Researcher Trolls MMO, Surprised When Players Hate Him 895
D1gital_Prob3 writes with this excerpt from a story about David Myers, a Loyola professor who spent some time studying superhero MMO City of Heroes/Villains:
"... he aimed the pointer at his opponent, the virtual comic book villain 'Syphris.' Myers, 55, flicked the buttons on his mouse and magically transported his opponent to the front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player. Syphris fired an instant message at Myers moments later. 'If you kill me one more time I will come and kill you for real and I am not kidding.' ... As part of his experiment, Myers decided to play the game by the designers' rules — disregarding any customs set by the players. His character soon became very unpopular. At first, players tried to beat him in the game to make him quit. Myers was too skilled to be run off, however. They then made him an outcast, a World Wide Web pariah that the creator of Syphris — along with hundreds of other faceless gamers — detested."
Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
So, a researcher enters a foreign land. He obeys the strict letter of the law, but ignores the customs and rules of polite behavior. Even more, he specifically sets out to break those customs and rules of polite society. The natives push back, telling him that he is being rude. He continues to break the customs and rules of polite society, offending large numbers of people on a regular basis. The natives seek every legal avenue and socially acceptable method to drive him away. He continues to offend. Some natives start pushing what is social acceptable, and skirting the edges of legality.
Wow, color me surprised. Those nasty natives! How dare they try to keep you down!
Perhaps as followup research he can start referring to people of other ethnicity using racial slurs.
Not trolling (Score:5, Insightful)
Carebears (Score:4, Insightful)
Myers, who bought "City of Heroes" when it hit store shelves in 2004, quickly learned that players ignored the area's stated purpose. Heroes chatted peacefully with villains in the combat zone. Instead of fighting each other, members of the two factions sparred with computer-controlled enemies..
What kind of silly carebear game is this? Try Eve, where the time it takes to rid yourself of such nonsense is measured in the time it takes to warm up a railgun.
Well duh... (Score:1, Insightful)
MMOs are nothing but overglorified IRC clients.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:2, Insightful)
... in virtual worlds the rules can be set by the players themselves. The developers in this context are enablers, rather than Gods passing down "rules".
If those user-driven rules are so important for the gameplay, they should just pass them along to the developers so they can add them to the actual rules. That's what we in the real world call "Laws". If they don't like the way things are they should go play somewhere else. Stupid whining babies...
Re:within the rules doesnt mean its within the rul (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
I like your suggestion:
because it is entirely ridiculous and indicative of what the users (how can you call them players, when they ignore the intent of the game) are doing. Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs." Why the hell have a city full of heroes and villains, if the villains and heroes just idly chat and don't actually fight each other?
And when someone does play the game, the natives get pissy as all get out. Sounds like a bunch of crybabies inhabit those games if you ask me.
Makes you wonder... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Anti-scoial != Indepedent/Mainstream (Score:3, Insightful)
More like a griefer, which made his antics instant win.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:5, Insightful)
A player was being irritating, which is within the rules.
The rest of the players turned him into an outcast, which is also within the rules.
I don't see the problem here.
Re:Carebears (Score:1, Insightful)
Pet peeve of mine: Players who join team games but don't help the team achieve the stated objective. "I'm here to have fun, stop bugging me!" No, this is a team game and YOU are the ass if you don't help your team. Then I get kicked for getting in the way of their self-centered fun...
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.
This is the thing with MMOs and really modern gamers. People lament that you can't actually role play in a computer RPG, but here's a guy doing that, and he's an outcast. Heros don't hang out and chat with villains. They fight. What we have here was people that didn't actually want to play the game. They just wanted to rack up (dubious) "achievements".
The prof did exactly right.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:1, Insightful)
Not all rules can bet programmed in. For example, camping. You can't make it impossible to camp, but in a lot of games (read: not all) it ruins the fun.
If the admin says no camping/playing cheap on his server, go to a different server, 'stupid whining babies'.
Death threat? (Score:3, Insightful)
Stunned? (Score:3, Insightful)
I weep for higher education. Here we have a man with a Ph.D. and a teaching position, and he doesn't know the first thing about culture. Is he lying when he says he was stunned?
The professor was disturbed that game rules encouraging competition and varied tactics hardly mattered to gaming community members who wanted to preserve a deeply-rooted culture.
Again, how can an educated man be so ignorant? Ah well, I suppose he's like the Ph.D.s at my mom's job - the ones who regularly send her email hoaxes, viruses, and Howard Dean campaign contribution requests.
