Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Aces High General Discussion => Topic started by: Shane on November 22, 2004, 01:30:50 PM
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I guess re-posting this is topical...
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an article published in Gamasutra.
Part 1
Glory and Shame: Powerful Psychology in Multiplayer Online Games
by Jonathan Baron aka Blue Baron
This paper was originally published in the 1999 Game Developer's Conference proceedings.
When you play a stand-alone computer game, you experience challenge, release, escape, frustration, and satisfaction; however, you cannot experience glory. Glory can only take place with an audience. Similarly, no computer game can shame you, again because shame requires that other people be present. But it takes more than merely the existence of other people in our environment to create opportunities for glory and shame - you also need a relationship with those people, one of either knowledge or recognition. This is why server network games, such as Quake, offer no special embarrassment when you perish or when you prevail.
Having large numbers of simultaneous players in an environment that records and preserves player records and actions diminishes anonymity and builds relationships among players, but it also creates the emotionally charged possibility of glory and shame in a game world. It's precisely because this does not exist in most forms of computer gaming that it is seldom understood by game designers; indeed, few have any idea of how even minor design decisions affect the balance between the two extremes. And this balance must be maintained, because if a game shames defeated players too much, many will leave. What's worse, no one will know exactly why they left.
Multiplayer first person shooters like Quake II have minimal shame and glory-
Viewed in a simple engineering way, glory is achieved at the price of shaming others; that is, the greater the shame the greater the glory. To some extent this is true, but the entire concept resists quantifiable analysis. You cannot line up shame possibilities, assign them a numerical weight, and come up with a sum of potential glory. Nor can you quantify how the possibility of shaming others can motivate players to endure tasks of such tedium and boredom that no traditional game designer could imagine them. So powerful are glory and shame that they have bound cultures together for centuries, motivated innumerable people to risk their lives, and have driven countless others to end their lives. Thus, while the creation of such an environment provides an emotional depth to online gaming, it must be employed with thought and care, if employed at all.
In this article, I will explore how glory and shame work in online gaming, note their consequences, and show how they influence the underlying community culture a game creates. Glory and shame also offer a clue as to why multi-player gaming has yet to achieve a prominent place among other entertainment media.
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Part 2
Glory and Shame
by Jonathan Baron
A Unique Audience
Many of you may question just how real or powerful the audience influence can be in multi-player online gaming. Most online games today have no persistence or scale to them at all - they are but a series of evanescent encounters amongst total strangers on a variety of hosts scattered across the world, for which no record is written. Although the power of audience influence is present in these games, and many of the principles I will discuss apply to them, the focus of this talk is on what people refer to today as, for lack of a better word, massively multi-player games. It is this segment of the online multi-player medium that has the potential to attract a broad enough cross section of people in the future to make it one day a major entertainment medium.
Certainly many of you are thinking, however, that even the large scale, persistent world multi-player games can't wield audience influence over players that can rival the effect of living, breathing people in the same room with you. People don't actually see one another, don't actually know one another, most don't even live anywhere near one another. What power can any audience in the virtual world of cyberspace truly exert over anyone?
The power of this audience, as well as the reason it's unique, stems from the most important difference between multi-player games and all other forms of entertainment; namely, the audience is the medium. This is because the audience in multi-player games is unlike any audience in any other form of entertainment, as participant and audience are one. As a player, you are at once participant and spectator, beholder and creator of the game environment. In this there are no analogies, nothing comparable to this environment, other than the experience that people unfamiliar with gaming claim the online gamer is lacking: life. Because the multi-player game contains the force and influence that groups of people bring to real life, but does so in an imaginative setting that real life too often either lacks or dares not attempt, multi-player gaming can have a social impact on people more powerful than real life can provide. Thus, the influence of its audience, without anyone physically being in the room with you when you play, can rival or exceed its real life counterpart. While there are plenty of games that have no audience, or have no audience/player/entertainer boundaries, none has the ability to so consume and involve its participants like online gaming, as everyone who has been involved with the medium at any length can attest.
If the stadium in which the NFL Pro Bowl was played was filled with pro football players as its only spectators, imagine the psychological impact upon the players on the field. Now imagine that every new football player had to play in front of this audience from the moment they first played football. Imagine that every beginning football player had to take to this field and play amongst these players. This is multi-player gaming today, which is also why multi-player games are an infinitesimally small segment of the entertainment industry today.
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Part 3
Glory and Shame
by Jonathan Baron
The Power of Shame
Shame is so powerful an emotion that entire societies have been held together by it. Many still are today, Japan being an excellent example. Echoes of shame's once prime importance in our society exist in a variety of figures of speech ("Shameless", "Have you no shame?", "You should be ashamed of yourself", and so on). Japanese warriors, when shamed, would beg not just for death, but for the right to kill themselves in rather horrible ways. Although people no longer plead for the privilege of killing themselves, and thereby mitigating their shame, every person reading this has wished, at one time or another, that the ground would mercifully swallow us up after we had embarrassed ourselves. No matter the words we choose to describe it, no matter what we actually do in response to it, shame has the power to make us wish we were dead. There is no more powerful emotion. And, until multi-player online games became widely played, this was an emotion computer gaming could not tap.
Furthermore, it is an emotion that most game developers today have no idea they have tapped. Lots of folks in the industry wonder why the market for multi-player games has grown so slowly. Others bemoan the so-called lack of an economic model for them. People dwell on learning curves, barriers to entry, interface design, and compelling content. What they fail to understand is that the principle reason more people aren't playing hosted persistent online games tonight is due to shame - the experience of it, or the fear of it. I challenge you to name a single massively multi-player online game that does not absolutely require that every new player undergo a period of embarrassment or humiliation. Yes, learning any new game requires that you do badly before you can do better, but multi-player has an audience, which, as noted above, is unique in all of entertainment. Multi-player gaming requires that you not only perform poorly initially, but that you do so in front of other people. Embarrassment, even on an insignificant level, is completely unheard of in any other entertainment media, all of which are hell bent to make you feel good and good about yourself.
