Puzzle Pirates Really Messes Up Big-time
Uh oh, looks like another gaming injustice has taken place. Unfortuantely, I'll have to call you out personally on this one, Daniel James aka "Cleaver," creator of Yohoho Puzzle Pirates. Great game, great business story of how you got your game together, truly embarassing banning decision you just made.
There is a player in Puzzle Pirates known as RobertDonald. I know him as "Sloppy," as that's what the Street Fighter community called him. Sloppy was not very well liked, and I wouldn't say I'm really friends with him, so don't think for a minute this has anything personal to do with me looking out for a pal. Sloppy was always wierd and brought rubics cubes and strange dolls to tournaments. I never knew him to cheat in one of our tournaments, but we allow almost everything imaginble except bugs that crash the game, so it's pretty hard to cheat. Anyway, he would always find unfair things the games and exploit them to no end. Note that these were ALWAYS things that were technically allowed. I never lost to him in a tournament, but he certainly caught people off-guard a lot.
When I heard he was banned from Puzzle Pirates, I pretty much guessed how it all played out, even before reading up on it. After reading up on it, it's remarkable how much agreement there was about him, even from people who want him banned. Everyone says he always played within the rules. Everyone said he was always polite. Everyone said he was shrewd. He rocked the world of Puzzle Pirates so damn bad, that there were really two categories of players: him and everyone else.
Here's a thread all about it.
So it looks like he used this "blockade" tactic where you declare a blockade on an island that a guild (aka "flag") owns. 24 hours later, they have to defend the blockade in a match of 3 out of 5, I think. This takes hours. If Sloppy wins, he gets the island. Then gets to ruin the island by building a bunch of shops, but whatever. If Sloppy loses, the enemy keeps the island. Maybe there is some cost to the challenge, because everyone is talking about "dropping a chest" as part of a cost. In any event, Sloppy schedules these blockade attacks at times that are personally invonenient the enemy, then he just doens't show up, so he loses. He does this every week, basically attacking the enemy's real life schedule so they will be demoralized, bored, frustrated, and give up. Over time, they do give up. Meanwhile he has many business dealings in the game that allow him to keep up this pressure.
Sloppy is mopping the floor with these guys. He claims when people actually go to war with him and a real game is played (neaerly never) he wins 20-0, and I have little doubt that that is true. He claims that the game appears to favor medicore players, giving them insane defensive advantage, but that at a high level (that few people are aware of), attacking wins. Not sure if he meant attacking when you actually play, or attacking when you afk and bore the enemy. Such a distinction isn't really important though, since the game allows either tactic.
The creators of the game have long known of Sloppy's tactics. They have repeatedly changed the rules to stop his tactics, and he always adapts to the new rules. The creators were not able to list ONE SINGLE RULE he ever violated. No other players were able to list ONE SINGLE RULE he ever violated. So Cleaver finally played the ultimate cop-out card: Sloppy violated the nebulous "spirit of the game" rule. It's the last refuge of the scoundrel, inhabited by otherwise fun games such as World of Warcraft and now Puzzle Pirates. When an obviously flawed system is exposed, the "spirit of the game" cop-out is how a misguided game designer can solve the problem.
What's most confusing out of all this is that Cleaver himself admits the blockade system is broken. This is totally obvious statement since Sloppy's tactics should clearly not be allowed in the first place. Why is this game so dependent on people being awake at 4am on tuesday or whatever? Why are there no in-game protections from repeated afk attackers? I think 100% of people involved (remember, including the game developers) agree that the system itself is flawed. Why, then, is a player banned for exposing this flawed system while still staying inside the rules?
If there is another side to this (what could it possibly be?) then I'd love to hear it. Barring that, I request a formal apology from Puzzle Pirates staff be given to RobertDonald, that all his characters be reinstated with no penalty, and that a redesign of the blockade system (and any other offending system) be undertaken. Your best tester is RobertDonald, you know. He's forcing you guys to do better, and I know you can do better now that all these loopholes are exposed.
Sloppy, if you're out there, I will hire you as a "super expert ninja tester/game balancer."
--Sirlin
July 20th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
The reality is, RobertDonald wasn’t banned because of the one thing he did during the blockades of Looterati, but repeated activities like that, including some that, yes, violated actual rules but which he was only warned for at the time. In the end, the Ringers put in place a system to make the kind of blockades he was pulling against the rules and he found a way around that, as well.
Y!PP is a more social game than most, and the ‘rules’ of the game are not defined as ‘anything you can do without crashing the game’. They’re defined as ‘things the game lets you do technically and which you haven’t been told by one of the OMs or Ringers that you’re not allowed to do’. That’s the difference between this scenario and the kind of tournament scenario you describe. Almost no one in Puzzle Pirates would suggest that all the things that the Y!PP client lets you do are within the rules, even RobertDonald himself.
July 20th, 2005 at 12:55 pm
As J said, you’re missing a very important point - RobertDonald was explicitly instructed by Cleaver on several occasions to stop what he was doing. When he disregarded those warnings, he was banned.