Re:Not trolling (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the point was that in the past the 'rules of polite society' said that blacks had to 'know their place' such as sitting at the back of the bus and only eating in the 'colors section.'
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:1, Insightful)
For those people who found my previous analogy too complex, who insist that because he's playing by the formal rules it's okay, I recommend trying a related social experiment: Head on out to public park where people play pickup games of basketball, or, heck, chess. Once you're welcomed in, start engaging in the most foul insults you can to distract your opponent. Might I suggest racial epithets? Since you're playing by the rules trying to win, no one will mind or get angry. Anyone who does get angry is blowing it out of proportion, since it's just a game. Now keep coming back day-after-day to do this; since it's a public park and you are obeying the law.
If you end up ostracized, I trust your moral superiority keep you company. And if you get your nose broken, you can take pride in knowing that you didn't break the law, so you're as pure morally as fresh snow.
Re:What an ass... (Score:1, Insightful)
This guy wasn't doing research, he just wanted a tax write off and a grant to do nothing but sit around and be a dick on the internet.
To be fair, it sounds like a fairly typical breaching experiment but "on the internet". I'm sure there's planty that can be learned about human behavior from this sort of thing except... his claim that he "was stunned by the reaction, since he obeyed the game's rules". Any serious researcher should have been expecting this or if not then at most be intrigued by it. Not stunned. The reactions he got seem to be well in line with what you'd expect from a breaching experiment along these lines. There's nothing new here.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:5, Insightful)
And just as with real-world laws, there's a limit to how much you can specify clearly enough, or how many restrictions you actually want to set.
In fact, I think we'd both agree that it would be a Bad Idea to have all laws be set to match social customs. There is no law against me walking up to your mother and calling her a cunt, and I would not want to live in a place that had such a law -- yet you probably still wouldn't want me to do that, and society in general would probably disapprove.
"Don't be a dick" can't be coded into law, but it's still good advice.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Except they're not playing games they're standing around chatting it up. It's IRC with graphical avatars.
Who makes the "rules" of a community? (Score:1, Insightful)
Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs." Why the hell have a city full of heroes and villains, if the villains and heroes just idly chat and don't actually fight each other?
Because people actually like it that way? I mean, who is this self-proclaimed researcher to go around enforcing his vision of how people should play the game with the equivalent of violent force?
Why do you say that going around beating up villains is actually "playing the game" and the people standing around and chatting aren't? Who gets to say what the game actually is? The developers or the people who play it?
In the real world, the people who make the laws of our society are our society's "developers," but the people who actually live in the world, or the "players," often set up unwritten rules. Just because the law says that something is okay, doesn't mean that it really is.
It's like people who go 45 MPH in the left lane on a 55 MPH road. Yeah, that's definitely what the laws say you can do, but most people don't, and the presence of a vehicle going a different speed from the flow of traffic creates danger and stress that shouldn't be there. Ignoring custom in favor of only the rules in print is antisocial behavior.
In terms of the game, the people who play City of Heroes have decided as a community what kind of behavior is acceptable. You only get to go PVP with people who have consented, and the arena is a place for people on other sides of the Heroes / Villains game split to be able to chat otherwise. It's a like a dance club where someone has decided that just because he's a man and you're a woman that he gets to bump and grind against you even if you're not interested. ("That's what dance clubs are for! Why is everyone ganging up on poor little me?")
I won't say that the abusive behavior of some of the angered players was acceptable, but this researcher is a space cadet if he thinks that what he was doing was perfectly kosher and/or commendable or that the reactions to his griefing were surprising. He was using the game's equivalent of violent force to tell people how to play the game and not respecting people when they said that they didn't like playing the way he did. Nobody likes someone who goes around ganking people for "playing wrong."
If he really thinks that the community's reaction to him "marching to the beat of a different drummer" is so horrible, then I wonder what he would think of someone driving by his home at 3:00 AM every night with the bass cranked up. Bold iconoclast? Or someone that he wished the cops would deal with?
I think this experiment illustrates quite clearly (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps you've heard of prisoner's dilemma? Mutual cooperation wins every time. E.g. in the Real World<TM> super heroes and super villains would join forces to do whatever they want (which would almost certainly be less than heroic but short of true villainy).
