistically the best solution would probably to have a guide available if something did come up and give them the powers to do whatever is needed.

Ed

blacknet Like ecka said i think you need to talk within TGFT first. i think pirates were invited without your knowledge or consent. don't blame the pirates blame your communication with other TGFT members. At least for this event.

You know, Ed, for all your bitching about how hard it is... I know for a fact that the old TGFT mining events operated in such sectors and managed to engage a large number of pirates.

I suppose you just aren't up to the task, though.

I know I am a new player, and I probably do not have much room to talk... but it looks like I am going to side up with the losing side here.

Why should any player event get "special" protections? I am not saying it is easy to organize and run this event, but part of this event should be to pay for player escorts and protection. (i.e., Does this story of a pirate and anti-pirate war I read about exist or not?) Otherwise it is an event of basically free money for whomever wants to join it.

Wouldn't it be a little more exciting if your trade group had to make a plan through private communication to meet somewhere to start mining rather than announce publically to every pirate as well?

I just came from a church festival this weekend. Do you know they actually had to pay several off duty police officers to go around with the people collecting money from the booths and to the bank. Everyone knows it is wrong to rob a church event... but not everyone follows the same rules. Why should an open-ended game be different?

I was invited by Maximian. Last I checked, miharu, you weren't actually there, so why are you commenting?

As for bot infested, well, it really wasn't that dangerous a sector.

Because I was watching from IRC, and everything else I saw indicated that genka had invited you?