EVE Online is known for some of the activities that happen in game. The wars, the cunning, the manipulation, the sneakiness and the patience it takes to pull off heinous crimes in the game like infiltrating a corporation, or stealing billions of ISK. A serious question: when is it too much? Is it too much when a player tortures their victim?
The activities allowed in the game draw sociopaths to the game. You’ll often hear EVE referred to as having a “unique” player base. That’s what they are referring to. All EVE players are not sociopaths but there are a lot of them in the game. To be fair there are some in every game but EVE attracts more because, unlike other games, “bad” actions are often rewarded instead of punished or prohibited.
There is a difference between being a ganker, a spy or even a thief in the game and a sociopath. When a player PvPs in a game, it is normal to have a rush of emotions, especially if the player is taken off guard. The excitement of killing another player in game or success in completing a caper in game. The reverse is true, for example, feeling frustrated when dying in game or losing an expensive ship or cargo load. Those emotions are normal.
The person showing sociopathic tendencies does an action in the game, the victim is raging, and they are getting pleasure out of the victim’s anger or attempting to increase the victim’s frustration. The action that caused this (the kill, the scam, etc.) is done yet the emotions are still flowing, so it is no longer about the game. It’s morphed into something else at this point. They are feeding off of emotions after the game event happened.
Sociopath: a person with a personality disorder manifesting itself in extreme antisocial attitudes and behavior and a lack of conscience.
The person playing a pirate or scamming is not necessarily a sociopath. It’s when they feed off of causing someone anguish that the line has been crossed. Not my definition, as I said in the video, I’ve talked about this to professionals before making this video.
To avoid these types of players, if you lose a ship or something negative happens to you, do not show emotion. Become the quiet victim. Not showing anger or frustration will please the player that enjoys true PvP and will frustrate the sociopath because it is the negative emotion, not the PvP, the sociopath is looking for. PvP or scamming is just a means to get the true reward – making someone else feel bad.
True PvP players do not enjoy winning against a player weaker than they are and respect losing to a player better than them as it is an opportunity to learn and become a better player.
