Is CR pointless?

[Alutka]

I must say that the discussion we had in the other thread made me wonder if it really makes sense to keep the CR? Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of the CR, but it's a rule which is almost impossible to be enforced.
We know that people talk on irc, they talk through skype, they even meet or get married. Does anyone really believe that this doesn't influence the way they play -at all-? Even if people are able to force themselves to keep things IC, the word -force- is a key here. It's a game, it should be fun and pleasure, not a gruesome task. Besides one really need to have their head up their ass to believe that people will be as likely to do some nasty things to a char who they know is played by a friend than to kill a char of a total stranger. Same goes for the PD actions actually. How can one expect them to be just as harsh to a friend of theirs and to someone they hate? Especially when the CR is so vague and it's equally easy to 'prove' someone is guilty as to 'prove' someone is innocent.

There was a situation in the PZ not long ago where a bunch of players (5 of them?) pressed the 'X' in the exacly same time (as if someone had any doubts that they were talking through skype or irc or whatever). And what? Lots of their characters were in crews together, or were ruling towns together or stuff like that.

But that's all nothing comparing to the fact, that apparently it -is- possible (and actually pretty easy) to have many accounts. So the whole CR business applies only to those, who do not know how to hide their identity in the internet (or who want to be decent players and believe in the goodness of the staff). What is more it's pretty impossible to prove that someone is using multiple accounts.

The point is: people break the CR on daily basis. I am pretty sure we've all seen a situation when we thought 'They must be coordinating this occly', yet you also knew that there was no way to prove it.

[MattWithoos]

I don't want to start an argument with you so please don't take my words as aggressive - but I wanted to tell a story and show that there are people who flat out will never cheat, and why.

Case in point, my friend who brought me into this game 11 years ago. When I first joined I asked him if he wanted to meet up in-game, he said no way - and explained the rules - but importantly, what I remembered wasn't so much the CR, but the fact that we're building a story together.. A few weeks later, I asked him to help my character out. He said no. We were only 15 or so back then, and he had a deep respect for the CR and the storyline which I've also found myself to appreciate. Cheating would have been like changing the ending in a book by getting a pen and writing it on the paper.

Today I was actually doing a thought experiment - if I convinced this friend to join, and it was somehow revealed we were friends, would the players department think we were colluding? My immediate thought after that was, "it doesn't matter, because neither he nor I would want to ruin the story of the game with cheating".

I think what I'm getting at is that this is a niche community, with a niche concept of a capital rule.

We are all joining in on one big story. Code tells us our character's limits, and the CR tells us our player's limits. We all take up an unwritten promise to each other to tell a fair story.

Cheating is childish, I think. It's like playing toy soldiers as a child, and taking your friend's pieces and throwing them in the bin and declaring victory. It's sad, it's meaningless and you're only hurting yourself.

Cantr is just a story. Cheating is utterly pointless. If you cheat, you're only cheating yourself from a worthwhile story.

If you understand this, you'll understand the CR. And you'll understand that any problem with the CR is actually just a symptom of a problem with the players - not the cause.

[Alutka]

I am not taking it personally Matt. It's a nice story, but it doesn't change anything.
There are some players who will never cheat, and there are some who will, and there is no way to really stop the other group from cheating if they do it carefully enough.

There is a nice Polish saying 'Law is like a fence. A tiger will jump over it, a snake will slither through and cattle stays in place'. And I've seen quite a lot of tigers and snakes over here. I wish all players had as high standards as you do, but sadly, it's not the case. And this problem seems pretty unfixable, which is exacly my point.

[sherman]

If people cheat on other games, they will cheat here too. Trust me, as former admin I know this. People cheat even for slightest advantage

[Mafia Salad]

Well said MW. I'll have further thoughts and experiences to share later, but have RL to deal with first.

I think the CR is the best possible rule to guide the nature of the game. Changing it changes the games essences. Of course people will break it, thats why we have a PD
That doesn't mean the rule is flawed, it means the players are.

[SekoETC]

It's not like anyone is going to admit that they cheat or have cheated.

I think CR in the way that each character needs to be roleplayed as a separate entity is valid - but that you couldn't play with your friend's or spouse's characters at all is wrong. It happens all the time and it's only seen as cheating if the characters time their actions in a way that seems the players orchestrated in real life when to do and what. They could just as easily whisper to the other character, hey, let's go inside for a cup of tea, and once they go inside where they can't be overheard, discuss an elaborate plan to kidnap someone or take over the town. PD can see if such a discussion took place or not. If characters just "snap" all of a sudden and work without verbal communication, it's going to look like it was machinated OOCly.

Edit: Now that I started this post with "Nobody's going to admit if they cheated...", I think I can safely say that I cheated in a way back in 2007, because I don't think people are going to punish me for something I did when I was much younger than now. I found a way to record the character id's of the chars in a certain town and how to bypass the people list and go straight to the attack page by pasting a modified url. Of course if the person had moved, it would cause an error message, but I had backup numbers recorded, and my character wanted to harm several people. With the bypass, he could attack several people within under a minute, when going through the people page it would've taken longer. Pages took longer to load back then. Ironically the technique didn't save my character, because he started believing in his own immortality, and that became his downfall. He was almost simultaneously attacked by two people. The first one dealt 48 damage, the second one killed him, so he must've dealt at least 52. Now I don't think that those two people told each other on messenger "Hey, now that attacker is in town, let's get him". They had enough time to discuss things inside the game and they could see the boat coming from an hour away.

