Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Kohiko Sun]

Why must it be an alt that does it? You could drum up a ton of RP by networking, bribery, seduction, extortion, dirty back room deals, and other things by getting a 'legitimate' character already in the corp or alliance to do it for you. On one level, all of that is missed out when you use an alt to do it; unless you RP those alts communicating together by yourself, there's none of the shady, dodgy games being played out with the risk of the consequences for getting caught during the conspiring (as opposed to caught in the act).

(Re-Aw has had a blanket no alt-spy rule since the beginning, and that's one reason for it.)

[Mizhara]

There's no reason not to do it that way, but nor are there any reasons to consider alt-spai any less RP than the alternative, is it?

[Cheiftan]

OOHH i get to make an I-RED Official Statment... or maybe not

Anyways from my own personal perspective i dont see anything wrong with infiltration RP wise, i remember watching Jade talk about this at Fan Fest on the alliance pannel 3 years ago and i agreed with alot of what he said.

The problem lies here.

The leaks are of OOC resources and mails, they should not have been leaked as IC files.

But either way you all get to see our internal activity 

I didnt spell or grammer check this, sorry for the errors

[Silas Vitalia]

Oh, if people perform infiltration jobs without alts (by actually hiring another character) and that character succesfully leaks IC-tagged only, you'll have my worship.

Agreed.  If you use your main and have to deal with the results, then I'm more ok with it.  As there are currently no consequences for the betrayal by using alts, I find the whole concept stupid.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.  When you look at whatever results you would achieve, and realize only a few people would enjoy anything to do with it, and the others would be quite unhappy, why should you go through with it? Aside from being an ass?

I could run around decking small 10-man RP corps to oblivion with the amount of bodies at my disposal, but how would that benefit anyone in the RP community?

You should all ask yourself ahead of these sorts of things if it benefits us as a group, or just benefits your own sense of importance.

[Kohiko Sun]

There's no reason not to do it that way, but nor are there any reasons to consider alt-spai any less RP than the alternative, is it?

Personally, I think it's more what's fun for the players. We actually had this discussion about a month ago on the corp forums when a newer member was curious why we didn't.

Any spies we may have used have always been best described as informants. They have been characters who were already in the target corp that we have approached in an IC manner to get them to tell us things. Mostly, these are plans or current activities, never passwords (of the Vent or forum kind) and such except for imaginary RP ones for getting past a security robot or something like that which can be used in a RP scene.

It's basically the view of not breaking OOC trust to hurt OOC friends. I have a bigger reply there I can copy pasta here, if you want it, that talks about my personal experience with an alt of mine in a position to spy once.

[Louella Dougans]

and hires him to infiltrate

it is an odd kind of hiring someone, when there are no payments or communications ever made between them.

When the infiltrator character does not receive isk, ships or other material, not even for "expenses", and never sends any communications to the party that receives the information, then... why are they infiltrating ?

[Casiella]

So glad this thread has stayed civil and on-topic.

Louella: not that I've ever infiltrated a corp, but I have a number of alts to whom I laundered ISK and items, either through middlemen that couldn't be traced to me or through meeting at a safespot and dropping stuff into a jetcan.

Also: not all gameplay has to be direct RP, even for a roleplayer. Whether this says something about the player in question is a legitimate subject for debate.

[Mizhara]

Who says they're not communicating? It's enormously easy to transfer ISK and communicate without leaving anything but logs and contract stuff that can't be seen without extended API and so on.

[Andreus Ixiris]

Oh god, I hope no-one infiltrates Mixed Metaphor. People might find out I watch My Little Pony and still play with Lego.

[Lyn Farel]

Oh, if people perform infiltration jobs without alts (by actually hiring another character) and that character succesfully leaks IC-tagged only, you'll have my worship.

Agreed.  If you use your main and have to deal with the results, then I'm more ok with it.  As there are currently no consequences for the betrayal by using alts, I find the whole concept stupid.

Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should.  When you look at whatever results you would achieve, and realize only a few people would enjoy anything to do with it, and the others would be quite unhappy, why should you go through with it? Aside from being an ass?

I could run around decking small 10-man RP corps to oblivion with the amount of bodies at my disposal, but how would that benefit anyone in the RP community?