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
The attitude of the CoH community sounds a lot like the Saberists from JK2. They had all these 'rules' for dueling online and would clog up the deathmatch servers, vote kicking anyone that didn't play their way. Rather than actually play the game, they'd just chit chat in the corner and have duels between the players. Never mind the fact that in deathmatch mode there was a duel key that prevented the agreeing duelists from being harmed by outside forces, the Saberists preferred to just completely overtake servers and ruin game after game with their forced upon "honor" (boy I wish I was making that up). Sure you could try and find a different server, but eventually they had run off everyone else and trying to get a real game going was nigh impossible. Anyone that just wanted to play JK2 (and JK: Academy later on) straight and have a good time was hailed as a griefer, a troll and turned into a pariah.
Is what Myers did wrong? Absolutely not, he was playing as any newcomer would. I know my immediate impression would be: "An arena where the forces of good and evil do battle in order to see who's the best? Sounds like a blast! Wait, all they do is talk to each other and have their robots fight? What the fuck?"
Groups such as the CoH arena community, and the Saberists community before them deserve to be screwed with. While community rules for fair play can indeed be an important part of a game (for instance, acknowledging a certain mechanic is broken and not using it until it's fixed just out of good sportsmanship), when they're twisted around as to essentially ruin the intent of the game, then they've gone too far.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
Here's a better analogy. You walk over to a basketball court to play basketball only to find a group of people hanging around talking, maybe passing a ball back and forth, but no one actually trying to put the ball in the hoop. You start dribbling the ball, making shots at the net, and maybe ask people to start a game. They all tell you to keep it down cause they're trying to have a conversation. You keep playing and they keep yelling at you to get out of their, maybe start threatening you, because you're annoying them. If they want to chat they should go to the park benches and get off the basketball court.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
People lament that you can't actually role play in a computer RPG, but here's a guy doing that, and he's an outcast. Heros don't hang out and chat with villains. They fight.
Err, no they don't. Heroes only fight villians to prevent them from doing evil stuff, that's why they're *heroes* and not 'villians employed by our own side'. And if the villians decided to drop the baby-eating stuff and have a nice chat over coffee, a proper hero would go and join them, not beat them up just because "dude, he's like, a villian".
That's the thing with roleplayers I despise the most, that they all 'roleplay' as genocidal maniacs brainwashed into an "us vs them" ideology. No, just because goblins are part of the 'monster' class doesn't mean you should go and chop them up, and just because some guy was classified as part of the 'villians' faction means you're a hero if you go and kick his ass while he's chatting with a friend.
Which is why I and most people playing online don't "roleplay". Its hard, its usually not that fun, and most people who try fail completely at it and become worse players, in the community sense, than those that play it as a mere game. Like TFA.
Griefer is reviled (Score:5, Insightful)
and writes book describing why it's ok to be a Griefer.
More surprising to me was that in CoH/V PvP is not played as described. I play WoW, on both PvP and carebear servers, and boy do I get ganked whenever I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. There is no such "polite agreement" between Ally and Horde in WoW. How did one get established in CoH/V?
And while it does indeed suck to get griefed and ganked by the opposing forces, esp when I am no threat to them, if it starts bothering me much I just go do something else for awhile. The Alliance can't be roaming Tarren Mill all of the time? Can they? But it seems like I did have to log in in the Early AM Server Time in order to complete some of those quests.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:2, Insightful)
Laws? Kicking over a kid's sand castle isn't illegal, but people will hate you for it. I'm not sure what your point is here.
Re:More of a study of Socialogy than Video Games.. (Score:3, Insightful)
The individual. How the fuck can you play baseball with only one person?
Re:within the rules doesnt mean its within the rul (Score:3, Insightful)
so cut the bullshit about 'its within the rules', and get used to living in a society.
It's not a "society", it's a game.
In real society, people do things you won't like all the time, and they are still "within the rules". Get used to it. YOu don't get to threaten their life.
Correctly? (Score:5, Insightful)
He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.
How is teleporting people in front of NPC bots designed to enforce a safe zone instead of beating someone up yourself "playing correctly?" Especially when he was attacking people who didn't want to PVP by abusing a mechanism intended to protect people who didn't want to PVP?
The only reason he was "unbeatable" was because he built a character optimized to exploit a cheap trick that didn't rely on his own strength. I mean, he talks himself up as being skilled, but the truth is a little less flattering. Plus, he wasn't as nice and innocently curious of a guy as he pretends to be. An AC below notes that he would taunt people, post bragging kill logs, etc.
He was a griefer who basically bemoans how "haters gotta be hatin'." What a chump.