Next: The Problem with Glory
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Part 4
Glory and Shame
by Jonathan Baron
The Problem with Glory
Okay, you know that shame is bad, but there are other emotions multi-player gaming can tap into that are quite positive; namely, shame's opposite, glory. Shame can feed glory - the greater the shame, the greater the feeling of glory. What did Conan say when asked what's good in life?
But there are plenty of opportunities for glory, or at least opportunities to reward players and make them feel good about themselves, that don't require the other players be humiliated. What then is the problem with glory? Ask yourself this question: what is the problem with money? Stressing glory, even when it comes without shaming others, emphasizes achievement over development. Although we may think we're motivated by recognition in multi-player games (and, the more competitive people would argue, in most of life's activities), the reason we keep coming back after we know what we're doing is due to our development in the social fabric of the game's community. The distinction can be confusing, and I will try to clear it up some. I'll start with the most recognized forms of today's true online games, how they handle issues of achievement versus development, and by extension, how gracefully they manage matters of glory and shame.
*Pure Meritocracy - the Ultimate Glory Game*
In the massively multi-player realm, this sort of game is best represented by the multi-player air combat simulation. This can also apply to some degree to the first person shooter, but I will restrict my comments to the air combat sim, as it has a long, established history. These games demand skills rare in human beings, skills that you're expected to master to become a force in the community. Earning respect here is not like religion, as devotion alone won't get you there. If you can't think in terms of three-dimensional geometry, and interpolate multiple vectors in your head, then you'll never achieve star status here. It doesn't matter how many hours you play. There is no cumulative character scheme. You cannot earn extra hit points for your fighter aircraft. Put another way, achievement and development are very closely coupled.
Glory and shame here are unambiguous. The two major examples of this genre broadcast notice of your demise, when you perish, to everyone in the game world at that time. One goes so far as to broadcast the game names of both the victor and the vanquished. Not surprisingly, both games have an unspoken ethic that approves of, encourages in fact, attacks with words as well as war planes. Finally, both player communities prefer to resolve major disputes through duels. If they could issue dueling challenges by slapping each other with gloves, they would. Yes, most of the players of these games are men.
That said, both have developed communities that have, over time, matured to include members that aren't hot shot fighter pilots. This is, in part, due to the spiritual influence of the underlying subject matter of these games; that is, aviation in an important and actual war that is still in living memory. In part this is due to the sheer age of the genre. Its first example, Air Warrior, is 12 years old. The point is that the ultimate depth and eventual development of elders, as opposed to just killers, in these communities was not a direct product of the design of these games originally.
*Multiplayer air combat sims like Air Warrior heavily emphasize glory and shame through achievement*
Is this genre successful? Few genres in computer gaming have been as enduring; indeed, in computer years, the genre dates back to the Pleistocene epoch. Is it a worthy model of multi-player game design? Yes, if you'd prefer a small, dedicated customer base. Ninety percent of the people who try these games don't hang around. Quite simply the glory and shame levels are so high, in particular the shame level for new players, that there will only be a mass market for this sort of game when society as a whole gives over to the worship of sadomasochism.
*Cumulative Character Games - The Devoted All Go to Heaven*
Best represented by the fantasy role-playing adventure genre, in these games you can get there through devotion alone. Nobody, regardless of native skill, intellect, reasoning ability, or reflexes can be anything more than meat in these games until they've put in time acquiring attributes an qualities bestowed by the game itself. Being smart can help you become a force to be reckoned with faster, but you have to pay your dues.
Although at first these may seem like purely achievement-oriented games, probably because you usually spend your first few hundred hours acquiring skills and game stuffs. They do evolve, however, into development games. Players either acquire so much stuff that it loses its meaning and utility, or they carve out a niche for themselves, deciding, in effect, to leave the rat race behind them. In either case, players will eventually develop beyond, or in spite of, the reliance of these games on game-created goodies to drive their game mechanics. Although most examples of the genre are established in early medieval settings, online FRP design is dominated not by the pre-Christian mythology of swords and sorcery, but by pure, raw, unseasoned capitalism. You are who you are because of what you've got, what you've acquired, what you can afford to buy.
*Multiplayer role playing games like Ultima Online focus on development*
But, like the occasional over-wealthy soul, player communities move from achievement to development when they learn there's more to life than money, and you're not something special because you have more of it. Just like the meritocracy-based game, cumulative character games over the years develop rich and warm societies that value their members and bring out the best in them. And just like the meritocracy game, they do so for reasons that seldom have anything at all to do with the intended design of their creators. To-date the only cumulative character online game that was ever designed, from the very first, to create a mature, multi-tiered society where money didn't matter was the original Multiplayer Battle Tech which is, alas, no more.
Next: Achievement Vs. Development
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Part 5
Glory and Shame
by Jonathan Baron
Achievement Vs. Development
The time has come to dispense with abstract and semi-concrete examples. What, once and for all, is the difference between achievement and development in multi-player game design, and what does any of this have to do with glory and shame? Achievement is all about meeting the challenges posed by game design. Development is your growth in the society of the game world. Achievement, in a competitive environment where hundreds or thousands are striving for a sharply defined set of goals, is glory for the winners, shame for the losers and also-rans. Development comes not from your ability to achieve game goals, but rather from the ability of the game, intended or not, to reveal who you are. This is how people can come to believe they genuinely know people they've played an online game with. This is where the lasting bonds among online gamers come from, and is the reason why the emergence of online gaming as a major entertainment medium is inevitable. As game designers, however, it is our preoccupation with the achievement side of the games we make, and the side effects of glory and shame that we, with little thought, unleash upon our customers, that retard this medium's emergence.
