Dueling Ethics ~ Please all give your opinions

DeletedUser

This is a role playing game. As such some people can chose to be cheaters. It was part of the west and should be part of the game. I have no qualms about attacking any player because I want to be an outlaw. I am BAD. I would steal from you given half a chance. That is why I became a dueler. As far as rigging a fight, well, that happened too. Yes it should be discouraged but it will happen. There would be another way. Ethics shouldn't matter in an RPG. If you want ethics, have them and hope people follow. Either they will or they won't.
 

DeletedUser

Romelis is not my favorite person as I am not his. I do have to say this though. I don't know if Romelis does this. I do know that he does not have to. He is one tough soldier and I double dare anybody to take him on in a fight. So there, I did my good deed for the day.

Titus, I'm glad you read the entire thread. Yes, it is just a game. A game some people spend money to play (I don't). They don't want to see behavior they feel is taking advantage of a loophole in game mechanics to be allowed to go on. All those players paying for nuggets might just decide not to spend the money to enhance their character when other players are simply fixing fights in order to get ahead in the game. Sort of takes the fun out of trying to be #1 (if that is what you are aiming for) when you are competing with cheaters.

Why would it even be fun for a dueler to do this I do not understand. How boring and utter lack of sportsmanship is it to tell someone you are going to duel them and can they bank their cash and please take their weapon off too. Imagine if everyone did this. Talk about a snoozer of a game. No excitement, no mystery, no challenge. Would be like playing solitaire and peeking at all the cards.
 

DeletedUser

Warnings have been given about the flaming of this thread already. Please do not flame, get personal, or insult. Please stick to the discussion or it will be locked. I encourage this sort of discussion, however when it gets aggressive it is a shame because we will all lose out. This is a definite hot topic for me at the moment.
 

DeletedUser5209

as i stated before, ther emay be difficulties in implementing prohibitions you all are shouting about. there must be a reason why inno didnt install that. i will give you a hint.
for mods to read the logs, they must be appropriately gathered. not only dueling fact with dmg, but gear equipted, dueling time and other data. this has log and store EVERY duel in every world. there are 9 worlds in global. and there are about 40+ worlds in other countries. its huge amount of server space and coding time.

im not stating its right to fix duels, im just saying its almost imposible to manage and monitor "duel fixing problem".

i havent violated any ingame rules so your moral implications of me being a cheater are wrong. i can take and defend what ever position i want.

You're right about the ability for administration to determine if somebody is farming or not being dependent on what type of logs/information is available to them about every player (as I said in my original post), but it does not require all the information you've listed and is not as complex as you're making it out to be. The ideas I have come up with myself would require a little programming, and a little more storage depending on which idea they went with, but not much of either.

Even though there are possibly a ton of people who farm across all worlds and languages, there are not going to be millions and millions of reports so it won't require too much human resources either. And I'm sure if Inno decided to go this route in banning farming they would be able to find a way to solve the possible issue of both kinds of resources.

I believe Denise asked you what your stance on whether farming should or should not be allowed was, but you didn't answer. So what is your stance on the issue? It has already been explained how it imbalances the game, so why shouldn't it be banned? We get your point that the solution to this problem could be tricky, but just because it might be hard to solve a problem doesn't mean the problem should be given up on (it just means it might be a long while before we see any "fix"). Talking about how fixing an issue might be really hard does not change whether or not there is something needing to be fixed - so stating how it might be difficult to fix the issue of farming does not help the discussion or anyone or anything.
 

DeletedUser

I really don't see any difference between the examples in the original post and using a dueling quest repeatedly to knock yourself out. If it's just to get the 48 hours without worrying about being attacked, it doesn't seem like a big deal.
 

DeletedUser

my stance is, "if you cant assure by programming that this would not happen, you should not prohibid it by rules" as someone wisely stated, monitoring forums is easier that game.

if the game will spread, more and more ppl will be playing it, im pretty sure inno will take note to this problem, but im pretty sure now they are occupied of developing the game to what was promised.
 

DeletedUser

The funny thing about game enforcement is when it is actually done you get less of the accompanying activity. Therefore to minimize it all you need to do is start punishing some of its participants.

BTW "Mavimus" I said exactly what I meant and you could obviously understand my "babbling"", since you so vehemently railed against it, so does that say something about you or me? I do not know if maybe you jest or are just not very knowledgeable, but the "smell test" is a common phrase, look it up, duuh.
 

DeletedUser

Guys this thread is for you to give your opinions, you are the ones that bought up the subject of unfair duelling when people remove their clothes and/or weapons. What we want now is your thoughts regarding this so that an informed decision can be made regarding a way forward.