Re:Both sides of the mouth.. (Score:5, Insightful)
After reading the article it seems like he was a griefer who wrote a paper to justify being an asshole. He's "dismayed" and "disturbed" by behavior any anthro 101 student could have predicted from the start. Behavior that would seem like a perfectly natural response to his actions in the "real world".
tl;dr version of his paper: "assholes shunned online as in RL. WTF?"
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
Head on out to public park where people play pickup games of basketball, or, heck, chess. Once you're welcomed in, start engaging in the most foul insults you can to distract your opponent. Might I suggest racial epithets?
That's a ridiculous comparison, and doesn't relate to how he was playing in-game. It would be a better comparison if you insisted on calling all fouls, obeying all rules, etc. That's more in line with what he was doing online. He wasn't insulting anyone, he was playing strictly according to the rules. He wasn't going around shouting racial epithets and trying to anger people, he was fighting "villains" as a "hero", or, in other words, exactly what the game is supposed to be.
This isn't IRC with 3d models, it's villains vs. heroes. If you insist on comparing this with something real-world, imagine if you showed up on a basketball court to get a game and everyone was just standing around talking, but you just grabbed the ball and started doing layups. Is that really something to get all butthurt about?
Re:Not trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
In Everquest, it went like this.
You started a low level character.
You angered one or more bad monsters and dragged it (them) across the entire zone to the lower level area *Most outdoor zones had a 10 to 15 level spread). Then you zoned or died next to them and they got killed.
For bonus points, you then logged on your twink and took the camp.
This happened on p2p AND on pvm servers.
In Warcraft, it consisted of sneaking a high level character to the opposing newbie area and then killing newbies as they spawned... for hours or until you were banned.
For PvP Everquest, it consisted of camping the respawn spot and killing people *repeatedly until they quit trying to log in*. Often, their next action was to cancel their account.
So I agree, it sounds like the person was being a dick and camping them. Not clear why they could not get out of range of the police. Not clear why they couldn't kill the guy's character and camp him.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Indeed, what is "vile or crude" but violation of customs? While some "customs" are based on well-demonstrated concepts (like Robert's Rules of Order running a meeting), many are simply courtesies and apparently arbitrary rules (don't put your hat on the bar, e.g.).
It sounds like he was extremely "vile or crude" because he chose to violate the customs of the people in the game deliberately. His bad.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
because it is entirely ridiculous and indicative of what the users (how can you call them players, when they ignore the intent of the game) are doing. Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs."
Not to defend what the other players were doing (harassing the guy obviously went way too far), but even in real life there are "customs" in societies that disallow certain actions even though said actions are legal. If you're going to be a part of a community, any community, you have to follow the unwritten rules of that community or you're going to be mighty unpopular. Just because it's a game doesn't mean the community can be ignored, and you do so at your own peril. If you read the article it noted that players at first gently informed him that he was breaking custom, and he ignored them and continued to do so. After that the players gradually increased the attacks on him trying to force him to conform.
And when someone does play the game, the natives get pissy as all get out. Sounds like a bunch of crybabies inhabit those games if you ask me.
Just to give a real world comparison, in most places it'd be perfectly legal for me to sit on my front porch and cuss out everyone who happens to walk down the street. But if I do so all my neighbors will begin to hate me and do whatever they can to discourage my behavior. Sound like a bunch of crybabies to you? Or am I being an unrepentant asshole who deserves to be hated by his neighbors? If you don't want to be part of a community, fine, but don't whine about the repercussions. That's what this professor's doing, he ignored the customs of the community he was in, and he faced the consequences and whined about it. He's the crybaby, not the other players.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
What we have here was people that didn't actually want to play the game. They just wanted to rack up (dubious) "achievements".
Who said the game wasn't about racking up "dubious achievements"? Since the majority of players seem to do it, I would say that IS the game, or at least one of the most significant parts of it. Just because you think it should be played out exactly like a comic book doesn't mean the game should be that way, and anyone else doing anything different is not really playing it. It's a superhero GAME, not a superhero SIMULATOR.
This part in the summary also kind of irked me, and follows what you said:
Myers decided to play the game by the designers' rules disregarding any customs set by the players
COH was far from a first-gen MMO. The designers went in full well knowing the players would develop their own customs, and designed the rules around that. Basically, the players' customs are part of the game design. Those customs are there generally to make sure the game stays 'fair', or perhaps gentlemanly is a better word. It's a game, not a real war between superheros and supervillians. If Clark Kent was real, do you think he would want to kick Lex Luthor's ass all day? No, he'd want to take Lois out to dinner and a movie in hopes that he gets lucky. For a MMO to be fun, it depends a lot on the other players. The designers can't make griefing prevention mechanics for everything without affecting other aspects of the game, so to make it a fun for everyone, players develop their own rules/customs that everyone generally follows to make sure they all have a good time.
