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Feb 8, 2010 -- 10:28AM, Newpaintbrush wrote:

At any rate - I think we all understand that the system is open to abuse.  Can we really shame the players for taking advantage of the system?  I say - no.  As long as it is allowed by the rules, the players aren't doing anything wrong.  Change the rules, change the game.

People keep saying this -- but it doesn't get any more true by repetition.

Let's look at MMOs; those are fun. MMOs have perfectly defined rules which apply to every player in the game in the exact same way. There are no questions of interpretation, because the rules are code. You can't say "oh, that weapon was supposed to do frost damage." It either does frost damage or it doesn't.

Sometimes the engineers who code MMOs make mistakes. Every MMO ever released has bugs. Everyone knows this, everyone accepts it. Sometimes those bugs allow players to do things that weren't intended.

Blizzard is the biggest MMO company in the world. They have 11 million players; in comparison, LFR is a tiny teeny little group of people.

When you take advantage of a bug in the game, Blizzard doesn't say "oh, it was allowed by the rules we put into the game, so you aren't doing anything wrong." Blizzard bans you. Blizzard believes that its players are capable of distinguishing between intended behavior and unintended behavior, and it expects its players to make that distinction and act appropriately. If you are playing at a high level, and you fail to make that distinction, you get banned. You probably complain about it, and sometimes you have a valid point, but you're still banned.

WoW also has Terms of Service. Those terms say, among other things:

Certain acts go beyond what is "fair" and are considered serious violations of these Terms of Use. Those acts include, but are not necessarily limited to, the following... anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the "essence" of the Game.

Now, that's language which is open to interpretation. But you know whose interpretation counts? Blizzard's. 

A few posts ago, Sean Molley told us that rust monster abuse was "a cheap metagame excuse to justify doing something that people intuitively realize is against the spirit of the rules." WotC is not going to ban anyone for rust monster abuse; I'm not sure there's any practical way to do that. But it's ridiculous to pretend that people who know what he said and who continue to abuse rust monsters shouldn't be ashamed of themselves. It's also ridiculous to claim that you have to outline every single possible rules violation. The biggest MMO company in the world doesn't do that, and life proceeds just fine.

Feb 8, 2010 -- 11:49AM, -Aribeth- wrote:

Your point is well taken but let me direct you to another point from your Blizzard example.  Blizzard also FIXES the bug which we are discussing here with MYRE/Rustmonster issue... a fix for that.

Sure, but Blizzard is never going to define "anything that Blizzard considers contrary to the essence of the game." The catch-all will always be present.

Also, I pay Blizzard fifteen bucks a month, as a result of which Blizzard can employ a staff of hundreds if not thousands of people. WotC is currently giving me hundreds of thousands of words of content for free, which is quite a different state of affairs. 

Feb 8, 2010 -- 12:22PM, KarmaInferno wrote:

Actually, they started out that way years ago, but they really don't do that anymore. They realized the same thing I did when I was campaign rules-guy for Procampur and Shining Jewel.

They have, as have most other MMO companies, switched largely to a "fix the problem and ignore the few players that abused the problem before we fixed it" attitude. At most they've been removing rewards from folks that didn't earn them properly. Actual punishments, banning and the like, are being reserved for actual rules infractions.

Feb 8, 2010 -- 11:21AM, Newpaintbrush wrote:

Feb 8, 2010 -- 10:45AM, aljergensen wrote:

More documentation just leads to more arguement about correct interpretation of the documentation.

Allen.

Allen, I think you're arguing a different point.  Who said we need to lug around crates, or write reams of documentation? All I think is being asked for is some carefully edited, concise documentation so these problems of ambiguity can be resolved.  Which is something I very much agree with, and that I think, on reflection, you'll agree with too. 

For Atras - yes.  But as correct as you are, I for one, would prefer that the rules be clarified.  Rules errata are getting rather long, but I think it's *far* better that we *have* them than *not*.

The problem is that one person's "clear and concise" is another person's "vague and full of loopholes".  The admins could spend weeks rewriting the LFR guidelines and someone would complain they weren't clear.  They can't win.  

Take the rule on not hitting fellow pc with AOE attacks.  I think it's pretty clear ... but some people insist that you only have to ask, you don't have to get permission.  

As far as comparing D&D to WOW.  It's like comparing apples and oranges.  They're fruit and someone may have painted my D&D orange red when I wasn't looking but that's about it.  I like playing D&D *because* the DM has some flexibility to apply common sense.  When WOTC charges $15/month and has millions of subscribers, they can afford to have a staff of people to answer all of the questions and hold our hands, but until then I'm thankful I get a ton of free mods to play.

Allen.