Science Discovers That MMOG Players Are Jerks
- Thread starter Andy Chalk
- Start date
Funny.
The professor plays the game by the Rules of the game, as they are written, but doesn't follow the social customs. He causes suffering to other players, then reacts when people get mad at him. He then tries to justify himself by saying that the game should be played the way he thinks it should be. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the real villain.
Seriously, these are the hallmarks of problem players. He's like a troll, doing something controversial, then mocking people for their reactions. True, online social groups can be quite cruel, but is he no worse? Groups of people are cruel to each other, yes, but aren't we meanest to the social outcast, who refuses to cooperate with people, and instead bugs the crap out of them? These are people we don't like, so it's understandable that the players of CoH don't like this guy either. I don't like this guy. If this guy were in my D&D group, I'd tell him to get out, and take his self-righteous Lawful Stupid paladin rhetoric with him.
The professor plays the game by the Rules of the game, as they are written, but doesn't follow the social customs. He causes suffering to other players, then reacts when people get mad at him. He then tries to justify himself by saying that the game should be played the way he thinks it should be. Ladies and gentlemen, we have the real villain.
Seriously, these are the hallmarks of problem players. He's like a troll, doing something controversial, then mocking people for their reactions. True, online social groups can be quite cruel, but is he no worse? Groups of people are cruel to each other, yes, but aren't we meanest to the social outcast, who refuses to cooperate with people, and instead bugs the crap out of them? These are people we don't like, so it's understandable that the players of CoH don't like this guy either. I don't like this guy. If this guy were in my D&D group, I'd tell him to get out, and take his self-righteous Lawful Stupid paladin rhetoric with him.
A lot of people here post about how he was a troll and ruining the game. I offer solutions.
1. Go to another pvp server, there's more than one.
2. Go to a pve server, grind, then try again to kill him. He died in-game, so he's not invincible.
3. Play another game. The obvious choice.
1. Go to another pvp server, there's more than one.
2. Go to a pve server, grind, then try again to kill him. He died in-game, so he's not invincible.
3. Play another game. The obvious choice.
I doubt science needed to tell us that MMOG players are jerks, I can prove that by just watching my cousin, "No Kevin for the last time, I do not play WoW."
"Science Discovers That MMOG Players Are Jerks"
Really?
Do you reeeeeally need science to tell you that?
Really?
Do you reeeeeally need science to tell you that?
We're human. We're all jerks at some point.
Might've been credible if he'd used that scientific wisdom on a few more MMOs instead of making a snap judgement on one and on the PvP crowd too. Talk about poking a hornets nest with a stick and wondering why you got stung...
Might've been credible if he'd used that scientific wisdom on a few more MMOs instead of making a snap judgement on one and on the PvP crowd too. Talk about poking a hornets nest with a stick and wondering why you got stung...
He did everything in his power to play in a way that was not only unbelievably obnoxious, but completely pointless. Teleporting people into instant death gives you no reward at all (no XP, no Influence, nothing but shits and giggles), and not teaming in the highest level zone means you can accomplish absolutely nothing. His actions served no purpose but to piss people off...and he complains that people who play MMOs are jerks.zoharknight said:
Frankly, if the words of a troll are enough to make you swear off a game, I'm fairly certain you wouldn't contribute anything good to the community in the first place.
...he was playing City of Heroes, not World of Warcraft.SomeGuyNamedKy said:
And you're completely missing the point. We're not complaining because he was ruining our playing experience. We're complaining because he's the MMO equivalent of a guy who crashes a party, drinks all the beer, sings too loudly, tries to feel up every woman he sees...and then complains when everyone calls him out for being a douchebag.
So...playing the game as it's meant to be played (as a concerted effort for game-tangible and social reward) is merely a cultural aspect?Kwil said:
That's roughly equivalent to coming onto these forums, typing in nothing but chatspeak, crashing discussions, derailing threads, starting flamewars, and claiming you have the moral high ground. After all, it's a forum, it's meant for people to post messages to other people.
Wrong. It's the equivalent of pissing into someone's sink and calling it "close enough" because it winds up in the sewer anyway.
What he did was just about as inappropriate as you can get in CoH without cyberstalking. And it completely invalidates his point, as well. You don't do a study on the temperament of rhinos, spend the entire time throwing rocks at them, and claim that their getting pissed off is indicative of negative social cohesion.
http://boards.cityofvillains.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Board=general&Number=13718988&page=0&fpart=1
a link to a thread about this on the coh/cov forum board
a link to a thread about this on the coh/cov forum board
So he trolled them, and was trolled in real life in turn.
He was unwise to believe that a whole community of humans could be dispersed without he himself becoming the villain, whether or not his character was a "hero".
Such self-alienation can be a powerful way of becoming a well-known individual. But it can lead to bad publicity, and all the trappings of real world celebrity. That's not limited to public dislike on internet forums, but to real life action as well.
Though he played the game by the book, it should be a questioned notion that this ability to beat up others freely in a game is good design. As I see it, such design leads to very little social control and a vast increase in player potential in an MMOG setting.
Player empowerment against the in-game enemy is an important thing to make a game enjoyable, but only within certain controls. A situation in which a community stabilises of its own will is always going to be flammable if everyone is highly armed and given the option to kill each other. That's a sociological and statistical fact, in both MMOs and real life communities.
