[Mzyxptlk]

I don't think many people are playing in a way that is harmful to themselves. Their goals may not be Bobzy's, your or my goals, but they make sense to them.

To make the problem a little more concrete, let's look at galaxy exiling. Veteran players have always ruthlessly farmed and then exiled newbies landing in their galaxies, because the odds of that newbie becoming useful to such a single-round semi-random collection of planets are slim. Better to get rid of them and bet on an experienced player, especially since you can influence the outcome of that bet by coordinating with such players exiling around.

This is clearly harmful to the long-term viability of the game, because if newbies have a hard time penetrating the community, they are unlikely to stick around.

You could say, well, veterans shouldn't do that then, but if I decide to keep newbies in my galaxy, then I am less likely to do as well as people who get rid of them. The Nash equilibrium is exiling. There are clear parallels with the tragedy of the commons and prisoner's dilemma, though I don't know if it's quite either.

One way the community could discourage selfishly optimal behaviour that is harmful in the long term is by punishing those who engage in it. Unfortunately, if dishing out such punishment were selfishly optimal, we would all already do it. Since we don't, it must be non-optimal for the persons engaging in it, thereby creating another gap: between people who selflessly punish and those who selfishly don't.

Ultimately, the only people who can improve the situation across the board are the ones who made the rules that gave us the incentives to behave destructively in the first place: the developers. If every time you exiled someone, everyone in the galaxy lost 10% of their value, people would stop exiling real ****ing quick.

This is just an example. Some others, off the top of my head: cheating (the offside rule is not enforced by the opposing team), blocking, OOT support, escorting, defwhoring.

We're all still dicks, of course.