Report, edit, etc...Posted by Wing-of-no-Wing on 2006-01-31 at 17:00:24
In online games that have written rules, do you enforce them? Is it right to enforce them? Is it obligatory?
Let me clarify the question with some more specific forms of it:
1) In Starcraft, how do you handle hackers? I think it's fairly obvious that as a map maker, there's no reason not to put in an anti-hack feature, and that hack detectors and anti-hack programs are fine. But let's say you're in somoene else's game, and a player on your team uses a hack, such that there can be absolutely no doubt that they were hacking. Would you feel like you then had to BS that person? What if you had a crash-hack?
2) Let's say that there's a server for a first-person shooter, with a message saying, "No firing missiles from the top of the spaceship!" or something like that. It's not your server, but you've played on it enough that you know the owner of the server bans people who do it. If someone fires a missile from the top of the spaceship, and the admin is not there, what do you do about it?
3) Back to Starcraft for a second. You see a game entitled "I need MapHack!!!!" or something of the sort. Now, as a reasonably well-armed individual, you have a host hack, one of those interesting little tools for righting wrongs either real or imagined. Go into the game and start blasting?
4) Okay, so you've just downloaded this neat new rpg-ish starfighter game. You enter the server, and a little message pops up saying, "No firing missiles at the spawn." The message lasts for an instant, and is written in small text. The round starts and both sides exchange massive volleys of missiles aimed at each other's spawns. Turn to your wingman and use blinding lasers on him over and over so that he spends the round unable to play or watch, then kill him and take his stuff? Does your answer change if the admin is there exchanging missiles with the rest? What if it's in early hours, and the people there are europeans or one of those other annoying groups who can't read English but play games where the rules are in English?
5) Same imaginary game, different situation. You get into the game, and your wingman goes up to one of the enemies and, instead of simply destroying him, griefs him in the most unpleasant way possible for the game, something that's completely contrary to the spirit of the game, and which the game designers clearly never intended to allow, and makes the other player cry over the in-game audio chat, but about which there are no written rules. Would you be justified in stopping him?
Here's what I think about this situation. If there are written rules, then whatever your position, you are OBLIGED to enforce them in any way available, even griefing the rule breaker if you can; you have to punish them severely enough that there is some unhappiness associated with them breaking the rules. You have to do this even if it means you keep getting automatically kicked from the server for BSing. If you aren't in a position to enforce them, but someone else is, and they don't, you are obliged to treat them as if they were rule-breakers. The reasoning for this is that, when nobody else is going to enforce the rules, if you don't, they'll just be broken, and a written rule has such force that allowing it to be broken is just wrong. It makes no difference if everyone is breaking the rules. The only time that rule-breaking is allowed is in taking down rule breakers, and in that case, proportion doesn't matter: it's perfectly all right to break every single rule of the game to make a player suffer for breaking a minor rule out of ignorance; it's even right to ruin the game of an entire group of people to enforce that rule, simply because of the principle that, in the long run, play by the rules makes people happier than play without the rules, even if that's not true for that particular rule.
If, however, the rule is not written, it's not a real rule, and you have no obligation or even right to enforce it: that doesn't mean that you can't be a nice person and enforce it anyway, it just means that you can't claim justification for doing so, and that you have no right to retaliate if rule enforcers attack you for it. Furthermore, if you yourself break a rule, and retaliate in any way against the person who punished you (even if they had no apparent "right" to do so), you yourself are guilty, and should be punished again. I'm not saying that you can never break the rules, just that you have to accept anything that comes to you as a result. Also, your own past rule-breaking does not mean that you are not obliged to enforce the rule, and culpable if you do not.
The reason why I bring this up is that I was just playing a certain first-person shooter, and enforcing rules that were clearly, repeatedly stated by the server, but which were not enforced because the admins were not on. Nobody seemed to understand; some of them even said that I had no right to even ASK people to follow the rules, simply because I was "just a player". And people just kept breaking the rules...Naturally, I got rather pissed, but as it is just a game, I left, since it's not worth getting truly steamed over. What is so wrong with the people there that they can't understand the importance of rules, that the nature of rules is such that the institution of rules IN GENERAL is overall good, and thus despite any specific details of the case, the right thing to do is enforce them? We can all see why, if a person is about to be murdered by someone else, and there are no police officers around, if you happen to be standing there with a bottle full of gasoline, a handkerchief, and a lighter, the right thing to do would be to make an instant Molotov Cocktail and take that murdering ( ) down with it; although games are far less serious, the principle is the same: rules exist for greater overall happiness, and MUST be upheld.
What do you all think about this?
Let me clarify the question with some more specific forms of it:
1) In Starcraft, how do you handle hackers? I think it's fairly obvious that as a map maker, there's no reason not to put in an anti-hack feature, and that hack detectors and anti-hack programs are fine. But let's say you're in somoene else's game, and a player on your team uses a hack, such that there can be absolutely no doubt that they were hacking. Would you feel like you then had to BS that person? What if you had a crash-hack?
2) Let's say that there's a server for a first-person shooter, with a message saying, "No firing missiles from the top of the spaceship!" or something like that. It's not your server, but you've played on it enough that you know the owner of the server bans people who do it. If someone fires a missile from the top of the spaceship, and the admin is not there, what do you do about it?
3) Back to Starcraft for a second. You see a game entitled "I need MapHack!!!!" or something of the sort. Now, as a reasonably well-armed individual, you have a host hack, one of those interesting little tools for righting wrongs either real or imagined. Go into the game and start blasting?