The developers should have included better controls for this situation. It sounds like they have little in the way of administrators keeping the community in line.
A situation this abrasive requires almost all involved groups to be in the wrong in some way in order to occur at all. In this case, the developers were wrong for giving players too much power, the major player community was wrong to expect peace in a highly volatile situation and to use whoever took advantage as a scapegoat, and the professor was in the wrong for expecting a kind response to his disruption of community interaction.
He was unwise to believe that a whole community of humans could be dispersed without he himself becoming the villain, whether or not his character was a "hero".
Such self-alienation can be a powerful way of becoming a well-known individual. But it can lead to bad publicity, and all the trappings of real world celebrity. That's not limited to public dislike on internet forums, but to real life action as well.
Though he played the game by the book, it should be a questioned notion that this ability to beat up others freely in a game is good design. As I see it, such design leads to very little social control and a vast increase in player potential in an MMOG setting.
Player empowerment against the in-game enemy is an important thing to make a game enjoyable, but only within certain controls. A situation in which a community stabilises of its own will is always going to be flammable if everyone is highly armed and given the option to kill each other. That's a sociological and statistical fact, in both MMOs and real life communities.
The developers should have included better controls for this situation. It sounds like they have little in the way of administrators keeping the community in line.
A situation this abrasive requires almost all involved groups to be in the wrong in some way in order to occur at all. In this case, the developers were wrong for giving players too much power, the major player community was wrong to expect peace in a highly volatile situation and to use whoever took advantage as a scapegoat, and the professor was in the wrong for expecting a kind response to his disruption of community interaction.
All servers are PvP in certain areas.SomeGuyNamedKy said:
Actually while doing that, he is invincible. He's also (to get in there) at the maximum level range.
And find another troll.
And just to underline the point, Droning has now been removed from the game, as it should have been done a long time ago, way before GDN.
Wow....and I was thinking about trying CoH/V too.....but if I can't even play the way the game says to....
Actually, he was exploiting the game mechanics to do something that was technically legal, but actually made him incredibly overpowered and impossible to beat. Imagine how annoyed you'd be if you were constantly killed by someone who was more powerful than you and you could do nothing about it. Fun for him it may have been, and it kind of fitted in with what the game's designers intended, but for pretty much everyone apart from him it was just making their playtime less fun.Earthbound said:
I read this quote from an article from the New Orleans Metro: "From a distance, he could transport villains anywhere he wished. He always took them to a cartoon robot firing line that instantly defeated whomever he zoomed before it." It wasn't so much his choice of playing the game aggressively as his choice of tactics. I don't know the game, but this sounds like an exploit to me. Apparently this tactic means he can defeat large groups of people one by one, and will always win one-on-one.
Imagine you're playing WoW. Now, I used to play on a PVP server. When I saw a horde character my level, or near enough, I'd enjoy engaging with him in combat, even though I mostly lost because of my lack of skill. Being ganked repeatedly by a level 70 in Stranglethorn however was not fun. Being repeatedly killed when you are completely unable to fight back pisses everyone off, and someone who exploits a system to deliberately do this, and then can't understand why people hate him clearly has a problem with understanding human nature. TBH it sounds like he is the 'Jerk' in this situation. He's ruining the free time of many others so he can indulge his own antisocial fantasies. He chose to be a griefer and an outcast and then cried about it. Sure death threats and attacks in real-life are excessive, but he should know that gamers aren't generally the most mature of people, and that angry people aren't the most rational.
In short, you made your bed Myers, now lie in it. And don't try claiming you had the moral high-ground or that you were performing an 'experiment' when you get attacked for being a complete jerk.
Edit: I'd also like to add that, having read his 'article' he has deliberately set out to be antisocial. Apart from the teleport exploit, he also set out to disrupt other players friendly and social cooperation, and refused to interact with other players in a friendly way. Why is he confused? This reaction occurs in actual societies: Anyone who refuses to obey a society's rules and seeks to disrupt a society is shunned and punished. If it were real life, his actions would be akin to complaining that people persecuted him for shoplifting or violent assaults. Duh.
After looking into this in more detail I discovered some interesting details regarding this.
a. What "Twixt" was effectively doing was trolling, and he left the game after the exploit he abused was fixed.
b. Twixt was arrogant and irritating - he did not simply yell things stated in the article but would insult and mock other players.
c. Twixt was not well-known by any means within the game - he played on a server with a niche group of people.
d. There's no science to these claims. The man trolled people and then was shocked when people became annoyed with him...
e. Twixt died many times perfecting said trolling method.
Regardless who is right (these ideas were found on a few forums and I have only played COH very briefly) I doubt the article really gives an in-depth look into this mentality.
a. What "Twixt" was effectively doing was trolling, and he left the game after the exploit he abused was fixed.
b. Twixt was arrogant and irritating - he did not simply yell things stated in the article but would insult and mock other players.
c. Twixt was not well-known by any means within the game - he played on a server with a niche group of people.
d. There's no science to these claims. The man trolled people and then was shocked when people became annoyed with him...
e. Twixt died many times perfecting said trolling method.
Regardless who is right (these ideas were found on a few forums and I have only played COH very briefly) I doubt the article really gives an in-depth look into this mentality.