Wednesday 24 August 2011

Honour... what is your word worth?

An incident last night with the a member of my corp last night forces me to once again think about this very grey area. What is Honour, and how is it applied to New Eden, and a game about space ships.

So last night some idiot flys a hulk into Amamake, and manages to get himself camped into a station. He then accepts a fleet invitation from a -10 pirate (an ex corp member of ours) who promises him an escort out of the station in return for 1.5m isk Unsurprisingly he warps happily away from the station into the arms of several happier pirates. Scrambled and caught, they then tell him that if he ejects from the ship the ex corp member will fly it to Rens and give it back. He ejects, and is promptly podded.

Now at this point I'm not overly impressed with them, ransoming a 200m isk ship is fun, but taking money for a "escort" then feeding him to pirates isn't really my cup of tea.
Then podding him after he ejects is just plain wrong in that situation.

Then to make matters worse, one of the corp members convo's the chap (who's still wiping the pod fluid off) and then promises to return his ship if he contracts over some loot, a deal is agreed for a pile of ore (about 5m worth) at which point the contract is accepted and the victim booted from the channel with a "welcome to eve" message.



Now the chap who lost his hulk is an idiot. That is not in question. However dishonouring ransoms, and blatently lying really annoys me.


People who have had ransoms broken on them tell other people, soon no one trusts anyone and extracting even the smallest of ransoms becomes impossible. I enjoying collecting ransoms, the interaction adds a little more fun to the fight, plus sometimes they stall and invite their friends to the party. Makes finding the next target far quicker.


But its only a game, it doesn't matter people say...

In someways, it actually makes it matter more.

Do what you say you will do, if you ransom a pod, let it go, he'll come back and pay again someday.