Stop posting and making the rest of us real thieves look like spineless, incompetent, crybabies by association.

---

TG, TG, GL, et al.

>>Hows that for starters? Hungry for a bit more?

lol

---

Individuals, families, countries, continents are destroyed at the heavy hand of Vinjince.

-GM Abasha

>BOBTHESNOB5515

What's wrong with you? We get it, you don't like being open and as a result of that you have decided to play differently. NO ONE FORCED YOU TO CHANGE YOUR PLAY STYLE, SO STOP ACTING LIKE THEY DID YOU CRY BABY. You could just man up and accept the consequences of your actions, keep playing the same way and have fun. Instead you CRAP UP 6 PAGES AND GET ME ALL KINDS OF EXCITED THINKING WE FINALLY GOT OUR 3.0 POST. I am disapoint.

-Reverend Gidien

---

"Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss."

~Miyamoto Musashi

>>It was not RP, it was murder.

It's not murder unless it's RP.

I don't suppose any of you would care to divulge your identities in kind? I'm aware my cowardice knows no bounds, but I can at least put a face on my argument like a gentleman.

>You're right, playing dead is really a style upgrade to how thieves normally play, I should be thanking this gift of providence.

You wouldn't be "playing dead" if you knew what you were doing. l2thief.

>caps lock button

NO.

-Reverend Gidien

---

"Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss."

~Miyamoto Musashi

>>What does that even mean?

Are you dead? Murder means you're dead.

Maybe you were thinking attempted murder?

>>I don't suppose any of you would care to divulge your identities in kind? I'm aware my cowardice knows no bounds, but I can at least put a face on my argument like a gentleman.

Hmm... oh, I've got like 30... how about Neesen Quiferens? Ooh. Hephaos. Yes? No? Kenta! Or maybe Nohen. Hrm. Zadkiel? Toongishok!

<<Are you dead? Murder means you're dead.

See, this is what I'm talking about. I didn't ask what murder meant, I asked what you meant by "It's not murder unless it's RP". You're not even sticking to the same topic, how can we possibly come to any sort of basis for intelligent disagreement?

<<how about...

No, sorry, I don't actually know any of those people :(

>You keep hammering away at this, yet you don't ever criticism to my actions. I steal, don't get caught, get mowed down(even in the bolt-holes). Which part am I "doing wrong"? Should I be logging out?

I honestly couldn't tell you where you are going wrong, but my open experience has been nothing like what you are describing.

I make it a point to run away after I steal and only steal from people I can go toe to toe with (this is what I meant by "make better use of mark"). I have yet to have a person come after me for stealing, but I have been killed for "RP" plenty of times. I just make it a point to give the person a quick GJ (win or lose) when it is all said and done and go on my way. This has never resulted in the spam killings that I keep hearing about.

Take this how you want, but I mean it as advice. Those who seek martyrdom will find it.

-Reverend Gidien

---

"Under the sword lifted high, there is hell making you tremble. But go ahead, and you have the land of bliss."

~Miyamoto Musashi

<<No, you don't know where I'm coming from.

I understood your argument, it was essentially the same as the rest of them. I also happen to know what a pronoun is, as it turns out.

<<Seriously. Stop lumping me in with other people. They're as wrong as you are. It's a different kind of wrong, and one I care a lot less about.

You didn't present any unique arguments to differentiate yourself:

<A punishment is a reaction to a crime. Being set to PvP Open, in this case, is like being looked at differently because you're wearing a wedding ring. This isn't a punishment: it's recognizing that you play by a certain set of rules and you should be categorized by that set of rules.

It's not a punishment (open pvp), therefore it's justification is not an appeal to the greater good. That about sum it up? If I steal, regardless of whether I get caught, am I now forced into pvp open? Can we at least agree that being pvp open is hazardous to the health? Given that this is a negative result, which occurs immediately upon committing the "crime", how is it NOT punishment? Is not stealing and receiving coin a reward? You're working quite hard in trying to avoid admitting that this is punishment.

I have addressed this identical objection previously. You're not special, you're not clever, you just got lost in your own analogy.

<<Or, you know, think outside the box a little and stop pretending that game design boils down to a tiny subset of possibility.

Please, oh great one, share that alternative. I was trying to be magnanimous and join the conversation you seemed to be inviting. Nice to see you're stuck on "insult".

<<Yeah, this is where you show you didn't read my posts in the other folder.

