For those of you who have never played EVE Online, a large part of it is about non-consensual PvP. A whine like this would draw an extremely high amount of ridicule on the forums.
So, what you're saying is that if someone came in from outside with a very different expectation of how PvP was supposed to be played from the dominant culture of the game, that they'd be subject to scorn, ridicule, and maybe even hatred if they attempted to be too insistent about their stance?
Gosh. It's almost exactly like what happened here.
He was clever enough to come up with a strategy that's apparently very hard to counter. That counts for something.
I was a strategy that the company would later prevent and treat as griefing. It was clearly not something the owners of the game considered kosher. The fact that it worked well even when people teamed up against him shows that it steps beyond "effective" to "broken." And the fact that he moved on to other anti-social behavior once the developers stopped him (i.e. messing with people having battles in PvE portions of the game), shows that he was purely interested in griefing.
The tactic he used was widely considered cowardly and against the spirit of PVP. It was like challenging someone to a swordfight and poisoning your blade. Effective? Yes. Fair play? No.
That's the benefit of being victorious, you get to brag about it. Whining that the winner is bragging just makes you a poor loser.
I'm guessing that you've never heard of the concept of a poor winner, then.
Most people consider someone who sucker punches someone and then taunts them to be a serious man-child.
I"m not going to respond to your drivel about rights, because you're wrong. It's the definition of a right.
You must use a different definition from that of the rest of humanity, then. Saying something short and pithy over and over without any logical support for the proposition doesn't make your argument very convincing.
As for begging the question, no, you used it wrong.
Yes, I am supposed to have that right, and it is supposed to be considered inalienable to me.
Well, too bad for you that no modern society has ever considered it inherently your right to abuse your neighbors and drive them to suicide. (I can't think of an ancient society that did either.) We've looked poorly on other speech crimes like defamation for most of history as well, and we've always considered someone who requests someone to commit a crime to be a conspirator to the crime as well. The tort of assault has covered mostly verbal threats as well since long before the US was created. And all throughout the law is a requirement that people act in good faith instead of lying.
The right to free speech is about the freedom to express ideas, particularly those of political & religious belief. It's not the right to try to actively harm other people through vicious anger and deceit. We have a good, Constitutionally-recognized tort for that in the United States: intentional infliction of emotional distress.
I'd hate to live in a society where the only response to this sort of behavior was self-help.
Also, I don't think that means what you think it does: Begging the Question
Actually, it's a perfect fit: "Begging the question (or petitio principii) is a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premises."
You presume that it's your right to abuse other people. The government cannot encroach upon a right you never had, and when you made the statement that encroaching upon these supposed rights to abuse people has "done far more to 'create more suffering' than anything I have or ever will do," you presume that the loss of this presumed right creates suffering in the first place. Thus, Begging the Question.
Attention, the traffic LAWS say "Slower traffic keep right."
In some states. Not all. Many of these states also say that it's illegal to pass on the right, so if someone goes and does it anyway, you're stuck either breaking the law or just sucking it up.
In other states, it's a free for all, and in yet others it's free for all except that commercial freight trucks can't use the left lane. Etc.
The developers are the ones who set the speed limits/laws, and not surprisingly, entering a Player vs. Player arena is explicitly saying "I want to PvP."
Well, does it really mean that? If not everyone who goes there does so, then quite obviously there are plenty of people who have in fact not consented to PvP any more than everyone one on the road has consented to going 10 under 55 MPH just because someone else can.
Also, just because it's possible to PvP with anyone there doesn't mean that people have consented to PvP with you. This is why I brought up the dance club analogy. Just because you're on the floor doesn't mean that just anyone can come up and dance with you without need for any further approval, and it doesn't mean that they can't refuse you if you try without having to run out of the room.
"No chance at fighting back," because they stood around and got their panties in a collective twist crying over the presence of a griefer instead of denying the griefer his fun by, oh I dunno, leaving the PvP arena?
You're one of those people that thinks that it's the nonsmoker's fault for not leaving as soon as a smoker shows up and decides to light up in his face, aren't you?
The rules of society should not be set up so that when someone starts causing another person grief that it's the victim's responsibility to run away and hide.
Unfortunately, it's been taken over by people who are doing something else in it. The majority doesn't want to leave. The individual just wants to use the field for what it was built for.
So who's in the wrong there?
Whoever causes the most trouble for the people permitted by the owner of the field to use it. If the company isn't clearing off the sunbathers, then the one-man baseball team is in the wrong. If the company wanted the baseball field to be only used for baseball, then it's up to them to enforce that and not for one man to cause grief to a bunch of other people who are using the field in a permitted manner.
And it certainly wouldn't be the player's right to just start hitting balls into the middle of the field where people are lying, which is the closest equivalent to what Twixt was doing.
He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.
How is teleporting people in front of NPC bots designed to enforce a safe zone instead of beating someone up yourself "playing correctly?" Especially when he was attacking people who didn't want to PVP by abusing a mechanism intended to protect people who didn't want to PVP?
The only reason he was "unbeatable" was because he built a character optimized to exploit a cheap trick that didn't rely on his own strength. I mean, he talks himself up as being skilled, but the truth is a little less flattering. Plus, he wasn't as nice and innocently curious of a guy as he pretends to be. An AC below notes that he would taunt people, post bragging kill logs, etc.
He was a griefer who basically bemoans how "haters gotta be hatin'." What a chump.
If you read some of the comments from posters who played the game, apparently he was kind of cheating. He was using a cheap trick to teleport opponents in front of NPC guards which did all the work for him, while he evaded attackers and teleported them into the NPC trap one at a time. The bots are there to create a "safe zone" for people who don't want to PVP. He abused it to kill people who didn't want to PVP from the other side.
Basically, he was doing the equivalent of "train to the guards" and claiming credit for the kills. Technically that's "within the rules" but definitely against the spirit of the game even as the developers set it up. What a biter.
Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs." Why the hell have a city full of heroes and villains, if the villains and heroes just idly chat and don't actually fight each other?
Because people actually like it that way? I mean, who is this self-proclaimed researcher to go around enforcing his vision of how people should play the game with the equivalent of violent force?
