Thursday, January 10, 2019

Gankers and Psychopaths



The online world, and MMOs in particular, reveal more about human nature than any real-world test or circumstance. The early Internet meme, that no-one knows you’re a dog online, reminds us that we are anonymous unless we choose to reveal ourselves, at least to the general public. Hackers can find you, and marketers. Facebook and Google know more about you than you know yourself, most likely.

But your online behavior reveals the TRUTH about what kind of person your really are: How will you behave when there are no real consequences?

I play MMOs, perhaps more than my friends think I should. They don’t understand that online friends are just as real as the ones that visit my RL (Real Life) home. I have a world of opinions about life online.

Today, I’d like to talk about psychopaths online. Gankers and the like. PvPers, they call themselves.

Now, for the record, let me make it CLEAR that not all PvPers (Player-vs.-Player) are psychopaths. I don’t have solid statistics, so I’ll be generalizing a lot, but I’d say most PvP is “friendly…” as friendly as a barroom brawl, at least. They may beat the tar out of you, but they’ll offer you a beer and a handshake afterwards. After all, “it’s just a game, man!” Generally, a polite PvP involves a query. Sometimes it’s as polite as “Wanna duel?” It may be a simple “1v1?” (one vs. one) in open chat. It’s likely to be a few light strikes from a weapon. If you run convincingly, they may let you go; if you turn and fight, it’s like dogs. It gets complicated, and varies with each assault. But generally, these guys are fitted out to kill, and nothing else, so anyone trying to play a different game style is at a severe disadvantage.

Psychopaths hide in this environment. I’m going to talk about how they reveal themselves. Maybe YOU are one of them, and haven’t recognized it? Game style is a clue: Most MMOs have a variety of paths to success, and a variety of goals to achieve. For many play styles, there is no “end-game.” They’re playing because they “live” in this world, and they’re exploring it.

I’m a firm believer in PwP—Player with Player—and I feel intelligent life manifests through cooperation, not destructive behavior. (It does seem that humanity is being trained to be warlike, if you look at TV, movies, and video game offerings for examples. Even books.) I’ve played a few MMOs extensively enough to offer an opinion in terms of their designs. I’ll give three as examples of how PvP can be very different.

First, the most sociable is a “game” called Second Life (http://secondlife.com/). It’s free to play, and has a huge abundance of free upgrades to your avatar. PvP is pretty much “opt in”: You must equip an add-on—generally, a HUD (Heads Up Display) of some sort—that keeps score of hits and damage. There are some locations in SL where damage is enabled to any avatar, but it’s very temporary, and limited to knocking attachments off of your avatar and pushing it around. You lose nothing of your player, as the PvP portion is such a small part of the game.

But Second Life isn’t really a game: It’s a virtual world. There are games within SL, but just like RL, SL has no end-game at all. I won’t go into it in detail here; as in the real world, you meet all kinds of characters, and find all kinds of things to educate or entertain you.

Another MMO is Elder Scrolls Online. Again, PvP is opt-in: You go to a region where PvP is enabled by default, or enter a duel mode with your chosen opponent. In general game play, other players do not harm you.

A third is Elite: Dangerous (https://www.elitedangerous.com/), a simulation of hundreds of billions of star systems. Less than a fraction of one percent of the game universe has even been visited, much less properly explored, so there’s a lot to do beside kill each other.

Now, in Elite, things are different: PvP is opt-OUT. You must select solo play, or build a private group of players that agree not to do PvP and select that group when you start the game. Open Play is Dangerous: Any player can attack and destroy you, and you can lose MONTHS’ worth of gameplay. Psychopaths LOVE this: They can really hurt you, by costing you everything you’ve invested in the game since your last “save.” Saves are complex: You must land at a port with appropriate facilities—these are common enough in the inhabited regions, but rare to non-existent throughout most of the galaxy—and sell your exploration data and collect on any earned bounties and intel you’ve discovered on your voyages. The psychopaths love explorers as targets, because they often have no weapons whatsoever, no defenses, and they have a lot to lose when they return from their explorations.

Psychopaths frequently intrude on private groups with intent to harm, and take advantage of Open Play by infiltrating roles as well. One of the most hideous examples is shown here: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/elite-dangerous-community-plan-event-upended-by-masterful-troll/

Calling a psychopath “masterful,” and saluting his savagery, is just sick, in my opinion.

These people spend a lot of time defending their play style, and will provide advice on how to survive their hostilities. It’s hard to know the devil when his arm is around your shoulder, eh? The problem is, any ship outfitted to survive a psychopath is not much good for anything else: You have to cripple yourself to have a chance. In E:D, you must exchange cargo space for defenses, and equipment slots that are needed for exploration and mining tools must be sacrificed for shields, shield boosters, over-sized thrusters, and anti-missile defenses. Heavy equipment destroys jump range—i.e., travel speed—in exploration ships.

This makes peaceful living crap, in open play. What these trolls force is a variety of “survival of the fittest” that ruins intelligent development: It makes humanity into a beast, incapable of doing anything but devouring others.

Think about that.

A beast.

Incapable.

Self-destructive.

Stupid.

There is an expedition known as Distant Worlds 2, scheduled for launch on January 13, 2019 (13 January 3305 in the game calendar). Over eight thousand players—myself included—have signed up for this event, which will involve months away from stations, and thus places to save progress. https://www.pcgamer.com/over-8000-elite-dangerous-pilots-are-embarking-on-an-incredible-18-week-journey/ The psychos have already promised to be there, and many are signed up—some in alternate accounts—just to create havoc, according to rumors. Armed escorts will be traveling along with the fleet…but given the example above, how many of those escorts are going to betray the ones they pledged to protect? These trolls love to hurt defenseless people, and even a very large defense fleet cannot prevent fragile explorer ships from being destroyed by even a weak attacker. My favorite ship can be configured to jump over 80 light years in game. Configured with most of the tools I need for exploration and support of the goals of DW2, including moderate defense, it’s about half that.

Because Elite: Dangerous lacks an effective policing system (psychopaths who are killed in game simply re-spawn, and they have nothing to lose as they don’t care about data), and has an “opt-out” PvP philosophy, there is no way explorers can socialize without fear of social diseases: Psychopathic trolls.

Trolls who will turn YOU into a beast.

Incapable.

Self-destructive.

Stupid.

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