Didn't get the required reading list.

<<Exactly. I don't think it is about stealing at all, it is about how you carry yourself as a player. If you get bent, people will act on it.

I hate to keep coming back to this, but you are assuming I somehow brought this angst down upon myself. I reject this analysis, and I point to the random killings everyone keeps referring to, and the scripts I mentioned previously. It isn't about stealing, and it isn't about "how I carry" myself "as a player". It is about a system that is essentially geared towards punishing the act of theft, in and of itself, by opening the player up to being gunned down in the midst of an unrelated game mechanic. Stealing, and being smart/careful enough to not get caught, should not be punished as though I had been caught. Thats like a successful lift from a shop resulting in you being tied to the caravan routes. If you get run over, well, them's the bricks; stealing is wrong and you know the consequences. My dispute is with this method of over-arching justice, irrespective of success or failure.

The only method of determining who did the deed, assuming no one witnesses the act, is retribution a la omniscience. I did the deed, therefore I deserve to be punished. Thats not how the justice system works (innocent until proven guilty), and it's not, in my opinion, how being a thief should work. This is how Ultimate Moral Justice works; bad guys get smited because nothing they do is hidden from the almighty watch-dog.

If you agree with the mechanic, fine, but my analysis of it is sound, which is why everyone keeps trying to call it anything but punishment in order to avoid the implications.

In fact, I responded to your exact objection in the post directly below yours:

<<<<What is being done is the system is enforcing that your PROFILE announcement of your play-style, accurately reflects your actions of your play-style.

<<That is a definition of punishment. Your actions result in something "being done" which is enforced by the system. If the result were beneficial, it would be a reward. The result is non-beneficial, therefore it is by definition punitive.

>>See, this is what I'm talking about. I didn't ask what murder meant, I asked what you meant by "It's not murder unless it's RP". You're not even sticking to the same topic, how can we possibly come to any sort of basis for intelligent disagreement?

Sigh.

Murder is either you, the player, are dead. Or you, in character, are dead. In the first case, which is obviously untrue, there is no RP going on. In the second case, there must be RP going on because you are not your character. If neither is the case, then there was no murder.

In other words, the basic definition of murder went unfulfilled, given that both sentences you wrote were true.

>>If I steal, regardless of whether I get caught

Again, understanding fail. It is NOT "if you steal". You keep coming back to this and it means you don't understand.

You're not committing a crime. You are not committing a crime. You are not committing a crime.

You are making a category error. You are talking about consequences to an action and there is no action. There is only one thing: your decision to roleplay a character who steals from other characters. That character is a PvP Open character.

>>Can we at least agree that being pvp open is hazardous to the health?

No.

As I said, I just spent the requisite amount of time, as KAELRX (see, I differentiate between posters) stipulated standing in a high traffic area at the center of Crossing, set to PvP Open, during prime time. I got stolen from and whispered to and that's it. Felt terribly let down. I thought I'd rack up at least three or four kills, given the shrieking on the forums.

I haven't even bothered setting it back to Closed because it wasn't worth the hassle. I'll try again with a different character some other night after people forget.

>>Given that this is a negative result, which occurs immediately upon committing the "crime", how is it NOT punishment?

Given that the "negative result" isn't negative and there isn't even a "crime" in the picture, why does the word punishment ever even need to come up?

Are you listening yet?

Honestly, I'm willing to let the first half of that slide since you're being beaten to a pulp every few hours and I can understand how that might cloud your mind, but you keep insisting on the second as if it was relevant.

It's not relevant.

>>Please, oh great one, share that alternative. I was trying to be magnanimous and join the conversation you seemed to be inviting. Nice to see you're stuck on "insult".

Go read HCDS. Particularly the three bullet points after "To decrease the number of killers".

This is the discussion I had hoped for: to discuss how PvP Open could be molded into something people aren't terrified of. But I can't have that conversation until you recognize that it's not a punishment. It's a conversation I can't have at this point because people are tired of listening to you, and I need a contextual jumping off point stronger than the dry, pedantic, repugnant bile I would start it off with. People aren't going to jump in now because they've blown their load on trying to manhandle you and gotten two mods and a GM to lay smackdown. And now I'm throwing it away because I'm sick of the topic and don't want to think about how to improve it anymore.

<sighs> I guess if I play half my hand, I may as well drop it all on the table.