Why do you say that going around beating up villains is actually "playing the game" and the people standing around and chatting aren't? Who gets to say what the game actually is? The developers or the people who play it?
In the real world, the people who make the laws of our society are our society's "developers," but the people who actually live in the world, or the "players," often set up unwritten rules. Just because the law says that something is okay, doesn't mean that it really is.
It's like people who go 45 MPH in the left lane on a 55 MPH road. Yeah, that's definitely what the laws say you can do, but most people don't, and the presence of a vehicle going a different speed from the flow of traffic creates danger and stress that shouldn't be there. Ignoring custom in favor of only the rules in print is antisocial behavior.
In terms of the game, the people who play City of Heroes have decided as a community what kind of behavior is acceptable. You only get to go PVP with people who have consented, and the arena is a place for people on other sides of the Heroes / Villains game split to be able to chat otherwise. It's a like a dance club where someone has decided that just because he's a man and you're a woman that he gets to bump and grind against you even if you're not interested. ("That's what dance clubs are for! Why is everyone ganging up on poor little me?")
I won't say that the abusive behavior of some of the angered players was acceptable, but this researcher is a space cadet if he thinks that what he was doing was perfectly kosher and/or commendable or that the reactions to his griefing were surprising. He was using the game's equivalent of violent force to tell people how to play the game and not respecting people when they said that they didn't like playing the way he did. Nobody likes someone who goes around ganking people for "playing wrong."
If he really thinks that the community's reaction to him "marching to the beat of a different drummer" is so horrible, then I wonder what he would think of someone driving by his home at 3:00 AM every night with the bass cranked up. Bold iconoclast? Or someone that he wished the cops would deal with?
The fact that JRPGs lack the things that make a game a CRPG is not logical?
You're both begging the question and attacking a straw man. I'm really losing complete respect for you. I'm asking, "Why are CRPGs RPGs and JRPGs not RPGs," and you're pretending that I'm asking, "Why aren't JRPGs CRPGs and thus 'real RPGs?'" (which begs the question of whether CRPGs are real RPGs or not and why).
Exceptions still don't invalidate a rule.
Yes, they do sometimes. If you said, "Birds are all capable of flight," and I pointed to penguins and ostriches, then it would in fact invalidate the rule. If you instead said, "Some birds are capable of flight," then it wouldn't invalidate the rule. Of course I can't tell what you're talking about because you won't define what "the rule" is!
As far as I can tell, you're saying that CRPGs have some quality -- which you refuse to describe with any solid detail -- that JRPGs do not. As I continue to try to guess what nebulous criteria you use to draw the line, the only things you offer are traits which are not in any way unique to CRPGs. The presence of JRPGs that have those qualities and the presence of CRPGs that do not should show that these qualities do not actually define any line between the two types of games.
I already told you quite clearly that I consider CRPGs to be a close enough representation of RPGs.
And I keep asking, "Why?" and getting nothing in return but traits shared by both types of game.
They are also intended to replicate the experience of roleplaying, and I doubt that is something Japanese developers consider (so if a JRPG ends up being similiar to a CRPG in some ways, it's unintentional).
CRPGs are far better at replicating one type of roleplaying -- Simulationism. However, they don't handle story-focused play very differently from JPRGs; just a greater emphasis on nonlinearity and a few more dialog choices at the cost of narrative cohesion. JPRGs are not designed to be limited sandbox games like many CRPGs, but that does not make them signficantly less "roleplaying" than a game that gives you 6 choices instead of 2.
The notion that JRPGs may not be CRPGs immediately makes you think that this is the same thing as saying that JRPGs are inferior. So it is as I said: in your eyes, the quality of JRPGs depends solely on whether or not they are CRPGs.
No, you're dancing with a straw man again, and it's very pathetic.
What got me was the statement of your first post: "I suppose they must be called JRPGs for lack of a better term, but just because they're called that way doesn't mean they actually are RPGs. So they shouldn't be part of this article."
In essence, you say that (1) JRPGs are not real RPGs, and (2) JRPGs are not worthy of consideration in an article on RPG design. Other statements that came later include, "JRPGs are not RPGs because there is no roleplaying involved." (Which presumes that there somehow is roleplaying in a Western, sandbox-style CRPG.)
Stop putting words in my mouth and pretending not to have written the words you wrote. It's you that only considers CRPGs to have value and be worthy of consideration in this article.
What do you mean: you wasted all that time? Are you saying you don't enjoy playing games, and are only looking fo rthe accomplishment of having finished something trivial? Because then roguelikes are definitely not for you.
I've played several roguelikes and enjoyed them immensely, despite never having finished any of them (except adom once through cheating). They're games that are meant to be played rather than finished.
Well, I'm sorry, but Rogue-like games definitely give the impression of letting you make some kind of progress. I mean, you all start out in roughly the same position, you're going to some destination or goal, and you have concrete ways of measuring your progress as you increase in power (levels & treasure). All of this gives the (perhaps false) impression that you're actually trying to accomplish something.
If I was playing Minesweeper, it would be one thing, but a game that expects you to invest hours to reach a goal and then snatches it all away with an almost arbitrary perma-death is just yanking your chain. I play games to relax and not to stress out over whether I'm going to lose hours of work; I've got enough stress in non-leisure time to not need to add extra. A game that forces you to endure that stress instead of letting you invest time and effort to avoid it is just senselessly spiteful, and I'll never understand someone who considers cutting off other people's play styles to be a "feature."
I just want to know how long the rabbit's been sitting there. I mean, is it still a living rabbit, and does it get hotter for a few seconds as it thrashes around without breath in the moon's almost nonexistent atmosphere?
Or do scientists just know how hot SPACE RABBITS get? When will the invasion come?
Who said anything about adapting freely to arbitrary decisions? That is not what we are talking about.
Well, it's important to a core question I've been trying to present from different angles: at what point does the ability to make decisions for the main character turn a game from "not an RPG" to "a real RPG?" Personally, I think you've just arbitrarily drawn your line in the sand to include CRPGs and to exclude JRPGs without providing a solid, logical basis for doing so.