*Development over Achievement*
The day we become conscious of the power of our medium, and of the power our design decisions have over it, is the day when online gaming leaves its Keystone Cops, silent movie era. Here are a few suggestions that can help you get there:
* Don't build a pyramid. If your game mechanic can only be mastered by a rarified slice of humanity then you will have the harsh, rough, chest beating culture of the meritocracy game. It may evolve into something better, but if it does, it will be no thanks to you. People tend to think that these games have the testosterone-poisoned cultures they do simply because they involve combat. This is simply not true. Look at Tribes, and its ability to employ a variety of contributions from people in a combat setting. Imagine the culture it would create if it became a massively multi-player offering. Instead of a pyramid, build a game structure like a collapsible camping cup - many interlocking layers, nearly equal in size, needing each other to work.
Starsiege: Tribes allows players to occupy a variety of roles
* Shelter your young. Perhaps the most powerful developmental tools the multi-player game has at its disposal are rites of passage, yet only rarely does it employ them. Don't tack on training to your game. Make raising your players part of the game. One major difference between shame in multi-player games and in real life is that, in the former, it can happen inexplicably and without warning. This, more than any other single factor, drives promising new players away from multi-player games - forever.
* Devise a game design where achievement allows and encourages many different sorts of people to make themselves useful in many different ways. Do that, without falling back to the database driven, cumulative character scheme, and player and community development will follow. Do that, and you'll conquer the world.
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Could ya please post the Readers Digest condensed version of that ... I am too lazy to read it all.
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sure...
call the lamers on whatever.
:D
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Condensed version: Hideous
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my head hurts now:(
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Did Shane read this part:
"If your game mechanic can only be mastered by a rarified slice of humanity then you will have the harsh, rough, chest beating culture of the meritocracy game. It may evolve into something better, but if it does, it will be no thanks to you." :)
-- Todd/Leviathn
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Ghey!
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Of course I did.... so must have HT. :D Unfortuantely he took out a big shame part (kill messages), instead only focusing on the glory part (system victory messages). We still do have the "rank" system, but.... yanno? Hence the attempts at shaming by individuals via CH1/200/pvt or here on the BBS.
Glory and shame here are unambiguous. The two major examples of this genre broadcast notice of your demise, when you perish, to everyone in the game world at that time. One goes so far as to broadcast the game names of both the victor and the vanquished. Not surprisingly, both games have an unspoken ethic that approves of, encourages in fact, attacks with words as well as war planes.
I also found this fairly prophetic about what we're seeing this far down the road.
Multi-player gaming requires that you not only perform poorly initially, but that you do so in front of other people. Embarrassment, even on an insignificant level, is completely unheard of in any other entertainment media, all of which are hell bent to make you feel good and good about yourself.
Stressing glory, even when it comes without shaming others, emphasizes achievement over development.
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The game at one time anounced every kill victim and victor.
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ahhh i wasn't sure, since i came in around tour 14 or so. edited above.
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I wouldn't mind seeing that system back for a bit. The victim was not listed. We just got "Victory #1 by octavius of blah blah blah".
I ended up squelching channel 6 because it got so cluttered though.
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At one time it said.
Pongo has been shot by Octavius of the Knight Hoards.
then they got rid of the pongo part.
then they got rid of it all together and just put in landed kills.
It was really painful for someone to get killed a dozen times in a vulch.
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see... that kind of thing would teach someone not to get vulched, and would it expose the chronic vulchers.
now what do we have? people vulching 2nd accounts more or less anonymously, especially if they don't get too greedy.
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I'm not so sure that the kill messages changed in order to save players from embarrassment. As AH grew and grew, kill messages cluttered the text buffer and crowded out actual conversation. In addition, every single kill meant having to send packets to every player in the arena; that's inefficient and sucks up bandwidth once you have hundreds of players. The current system seems like the most network-efficient with one side effect being the removal of shame as a learning tool.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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I liked the part where people who fly La7s dont go to heaven :p
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Jeez Shane, by the time I got done, I forgot the begining.
I caught the jest of it tho..
Timid pilots ought to get a biker tattoos ??..and talk gruff ?? ...and hope it rubs off in their flyin ??
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hey, i didn't write it. but then what can we expect of a quaker with the attention span of an inconinent cocker spaniel on meth?
:D
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NEED ASPIRIN....NeEd AsPrIn NoW!!!
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Guys, you really should read this stuff. Blue Baron knows online communities, and he has a beautiful gift for writing. Forget the word count, and enjoy it for what it is.
-- Todd/Leviathn
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I always liked the entertainment value of the old fashion 'shot down' and 'plane crashed' messages:
Dweeb1: LOL n00b you need to work on your SA!!!!1
Dweeb1 Shot down
n00b: LOL the idiot augered
n00b Plane crashed
:)
Good post OP
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Originally posted by Pongo
At one time it said.
Pongo has been shot by Octavius of the Knight Hoards.
then they got rid of the pongo part.
then they got rid of it all together and just put in landed kills.
It was really painful for someone to get killed a dozen times in a vulch.
Really? was this before tour 2? :)
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Very interesting!
While HTC cannot abandon the MMOG-Flight-Sim genre, they are trying to go down the road that was mentioned in the end of the article. They are trying to establish parts in the game where you dont have to understand energy management for example. You can fly bombers or drive GVs. And they can have an impact on the game.
You can become good in the game without having to know at all why planes have these fins sticking out everywhere.
The problem might be that there is an end to this. It will not bring anything good if ppl do not shoot at each other. In this game, that is.
So, HTC will probably have to live with the fact that this online flight sim will never become as popular as quake.
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I dont know Oct. Thats the way it was. You dont seem to believe me. But thats the way it was.
Search the forums. It was changed for exactly the reason the article puts forward. When they got rid of individual kill messagages it wasnt just for messaging band width reasons but for trying to use the "glory" to get people to land.
Do you remember when the B17 had no guns?
