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The Last Word On The Curious Case Of The Pouting Professor
Gevlon is my moral compass, but in reverse. Although I do wonder how he would have handled 1999-era UO.
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about 1 year ago
Good question,unfortunately for him there isnt a economy to manipulate in gank land.
Although, seriously, a game with PvP needs to be designed keeping in mind people that enjoy defeating and smack talking. Just a simple hot-fix in the TP-foe for avoiding the death-squads until the PvP balance patch would have cut this short (and the professor “investigation” would have cut short, instead just being a list of educated insults for being nerfed)
about 1 year ago
He would have created a fotm abusive character and griefed the carebears. He would have been in the bring back pre-casting biyotch movement. Most definitely he would have quit once Trammel came around.
about 1 year ago
“I do wonder how he would have handled 1999-era UO”
http://spla.sh/bp/meet_gypsy_files/bone4.htm
about 1 year ago
Ah, “fethers”, what can’t you respond to.
about 1 year ago
You just encouraged Gevlon to write more of its nonsense. Does it really have that much entertainment value?
I mean, he is the guy who makes moneymaking guides for a game where you get it basically shoven right into the rear.
about 1 year ago
Words failed me, then I remembered I’m a spammy bastard and came up with some anyway.
Seriously, if this is the entirety of his moral compass, he’s a genuine danger to himself and others.
about 1 year ago
why even bother linking to Gevlon?
There are good logical and even philosophical defenses of why griefing should be allowed in games.
Gevlon never makes one.
He simply says you should accept anything that is someone can possible do to you in a game.
about 1 year ago
Yeah I can’t even read his blog to be honest.
about 1 year ago
While what this guy did I consider cheesy, it however did not violate any rules of the game from what I have read. If anything the common dominator is we have people that wanted to pve specific pve mobs in this specific areas and even though they knew this guy was very famously doing this and they still came back time after time, after time with the same result.
If this guy was griefing to the point of preventing people from being able to play the game at all then that I consider malicous griefing, this guy was in a pvp specific zone, the only one in the entire game, in one particular part of that zone, and these people got pissed that he was ruining there joyess pve grinding because they found it easier to not fight other players to get rewards by some “agreement not to pvp”. This guy did not like that fact and found a way to spoil there fun in particular areas that they continually returned to over and over and over again. It is like touching a red hot burner, getting burned, and going back to touch it again. I would not feel sorry for that person unless he is mentally challenged. It was not like this guy was following them all over the game, the irony in all this is they were coming directly to him even though they already knew the likely outcome.
about 1 year ago
This is how the portrayed the events in his favor, Votan. You should better read the player comments on this.
It is not like that an evil community of players with a non-pvp agreement urged evil NCSoft to ban this “perfectly legit” guy…^^ – talk about a twisted view of oneself.
about 1 year ago
Votan, the problem was not that he was PvPing; the problem was that he was using an exploit to kill others in a way that they were unable to counter. Specifically, he was repeatedly teleporting them into insta-kill NPC guards that were meant to protect a zone-in area. People didn’t fight him and lose; rather, being anywhere within range of him was instant death, with no chance to fight back. He then, as what he claims was part of his experimental persona, publicly insulted his victims. Other players did not use that exploit (those few to whom it was available) because it was bad sportsmanship; they remembered that games are supposed to be fun for all participants. PvP fights are fun (a lot of fun) but getting chain-ganked by exploiters is not fun at all.
Look at it this way: how would people react if a pro football player took a Taser onto the playing field and zapped any opponent with the ball? Would he be considered a great player? Hell no … even if there’s no specific rule against it, he’d be nailed for unsportsmanlike conduct.
The rule Professor Obvious there broke is one of the rules of life, not one of the rules of CoX, and that rule is “Don’t be a jerk.” He was a jerk, so people treated him like they treat jerks, and he went and bawled for the waaaaahmbulance. Typical griefer.
I’m with the people who think he got caught playing CoH too many times and claimed it was research to get out of trouble. That’s the only reason I can think of for someone of at least normal intelligence to have to do an (un)scientific study to “prove” that if you act like a douchebag, other people aren’t going to like you, since most people have a good understanding of that connection pounded into them by their peers by the age of five.
about 1 year ago
Gevlon reminds me of the old-school gankers in UO who liked killing & dry-looting, then wondered why most of the folks went to Trammel or quit UO…
Sheep don’t like being sheep, and unlike real-life, I don’t have to play a game…
about 1 year ago
OK I actually play CoH, and though I don’t PvP I do read the forums quite a bit.
1. The Teleport Foe exploit was available to everyone who wanted to take that pool and was pretty commonly used on some servers.
2. The range is pretty short, so the people he would teleport to insta death by the drones were camping the zone entry. Note: The zone is pretty large and the PvP population is small. Being near one zone entry or the other is likely the only way to actually find a fight so there is that to consider.
So if he was going against the norms for the server, then the PvP community on that server must have agreed on some norms that were outside the EULA and designed by the community actually playing the game to make it more fun. This is where Dr. “Asshattery” (WOOT! Gevlon quoted me and implied that I was wrong, I feel like a paragon of virtue now; I can die happy.) is making his mistake. Honestly if I was fighting a guy in a fair fight and some griefing jerk teleported my foe into the drones, or into some mobs that stole my kill, I fail to see how anyone but said griefer gain anything from the experience. He didn’t share in the kill, he stole it because I did the work, but can’t get any credit for it. That is griefing pure and simple, and that’s where the ‘good’ doctor needed to be canned by NCsoft.
If he’s ‘participating’ in a community where only he may derive enjoyment, but everyone is paying their $15/month, then pardon me but I don’t see where he can whine like a bitch for being disliked. I dislike him and he didn’t even do it to me. It seems to me that NCsoft dropped the ball in letting him grief for so long.
about 1 year ago
Best way of dealing with undesirable (to you) behavior in a PvP environment is to make your opponent move on (if you are able) or move on yourself (if you are not able).
As a game designer you need to make sure that option to move on is always available to all parties involved.
In PvP environment definition of grifing pretty much encompasses every possible activity and is largely meaningless because of that.