This isn’t a simple one-on-one puzzle game. This is a complex MMORPG - an online world with about a dozen different puzzle games in addition to the high-end conflict. The possible areas of exploitation when it comes to human interaction are infinite. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to make rules to cover every possible scenario in a game with this many layers, with some 10,000 people interacting with each other.
The only thing the architects of such a game can do is to have Terms of Service that cover most circumstances, do their best to clarify them to the community, and leave the rest up to a clause like “Spirit of the Game,” while giving warnings to players so they know when they’re crossing the line. I believe all of those things happened in this situation.
July 20th, 2005 at 1:43 pm
For you to give us all an “expert opinion” after reading the topic in a thread and from your own personal experience with the guy without playing the game is disappointing and does not provide much credence to your position.
July 20th, 2005 at 2:28 pm
The problem with RobertDonald (”RD”) was that he was persistent in continually “proving” that the system was broken. Cleaver admitted blockades are broken. However, in a large game system such as Y!PP you can’t just “fix it” with a 10 minute code fix. You have to totally redesign the entire “taking an island” concept.
Thus, the interaction between RD and Cleaver went something like this:
RD: Look! I can break this!
Cleaver: Yes, I know. We need to fix this. Thank you for pointing this out.
RD: Look! It broke again!
Cleaver: Yes, like I said, I know. We intend to fix this as soon as we can. Please don’t do that anymore.
RD (a day or week later): Look! It’s Broken!
Cleaver: We know that. Please stop doing this. It’s getting annoying.
RD (another week later): Look! Watch me circumvent your control!
Cleaver: You haven’t noted anything new. We know that. Please stop
RD: Hey! Look! It’s broken!
etc…
Cleaver and the Ringers gang were forced by RD to put in interim controls because RD kept doing things that were obviously not in the spirit of the game, while still “legal”. When RD kept exploiting the interim controls, they were forced to put in more interim controls.
I’ll bet if RD didn’t keep pushing the issue, the Ringers could have evaluated the best way to solve this Blockade problem. But RD kept forcing the Ringers to implement interim controls to put out all these small fires, as opposed to allowing them time to figure out how to make the entire game fireproof.
July 20th, 2005 at 3:29 pm
“I’ll bet if RD didn’t keep pushing the issue, the Ringers could have evaluated the best way to solve this Blockade problem. But RD kept forcing the Ringers to implement interim controls to put out all these small fires, as opposed to allowing them time to figure out how to make the entire game fireproof.”
The blockade system is flawed to the core. The game forces gaming clans (aka flags) to organize a team of several dozens of people to defend clan property for several hours and this can start at small-number-o’ clock in the morning. The blockade system also allows a few players get to do “cool stuff” that’s available nowhere else in the game…if they can convince dozens of other players to do run of the mill game tasks for 45 minutes, three to five times in a day.
There’s a fun to had in Y!PP if you ignore the flawed blockade system. Arguing that RD was preventing the devs from fixing the blockades is like saying that you’d have a much easier time putting lipstick on a pig if that guy you don’t like would only stop pointing out that you’re wrestling with a pig.
July 20th, 2005 at 4:10 pm
I only offer my opinion because the situation is such a familiar one, repeated in so many other gaming communities. I don’t know the specifics of Puzzle Pirates, but I do get the gist of it. World of Warcraft faces the exact same issues, and I know that game well.
I still maintain that a ’spirit of the game’ clause is an absolute worst solution. Having that clause is fine, in case some castastrophy like a bug to create infinite money comes along. That would be extreme enough to say “ok, ok, we have no actual rules against that, but it’s ruining things so badly that we have to invoke the cop-out rule.” I get that. Anything less extrme than that–and RD’s case seems far less than that–and actual rule changes would be a much better solution.
The great thing about games is that they have enforced rules. Applying an extra layer of subjective rules is a troubling thing to do in any game. In an MMO, a certain minimum layer is probably needed (to stop things like crashing the server, duping gold), but beyond that, I can’t see banning people. I can see using the data from them to fix the problem.
My friend at work just talked to David Zeb Cook, lead designer on City of Heroes about exploiting bugs. His attitude is that when players discover something unfair, he applauds them, then starts on fixing it. It wouldn’t even occur to him to ban them, or so the friend says (sorry for the indirect quote there, David).
If anyone disagrees with any of this, then I ask what SHOULD the criteria be to ban someone? Using the rules in unintended ways doesn’t sound like any grounds at all. So what ARE the grounds? Perhaps the answer to that question would end up benefitting many more than just the players of Puzzle Pirates.
–Sirlin
July 20th, 2005 at 6:33 pm
So j: What “actual rules” did RD violate?
It seems like every post in the thread agrees that RD broke no official rules other than the lame “spirit of the game” rule.
MMOG’s have myriad goals and spirits. Maybe my goal is to collect anything blue. Is that against the common “spirit of the game”? What if that pursuit causes me to behave disturbingly different from any other player in the game. Of course some players will behave erratically and pervert the “spirit” in un-ban-worthy ways.
