What happened: I had infiltrated and taken control of a single base and a few tanks belonging to TAW, they were returned to TAW by KptnKurt despite no investigation occurring and no rules were broken. Player(s) with issue: Ultima133 Server: NA Time (cb:time): 30 minutes ago as of the timestamp of this post. Playfield: Imperium Structure Name(s): “XPA sends their regards”, and several tanks that were located on this base. Structure ID(s): Unknown How can we help you now:
No rules regarding infiltration or sabotage was violated, I did not violate the clause regarding PvE planets as the planet was not a started planet, I did not post blueprints publicly and I did not violate the clause regarding sabotage to ruin gameplay as I did not ruin gameplay for an entire faction.
Despite this, KptnKurt returned these assets to TAW, there was no rule violations to justify a return, TAW was given back assets they lost to someone who took them using legitimate means.
TAW was at the time a very large faction, not only did they have several bases all over the planet where this theft took place but also on another planets, no gameplay has been ruined as I intentionally left several bases untouched so that their gameplay would not be ruined.
Not a single asset stolen was stolen in a way that violates any rules, thus I wish to request the assets I stole legitimately be returned to my control in addition to any resources that were present in these bases at the time it was stolen.
I have video evidence to confirm that I stole the assets in a legitimate matter which can be provided on request.
Key wording here is “to ruin the gameplay of a whole faction”
Considering the size of TAW and the scale of their assets that are spread over multiple planets, there is absolutely no way any reasonable person could have their gameplay ruined by the loss of a single base.
To say that the loss of such size would ruin the gameplay of an entire faction is a significant exaggeration, they have several bases that they could have used, I caused TAW a minor inconvenience if that.
Your rules do not ban infiltration outright, they specifically mention “to ruin the gameplay of a whole faction”, which was not done in this case.
I don’t even know why I need to point this out, this should be common sense that any reasonable unbiased person would have no problem understanding.
I’m no fan of TAW but if this were allowed in your case what’s to stop anyone else from doing the exact same thing. That rule was created to prevent such gameplay as you see on EVE where sabotage and scheming is commonplace. Think of it from the other side, you worked for several seasons/hours to mine resources and spawn in/stock a sizeable base such as the one in your video then someone joins your faction and replaces the core then leaves the faction.
This isn’t EVE and we don’t want to encourage that style gameplay here. I’m gonna have to side with TAW on this one.
EDIT: Just one thing to add here. I’ve been hotly debated on these forums in regard to the OCD and how I feel that hacking should be allowed but in a limited capacity. Hacking, at least in the form that I would see it implemented, would never result in this much loss this quickly. So for those of you that oppose hacking this should definitely not be tolerated in the slightest.
Rules against total sabotage of a faction to the point where they cannot continue (actual ruining of gameplay for an entire faction) I have no problem with being banned.
However in terms of smaller scale operations such as this one, I believe it should be up to the faction leadership to deal with leeches and spies within their faction. It seems that the person who wrote the rules is in agreement with that point of view.
@Ultima133, we all get what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to walk a thin line, this is an EVE tactic that is commonly used, the problem is we’re a community here. That base you took wasn’t a small base, if every TAW member or even just a handful of TAW members decided to do the same thing then it would devastate TAW. If it was decided that this act was ok this time then others would decide to do it later. You made it a big deal.
Now that it is a big deal a decision has to be made and I’m on the side of the community being against this sort of thing because going the other way results in us seeing no more big factions. We’ll see only small factions with no one trusting anyone and then polluted playfields with massive amounts of bases/vehicles and tons of lag.
Since you admit to being a terrible person(you used more colorful language in the game chat) and say you don’t mind a ban, and you seem to favor this terrible style of tactics so then I am on the side of removing you from the server since you seem to favor both a negative mindset and negative style of play.
I never implied the base was small in size, what I did state was that TAW has many other bases scattered all over the place as you can clearly see in this screenshot.
9 bases on Imperium alone and several others, the loss of this base would not have affected TAW in a way that would have caused the entire factions gameplay to be ruined.