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lol sorry Pongo, that was a serious question. I dont remember :)
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BB had a perceptiveness and understanding of MMOG psychology I have never seen matched.
IMO we see here and in the arena the very symptoms he points to when glory is promoted over shame...........
all humility is lost............ ego is all
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Don't build a pyramid. If your game mechanic can only be mastered by a rarified slice of humanity then you will have the harsh, rough, chest beating culture of the meritocracy game.
This part says it all.
Aircombat sims are by nature a pyramid. Inherently competitive and predisposition to chest thumping is written in the DNA.
And the interesting part is while the "rarified slice of humanity" which in flight sims we can calssify as 'vets' or 'aces' seemingly promotes or motivates people to become better at the game, they never cease to give up their own place on top of the pyramidic hiearchy - those who are at the bottom levels are people they can insult, step on, crack talk, and humiliate - in the name of 'motivation'.
But in the end, the under levels of the pyramids are always the most numerous. The more the game integrates various components and diversifies the role one can play inside it, the less importance the "rarified individuals" play.
The "ubermensch" are a dying breed. The days of the "untermensch" have arrived, and they dictate the arena.
And the "sore loser" phenomena, is one out of desperation. A "vet" in a pathetic bid to gain attention. To tell the community "hey, I'm a great pilot. Respect me!"
The last cries of a race in extinction.
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I remember flying arround in a 190a8 and hoeing anything that I could in an attempt to break even on the K/D stat, and that was after playing offline ww2 fighter games for years.
It doenst matter who you are. This stuff is hard. Guys that just have an interest and a new computer and the first experiance they have in ww2 fighter games is AH2..wow.
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Very good stuff. Not universal though, but certainly seems logical for gaming in general.
I've always played these games like a solo round of golf. Did I hook that merge? Slice that reversal? I try to have fun, land kills when I can, not make stupid mistakes or wander into total gangbangs. I don't know who's ranked no.1 (certainly isn't me), don't care, seldom ever read the text buffer, help people out when I can, avoid the conga line when it's already rolling, and get more pissed when a nameless red plane in the horde beats me than when I get plain outflown by a better pilot.
The ego is a ***** though, at least was in my earliest days of AW when I was trying to establish a positive K/D. And getting that regular positive K/D while still being willing to take some risks (yank and bank at heart) is far more difficult in this gaming environment han in most others. Path of least resistance can be a powerful thing if you're not pissed off enough at youself to want to do as well as you expect you can. It took me about a year, largely just dealing with SA issues.
Charon
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Originally posted by Charon
Path of least resistance can be a powerful thing if you're not pissed off enough at youself to want to do as well as you expect you can. Charon
and *this,* my friends, nicely sums up almost your entire collective experience of me on ch1/200. this is what i'm "going on about." it's not the ganging, it's not the cherry picking it's not the vulching, it's not what or really how you fly...
it's the lack of effort to try harder, do better, and to steal a cliche, be all you can be.
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text buffer was getting crowded, with all the kill messages.
I would like to see an after action report though.
kinda like the ones for some SEA events.
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Good grief, that article is like a shrink session in The Sopranos.
However, glory and shame are not exclusively the verdicts of external audiences. A person can feel glory and shame just as strongly in solo endeavors, including offline games against the computer. Chess is one of the most obvious examples, and even solitaire.
Solo feelings also depend on how the individual regards his or her place in the universe, e.g., whether totally alone in a godless void, or being watched over and connected to spiritual beings that might include God and even deceased relatives and friends.
The difference is, without external audiences a person has much more latitude as to how much he or she will accept or reject the feelings of glory or shame. It may make little difference or it may be quite important -- but the individual has total control.
With external audiences, the individual can still control to an extent how he or she feels about glory and shame, e.g., how much the external feedback is accepted or rejected. But there now are two perceptions: the protagonist's and the audience's, which are independent although influenced by each other.
Examples abound in Aces High. Some players don't care what others think. Some care a lot. Some find glory or shame all by themselves; some rely on the verdicts of others; most are somewhere in between.
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I recommend once that HTC add a landing message for bombers
like (playername) landed (X) victories in a (planename) of (squadname)
and destroyed (X) objects and (X) ships/trains/convoeys
second line wouldn't be on most landings anyway if coded to not display when 0 ... most folks don't egg and kill and land. But I think would give nice 'glory' to Bombers.
The only point I really belive of this... is that AH isn't doing enough of encourgeing new players to learn.... 'protecting your young' .... maybe we need to force squads to take in an X number of noobs :D
HTC has tried training incentives ... But never found many folks that wanted help when I looked under that training tab- back when I used too.....maybe more devlopment there could help? (or anyone use this and find it works, from the training or trainiee side?)
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Originally posted by Shane
and *this,* my friends, nicely sums up almost your entire collective experience of me on ch1/200. this is what i'm "going on about." it's not the ganging, it's not the cherry picking it's not the vulching, it's not what or really how you fly...
it's the lack of effort to try harder, do better, and to steal a cliche, be all you can be.
BS call. The SUM implies the WHOLE and you've whined about some stupid stuff, at times, bro. I ain't got no problem with shame, per say .... just some peeps need to be ashamed about what they choose to whine about. Yes, ma'am ... it cuts both ways.
And THAT, monsignor Toot-n-shoot, is why your method ain't workin' too well. You'll never know how many pilots admired what ya just pulled off in the air and were thinkin about emulatin' ya .... until you typed pizzy on the open channel. ;)
Wanna breed respect? Type as manly as ya fly. And that don't involve carrying on and having a hissy fit because things weren't fair. Don't wanna? Do whatever makes ya feel better then ... but don't try to pretend you're doing anything but. :aok
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Originally posted by Shane
and *this,* my friends, nicely sums up almost your entire collective experience of me on ch1/200. this is what i'm "going on about." it's not the ganging, it's not the cherry picking it's not the vulching, it's not what or really how you fly...
it's the lack of effort to try harder, do better, and to steal a cliche, be all you can be.