Let's look at some of the text from the article you quoted:
A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game. -- In my opinion, the difference between a token and a role-played character is this: Hypothetically, a person watching the game looks over your shoulder and suggests a move, and your reply is "No, my character wouldn't do that." If this happens, or is capable of happening, then at some level you are playing a role-playing game. This simple distinction puts a world of difference between RPGs and other games.
This less about the game itself than how you play it, and it's constrained by the game itself in all cases -- JRPGs and CRPGs. All JRPGs allow you freedom to act in *some* ways, and some give you more freedom to decide your character's fate than some CRPGs. There is no solid, dividing line here.
As I pointed out earlier, and you dismissed as "irrelevant," no CRPG gives you the "freedom to improvise." By the article's own definition, no CRPG with truly an RPG. So why do you keep citing the same passage I mentioned earlier that you ignored?
What essential level of choice makes an RPG into a "real RPG" instead of just "playing with a token?"
If you can choose between two dialog options and get different responses but the same plot outcome, is that an RPG?
If you can choose between two actions and determine whether someone is friend or foe, is that an RPG?
If you can choose between two actions and get different endings to the game is that an RPG?
If you can choose whether to interact with a character at all, is that an RPG?
Does it matter if the game grants a reward for choose one of your two options and if "staying in character" would require giving up power?
I mean, what a "significant" choice that can be character driven, and what is not? Without some clear, defining guideline, your entire argument that JRPGs are not "real RPGs" comes down to simply, "but I don't like them!"
Your entire argument against CRPGs is just "they're not perfect in every way, therefore they are exactly the same as JRPGs!"
Let me try to rephrase it then. I'm not arguing a black & white argument where if it's not perfect, it's not a "true RPG." The article you cite for support also doesn't quite do the same. However, it pretends that CRPGs meet criteria which *are* perfect. (e.g. The ability to truly improvise which is absent in ALL CRPGs & JRPGs.)
My argument is that there are no meaningful distinctions between CRPGs and JRPGs, least of all one that supports calling one "real RPGs" and the other "not RPGs." I think your hard stance that they are totally different beasts is probably the result of you not playing a significant number of games from both camps like I have. They have far more similarities to each other (compared to games in other genres) than differences, and most of those differences are stylistic.
The article you cite is making up distinctions that really aren't there. You can't "improvise" in a CRPG any more than you can in a JRPG. You can make decisions based on want
It is a simple fact that they are not linear. Just because they aren't == PnP RPGs doesn't mean they are on rails.
But they are on rails -- inherently. Some games just have more than one track, but there is no game on the market that adapts freely to the arbitrary decisions of the player AND has a coherent story. That would require strong AI to replace a GM.
Some have a "good path" and an "evil path." Some have the option of letting you do things in a different order. Some let you decide to overcome obstacle 22 with charm or force or stealth, but you still must ultimately beat obstacle 22 somehow to advance the plot. No matter what, you still start at point A, go through points B, C, and D in some order, and you end at point E. For example, in Baldur's Gate II, you start out in a cage and end up killing the mage that captured. It doesn't matter what order you take the quests in between the beginning and rescuing Imoen, and it doesn't matter which of various choices you make, the game still runs along the same general path to the end. Switching tracks doesn't matter if the rails all run in parallel.
If I can clearly make a choice between A and B or X, Y and Z, all of them different options, how could that possibly be an illusion?
Because you can't pick option C or option Q. You can't improvise. You can only play the types of characters that the developers deemed okay. You're just running along a few parallel rails that occasionally let you switch tracks to another one. Your choices are not particularly meaningful -- at least not in any way that makes CRPGs cross some undefinable line from "not RPG" to "RPG" and leaves JRPGs behind.
Fallout doesn't have any chapters, and the last time I checked it has a coherent storyline from start to finish. I don't know where you're getting your information from. And what does it suddenly matter if a JRPG has a more tightly focused story?
*sigh* "Chapters" is a metaphor, not an explicit, linear division of the story. Each time you visit a new location in the game, it has a series of largely self-contained bits of storytelling -- side-quests, characters, etc. There's not a lot of linked plots between locations. Shady Sands has the radscorpions and rescuing Tandi, and neither of these plot threads in the "chapter" have anything to do with the greater plot of the game. It's all just "Chapter B" in the progression from A to E.
My point about the story-driven focus of JRPGs is that it has strongly affected the development decisions behind the games. What CRPG fanboys decry as "rail-playing" is a conscious decision to prioritize story over exploration. (Again, I refer you back to GNS Theory and the Big Model.)
Has someone claimed that the only thing that makes an RPG an RPG is a dialog tree (and that Monkey Island is therefore an RPG as well)? No, because that is not the case.
Then, can you name something else that makes something a "true RPG," because that seemed to be the focus of the article you presented. (That and some fallacies about "lots of new systems" == "design failure.") You talk about choices, but choices in CRPGs generally fall into only three camps:
1) What does my character say to someone? What personality does he present? 2) What order does my character explore / complete missions in? 3) How does my character overcome an obstacle? (e.g. Combat, subterfuge, etc.)
None of these choices make a game more or less an RPG, really, because every option is limited to a few "correct" (or more appropriately "allowed") answers. JRPGs limit a lot of these to a single choice while CRPGs may give half a dozen or so. Since the results usually come out the same for the CRPG, and since you must follow the plot to roughly the same conclusion, the illusion of choice and non-linearity is just that.
I had no idea that he is now in a position of autho
JRPGs are completely linear. You make no choices and everything is pre-determined. There are no moments when you think "what would my character do?" Your character is exactly as the developers intended.
And if you want to pretend that Western CRPGs aren't linear, then I'm going to have just shrug and shake my head.
I mean, let's take Baldur's Gate for an example. The game has a definite beginning and end, and to get from A -> E you will still have to go through B, C, and D to get there. Just having the choice of what order to do B, C, & D in is no more meaningful of a choice than whether or not to do sidequests in a JRPG. Ultimately, the plot still always goes from A to E. All you have is an illusion of choice created by a conversation tree.