And you can throw out the argument that some people want a superhero simulator. This is true, not everyone likes the same thing. However, COH is not intended to be that 'simulator'. Why? Well first and foremost, MMOs are a business. You make something that you think your target audience will like, and you then generally cater to that target audience to keep them playing and paying. The game is quite mature, so the playerbase most definately represents the target audience at this point...otherwise they would have quit playing long ago. If the game was supposed to be a 'simulator' and not a 'game', the playerbase would be different.
Re:What an ass... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wow, I'm not sure which is worse - the fact that what he is getting reviled for doing *exactly* the point of the game (heroes and villians, think about it), or that you looked at the evidence and somehow concluded that he was doing it because he wanted to "be a dick on the internet." Sounds to me like he was playing the damn game. He wasn't even talking trash, for crying out loud! Sure, nobody personally likes the guy that kills them in a game, but the correct response is to try and kill him right back (in game), not whine, make insults, or send real-life threats.
The equivalent "next research project" would be going down to the bus station with a wanted list from the police, and calling the cops whenever he sees somebody on that list. Sure, that person might not have done anything to him personally, but they chose a "side" of society that... you know, this whole analogy is absurd. It's a goddamn PvP game, the objective being to pit player against player. Do you play CounterStrike by any chance? I suggest next time you play as one of the terrorists, you try sitting down for a chat with one of your opponents, and maybe suggest seeing who can throw a grenade the furthest (but not *AT* one another, of course!) You might get a "LOL!!" before he shoots you in the face. Probably only after, though. Quite a bunch of dicks, though counter-terrorists, aren't they!
Re:Who makes the "rules" of a community? (Score:5, Insightful)
This
and this
are arguing opposite sides. The developers are the ones who set the speed limits/laws, and not surprisingly, entering a Player vs. Player arena is explicitly saying "I want to PvP."
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
People chose to use the game differently to how the makers intended. That's fine in itself.
I don't think it is. This is a game people pay for. A game that is marketed in a certain way. If I paid money for this, I want to get what I was promised. I think the biggest fault is with the developers and moderators, not so much the professor or the other players. The developers are guilty because they should have provided a way to do what the people wanted to do (chatting between heroes and villains, which AFAICT is not possible elsewhere). The moderators are guilty because they should not have let the area get so out of touch with its intended purpose.
Re:He has no idea what he's playing (Score:3, Insightful)
The game itself is broken, then. Why the hell can you teleport somebody like that in that case?
I actually still find the other player's responses interesting. Instead of trying to use the same (obviously highly effective) tactic against this guy, or forming groups so that he can't do it to thim without dying as well, they're sitting back and whining, name-calling, and sending RL threats (easily enough to get you permabanned in most games).
Mind you, I've no interest in actually playing this game - the way you describe it, the designers must be absolutely retarded to actually permit this strategy - but I do find it interesting, from a societal point of view, that these people would choose to play a game wherin these tactics are possible, but get so very upset (as opposed to simply playing along, either by countering him somehow or replying in kind) when they are used.
meaningless statement (Score:5, Insightful)
That's meaningless, the programmed rules of the game are analagous to the laws of physics. Just because you can punch someone on the nose doesn't mean that you should, or that they should just shrug their shoulders and go "well, physics allows it, so I'm ok with it"
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
I believe it said "taunt" and that takes some level of insult to be effective.
It's like instead of playing basketball, both teams were just standing there chatting about nothing in particular and hogging the public court. He decided to start shooting some hoops, and some moron got hit on the head by the ball because he didn't move.
He didn't just start playing with the equipment near them. It's more like he'd run them over violently, then, after stepping on them, hand them the ball and say "your shot." That's within the letter of the rules, but not the intention. You are supposed to avoid fouls out of politeness, rather than foul them hard then let them have their shot, then foul them again even harder. There are players like that. They are osteracized much like he was.
There's plenty of analogies that would fit. Yours was not one.
He followed within the rules, but played unlike everyone else. That means he wasn't following the rules. Ever play a sport other than baseball? Soccer is non-contact, as is basketball. Hockey is often played under no-contact rules, and the NHL plays where almost no contact is allowed. Now, play one of those three and tell me if there is contact. The manner of play and what the custom of play is determines the rules more than the written rules do. He purposefully disregarded the "rules." In fact, he identified them and acted contrary to the expected play in such a manner as to cause the most amount of harm to the play of those around him. It's not unlike he went to an open court where people were playing 4-square and he'd steal the ball and start shooting hoops with it. He was winning, but not in the same game as everyone else, even if they were using the same ball and court.
