Dueling Ethics ~ Please all give your opinions

DeletedUser

Personally, I can't see the point of discussing the technicalities or labour cost etc of policing this rule. I think the only question is whether the player base thinks power levelling should be against the rules or not.

Imo, we can give Inno feedback on what we think about the ethical question: That is the useful information for them. What to do about it is their business.
 

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

Thankyou and agree strongly. Premium user benefits far outweigh any power-levelling/fixing fights, a "poor mans" subsitute.


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.

If you read again please what he said, If the game mechanics(coding) cannot guarantee this form of control, why pretend to?
Each player bring his/her own social rules to the game and is usually not compounded by the game rules. They will follow there own rules.

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.

Please see the answer above.

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.

I apologise, I waded into the thick of this discussion with some strong feelings.

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.

Premium users enjoy a higher benefit than our workarounds.

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.

If an RPG is linear than its not an RPG. It has to be open-ended enviroment.

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.

There is, do a search for all duel reports, looking for duellers without weapons. But then youll have duellers with no hats and weapons, etc

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.

Maybe there can be other incentives to give greater xp rewards?
It is a problem but a minor problem at that, especially at mid-later levels?
So my money is on Innogames improving the game and updates.


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.

If you punish people for trying to get ahead than youll fail. Better to rehabilitate and gently nudge in another direction.
I could draw parallels with life.

And punishing people who voluntarily out if their own valuable time subscribe to this game, what do you think will happen?

"Don’t do something just because you are convinced you have the right to do so, if it doesn’t pass the smell test"

As to the rest of your reply I believe you are being esoteric? In which case I wouldnt pass your smell test.

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.

Sorry yet again.

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.

You want to police this behaviour? On a minority of people?


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.

Logic was good but then it turned to conjecture and improper accusation of a whole town.

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.

I agree strongly.

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.

How will they do that if not banning them?
Give them a list of players they have duelled in the past for farming and then telling them you may not ever duel these people again, ever!
 

DeletedUser

Personally, I can't see the point of discussing the technicalities or labour cost etc of policing this rule. I think the only question is whether the player base thinks power levelling should be against the rules or not.

Imo, we can give Inno feedback on what we think about the ethical question: That is the useful information for them. What to do about it is their business.

Power levelling by farming/duelling other players with the inside knowledge of being guaranteed a win, in order to recieve substantial xp points.

Can we put it to a vote?

Right. Im off.
 

DeletedUser

What if two towns started a fight night? wait... I might need to start another thread. I am sure it isn't a new idea but would it fall under the category of power leveling? Several fights with same players every week. Sometimes bareknuckle, sometimes unlimited. Would ethics play a part in something like this NOT being able to happen?
 

DeletedUser

What part of fixed fighting do you not understand? I'm not trying to be a smartalec but honestly. This thread has to do with fixed fights. Any other scenario you bring up does not apply. I'm really asking you a valid question because you seem to be confused on what we are really talking about.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

Please do not misunderstand me. Everything I have written about pertains to Fixed Fights if only for the reason of some other gaming incident LOOKING like a fixed fight. I am hoping that thinking everything through will come up with something. I am hoping to get a real discussion on this going. I do not want to fight with anybody and I am not stupid. I apparently did not communicate my thoughts clearly and for that I am sorry.

Let me rephrase my question more directly:
by making rules against Fixed Fights is it possible you could take away another fun aspect of the game or possibly be erroneous in finding culprits, or prohibit some new kind of game between towns that hasn't been thunk up yet?

I am not trying to rile you up just trying to get some thinking going on. I am stuck in a wheelchair and I live on a hill so I play this game a lot and I read a lot of the forums.
Ig
 

DeletedUser

One of the most obvious characteristics of exploiting the mechanics by duel-swapping, as Denisero repeatedly indicated, is when people remove all their items (or at least their weapon).

Come on, nobody does that (except for the intent to exploit). Stop posing "what if" scenarios just to rationalize the behaviors. There is no doubt that policing such actions is going to be difficult, but it is also difficult to police multiple accounts (an existing rule prohibits multiple accounts). The best that can be done is catching the obvious offenders, the blatant abusers. And, to tell you the truth, that's good enough for me. It's the blatant ones, not the subtle ones, that are obtaining the grossly unfair advantage.

