Posts made by bored

I'm not sure there is much difference, depending on how you mean it.

If the policy is 'We can spy on you in any way we like, for any reason, all the time' (IE, Firan's) then yes, that is something of a red flag and it suggests a lot more privacy will be violated than if it wasn't the policy.

However, if the policy is 'All command input is logged for security, moderation and debugging and will only be accessed for these purposes', that policy despite allowing monitoring is not going to make unethical privacy violations more common compared to a game that says nothing or even makes some basic assurance of privacy (but doesn't completely deny wiz powers to multiple staffers). The unethical person is going to have the same options available to them regardless of what is stated, and be the same shitty person.

@Sunny said:

I understand that the government has access to everything I do/say, and that there's no such thing as privacy on the internet.

I also prefer to not have the people I interact with on a daily basis reading over my shoulder because it's just awkward.

This really only goes to illustrate my point. Many people will be more cautious about what they're reading if they're an in an environment where they can expect people might suddenly show up behind them and be inclined to read over their shoulder. Somehow, suggesting the same basic good sense in the MUing population makes me the abused wife of G.W. in Theno's mind.

Do I have any guarantee of privacy on the internet? Nope. Do I prefer a game where the staff says 'we don't spy' and then behave in a fashion that allows for me to trust them? Yep. I won't play on a game where I'm told someone is planning on reading over my shoulder just randomly. Don't like it.

That's a perfectly fine decision. But you're hopefully still aware that on the game where they say they don't, its very likely if the staff is larger than one guy that someone might do it anyway.

I'm not sure what about the question is melodramatic. You seem to be making the very broad claim that your staffing (or at least, I'll assume favorably, staffing in a high position of influence/authority) would mean that these things would not have any chance of happening. You did staff on the reach, right? At a fairly high level of authority (I might be wrong about this, question is non-rhetorical)? And it did basically host a veritable rogues gallery of people from the WoD playersphere on staff? Correct me on any of these points.

Regardless of that, your prescription is not really consistent of my view of how MUs are run. I don't know if I've played where you staffed, but I've definitely played on games where there were ethical staffers. They always ended up with bad ones too. Explain it however you want, burnout and need for extra help, but 'just have a perfect staff with no one unethical possibly accessing wiz powers' seems like a non-trivial thing to suggest as a solution. It's an admirable aspirational goal, but not much more than that.

So I continue to feel that in the 'wilds' of actual MUing, where there is no guarantee some douche won't get their hands on a wizbit, its probably best that anything you type into the window be something you realize might well be seen by a third party.

So you're claiming there were no bad staffers with Wizard bits on, say, TR?

It's well and nice to say that games could, theoretically, be run with perfect ethics and tight controls to enforce them, but it is not my experience that most games are run this way. We can strive for them to all be perfect, but in the mean time, I still think @Cirno's advice is, in this one rare instance, good advice. At least until the prophet Thenomain guides our hobby to a new era of moral perfection.

Yeah, because games you have staffed on have never also had shitty garbage people staffers on them.

@DnvnQuinn said:

Just because the government does it, does not mean private parties can do it...If we're going to follow this bad analogy.

Game owners absolutely can do it, and you will never know (well, until they page you 'bow chicka wow wow!', apparently). I assume you mean that they shouldn't do it, and I'm not disagreeing, but it's still head-in-the-sand level naivete to imagine your privacy is going to be protected on a MU. Thus the statement that you shouldn't be doing things you'd be upset if someone saw is objectively good advice.

People are shit, people will do shitty shit. You have zero expectation of privacy, regardless of what anyone tells you, because they're probably lying, or some staffer under them just doesn't give a shit.

@Cirno said:

Considering that the NSA records everything we do online, it doesn't matter to me if people spy on me, especially since I do nothing that would invite suspicion.

If you can't do it in public, don't do it at all.

So, I never thought I'd be +1'ing Cirno, but, this is reality.

Everything you do online is logged to some degree, possibly temporarily, but often not. By your ISP and many other entities, some of them possibly clandestine. Unless you're living like an Eastern European child porn ring on a ridiculous web of proxies and other measures, your privacy is close to nil to begin with.

Now, whether the good outweighs the bad with player input being logged, the sudden privacy fetish people have is fairly naive. As a lot of bad games have shown, if wizards want to spy on you, whether they have built in tools to do it or just put some together on the spot, it's not going to be hard for them. They might have policies about it, but they can violate them, and you probably won't know they're doing it. It's hugely unethical, I absolutely agree, but it's INCREDIBLY easy and people should be realistic with that fact and the psychology involved. Throwing back to the NSA bit, while it has policy against agents to using their resources to spy on their ex-girlfriends, they catch them doing it all the time. If facing potential federal level legal consequences for this kind of behavior doesn't stop people, what is a MU ethics policy going to do?

So yeah, if you need privacy for your MU activities you might reconsider them as MU activities. It's also probably more realistic, from a game owner perspective, to be straightforward about the whole thing as well, say that it may be necessary to log some things for data gathering/security/whatever other reasons, and remind people that if they really do need privacy they should be mindful of the venue they choose.

I don't find Rey any more Sue-ish than any Star Wars main characters, nor do I mind if she is. The hero's journey concept pretty much requires it, defining the hero as uniquely capable of taking on the tests and challenges and ultimately bettering the rest of their kind through their awesome deeds.

But. I dislike the shortcut on her force training because it's a disservice to her own character arc.

The Han 'it's all true' scene is such a big moment, but it completely undercuts things for her go from the revelation the force even exists to slinging Mind Trick without ... erm, any idea that it's even a thing? In the originals, that power itself is the link between wide-eyed clueless farmboy Luke watching Obi-wan wave away Stormtroopers like they're nothing, and a hooded, Obi-wan looking Luke rolling up to Jabba's and doing exactly the same thing. It's the viewer's very first proof of just how far he's come at the beginning of RotJ.

So I'm not a fan of them skimping all that. The instinctive lightsaber stuff, and what might effectively be low level battlemind/battle meditation during the final saber fight? That's fine. Her kicking Kylo's ass is fine (it's pretty clear he's not nearly so far along on his training either). But from-the-butt Mind Trick bothers me. You can come up with all sorts of ways it could be justified (something sympathetic from her breaking the mental intrusion, or even instinctively reading something from his mind when she does), but it feels like a short cut, and I'm not sure what will now take the place of showing us she's actually completed her training. Maybe she'll freeze a bolt like Ren, since that's the first big force power they show? I dunno.

I am also strongly avoiding this one.

How can you strictly follow canon but also let people play FCs? Oh, right, by making them literally invincible and expanding your definition of 'canon' to include a lot more force-powered hate sex.

I am 100% behind the Binks thing, to the point of aggravating my friends and the person I saw the new one with. If you read any of the stuff about Lucas trying to use Ring theory in film, it makes even more sense (the reddit thread touches on that with the 'rhyming' concept and how Darth Binks is the necessary rhyme to Yoda).

It would really be a shame if that's what they were going for and ultimately chickened out of.