Legal Absurdities and your Fake Morality

[Erik_the_Blue]

Wow, are you seriously advocating real-world violence over a video game? That's retarded.

This is because I mentioned internet anonymity, right? I'm not advocating real-world violence. I'm not all that comfortable with meta-gaming, either. As far as I'm concerned, what happens in the game client should stay in the game client (and the forums as an official extension of the game).

What I'm getting at is that I notice a lot of people seem to be acting like jerks in-game just so they can get a reaction on the forums. They're not even interested in the game itself, they just like being jerks. It's one thing to have serious thieves and blood feuds, but it's another to have an alt horde mow through someone's claim or to trick people into not trusting each other just for entertainment (though, granted, everything done in-game is supposedly for entertainment by the very nature of it being a game). If there were some magic way to guilt the players behind these characters into changing their ways, we'd see less of the quasi-meta-gaming crime now occurring in-game. Of course, the only way to guilt players who lack enough of a conscience to go around doing this stuff in the first place is to somehow expose their persons', at which point fear of retribution supposedly handles the rest. Stating the obvious, this is a *Very Bad* idea for multiple reasons, but it is still useful for academic purposes to recognize that internet anonymity is a potential contributor to the problem (albeit a morally irreconcilable one).

Put another way, real-world sociopaths generally don't act like sociopaths all the time when they're out in public because they know such behavior can result in bad things being done to their persons and resources. Not so on the internet.

As for your example, as far as I'm concerned people should be able to do whatever they want so long as everyone involved is of legally sound mental capacity and gives consent to their participation in the given activity for the duration of said activity. Only when people strip consent from others is it just for the law to strip consent from them. In this case, if all the people participating in said "gimmick event" met the proper criteria for consent, then it was not just for anyone acting as the law to strip consent from the participants and punish them for accused crimes related to said event.

[Mules]

LoL goons, Troll post.

Vigilante rangers are awesome, if you're getting killed by them then maybe you should leave crimes off and be less of an ass hole.

It must blow to live in that Laketown shithole.

[copyannon]

Well kudos to you for trying, I guess.

[Colbear]

If you think it's wrong then why do you do it? Have you tried just knocking somebody out and leaving a note or something? Has anyone? The loss of hhp is a time loss, and the knowledge that retaliation is real gives a player a chance to reconsider stealing from you. I suspect that killing them just makes them more likely to hit you again, but stronger.

Some people from my village did just that - they knocked out the thief (who was online at the time, but refused to speak) and stripped him naked. A couple of days later we followed another clue from our village and it lead to the same guy, only he was dead this time. None of us did the deed, so I assume it's another victim of his. Anyway, the point is that knocking someone out accomplishes nothing.

What does killing him accomplish? Doesn't he just make a new character and do it again?

[Vattic]

If you think it's wrong then why do you do it? Have you tried just knocking somebody out and leaving a note or something? Has anyone? The loss of hhp is a time loss, and the knowledge that retaliation is real gives a player a chance to reconsider stealing from you. I suspect that killing them just makes them more likely to hit you again, but stronger.

Um.

So far I have killed two and only while both parties are logged in. Recently my neighbour was robbed and I tracked the guy down and got his stuff back with no damage done to either party but then he pleaded ignorance before asking me to kill him odd chap, of to find some suicide leeches last I saw him.

One was a guy actively stealing a cart load of stuff from the former Shadyacre and the other was some time before that but I cant remember the details. This was before clues and walls and all that. I haven't killed anyone in ages and I've twice tracked down and spoken to people who left theft scents with no damage done.

[Colbear]

As for your example, as far as I'm concerned people should be able to do whatever they want so long as everyone involved is of legally sound mental capacity and gives consent to their participation in the given activity for the duration of said activity. Only when people strip consent from others is it just for the law to strip consent from them. In this case, if all the people participating in said "gimmick event" met the proper criteria for consent, then it was not just for anyone acting as the law to strip consent from the participants and punish them for accused crimes related to said event.

I agree with you, as far as this is concerned. I'm just worried, because sometimes, rangers don't wait -- sometimes, they shoot first, ask examples later. I mean, take for example my gimmicky "let's kill some alts with funny names" thing. Would I have died if I was offline because I didn't explain myself (wasn't there to do so)? Will someone come kill me now, because they can summon me at hearth?

I don't like that fear, that worry that someone will kill me because THEY CAN, and for no other reason (which is why I haven't committed any crimes, but this one seemed like a good idea at the time).

What happens when people aren't around to explain themselves? Who waits? Will they wait? What if they feel they're above such petty things as what we expect? What STOPS them from wreaking havoc? What protects us from them?

[Potjeh]

What does killing him accomplish? Doesn't he just make a new character and do it again?

He loses the hour it took him to get theft. It's not much, but at least it's something.

[theTrav]

take for example my gimmicky "let's kill some alts with funny names" thing. Would I have died if I was offline because I didn't explain myself (wasn't there to do so)? Will someone come kill me now, because they can summon me at hearth?

So you were grinding LP by killing ALTs and don't want someone to kill you before you can lie to them? My heart bleeds.

[Colbear]

What does killing him accomplish? Doesn't he just make a new character and do it again?

He loses the hour it took him to get theft. It's not much, but at least it's something.

So let's say you kill the right guy, for the right reason, 90% of the time. The other 10% is a misunderstanding.

90% of the time, you make a griefer lose 1 hour of work.
10% of the time, you make a legit player lose a HUGE chunk of work, basically a percentage of all the effort they put into the game, and most people have high change sliders.

I don't think that risk is worth is. You get little reward (1 hour is nothing) most of the time, and make a big fuckup (ruining a person's experience of the game) some of the time. Seems like a net loss to me.

(You don't get LP by killing alts? Or at least, I didn't notice getting any...)

[copyannon]

What did he do that was wrong? Even if he was grinding lp (which, let's admit, is a big factor of any task in this game), what was wrong with that? Isn't it still fair game to use any exploits you can? Or are things different now that the devs are apparently willing to just delete whatever advantages they choose: e.g. the longhouse in the woods.