If you continue the flaming and talking offtopic then you wont get an input into what is right and wrong, and any possible rule changes or new ones being implemented in order to make the game fairer for all.

The choice is yours regarding your involvement in this discussion.
 

DeletedUser

Romelis, there are some things difficult to program/script against, such as multiple accounts. There nonetheless are rules in place indicating that having multiple accounts are a bannable offense. If you truly, honestly, believe that the game's mechanics should be the end-all of all policies, then you'll find this game (and most every other game on the net) to be a very unsatisfying experience.

Not everything can be managed by scripting/programming alone. The unfortunate thing is, where scripting fails, manpower is required. One of the means to buffer the expense of having more people employed, is having volunteers. An even further means is encouraging people to report infractions of existing rules. These two are already in place, to some degree or another. But, there's still a need to somehow discourage this activity, via scripting.

So, let's put away the ethical arguments and go to the next step

Let's discuss what ideas people may have about programming/scripting, ways and means to alleviate some of the 'human' work associated with policing this particular behavior.
 

DeletedUser

I really don't see any difference between the examples in the original post and using a dueling quest repeatedly to knock yourself out. If it's just to get the 48 hours without worrying about being attacked, it doesn't seem like a big deal.

There's a major difference. The point of duelling farming is NOT to get the 48 hours 'free time', but it's a way to reap lots of experience very fast.


Honestly, I don't see why whether or not this is hard to enforce is an issue at all? (Ok, in part I do, but:) No matter how hard this is to enforce, it should not be allowed in the game's rules. Even if it was impossible to enforce it should be against the rules.

To take a real life example, there are laws against piratting music/games/programs, even though these laws are very hard to enforce - still if there was no law against it, it would probably be even more wide spread than it is now.

It has already been argued why - and how - this practice disbalances the game. However, I still haven't seen a single reason why it should not be a banable offense. And I don't consider the following a valid reason:

[...]As such some people can chose to be cheaters. It was part of the west and should be part of the game.
 

DeletedUser

You are talking about making rules that would only get broken and possibly not be enforced? Is seems to me that starts down a bad road. Next there could be rules about getting banned for attacking a worker. Seems to me that if you want easy exp that is the way to go anyway. Then as soon as you make your run just quit the town you are in until you are rested up and join again. There will always be ways to "cheat". There is always going to be someone that believes what is happening to them is unfair. Maybe I am biased because I already feel like I started playing the three worlds I play just late enough that I will never catch up to the leaders. I am ok with that. I have even purchased two weeks worth of premiums. Why? To see what it is all about. Premium users still get an advantage because extended energy up to 150. Or being able to cue up four things in automation, or seeing what jobs are available to you, or making higher wages. Premium users get more benefits than non. What is a law that is not enforced? Words
 

DeletedUser

They are not going to make a rule that they are not able to or not willing to enforce. Making a rule against power leveling is not a slippery slope. Inno and staff will determine the best way possible to make power leveling illegal if they choose to. I don't think we need to discuss what would bring up red flags through scripting because the less we know how they catch cheaters the less chance someone has of getting around the system. No one should be suggesting a rule be put in place without giving staff the power or tools to enforce it.

If they do make power leveling a bannable offense then of course the rule should be clearly stated so that there can be no confusion as to what power leveling is. Should someone be wrongly accused/banned for power leveling I am sure they can appeal. Bans have been overturned before.
 

DeletedUser5209

my stance is, "if you cant assure by programming that this would not happen, you should not prohibid it by rules"
Ridiculous. I'm pretty sure harassing members, using extremely obscene language or hateful speech.. etc etc, any of that stuff, cannot be blocked by programming (blocking a player is not the same here), yet it is prohibited behavior. Social rules DO exist and they have a right to, I really don't understand where you're coming from in thinking that they don't or shouldn't.

As Hell explained very eloquently, programming can't block everything.

Once again however you did not address the actual issue of whether you think this behavior should be allowed or not..

And Denise is right, Inno would not make this a rule if they did not plan to enforce it, simple as that.. and as Denise also said, the less we know about the mechanisms they use to enforce it, the less people are able to circumvent the systems.
 

DeletedUser

But he did address the issue. Everyone knows that being a jerk is not socially acceptable. Yet, jerks there are a-plenty. I just don't think there are any unseen advantages this dueling thing. I think you can power level in this game just by knowing what to go for in regards to quests, ie reading west stats and knowing every product that you will need in order to complete your character class line of quests. It seems to me that the whole premise of this power leveling through dueling is based on having 30 co conspirators in order to make it work. That seems highly unlikely. And to think how much time it already took for the co conspirators to rank up high enough to be able to even give decent experience gains.
Besides, in this method there are no money gains and there are no special item gains. The player that completes quests and does high end jobs will always come out ahead both in money and experience. And I guess thirdly in special items.
I guess ultimately I am saying that yes, this behavior should be allowed but not socially acceptable. But anybody that does this would already know that it is not socially acceptable. So what is the real point? Where there is a will there is a way.
 