However, the result of more linear play is a more coherent storyline. D can be plotted with reliance on the events in B & C. Games like Fallout, NWN, etc. have to run their story with self-contained chapters for each location, but a JRPG can put together a story that runs the course of the entire game. The only Western CRPGs that let you pretend to be creating the character's story are those that do not provide ones themselves. (i.e. Those more concerned with simulation than narrative.)
And no, I don't care if a small number of JRPGs allow for some degree of choice, or bear some other similarities to CRPGs. That means nothing. Exceptions don't invalidate rules.
Exceptions prove that a rule isn't really a rule. Many JRPGs have completely different endings based on what choices you make -- which is something many Western CRPGs do not have (as they are ultimately just as linear as the JRPGs you complain about). When you strip away the stylistic differences, all you have is a flowchart. Games from both sides of the big pond fall into linear and nonlinear camps. The stereotypes are just that.
Insomnia: On Role-playing Games
I liked the article, but I disagree with some of the premises. For example:
Because by employing extensive dialogue trees in conjuction with multiple story paths, or simply by allowing the player more freedom in choosing the order in which to pursue the various quests, they were able to approximate to some small degree [...] [A]ll the instances of role-playing to be found in even the best-of-the-best CRPGs hardly ever amount to more than a few minutes in total. But those few minutes were enough to conjure an illusion of role-playing; to make one feel as if they played some part in steering the stories of these games towards their eventual outcomes. And the players loved them for it.
See, I played and loved Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, and NWN. But I never felt anymore like I was actually roleplaying than when I played Persona 3, Tales of Symphonia, or Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. A few minutes of being able to pick different dialog options never really felt like roleplaying to me. It was just more content to unlock by picking the right options in the trees. Even games like "Planescape: Torment" only rarely caused permanent changes to the plot line from picking certain dialog options. You could often restart conversations and take them down different alleys. And when an option would make a choice, you were only one load & replay away from seeing all the others. I just wanted all of the story, and a dialog tree alone does not make for roleplaying (any more than it made the classic games StarControl 2 or Monkey Island into RPG).
And this is where I disagree with the author of that article and you apparently. To me a decision tree alone is not sufficient to immerse me enough for me to feel like I'm roleplaying anymore than uncovering a gripping story does. As a fan of narrativist games (like the game Dogs in the Vineyard mentioned in the article), I wouldn't be surprised if I turned out to have very different play goals in tabl
Have you actually played any CRPGs made during the past 10-15 years? There is no shortage of storytelling in them. JRPGs are not RPGs because there is no roleplaying involved.
"No roleplaying?" Puh-lease. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask what exact elements of CRPG playing that you have that makes it "true roleplaying" in your eyes, because neither experience comes anywhere close to being the same as a tabletop game. I frankly can't see anything in Western RPGs that makes them more like roleplaying than JRPGs.
Conversation trees that affect the plot? Many JRPGs have that. Nonlinear storytelling? Some JRPGs have that (and their plot suffers about as much as Western nonlinear games for lack of direction). A protagonist that's utterly undefined until the player creates them? Rare in JRPGs, but this is a point where I think the JRPG philosophy leads to better storytelling because its easier to write more moving stories when a character isn't an unknown mass of stats. I mean, don't let me put words into your mouth here, but I have no idea what element you think must be necessary to earn the crown, but whatever it is, I just don't see it. It's all playing in a limited sandbox to me.
I believe in the government not encroaching on the rights I am supposed to have.
You're, of course, begging the question as to whether or not you are supposed to have the right to harass someone until they commit suicide or even just the right to play a cruel and emotionally damaging prank on a girl that wouldn't commit suicide.
I like the old maxim that "Your right to swing your arm ends at my face." No one has the inherent right to be hurt someone else for their own amusement / satisfaction. Just saying that all speech is the same ignores defamation, ignores fraud, and ignores abuse, stalking, and harassment. I mean, if you pretend that things are all black and white about speech, then even asking someone to kill someone for you wouldn't be a crime in your world.
Suppose you are driving your car down the road and I swerve to the right, then back to the left as if I was going to ram into you. I stay in my lane but you react and swerve to avoid me and hit a pedestrian killing them. Am I at fault at all? I didn't break any laws, the pedestrian is dead by you hands, not mine.
Actually, you've committed vehicular homicide. Almost all jurisdictions define homicide as taking an action that causes the death of another person. It doesn't matter that the other car was the one that actually hit the person; you are a proximate cause of the accident. Your intent will only matter to determine which degree of homicide you committed -- from vehicular manslaughter to 1st degree murder.
I know that's largely a distraction from your point about using the law to convict someone who's wrong of something even if there's no law on the books, but that's not really the way we do things. No "post ex facto" convictions and all that.
I know the media has largely focused on the federal prosecutors' unique use of computer fraud statutes, but I've always wondered why she wasn't charged with violations of other laws like 47 U.S.C. 223(a)(1)(E) and why the local county prosecutors decided to do absolutely nothing about the case. You'd think that there had to be some state laws that would apply.
Japanese RPGs focus on telling an interactive story (and placing game & combat mechanics on top). This is radically different from the western RPG model of simulating a character in an environment (and placing game & combat mechanics on top), but it's no less role-playing. Look up GNS Theory and The Big Model, sometime.
If your main interest is exploring a world, play Western RPGs. If your main interest is getting a cohesive narrative, play JRPGs. Either way, don't fall into the "No True Scotsman!" fallacy and declare everything that it's your favored style of play "not actually RPGs."
This is what a lot of "JRPGs suck" or "Western RPGs" people are missing.
The two types of games have radically different gameplay goals. They should no more be considered the game genre than turn-based strategy and real-time strategy or FPS's and 3D platformers. The interactive storytelling model of JRPGs and the "character living in a setting" focus of Western RPGs are apples and oranges.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, you're kinda wrong, at least in terms of American driving.
Actually, it's a state-by-state thing, and it isn't illegal into two of the states I've lived in. I often forget that it's illegal in other states.
For those of you who have never played EVE Online, a large part of it is about non-consensual PvP. A whine like this would draw an extremely high amount of ridicule on the forums.
