All us oldheads remember what happened last time the monkey's paw curled a finger on "crimes should be punished harder and be impossible to get away with!"
WHY!?
- Thread starter Commander Holroyd
- Start date
You keep saying "ad hominem" for things that aren't ad hominems. This isn't debate club, there isn't a magical list of latin phrases that you can recite to make you win the argument.
An ad hominem would be saying "you are an idiot, therefore everything you say is wrong". Saying "your argument is delusional and has no basis in reality" is an attack upon your argument, not upon the person saying. The implication that only a stupid or delusional person would make such an argument is besides the point, which is that your position, that attacking someone in a video game is morally equivalent to attacking them in real life, is outwith the bounds of reality versus fiction.
You weren't in the force and you weren't a criminal ?
I would totally watch this version of chess. Anybody remember a game on the old c64 called Archon?
Assassination, raid, massacre and takedown missions all have a chance of spawning "incoming enemy" type pursuers after you kill the target. Due to some quirk (which may be a bug) these hostile (and extremely relentless, I might add) enemies don't spawn with any bounties on them.
They're pretty much the main reason I have crime reporting turned on when doing PvE.
The Pilots Federation isn’t a chess club, though. It’s an organization that exists to certify that a pirate, swindler, human trafficker, assassin, smuggler, murderer, thief, slaver, or hauler is skilled enough to do the job required.
Attacking the person by implying that they are delusional, and not responding to any points raised is exactly that.
Sure yes, to reinstall trust in pilots due to the reaction of land lubbers who, due to the behaviour of consequence free traveling folk in spaces general behaviour, the federation was formed to give federation pilots credibility, an assurance that they would complete the task, to folk who no longer trusted a single one of them.
Right… but the tasks various clients are requesting of the Pilots Federation aren’t legal hauling like they were a hundred years ago. Most of the tasks that are being request above the table include but are not limited to: piracy, assassinations, mass murder, acts of terror, kidnapping, slavery, human trafficking, smuggling, theft, industrial sabotage, industrial espionage, installing malware, and bioterrorism.
Do you really think people capable of doing all that for money are willing to play nice with each other? Or the Pilots Federation isn’t willing to look the other way if it fills their coffers?
The system where the player in the original post was being attacked - HIP 20567 - is an Anarchy system and always has been.
Does this change your view of the people attacking them at all?
Sure, but nothing really serious like loitering.
Ah yes it does, I overlooked that entirely! likely due to all the thargoid action in shinrarta of late; In most anarchies attack is fair game, so far as my immersion goes. The nuance of civilised functional anarchies are a viable thing too, I believe they exist in game as well.
Addendum: Though it does not alter my opinion as to why folk engage in such behaviour. I should also stress that this reflects my opinion on why they do it, not my opinion of them..
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I don't! I do recall battle chess though, particularly because it really reminded me of the game on the millennium falcon in starwars!
Anyhow as chess not being like elite was mentioned earlier on, I just wanted to add that by mentioning chess all that I intended to suggest is that elite is no more dystopian than a game of chess, and folk for the most part do manage to remain civil playing that. From what I recall of the pilots federation history tourist beacons it is all really rather civilised with the aim of protecting and helping pilots by differentiating them from the rabble pirate hoards, to rise above the dystopian effects caused by having such freedom.
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Tasks ? Again, show me missions to explicitly kill another commander ?
The game has got a rather large dissonance problem in that they don't seem to be able to decide how dystopian to make it in lore, there's often a conflict between out-of-game representations (dev diaries and posts) and in-game representations (Galnet, etc.), and the game mechanics themselves rarely reflect either. In general the game mechanics tend far more dystopian than the fiction, even the bits of fiction which are actually trying.
A few examples:
- if you are flying a passenger vessel, any system authority will consider it absolutely legitimate and proportionate to destroy your vessel and the hundred innocent passengers aboard to kill one criminal passenger (or even no criminal passengers, if your docking computer takes a bit too long over getting an exit slot), there are plenty of abandoned settlements where the logs reveal people have been massacred for a quick profit, and in Odyssey you can make your own ... and yet we're supposed to believe that the approach to the disaster on Rhea has been a humanitarian one rather than "well, that's annoying, best rebuild the factories on the next planet over and ship in some new workers" or that we bothered to use "rescue" missiles to get captives back from the Titans rather than the rather simpler "explosive" missiles to prevent the Thargoids from using their captives for whatever it is they're up to.
