Re: The return that ends in a first tppk
:soapbox: I am going to advance what may be regarded as a "heretical" idea here, but one that I strongly believe in:
There is no such thing as a "legitimate" PK. (At least, not in Hardcore Diablo on the Realms.)
Why? Well, I could keep you here for the next six days with reasons why, but here are my main ones:
(1.) Whatever Blizzard may or may not have intended with the idea of "non-consensual hostiling" when they originally designed the Diablo series of games, what it has evolved into has gone far astray from anything remotely resembling a game mechanism that makes the game (especially in Hardcore mode) fun to play, at least for 99.9% of the legitimate, honest players who buy it in a store.
I very much doubt that Mr. or Mrs. Average American Shopper, who buy the game at Best Buy / Wal-Mart / whatever, do so with the expectation that it will allow little Johnny / Janie to have their fantasy characters attacked and murdered by total strangers, for no obvious reason other than for the perverse gratification of some PKer who gets his (note: it's always "his"; so far, in years of playing this game, I have yet to find a single female player who finds this sort of activity to be "fun") jollies by engaging in an activity which, if undertaken in real life, would be a capital crime in many jurisdictions. (If fantasy games are supposed to be a simulation of some alternate reality, just what lesson are we teaching people by allowing PKing?) (Incidentally: If being murdered by a cheating, hacking total stranger is one of the "benefits" and "selling points" of Hardcore Diablo, why isn't it clearly advertised like that, on the game box? Take a look at the D2 box; it talks on and on about co-operative fantasy adventure, and has little to nothing about PKing. This makes it pretty obvious about what the expectation would be, on the part of a casual customer who buys the game "to see what all this fantasy role playing is all about".)
Do any of you have any idea of how upsetting that being PKed can be to a young child who is just taking his or her first foray into the world of multiplayer games? I do; I used to run an Internet cafe in which I personally witnessed (several times) kids in tears, because they were TPPKed or otherwise victimized by the cheating griefer pricks that get off on it.
Sorry, folks; the cost in frustration, grief and discouragement to the vast majority of co-op D2 players, in my mind, far outweighs the kicks that the griefers get by victimizing the latter. Sure, you can make it so that a few bullies have fun by beating up defenseless victims, but any rationally organized society decides that the few bullies have to give way to the huge majority of people who don't want to be abused, hurt or humiliated. It is beyond me why a simulated society like Battle.Net should be any different.
(2.) If you shoot your rocket launcher at someone online in, say, Unreal Tournament or Call of Duty, well, fine, that person hits "respawn" and gets back into the battle. Maybe his sense of being "leet" is a bit wounded by knowing that someone got the drop on him, but so what, it's clearly understood to be in the nature of this genre of entertainment: fast, furious, with little consequence if you get "killed" because in fact you never do get permanently "killed". Furthermore, the fact that you are going to get shot at by other human players is an essential and well-understood, integral part of online play in the FPS genre.
This is absolutely not the case with Hardcore Diablo, where an unprovoked attack by a stranger can ruin weeks or even months of work that you did building up your character. If Blizzard had implemented the common-sense "no hostile" flag upon Diablo session creation, the next point wouldn't be as important; but, because they haven't, when a PKer attacks you in an otherwise co-op Hardcore D2 session, they are turning the concept of the game that most participants bought the game for (that is, co-operative questing against the risks of the fantasy setting) on its head, turning it, for only their own gratification, into a "one strike you're out" dueling session.
This is the height of self-indulgent, arrogant, selfishness -- what bloody right does a PKer have to do this? (Please don't give me the lame and evasive excuse of "because Blizzard allows it", here -- what I'm asking is not what the game theoretically allows you to do, but what it's ethical for you to do, regardless of what constraints the system does or does not impose. If you own a gun, you could use it right now to walk out your door and shoot the next passer-by. When the cops catch you, will you defend yourself by saying, "I just did it because I could, ethics don't come into it"?)
Try to imagine a bunch of people going out on a hike in the wilderness, each trying to help the other get up the side of a mountain and avoid the local grizzly bears; then, all of a sudden, some psychopath shows up and starts firing a gun at the former group of totally co-operative adventurers. What would most people conclude about the interloper? That he's a prick and that he belongs in jail where he can't hurt anybody, that's where!
I'm sorry, but I have no patience or sympathy at all with even "legitimate" PKers, in this respect, because in 99.9% of the cases that I have seen on the Realms, what they do is intrude upon a group of Diablo players who are all trying to play co-operatively to beat the game, start hostiling people and in so doing, either delaying or completely ruining the session altogether (because, most experienced Hardcore players know all too well about the cheating, or near-cheating, tricks that PVP players use, for example "rushing" a level 18 dueler all the way through Hell so he gets quest bonuses that no normal character of that level would have, so they sensibly wait in town until the PKer leaves... if he ever does, I have many times seen comments like "ha ha, I ruined your game, you f*cking n00bs"). In other words, the PKer is using the "non-consensual hostile" feature simply to frustrate other peoples' desire to play the game in the manner in which the latter clearly want. WHO THE HELL GAVE THE PKER THE MORAL RIGHT TO DO THAT.
If you want to duel in Hardcore Diablo it is incredibly easy to do; just create a game called "Duel Me Noob" and you will instantly have dozens of other PVPers at your disposal. When you intrude into a "friendly" D2 session and hostile the players in it, you are acting like an obnoxious drunk at a picnic who thinks it's "fun" to throw up on everyone else's lunch. You have no right to do it, just because you can.
In real life, people would call the cops. Pity that there aren't any cops, on Battle.Net.
Mr_Bill
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