Here's my thought: go right ahead and continue to argue semantics, pose "what ifs," and whatever else you want to do. It doesn't really matter. If this company decides to impose a rule, it is our obligation, as players who get to participate in this game for FREE, to assist them in enforcing those rules. Seriously, I'm always amazed at the entitlement presented by players of these FREE games. What WORK did you do to design this game? What EFFORT did you make to set this whole thing up?

Yes, they're in it for the money, and they also recognize that advantage, not fairplay, is something the vast majority of internet gamers look for. This company's goal is to make a profit. There are increased profits in a game when advantages must be payed for. FREE advantages cut down on their profits, so it is not unreasonable for them to try and remove these leaks in their profits.

No player is entitled. This game exists because a company (group of people) scripted it as a means for income. Whether you play for free, or pay for advantages, you are not entitled. This is an important thing to understand, because what is going on here is exploiting a facet of the game, obtaining an advantage without paying for it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

The only work I have done is to play the game many hours. The only effort I have done is to pose what ifs in hopes that this game is fun for everyone on every level in a forum setting. I like this game. I want this game to get better. Ultimately whatever Inno comes up with will have to do but I can say that I threw my thoughts out there and somebody maybe read it and took it into consideration on some level.
 

DeletedUser

last 3 posts represent my opinion 100%. i could sign after them in blood.

sorry for not making that clearer myself earlier, English is not my mother tongue
 

DeletedUser

Thankyou and agree strongly. Premium user benefits far outweigh any power-levelling/fixing fights, a "poor mans" subsitute.

How? 100-200 exp every 10 mins is worth a lot more then premium.

If you read again please what he said, If the game mechanics(coding) cannot guarantee this form of control, why pretend to?
Each player bring his/her own social rules to the game and is usually not compounded by the game rules. They will follow there own rules.
Yet you are still bound to follow the game rules are you not? No one except you and Romelis have wanted the actual mechanics to be able to stop this or even expected it to. The same as multi accounts cannot be stopped by the game mechanics but by staff investigation and player reports ect.

Please see the answer above.
See my first answer to this question.

Premium users enjoy a higher benefit than our workarounds.
Have you ever used premium? If not then how can you know how effective it is?

There is, do a search for all duel reports, looking for duellers without weapons. But then youll have duellers with no hats and weapons, etc
And it can be narrowed down to all duels involving one player then I doubt it would take long to investigate

Maybe there can be other incentives to give greater xp rewards?
It is a problem but a minor problem at that, especially at mid-later levels?
So my money is on Innogames improving the game and updates.
Its a major problem at mid - late levels.

You're talking a potential 600 - 1200 xp per HOUR no job comes close to that.

If you punish people for trying to get ahead than youll fail. Better to rehabilitate and gently nudge in another direction.
I could draw parallels with life.
Yup you could, I believe its called fraud in real life? Trying to get ahead is not of itsself wrong, what is frowned upon by people is the way in which you are trying to get ahead, by exploiting a loophole in the rules.

And punishing people who voluntarily out if their own valuable time subscribe to this game, what do you think will happen?
If the rules are changed then you must abide by them, if you don't then you have no reason not to be punished.

I agree strongly.
You fail to see how different this is? A person doing quests / high xp jobs will never be able to match people power levelling simply because there is such a difference in the xp gains as I showed above.

Also you seem to fail to understand how the reporting process works. People are innocent untill proven guilty. A report is made and is looked at by an IGM and then any necessary action is taken, not before.

How will they do that if not banning them?
Give them a list of players they have duelled in the past for farming and then telling them you may not ever duel these people again, ever!
If people are caught breaking the rules they will be punished in correlation to the extent of their cheating.

hmm lets see shall we?
1) XP Deduction
2) Item Deductions
3) Cash deductions
4) Reset of dueling stats for players and towns
5) Enforced no dueling period (variable length)

All ways that are not bans but are still punishments.