You should all ask yourself ahead of these sorts of things if it benefits us as a group, or just benefits your own sense of importance.

I have more or less the same feeling. And also with Merdaneth.

Though in any case, even if it is perfectly RP in most of the regular and well done cases, it makes me uneasy.

Unless you infiltrate a RP corporation being in the "immersionist" category with 100% IC stuff and no OOC relationships at all between members, well... Lets take KotMC (because i know how it works internally). You will enter in the corp with a half IC/OCC introduction if you are a roleplayer, or with a totally OOC introduction if you are not. You can pretend both, even if you are playing an alt of an actual RPer. In any case afterwise, you will have to deal with a purely OOC corp channel (and its the only mandatory one, but it is there). You will have difficulties to avoid not talking on it because people will naturally start to talk to you or even ask you questions. Same thing on vent, we do not consider it IC, and the most part of our forums are OOC too (even when commenting about IC stuff). We are only heavily RPing IC on dedicated RP channels. My point is that you will have to cope with OOC stuff when infiltrating us. You will always speak OOC with us, and the whole infiltration thing will be totally blended between IC and OOC things. Even if you betray IC-ly by purely IC actions and stabs in the back, you will obviously stab in the back OOCly too. And because it will happen after a while, you will also probably not be able to remember what was IC knowledge to your character and what was not (especially about what was posted on a RP log on the forums, etc). Eventually, your betrayal is half IC at best, and half OOC (if not more), even if you try not to do so.

In any case im not fond of "unilateral RP", even if it is about things that really happened ingame. I tend to favor cooperation and coordination with the other parties involved. Less insane.

[Louella Dougans]

Who says they're not communicating?

Some do, some don't.

I just think it is a bit like the sub 900ksp alts in rookieships to see what is on the other side of a gate before jumping in the main.

what IC reason does that alt have to be there? How do they benefit from their actions? how/why is the information transmitted IC to the main?

[Silas Vitalia]

Well said, Farel.

I'm recalling that Moira ooc infiltration on my guys a few years back with some unpleasantness.

[Kaleigh Doyle]

The implication that there has to be an rp motivation for every solitary act is mildly absurd too. The player makes the final decision, and may be acting on intel the character may not otherwise have access to.  Did your character have a pre-stated reasoning for training Mechanic 3 at 6:05am on June 23rd?

[Kohiko Sun]

Did your character have a pre-stated reasoning for training Mechanic 3 at 6:05am on June 23rd?

Yes. It was so she can be a better pilot and better serve her corp.

[Esna Pitoojee]

I think we can distill this down into three seperate questions by now, which are best addressed and handled as seperate issues:

1, Is it acceptable to, as part of an IC intelligence release, include information that is specifically or most likely OOC information (i.e., the information refers to out-of-universe things, is written in an obviously OOC manner, etc)?

I think this is the easiest to address, so I'll hit it first: No. There's not reason to release information that you are certain or pretty certain is OOC information as part of an IC operation. By doing this, you are effectively dictating for another player or group of players how they play the game, which in my opinion displays a serious lack of respect for fellow players.

2, is it acceptable to infiltrate another corp and release information / assets / whatever as part of an IC operation, with all aspects of this being couched in IC terms?

I'm going to tentatively say yes on this. I'm not certain on it because inevitably someone will infiltrate with intent not to just kill a valuable ship or loot some assets but to crush an organization out of existance via a coordinated campaign of sowing distrust, embarrasment of members, etc, and while I'm not generally one for "space bushido" I like to think we have enough respect for each other to not be crushing our long-term projects just for the sake of crushing.

3, is it "cool" to use alts for an infiltration (note that this includes alts who do so under the IC reasoning of "I was payed" or "I do it for fun" as well as alts with a full backstory for reasoning)?

Well, here's the thing - generally, it's very very hard to turn a player from a corp they have worked in for some time. Barring storyline twists (which also happen to be rather rare) and particularly ruthless characters, you don't have a lot of options - doubly so because unless you want to include a "middleman" or "handler" alt, the person you are approaching is going to be met by someone who is obviously hostile towards the organization they're part of.

So, it may be more a case of "no other efficient way, so people are just going to use alts" than "cool/not cool".