So, what you're saying is that if someone came in from outside with a very different expectation of how PvP was supposed to be played from the dominant culture of the game, that they'd be subject to scorn, ridicule, and maybe even hatred if they attempted to be too insistent about their stance?
Gosh. It's almost exactly like what happened here.
He was clever enough to come up with a strategy that's apparently very hard to counter. That counts for something.
I was a strategy that the company would later prevent and treat as griefing. It was clearly not something the owners of the game considered kosher. The fact that it worked well even when people teamed up against him shows that it steps beyond "effective" to "broken." And the fact that he moved on to other anti-social behavior once the developers stopped him (i.e. messing with people having battles in PvE portions of the game), shows that he was purely interested in griefing.
The tactic he used was widely considered cowardly and against the spirit of PVP. It was like challenging someone to a swordfight and poisoning your blade. Effective? Yes. Fair play? No.
That's the benefit of being victorious, you get to brag about it. Whining that the winner is bragging just makes you a poor loser.
I'm guessing that you've never heard of the concept of a poor winner, then.
Most people consider someone who sucker punches someone and then taunts them to be a serious man-child.
People in the game could have formed an angry mob or something and that would be fine with me.
They did. He kept beating them. That's how cheap and unbalanced the trick was.
I"m not going to respond to your drivel about rights, because you're wrong. It's the definition of a right.
You must use a different definition from that of the rest of humanity, then. Saying something short and pithy over and over without any logical support for the proposition doesn't make your argument very convincing.
As for begging the question, no, you used it wrong.
See above.
Yes, I am supposed to have that right, and it is supposed to be considered inalienable to me.
Well, too bad for you that no modern society has ever considered it inherently your right to abuse your neighbors and drive them to suicide. (I can't think of an ancient society that did either.) We've looked poorly on other speech crimes like defamation for most of history as well, and we've always considered someone who requests someone to commit a crime to be a conspirator to the crime as well. The tort of assault has covered mostly verbal threats as well since long before the US was created. And all throughout the law is a requirement that people act in good faith instead of lying.
The right to free speech is about the freedom to express ideas, particularly those of political & religious belief. It's not the right to try to actively harm other people through vicious anger and deceit. We have a good, Constitutionally-recognized tort for that in the United States: intentional infliction of emotional distress.
I'd hate to live in a society where the only response to this sort of behavior was self-help.
Also, I don't think that means what you think it does: Begging the Question
Actually, it's a perfect fit: "Begging the question (or petitio principii) is a logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in the premises."
You presume that it's your right to abuse other people. The government cannot encroach upon a right you never had, and when you made the statement that encroaching upon these supposed rights to abuse people has "done far more to 'create more suffering' than anything I have or ever will do," you presume that the loss of this presumed right creates suffering in the first place. Thus, Begging the Question.
Attention, the traffic LAWS say "Slower traffic keep right."
In some states. Not all. Many of these states also say that it's illegal to pass on the right, so if someone goes and does it anyway, you're stuck either breaking the law or just sucking it up.
In other states, it's a free for all, and in yet others it's free for all except that commercial freight trucks can't use the left lane. Etc.
The developers are the ones who set the speed limits/laws, and not surprisingly, entering a Player vs. Player arena is explicitly saying "I want to PvP."
Well, does it really mean that? If not everyone who goes there does so, then quite obviously there are plenty of people who have in fact not consented to PvP any more than everyone one on the road has consented to going 10 under 55 MPH just because someone else can.
Also, just because it's possible to PvP with anyone there doesn't mean that people have consented to PvP with you. This is why I brought up the dance club analogy. Just because you're on the floor doesn't mean that just anyone can come up and dance with you without need for any further approval, and it doesn't mean that they can't refuse you if you try without having to run out of the room.
"No chance at fighting back," because they stood around and got their panties in a collective twist crying over the presence of a griefer instead of denying the griefer his fun by, oh I dunno, leaving the PvP arena?
You're one of those people that thinks that it's the nonsmoker's fault for not leaving as soon as a smoker shows up and decides to light up in his face, aren't you?
The rules of society should not be set up so that when someone starts causing another person grief that it's the victim's responsibility to run away and hide.
Unfortunately, it's been taken over by people who are doing something else in it. The majority doesn't want to leave. The individual just wants to use the field for what it was built for.
So who's in the wrong there?
Whoever causes the most trouble for the people permitted by the owner of the field to use it. If the company isn't clearing off the sunbathers, then the one-man baseball team is in the wrong. If the company wanted the baseball field to be only used for baseball, then it's up to them to enforce that and not for one man to cause grief to a bunch of other people who are using the field in a permitted manner.
And it certainly wouldn't be the player's right to just start hitting balls into the middle of the field where people are lying, which is the closest equivalent to what Twixt was doing.
He had been playing since the game came out in 2004. He knew the customs, he knew the rules. He played the game as designed. He was a hero who defeated villains in a PvP server. He played the game correctly, while everyone else wasn't.
How is teleporting people in front of NPC bots designed to enforce a safe zone instead of beating someone up yourself "playing correctly?" Especially when he was attacking people who didn't want to PVP by abusing a mechanism intended to protect people who didn't want to PVP?
The only reason he was "unbeatable" was because he built a character optimized to exploit a cheap trick that didn't rely on his own strength. I mean, he talks himself up as being skilled, but the truth is a little less flattering. Plus, he wasn't as nice and innocently curious of a guy as he pretends to be. An AC below notes that he would taunt people, post bragging kill logs, etc.
He was a griefer who basically bemoans how "haters gotta be hatin'." What a chump.
If you read some of the comments from posters who played the game, apparently he was kind of cheating. He was using a cheap trick to teleport opponents in front of NPC guards which did all the work for him, while he evaded attackers and teleported them into the NPC trap one at a time. The bots are there to create a "safe zone" for people who don't want to PVP. He abused it to kill people who didn't want to PVP from the other side.
Basically, he was doing the equivalent of "train to the guards" and claiming credit for the kills. Technically that's "within the rules" but definitely against the spirit of the game even as the developers set it up. What a biter.
Seeing the other side of the story is a good thing.