Re:Who makes the "rules" of a community? (Score:2, Insightful)
[sarcasm]I see your point. Almost everyone is a fucking gay wannabe, so when someone comes along and REALLY plays the game, he's just an asshole.[/sarcasm]
I play war games. I play to kill. Some sissy crybaby comes to my game world, I'm going to rape him/her for whatever they have of value. If they want to hang out with a bunch of pansies, and talk about how great they are in bed, they can do it elsewhere. Give them a link for some pastel wallpaper for their gayspace page, and get them out of the game.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually he was not if you RTA. He was exploiting zone mechanics to deliberately annoy other players.
He wasn't fighting villains as the game designers intended... the real problem here is the game's moderators allowed the behavior because they could not prevent it without breaking the game. They could however protect him from all those mean nasty taunts and threats.
This kind of behavior is not news. Other MMORPGs have had similar issues. Everquest had the "Bard charm-the-dragon to kill the other dragon (or players)" exploits. World of Warcraft had the "lead the dragon to X major city to kill all the players" exploits. City of Heroes was never originally designed to allow Heros to fight other players as Villains. It was the addition of the PvP after City of Villains was released (2006?) that introduced the "exploit" mentioned.
All three examples above came as a result of the game designers releasing expansions with changes that had unforeseen consequences.
This so called "gaming professor" could have researched his paper entirely by reading other older games forums. Just like hunting whales provides very little new scientific insight - this guy didn't have to grief a server to get his name in lights. I would even go as far as to suggest the paper was entirely secondary.
see what you're missing in academia... (Score:5, Insightful)
Were I faculty at Loyola, I would find the IRB members who approved this and give them a very hard time, as this is not the kind of research I would want to be associated with. If he has done this without IRB support, I would ask that he be removed from the faculty.
I would point to his academic themed blog (linked to in the article), where he seems to go out of his way to belittle and further antagonize the non-academics who are complaining (he had a separate blog "in character" for his research, this is his "serious academic" blog). His response to an inquiry about the ethics of what he has done is to link to a discussion of similar researchers who seem to reach a conclusion that the ethics in MMO social research are complicated and suggests that transparency and respect of the other players is the best policy (in other words, he links to a blog that suggests he has acted unethically). That he is acting "in character" in his academic blog after the conclusion of the research and is not adhering to the "normal" research conduct of his field is, to me, totally unacceptable.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:2, Insightful)
The COH developers have addressed previous griefing techniques, such as teleporting other players into locations they could not exit, heroes camping the inside of the villain hospital, etc. However, griefers are inventive, and sometimes find new tactics faster than the developers can program ways to prevent them.
Re:Does entering a PvP ring really mean that at al (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, just because it's possible to PvP with anyone there doesn't mean that people have consented to PvP with you.
Try telling that to some player pirates in EVE.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not trolling (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure you read the article where it says,
"he aimed the pointer at his opponent, the virtual comic book villain "Syphris." Myers, 55, flicked the buttons on his mouse and magically transported his opponent to the front of a cartoon robot execution squad. In an instant, the squad pulverized the player."
The other player didn't do anything to him first. There was no way to avoid this while this person was in the game. And it is clear from his own quotes that he repeatedly griefed the same player into insta death.
I don't even play CoH and I'm angry at him and think he's an asshole griefer.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you measure the punishment for something you can't measure the crime in?
Re:Full Court Press (Score:2, Insightful)
It also is not "cheap" in terms of energy expended for the defensive team, and has a certain level of risk -- if the offense breaks the press and gets across halfcourt, the odds are pretty good they'll be able to get a quick and easy basket. It's a worthwhile strategy when used when necessary or as a non-routine variation that forces the other team to adapt. Do it all the time and the other team will adapt tactics (and personnel) to counter.
Re:Who makes the "rules" of a community? (Score:1, Insightful)
I can't disagree with your point, so I'm going to nitpick to prove my own point:
He was using the game's equivalent of violent force to tell people how to play the game and not respecting people when they said that they didn't like playing the way he did. Nobody likes someone who goes around ganking people for "playing wrong."
