I kinda understand this - what people find distasteful tends not to follow some simple legal pattern of severity. I doubt many people would want child sex trafficking into the game despite the legal comparisons between it and murder.
Imperial Slaves - A Proposition
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That's an interesting point. But that makes discussions like these very arbitrary doesn't it? Anything could now be deemed offensive.
I'm still at the position that it's a game, and I vehemently oppose the notion that what a person trades in in the game says anything about the person irl. If it does, there's something wrong with that person, not the game.
You have to draw the line somewhere to have enough human misery that establishes the backstory and not make it gratuitous though. Slavery, those who use it (along with all activities) have consequences at a lore, Power and BGS level and acts as motivation for how some societies work in the game. The only thing missing is a way to liberate the basic slave commodity- perhaps add it to the search and rescue tab depending on gov type.
ED does not trivialize slavery as a concept- if it did it would not have the multifaceted lore it has. From that its up to you really if you view slavery as evil, necessary evil, meh, or useful.
Possibly, though slavery as a concept certainly isn't just anything but a rather vile phenomenon and it isn't IMO entirely unreasonable to be offended by it. I think in the end it is up to the devs to decide where they want to draw the line what kind of phenomenons they want to portray in their computer games, though sometimes the opposite option is even worse like in many historical strategy games where they actually sanitize the slavery from history altogether.
I completely agree with you that playing a slaver character in a fictional world doesn't really say anything about person IRL tho.
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If one devotes hours to consciously and premeditatedly gank and grief others, over time it is fair to label them as a ganker or griefer. Is this matter different just because it's a more sensitive issue?
One of the last things this game needs is more railroady CGs with foregone conclusions.
By the standards of what Imperial Slavery is supposed to be, there are more slaves in my nation today than there was at the start of it's Civil War in 1861.
They have and there is. The thing about superpowers is that they can ignore it, and the thing about everyone else is that they know they'd be hypocrites for pushing too hard on the topic anyway.
I assume it's already there.
Nothing even hints at there being a lower age limit for whoever happens to be in those canisters of slaves. The only rational assumption is that many of them are children and that anything you can imagine, and probably plenty you can't, is going to be done to them.
There are a lot of concepts I find extremely offensive that are staples of either the Elite setting or the game we have.
Government in general, the existence of money (fiat money in particular), police, and senescence still being a thing, just to name a few.
If the game couldn't offend me, it wouldn't be engrossing enough to play.
Probably, but it isn't explicitly there nor it is ever mentioned anywhere, and few people would want it to be and if it isn't mentioned, nothing prevents deciding that it isn't there.
Either way, my original point in that was that it isn't necessarily that contradictory that people are for example okay with GTA game having murder but not unconsensual intercourse (can't apparently use the more colloquial term here).
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More sensitive than ganking? You really must be new here
Anyway, we were talking about trading in npc slaves, not about ganking players.
I'm pretty certain it was fertilizer.
You might be right on that one. I should change it to eventually becomes animal meat (after I've then picked up some live animals in my now totally clean, life support less, cargo hold)...
My point exactly, one could start a YouTube or stream and brag about how good they are at ganking players. But no one would dare do so with trading slaves albeit npc or not. So why are we as a community still ok with it in game?More sensitive than ganking? You really must be new here
Anyway, we were talking about trading in npc slaves, not about ganking players.
Why wouldn't they dare to do so (not that I would actually bother watching someone space trucking slave canisters)?
You haven't searched for that on youtube have you...
Calling something rather smelly dropped from the back end of a male cow on that one...
If trading in slaves would be way more profitable, you can bet your hind side people would make clips on YouTube.
But the main reason people don't stream trading slaves has nothing to do with some sort of shame, but that ganking players involves real people. And people like to brag about defeating other people. Posting clips about trading for mediocre profit just isn't really interesting.
Entirely different subject.
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We can kill in game and if we celebrate that its more or less no harm no foul. We can push drugs and illicit cargo and this is also celebrated albeit in smaller circles. When we trade slaves in game it is almost always regarded as a means to an end and is rarely ever celebrated.
You can Roleplay as a space cowboy, illicit hauler, smuggler, renegade, vigilante, black-hat, griefer, ganker, noob hunter, or what have you.
But you can not roleplay a slaver.
Thing is, you are possibly already doing that by supporting factions and Powers and the viewpoints they carry. By default the Empire endorses Imperial slavery, with only one Power adopting a different viewpoint.
I'm not sure what "Noob hunter" is, but I'm rather certain it's not a roleplaying archetype. Neither is ganker. Slaver is.
I suspect you don't know what roleplaying is.
"Noob hunter", as I infer from the name, is someone who plays the game in certain way, enjoys certain interactions (killing new players) and does not roleplay anything. He does what he (the player) wants.
Being a "slaver" actually forces you to roleplay - that is to create specific character with certain traits and ethics, that acts in specific way, that does not have to be the way you would act in RL. You play a role. In case of Video games this includes using imagination to add details that are not present in the game.
It's extremely contradictory, because people are.
Nothing is more immersion defying or counter to believable role playing than those who feel the need to conform to archetypes.
"roleplay - that is to create specific character with certain traits and ethics, that acts in specific way, that does not have to be the way you would act in RL. You play a role." Those are your words, so tell me how a ganker is somehow exclusive from your own definition?
Example: Someone whom may enjoy killing other players may be playing a role and not do the same in RL.
Fair enough, to correct, it's not something that puzzles me especially in a world where fictional (and sometimes even non-fictional) depictions of homicide is a popular pastime across different platforms of entertainment.
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