Who has the moral high ground in Star Citizen, the PVPers or PVErs? I'm a long-time player and I've been enjoying the PVP aspect of Star Citizen for the past couple of years. I currently train other pilots to PVP within the Org, Vanguard. In Vanguard we have a strict policy against piracy and killing other players outside of our ROE (rules of engagement). Not everyone within Vanguard engages with PVP but there's a large number of us who do. That's just to give the perspective that I'm speaking from and whatever bias I might have. The ROE and stance against Piracy isn't because of any moral reason but rather established out of Role Play, though some members of Vanguard probably would argue against that. If Vanguard declares an area off limits to outsiders then anyone who enters our vicinity is fair game to engage in combat. What enables this type of gameplay? There are a couple of reason's we're able to freely engage in PVP, the primary reason is that we're a large org with capable players that are able to work together and fend off threats. There's virtually no in-game consequences for a group of people to harass players trying to fly into or out of a station, unless they encounter a force that is more powerful than their own. Hopefully there will be reputation systems in the future to mitigate this issue. Unless CIG essentially breaks the AI security to be unstoppable or implement a system wide armistice zone where you can't damage another player ship there's really nothing that will prevent PVP even within a High Security system. My personal wish is that they would remove armistice zones at trading outposts and install turrets to shoot any active threats. So where is this moral superiority among PVErs coming from? It's important to remember that this is a videogame (or you could argue a tech demo). There are representations of morality within the game, like accruing Crime Stat, but killing a player or stealing cargo is obviously not equivalent to doing these things in real life. If you're playing a renegade character within Mass Effect, you're just role playing and seeing what consequences your character might encounter within the game. The same is true of players who pirate and PVP within SC. A player who has grown complacent in their piloting and hasn't made the effort to make friends within a multiplayer PVP environment will occasionaly suffer the consequences of that decision. Not being good at the game doesn't give you the moral high ground over someone who practices an hour+ a day. You can complain sure, but the complaints usually aren't valid. There is of course nuance here, ganking players at XenoThreat who can't even move after jumping into the wreck site is pretty dirty. There are cases where it is appropriate for CIG to step in. They can't however ban people for taking advantage of every broken mechanic in a game that's still in development, ex. players taking advantage of bugged strafes on the Hornet Series. There have been cases where bans were, IMO, unjustified but I also only know about things from a limited perspective. I was part of the security detail the day the Experience was torped but due to a gross misallocation of resources, myself and other security members were sent to scout ahead of the 890 around the time things went down. It was a situation that could have easily been avoided with the proper planning and skillset but I suppose hindsight is 20/20. I have very little room for sympathy for Bobs who attempt to discredit the PVP community as it's generally due to the complacency of the Bob that they're in a disadvantaged situation. Yet because they are either inept or piloting a non-combat ship, their lack of combat effectiveness somehow affords them a moral advantage against players looking to have some type of player interaction. Then once they have lost they revert to spouting insults in chat and complain here in Spectrum. Even within the PVP community there are those who would claim moral superiority because they claim to only fight fairly. No missiles, no distortion, no backstrafing, no taking advantage of bugged strafes and no 3rd partying in BR. A lot of these PVP purists try to call out other players and kick people from discords and yet fly around exhibiting the same behavior. Again, it's a game and it's up to CIG to balance things to improve the gameplay experience for everyone. The F7A omnisky DPS race has made for an extremely uninteresting combat experience but that's not going to stop people from flying a meta loadout. I don't know about everyone else but I consider myself a gamer, not a volunteer QA tester. If you don't want to die to missiles, bring more than your enemy and queue those flares. We need to stop throwing around excuses at each other. Just stick to GF. Then there's the streamers and the issue of stream sniping. If you're playing Star Citizen for 8+ hours a day you have less excuse than anyone to not put in the practice time. Of course there's different types of content creators, some are more informative and don't actually spend that much time in game. Being able to make a living playing video games is an absurd privilege. Just be grateful the emergent gameplay is coming your way when you get engaged in combat. Obviously there's policies against stream sniping but the sense of entitlement that something as frivolous as a livestream can be deemed so important as to not be interrupted for any reason is a bit ridiculous. It's important to remember that you're still playing a videogame where it's pure escapism from actual responsibilities. If the combat is entertaining for the viewers it's still a win for the streamer. I'm not attempting to appeal to the minds of any of the Bobs here on Spectrum but if you're looking to get better at dogfighting then come join the rest of us PVPers. There's a lot of resources from orgs and videos online that can get you to the top of the pack. Luckily the current flight model has the highest skill floor and lowest skill ceiling the game has ever seen. Getting good only requires half the effort it used to. Hopefully CIG will implement gameplay consequences for players, good or bad. Until then, have fun out there and good luck in the Verse. This is likely my first and last post. Thanks for Reading - JJ