No. He was being a good guy who beat up the bad guys; the ultimate super hero fantasy. Personally, I'm utterly shocked and flabbergasted that people flagged for PvP or in a PvP area would cry that PvP had occurred. It goes against everything I know and believe for PvP fans to whine and cry over any one player or detail. All sarcasm aside, I don't think, at any point, did he threaten any good characters, nor did he take or threaten any action against the players of the "evil" characters. As far as I understand the article, he didn't try to make anyone play his way, he just played the way he wanted to. It was the players who, if you'll forgive the hyperbole, had heart attacks over clusters of pixels.
Re:He has no idea what he's playing (Score:3, Insightful)
This is a clearly marked PVP zone, in a game where everyone is on one side or the other and they are supposed to be constantly at war. If you want a farm a zone like that you do it at your own risk, and getting butthurt because someone on the other team was actually playing their character is just absurd and pathetic.
The same kind of idiocy this researcher found in this game definitely goes back a long ways though. I remember encountering it in MUDs way back in the 80s, and the cross-teaming that killed Everquest race-war pvp comes from the same source conceptually as well. These are players with no interest or appreciation for the game at all, who enjoy destroying it for others while chatting with their "friends" on the other side (who should be their mortal enemies) instead of actually playing.
No sympathy for them at all. IMOP they are deserving of the "griefer" epithet, not him.
What was his control? (Score:3, Insightful)
He claims to have done an experiment, yet from what I can see, he's tried a grand total of ONE behaviour.
Maybe all players treat everyone like they're an asshole, maybe it wasn't the killing itself, but the obnoxious bragging about it that got people riled.
Maybe it was the color of his pants, or the time of year, or maybe he did something outside of the game itself to bring it on.
And no statement from the developers of the game that what he was doing was how they "intended" the game to be played.
How can he possibly draw valid conclusions from this?
Re:They're scrubs... (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.xeodesign.com/whyweplaygames.html [xeodesign.com]
Sirlin's essay is correct insofar as it goes, but it ignores 75% of the categories of play. Scrubs are only scrubs if they are applying their socially constructed rules in the Fiero space. Socially constructed rules are normal and expected in the other three play types.
Re:Being an asshole makes people angry, film at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically just find a group of people that play the way you want to or be prepared to be disliked. In games like Jedi Knight especially it's easy to find a server that does what you want. There's servers that emphasize teamwork, servers for no-holds-barred 1337 kids, servers where people just want to pretend they're jedi and play act lightsaber duels or whatever. No real reason to linger on one when you can just head to another.
Re:within the rules doesnt mean its within the rul (Score:3, Insightful)
only if you want to be one of the cool kids who everybody gets along with. independant thinkers should be ridiculed for their non-conformity if the social convention where you are is to fart during a meal as a sign of approval of the meal you'd better stress that rectum into belching out some noxious gasses...
in all seriousness though... fuck socialism. A democratic society is one where you have freedom... this guy went into an online game and did what the game was designed for... heroes fighting villains, he broke no rules, he just pissed off a bunch of idiots that thought "heroes vs villians, that sounds like an interesting place to hang out and chat about shit"...
Re:Correctly? (Score:3, Insightful)
How else would a character whose major power focus was teleportation fight? Huh? The hero is supposed to go fight the villains but refrain from using his only significant power because it's unfair? That's ridiculous. If the teleport power is overbalanced, the game designers need to rework it or remove it, but dont blame the player for using what he has in an intelligent way to achieve his goals.
Re:Who makes the "rules" of a community? (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, others have pointed out the factual errors, but think about this for a minute man.
This is THE PVP area in a HEROS VS VILLAINS game. He's playing a hero. He goes in to kill villains. And HE is in the wrong?
A better analogy would be that he was doing 55 on a 55 road and really irritated the mob that was trying to use the asphault as a spread for their picnic. Solution - DONT PLAN PICNICS ON THE HIGHWAY SURFACE THAT'S NOT WHAT IT IS FOR!
Re:I think this experiment illustrates quite clear (Score:3, Insightful)
That and that "tyranny of the majority" thing.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the issue is in some people seeing it as a separate world/community and some seeing it as a game within our own real world/community.
This researcher was being a complete asshole, harassing people and ruining the game for easily dozens of people, in front of hundreds of others. How is that different than a guy who goes down to a park and starts knocking over people's chess boards? Revealing the end of movies outside of a theater, maybe going inside and shouting and being an ass during the movie? All the while, he's trash talking the people he's harrassing.
In the real world, people like that get the shit beat out of them (that is, something illegal being done to them for their [questionably] legal acts) and nobody would be at all surprised. Well, he's in THE REAL WORLD. Just because he's sitting in front of a computer doesn't mean he's in some magical place that is no longer reality. He's surprised at -threats-?
