Less violence

General out-of-character discussion among players of Cantr II.

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Pirog
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Postby Pirog » Thu Dec 18, 2003 7:38 am

I get the feeling that it pretty much is a few players in Cantr who only seems to be organizing these massacres out of the sheer fun of destroying the game for outer players.
People like that can be found in about every multiplayer game that is played over the internet.

In many of the recent massacres I think the Capital Rule has been violated.
Take the one in Krif for example...
I may have missed something, so this is purely speculation, but the characters who attacked people had hardly ever spoken to each other, and I think the same goes for other massacres.
Even if the characters would be the worst kind of psychotics it would require a huge amount of planning, and thus a lot of whispering amongst the people involved.

I would say that if a) the massacres are planned OOC by friends b) it is a single person who have gathered some characters in the same town or c) they pretty much say IC "Let's kill everyone in this town - "OK"...they should be counted as cheaters and be booted from the game.

I don't think it is fair to compare the seemingly pointless massacres in Cantr (there have been some motivated ones, like in Naron) with historical massacres IRL.
I have never even heard of a massacre where citizens destroy their own town and killing everyone else there. The only similar tragedies is small scale massacres like the one in Columbine, but even there they had a reason, since the societies nowdays make people feel so small and anonymous that they do things like this just to be remembered.

In the past massacres have almost always been either organized military operations by trained soldiers, or carried out by people with ethnical differences where they hardly even see the other side as humans.

In conclusion my views are that with a few exceptions the massacres in Cantr is extremely poor RPing and only motivated with OOC reasons to ruin the fun for other people.
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Cheshierekat
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Postby Cheshierekat » Thu Dec 18, 2003 7:43 am

I know this might sound silly, but violence is a part of a society. It is a sad part of society, but it is one. I know that it is sad to log back on and find a character dead, but if Cantr is supposed to be a representation of how a society grows, then violence is an essential part of that.

(And I have had many char killed for no reason)
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Pirog
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Postby Pirog » Thu Dec 18, 2003 8:32 am

Cheshierekat>

Yes, but not liking the pointless, unmotivated massacres isn't the same as disliking violence in general...
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Cheshierekat
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Postby Cheshierekat » Thu Dec 18, 2003 8:41 am

I'm not saying I like violence. I try to have only peaceful char. I was only trying to make a point.
When people tell me that great minds think alike, all I can do is look at them and think "oh you dirty, dirty bastard"
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Pirog
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Postby Pirog » Thu Dec 18, 2003 8:46 am

Well, I don't like violence IRL, but I personally thinks Cantr would be boring without any form of violence.

If you read the topic you will understand what I meant about the difference in disliking pointless massacres and regular violence.
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The Hunter
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Postby The Hunter » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:12 am

Yep. There's a differnece between killing paople to get what or where you want, and people deciding the want to butcher the while town. No one has ever complained about violence in small amounts. The pointless masssacres by 2 players are disruptive to the game and if we want to compare it to RL, nearly impossible. The fact that 2 well armed people are able to kill of dozens of char's just isnt realistic, in RL nor in Cantr.

Also, there have been a number of pointless massacres in Cantr recently. Many players lost their characters after investin lots of time in them. It's just getting out of hand and a player deciding to kill off all the other char's just isnt original anymore. When I heard of the most recent massacre in Blojt, my first thought was, "oh, no, not again.

There's just some bored bad RP's out there. Even when those massacres are done out of a RP point of view, resolving to such severe violence would be the last thing to consider and would probably not even cross characters minds.

People seem to think of life in cantr as expendable. Oh, lets get my character killed, i can spawn a new one anyway. That's a players thought, surely not a char's thought. Cmon ppl, Chars are just like us. In the end, all they want to do is survive.

I'd say: Cut back the amount of characters a player can have. When you have less of them, their lives might become more valuable to players? Or how about a week's delay in spawning a new char? This might also reduce the countless suicide note thieves.
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Anders Molin
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Postby Anders Molin » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:42 am

rklenseth wrote:Yes, psychopaths are a reality of civilization but what are the chances that three fully armed psychopaths will meet up, plan a massacre, and go through with it? Not much.


Exactly my point! Well put.
"No man is an island, entire of itself [...] Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -John Donne
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g1asswa1ker
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Postby g1asswa1ker » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:49 am

don't cut back on characters set a time limit to the a dead char slot reset. Say 6 months
Somehow you strayed and lost your way,
and now there'll be no time to play,
no time for joy,
no time for friends
- not even time to make amends.
You are too naïve if you do believe life is innocent laughter and fun.
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Surly
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Postby Surly » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:50 am

It is wrong to compare to RL massacres. In real life serial killers do have motivation. They hate society, and certain people or places especially. But they do have a reason, and they don't occur frequently. In Cantr, the killings had no reason or base on historical fact. They were in breach of the Capital rule. People should remember that characters wouyld not know about the other massacres until a character who survived tells them. It is a balatant breach of the capital rule to see the massacre of Krif and suddenly have them all over the place.
Serial Killers and barbarian hordes have reasoning, and don't occur often. It should be remembered that your character should know neither about other masscres and more importantly should not know about RL massacres. Justifying actions in game with actions in RL is wrong. Your characters mental state should be shaped by the game situation. Before violence, think "Is this a suitable reaction to how my character has been treated? Is there any rerason for violence?"