Basically, he played the game (actually fighting villains) and was hated for it. Not because he was being vile or crude (indeed, completely contrary to what you suggest) but by violating game defeating "customs." Why the hell have a city full of heroes and villains, if the villains and heroes just idly chat and don't actually fight each other?
Because people actually like it that way? I mean, who is this self-proclaimed researcher to go around enforcing his vision of how people should play the game with the equivalent of violent force?
Why do you say that going around beating up villains is actually "playing the game" and the people standing around and chatting aren't? Who gets to say what the game actually is? The developers or the people who play it?
In the real world, the people who make the laws of our society are our society's "developers," but the people who actually live in the world, or the "players," often set up unwritten rules. Just because the law says that something is okay, doesn't mean that it really is.
It's like people who go 45 MPH in the left lane on a 55 MPH road. Yeah, that's definitely what the laws say you can do, but most people don't, and the presence of a vehicle going a different speed from the flow of traffic creates danger and stress that shouldn't be there. Ignoring custom in favor of only the rules in print is antisocial behavior.
In terms of the game, the people who play City of Heroes have decided as a community what kind of behavior is acceptable. You only get to go PVP with people who have consented, and the arena is a place for people on other sides of the Heroes / Villains game split to be able to chat otherwise. It's a like a dance club where someone has decided that just because he's a man and you're a woman that he gets to bump and grind against you even if you're not interested. ("That's what dance clubs are for! Why is everyone ganging up on poor little me?")
I won't say that the abusive behavior of some of the angered players was acceptable, but this researcher is a space cadet if he thinks that what he was doing was perfectly kosher and/or commendable or that the reactions to his griefing were surprising. He was using the game's equivalent of violent force to tell people how to play the game and not respecting people when they said that they didn't like playing the way he did. Nobody likes someone who goes around ganking people for "playing wrong."
If he really thinks that the community's reaction to him "marching to the beat of a different drummer" is so horrible, then I wonder what he would think of someone driving by his home at 3:00 AM every night with the bass cranked up. Bold iconoclast? Or someone that he wished the cops would deal with?
The fact that JRPGs lack the things that make a game a CRPG is not logical?
You're both begging the question and attacking a straw man. I'm really losing complete respect for you. I'm asking, "Why are CRPGs RPGs and JRPGs not RPGs," and you're pretending that I'm asking, "Why aren't JRPGs CRPGs and thus 'real RPGs?'" (which begs the question of whether CRPGs are real RPGs or not and why).
Exceptions still don't invalidate a rule.
Yes, they do sometimes. If you said, "Birds are all capable of flight," and I pointed to penguins and ostriches, then it would in fact invalidate the rule. If you instead said, "Some birds are capable of flight," then it wouldn't invalidate the rule. Of course I can't tell what you're talking about because you won't define what "the rule" is!
As far as I can tell, you're saying that CRPGs have some quality -- which you refuse to describe with any solid detail -- that JRPGs do not. As I continue to try to guess what nebulous criteria you use to draw the line, the only things you offer are traits which are not in any way unique to CRPGs. The presence of JRPGs that have those qualities and the presence of CRPGs that do not should show that these qualities do not actually define any line between the two types of games.
I already told you quite clearly that I consider CRPGs to be a close enough representation of RPGs.
And I keep asking, "Why?" and getting nothing in return but traits shared by both types of game.
They are also intended to replicate the experience of roleplaying, and I doubt that is something Japanese developers consider (so if a JRPG ends up being similiar to a CRPG in some ways, it's unintentional).
CRPGs are far better at replicating one type of roleplaying -- Simulationism. However, they don't handle story-focused play very differently from JPRGs; just a greater emphasis on nonlinearity and a few more dialog choices at the cost of narrative cohesion. JPRGs are not designed to be limited sandbox games like many CRPGs, but that does not make them signficantly less "roleplaying" than a game that gives you 6 choices instead of 2.
The notion that JRPGs may not be CRPGs immediately makes you think that this is the same thing as saying that JRPGs are inferior. So it is as I said: in your eyes, the quality of JRPGs depends solely on whether or not they are CRPGs.
No, you're dancing with a straw man again, and it's very pathetic.
What got me was the statement of your first post: "I suppose they must be called JRPGs for lack of a better term, but just because they're called that way doesn't mean they actually are RPGs. So they shouldn't be part of this article."
In essence, you say that (1) JRPGs are not real RPGs, and (2) JRPGs are not worthy of consideration in an article on RPG design. Other statements that came later include, "JRPGs are not RPGs because there is no roleplaying involved." (Which presumes that there somehow is roleplaying in a Western, sandbox-style CRPG.)
Stop putting words in my mouth and pretending not to have written the words you wrote. It's you that only considers CRPGs to have value and be worthy of consideration in this article.
What do you mean: you wasted all that time? Are you saying you don't enjoy playing games, and are only looking fo rthe accomplishment of having finished something trivial? Because then roguelikes are definitely not for you.
I've played several roguelikes and enjoyed them immensely, despite never having finished any of them (except adom once through cheating). They're games that are meant to be played rather than finished.
Well, I'm sorry, but Rogue-like games definitely give the impression of letting you make some kind of progress. I mean, you all start out in roughly the same position, you're going to some destination or goal, and you have concrete ways of measuring your progress as you increase in power (levels & treasure). All of this gives the (perhaps false) impression that you're actually trying to accomplish something.
If I was playing Minesweeper, it would be one thing, but a game that expects you to invest hours to reach a goal and then snatches it all away with an almost arbitrary perma-death is just yanking your chain. I play games to relax and not to stress out over whether I'm going to lose hours of work; I've got enough stress in non-leisure time to not need to add extra. A game that forces you to endure that stress instead of letting you invest time and effort to avoid it is just senselessly spiteful, and I'll never understand someone who considers cutting off other people's play styles to be a "feature."
I just want to know how long the rabbit's been sitting there. I mean, is it still a living rabbit, and does it get hotter for a few seconds as it thrashes around without breath in the moon's almost nonexistent atmosphere?
Or do scientists just know how hot SPACE RABBITS get? When will the invasion come?