>>It's not a punishment (open pvp), therefore it's justification is not an appeal to the greater good. That about sum it up?

No. You missed it. You failed to notice that my initial response was a direct reaction to your very first post. Before you made up "appeal to the greater good" as a fancy way of dismissal.

PvP Open is not a punishment, therefore treating it as a punishment is asking the wrong question. Asking "Why not?" would have been nice, but you merely ignored it. No moral argument had been posed, but you decided it was one anyways. Which was odd, since "not a punishment" usually signifies "not a moral argument", since punishments are moralistic... and that's something I knew you understood because it was in your first post.

And I was silly and expected someone who could actually think through arguments to be able to instead ask, "Then what IS PvP Open?" A simple, basic challenge on intellectual grounds that would have invited discussion rather than the predictable whining. I suppose I might have been able to say something, but I went to lunch at that point. By the time work had gotten halfway through crushing my spirit, two pages of circular yelling had gone by.

Had that question been asked, then someone would have zinged something about policy playing, someone else would have pointed out that's just policy, and people would have moved to agreeing that the problem was griefers and that your proposal would be a band-aid fixing nothing and at that point we could have started talking about how to actually fix it and everyone would have been happy.

Woe are my scripts and all the annoying variable human interpretations and choices that go into stymieing the best laid plans.

And nevermind that my utopian discussion would have been derailed ten posts in by someone rattling off names and people arguing about whether or not they're really griefing when the victims deserve it half the time and then we'd get into character purchasing and it would get punted to OOC Conflicts anyways where people would continue to miss the point until it flamed out.

Would have been better than that Megatrillion thread, though. I still haven't gotten around to rolling up Megaquadrillion for the l33t ArrPee.

But seriously, I don't have an answer beyond "finish Combat 3.0 and Crafting 3.0 already" which would be the HCDS recommendation.

>>currently located in Aesry hunting

So much is explained.

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TG, TG, GL, et al.

<<I hate to keep coming back to this, but you are assuming I somehow brought this angst down upon myself. I reject this analysis, and I point to the random killings everyone keeps referring to, and the scripts I mentioned previously. It isn't about stealing, and it isn't about "how I carry" myself "as a player". It is about a system that is essentially geared towards punishing the act of theft, in and of itself, by opening the player up to being gunned down in the midst of an unrelated game mechanic. Stealing, and being smart/careful enough to not get caught, should not be punished as though I had been caught. Thats like a successful lift from a shop resulting in you being tied to the caravan routes. If you get run over, well, them's the bricks; stealing is wrong and you know the consequences. My dispute is with this method of over-arching justice, irrespective of success or failure>>

said quite well.

basically you are punishing success.

thats basically the change that took the fun out of playing a thief. because you can no longer do what you've trained for years to accomplish.

---

You've seen life through distorted eyes;You know you had to learn;The execution of your mind;You really had to turn;,the book is read,The end begins to show,The truth is out, the lies are old, But you don't want to know - Black Sabbath

Here is what I do. I kinda know most of the people who love to kill people just because they are open. If I steal I have these folks highlighted. I avoid these people the best I can.
While open I have been murdered several times. One time I was just drinking a beer in Taelberts and THWAP! I was dead. I whined about Nefidyne making me spill my drink. I was rezzed and got another beer.
It is just a fact of life if you are open there is a chance you may randomly die. It is ok there is no permadeath these days. Enjoy trying to play a real thief and being sneaky.

Mujaki, paladin of the people

<<which is why everyone keeps trying to call it anything but punishment

/facepalm

Everyone is saying it's not a punishment because....it's not a punishment. It's letting your profile reflect your play style. It's something you should manually do, but the system knocks it out for you in case you forget.

If I snipe you in the face and you don't see me....I should still be locked open(and hopefully someday the GM's will get around to coding it). Caught or not I'm being conflictual. Stealing is the same thing.

>>I'm still amused that stealing from players is both a cornerstone to the guild while also being completely pointless, profit-wise.

Honestly, I think there needs to be a system for bank robbery, particularly in the PvP sense, but I have no idea how to do that, let alone do it right.

Serc, Devan, I understand your argument. It is not intended as a punishment. That does not negate the fact that it is.