The problem arises when these supposedly anti-social tactics are effective. If the game has a broken blockade system, it needs to be fixed. If it is so broken that it is rewarding anti-social behavior when the goal and spirit of the game is to promote social harmony or some such, then maybe a real rule needs to be established as an interim solution until the proper fix can be implemented in the game code. To fall back on some retarded “against the spirit of the game” rule is dumb. Players are banned for that rule in many different games and it always seems like a cop-out.
You would have to define an agreeable “spirit” before you can retaliate for players going against it.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say there’s a new high school popularity game. Everyone is fighting for popularity. The designers enabled players to perform several actions on each other and NPC’s. These include: Complement, Flirt, Offer to do Homework, Offer to Carry Books, Hug, Tickle, Wink, Shake Hands, Ignore, Insult, Slap, Kill.
Now the designers figure this is a “social” game. Certainly you’re going to plummet in popularity if you start slaughtering your classmates so it was kinda put in as a joke or for a special animal cruelty scenario or something. These designers have overlooked the fact that you can become the most popular in school by default if you kill everyone.
Sure, it’s a flawed game design. Is it so against the “spirit” to massacre? Maybe it’s the most efficient way to maximize popularity. If the game rewards the wrong behavior, it is lame to ban players for utilizing it.
“Oh but it’s not fair for all the other players to get killed!” Maybe it’s not fun. Maybe it’s not the most social… but if the game is about popularity (or controlling islands etc.) and the ability was designed in and implemented with such flaws, then doing it should not get players banned. The game should be fixed.
Maybe the analogy isn’t perfect but I think it highlights the goofiness of “spirit” rules. Players should only be banned for solid rules. If your happy fun social game rewards anti-social behavior, crappy “spirit” rules are not the right answer as much as anyone wants to defend them.
What justification is there? Can anyone even agree what a game’s “spirit” is or should be?
-Pip
July 20th, 2005 at 6:35 pm
This is definitely a very complex issue. I appreciate your input, Sirlin, you definitely have an interesting perspective.
As far as I can tell, the real problem with his banning is that the majority of players seem to favor him being not banned.
One thing you might be interested to know is that Robertdonald’s second in command, Jacktheblack, was banned, and his flag was fined 2 million pieces of eight (read: a buttload) when they circumvented a system Cleaver had put in. However, Jacktheblack successfully paid his fine, repealed his ban, and is now being allowed back into the game after a month from his original ban.
RD does not seem interested in returning, so.. *shrugs*.
July 20th, 2005 at 9:42 pm
It is interesting to hear that RobertDonald’s second in command was banned, but I’m not sure how to factor that in. What are the list of exact rules that RobertDonald broke? So far, I’ve only seen this “spirit of the game” rule. Many people point out that RD was careful to play just within the rules.
He doesn’t want to return to the game? Sounds like he was a major personality in the game (a villain), and certainly a skilled tester. He showed the game system actually operated differently than others thought. If I did all that and was banned for it, I’d probably not be very interested in coming back either. :(
Another thing I’m having trouble understanding is why the blockade system wasn’t obviously broken from day 1. Isn’t it pretty clear that it allows you to repeatedly challenge people at 4am and force them to respond, while you afk? It’s not really a “loophole,” right? Or is there some subtle nuance RD was using, and not just anyone could repeatedly force people to repsond at 4am?
–Sirlin
July 20th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Dear lord, do we really need to bring this subject up again? Sirlin, you have inadvertantly opened a hornest nest, and with this article being directly linked from our forums…goodluck.
The only problem that existed with RD is that he did not play by the prevaling island holders’ rules. Islands are a tricky thing in the game. There are only a few in every ocean and everyone wants one. Major conflict arrises when one island holder feels that the actions of another flag are not “proper and acceptable”. Indeed, the idea of propriety runs strong with island holders, being that the original holders feel they “deserve” to own the island regardless of their ability to play the island holding game.
In the game, there has become an extremely strong dicotomy, players who enjoy war and blockades and actively seek them, and players who avoid those aspects of the game entirely.
Here I interject a historical note as to why this is a case. PvP actions have never been acceptable in the history of the game. Indeed, any Pvp action is almost always taken as a personal attack or vendetta. Here are a couple of threads that show this lunacy.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=6336
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=5403
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=6908
In any case, the flag RD targeted was a part of the “Conflict is against positive social interactions” camp. So, they complained. Due to this group of people’s status in the community, and their status with Three Rings (Cleaver has a bias for them and at least one of the game’s paid moderators is a member of this flag) they got a nice “Spirit of the Game” clause pulled for them.
What is most ludicrous is that this flag, Looterati, inspired RD’s vendetta. In the early history of the game, they went after him claiming he was a cheater, misogynist, liar, etc. They persecuted him, yet Cleaver turned a blind eye to this obvious violation of the “Spirit of the Game” because it was only one person, not a group of his darlings. RD did get a bum rap, but he can walk away from the game knowing that, in the end, the flag he wanted dead and gone succumbed.
July 20th, 2005 at 11:04 pm
“Another thing I’m having trouble understanding is why the blockade system wasn’t obviously broken from day 1. Isn’t it pretty clear that it allows you to repeatedly challenge people at 4am and force them to respond, while you afk? It’s not really a “loophole,” right? Or is there some subtle nuance RD was using, and not just anyone could repeatedly force people to repsond at 4am?”
