On Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 3:58 AM, ais523 <callforjudgem...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > This is a hugely problematic opinion. I don't think it's acceptable to > break the rules of any game that you play voluntarily unless you want to > quit the game permanently, criminal courts or not. As a result, what > you're doing here effectively only penalises the honest; dishonest > players will break the rules and take meaningless punishments, whereas > honest players are effectively mousetrapped.
Well, I consider myself an honest player, but we significantly disagree about what "breaking the rules" means in this kind of game. For one thing, the punishments are only meaningless if you want to quit the game permanently; otherwise they will get back to you when you (try to) reregister. > One solution to this might be to implement some sort of hard > deregistration that is actually separate from the current time, with a > massive timeout on rejoining, so that people can actually leave the game > and no longer be bound by the rules. This would satisfy both of us, but... Hmm. I guess this is just an extreme case of MetagamingOrRoleplayingThesis. In that case, there was some fuss over the term "impeachment": [ An "impeachment" is not seen as what it is in the rules of Agora (just one of many ways to remove players from office, and one of the most difficult ones at that) but interpreted similar to a procedure which exists in the US American constitution, with a very different function and purpose, but which happens to have the same name and some similar results (removal from office) as the Agora procedure. Aspects like the officer's personal integrity and honor are not connected to Agora impeachments at all (it isn't even necessary to provide a reason for an Agora impeachment); they are introduced into the Agora discussion merely by the parallel with US politics. ] In this case, "breaking the rules" is not seen as what it is in the rules of Agora-- essentially, an action that costs a certain amount of assets-- but interpreted as equivalent to cheating in another game. And yet I agree with ais523 in that I don't willingly break the rules, even if I can pay to burn the Rests... perhaps the difference is that for ais523 this is an absolute in any game, while I wouldn't mind switching to a more pragmatic style if societal opinion shifted such that I wouldn't offend people with it. I don't know, I'm too tired to think straight. -- -c.