[Telefon]

Without the capital rule, talking with others about situations would be allowed, knowledge about situation already happening in distant places would be allowed, everything would be allowed, the game would be destroyed even more than it's now, but nobody would get banned. I don't know which option would be better, because now probably about half of the players should be banned for playing OOC.

[cutecuddlydirewolf]

I've been doing online roleplaying in various communities for a long, long time now, and the one thing I keep seeing over and over is people bringing OOC knowledge, personal spats, and other things into their roleplay. Nothing ruins good roleplay faster than people putting too much of themselves into their characters, to the point where it becomes personal.
Not everyone sees things like this as 'just a game', or can't keep that way of thinking.
The CR keeps people from planning OOC things, which prevents unfair events from taking place. The alternative would be allowing every player to plan out all their RP with other players, which would completely ruin the feel of the game.

That being said, I do agree that it's a bit strict to assume that every player wants to cheat. Most of the current playerbase has been around for quite a while, and doesn't want to see the game crash and burn. Just because a player has a character in the same town as their real-life friend doesn't automatically mean that they're going to plot to kill off the town leader.

The same applies to players who decide to play violent characters. Violent characters, when played properly, can generate some of the most interesting and gripping kinds of roleplay out there (in my personal experience, anyway). And yet, they're so heavily monitored by the PD that it's hard for any player to create and roleplay a character of that sort.

Overall, while I do like the concept of the CR, it's enforced to the point where I believe it's almost stifling the potential of the game.

[Rmak]

There needs to be a CR and it needs to be policed, I just don't think only advising people of someone interpretation of it before their account is locked or character deleted is the right way to go about it, given the current age of the game. Guilty until proven innocent mentality just causes more trouble than its worth, as does simply deleting threads staff don't agree with (I guess I'll wait for an apology by PM) - it just creates a certain culture that does help anyone.

[Alladinsane]

No need to apologize Rmak, you are already forgiven.

The thing that some people don't seem to realize, whether they play violent characters or not, is that it is not a war against PD. That's not what it is about.

Its a war against the other players. If you are reading this, then those who have violated the CR are cheating you!

Policemen do not enforce the law because their own house was burglarized, they enforce it because anybodies house was burglarized.
Pd is stepping in to protect the players, not ourselves.
When one of you reports something, we look into it.
We won't tell you what we found because we don't discuss it with players, but if you have committed a crb, you will hear from us.

I also honestly hope we can start a civil discourse on this.

[MonkeyPants4736]

Edit: Nevermind, I misunderstood something in the last post

[Rmak]

Oh I meant the cheater accusation apology that Im sure will never happen.

You may not have noticed there is already a civil conversation about this which you arrived late too. Just because you disagree with someone doesnt mean they are not civil. The issue is not around PD's actions but the core rule of the game that they work off, which many find vague and when hearing about PD cases verdicts that all relate to the core of the game.

The police example is good as in most societies the law is easily view-able in many forms and media, its not "deliberately" vague and you only don't hear about it at sentencing. (Well, you do in some countries but not western countries unless you mean Police in America as we all see what they do in world TV in between articles about the up and coming Trumpolypse. ).

Of course there will always be cheaters, cheaters in game, cheaters who sockpuppet forums that need discipline but with a vague rule (see threads over years) and some interesting view of players the community is just a product of its environment.

[Undine]

There needs to be a CR and it needs to be policed, I just don't think only advising people of someone interpretation of it before their account is locked or character deleted is the right way to go about it, given the current age of the game. Guilty until proven innocent mentality just causes more trouble than its worth, as does simply deleting threads staff don't agree with (I guess I'll wait for an apology by PM) - it just creates a certain culture that does help anyone.

I agree wholeheartedly with Rmak here. I also believe that there are inherent flaws in the way that the CR is interpreted. Players are accused of cheating simply for having "too many eyes and ears" in a single area. I'm not even talking about the same town, I mean the same island. Characters don't even have to use OOC information anymore in order to be accused of using OOC information. When did "innocent until proven guilty" go out the window?

[HFrance]

"innocent until proven guilty"

This applies also to the judges.

[Alutka]

"innocent until proven guilty"

This applies also to the judges.

Which is very convenient since Players are not allowed to discuss their cases in public and thus would be unable to prove the 'judges' guilt even if the judges screwed something up completly.

Anyway, back to the CR rule. It's exactly as Telefon said. The CR in theory forces people not to cheat, but in practise people still cheat -a lot-, the only difference is that they are pretty clever now. In some sense the CR is as useful now as was prohibition in the States. Imho the very idea is flawed: apparently a system where people are allowed to have multiple characters in one world and keep them separate can't really work. People abuse the CR and will keep on abusing it and there is no way the PD will ever be able to prove the guilt in majority of cases.