DeletedUser

So the only objections I've seen to making a rule against power leveling are:

1. People will be jerks and cheat anyways
2. People cheated in the real west
3. You can't catch everybody through scripting
4. It would be too hard to catch people

Well I really don't think those are good enough reasons not to try. Especially when the majority of players feel that power leveling shouldn't be done. Every other trumped up reason has been dismissed or proven to be hogwash so far. I think anyone that is power leveling may want to get ready for some changes in the game. This thread may be serving as your warning notice that Inno and staff are taking the matter seriously.

Iggy, you think it would be hard to get several people to participate in something like power leveling? Let's just say that in the top 30 duelers of one of the worlds I play, 10 of them are from the same town (actually 2 towns but they operate as 1). I am not saying they all do it or that even 9 of them do it. I can tell you that their founder got on these forums and admitted to doing it. So if he is doing it at least one other person in his town is doing it as well. That would be the logical assumption to make since he has to have a partner in crime. If two of them are doing it and getting away with it and others in their town realize how easy it is then it would be logical to assume that others have done it as well.
 
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DeletedUser

So what would the control be for catching somebody power leveling? I have a soldier. I want to level as fast as I can. I put all skill points in a certain order to get best job and still be effective dueler. I gain fairly fast. To supplement I duel towns where I can beat everyone in that town. Why? I am a dueler bully. What's the difference between their actions and mine? Am I going to get banned for attacking a player? Farming farmers so to speak? I am a bandit. That is what I do. From the outside looking at my character, I make good money and I am leveling fairly fast so let's flag him and ban him or whatever? Or, I have a town I am friends with, sometimes we duel each other to see where we are at, new weapons and so forth, are we going to get flagged for that? We put all our money in the bank first and went at it twice to see about soldier gains and what not. Is that kind of experimentation going to be frowned upon too? Or is the ultimate goal to make a rule and find out what exceptions to the rule after in an appeal process, you know, guilty until proven innocent.
 

DeletedUser

Let's just clarify a term so everyone is using the same definition...

Power-levelling: Deliberately fixing fights by having one player remove their gear/weapon.

As far as I can tell, this fight-fixing is the only behaviour being objected to. Any other fights, against whatever class, against whatever player, no matter how many times that player has been fought is fair. It is only fight fixing that is not.
 
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DeletedUser

Maybe you haven't read the entire thread. Power leveling is basically when you and another player conspire to farm xp off of each other by agreeing on who the winner of the fight will be beforehand. Also known as "fixing a fight". Sometimes this is ensured by one of the players removing their weapon and/or gear. Players that power level tend to do so a lot. Not just once or twice. There will be a detectable pattern to it.

You and your friend dueling each other every once in awhile to test out your dueling strengths, etc is not power leveling. I'm sure you don't do it daily or several times a week. I am also sure that you don't tell your friend to disarm so you can win easy.

You being good at dueling and winning lots of duels is not power leveling. Please see my first paragraph. Honestly, people that power level will have an easily detectable pattern to their duels and if staff queries their duel reports or uses whatever scripting Inno puts in the game to aid staff in catching power levelers they will see it. I am sure if it is questionable they will either ask both players about the pattern of duels they see or err on the side of not banning someone. Scripting and staff would be looking for evidence beyond a reasonable doubt, not just anything they can hang someone with. They don't want to ban or inhibit anyones game play. They just want to make sure that the people who are causing an imbalance in the game through an oversight of the developers will not be able to continue to do so.
 
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DeletedUser

Well, here's the catch of course. If a person is suiciding themselves, even if the other person isn't aware they're about to be dueled, one person IS removing their gear, and one person DOES know the outcome of the predetermined fight.

So if they implement hard and fast rules regarding dueling, I'd be very interested in how they treat such actions.
 

DeletedUser

I understand your sense of the term Power Leveling. I just mean that, hypothetically, what if this pattern that is so easily detected is fooled? If they run a report and see this "pattern" what if someone just playing the game falls into the pattern the report produces while not participating in power-leveling? (that is a fun sentence to say out loud)

Maybe implementing other features into the game could help curb these actions. I know this isn't the right forum but maybe it is the connection of ideas that makes everything work. For instance, maybe the bounty system. That could also backfire and give the power levelers money now to buy equipment. I don't know but I am not convinced this forum is talked out yet.
 
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