The AFK-at-4am happened once. A week later, RD was banned for it. In that week, however, RD managed to have another blockade (Maximum 1 blockade per island per week, only allowed on weekends, but allowed at 4am on the weekend) and win the island from Looterati. Looterati got the island back shortly after RD’s bannination.
Incidently, the ban on the second in command happened after the second in command won the same island back from Looterati.
But, yes, while you don’t have all of the details quite correct, you are right on the money with the observation that blockades were broken from day one.
July 20th, 2005 at 11:50 pm
Normally, I’d heckle. When this went down, we heard the exact same complaints on the PP forums. However, I’d far prefer to be constructive right now, in the silly hope I might convince someone of something.
Firstly, RD was banned for an unspecified period. He will be invited back after the blockade system is repaired. His banning, quite deliberately, coincided with an announcement that the blockade system was considered broken and it would be fixed.
Secondly, although the Loots are complete PvE players, and thus they complain a lot (they used to be cool), it’s not that which was the issue. RD continually and flagrantly found ways to avoid fighting a straight blockade. Some consider that the game encompasses not just the actual, specified rules, but the circumstances in which the game takes place - essentially, that playing Monopoly while skydiving is the same as playing Monopoly in the living room. RD, essentially, wouldn’t play Monopoly anywhere but while skydiving, and refused on multiple occasions to play in the living room or not at all and kept nicking the board and going to the airfield. (An oversimplification, but amusing.)
Thirdly, ‘the spirit of the game’ clause is usually designed so that people who find unforseen ways to impact the enjoyment of other players can be dealt with. I know in the arcade scene essentially anything goes, but the vast majority of players, including YPP’s target audience, have a different philosophy. That’s fine, people are allowed to have different philosophies on what’s fun, and that’s why we have different genres of games. The MMOG genre usually relies on the spirit of the game rule to ensure that as many people as possible have fun. It’s not about winning for these games, and they need a lot of players in order to work, which means making sure everyone is having fun.
Fourthly, in the MMOG genre, applauding exploits is a stupid idea because you strata your players, which ends up driving them away because they can never be as good as the players who have a cavalier attitude for boundaries. Defining lines only serves to allow certain types of players as close to the line as they can get, even when it’s clear they’re harming the fun of other players. Keeping the line blurry means that those players either keep well away from the line or can be dealt with when they start causing problems.
Finally, so that’s what was up with his avatar. He’s part of the Street Fighter scene.
July 21st, 2005 at 3:05 am
There were other violations. he was more or less on probation for about a year.
July 21st, 2005 at 9:38 am
I won’t go into this hornet’s nest again, but one thing:
Stop calling RD a ‘tester’. This game has been out of Beta for over a year now. He was a player just like anybody else.
July 21st, 2005 at 9:58 am
I am allowed to get in your face, wave my hands all around and be generally annoying, without touching you — I may not be doing anything illegal, but few will blame you if you punch me in the nose. And if we’re playing an important chess match at the time…?
It is impossible to code into an MMO game restrictions on any and all forms of griefing. If two people can play the same game and interact, it is possible for one to grief the other. What is and isn’t griefing is therefore a judgment call made by those with authority.
The “spirt of the game” clause is perfectly valid and often the only way to punish griefers. This is particularly true if a player is warned not to do those actions again, and refuses to abide.
–
Incidentally, I wouldn’t assume most players disagree with the ban, as one poster commented. Those in favour of the ban have little reason to comment after the fact; critics are trying to undo the action and are therefore more vocal.
July 21st, 2005 at 1:57 pm
As a guy who codes games as a hobby, I really don’t understand the attitude of the game creator. Personally, If I wrote a game like that, I would LOVE to have people break the heck out of it so I can figure out what to fix while knowing there are people out there that love the game that much to break it so. Even in the current rogue-like game that I maintain, I have encouraged people to abuse all glitches that they stumble
across to their fullest extent so that I know how bad they are and how I should fix them, even if it means they can beat the game very easily in the meantime. I have even left some in because they have provided unintentional but interesting gameplay.
This is the same scenario. RD found broken tactic X well within the game which many construed to be “griefing” or perhaps the better word is “cheap”. There is absolutely nothing wrong with long wars of attrition (many online games with clans have them, like Earth2025) and if you can’t find the strategy to beat RD’s 2am blockade strategy, at worst you could just surrender the island and use the strategy BACK and seeing how he responds to it and taking note. I can’t even fathom this being a bannable offense, for if a European clan started doing this every week at 3-4am, would it not wear the defenders out the same way even if they did show up?
Although I don’t know much of the game, I think if you had a clan of people holding the island, you could rotate people to deal with the situation since blockades only occur once a week and since RD had a significant chance of not showing up. By rotating people about, an individual may only have to personally deal with it maybe once a month, and that wouldn’t be a big deal considering that there’s a good chance RD wouldn’t show up anyways, and that you like the game enough to commit a few hours of sleep at one weekend a month to guard your precious island.