Anyway, I think you get my point. Violence is an important part of Cantr (I've calmed down now), but it needs modifying to prevent those who breach the CR affecting others. It is CR breaches (not just collusion which doesn't really have an adverse affect to the same extent) which ruin the game, and those which need preventing first and foremost.

NOTE: Wow, my first topic to reach 3 pages. Back of the net!!
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Surly
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Postby Surly » Thu Dec 18, 2003 9:54 am

Also, setting a limit for replacing dead characters may deter the CR breachers, but if one of my characters is killed when I'm offline by an idiot, for no reason, making me wait 6 months is not really fair. Especially if I don't have many charcaters to play in the mean time.
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Pirog
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Postby Pirog » Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:18 am

Yes, 6 months would be way to much.

A week or something would probably be enough to stop the ones that kill their characters off to spawn in another location, but I don't think it will be an efficient way to stop the massacres.

People who take pleasure in ruining the fun for others are driven by some sad, almost perverted motivation...it's the same on shoot-em up games like Counter-Strike where they can spend an hour killing off their teammates and almost seem to get some sexual need fulfilled from knowing that people get upset...
(I'm not saying that all the players behind the massacres are such a tragic bunch.)

The only thing I think would work is if the people behind Cantr takes an OOC discussion with the players behind these suicidal mass murderers and lock them out of the game if they find that they are doing these things without any IC motivations, because they are truly ruining the game.
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g1asswa1ker
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Postby g1asswa1ker » Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:57 am

I think 6 months is fair, You would certainly fear people more if you new that it would take that long to reset a char slot. You might also start thinking about well I'm not logged on so I'm going to send this char in to the building where I'm going to be safe......
:twisted:
Now if you have 15 characters and they all got slaughtered by one player then fine I think it would be in our power to reset the slot for you ealier if there is reason enough....
Somehow you strayed and lost your way,
and now there'll be no time to play,
no time for joy,
no time for friends
- not even time to make amends.
You are too naïve if you do believe life is innocent laughter and fun.
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g1asswa1ker
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Postby g1asswa1ker » Thu Dec 18, 2003 10:58 am

You would also stop seeing the note thieves and the "please kill me I don't want to live anymore!" :twisted:
Somehow you strayed and lost your way,
and now there'll be no time to play,
no time for joy,
no time for friends
- not even time to make amends.
You are too naïve if you do believe life is innocent laughter and fun.
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Thomas Pickert
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Postby Thomas Pickert » Thu Dec 18, 2003 12:40 pm

Pirog wrote:The only thing I think would work is if the people behind Cantr takes an OOC discussion with the players behind these suicidal mass murderers and lock them out of the game if they find that they are doing these things without any IC motivations, because they are truly ruining the game.


Wow, what a really good idea! I think, we should have a whole department of people to do that kind of things. :lol:

No, seriously, in case you really don't know, what you have described above is exactly what the people in the Players Department are doing. We do that behind the scenes, though, rather than in public, because handling such cases in public usually just (like right now) infuriates our players who do their best to play by our rules. In a game with over 500 players, there will always be some who disregard the rules. Some others will do that on purpose, just to ruin the fun for as many players as possible. We are reacting to such incidents as swift as possible. What we can almost guarantee is, that, if a player, or a group of players majorly violate our rules, they will certainly not do that a second time.
Measures to prevent such problems in advance are always being thought of. Everything that has been suggested in this thread has already been considered. In this respect, you really have to take into account, that Cantr is still in a programming stage. That means, that we might have security holes sometimes, because we want to release features for the benefit of our sincere players before we have shut down all possibilities for exploits, which the very few immature and destructive players like to exploit. Eventually, Cantr will become safer and safer against such behavior.

Overall, though, I think, we have very few problems, compared to some commercial online games. We should be thankful for that, and we should just move on after such incidents. And, just to state it again, not every massacre involves a breach of the Capital Rule, some are the natural consequence of in-character actions, and should be looked at as wars.

So, please, don't waste your energies on being angry after such incidents. With Cantr's progress, things will change to prevent them in the first place, it just takes some time. After all, Cantr is still a free game, run by volunteers. ;) We maintain a certain level of professionalism, but we can't change fundamental concepts in the game (like the battle system) within a few days (or weeks, actually). You'll have to bear with us there. :twisted:
Chrissy
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Postby Chrissy » Thu Dec 18, 2003 3:35 pm

I have yet to see a real war unfortunatly. In this last incident, you have people come into town to kill, which was legitamate, but then you have those people who spawned in the town and "mysteriously" immediatly, join forces with this outside group they never met.

A real war would be interesting.

Chrissy

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