Moral implications within Ryzom

[glipe]

Thanks for the incredible replies everyone. It’s nice to see structured points and elegant prose rather than spam and flames everywhere!

I think Jyudas made a good point by saying that the only way you can properly police PKers is by having the game punish them. Fame loss or some other debilitation is a great deterrent. But really, we don’t have much of a PKing faction within the game so I don’t see that we need to concentrate on that issue just yet. I’m not saying it’s not valid or important, just that it’s not the issue at hand.

Syne mentioned that there should be a separate level of morals for guild. I dispute that. What you take from your guild is up to what you want your character to take from it. Imagine a homin joins a neutral guild but has a tendancy towards the Kami side. The guild happens to align itself with other guilds who are more aligned with the Karavan. Surely it is the individual that chooses how they will deal with each instance.

In fact, scrap that. It’s a rubbish example and I know it. Simplified, if you decide to be a sheep and follow what a guild lays down it is still a choice in exactly the same way as going against guild policy. It all boils down to character, not guild.

But I do agree that players develop an attachment to their characters after having built them up. And it does hurt when someone puts the smackdown on your character. I’m an old school player though, and sometimes that’s just the way things go. Especially in a roleplaying situation on Atys where being killed is such a small thing, Sanz doesn’t really mind being killed. Maybe all that time being atomised will help him figure out the technology behind respawning.

Dekkert; what a fantastic post! It sorta puts everything I wrote in a different slant with good personal insight. If we were dealing with just plain old PKers I think I’d have written a different opinion down but we’re dealing with people who want to play their own way and still keep to the spirit of the game. I think that takes a lot more guts and honour than someone just being a PKer. How we deal with it in-game is up to us. I will celebrate your massively intelligent post by destroying some brain cells tonight with copious amounts of alcohol of mixed variety.

sofiaoak,; I agree with what you’re saying to an extent. I’ve said this before, I don’t think PvP will make the game better but I think the capacity to do it well will. Sure, we don’t *need* it but the way the conflicts are escalating (this Infinity claiming rights to material sources is only a prelude to what will come with Outposts, if not open war.) we need a system to deal with the inevitabilities and I for one will be happy to see it, even if Sanz is probably not going to participate. I also agree with you that consentual PvP is a good idea, which is basically what Outposts will be. I hope to see neutral people being free to walk around the PvP areas in the roots and anywhere else without being attacked not because of the system but because of the community.

[larwood]

But really, we don’t have much of a PKing faction within the game so I don’t see that we need to concentrate on that issue just yet. I’m not saying it’s not valid or important, just that it’s not the issue at hand.

Overall Sanz, nice post. But this is where I tend to disagree.

Sure, there aren't PK'ers overflowing from the roots, but there are at least a handful, and a bunch more who are avid PvPers that don't see any problem with PKing.

How many matches does it take to burn down a house?

A small minority can ruin the game for the larger majority. I've seen it happen in other games.

Don't ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Fix it while it's small, before it gets out of hand.

[glipe]

Overall Sanz, nice post. But this is where I tend to disagree.

Sure, there aren't PK'ers overflowing from the roots, but there are at least a handful, and a bunch more who are avid PvPers that don't see any problem with PKing.

How many matches does it take to burn down a house?

A small minority can ruin the game for the larger majority. I've seen it happen in other games.

Don't ignore the problem and hope it goes away. Fix it while it's small, before it gets out of hand.

Hmmm. I know what you mean but I really don't know enough about the avid PvPers within Ryzom to comment properly yet. The only time I've been killed down there is when Locky cruelly slaughtered me as I explored. Only kidding! It was after the first big write up on here and I went up to him and asked if I should be scared. He said "Yes." put me down and then rezzed me up and we laughed and chatted for a while, while he and Seren battered at each other with bare fists. Most amusing. But anyway, I didn't know we had a problem with Pkers in the game. Most problems seem to be misunderstandings or jokes gone wrong rather than malicious slayings.

[myseren]

umm, wasnt that time saviour?
not that ive been gamked a few times or anything....

[asyne]

This is something a mature person is able to differentiate, even in moments of rage. But the younger a person is the harder it can be for that person to differentiate. Both is happening in your brain, the phantasy and the reality. Very bad if those two minds get mixed up.

Very bad indeed, which is why we should be thankful that out of the millions of players that play online games (not mentioning those who only play single player), less than 0.01% mix the two with dangerous results. As for the difference of age, ESRB ratings are put in place to make sure that age matches content. But on another point...

If you kill a player in game you do excatly that. You kill a person. No way to talk around this. You do lower the inhibition threshold for killing someone.

I could rant for ages, but that would be boring. I stick to my satire.

Syne mentioned that there should be a separate level of morals for guild. I dispute that. What you take from your guild is up to what you want your character to take from it. Imagine a homin joins a neutral guild but has a tendancy towards the Kami side. The guild happens to align itself with other guilds who are more aligned with the Karavan. Surely it is the individual that chooses how they will deal with each instance.

When you put it that way, I can see that I myself act that way. I'll try to make myself more clear. Suppose if I were to graph the categories of moral that were mentioned, it would look like this (higher is higher priority):

-personal
-game
-character

Looking at what you say there, it still seems to me that guild morals and policies deserve a seperate level from character morals, as sometimes one takes precidence over the other. Being in a guild affects a character, whether through a consious re-writing of a character's roleplay script as it becomes affected by the roleplay of other characters in the guild, or the willingness of a player (not character) to sacrifice some of the character's morals in order to remain on good terms with others players in the guild. Or perhaps a player that refuses to stay in a guild because the guild's morals don't match the characters, or at least compliment them. So guild morals are a seperate level, and although they can affect player morals, I (for example) could not go out and change Infinity's policies without having a lot of other people in the guild think it was a good idea. So whether the guild takes more or less priority than character is totally up to the player, but it doesn't always mix, for player morals still bow somewhat to the morals of society and instinct, which urge agreement and teamwork. And, to a certain extent, submission to leadership.

[asaseth]

So whether the guild takes more or less priority than character is totally up to the player, but it doesn't always mix, for player morals still bow somewhat to the morals of society and instinct, which urge agreement and teamwork. And, to a certain extent, submission to leadership.

And seeing as how my character likes and agrees, at least to a point, with the leader, Bri, I continue to follow him. Still have this nasty tendancy to ress anyone, dispite being told that they are on the 'do not ress' list, but then, that is also IC, especialy if they are a lady-in-distress. Heh, done more than my share of guys that happened to have female names cause of that.


Noh
Zorai
Infinity