The previous analogies are also wrong. “Playing Monopoly only while skydiving” doesn’t work because that’s outside the confines of the game while this is well within it. As for the chess analogy, well, world chess champion Alekhine had a “piercing stare” that could shatter stone, but if you let such psychological factors get in the way of your play so easily, then you shouldn’t play the game in the first place.
July 21st, 2005 at 4:42 pm
The problem with letting someone like RD exploit something that is broke as long and as often as they want is the impact it has on other game players. By the time you are able to implement the fix to what he has exploited you’ve lost a lot of other players for which he has made the game no longer fun.
Bottom line is if you as a game deverloper chose to allow this it is your call; however, if you tell a player don’t do it again and they do it is also your call on how to punish.
I would say the world of PP is sufficiently different than most MMORPG gams to mean you simple can’t let someone exploit without end in hopes of fixing the problem down the road. Failure to take action could quickly leave you with a much smaller player base.
July 21st, 2005 at 7:47 pm
The game would be a better place if those who detest conflict left.
Whitefire
It’s about playing the game, not complaining about when it’s played.
July 21st, 2005 at 9:49 pm
Cry more about how some company runs its own game.
July 22nd, 2005 at 2:18 am
I’m not going to comment on the decision (Although for the record I will openly admit I disagreed with the decision to ban RD) however I find this article to be an extremely uninformed piece of writing.
You openly write you sit on the side of the fence that says “If you can find an exploit in the rules, go for it” That’s fine. You are entitled to be of that view. Indeed, people who run games are entitled to run games like that.
However, Yohoho Puzzle Pirates (YPP as it is known in the community) is not played like that. One of the “drawcards” for the game is the community aspect and a social understanding that it is not like most games where it is kill or be killed. Playing by the socially expected rules within the game, and indeed it is a game where the community will turn on a player who does not play.
If I was a games reviewer, Indeed I would not promote the game towards yourself. I would not promote the game towards anyone who likes to play in a highly competitive environment where those who push things to the edge are held in high reguard. YPP is geared more towards those who prefer to play in an environment where trying to find a way around every rule as opposed to playing in a friendly manner like the majority of the other gamers is seen as “A bad thing”.
In some circles, the accepted community norm, playing within the rules based on “technicalities” is fine. In the YPP world it is not. In the YPP world, it is not about beating the hard coded rules, it is about playing to the intent of the spoken, and indeed in some cases unspoken rules, and ensuring the fun of the greater community.
Further to that, YPP is the sort of community that would prefer that the game design team could spend their time working on new things for the game, rather than having to focus on closing exploits all the time.
I would suggest that you research your subjects a little better. And as for RD (Or Sloppy as you know him) In the event that he never makes a return to the Oceans, all the best for the future.
July 22nd, 2005 at 1:16 pm
“You openly write you sit on the side of the fence that says “If you can find an exploit in the rules, go for it” That’s fine. You are entitled to be of that view. Indeed, people who run games are entitled to run games like that.
However, Yohoho Puzzle Pirates (YPP as it is known in the community) is not played like that.”
Bullcannon. In Y!PP, that style of play is quite common. Typical exploits of the past and present include:
* Several people, including very social groups, have been known to use alts with artificially low Sea Battle ratings to ship goods, exploiting the code that determines which NPCs attack the ship.
* When gold had to be stored in banks, many people used a bug in the tournament code to warp money from island to island.
* When the highest level of brigand (NPC) ships had an AI flaw that made them trivially easy to defeat, knowledge of that flaw and how to use it was spread from player to player.
* Some people who own more than expensive in-game outfit by a tailor shop not to sell clothes but to exploit the fact that spare clothes stored in tailor shops do not age.
* People have been known to create alternate characters just to create a new set of rags/beginner clothing/foils for free.
* There have been multiple complaints regarding people using alts to disguise puzzle ranking. This exploit is used so that the person with the alt can gamble against other players without the game revealing that they are experts at the given game.
* The foraging system had to be completely overhauled as it was exploited mercilessly.
July 23rd, 2005 at 12:15 am
The two posts above this one have completely opposite views. One says I have no clue how the game really is and the next describes a game exactly as I envision it.
Some people seem against the idea of actually fixing the game, or are at least of the opinion that it’s prohibitively difficult. Is the game so amazingly broken that we have to restrict ourselves to solutions that don’t involve fixing? Is the game just hopeless, so banning RD is the only way out? I highly doubt that.
It’s far more likely that it’s a really good game with a few issues that can be solved, especially now with all the problems RD repeatedly exposed. Fast forward in time a bit and imagine the more rock-solid YPP that RD “helped” create. Won’t even the “social” players appreciate this better system? In a fantasy world where everyone always plays nice and no one tries to get ahead, we wouldn’t need a more solid YPP, sure.
I still maintain that banning RD is not consistent with a LONG TERM healthy community. I say this not because I know anyting at all about YPP, but the “pro-group” system described in my other post is just dangerous, prone to uneven enforement, and takes away freedom from players in too many cases.
YPP staff, I’m sure you’ve read all this and even posted, though I don’t know which ones are you. I want to state again that I have high respect for your accomplishments of launching this game, even if we disagree on this issue.
