To me, this was the payback for all the ganks I've endured in my years of mmorpging and what makes me such a huge fan of the genre in spite of the occasional bad seed that griefs or corpse camps.
That's like parents abusing their kids to take revenge for getting abused by their parents when they were children. Sounds like a criminal-justice problem, not a game problem, to me.
Sounds like you got some issus to deal with mate, chill out and try to think before you post such garbage.
Actually my premise rested on the design of leveling vs skill based games originally.
I brought up that alongside an example in Mount&Blade, noting how It's generally easier to find both competent/respectabe opponents and how the system inherently deters gankers by not generating an arbitrary insurmountable gap between the avatars abilities.
I accept perfectly fine that there's people who like to gank and be ganked. I just don't like them and find it nigh impossible to respect them. I know when playing a game and I'm fubar, and I accept the inevitable in such situations. I can enjoy those moments in the games I play because they are only able to happen because I'm actually against better skilled or better organized players.
That's also where my revised analogy 'If players don't want to get tackled by a freight train while playing football, they shouldn't be playing a hackneyed version of football where older athletes can drive vehicles on the field.' came in.
I was appealing to the case of the arbitrary difference in ability and inevitably one sided results.
I even said that. 'It's not a fight if there's a clear victor before the fight even starts, then it's just boring.'
I brought up the matter that I had the same experiences in AC and DAoC ffa servers early on too. They were simply more respectable games where the community policed themselves well. They even had public KOS listings for serious offenders.
And you keep making that comment that it must be condoned by the game since it's an option in the game regardless of disincentives.
In Planetside you can kill your team mates. You got negative rep and if you did it enough times you could get flagged. Nothing different about that situation. You wouldn't be banned from the game or anything for doing it, you wouldn't even get a peep out of the devs. Yet, people still knew it wasn't the right thing to do.
Did people still do it? Sometimes yes.
Did other people accept it since it was a part of the game? Hell no.
They took the regulation into their own hands. Ally keeps teamkilling, eject that twit into the water from your dropship next chance you get. Drop that twit from your unit and platoon an keep on trucking, leaving him behind.
And like I said with DAoC and AC. People did self policing. Both games let you kill anyone and everyone on their PvP servers, yet you could walk around most all cities without much in the way of concern.
This was especially amazing considering you looted corpses on AC, so there was potential reward from killing anyone, even lowbies. The reason it wan't rampant was because of a stable minded player base that dealt with the gankers in a swift fashion and did a wonderful job to deter them.
Also, on the real life versus games topic, you again are eluding to something I am mot addressing. Related maybe, but not the same topic.
It's well established that people won't suddenly become homicidal maniacs if they play a violent game. You don't need to take a trip to some exaggerated fantasy to belittle the issue.
The issue itself is that the two are indeed tied still. If you can't accept the causal relation between them then that's fine, but there's a great risk carried with denial.
It's no different in L2.
Players who were considered pk'ers or clans that were pk clans or griefers were considered as "bad" and would be considered a target by other clans/players. However, since entire clans came together in order to grief/pk etc one would have to field a sizeable force or just a force that was powerful enough to combat them.
Several times on the Hindemith server the server got tired of a certain clans actions and rose up to dethrone them. This to me is a good thing and quite frankly is the conflict that these games need.
I say if one wants to be a "murderer" in these games then by all means go for it. But there will be consequences. I have never claimed otherwise.
As far as you not liking or respecting these players, well that's your business. I knew of a very distasteful person in Lineage 2 who was known by a clan member. When I asked about him they told me that he was actually a distasteful person in real life as well. Some people use these games as venues for their own issues.
It is what it is. As I've said there are distasteful people in pve games as well.
I'm not saying people become homicidal maniacs and me bringing up the point that violent video games don't make killers is not belittling the issue, no matter how much you might insist that it is.
The point is that violent games don't make violent people. I would say from my experience (and not being a therapist) that violent people can very well be drawn into violent video games.
I mean, I can go log into L2 right now and take a town over before somone decides to come and challenge me. It still doesn't change the fact that I'm a vegetarian for humane reasons, don't condone real life violence and help little old ladies across the street. Which I have actually done.