This research is absolutely useless, reveals nothing at all, and was an excuse for him to be an asshole while playing his favorite video game. This guy shouldn't even have a job, much less a degree.
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:3, Insightful)
fuck it, i have to post again, your post is just ridiculous.
first off, a griever is someone who causes grieve by interrupting gameplay in an unintended way, griever != whiner, please at least get your mmorpg slang right.
i have played eq, and cross teaming has absolutely nothing to do with this, you're not able to team up with anyone of the opposite faction in cox (only in cooperation zones, but we're talking pvp areas here), you can't heal them etc. i am repeating myself, people in those zones are playing as intended, they are pvping, they are fighting each other with some ooc text in between. twixt is essentially doing what fansy [notaddicted.com] did in eq1, are you getting it now?
Re:If it's within the rules, it's within the rules (Score:3, Insightful)
the anti-twixt folks were the griefers, you should RTFA
I did read the article. Some people used out of game methods to get back at him since his character was too powerful in game. Since your stuck in "RP is All" mode isn't it common practice that the villians would resort to defaming a 'hero' if they can't beat them? In any case, he reaped what he sowed, nothing more, nothing less. Role playing as a blood thirsty 'hero' doesn't absolve him of being an ass.
Re:What an ass... (Score:1, Insightful)
Sigh. I wish people would quit saying it's the point of the game to PvP versus the opposite faction. You obviously haven't played City of Heroes or City of Villains, have you?
Let me enlighten you. Yes, as a hero you go around defeating villains, and as a villain you go around defeating heroes. However, these are *all* NPC heroes and villains. While you can level inside PvP zones, actual PvP does not advance your character. Why is this, you ask?
It's because PvP in CoH and CoV is terribly broken. Horribly unbalanced. Not the kind of "unbalanced" people complain about in WoW where people get whipped up into a frenzy over a "nerf" that reduces their characters damage by 5%. I mean irretrievably, unarguably broken in a fundamental way. The problem is the power sets in CoX are too extreme to interact with eachother in a sane and balanced way when they're built to PvP. So the developers have basically abandoned PvP as a serious pastime for the players.
This isn't to say you can't show up, brawl a little, and have fun. That's largely what people do, in fact. It's really what the PvP zones are used for... people want something a little different, so they pop over to a PvP zone and fiddle around a bit. It's not serious PvP, as serious PvP hasn't been part of CoX in ages. What we ended up with was often people conducting polite skirmishes and duels.
So, enter a professor whose expressed purpose is to do everything he can to piss off people in the area, including talking trash (which you say he wasn't... but a little research shows he was... a lot), exploiting game mechanics for insta-kills, and being a general ass. Of course he'll get a bad reception. It's obviously what he was LOOKING FOR.
Just to reiterate, despite what the article says CoX is NOT about killing PCs of the opposite faction. It's almost exclusively "player versus environment" and the PvP areas are really just a side-show. One where this sort of behavior is quite inappropriate.
Re:Correctly? (Score:3, Insightful)
No, the drones at both bases are meant to prevent people from the opposing side from spawn-killing people inside the opposing bases.
Doing so does not accrue kill credits to the person doing it, or the side upon which he's playing. It merely creates debt and wasted time for the other player.
With a bit of extra accuracy and lots of range, anyone could do it. It doesn't make for a very productive or enjoyable gaming session.
There's a reason now why certain changes in the PVP system make this tactic less effective now.
What he wasn't saying (Score:5, Insightful)
The entrance to every zone in COH/COV is an area protected by police robots. The robots have rays that instantly kill anything in the game. The purpose of this is to prevent anyone from greifing people who are in the process of entering the area and don't have control of their characters yet.
If it weren't for these robots, then greifers could drag powerful mobs into the entrance area, or in the PvP area just stand in the enemy entrance area with a buddy or two, and prevent anyone from being able to enter without getting killed before having a chance to fight back at all.
There's also a "teleport foe" skill you can take, which is very handy for pulling, or for when an enemy gets stuck in a wall.
What this guy appeared to be doing was going into the PvP area and using teleport foe to teleport players on the other side into his own insta-death protected entrance area.
It is a very clever way to use the dev's griefer protection tools to grief people. What is most certianly is not is "playing the game by the designer's rules".
If you've ever had a conversation with a game griefer where they dumped their rationalizations for their prickish behavior on you, this article will look very familiar to you.