–Sirlin
July 23rd, 2005 at 10:44 am
I’d agree with ou Sirlin if RD had found a problem and moved on to find another; however, instead he chose to keep pounding away, with slight variation, at the same problem time and time again. That, more then anything else, was his crime in my opinion.
As for those that use alts to hide their real strength, that is frowned on by the majority of the community. Those work arounds that give you a competitive advantage often result in stikes against the offender by the community at large.
Is it perfect, nope, but it beats the heck out of saying anything goes.
July 25th, 2005 at 12:34 am
I have to say, this is somewhat ridiculous. I’ve played a few MMORPGs (Runescape, Maple Story, and a few MUDs) and if you do not directly violate rules of the game you should not get punished. The only people EVER punished in Maple Story are the ones who either used bots or third party software to screw up the game. If someone “accidentally” dropped an item and you snagged it, well, tough - your loss. If you were waiting for 4 hours for a monster to spawn and someone else takes it before you kill it, well, that’s a bit cruel and against general social stuff (aka people may get mad at you for it) but the game itself isn’t going to punish you.
Heck, the MUD I’ve played recently actively encourages players to screw around with things - if you break it, they’ll fix it and you get your rewards for breaking it.
If this sort of thing was fundamentally wrong with the game, then the developers should attack that problem. What specifically is wrong, gaining some advantage for not showing up? Then take out that system temporarily, fix it, and put it back in.
From what I’ve read on that other topic, I can’t imagine this guy NOT being a boon to the community. He makes a lot of people upset, and he plays the game so well that he can take anything he wants. Having someone like that for people to rally with or against is probably the best thing you could get in a MMO.
I’d actually looked into joining this game (saw ads for it from Penny Arcade) but if playing to win is going to get people banned, well, I’m not going to play.
This would be the equivalent of having Survivor ban Rich for the alliance because it was against the spirit of the game. If you’re playing a game, you have a goal. And if you get punished for doing everything you legally can to accomplish this goal, there’s something wrong with the system.
If you have something in a game that you need to fix, it is not the player’s responsibility to just pretend the exploit isn’t there. If blockades are broken, temporarily take them out, fix them, then put them back in. Fine. No one is going to be abusing the blockade system. Islandholders (or whatever they are) are safe for a while, but everything goes back in the air when the new and hopefully fixed system is put back in place.
And let’s be serious for a moment. It’s a war. It’s you against whoever else. There is no such thing as griefing here. Your job is to beat the opponent by any means possible. The opponent’s job is to beat you by any means possible. If the game is broken and one player uses it to his advantage, that’s the game’s fault, not his. Saying that a player is causing too much stress to another player that he is fighting against is ludicrous - of course he’s supposed to make things difficult for them, he’s fighting them! This is the equivalent of banning a [insert fighting game here] player for playing a defensive/keepaway/turtling/projectile game because he’s making it too difficult for his opponent to fight him.
I would argue that the spirit of this game is conquest, and that by trying to conquer an island RD was acting perfectly within the game’s spirit. Saying it’s supposed to be “social” is just a cop out - I can be social on an IM, or in a game - and if I’m social in a game, its because I’m working with or against other players, which is exactly what RD was doing.
July 25th, 2005 at 12:59 am
Well, not that I play PP- But, it seems like the system is set up so people can and are intended to fight each other in some form and fashion. Any time you have a system where two (or X # on two or more sides) can challenge each other- especially for profit- there is the immediate potential for hurt feelings. One person wins, and one person looses. Now, RD seems to be attacking guilds, and ones wealthy enough to own an entire island, at that (which is good, since I believe picking on lower level players is generally bad). Ok, so its POSSIBLE he is pushing against the rules of the game, but some problems I see with this are- Everybody starts out equally in this game. Guilds should have enough people to have at least one person in different time zones, such as its currently 3 am in Central USA, and around 6 hours later in England- 9 am. If the community Spirit which RD is breaking so badly objects, then people can volunteer to assist whoever against RD. -Of course, then a smart player would seed the volunteers with double agents to play badly… THAT’s gameplay! But it does sound like RD was well within his rights to play the way he did, and that the Game Authorities were tolerant for a while, but then reacted in the wrong way. In a sense, and I know I’m stretching here, it’s like saying that every 5th one of you can be shot and killed just for reading this.
That’s probably 3 am logic. oh well.
July 26th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
(Warning: I’m a bit wordy.)
The best part of a multiplayer game is that it introduces new gameplay strategies that the designers could not have anticipated.
RD was not following the community-defined implicit game rules. This is true. But by banning him, Y!PP ruined an opportunity to transform itself into a better game.
One of the greatest joys of being a game designer is to see what gamers do to your game. Imagine the joy id Software got when their fps Quake turned into a movie maker. People bought Quake long after they completed the single-player mode and shoot-em-up death matches and used it to make movies.
Half-Life evolved that idea and put the movie in the fps. Even after people finally got bored with that, they began playing around with the mod making tools. Which led to Counter-Strike, a completely new way to play Half-Life. This kept Valve alive for 6 years while they made their sequel.