- the Federation and Alliance (as well as various independent factions) are presented in lore as strongly opposed to slavery and reject both the independent unregulated trade and the Empire's justifications for why its sort of slavery is okay really. By "strongly opposed" this means "you'll get a minor fine for breaking import regulations if you carry slave pods in their space, but they'll make no attempt to confiscate those pods or provide any route to rescuing slaves, and no-one will try to punch you in the face the moment you step off your ship"
- are Frontline Solutions a deliberate satire on the modern arms trade in the finest traditions of dystopian fiction or did they just run out of budget to give each faction its own war desk? It's been three years and I still have no idea if they meant to do that.
As others have already said, so much of what pilots are asked to do for a living is outright war crimes [1] that it would only be a matter of a change of presentation rather than any game mechanics to have the default point of view settle on a freedom fighter trying to bring down the corrupt authorities controlling the setting - and of course hunted and hated by those authorities for doing so, cut off from most easy sources of supply, constantly alert and nervous, unable to trust anyone but their own ship and skills. That's not the game - it's an Elite sequel so we obviously play one of the celebrated enforcers of the system, getting an easyish life in return for keeping our moral compass in a lead-lined box - and that's fine, in "Tie Fighter" [2] you were playing a feared Imperial fighter ace who at the end is personally decorated for bravery by Emperor Palpatine himself, there's a long tradition of games where you play the bad guy and a few of them even meant to do it.
[1] Which should also make the "legal" missions seem a bit suspicious too. What exactly is in this courier packet that's so sensitive you have people trying to kill you to stop its delivery? As a good little servant of whichever regime is paying you today you know better than to ask questions like that, of course.
[2] In Tie Fighter itself you are never told outright that you're playing the bad guy. If it didn't have the Star Wars branding, it'd just be another 90s space shooter "recruit to hero" plot, in which you win some battles for your side who are obviously the good guys, because the other side are shooting at you and that's clearly something a bad guy would do, and the question "is the Pie Fighter protagonist ultimately propping up an unjust state?" would be one of those "hey, stop Bringing Politics Into Our Clean Authoritarian Fun" moments, rather than "yeah, obviously, that's Darth Vader and Palpatine right there, you're flying from a Star Destroyer, what do you think?".
(Which is why, given the choice between ED's "show" of an incredibly dystopian setting and its "tell" of ... well, inconsistently a more mild dystopia and the 21st century equivalent of the Jetsons ... my personal interpretation is always to go with the "show")
There are none.
But as far as the game mechanics are concerned, there are also no additional penalties for killing another Commander vs a non-member of the Pilots Federation. The Pilots Federation is perfectly content to look the other way when its more bloodthirsty members extend their deprivations to their fellow members. Which is yet more evidence that there's something rotten within the Pilots Federation.
Game mechanics are the primary form of world building in video games. They define how a player interacts with the world, and how that world reacts to the player. And in Elite Dangerous, the game mechanics depict a Pilots Federation that actively advertises mercenary work for acts of terror and war crimes, actively assists its members in evading the consequences of mass murder and lesser crimes, provides services to its members to facilitate smuggling and other illegal activities, manipulates the major galactic superpowers for its own fun and profit, and is unwilling to police violence between its own members.
My proto-CMDR's (pre-reset) first ~150 hours after getting that shiny learners permit from the Pilot's Federation:
They seemed entirely happy that their school produced a pilot that casually murdered someone once every fifteen minutes and shot down another Pilots' Federation member every third hour, on average.
In hindsight, that 'harmless' sticker they made him wear uner his name tag the whole time was rather cruel irony.
It's not like Ma Corn just grows on trees. No, it grows on stalks! You know what a pain in the stalks are? You need slaves to pick corn from stalks (ain't no one doing that for money in a post scarcity economy) and slaves come in cans and everyone knows that the Pilots' Federation is who you want hauling your slave filled cans...probably because they can't be interrogated for the names of their employers due to all that plot armor.
For at least the first few years of the game, CMDRs would be explicitly labled as mission targets for massacre (civilians) missions.
That's beside the point though. The Pilots' Federation has never (in this game) policed it's members actions against eachother. It's never demoted a CMDR, it's never recinded a permit (aside from the newbie zone), they never suspend insurance benefits or discounts; it's never censured one CMDR for attacking another in any way. Unless one is in an area where the Pilots' Federation is the local faction in control, they don't issue fines or bounties for any crime at all.
They seemed entirely happy that their school produced a pilot that casually murdered someone once every fifteen minutes and shot down another Pilots' Federation member every third hour, on average.
In hindsight, that 'harmless' sticker they made him wear uner his name tag the whole time was rather cruel irony.
It's not like Ma Corn just grows on trees. No, it grows on stalks! You know what a pain in the stalks are? You need slaves to pick corn from stalks (ain't no one doing that for money in a post scarcity economy) and slaves come in cans and everyone knows that the Pilots' Federation is who you want hauling your slave filled cans...probably because they can't be interrogated for the names of their employers due to all that plot armor.