I try not to judge people oh how they play these games. I do tend to judge them by how they address people. If a person takes over a noob city but is nice enough otherwise (meaning they don't verbally insult players) then that's fine with me.
But once again, this comes back to knowing what the game is about and accepting that if it's possible to do in game then it will probably be done to me.
If it bothered me i wouldn't play. My personal view is that anything that really bothers you is in reality a poison to your well being and should be avoided or lessened.
But changing my paradigm, my thought about being ganked, I realized that nothing bad happened to me and that it spurred game conflict and made for more interesting play.
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
'The point is that violent games don't make violent people.'
That is a less hostile remark that means the same thing as my 'homicidal maniacs' remark, y'know. That's an argument of semantics.
The fact that you're mentioning it at all belittles my remark, because as I said it is not what I was addressing. I agreed that killing people in a game doesn't and under normal conditions won't translate to people being killers in real life. Persistence on that is only service to distraction from real meaning.
Fact is there is a psychological correlation between the demeanor and behavior people have in game and out of game. It's just the same as if you played an aggressive real world sport. If you're overly hostile during the activity, it can and does effect your other activities post sport or post gaming. Part of the reason there's an emphasis put on 'good sportsmanship'. It's a deterrent from perpetuating tendencies that can lead to bad results both on and off the field.
And this isn't just some opinion, it's been a part of psychology and therapy study for a long time, and it's only due to gaming being a relatively new mainstream phenomenon that it is still a greatly misunderstood and unknown thing.
Again, I'm not saying violent games make violent people. I'm saying actions done within one context paint your view and responses to other situations.
Just as well, there's the old saying 'actions speak louder than words'.
Great, people don't insult you as they beat you to death. Most people don't insult you when they run you off the road or otherwise either, that doesn't make them any less of a twit.
I do judge people on how they play games as much as how they talk, because I know how easily they can be just like me.
I'm a mildly antisocial introvert in early adulthood working towards their middle age. You know what that means? I'm in the highest statistic bracket for people who may commit murder. The fact that I have a lot of self contained hobbies and generally don't like being around and talking directly to others are apparently bonus factors that pushes those statistics to higher probability.
Most violent people aren't big talkers. Annoying people are big talkers. Most antisocial people, even if they aren't into violence aren't big talkers either.
I intentionally counter this most of the time by playing supporting role classes. I separate myself from direct conflict because, while I'm good at it, it can cause me to become more harsh.
At this point you could turn around and say 'well that's only a potential issue because you're not the norm', but I only illustrate my condition because it's provides a more clear emphasis on the point. Predisposition or no, talking or no. One's actions can tell many things about one's mindset. The fact that someone doesn't talk while they kill a bunch of lowbies doesn't suddenly mean they aren't any more respectful, it more readily means to me that they may just be less social. You may be able to tell this by seeing how succinct of an answer you get when you /tell them with an inquiry.
We seem to honestly be in agreement though on the idea of server regulation. Self-regulating player bases and the concept of consequence for one's actions is generally preferred.
None of that really addresses my point still of leveling being a general problem that leads to the distasteful form ganking I keep hating on though.
It's like I've said before. I'm ok with people killing me. I can deal with that and I can deal with it being in an inopportune moment. The part I can't deal with is the gross dissimilarity in power that leads to these more rampant ganking moments.
Like the fellows you mention as camping lowbie towns.
I say I hate those guys not specifically or their choice of camping the town, but because their choice in prey. And that to me is more of a fault in the system than it is that of the players.
I'm very strongly for skill based games in general. I'm also for non-linear progression as opposed to the leveling that you see in games like L2 and, well, most MMOs. That's one of the aspects about Planetside that made me love it so much.
Not only was it an action skill based game, but all the leveling did was provide you more tactile variety and abilities more so than an upward progression of stats.
Even in a game that isn't skill based, I still prefer non linear progression to this ladder format people always use. It creates an arbitrary split in the player base that does nothing but offer opportunity for both unrealistic and meaningless chances to ruin people's days by making them weaker than you in ways that just don't make sense.
Even equating leveling to real world mechanics like weight lifting to become notably stronger than some one else, it's all a tradeoff. You get more mass, you get more trouble maintaining the mass, you even get less effective use of your strength dependent on bulk. Nothing is a clearly upscaling progression without counterbalancing.
