Anyone who plays EVE for three months or more, especially after coming from other MMO’s of various genres that want to ensure the “safety” of the player, quickly realize that EVE is different. Chiefly, that the exploitation of the player at the hands of another is an entirely valid and allowed aspect of the game. This does not apply to the exploitation of the game mechanics for purposes contrary to the universal game rules. “Exploits” of the strict term are quickly disallowed by the developers and players are punished for using them.
However, it is up to the player to trust whether or not the newest corporate recruit is an alt or a thief, or the person in local chat calling for mission help actually has a fleet of buddies, either on that account or another, that are waiting to jump in and gank whoever joins up to offer a helping hand. EVE will not replace your items or ISK if you make a mistake in trusting another player, whether he destroyed your T1 cruiser in a fleet or if he entirely cleaned out your corporation’s science hangar.
It is this simple fact that trust is a real, dynamic element in EVE that causes the in-game player interaction to be vastly more political and intriguing than other games, from the smallest level of two mission runners, to the largest levels of 0.0 mega-alliances. The ultimate question becomes: who do you trust in this game, how do you know you can trust them, and how can you be sure you’ve earned theirs?
This is the aspect of the game that simply has no clear-cut answer. No one can write a game guide to earning trust in EVE. EVE is an organic game, just like the people who run it. However, having seen many sides of the game and the people who run it—perhaps not the deepest, but certainly varied in their many facets, one may be able to make the conclusion that trust—earning, losing it, and manipulating it, depends on only one thing:
Dedication.
What is dedication? Dedication is your proof to the world that your actions line up with your words. It is consistency, it is stability, and that translates into trust. Dedication, even the simplest kind, but also the most consistent, can create the most powerful bonds in the game—the kind that cannot be bought. To show you exactly what I mean, let’s do a thought experiment involving a medium-sized corp (forty to seventy members) that is relatively stable, has solid leaders that cast a solid vision, and has no ties to any alliance superpowers. You are a new recruit with a lean towards industry, and after a very successful application process, you are delegated to the manufacturing division, with the hint that you may promoted to Science.
You know the following things: the corp has POSs due to a hint that was dropped in your interview, but of course they didn’t tell you where they are. Because they also have a science division, this means that they probably have sizable blueprint research and copying operations, if not moon mining and T2 manufacturing. After all, they have to pay for the POS(s) somehow.
As a manufacturing recruit, you are ordered by the division director to start building certain items. You are given passwords and roles to access manufacturing blueprints. However, you see that all the blueprints available to you are copies. Confused, since they all have a set number of runs and eventually will expire, ask the director where the BPOs are and why they aren’t available to you for building purposes. He replies that manufacturing does not hold the BPOs—that they are the assets of science, and that manufacturing division will only touch BPCs.
Now, if you are a new player to the game and have some smarts about you, you have probably realized that this is a security protocol for this corporation in case a manufacturing recruit decides to be greedy and make off with some researched BPOs. You have gotten your first taste of the world of corporate infiltration and the abuse of trust.
If you are not a new player and are actually a corp-thieving alt, you so far know that you’ve landed yourself in a smart corp—one that will not give you all of its assets in one swipe. You’ll have to prove your dedication if you want access to those BPO’s by staying in the manufacturing division for a month or more, continually producing goods and turning profits. That is, of course, if you don’t want to make off with what you already have. The corp has all of their minerals and salvage, even their T2 salvage, in the hangar floor since things can’t be built from inside station containers, and as a manufacturer you already have access to a number of precious, full-run BPCs. These assets may be worth anything from 25 million to 150 million, depending on how plentiful the resources are. Since salvage and blueprints weigh nearly nothing, you could swipe them and be across the universe in half an hour, subsequently deleting your character and sending the goods the way of your main, who is now quite a bit richer, and leaving the manufacturing division of some high-sec carebear corp paralyzed.
Is it good? For the robbed corp, no. Contrarily, the thief might say it was a great time for him. The devs have no comment on whether it’s good or not, but the corp’s petition won’t be answered—ever. And that’s the only answer you will get to the “is it good” question. There is no “good” in EVE—only the dedicated and what they decide to do with their said dedication. If you, the new recruit in our thought experiment, were indeed a corp thief, then you proved you were dedicated only to your own wallet, and really could care less about the health of these carebears and their corporate vision. Maybe you even spent a bit longer in that corp, finally gaining access to their Science hangar and cleaning out nearly 500 million ISK worth of BPOs, then selling the bookmarks of their POSs to local mercenaries. The corporation may be dead, but there are hundreds of corps in EVE just like them, and it was your wits and cunning that got the better of them. There is no such thing as karma in this game.
By chance, however, if you were dedicated to the corporate vision, and began to respect the CEO and the work he put into the people he had recruited for nearly a year now, you could take the alternate route. You could work your way up, helping to grow the corp in your own small way, and ultimately, after a few months, become the manufacturing director. The corp grows by 30% during your career, and shortly thereafter is gains political traction in the region and is capable of forming an alliance. And you proved your dedication to a corporation that is on it’s way to being a regional power—you are trusted with the CEO’s most secret of plans, and the most valuable of the corporate resources. He believes you will never sell him out, and with good reason—you’ve proven your dedication time and time again, helping with the new recruits who were once just like you, expanding the division and running it smoothly in the CEO’s absence.
This is why I say that dedication is the measure of trust in EVE. Trust, and how much trust you’re given, is all in proportion to the dedication you’ve shown in any situation. In our thought experiment, you were either dedicated to the corp and her members like you said you were in the interview, or you were just dedicated to the fattening of your own wallet. There is no moral judge delegating the consequences of either of these choices aside your own. It all depends on where your intent is, where your words are, and how your actions line up between the two. Even as a member of six months and a manufacturing director, you could still decide at the drop of a hat to clean out both the manufacturing and science hangar. But you won’t, because that dedication affects you just as it affects the corp and how much. You care about the people now, you care about the CEO and helping the continuing growth of this corp, which somehow you too have a stake in after all this time.
Unless, of course, you’re just that cold-hearted of a thief, or were inserted there purposefully by a rival power to take down our thought-experiment corp from the inside out. It’s all a possibility, but that possibility can only be judged in terms of it’s probability. And that probability can only be judged by how well your actions line up with your words—which everyone knows—and your intent, which only you know. It’s only one example, and one of many that could be explored. But the principle applies, all the way from the smallest scale to the largest scale, and even in ways you might not first think. For the simple, trust is given. For the wise, trust is earned—and in EVE, even the most ancient, timeless of human wisdom applies. Whether you’re the thief or not.
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