For at least the first few years of the game, CMDRs would be explicitly labled as mission targets for massacre (civilians) missions.
That's beside the point though. The Pilots' Federation has never (in this game) policed it's members actions against eachother. It's never demoted a CMDR, it's never recinded a permit (aside from the newbie zone), they never suspend insurance benefits or discounts; it's never censured one CMDR for attacking another in any way. Unless one is in an area where the Pilots' Federation is the local faction in control, they don't issue fines or bounties for any crime at all.
Oh I could not agree more, deeper than that even some very dark coding patters are palpable, but I've come to the conclusion that this is a plus that it adds to the ambiance when playing the game, though likely this is the root cause of the dissonance too.
To my mind elite dangerous, just like elite is akin to a desktop creative software application, the game play the canvas and the stations and ships computer are the creative suits toolbox. It is down to the user to create what ever they want in this superb play environment.
The only time issues seem to arise is in the way that different personality types interact within this environment, when the canvas is shared.
Studies made on the play styles of children apply to this environment when adults are playing and are I think highly reflective of the different scenarios that arise during open and group game play.
The tool box is varied and I don't thing that unrealistic when considering human nature when it is paired with vast open space and a lot of freedom.
You make some very valid points, I tend towards the lore, as stated above, I see the game as being only the creative suite and not really so much the content. I take in the lore and search within the vast expanse for traces of more of the lore because it embellishes my designs.
There are some dark patterns in the game, I think this is due to it's not having been coded entirely by David Braben, and there are some other influences in the mix. I like to hope that there is space for emergent behaviour to clean up the pilots federation with some spit and elbow grease.
Quite right, and such a difficult thing to balance and get right, we are in some ways spoiled with elite, it is very rare for a game to capture my imagination like this one does, as have all of David Babens game for me in the past, that I have played.
I find the way that new mechanics are introduced is really very well done, and think that anything is possible for the game in the future.
I don't see anything other than a record of how you chose to play the game; This speaks a lot about you.My proto-CMDR's (pre-reset) first ~150 hours after getting that shiny learners permit from the Pilot's Federation:
They seemed entirely happy that their school produced a pilot that casually murdered someone once every fifteen minutes and shot down another Pilots' Federation member every third hour, on average.
In hindsight, that 'harmless' sticker they made him wear uner his name tag the whole time was rather cruel irony.
Really very awesome, I love to hear about how you have found this in your game play! Really is very cool that the canvas does provide it for you, I would have never spotted this!It's not like Ma Corn just grows on trees. No, it grows on stalks! You know what a pain in the stalks are? You need slaves to pick corn from stalks (ain't no one doing that for money in a post scarcity economy) and slaves come in cans and everyone knows that the Pilots' Federation is who you want hauling your slave filled cans...probably because they can't be interrogated for the names of their employers due to all that plot armor.
I gather that in the early days one of the main proponents of a gang of gankers was one of the lead coders, so there is really little surprise here.
No they've not, but that doesn't mean that they never will, it is a gloriously dynamic galaxy and play canvas. I'm not really interested in general policing, more so that the hotspots of out of place activity might get channeled into something that fits better with the games narratives. I've high hopes that power play 2 will manage to do this.
I'd really love to see a better service for PvP as a marital art, it really does merit the attention, and I'm sure that there would be a market for this. I for one would love to be able to enter a PvP virtual arena with my builds to test them out. Currently it would seem that folk use a few bottle neck systems in game for doing this. I've got a massive respect for the skill of the players in these areas, but on the other hand find it so annoying to put up with when I'm tying to concentrate on composing my next build.
It is fact that those who show dark triad tendencies have a very different play style to those who do not, this has been researched in children but I think it applies just as well to adults in a virtual play arena, as they say 'all is fair in love an war' ... Is this also true of play, if so, then what is fair play?
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As it's not a PvP-based game, kill missions can optionally be completed by killing other players.
You have the choice of only hunting players, only hunting NPCs or doing a mix of both - it's down to the person doing the mission how they want to complete it.
As a philosophical question more so than a judicial one, can a war crime exist anywhere outside of a normative framework system or state, if not then how does this hegemonic status quo differ from a totalitarian system? I love that elite does not pander to such, and do not feel that it is particularly dystopian, more so that it reflects human nature pretty well, with a large dose of irony.
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Since there are no such tasks, it turns out there are no such tasks from the FP. Yes, the player can make up all sorts of nonsense such as: racing on the SRV, manipulation of the BGS and other things, but it will be just a fantasy and no more.