Who said anything about adapting freely to arbitrary decisions? That is not what we are talking about.
Well, it's important to a core question I've been trying to present from different angles: at what point does the ability to make decisions for the main character turn a game from "not an RPG" to "a real RPG?" Personally, I think you've just arbitrarily drawn your line in the sand to include CRPGs and to exclude JRPGs without providing a solid, logical basis for doing so.
Let's look at some of the text from the article you quoted:
A role-playing game is a game in which the participants assume the roles of fictional characters. Participants determine the actions of their characters based on their characterization, and the actions succeed or fail according to a formal system of rules and guidelines. Within the rules, players have the freedom to improvise; their choices shape the direction and outcome of the game.
--
In my opinion, the difference between a token and a role-played character is this: Hypothetically, a person watching the game looks over your shoulder and suggests a move, and your reply is "No, my character wouldn't do that." If this happens, or is capable of happening, then at some level you are playing a role-playing game. This simple distinction puts a world of difference between RPGs and other games.
This less about the game itself than how you play it, and it's constrained by the game itself in all cases -- JRPGs and CRPGs. All JRPGs allow you freedom to act in *some* ways, and some give you more freedom to decide your character's fate than some CRPGs. There is no solid, dividing line here.
As I pointed out earlier, and you dismissed as "irrelevant," no CRPG gives you the "freedom to improvise." By the article's own definition, no CRPG with truly an RPG. So why do you keep citing the same passage I mentioned earlier that you ignored?
What essential level of choice makes an RPG into a "real RPG" instead of just "playing with a token?"
I mean, what a "significant" choice that can be character driven, and what is not? Without some clear, defining guideline, your entire argument that JRPGs are not "real RPGs" comes down to simply, "but I don't like them!"
Your entire argument against CRPGs is just "they're not perfect in every way, therefore they are exactly the same as JRPGs!"
Let me try to rephrase it then. I'm not arguing a black & white argument where if it's not perfect, it's not a "true RPG." The article you cite for support also doesn't quite do the same. However, it pretends that CRPGs meet criteria which *are* perfect. (e.g. The ability to truly improvise which is absent in ALL CRPGs & JRPGs.)
My argument is that there are no meaningful distinctions between CRPGs and JRPGs, least of all one that supports calling one "real RPGs" and the other "not RPGs." I think your hard stance that they are totally different beasts is probably the result of you not playing a significant number of games from both camps like I have. They have far more similarities to each other (compared to games in other genres) than differences, and most of those differences are stylistic.
The article you cite is making up distinctions that really aren't there. You can't "improvise" in a CRPG any more than you can in a JRPG. You can make decisions based on want
It is a simple fact that they are not linear. Just because they aren't == PnP RPGs doesn't mean they are on rails.
But they are on rails -- inherently. Some games just have more than one track, but there is no game on the market that adapts freely to the arbitrary decisions of the player AND has a coherent story. That would require strong AI to replace a GM.
Some have a "good path" and an "evil path." Some have the option of letting you do things in a different order. Some let you decide to overcome obstacle 22 with charm or force or stealth, but you still must ultimately beat obstacle 22 somehow to advance the plot. No matter what, you still start at point A, go through points B, C, and D in some order, and you end at point E. For example, in Baldur's Gate II, you start out in a cage and end up killing the mage that captured. It doesn't matter what order you take the quests in between the beginning and rescuing Imoen, and it doesn't matter which of various choices you make, the game still runs along the same general path to the end. Switching tracks doesn't matter if the rails all run in parallel.
If I can clearly make a choice between A and B or X, Y and Z, all of them different options, how could that possibly be an illusion?
Because you can't pick option C or option Q. You can't improvise. You can only play the types of characters that the developers deemed okay. You're just running along a few parallel rails that occasionally let you switch tracks to another one. Your choices are not particularly meaningful -- at least not in any way that makes CRPGs cross some undefinable line from "not RPG" to "RPG" and leaves JRPGs behind.
Fallout doesn't have any chapters, and the last time I checked it has a coherent storyline from start to finish. I don't know where you're getting your information from. And what does it suddenly matter if a JRPG has a more tightly focused story?
*sigh* "Chapters" is a metaphor, not an explicit, linear division of the story. Each time you visit a new location in the game, it has a series of largely self-contained bits of storytelling -- side-quests, characters, etc. There's not a lot of linked plots between locations. Shady Sands has the radscorpions and rescuing Tandi, and neither of these plot threads in the "chapter" have anything to do with the greater plot of the game. It's all just "Chapter B" in the progression from A to E.
My point about the story-driven focus of JRPGs is that it has strongly affected the development decisions behind the games. What CRPG fanboys decry as "rail-playing" is a conscious decision to prioritize story over exploration. (Again, I refer you back to GNS Theory and the Big Model.)
Has someone claimed that the only thing that makes an RPG an RPG is a dialog tree (and that Monkey Island is therefore an RPG as well)? No, because that is not the case.
Then, can you name something else that makes something a "true RPG," because that seemed to be the focus of the article you presented. (That and some fallacies about "lots of new systems" == "design failure.") You talk about choices, but choices in CRPGs generally fall into only three camps:
1) What does my character say to someone? What personality does he present?
2) What order does my character explore / complete missions in?
3) How does my character overcome an obstacle? (e.g. Combat, subterfuge, etc.)
None of these choices make a game more or less an RPG, really, because every option is limited to a few "correct" (or more appropriately "allowed") answers. JRPGs limit a lot of these to a single choice while CRPGs may give half a dozen or so. Since the results usually come out the same for the CRPG, and since you must follow the plot to roughly the same conclusion, the illusion of choice and non-linearity is just that.
I had no idea that he is now in a position of autho
JRPGs are completely linear. You make no choices and everything is pre-determined. There are no moments when you think "what would my character do?" Your character is exactly as the developers intended.
And if you want to pretend that Western CRPGs aren't linear, then I'm going to have just shrug and shake my head.