Now, imagine id and Valve said that movie-makers and mods were “against the spirit of the game” and banned them. Quake and Half-Life would have become boring months after their release.
Yes, RD’s activities broke the implicit community rules by exploiting a quite broken system (MMOs cannot rely on time-of-day to reslove something. Ever.) But imagine if they let him stay and let the community tough it out until they fixed it.
Maybe the community could have used social pressure on RD. Maybe the community would just stop caring about islands if it’s that annoying to defend them. By forcing the game to deal with RD, a new type of gameplay would have emerged, breathing new life into the game.
I’ve been in way too many MUDs that died because they banned anything interesting out of it, and then the ‘majority’ got bored of what was there and left.
By banning RD, Y!PP is demonstrating that they are unable to change. What will happen when the majority gets tired of it?
-Chadius
PS Another example of a MMO whose breaks and tweaks kept it alive long after the original content got boring: Diablo 2.
July 26th, 2005 at 7:19 pm
Chadius, good points. From a marketing standpoint, this is allowing your own customers the freedom to do your own innovation. Once they lose interest… there is no market to even worry about. Arm & Hammer baking soda might have made more money from people using it as a refrigerator freshener than from actual original intended use. American Express now makes more money off the interest of traveller checks, than from payment for the service itself as originally intended. There are clear parallels between this kind of business innovation and technical development/coding innovation.
Surprise’s comment here blurs the lines between “developer” and “designer”. Though it is true that technical innovation is more tedious than business innovation. The developers could be the best ones in the world, but if the design they’re working from is inherently broken, whatever implementation they come up with won’t matter much. The design is more core. That said, I can also understand that once a decision to improve the design is made, the developers suddenly become the bottleneck.
The best designers recognize that it’s best to create something that allows your customers this kind of freedom to innovate, and use products in ways the designers never imagined upon release.
This customer freedom might contrast with the primary freedom and core values of the company to do whatever it wants- the freedom to say “the customer is wrong” sometimes- however, those in favor of allowing the RD ban seem to cite “social aspects” as an over-riding priority they are trying to promote. I don’t know much about MMORPGs specifically, but if you say you’re trying to promote “social aspects” and “spirit of the game” clauses, who wants to choose a society with less freedom, given the choice? Your actions (banning RD) are speaking a lot louder than your empty words. How much do you really care about the people? It seems more likely you just care about their money. For any business that is understandable, and you do what you have to do to keep the revenue coming in- run it how you want- however, don’t try to put up some facade of integrity, saying it’s for the people when it’s not.
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:31 pm
The jerks at Three Rings did it again, only worse this time:
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/community/viewtopic.php?p=393013
and
http://www.livejournal.com/users/danno_san/52679.html
.
August 2nd, 2005 at 2:35 pm
Blogger doesn’t seem to like long URLS. I’ll repost the web addresses with added line breaks:
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
community/viewtopic.php?p=393013
and
http://www.livejournal.com/
users/danno_san/52679.html
August 12th, 2005 at 10:50 pm
I was just directed to the fact that i was mentioned here by a friend of mine who also knows RD, and I’d really like to know who decided to post that without talking to me first.
I had enough of an issue forgetting that people could find my LJ through the link to my homepage in my Y!PP profile, but having someone post that here on a widely viewed public blog without at least asking me if I’d mind my Livejournal being linked that way would have been nice.
I quit, I was not banned, and to claim that Threerings banned me for something is simply inaccurate. I quit because of circumstances and issues with the company, but I was under no requirement or obligation to do so.
August 17th, 2005 at 9:00 pm
If you don’t want people to link to something, don’t post it on the internet.
August 19th, 2005 at 12:24 am
I walked in on my dad reading my Live Journal yesterday. The only reason I was emberassed was because of my horrible layout. If I didn’t want people reading it, it wouldn’t be on the internet.
Kudos to the poster before me.
November 9th, 2005 at 3:18 pm
I don’t know why people are always taking bullets for these companies.
If it’s broke, fix it!
Why are people so hard-fisted to suppress progress and development? The only thing you are doing by supporting the ban of Robert it delaying the inevitable.
If Puzzle pirates are forced out of board meetings and into actual discussion about how to fix a problem, isn’t that a favor?
Where is the mercy in supporting somebody’s stagnation? I think that’s more cruel than anything. Tough love, man!
November 19th, 2005 at 12:56 am
Jacen said something that I was gonna get at. The fact that the people against RD had their whole community as a tactic to use against him.
Hardcore characters in Diablo 2 are interesting. If you don’t know, they’re characters that get lost forever when they die.
I’m a competitive gamer and love that Idea, however others might not. Those players don’t have to play with a hardcore account. I suggest a different, more competitive server for YPP. The other “social server” could adhere to “spirit of the game” concepts and even have them listed in the ToS aod CoC.
The competitive server indeed would lead to great things as Jacen suggested double-agents to bone the other team.