Perhaps, at one time, or even now for some, being open is little more than an invitation for vigorous playstyle. This was why I went open immediately upon returning. I was told, a number of times, that I need to go closed or guarded now or I would be cut down mercilessly, unceasingly, randomly. I protested, I wasn't going to hide behind a profile setting to avoid the consequences of my own behavior, were any to surface. I believed this was the right way to play. I couldn't have been more wrong. To be "open" is not to be prepared to deal with the consequences of my actions, but to be slain simply because I was alive, and open. I understand the argument that it is not intended as a punishment, but when looked at objectively, no other conclusion could possibly be formed. To be open is to accept that person Z, who, now and probably forever, outstripes my skill in every possible way, will kill me simply because I am open. Then person X will wait until I've rezzed, and do it again. Then person Y, then person W, etc. This may not be immediately, or not even in the same day, but it will happen. It will, and did, continue to happen rather reliably until I simply close my stance in frustration. Unless I want to be "text murdered" over and over again, I shouldn't "text steal", that message was loud and clear, and this result has been widely reported.

What does it really mean to steal from a player? Well, I've heard any number of times about the depredations of my poor victims, thrown into a conflict they didn't sign up for, and can't avoid. This argument would hold water if stealing were actually a significant burden upon players, at least as significant as death. Is it?

<<I'm still amused that stealing from players is both a cornerstone to the guild while also being completely pointless, profit-wise.

This has been echoed by almost everyone in the debate, in addition to the comment that it doesn't even train anymore. So why steal? Why create conflict? Why not just avoid the whole enterprise altogether and stop badgering us on the forums? Because it is a "cornerstone to the guild", it is what and who we are.

What does it mean to be a successful thief? How about a run to the museum, how is success measured? Well, it's measured by getting in, getting out, not getting caught, and coming away with something. IF you accomplish these things, you aren't immediately put on an arrest warrant to indicated your "chosen playstyle". You succeeded, you have your reward and there is no punishment. If you get caught, the hammer falls, and the law is now on your tail, and you have both your reward (the items you stole without being caught) and the punishment(the warrant for your arrest for not succeeding). Notice the difference?

To be set to open is punitive based solely on the environment currently being fostered in the open community. As I conceded, it was not intended as a punishment, but an objective observer would consider that punitive because in open stance, you are likely to be cut down randomly. Being open really does put your character in dire jeopardy.

How can you possibly say that going from 'not in danger' to 'in danger' as a result of your actions is anything but punitive?

Leaving aside the question of punishment, lets look at practicality. I touched on this in one of my earlier posts, and I'd like to expand it a little here. Say I'm a decently high level thief, fairly unperturbed by any regular conflict, and I only have to worry about a dozen or so people, tops. Not, of course, because they are the ones randomly killing people, but simply because they are "bigger fish" than I. Now, I steal from someone, get set to open. Was the person I stole from open? Unlikely. Does the person I stole from have any recourse if I am caught? Not unless I, as a player, play fair, which seems unlikely from what I've seen. How big of a deal is it that I'm now set to open? Probably irrelevant to my daily life.

Now pan this down to someone my size, or lower. I have a large number of people to worry about immediately upon going open. You could term this 'clear and present danger'. I have stolen far less than the thief above. If I'm caught, I am forced to be fair due to my size, and a bigger fish, for muscle if I'm not, is just around the corner. I am more likely to be caught, and more likely to be held to justice for my crimes. I am the proximate cause of these actions, and therefore accountable to them, moreso if I get caught in the act. However, even if I get caught, get killed for my crime, and the conflict is complete, I"m still open! I have paid my dues in blood, yet remain a hunted man. This is not justice, this is retribution run amok.

What has changed by pushing players into open pvp stance immediately upon stealing? Well, older thieves don't really care and continue cleaning pockets, young, reckless idiots with moonie or warmie mains that just wanna dick around keep at it, but the sensible, cautious, low to mid level thieving is gone. We're done, out, thanks but no thanks.

Yeah, its "not punishment", but I"m not going to do it for fear of being "not punished". All you have done is push lower thieves away from stealing altogether. Many don't even train it, the fines aren't worth it. I'm starting to agree. Money still leaves pockets, the hands are simply bigger. This is a tourniquet for a paper-cut.

<<if you're open to the idea of allowing everyone to engage you in a hostile manner don't engage anyone else in a hostile manner.

Thats like saying that if you and I were to get into a conflict, and had no other recourse than to duke it out, you would then be sufficiently forewarned that anyone and everyone can come take you out.

That goes way beyond conflict resolution, and if you can't see that, you're simply not looking at it critically.