I mean, let's take Baldur's Gate for an example. The game has a definite beginning and end, and to get from A -> E you will still have to go through B, C, and D to get there. Just having the choice of what order to do B, C, & D in is no more meaningful of a choice than whether or not to do sidequests in a JRPG. Ultimately, the plot still always goes from A to E. All you have is an illusion of choice created by a conversation tree.
However, the result of more linear play is a more coherent storyline. D can be plotted with reliance on the events in B & C. Games like Fallout, NWN, etc. have to run their story with self-contained chapters for each location, but a JRPG can put together a story that runs the course of the entire game. The only Western CRPGs that let you pretend to be creating the character's story are those that do not provide ones themselves. (i.e. Those more concerned with simulation than narrative.)
And no, I don't care if a small number of JRPGs allow for some degree of choice, or bear some other similarities to CRPGs. That means nothing. Exceptions don't invalidate rules.
Exceptions prove that a rule isn't really a rule. Many JRPGs have completely different endings based on what choices you make -- which is something many Western CRPGs do not have (as they are ultimately just as linear as the JRPGs you complain about). When you strip away the stylistic differences, all you have is a flowchart. Games from both sides of the big pond fall into linear and nonlinear camps. The stereotypes are just that.
Insomnia: On Role-playing Games
I liked the article, but I disagree with some of the premises. For example:
Because by employing extensive dialogue trees in conjuction with multiple story paths, or simply by allowing the player more freedom in choosing the order in which to pursue the various quests, they were able to approximate to some small degree [...] [A]ll the instances of role-playing to be found in even the best-of-the-best CRPGs hardly ever amount to more than a few minutes in total. But those few minutes were enough to conjure an illusion of role-playing; to make one feel as if they played some part in steering the stories of these games towards their eventual outcomes. And the players loved them for it.
See, I played and loved Planescape: Torment, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate, and NWN. But I never felt anymore like I was actually roleplaying than when I played Persona 3, Tales of Symphonia, or Soul Nomad & the World Eaters. A few minutes of being able to pick different dialog options never really felt like roleplaying to me. It was just more content to unlock by picking the right options in the trees. Even games like "Planescape: Torment" only rarely caused permanent changes to the plot line from picking certain dialog options. You could often restart conversations and take them down different alleys. And when an option would make a choice, you were only one load & replay away from seeing all the others. I just wanted all of the story, and a dialog tree alone does not make for roleplaying (any more than it made the classic games StarControl 2 or Monkey Island into RPG).
And this is where I disagree with the author of that article and you apparently. To me a decision tree alone is not sufficient to immerse me enough for me to feel like I'm roleplaying anymore than uncovering a gripping story does. As a fan of narrativist games (like the game Dogs in the Vineyard mentioned in the article), I wouldn't be surprised if I turned out to have very different play goals in tabl
Have you actually played any CRPGs made during the past 10-15 years? There is no shortage of storytelling in them. JRPGs are not RPGs because there is no roleplaying involved.
"No roleplaying?" Puh-lease. I'm afraid that I'm going to have to ask what exact elements of CRPG playing that you have that makes it "true roleplaying" in your eyes, because neither experience comes anywhere close to being the same as a tabletop game. I frankly can't see anything in Western RPGs that makes them more like roleplaying than JRPGs.
Conversation trees that affect the plot? Many JRPGs have that. Nonlinear storytelling? Some JRPGs have that (and their plot suffers about as much as Western nonlinear games for lack of direction). A protagonist that's utterly undefined until the player creates them? Rare in JRPGs, but this is a point where I think the JRPG philosophy leads to better storytelling because its easier to write more moving stories when a character isn't an unknown mass of stats. I mean, don't let me put words into your mouth here, but I have no idea what element you think must be necessary to earn the crown, but whatever it is, I just don't see it. It's all playing in a limited sandbox to me.
I believe in the government not encroaching on the rights I am supposed to have.
You're, of course, begging the question as to whether or not you are supposed to have the right to harass someone until they commit suicide or even just the right to play a cruel and emotionally damaging prank on a girl that wouldn't commit suicide.
I like the old maxim that "Your right to swing your arm ends at my face." No one has the inherent right to be hurt someone else for their own amusement / satisfaction. Just saying that all speech is the same ignores defamation, ignores fraud, and ignores abuse, stalking, and harassment. I mean, if you pretend that things are all black and white about speech, then even asking someone to kill someone for you wouldn't be a crime in your world.
Suppose you are driving your car down the road and I swerve to the right, then back to the left as if I was going to ram into you. I stay in my lane but you react and swerve to avoid me and hit a pedestrian killing them. Am I at fault at all? I didn't break any laws, the pedestrian is dead by you hands, not mine.
Actually, you've committed vehicular homicide. Almost all jurisdictions define homicide as taking an action that causes the death of another person. It doesn't matter that the other car was the one that actually hit the person; you are a proximate cause of the accident. Your intent will only matter to determine which degree of homicide you committed -- from vehicular manslaughter to 1st degree murder.
I know that's largely a distraction from your point about using the law to convict someone who's wrong of something even if there's no law on the books, but that's not really the way we do things. No "post ex facto" convictions and all that.
I know the media has largely focused on the federal prosecutors' unique use of computer fraud statutes, but I've always wondered why she wasn't charged with violations of other laws like 47 U.S.C. 223(a)(1)(E) and why the local county prosecutors decided to do absolutely nothing about the case. You'd think that there had to be some state laws that would apply.
Japanese RPGs focus on telling an interactive story (and placing game & combat mechanics on top). This is radically different from the western RPG model of simulating a character in an environment (and placing game & combat mechanics on top), but it's no less role-playing. Look up GNS Theory and The Big Model, sometime.
If your main interest is exploring a world, play Western RPGs. If your main interest is getting a cohesive narrative, play JRPGs. Either way, don't fall into the "No True Scotsman!" fallacy and declare everything that it's your favored style of play "not actually RPGs."
This is what a lot of "JRPGs suck" or "Western RPGs" people are missing.
The two types of games have radically different gameplay goals. They should no more be considered the game genre than turn-based strategy and real-time strategy or FPS's and 3D platformers. The interactive storytelling model of JRPGs and the "character living in a setting" focus of Western RPGs are apples and oranges.