You have an interesting take on the point of the article, shane. You are coming from the "macho baby seal killer" side, and using the points made by the author to justify your position. On the other hand, I see it from a different angle--I will never be a great fighter jock, but I am a pretty good tanker, jabo driver, and bomber, and I excel at tactics. The author points out that, to survive, the community needs to have a diverse skill (and value) set.
You value only your expertise, and look down your nose at those who don't have it. And that's ok. As long as we're all having fun.
shubie
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no shubie, you see, if you're more or less a bomber pilot, all the more power to you. i don't whine about porking, i don't whine about bombing radar (except in CT when it's done out of spite, not ignorance). i don't whine about formations or low-level buffs. i don't whine about gv's and related gv issues. i don't whine about the hordes, i don't whine about resets. i don't whine about milkers or scorepotatos, altho' i mildly mock them.
but if you're gonna fly a fighter, at least try your best instead of taking that path of least resistence.
it's the ones i see that possess *something* of a clue, yet don;t try and follow thru on it.
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Originally posted by Kweassa
This part says it all.
Aircombat sims are by nature a pyramid. Inherently competitive and predisposition to chest thumping is written in the DNA.
And the interesting part is while the "rarified slice of humanity" which in flight sims we can calssify as 'vets' or 'aces' seemingly promotes or motivates people to become better at the game, they never cease to give up their own place on top of the pyramidic hiearchy - those who are at the bottom levels are people they can insult, step on, crack talk, and humiliate - in the name of 'motivation'.
Well, if anyone here (and I'm sure some have, even some are/have been) has ever spent any amount of time around and conversing with real fighter pilots, they are, to say the least, chest thumping egomaniacs! To not be one can be, well, fatal.
I respected the h3ll out of those guys when I was a flight crewman in the good ol' USN. They were definitely a breed apart form every other pilot on the ship. (for the record I was an enlisted ASW guy on S3 Vikings)
No one should be surprised when this attitude translates to the flight SIM world. I don't believe that 'most' of the good pilots here believe that have a right to insult the lesser pilots in the name of motivation. To the contrary, it's been my experience in life that the insulters are usually more along the lines of wanna-bees using insults to inflate thier own egos.
We're talking about the timid pilots here. In real life the timid pilots get weeded out in flight training and sent to fly cargo planes, transports and tankers. The less aggressive pilots are sent to fly attack/bombers. It's the arrogent SOB's that fly fighters.
I agree that it makes for a community where the noobs may feel like outsiders sometimes. It's threads like the one that prompted this one that may at times set people back a bit. I know there were a few threads I read that made me a bit apprehensive until I got into the MA and read other threads here and realized that there are a lot of good people here who will help you become a better pilot. Not just in skill but in attitude too.
If pilots want to fly fighters, aggressive confidence should be encouraged. Calling people names won't do that but whining when someone asks you why you didn't engage them in a fight only makes you look like a wuss. If you have reasons why you didn't, tell them. Don't start a b!t@h session on the BB. If someone is being a total moron ignore them. That will P1$$ them off more than anything.
(but I digress)
The article here kind of left me with the feeling that the author thought that the games should be more PC. (I could be wrong but that's how it left me) I don't know about y'all but that's not what I want. In our world shame and glory can be a good thing if taken with the right attitude. I know I've shamed myself many a time in this my first full month in AH. Sunday night I landed my first kills (3) and d@mn that felt great!
My 2 cents.
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Originally posted by Arlo
. The SUM implies the WHOLE and you've whined about some stupid stuff, at times, bro.
Wanna breed respect? Type as manly as ya fly. And that don't involve carrying on and having a hissy fit because things weren't fair.
i see you've yet missed the point again arlo. a big ole whooooosh!
what "stupid" stuff have i whined about?
re-read this part again, slowly if you have to.
it's the lack of effort to try harder, do better, and to steal a cliche, be all you can be.
the fact that the above is ususally expressed by... you got it, ganging, cherrypicking, vulching.. all in *how* one flys, or rather in how one limits themselves to flying, not ho wthey fly per se, as in e-fighting, bnz, tnb. I have no problem with bnz as long as the person makes an honest effort at it... it shouldn't take 37 passes to make a kill on a lower bogey.
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A good example of how the contrasting emphasis of Shame and Glory "modelled" the macro community and influenced the individual would be to compare the apparant persona of an Oopsy flying AW and a Shane flying AH..............
for sure they are not the same persona
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The one thing I don't think that article covers is that the "shame" as a learning tool breaks down when the largest chunk of the population does things that a minority feels is "dweeby".
For most people, at least in this game, now, stuff that would have been considered "shameful" three years ago is now considered par for the course.
We've got people who've been flying for 2+ years that, if you believe them, can't tell which way an enemy plane is flying by looking at the icon for 5-10 seconds.
I think it is safe to say that 3 years ago, someone like that would have been absolutely ridiculed by the community at large, now it isn't even worth a mention.
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Originally posted by Tilt
A good example of how the contrasting emphasis of Shame and Glory "modelled" the macro community and influenced the individual would be to compare the apparant persona of an Oopsy flying AW and a Shane flying AH..............
for sure they are not the same persona
you're right, they're not. altho' -->OP is closer to Shane than Oopsy is. Differences in the RR/FR arenas I guess. It's been an evolution (or devolution if you prefer) of simply seeing so many give so little effort. it's not the noobs i go after, it's the ones who have been around long enough and yet.... and to compound the matter it's these guys who have been given the ability to form the incoming generations, passing along, what....
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It would be something like.......
Probably all system reports would be limited to stuff happening within "range"
There would be no victory reports..........
System will not tell you who you shot down although you would be able to work it out because your personal "kill" or "assist" report would follow immediately after a system "##### shot down" report.
