Skip to main content

Reflections

At what point, are people to blame for their own mistakes or decisions? Or, at what point will they blame themselves?

I've seen two things happen recently and both make me wonder. One is while I was burning some time in incursions last week. As we where going through a site someone said, "Oh no."

"What?" he was asked.

"A thrasher just popped my alt."

It turns out that he had gone to buy some after burner for one of his incursion fleets. It cost around 350 million. I noticed, because it was near the price for the one that I had for sale. He had sent his alt to buy the item in Jita and when he was about 7 jumps away from the incursion site he decided it was safe enough to autopilot.

Two jumps later he was popped. The module did not drop but a thrasher is cheap. It was worth it for the ganker to try.

His reaction was not anger or rage. He took it rather calmly. There was fustration there. He had spent the last of his isk on it. I'm noticing the reinvestment rate for incursion ships is much greater then I expected. But, he will make the ISK again.

What caught my attetnion was the reaction from another fleet mate. "That jerk who popped you," this guy said. "At least he didn't get anything."

Is the thrasher pilot a jerk? The use of jerk, beyond being an insult, leads to feel as if the thrasher pilot did something wrong by the gank.

jerk noun \ˈjərk\

Definition of JERK

4. a : an annoyingly stupid or foolish person
b : an unlikable person; especially : one who is cruel, rude, or small-minded

What responsibility does the module owner bear for putting himself into a bad position? While there is an admission of, "should not have autopiloted with shiny in cargo hold" the ganker is still the 'bad' person. There is an under current of "it shouldn't have happened to him" that bothers me. This comes not from the victim, but from those around. This is where the dangerous ground lays and the first steps upon the path of 'greater safety' land.

If I were to jump into a system in low sec and be ganked, it'd be my bad luck or the luck of the draw. "What do you expect to happen?" I am sure someone would ask if I expressed my surprise.

Is it to much for me to hope that people will accept fault? I fear it may be. Yet, it needs to happen. To say, "I should not have created this situation for myself" is important. It helps to close the door of, "This shouldn't have happened to me," and open the door of, "What can I do to avoid this situation?"

Comments

  1. Actually a somehow similar thing happened to me few weeks ago. I bought an expensive implant and was getting it back in Jita for a good 50 million cut. I didn't autopilot and got popped in Jita. while aligning to the station. Of course I was not happy about it and it was not pocket money from me.

    I convo him and told him "well done", discussed a bit with him without being angry at all. I even told him that he could sell it easily at good price in the station.

    I was angry against myself ... it was rather good game in his part as he scanned me down and got me without autopilot being on.

    It is easy to point fingers to someone else (especially unknown) or blame luck, game or anything else. It is common in games and common in real life as well ... In work you can see multiple examples when people camp on their positions. Most of the time things would get better if once in the while you admit that you made a mistake ... you are human and it shows that you are honest with yourself and others.

    EvE has more risk than most game and I think it is actually positive in some aspect of it. I remember few years ago loosing my ship in high-sec and just unsubscribing out of rage and boredom. Now I understand the risk better, learned from my mistakes and play with the it.

    Yesterday in low-sec I was hauling things around on my badger II with cloaking (not cover ops) and jumped on a camped gate. I knew that I could cloak after the timer but not warp fast enough for not being destroyed. I waited, cloaked quickly and few minutes after they moved away. It was pretty fun seing so many ships around my cloaked badger and kinda like getting away with it :).

    ReplyDelete
  2. You assume he was popped because he activated the autopilot. That is a reasonable assumption, but still an assumption. Probably he was scanned earlier and would have been destroyed even if he manually piloted. In other words the ganker had the intention to pop him or anyone else with expensive cargo. If ships with expensive cargo go boom, it’s his fault. Sure the hauler might be dumb or even idiotic, but he is the victim. Let me use your words:

    What responsibility does the car owner bear for putting himself into a bad position? While there is an admission of, “should not have left the door open” the thief is still the ‘bad’ person.

    Just to be clear, I know that you are basically talking about the fundamental attribution error. (If I win it’s because I’m a pro, if you win it’s because of luck or cheap tactics. If you lose it’s because you are an idiot, if I lose, I’m unlucky or it was unfair or dancing cats distracted me.)

    PS: I discovered your blog about 2 weeks ago and I like it so far. I read it from the start and I’m still somewhere in April, you write a lot…

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree with the car owner position. Yes, the door should have been locked but the car should not have been stolen in the first place.

      However, to step away, and perhaps I should have added in a notation, I'm more debating in terms of Eve as Eve vs People as People. I know that gets blurred a lot.

      In the situation with the car, it should never have been stolen in the first place. The theft is wrong and we have worked to allow people safety in society.

      In the case of Eve, the module should have been transported in a better manor from the get go to attempt to avoid the ganker who is a normal and not 'wrong' aspect of the game even without foreknowledge of the gankers presence.

      Sorry about the words... I like them... :P

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Maybe one day!

 [15:32:10] Trig Vaulter > Sugar Kyle Nice bio - so carebear sweet - oh you have a 50m ISK bounty - so someday more grizzly  [15:32:38 ] Sugar Kyle > /emote raises an eyebrow to Trig  [15:32:40 ] Sugar Kyle > okay :)  [15:32:52 ] Sugar Kyle > maybe one day I will try PvP out When I logged in one of the first things I did was answer a question in Eve Uni Public Help. It was a random question that I knew the answer of. I have 'Sugar' as a keyword so it highlights green and catches my attention. This made me chuckle. Maybe I'll have to go and see what it is like to shoot a ship one day? I could not help but smile. Basi suggested that I put my Titan killmail in my bio and assert my badassery. I figure, naw. It was a roll of the dice that landed me that kill mail. It doesn't define me as a person. Bios are interesting. The idea of a biography is a way to personalize your account. You can learn a lot about a person by what they choose to put in their bio

Taboo Questions

Let us talk contentious things. What about high sec? When will CCP pay attention to high sec and those that cannot spend their time in dangerous space?  This is somewhat how the day started, sparked by a question from an anonymous poster. Speaking about high sec, in general, is one of the hardest things to do. The amount of emotion wrapped around the topic is staggering. There are people who want to stay in high sec and nothing will make them leave. There are people who want no one to stay in high sec and wish to cripple everything about it. There are people in between, but the two extremes are large and emotional in discussion. My belief is simple. If a player wishes to live in high sec, I do not believe that anything will make them leave that is not their own curiosity. I do not believe that we can beat people out of high sec or destroy it until they go to other areas of space. Sometimes, I think we forget that every player has the option to not log back in. We want them to log

And back again

My very slow wormhole adventure continues almost as slowly as I am terminating my island in Animal Crossing.  My class 3 wormhole was not where I wanted to be. I was looking for a class 1 or 2 wormhole. I dropped my probes and with much less confusion scanned another wormhole. I remembered to dscan and collect my probes as I warped to the wormhole. I even remembered to drop a bookmark, wormholes being such good bookmark locations later. My wormhole told me it was a route into low sec. I tilted my head. How circular do our adventures go. Today might be the day to die and that too is okay. That mantra dances in the back of my head these days. Even if someone mocks me, what does that matter? Fattening someone's killboard is their issue not mine. So I jumped through and found myself in Efa in Khanid, tucked on the edge of high sec and null sec. What an interesting little system.  Several connections to high sec. A connection to null sec. This must be quite the traffic system.    I am f