That's where the problem lies to me. The ganking I hate only exists because a false gap in the quality o a player's characters, and in any reasonable circumstance it shouldn't be capable of happening simply because there shouldn't be that gap.
Now you can say 'that's a different kind of game', and you'd be right. This truly does boil down to preference here. But it's that preference in playstyle that makes me see this problem as a glaring issue with games like L2 as opposed to an intended game mechanic.
Which would also be why I stated that 'just because it's in game doesn't mean it was intended'. And just like you cited, L2 did add an inhibitor to higher levels ganking lowbies without consent. It took them a long time and a shift in the playerbase as a reason to make it as incentive for more players, which indicates that either their old community that didn't care waned and/or their playerbase's mentality developed it into a problem.
Just like the other remark you quoted 'When asked what the korean players did in this situation the gm on the forums answered "they are too busy playing the game to figure out ways on how to get around things to grief people".'
That comment summarizes a few things rather well. The fact that the original korean community simply wasn't as big on griefing to begin with, and that the problems really associated with griefing came up as a result of the western playerbase's meddling shows that difference in mentality. The korean playerbase plays/played L2 as a considerably larger community, but because their focus wasn't on making other people's lives hell, and instead on the conflict, they didn't have as much problems when it came to the harassment of other players.
EDIT: As such, I also point to the 'Kindness' blog post linked on the front page recently. It being in part what contributes to my annoyance with gankers and a decent illustration of how you don't need to talk to be an utter twit.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
To me, this was the payback for all the ganks I've endured in my years of mmorpging and what makes me such a huge fan of the genre in spite of the occasional bad seed that griefs or corpse camps.
That's like parents abusing their kids to take revenge for getting abused by their parents when they were children. Sounds like a criminal-justice problem, not a game problem, to me.
Sounds like you got some issus to deal with mate, chill out and try to think before you post such garbage.
You've got some anti-social behavior problems there, should seek some professional help.
Ganking: the game that allows angsty, disaffected, basement-dwelling teenagers to fool themselves into thinking that they're anything more than just a waste of oxygen smothered in acne cream.
Isn't that the point of most video games in general?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Man, some people just need to step back and calm down for a moment. We're talking about video games here, not school shootings. Play the game you like. Enjoy it. Let other people play the games they like. And above all, dont join the wrong kind of game and whine about it.
It's not like there isn't a huge choice of MMOs out there. If you dont like FFA PvP, dont play games with FFA PvP. That's fine, that's OK. It's allowed. If, on the other hand, you dont like being able to attack anyone you like (along with taking the consequences), then dont play games that disallow this.
Although there aren't as many FFA games, there is still a pretty good selection, so go play those and just accept that people aren't "cowards" or "ruining world building MMOs" or whatever else. No they aren't, they just want to play a god damb game and enjoy doing quests with their friends and have a little fun. That's OK too, there's nothing wrong with that either. I play an FFA MMO (EVE) most of the time, but sometimes, you know what? I have a shitty day at work, I'm tired, and I just want to beat the crap out of some NPCs with my buddies. That doesn't make me a weaksauce little crybaby who needs his hand held by mommy, it just makes me a tired guy who wants to have a little low-key fun, drink a beer and chat to my friends before I hit the sack. I can log in to EVE and have some high-intensity adrenaline rush gaming tomorrow.
There is literally no need to characterise people as psychopathic child-abuse victims just because they play games in a way you dont like. In fact I can hardly think of anything more childish than doing so. It's ridiculous, it's patently untrue and it just discredits whatever point you're trying to make. It just makes you sound like a sore loser, the kind of kid that runs off crying when he's not allowed to win and makes up stories to tell teacher in order to get "revenge". And calling people weak / cowardly / stupid because they dont like FFA is very nearly as bad.
Comments
Sounds like you got some issus to deal with mate, chill out and try to think before you post such garbage.
It's no different in L2.
Players who were considered pk'ers or clans that were pk clans or griefers were considered as "bad" and would be considered a target by other clans/players. However, since entire clans came together in order to grief/pk etc one would have to field a sizeable force or just a force that was powerful enough to combat them.
Several times on the Hindemith server the server got tired of a certain clans actions and rose up to dethrone them. This to me is a good thing and quite frankly is the conflict that these games need.