Personal reports
Kill!
Assist!
Ditched!
Crashed!
Captured!
Bailed!
Shot down!
Landed!
System reports (maybe only sent to those within range.)
Tilt crashed (you could add ride type here)
Tilt shot down (you could add ride type here)
We see immediately that for folk to have glory they must claim it....either by a "killmacro" or by proclaiming them selves as 10 streak victors etc.
Such folk (big heads) set them selves up as targets and its fun to hunt them. However when they are really good the huters oft become the hunted. Point being that folk can attract furballs to them selves.
Further we see that all players see our failures and see that we all have failures. A bit more humility may result...........
There is the oft stated risk that "shame" induces "timid" game play....... listening to many its seems that "glory" has not avoided it either..........
repeated crash reports close together from an individual usually signifies a newbie who needs help setting off........ or setting up.
repeated shot down reports close together from an individual signifies a vulch/spawn camp in progress.....or indeed some one packing his score with a freind or a 2nd account.
Looking for easy kills for those victory reports becomes a little more futile so there is less motivation for daisy chains and spawn camping.
Adding the ride type would allow a little more shame if it happened to be a 262 or an la7 but less shame if it was a 202 or a Spit1
But do not worry......it will never happen here IMO. The changes above may not seem much but they so manefestly alter the psychology of the game play that HTC would never risk it...... it would be a massive gamble given the obvious glory culture the game has built its self around.
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Originally posted by Urchin
The one thing I don't think that article covers is that the "shame" as a learning tool breaks down when the largest chunk of the population does things that a minority feels is "dweeby".
For most people, at least in this game, now, stuff that would have been considered "shameful" three years ago is now considered par for the course.
We've got people who've been flying for 2+ years that, if you believe them, can't tell which way an enemy plane is flying by looking at the icon for 5-10 seconds.
I think it is safe to say that 3 years ago, someone like that would have been absolutely ridiculed by the community at large, now it isn't even worth a mention.
I think that comes from a general lack of effort on thier part. There are some I'm sure that see it more along the lines of a game and other like myself who see it more along the lines of flying/combat.
Ridicule can be used for good or ill. In an I.T. Group I worked in once it was a very tough environment. We expected results and were not very tolerent of poor performance. If you made the same errors over and over you would hear about it, in front of the group and would get ridiculed pretty good. Some people thrived in this environment but others did not. I remember that we made one guy actually cry. Didn't mean to but that's what happened.
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Originally posted by Shane
you're right, they're not. altho' -->OP is closer to Shane than Oopsy is. Differences in the RR/FR arenas I guess. It's been an evolution (or devolution if you prefer) of simply seeing so many give so little effort. it's not the noobs i go after, it's the ones who have been around long enough and yet.... and to compound the matter it's these guys who have been given the ability to form the incoming generations, passing along, what....
See and that is what you don't get about me. My point is, who died and made you pope? Gee shane, it is awfully nice of you to take it upon yourself to help others with, what you think, are their shortcomings. Who are you to say how they play the game? If they want to get better, they will seek out help, if they just want to blow off steam after work without a major time investment... so be it. But what you do in the MA, frankly benefits noone besides making yourself look like a whiny baby. This remark: "You geldings not bad 5 on 1"... how does that shame someone besides letting the world know you just went down in flames?
People will comment on your skill if you have it, they will ask you for tips if they think they know what you are doing.... But you have a reputation for being a beligerant, whiny person on Ch. 200, now tell me how that invokes people to seek your assistance? Maybe if you were in a squad, and helped the new guys learn to fly in the MA, that would be one thing... but you even fly alone, and your way of helping them is when a few of them jump you and kill you, you let the world know they killed you, and they grin from ear to ear. Not much of a learning aid as far as I can tell....
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No, it is just an indication of how far the skill level, and perhaps desire, has fallen in the past 3 years. 3 years ago, most everyone was good enough that there were no 5 on 1s. 2 or 3 people could kill anyone in the game. If you killed someone in a 5 on 1, you didn't gloat about it... hell, if you killed someone in a 2 on 1 you didn't gloat about it. 1v1 kills, sure, there were bragging rights.
Now, a typical "ace" has the attitude of "Sure, you might be a good stick, but you die real easy just like everyone else as long as there are 5 of us, and we are in better planes, and higher.. and faster."
I think even the transition period where the gameplay might have altered course has been passed.. figure 1.5-2 years ago someone would do "Damn.. why is it every time I run into Shane 1v1 I get my bellybutton reamed out? Maybe he knows something I don't, and I should ask him for help." Now it is, damn, every time I run into Shane 1v1 I die... I better bring some ****ing friends next time I guess, and fly a little higher.
It is kind of stuck between pathetic and disgusting, in my opinion.
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Originally posted by Howitzer
But you have a reputation for being a beligerant, whiny person on Ch. 200, now tell me how that invokes people to seek your assistance? Maybe if you were in a squad, and helped the new guys learn to fly in the MA, that would be one thing... but you even fly alone, and your way of helping them is when a few of them jump you and kill you, you let the world know they killed you, and they grin from ear to ear. Not much of a learning aid as far as I can tell....
People seek Shane's assistance because he can walk the walk. Probably it's not as noticeable to you in the chaos of the MA, but Shane goes out of his way to make himself available in the DA to help anyone who asks for it. Next time you're in the MA, ask him. Chances are he'll stop whatever it is he's doing, so that he can meet you somewhere else and teach you some very useful lessons.
Take this thread as an example. Shane is trudging up and down the sidewalk with his "Repent" sign in hopes of pulling a few of the unmotivated out of the pool of easy kills and pushing them into becoming killers. You may think that a spoonful of sugar and a kind word to the wise will be more persuasive, and perhaps you're right. But there are those who respond to a slap in the face, or who work harder just to get even, if someone makes fun of them. That is obviously Shane's approach, and the gist of Blue Baron's article.
