That doesn’t mean it’s unethical either. If you’re going to accuse people of unethical behavior, you should be able to defend exactly why it’s unethical and with something better than “Because I don’t like it” or a bunch of faulty comparisons to yelling in public parks.
Furthermore, in that situation Bob would be interacting with people NOT also playing the LARP or whatever it’s called, which isn’t the situation going on here. People not in the game (i.e. people browsing CNN, for example) aren’t even germane to the argument.
A better comparison to the situation in question would be Bob hollering his obscenities at other LARPers, not at non-game players. And furthermore, if it was explicitly a “cuss-like-a-sailor” LARP event, or cussing wasn’t actually forbidden, then the other LARPers have no leg to stand on if Bob decides to use the word “cunt”, even if they don’t like it and it makes them uncomfortable.
That’s the LARP in the park equivalent of what you’re arguing, I think.
Dude, I have explained why it’s unethical referencing Kantian ethic’s universalizability principle. How much more exact are you expecting me to be?
Edit: and that bit you put in quotes is not remotely like anything I’ve said. Please don’t do that.
In a world of magic including divine resurrection and fireballs Kantian ethic’s universibality principle is irrelevant. Additionally anyone can argue that is ethical even using real world axioms by appealing to might makes right. But it’s not the real world and playing as intended and encouraged by the developer is fine regardless of a subset’s erroneous presumptions s out what the game should be.
I acknowledged you don’t like free for all PvP. I don’t either. Nothing frustrated me more than spending 6 hours in a dungeon with friends and getting robbed as we made our to town. It sucked. And at first I felt those were truly scummy people to do that.
But I dont know that they were or weren’t. All I know was that in retrospect they were to the best of their knowledge playing the game as the developers intended. If the developers didn’t like a particular action surely it wouldn’t be too hard to patch it in. So after that thought why should I get pissed at people playing the game as designed? That’s clearly irrational. If I didn’t like the game as designed I need to petition the developers to change it. Not hope that some form of non-existent universal morality predicated on assumptions of how the game should be would sufficiently influence people to behave in the manner I desired. Especially since the presence of said PvPers was proof that the hope for change approach had already failed.
Middle and Upper class American conventions on decorum are also irrelevant. You have entered a game environment where it’s explicitly allowable to decapitate your player controlled foe and carry that head in a sack. This behavior was and probably is 100% still allowed in UO. The difference then compared to now was that the consent you gave was not as explicit. Outside of ISIS controlled territory that’s far outside of the realm of allowed behavior regardless of intent.
Yes, mules and non gray/red intermediaries, were a borderline exploit. That’s probably a technical problem that will be very hard to fix and abusing those to avoid the in-game penalties is problematic.
Let me ask you this, Left Hand of Dorkness, is the exact same behavior on a free for all server like the original UO unethical if there are also UO servers that have 0 or only with consent PvP? Because if it isn’t then your problem is a due to a perceived lack of choice not the behavior. If it is equally unethical even though one has the choice to play completely separate and safe, well, I think we know who the obstinate one is.
Good example. You just described the Pit. Lol. Dopers can non-consensually pit someone for any reason and lie about them, call them names, and with sympathetic mods get them banned for not playing along. But please don’t say “cunt.”
“That ruins our fun.”
Kantian ethics don’t apply to gaming as you’d like. Scarcity of resources keep everyone from playing the same way whether they are crafting, raiding dragons or hitting a dungeon. Furthermore, if everyone exclusively attacked other players it would not work however, as has been explained numerous times, that is not how PVP players operate. On the other hand, if everyone added some PVP into their play style, the game would do just fine as evidenced by PVP servers. Even Bump did not exclusively engage in banditry, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten to a level where it was an option and would not cite the scarcity of monsters as his initial motivation.
So, no, you haven’t made much of an argument that PVP players are unethical.
First, I do have a very specific argument. You disagree with it, but it’s scurrilous to paraphrase it as “I don’t like it” or as something not specific. Do me the courtesy, please, of not mischaracterizing what I’m saying.
Second, Kantian ethics apply to all of human existence, including the act of pressing computer keys as part of game-playing. They don’t apply to the in-world fantasy, but if you think they don’t apply to situations with scarce resources, you vastly misunderstand the system of ethics.
Your repeated argument was that PVP violated ethics because not everyone can play that way all the time. This is a poor argument since no one plays that way all the time and since no one can play ANY way all the time unless it’s just standing around and staring at one another. On the other hand, people CAN play with PVP as an essential part of their balanced breakfast and do so all the time including on servers explicitly reserved for PVP. We know exactly what would happen if everyone played with a PVP mindset because there tons of examples and… well… it works fine. So someone playing PVP sometimes isn’t really unethical based on the idea that everyone can’t do it all the time.
If I’m misunderstanding your argument, please let me know and clarify. Although I suspect that the root of your argument is in error.
People can play PvP all the time. You can respawn and attack with starter gear indefinitely. And resources being limited is completely irrelevant. The computer game is a make believe world that one voluntarily participates in.
A major problem that may be contributing to this is the unbalanced nature of certain game features. Many FPS games simply have overpowered sniper rifles that allow players to do amazing things (such as quickscoping) that simply aren’t possible in real life. The answer to this isn’t to tell players not to quickscope (which leads to resentment and often disobedience), but to change the game engine to make quickscoping less of an advantage.
Roleplaying systems that allow in-character “crime” are very hard to do well. One major reason could be that the vast majority of people in real life, even criminals, are afraid of criminal penalties and will thus avoid committing crimes when the cost seems too high. In a game, a player who finds himself at the end of an unsuccessful criminal RP can hit the reset button, create a new character, or just farm XP for a few days and get right back in without having to spend a few months or years in prison. That makes it very much unlike real life.