I say if one wants to be a "murderer" in these games then by all means go for it. But there will be consequences. I have never claimed otherwise.
As far as you not liking or respecting these players, well that's your business. I knew of a very distasteful person in Lineage 2 who was known by a clan member. When I asked about him they told me that he was actually a distasteful person in real life as well. Some people use these games as venues for their own issues.
It is what it is. As I've said there are distasteful people in pve games as well.
I'm not saying people become homicidal maniacs and me bringing up the point that violent video games don't make killers is not belittling the issue, no matter how much you might insist that it is.
The point is that violent games don't make violent people. I would say from my experience (and not being a therapist) that violent people can very well be drawn into violent video games.
I mean, I can go log into L2 right now and take a town over before somone decides to come and challenge me. It still doesn't change the fact that I'm a vegetarian for humane reasons, don't condone real life violence and help little old ladies across the street. Which I have actually done.
I try not to judge people oh how they play these games. I do tend to judge them by how they address people. If a person takes over a noob city but is nice enough otherwise (meaning they don't verbally insult players) then that's fine with me.
But once again, this comes back to knowing what the game is about and accepting that if it's possible to do in game then it will probably be done to me.
If it bothered me i wouldn't play. My personal view is that anything that really bothers you is in reality a poison to your well being and should be avoided or lessened.
But changing my paradigm, my thought about being ganked, I realized that nothing bad happened to me and that it spurred game conflict and made for more interesting play.
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
'The point is that violent games don't make violent people.'
That is a less hostile remark that means the same thing as my 'homicidal maniacs' remark, y'know. That's an argument of semantics.
The fact that you're mentioning it at all belittles my remark, because as I said it is not what I was addressing. I agreed that killing people in a game doesn't and under normal conditions won't translate to people being killers in real life. Persistence on that is only service to distraction from real meaning.
Fact is there is a psychological correlation between the demeanor and behavior people have in game and out of game. It's just the same as if you played an aggressive real world sport. If you're overly hostile during the activity, it can and does effect your other activities post sport or post gaming. Part of the reason there's an emphasis put on 'good sportsmanship'. It's a deterrent from perpetuating tendencies that can lead to bad results both on and off the field.
And this isn't just some opinion, it's been a part of psychology and therapy study for a long time, and it's only due to gaming being a relatively new mainstream phenomenon that it is still a greatly misunderstood and unknown thing.
Again, I'm not saying violent games make violent people. I'm saying actions done within one context paint your view and responses to other situations.
Just as well, there's the old saying 'actions speak louder than words'.
Great, people don't insult you as they beat you to death. Most people don't insult you when they run you off the road or otherwise either, that doesn't make them any less of a twit.
I do judge people on how they play games as much as how they talk, because I know how easily they can be just like me.
I'm a mildly antisocial introvert in early adulthood working towards their middle age. You know what that means? I'm in the highest statistic bracket for people who may commit murder. The fact that I have a lot of self contained hobbies and generally don't like being around and talking directly to others are apparently bonus factors that pushes those statistics to higher probability.
Most violent people aren't big talkers. Annoying people are big talkers. Most antisocial people, even if they aren't into violence aren't big talkers either.
I intentionally counter this most of the time by playing supporting role classes. I separate myself from direct conflict because, while I'm good at it, it can cause me to become more harsh.
At this point you could turn around and say 'well that's only a potential issue because you're not the norm', but I only illustrate my condition because it's provides a more clear emphasis on the point. Predisposition or no, talking or no. One's actions can tell many things about one's mindset. The fact that someone doesn't talk while they kill a bunch of lowbies doesn't suddenly mean they aren't any more respectful, it more readily means to me that they may just be less social. You may be able to tell this by seeing how succinct of an answer you get when you /tell them with an inquiry.
We seem to honestly be in agreement though on the idea of server regulation. Self-regulating player bases and the concept of consequence for one's actions is generally preferred.
None of that really addresses my point still of leveling being a general problem that leads to the distasteful form ganking I keep hating on though.
It's like I've said before. I'm ok with people killing me. I can deal with that and I can deal with it being in an inopportune moment. The part I can't deal with is the gross dissimilarity in power that leads to these more rampant ganking moments.
Like the fellows you mention as camping lowbie towns.