- oldman
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On the other hand, I see it from a different angle--I will never be a great fighter jock, but I am a pretty good tanker, jabo driver, and bomber, and I excel at tactics. The author points out that, to survive, the community needs to have a diverse skill (and value) set.
I disagree. Your position has a validity of its own, but it tends to impact what I (and some percentage of others) find enjoyable in the game. To me the attraction of these games is (and has been since 1993) to emulate, to some small virtual degree, the experiences of my heroes and villains from from the burining skies of WW2. Mainly fighter pilots. I like good strat games (logged more house this summer on CIV3 than AH), and were the strat model more complex, creating more opportunities for historical-type mission and requiring truly diverse gameplay to win the war then I might jump in with both feet. But I just can’t get into strat that revolves around steamroller tic-tac-toe.
Similarly, where “war winning” tactics are concerned there is something that is just too...sad... about dive bombing a CV with a flight of Lancs if you've spent 3/4 of your life reading about and being fascinated by WW2 air combat. However, as long as the "war" provides for an abundance of my style of good A2A action, then I don’t much care how anyone else plays the game. I will liklely even help out if an opportunity arises to intercept incoming bombers or the goon or kill a GV shelling the field, kill some drunks in their chutes -- I even deacked my first field last week.
Unfortunately, as has been pointed out before, winning the war and having good fights tend to contradict each other. That’s also where the path of least resistance comes in. To those AH war-winning bomber and fighter pilots and GV drivers who enjoy the challenge of the fight However, you can win the war and do your part for the home chess piece very easily without having to know a high yo-yo from a lag turn. You can fly bombers in a non-historical manner and succeed without even having to calibrate the simple bombsight. You can shoot a plane on the runway, or with 10 of your friends, or after it's missing a wing and feel good - I got a kill! The war can be won with a comparative level of skill and knowledge that would embarrass a 1941 era Soviet flying cadet or a 1945 kamikaze pilot. It’s not an elitist thing -- I’m hardly elite -- so much as the fact that those of us who like a good fight, and have found communities of others who like a good fight for many years, find that focus diminishing.
I have no problem with a cherrypicker who fights, or those who fight but run when they get too far in the hole. I don't expect the Mustang to stall fight against my Ki-84. But it's got to the point where if I'm alone and a solo Mustang flies over me, I expect 1 half-assed pass, maybe two, and good by - if that. This is what I've seen change the most since about the Gamestorm era. With even a reasonable amount of skill and some agression that Mustang should have a 75% chance of blowing me out of the air. It should be something to be feared, but you can almost ignore a high jabo type today.
A game that represents the Ferrari of 3d WW2 air combat simulators gets used for it’s winning-the-war gameplay model, which putts along at Yugo/Lada levels. What ya gonna do :)
Charon
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Originally posted by Howitzer
People will comment on your skill if you have it, they will ask you for tips if they think they know what you are doing.... But you have a reputation for being a beligerant, whiny person on Ch. 200, now tell me how that invokes people to seek your assistance?
see... if i were all nicey nicey i'd get overwhelmed with requests. at which point i'd simply have to start refusing them and end up like so many of the other nicey nicey vets who don't bother giving help any longer.
you want my help, you're gonna have to put *your* ego aside.
call it a screening process.
despite what many of you may think, i'm very aware this is a game and each of us have our own motivations and goals in it. no one is ever forced to get into word warrior with me, so don't go whining about it when you chose to play that particular game with me. just as some don't respond to my "method" i don't respond to haughtiness handed down from atop a high horse.
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just as some don't respond to my "method" i don't respond to haughtiness handed down from atop a high horse.
This is the most hypocritical thing I've read from you. This is EXACTLY what your ranting sounds like to others. It may not be what you are intending, but this is exactly how you come off. Just as you don't respond to it, others don't respond to it from you. Makes it sound like you are the best and the others that challenge you are just drivel... no wonder people don't respond to you...
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Here's a post I made a long time ago in another thread.
One thing, don’t confuse what folks are saying. You can have fun any way you want. Just don’t expect other folks to share your view and be prepared for the comments that will inevitably follow.
One thing that has changed in AH is that folks take "mocking" and friendly exchanges of taunting personally. In the past I remember only Karnak throwing a fit that some folks referred to spit pilots as "spit dweebs". Now say spit dweeb and 4 guys will run to the bbs with a thread entitled "Am I a dweeb for flying a spit?" Well the answer is of course you are, we all are.
It's getting to the point just calling some one an allied farm boi opportunist is enough to get a lawsuit slapped on you.
There is fun in the “hate” but if you can’t take it for what it is I would suggest that you turn off Opera and Dr. Phil and butch up a little.
I used to mock folks all the time; all in an attempt to get them to come back mad. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Now folks rush to the bbs "Mommy they picked on me".
So what if some one thinks you are timid or what ever, it’s up to you to find your fun. As I said above just get some thicker skin.
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hmmm rants are rants, high horsey-ness is an entirely different beast. it's all in the delivery.
and why should *you* care about what others respond or don't respond to?
could it be you're struggling with your own ego? if i were all nicey nicey to you, you'd be asking for help? sorry, my screening process is in place for a reason. :aok
i don't claim to be the best. never have. know i'm not.
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Originally posted by Urchin
We've got people who've been flying for 2+ years that, if you believe them, can't tell which way an enemy plane is flying by looking at the icon for 5-10 seconds.
LOL I almost spit my drink out when I read that excuse for his joust. The only way that's possible is if the guy has terrible vision and no glasses lol.
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I could care less what people respond to, however I'm arguing the point with you. Not sure how I have an inflated ego... sounds more to me like my points in the argument were better, you are out of counters, and are trying to change the subject before others notice. I am just challenging what you were asserting earlier. I don't think this is about me at all... from what I understand, its about you and your attitude towards the AH community.