4) Okay, so you've just downloaded this neat new rpg-ish starfighter game. You enter the server, and a little message pops up saying, "No firing missiles at the spawn." The message lasts for an instant, and is written in small text. The round starts and both sides exchange massive volleys of missiles aimed at each other's spawns. Turn to your wingman and use blinding lasers on him over and over so that he spends the round unable to play or watch, then kill him and take his stuff? Does your answer change if the admin is there exchanging missiles with the rest? What if it's in early hours, and the people there are europeans or one of those other annoying groups who can't read English but play games where the rules are in English?
5) Same imaginary game, different situation. You get into the game, and your wingman goes up to one of the enemies and, instead of simply destroying him, griefs him in the most unpleasant way possible for the game, something that's completely contrary to the spirit of the game, and which the game designers clearly never intended to allow, and makes the other player cry over the in-game audio chat, but about which there are no written rules. Would you be justified in stopping him?
Here's what I think about this situation. If there are written rules, then whatever your position, you are OBLIGED to enforce them in any way available, even griefing the rule breaker if you can; you have to punish them severely enough that there is some unhappiness associated with them breaking the rules. You have to do this even if it means you keep getting automatically kicked from the server for BSing. If you aren't in a position to enforce them, but someone else is, and they don't, you are obliged to treat them as if they were rule-breakers. The reasoning for this is that, when nobody else is going to enforce the rules, if you don't, they'll just be broken, and a written rule has such force that allowing it to be broken is just wrong. It makes no difference if everyone is breaking the rules. The only time that rule-breaking is allowed is in taking down rule breakers, and in that case, proportion doesn't matter: it's perfectly all right to break every single rule of the game to make a player suffer for breaking a minor rule out of ignorance; it's even right to ruin the game of an entire group of people to enforce that rule, simply because of the principle that, in the long run, play by the rules makes people happier than play without the rules, even if that's not true for that particular rule.
If, however, the rule is not written, it's not a real rule, and you have no obligation or even right to enforce it: that doesn't mean that you can't be a nice person and enforce it anyway, it just means that you can't claim justification for doing so, and that you have no right to retaliate if rule enforcers attack you for it. Furthermore, if you yourself break a rule, and retaliate in any way against the person who punished you (even if they had no apparent "right" to do so), you yourself are guilty, and should be punished again. I'm not saying that you can never break the rules, just that you have to accept anything that comes to you as a result. Also, your own past rule-breaking does not mean that you are not obliged to enforce the rule, and culpable if you do not.
The reason why I bring this up is that I was just playing a certain first-person shooter, and enforcing rules that were clearly, repeatedly stated by the server, but which were not enforced because the admins were not on. Nobody seemed to understand; some of them even said that I had no right to even ASK people to follow the rules, simply because I was "just a player". And people just kept breaking the rules...Naturally, I got rather pissed, but as it is just a game, I left, since it's not worth getting truly steamed over. What is so wrong with the people there that they can't understand the importance of rules, that the nature of rules is such that the institution of rules IN GENERAL is overall good, and thus despite any specific details of the case, the right thing to do is enforce them? We can all see why, if a person is about to be murdered by someone else, and there are no police officers around, if you happen to be standing there with a bottle full of gasoline, a handkerchief, and a lighter, the right thing to do would be to make an instant Molotov Cocktail and take that murdering ( ) down with it; although games are far less serious, the principle is the same: rules exist for greater overall happiness, and MUST be upheld.
What do you all think about this?
Report, edit, etc...Posted by IceWarrior98 on 2006-01-31 at 17:17:48
If u mean would i take action against a cheating lil newb? Then yes. If I was "well armed" with anti hacks i would unleash my fury. If someone wasnt following rules of a games server i'll warn him...if that dont work tell the admin or(if i know the admin and am the admin) ban, kill, and just taunt the basterd with the mighty strength of the console 
Report, edit, etc...Posted by Bringer on 2006-01-31 at 17:28:39
I would enforce the rules. I love having fun and fair games and when people use glitchs and so on to ruin the spirit of the game then it is not fun anymore. If your playing an unranked play for shizs and giggles then I do not care if you glitch but if it is Ranked and Serious then the moment you try one little glitch is the moment I will enforce the rules.
Report, edit, etc...Posted by Wing-of-no-Wing on 2006-01-31 at 21:09:06
QUOTE(IceWarrior98 @ Jan 31 2006, 05:17 PM)
If u mean would i take action against a cheating lil newb? Then yes. If I was "well armed" with anti hacks i would unleash my fury. If someone wasnt following rules of a games server i'll warn him...if that dont work tell the admin or(if i know the admin and am the admin) ban, kill, and just taunt the basterd with the mighty strength of the console
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You say that you would "warn" them or try to tell the admin. If the admin wasn't reachable, would you enforce the rules by backstabbing the person? That's what people get pissed at me for.
QUOTE(Oo.Bringer.oO @ Jan 31 2006, 05:28 PM)
I would enforce the rules. I love having fun and fair games and when people use glitchs and so on to ruin the spirit of the game then it is not fun anymore. If your playing an unranked play for shizs and giggles then I do not care if you glitch but if it is Ranked and Serious then the moment you try one little glitch is the moment I will enforce the rules.
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What about less extreme cases, though? Would you BS an ally for rushing in a game with "no rush" in the title? I know that I would.
Report, edit, etc...Posted by IceWarrior98 on 2006-01-31 at 22:09:35
Well it would depend on what he/she is doing. If my ally is rushing a no rush game, i'd pumble his/her base so its crippled and then attack his/her forces that way they cant defend or attack for a while. If its in a FPS and he/shes being a god damn wang, two words...Head shot! I've done it so many times and got banned by the servers so many times its not even funny. Then again the pricks were always the admins.