Any reasonable, unbiased person can conclude that the loss of 1 base out of the many that they have would not have ruined the gameplay of an entire faction.
You may as well have just used the old [CURRENT YEAR] argument here, “we are a community” is not relevant to the point.
One person was involved in this so that isn’t an argument.
As the rules say:
“If you think you have a thief in your own faction, it is your responsibility to protect / keep track of your property and asset. We CAN’T help with inter gameplay (ie. faction politics), being that there are so many players.”
TAW made no attempt to protect their assets and they lost as a result of it.
I’ve played on servers where this was allowed and the state of factions was nowhere near what you described.
The rules state that sabotage is not allowed to ruin the gameplay of an entire faction.
TAW has multiple bases scattered all over the place, any person who is reasonable and unbiased would be able to conclude that the loss of a single base would not have ruined the gameplay of an entire faction.
This is not a difficult concept to understand and the fact that people ITT continue to argue otherwise even though it is painfully obvious that no rule violations occurred makes me question how impartial the people ITT are.
The friends I do have on the server are actually in factions that oppose TAW
I actually represent arguments opposing large factions in most cases, check the forums and you’ll see this
I don’t think this one act will hurt TAW but this combined with the many attacks they deal with on GG against the opposing alliance will
This is more of a morale thing, huge hit to morale for TAW members to lose extensive resources
It’s not my call but I just wanted to weigh in since this decision will hold weight on how things will be handled on the server, Rex and Jascha are online now and will be making a call after they discuss it
Which is the precise reason why I have not violated any rules, the rules state that sabotage that ruins the gameplay of an entire faction is prohibited, not sabotage as a whole.
after a long internal discussion and investigation here is the TL;DR:
@Ultima133 is temporary banned from the HWS servers and HWS Community for his actions and behavior until 09.08.2103 11:34.
Let me clear some things up why we had to do this.
2 years ago we had the first tryhard sabotage going on, forcing us to think about it and implenting rules to prevent this.
As written in the rules, real life is hard enough to not bring stuff like this into a game where fun should be the main goal for everyone.
So the main point Ultima brings into the table is
That’s it.
With 9 playhours on HWS he had only one goal to achieve at all cost: damage other player.
Bringing old stories into HWS:
09.04.2018 02:43:52 TAW Ultima133™ XPA sends their regards
Now to tackle this smart rule-loophole-Digger he quoting all the time the current rule about sabotage, which was 2 years nice and settled until now:
I don’t go into detail here what the definition of “ruin” + “gameplay” + “whole” could mean. It would be too long.
Ruin = the very moment you did the action you triggered the word “ruin”.
Gameplay = the intel plans TAW had, the main logistic base TAW had and the disabling ships from TAW is triggering the word “gameplay”.
Whole = a whole faction is on HWS declared of all active members. So he affected the whole faction of that very moment hence the word “whole” triggered.
But to prevent exactly these kind of smart-heads we have something so easy and simple, he probably missed it in his evil plan:
We are no high professional skilled english lawyer, trying to prevent any loopholes and creating more rules than any government has in place.
We are here and have this Bottom Line philosophy.
Obviously Ultima didn’t care about it in first place, so he got punished. Simple as that.
While the severity 2 years ago was not that high, that time he not only provided his guilty by himself via a video (thanks for that!) but also broke many other rules along the way.
Such as griefing and any common sense of fair play in the first place like this
Last but not least quoting our rule
Might seems legit, missing the context though of the difference about stealing in terms of taking something and don’t let other people know in the faction (thus inter faction politics) or sabotage, which means a forceful way of breaking in from outside, ruin the whole eco system of a faction and then leaving which breaks another rule of HWS:
So overall the serverity is in this case very high because of a very poorly planned attempt to loophole our HWS rules, justifying to ruin the fun of others and principles of HWS.
And while it wouldn’t be even of a material loss TAW was caused by this, it is about principles and a mindset of Ultima we don’t want here at all.
Closing statement: Final Judgement: HWS Staff have the final word on the validity and repercussions of any claims following an investigation.