Please Shane, do whatever you like, but whatever you do, don't change, the rest of us get too many laughs at your expense. :aok
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because they can't get laughs on their own.. like their kills.
:D
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Originally posted by Shane
i see you've yet missed the point again arlo. a big ole whooooosh!
what "stupid" stuff have i whined about?
Saw ya go off on a guy who dove in to help ya ... but was a bit late and ya died .... for about 45 minutes or so. You even switched sides and tried to get other players to hunt him with ya ... to which we all just laughed and told ya to get over it. Then ya logged.
So don't try to give ME this "I'm just trying to embarrass folks so they can be all that they can be" malarkey. I know better. I like the "I'm just pushing buttons" version better. It, at least, has a ring of authenticity. I can respect that.
Wait ... yeah yeah .... you don't need my respect. Well, that's ok. Then I'm just doing a Shane here too, I reckon. Callin' it how I see it and not really giving a carp how if bothers ya or not. Only difference being ... I ain't strokin' my ego none, doin' it. Yasee, I always knew you was better at video games than me. And although I should be devastated about it, I'm not. Go figure. ;)
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Originally posted by Wotan
Here's a post I made a long time ago in another thread.
Whoa! And just as impressive in this thread as it was in that thread. I think you should bookmark that for later threads. It would definately safe time and effort. :D
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Originally posted by Arlo
Saw ya go off on a guy who dove in to help ya ... but was a bit late and ya died ....
oooohhh you mean the guys who chronically go after the one someone else is *already* on instead of actually trying to get the one coming in or on that person's 6 already?
guys who should and do know better?
it doesn't just happen to me, either, i see it happen to others.
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Originally posted by Arlo
here ya go arlo, i made you one, too, be sure ot bookmark it...
:aok
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Hey ... sure ... get pizzy with me. I think it's funny. :lol
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Nice read.
Thanks for the post!
Sun
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Originally posted by Oldman731
People seek Shane's assistance because he can walk the walk. Probably it's not as noticeable to you in the chaos of the MA, but Shane goes out of his way to make himself available in the DA to help anyone who asks for it. Next time you're in the MA, ask him. Chances are he'll stop whatever it is he's doing, so that he can meet you somewhere else and teach you some very useful lessons.
Take this thread as an example. Shane is trudging up and down the sidewalk with his "Repent" sign in hopes of pulling a few of the unmotivated out of the pool of easy kills and pushing them into becoming killers. You may think that a spoonful of sugar and a kind word to the wise will be more persuasive, and perhaps you're right. But there are those who respond to a slap in the face, or who work harder just to get even, if someone makes fun of them. That is obviously Shane's approach, and the gist of Blue Baron's article.
- oldman
Enough said...
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^
Yup, and I think the same goes for most of us evil horde spoiling fighting types.
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Good stuff oldman!
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Originally posted by Shane
and *this,* my friends, nicely sums up almost your entire collective experience of me on ch1/200. this is what i'm "going on about." it's not the ganging, it's not the cherry picking it's not the vulching, it's not what or really how you fly...
it's the lack of effort to try harder, do better, and to steal a cliche, be all you can be.
Uh, sparky why all of the EXCUSES of when you get LIT UP like a $9.99 Xmas Tree?
Karaya
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When I first started playing these games I'd say there was the possibilty of shame or glory. I felt bad when I fugged up a mission, or good if I bested someone. Now, and its probably due to my age, its like ".....next!" whether I die or win. Online gaming is THE MOST UNNPRODUCTIVE, waste of time, man has ever invented short of whacking it. (Not knocking that) No one should take any game so serious that it makes you so angry you wanna punch something, or so proud you feel like you could walk in a bar in town with an AH leather flight jacket on, and try to pick up chicks.("Hey baby....")
I just want to enjoy myself, MY WAY, and if someone doesnt like it fuggem. If someones a dink, I just pretend he's a guy living at home with mom, angry at himself, for what he's done with his life. And I smile.
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Ya know if you're an Adult....the article doesn't apply....or mean
anything to you ;)
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Shanes getting (http://www.aseclub.net/phpBB2/images/smiles/owned.gif) in this thread! :p
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Originally posted by FiLtH
Online gaming is THE MOST UNNPRODUCTIVE, waste of time, man has ever invented short of whacking it.
you sure hit the BULLSEYE on that statement.................... but it is fun! :)
and in my recollections of almost forgotten memories Shane in AW-whatever version vs Shane in AH are not the same. Shane has changed with the times, yet I am butch enough to take his slander and mature enough to respect his abilitys when his game is on, and appreciate his offering of help anytime some one ask him for it! btw, Oopsy was all together a different breed of player.........
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Ohhh Boy!
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(http://www.x-plane.org/users/reddog56th/popcorn_smiley.gif)
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At the risk of repeating a previous person's take, I didn't feel like reading through Amateur Psych 101 so here's mine.
There is a DA for that mano y mano personal superiority aspect, and there's the MA for your average joes that just want to experience a fun interactive online WW2 flight/ground/sea sim.
I, like most, certainly don't feel like a better pilot than someone I just vulched just because I killed them. Nor do I feel like I have less skill based on one isolated encounter where I may have died. As for "styles".. if I come in on a base capture that takes longer than expected, and I have 4 kills pocketed.. and the base doesn't look like it's going to fall.. by gosh I may just peel off and RTB with my kills. What I can do without is some overobsessed twit on 200 asking me why I'm running. I'm RTB'ing to friggin land kills.. so what? I (personally) don't take this SERIOUSLY enough to feel some bizarre need to comment to EVERY person that I shoot down or shoots me down.
And yo Shane.. obviously you invest a LOT of time, thought, and energy into your hobby.. that's awesome sir.. ya for that. But I think I speak for darn near everyone when I say that I don't need a text buffer critique on my ACM every time you either encounter myself or anyone else. It's just not very.. dare I say.. Glorious, anymore.