Has anyone implemented a game that has somewhat realistic penalties for crime? It would be neat to have a game where a criminal character gets caught and then has to check in with a probation officer or else they face even more in-game penalties.
Not that I’m aware of. One of the problems is what you have perceived and that is cost. In real life people engage in unethical and/or criminal behavior all the time if the risk is low. Who here claims all sales tax saving from out of state shopping? Who here clears cookies to read certain sites unlimited? Who here shares music? Who here consumes any resource gluttonously while others starve? And that’s in real life where the consequences are vastly more severe than a video game.
So if anti-social behavior in a video game that allows anti-social behavior has negligible costs the expectation is that that behavior will be common. The solution is difficult because the developers try to balance too many competing desires. What I would do is allow one character per server. That still doesn’t address the people who can afford multiple accounts. Some people multi box with 40 characters!
That’s not my argument at all. Bump got sick of waiting to farm monsters and craft alongside the other rubes. That way of playing–farming alongside everyone else–is something everyone can do. So he switched to the style of killing other people and taking their stuff. That style–letting others farm, then kill and take their stuff–is NOT something everyone can do.
That’s not how Kantian ethics works, Jophiel. Kantian ethics, for example, condemns lying, based on the fact that successful lying depends on people trusting what you say, and if everyone habitually lied, that trust wouldn’t be there, so lying wouldn’t work. Objecting “but nobody lies all the time” completely misses the point of the ethical calculus. Similarly, the fact that nobody PVPs every second misses the point of the ethical calculus.
We also know what happened in UO: people got very frustrated, a lot of people got very frustrated, and a lot of people felt like this approach ruined the game, for much the reasons I laid out above.
Again, in other games–Team Fortress 2, PVP-server WOW–I don’t have any problem with PVP per se (it is of course possible for someone to be a jerk during PVP, but it’s not the player-killer aspect that’s leading to their jerkitude). I’ve played plenty of PVP games myself; the problem isn’t a personal distaste for it either. We’re talking about a specific kind of PVP, the prey-on-people-playing-a-different-way style that bump engaged in, that I’m condemning. Please don’t try to broaden what I’m saying beyond that.
I think I’d be fine with it if people could play the same game in a PVE environment.
That’s not correct. My problem is with the choice bump made, given the choices others made. At its simplest form, he saw folks uninterested in engaging in conflict with him, and he engaged in conflict with them against their will. The fact that the game rules allowed him to do so aren’t as important, since the game was so nebulous; what’s important is that he knew they weren’t interested in the conflict with him and he forced the issue.
If there were PVP servers, then everyone who went there would be spending less time gathering loot or making loot and more time stealing it from one another. That situation, with a lot less loot around, satisfies Kantian ethics.
Not exclusively, no. But that’s not what people do. And Bump “got sick of waiting” because not everyone could farm creatures either. Hell, if more of those monster-killers spent time in PVP, there would have been more monsters.
But everyone CAN habitually engage in PVP on a non-exclusive basis. It works just fine.
But that’s not a matter of ethics. If I get frustrated and feel like the over abundance of monster hunters is ruining the game, that doesn’t make your monster hunting unethical. The developers made a smart call in modifying the game to appease more people but that doesn’t imply that ethics were the cause or issue.
Yes, everyone can farm creatures. If everyone does, everyone waits longer to get a successful farm. But everyone can do it.
Again, what bump was doing was more specific than that. Do you understand that what he was doing was more specific than that?
The “over abundance of monster hunters” is an issue with a lot of people, and that’s a developer issue. But what bump did wrong was a specific thing to a specific person, and that’s where he can be faulted. He knew other people weren’t playing the game for the purpose of PVP, since the game had other motives; he used that knowledge (that they were probably playing for PVE and crafting) to his advantage; he used a loophole in the rules to avoid in-game consequences for those actions.
I still think that whatever Kantian ethics are is a poor set of axioms for an online game. We have choice about whether or not to participate in a game with a rule set known to all participants prior to joining. This isn’t real life where the participant inhabits a body they did not choose in a world he did not choose. Choosing to participate undermines most everything else.
Even anti-social behavior directed at the player if said anti-social behavior was a known and advertised feature of the game is not unethical. Your reaction to a paid dominatrix spanking your booty would be different in an environment in which that was not the norm. I understand the frustration because I played UO for the same reasons you and Miller did. I played to work with others and beat up monsters and have a mutually good time. I was quickly educated that my point of view was a bit naive.
That’s why my approach was to argue on the UO forums for more server types. Arguing from a point of ethics is a complete waste of time. Different people are going to argue from different sets of axioms and in that case logic and reason are irrelevant. However, arguing for different server types can and did solve the problem.
Once more, with feeling: bump’s mistake wasn’t simply engaging in PVP play. If you think my objection is purely to his engaging in the PVP play the game advertised as a feature, you will never understand why I object to it.
Hold up. I never played UO. This is not a case of my whining about mistreatment. I think it’s an interesting ethical discussion that illuminates how humans should act in quasi-public spaces, not something I bear a grudge about.
My apologies.
But if you would have played UO, you would have known or should have known, that PvP was a large part of the experience. Major systems were designed around PvP. And since you didn’t even need a weapon to engage in PvP everybody could participate all the time.
Now I’m not saying pk’ers weren’t jackasses. I’m just saying that merely pk’ing isn’t sufficient to determine that.
Once more, with feeling: bump’s mistake wasn’t simply PKing.