I say I hate those guys not specifically or their choice of camping the town, but because their choice in prey. And that to me is more of a fault in the system than it is that of the players.
I'm very strongly for skill based games in general. I'm also for non-linear progression as opposed to the leveling that you see in games like L2 and, well, most MMOs. That's one of the aspects about Planetside that made me love it so much.
Not only was it an action skill based game, but all the leveling did was provide you more tactile variety and abilities more so than an upward progression of stats.
Even in a game that isn't skill based, I still prefer non linear progression to this ladder format people always use. It creates an arbitrary split in the player base that does nothing but offer opportunity for both unrealistic and meaningless chances to ruin people's days by making them weaker than you in ways that just don't make sense.
Even equating leveling to real world mechanics like weight lifting to become notably stronger than some one else, it's all a tradeoff. You get more mass, you get more trouble maintaining the mass, you even get less effective use of your strength dependent on bulk. Nothing is a clearly upscaling progression without counterbalancing.
That's where the problem lies to me. The ganking I hate only exists because a false gap in the quality o a player's characters, and in any reasonable circumstance it shouldn't be capable of happening simply because there shouldn't be that gap.
Now you can say 'that's a different kind of game', and you'd be right. This truly does boil down to preference here. But it's that preference in playstyle that makes me see this problem as a glaring issue with games like L2 as opposed to an intended game mechanic.
Which would also be why I stated that 'just because it's in game doesn't mean it was intended'. And just like you cited, L2 did add an inhibitor to higher levels ganking lowbies without consent. It took them a long time and a shift in the playerbase as a reason to make it as incentive for more players, which indicates that either their old community that didn't care waned and/or their playerbase's mentality developed it into a problem.
Just like the other remark you quoted 'When asked what the korean players did in this situation the gm on the forums answered "they are too busy playing the game to figure out ways on how to get around things to grief people".'
That comment summarizes a few things rather well. The fact that the original korean community simply wasn't as big on griefing to begin with, and that the problems really associated with griefing came up as a result of the western playerbase's meddling shows that difference in mentality. The korean playerbase plays/played L2 as a considerably larger community, but because their focus wasn't on making other people's lives hell, and instead on the conflict, they didn't have as much problems when it came to the harassment of other players.
EDIT: As such, I also point to the 'Kindness' blog post linked on the front page recently. It being in part what contributes to my annoyance with gankers and a decent illustration of how you don't need to talk to be an utter twit.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
You've got some anti-social behavior problems there, should seek some professional help.
Isn't that the point of most video games in general?
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Man, some people just need to step back and calm down for a moment. We're talking about video games here, not school shootings. Play the game you like. Enjoy it. Let other people play the games they like. And above all, dont join the wrong kind of game and whine about it.
It's not like there isn't a huge choice of MMOs out there. If you dont like FFA PvP, dont play games with FFA PvP. That's fine, that's OK. It's allowed. If, on the other hand, you dont like being able to attack anyone you like (along with taking the consequences), then dont play games that disallow this.
Although there aren't as many FFA games, there is still a pretty good selection, so go play those and just accept that people aren't "cowards" or "ruining world building MMOs" or whatever else. No they aren't, they just want to play a god damb game and enjoy doing quests with their friends and have a little fun. That's OK too, there's nothing wrong with that either. I play an FFA MMO (EVE) most of the time, but sometimes, you know what? I have a shitty day at work, I'm tired, and I just want to beat the crap out of some NPCs with my buddies. That doesn't make me a weaksauce little crybaby who needs his hand held by mommy, it just makes me a tired guy who wants to have a little low-key fun, drink a beer and chat to my friends before I hit the sack. I can log in to EVE and have some high-intensity adrenaline rush gaming tomorrow.
There is literally no need to characterise people as psychopathic child-abuse victims just because they play games in a way you dont like. In fact I can hardly think of anything more childish than doing so. It's ridiculous, it's patently untrue and it just discredits whatever point you're trying to make. It just makes you sound like a sore loser, the kind of kid that runs off crying when he's not allowed to win and makes up stories to tell teacher in order to get "revenge". And calling people weak / cowardly / stupid because they dont like FFA is very nearly as bad.
God, just grow up.
Give me liberty or give me lasers