The high price of trust in EVE
by James Egan 
Aug 10th 2008 at 11:00AM
Filed under: Sci-fi, EVE Online, Culture, Game mechanics, Opinion, Politics
Trust is a rare commodity in EVE Online, and is one of those aspects of the game that makes it at once interesting and frustrating. That friendly person who offers you assistance in a mission, wants to sell you a faction module, or seeks to join your corporation may very well be waiting to backstab you when you least expect it. This might sound bad, but it's not necessarily a terrible thing in terms of enjoying the game. Indeed, some may feel that it adds to the risk inherent in EVE, and thus the thrill. The fact that players can manipulate trust within the rules of the game is one of the aspects of EVE that sets it apart from most other MMOs.
The risk vs. reward stakes are raised when trust comes into play with groups of players. Collective action through corporations or alliances will, at some point in time, entail trust. It may be a CEO or director lifting restrictions on access to resources for a member of the corp, hoping that the faith placed in the recruit wasn't a bad move. In other scenarios, the situation is reversed -- a director decides to cut and run, seizing assets and leaving the corporation shocked and understandably enraged.
The concept of 'Trust in EVE' is explored in-depth in a piece written by Soleramnus, for EVE-Mag.com, where he looks at both sides of the dynamic -- the corp official who places trust and the thief who betrays it. Soleramnus writes: "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?"
These are questions that most EVE players will be faced with at some point. What have your own experiences been with trust and betrayal in EVE?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
SomeGuyHere said on 11:18AM 8-10-2008
Yea but whats the most that anyone ever stole from a corporation?
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crsh said on 12:27PM 8-10-2008
The best part about the risk factor in Eve is that it's completely intended by CCP, it's an integral part of the game and has been so from the very beginning. I love that about Eve personally, it also adds a good twist to RPing.
Eve has minimal rules and safe-guards about player interactions, CCP won't intervene if you've been mislead or scammed (as long as it's playing by the defined rules, of course), it's up to you to be on your toes. Definitely something that's lacking in many MMOs.
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Brendan Drain said on 8:48AM 8-11-2008
In addition to the high cost of trusting the wrong person, it's important to remember that the converse is also true. Being trustworthy is in itself a valuable comoddity in EVE and having a long and proven track record of trustworthy public dealings opens up a lot of doors for players. Chribba, for example, is widely trusted in the EVE community and runs his "third party" escrow service for big trades and business deals.
Due to trustworthy names behind them, entites like EBank are able to succeed despite a few high profile bank scams in the past. I myself have been able to run two massive public investment schemes worth a total of 60 billion isk which sold out extremely quickly. I've since closed them down but it's nice to know that if I ever wanted to start them up again, people would be more than happy to trust me with their isk.
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Brendan Drain said on 8:55AM 8-11-2008
The EIB scam claimed a value of 790 billion but that was determined to be fake. The highest confirmed amount would be this:
http://eve.klaki.net/heist/
Note that the Tech 2 blueprints have since increased in value tenfold and continue to rise.
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