(12-06-2016, 11:49 AM)Ihtyander Wrote: So in generall to conclude it - if i choose to harass one poor player all day along via player online tab, i am not techically metagamer in mean of braking server rules, but i can call myself and be called by others as complete RP ass`ole. Ok, i figured it.
If you do that and the player reports you for it, we will sort your ships by value and delete a few of them to make the lesson stick.
Dont worry mr Admin. I was mere extrapolating in just theoreticall projection. It would be poor behaviour to do such.
The essence of what should be appropiate behavior, no matter if ingame, on forum or anywhere else, is basically: Don't do things you don't want people to do with you.
Anytime you're using something like that to gain an advantage over someone else, that's metagaming. So in all your examples you're using the knowledge of where someone is to pick a character that can go and interact with that player. In a situation where it's your friend and you're just meeting up to talk or work together, that'd likely be tolerable. But using that knowledge to pirate or police is blatantly trying to abuse things.
For example, I am playing a trader. I get bored, or I see a known pirate/trader in the next system. I switch to a character to demand a bribe, blow them up, whatever, then switch back to my trader until the next time I need to do that. That is an extreme case of VERY bad metagaming.
This is the way to look at it, if you're a bounty hunter, police, whatever, you logging in is like showing up to work in the morning. You only know things from when you were last there. The playerlist and their systems are things you would not know, but if you have access to TLAGS you could get information from that fairly quickly.
I think the reality of it is though, because it's something out there, that can't be removed for the sake of RP, use common sense with it. I think it's fair to assume most traders and pirates are looking at it to see who is in systems or paths around theirs, and acting accordingly. A "long range scanner" of sorts, and I think that's sort of acceptable (by virtue of inability to do anything about it). But, the long range scanner is for THAT SINGLE PERSON. So using that information to log in a new character/person, that would be not OK.
(12-15-2016, 04:05 AM)blksti Wrote: ^^^^^ I agree with this.
In a situation where it's your friend and you're just meeting up to talk or work together, that'd likely be tolerable. But using that knowledge to pirate or police is blatantly trying to abuse things.
For example, I am playing a trader. I get bored, or I see a known pirate/trader in the next system. I switch to a character to demand a bribe, blow them up, whatever, then switch back to my trader until the next time I need to do that. That is an extreme case of VERY bad metagaming.
This is the way to look at it, if you're a bounty hunter, police, whatever, you logging in is like showing up to work in the morning. You only know things from when you were last there. The playerlist and their systems are things you would not know, but if you have access to TLAGS you could get information from that fairly quickly.
I must mostly disagree.
There is acceptable metagaming, which is, that the chat list was built into the thing for a reason, and unacceptable metagaming. F1'ing or going ooc is unacceptable metagaming. Expecting people not to use the list to see whats going on, who's around, and if its worth flying a certain character or not, has to be considered acceptable, or the very fabric of gameplay goes out the window. You have to be able to be expected to be seeking other players when you launch, in a multiplay server. I play mostly as a pirate or privateer, and always have. Guess what? Players use the same list to do everything they can to avoid such an encounter, as much as I use it to seek it out. Its even stevens out there, as they say. And trust me, after you hit someone once, the odds of getting close to them again, on any of their other ships, is near impossible. So tell me people aren't metagaming all the time to save their own butts! I see it every day, people won't even launch if they see a known ship around that will likely intercept them.
If you can use the list to find friends, you can use it to find enemies. When you come across another ship, you aren't obligated to tell them how you found them, you can RP that you were indeed out on a routine patrol. All they could do is go oorp and call you a liar...not a good idea. With how routes and routines go, if you even ever want to have encounters with some players or factions (especially that you might be enemy or hostile to), using the list is crucial. I used to feel bad, but when I realized that unless I want to change my ship name every week, the only way to get anywhere is to remember that they will avoid you all they can as well. Its even worse when you know that they wind up playing another character later, which wouldn't know what you are, and still avoid you because of the experience they had on another ship. How do we stop that metagaming? We don't, we have to accept it to even have a game like this, a certain amount of metagaming must be accepted. Ironically, I posted a topic recently about bad metagaming in this game, but its not the chat list that concerns me so much (learned to live with it, i trade too btw) as it was the fact that people can fly characters for opposing factions which makes RP involvement in activity totally compromised. I suppose that's because I always saw this game as a great simulator, not just a stage for everything to be set up behind the scenes. i was always for letting things play out naturally, and simply restricting how players can bounce, and how they metagame in that way.
But don't get me wrong, I do think the current list set up is too easy, and personally always supported changing the system names simply to their spatial regions. "New Tokyo" would read as " Kusari", and etc. That way you only really know where someone's at via the list when they change region. So going from Kyushu to Tau-29 would read as Kusari to Taus. In many cases you might not know exactly where the transition took place, but you do get an idea of where to focus your activity if you want to interact with other players. I've seen it like this on other servers I believe. That way you know if there are 5 people in kusari, or 20 in liberty, or 3 in the Omegas...As a pirate or hunter, at least you know that if you go to those places when they have players in them, you can patrol some kind of area, or block a trade lane, and have a good chance of not wasting hours searching for a needle in a haystack.