December 15th, 2005 at 2:08 pm
RD was told not to do it several times, and he kept doing it till supprise he got banned. He was warned he’d get banned if he’d do it again and he did it again. How is banning him an injustice he could of chosen not do it and not get banned. RD viewed the OM’s as a bunch of push overs and kept pushing them right into a corner until they had no choice to push back. He him self stated prior to the banning “I’m supprised I haven’t been banned yet.” He knew it was comming, he was daring them to ban him. How many times can you shove a guy until they shove back? This is exactly what happened and as far as him not violating the rules, I know of a few he had violated. The drinking bot for example was against the TOS, I loved to play against it, was an awsome challange he deserves merits for creating it and the om’s let it slide. He abused bug after bug and hide behind “oh look here’s a bug” then exploit it “here it is again”, then exploit it again “it’s still here” till no end. I find nothing wrong with finding bugs and pointing them out but after the 1st time you exploit it becomes an abuse weather your pointing out the same bug over and over again or not.
January 12th, 2006 at 12:47 pm
…sounds like a bunch of sore losers are mad he was winning to me… grow some ballz you pussies and come up with your own schemes to win instead of crying about some genious thats kickin your asses!!!!
July 5th, 2006 at 11:13 am
I’d like to point out a startling parallel I’m noticing here.
What RD did in Puzzle Pirates.
What Ghandi did when India was under British rule.
I defy anyone to find a significant difference between these two things.
Ghandi also scraped the edge of the rules, even breaking a very small number along the way. The British warned him several times he would be put in jail, yet he continued. According to some of the posters here, that justifies throwing Ghandi in jail.
The only difference is, Ghandi was freeing a nation. RD was winning a game. He didn’t deserve an inch of that punishment; it IS just a game after all.
July 6th, 2006 at 10:42 am
(My apologies if this was pointed out above, it’s late and I’ll have to finish reading tomorrow, but…)
“Stop calling RD a ‘tester’. This game has been out of Beta for over a year now. He was a player just like anybody else.”
An attitude like that is what produces Microsoft products. :P
Until such time as a game can’t be broken, it’s in a state of testing.
And if a game is so big that it can’t be perfectly fixed? Well, I guess the designers are just lucky that people are willing to pay for the privilege of helping fix the game.
July 9th, 2006 at 4:00 pm
If the Puzzle Pirates people specifically contacted him and said “we will ban you if you keep doing this,” or had some clause players must view stating that players that the developers view to be griefing or harassing other players may be banned, then I see no problem with them booting him.
If, however, they did not, those Puzzle Pirates people should not have banned him. Doing so would only be an act of frustration caused by their own lack of insight.
July 25th, 2006 at 2:55 am
Well, RD had exploited things massively since he joined the game, being warned on several different occassions that using bots and making anti-semitic remarks were not allowed. The harassment of the Looterati was noticed by the developers the first time, they did know it was an issue and that things were broken. What RD did was take the exploit after they knew it was there and then stretch it right wherever he could in order to win. Which is not playing, it is simply bullying.
October 25th, 2006 at 12:53 pm
Reading this set has illuminated the article on scrubs for me in entirely new ways.
November 5th, 2006 at 5:41 pm
Look what sloppy did was do he best to become the best…and he was succeeding in that with too much ease witch the creators didnt like as most of there top players would quit out of defeat, some of those spending money on the game.
sloppy was an icon and an insperation and sloppy if u are there i will do my best to help u again if u re-join and the game would be much better if u did :)
January 22nd, 2007 at 11:24 am
Maybe, just maybe, they should have fixed that issue some time before banning RD. Assuming that it is a western hemisphere only game, only allow that action between certain times, where the time is determined by a clock on the server computer which it is run, is certainly a very plausible fix, that is just off of the top of my head surely a team of professionals with longer than 5 minutes time can come up with better. If the game is not, then the there can be a server system similar to that implemented by Blizzard divided geographically and then implement the above stipulation. When Mike Long came up with Long.dec did Wizards of the Coast ban him or did they correct the problem he created? (I am aware that he is in fact banned, but that’s because of literally having an ace up his sleeve) Please don’t hand me blah blah blah coding blah blah blah. Perhaps they should have some hardcore min/maxers on their development team.
August 7th, 2007 at 2:25 pm
I believe spirit is what you think the game is, but you can’t impose that over someone else.
The artistic “feel” of what you “grok” is yours (even if it would be shattered at a higher level of play).
So players complaining about “spirit” being violated are basically saying that their perception has been shattered and yes, it has, it’s not a fault and no one’s responsible except you.
Tier arguments in fighting games sound similiar to this ban.. The word “Scrub” comes to mind.
Props to Sloppy for owning the game!
October 10th, 2007 at 7:33 am
“Spirit of the game” is not social interaction. Social intercain would allow people to emulate social behavior, but what you guys have banning different kinds of behavior is a fantasy land where everybody must be really dumb and happy. Its like a country where the dictator ordered everybody to smile at all times and never disagree with the govrnment, or yoll die. It seems people like it though.
The main point tha remains ins really simple. The game sucks. Go play something else, or ask the company to fix it. Being lazy will keep being an option as long as teh customers keep being abunch of pushovers, just like teh imahginary country I’ve just described