In conclusion, I would strongly support a change in the rules to make power levelling illegal.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

I agree that fixed fights should be illegal. I have no problem so long as the right people are punished. That is all I ever meant.
 

DeletedUser

There is nothing wrong with the current system. Dueling motavation helps to keep things in check by lowering the XP gained when it is low.
 

DeletedUser

There is nothing wrong with the current system. Dueling motavation helps to keep things in check by lowering the XP gained when it is low.

Except...

Duel rankings are based on XP earned by dueling. If a player only ever participates in fixed fights with other players, even if only a few times a day, not only do they have guaranted XP earings for the rankings, which other players do not, they can spend all their skill points in non dueling areas and also have the benefit of access to jobs that duellers who work hard to be competitive can only dream of.
 

DeletedUser

The conditions upon which this thread has been reopened...

1. No discussion of or reactions to perceived tones or attitudes. If you find someone's attitude inappropriate, please report it for me or another mod to deal with.

2. No more quotapalooza. Excessive quoting is against the Forum Rules and also leads to #3.

3. No more nitpicking arguments over every phrase or sentence. This only detracts from the central issues and turns a general discussion into a personal argument.

4. No more personal comments of any kind, not even if they are responses to personal comments made against you. Any responses like that will be treated as an "in before lock" post and will be infracted.
 

DeletedUser

There is nothing wrong with the current system. Dueling motavation helps to keep things in check by lowering the XP gained when it is low.


I still stand by this statment. As 1 of the top 50 duelers in world 5 I try to keep my dueling motavation low because as XP grows I am running out of people to duel. The system thats in place works. The low level duelers that are getting beat just need to get over it.
 

DeletedUser

Todarling, that is not what we are talking about in this thread. We are talking about duelers that conspire with each other to fix fights. Player A says to Player B "I am going to duel you". Player B banks their cash and either disarms or wears nondueling clothes so that Player A is guaranteed the win. This way Player A gets easy xp. The favor is usually returned so that both players benefit from easy xp in order to level up and rise in dueling ranks.

No one here is a low level dueler complaining about getting beaten. There are at least 3 top 15 duelers posting in this thread at the moment. Please read the entire thread. Your comments do not address the issue at hand at all.
 
Last edited by a moderator:

DeletedUser

Todarling, that is not what we are talking about in this thread. We are talking about duelers that conspire with each other to fix fights. Player A says to Player B "I am going to duel you". Player B banks their cash and either disarms or wears nondueling clothes so that Player A is guaranteed the win. This way Player A gets easy xp. The favor is usually returned so that both players benefit from easy xp in order to level up and rise in dueling ranks.

No one here is a low level dueler complaining about getting beaten. There are at least 3 top 15 duelers posting in this thread at the moment. Please read the entire thread. Your comments do not address the issue at hand at all.
I know whats being said. My point is getting the easy XP will cause you to run out of people to duel. So we don't need to make changes. Just so you know I do not do the planned dueling thing.
 

DeletedUser

I still stand by this statment. As 1 of the top 50 duelers in world 5 I try to keep my dueling motavation low because as XP grows I am running out of people to duel. The system thats in place works. The low level duelers that are getting beat just need to get over it.

I agree that there is a certain balance required. For those who like to be at the top of the rankings, and that does matter to some, it is a difficult balance to not let your XP gain outstrip you capability or limit your access to good opponents.

The issue with power levelling, however, is that some people will reach the top of the rankings without ever having to balance these things, without ever having to be a good dueller, without ever competing for their place in the list. So for players whose game goal is to be a top dueler, they are essentially being cheated of their rightful place by those who are simply gaming the system for undeserved glory.

I'm sure there are many players who don't care about the rankings that much, and if you don't that is fine. But just because you don't personally care doesn't make it any more reasonable to give the medal to the guy who took a shortcut when everyone else has run the whole marathon.
 

DeletedUser

Well the funny thing about that statement Todarling is that the reason given by someone earlier for why they power level is because it is the easiest thing for them to do. They don't have to travel far from home in order to make good xp. So you see power leveling would be the easiest way to get xp. So while you have a point it really does not encompass why people power level.
 
Top