Non-toxic PvP
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On a total tangent, I have mixed feelings about the term CvC and I don’t generally use it. Whilst I totally agree that conflict should be between characters and not players, I think that in reality it’s often messy in ways that aren’t necessarily obvious, provable, or fixable, and I’m not convinced that asserting there’s a distinction does anything to ameliorate these issues.
When players get salty over conflict not going their way, they will rarely actually say that. Instead they’ll say stuff like “I’m upset that this other player cheated/used an exploit/is being unthematic/is unpleasant OOCly/is hogging scenes/can’t write for shit/has a super generic character/only cares about the mechanical win” etc. even when whatever complaint they’re making is provably untrue.
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Yeah I agree. “CvC” just comes across to me as spin.
My understanding of PvP was already that our characters duke it out IC, not that I’m literally attacking players.
When I used to play GoldenEye 007 with my buddies on the good old Nintendo 64 and we put that shit on PvP mode we didn’t actually start shooting each other up with golden guns. And Nintendo didn’t have to come down and be like, “Nah bros, chill! It’s CvC!!!”
(Though we did talk shit plenty and accuse the other of cheating all the time or having a better controller. But what’s wrong with that?)
I don’t think using the term “PvP” for decades contributes to the problems we’re discussing, and I don’t think changing it to “CvC” solves any of the problems we’re discussing.
Hell - when your team is losing a football game a common refrain is that the referees rigged it. I don’t know what to say. Losing is going to result in salty balls some times. You should see my cousins play Uno.
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@howyadoin said in Non-toxic PvP:
I don’t think using the term “PvP” for decades contributes to the problems we’re discussing, and I don’t think changing it to “CvC” solves any of the problems we’re discussing.
I don’t think changing it to CvC is intended to solve problems, just clearly delineate IC vs OOC. For some people PvP bears the distinction that indeed the player of the character wishes to end the fun of other players.
Also, if you approach IC conflict in a fully RP MU (so a MUSH or MUX or whatever) as though it’s a round of all slappers in Goldeneye, I would suggest that you’re in the wrong place and would better be served by a PvP MUD.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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I don’t know that the term CvC solves any problems, but I also don’t see it as spin. In my mind, calling IC conflict where everyone is working together to tell a good story CvC reframes the conflict to one where the players can be cooperative.
PvP doesn’t suggest to me that the players are going to start hitting each other. To me, the difference is that in PvP, the players are trying to one-up one another OOCly as well as ICly. They aren’t cooperating to tell a story, they’re pitting their OOC wits against one another as well as their IC wits (there could even be some situations where there’s OOC competition even though there’s IC cooperation, maybe two characters are working together one a project and are ICly cooperating, but the two players each want to one-up the other and come out looking “best” from the cooperation).
And PvP can be fun as hell, don’t get me wrong. There is indeed a different rush to knowing that you got one over on another real person, not just that your character won the dice rolls.
I don’t think that CvC should suggest that something is more or less messy than PvP, I think that it should suggest that the players are cooperating even though their characters are competing.
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@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:
just clearly delineate IC vs OOC.
If someone is having trouble delineating IC vs OOC when bad things happen to their character, I don’t think changing the letters is going to help.
@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:
For some people PvP bears the distinction that indeed the player of the character wishes to end the fun of other players.
But sometimes they literally do. It’d be nice if we all lived in an ideal world where there was never any OOC bleed and everyone was a perfectly good sports, but that’s just not the case. Many people like PVP over PVE precisely because of the other P in the equation. It really IS about going up against other players and winning. That doesn’t mean it’s malicious, just competitive.
Good sportsmanship is more about playing by the rules and not being an a-hole than it is about making sure the other person/team “has fun”. (Especially when your idea of fun is “I win” and so is theirs.)
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I think that a core problem is that upwards of 90% of players in this hobby want their characters to be Cool. There are players who enjoy playing weird little gremlins or satirical characters they see as totally separate from themselves, where they get to have fun at that character’s expense. These tend to be my favourite players, but they are in the minority. Mostly people have fantasies about being Sexy or Strong or Smart or Cool that these characters, and their wins, are meant to fulfil.
So as much as we can look down on people who see their character’s loss as their loss, for having trouble separating IC and OOC, the reality is that this is most people. And even if you are someone who enjoys playing the foil or the weird little gremlin, I’ll wager that at some point you’ve realised that what most people enjoy about your characters is they get to feel Cool in comparison, when they’re putting your character down or beating them up or being morally upstanding in contrast to your character. And you’re OOCly giving them the thumbs up that no feelings are being hurt in the process. That’s why playing what most people consider a “good villain” is basically a service you’re providing other players, because they get to feel Cool rooting for their own character against yours, while you’re always holding back just enough that it never feels humiliating or futile. This is CvC, but you’re serving the needs of P through a C veil, and if you stop doing that, the feelings that arise are PvP.
So staff can call it CvC, but they need to understand that it’s still ultimately a balancing act of managing player egos.
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@MisterBoring said in Non-toxic PvP:
Also, if you approach IC conflict in a fully RP MU (so a MUSH or MUX or whatever) as though it’s a round of all slappers in Goldeneye, I would suggest that you’re in the wrong place and would better be served by a PvP MUD.
I promise you I am in the right place lol.
Also - my bros and I never demanded no contact orders from our parents after a round of GoldenEye slappers. So maybe we had it right after all?
@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:
There are players who enjoy playing weird little gremlins or satirical characters they see as totally separate from themselves, where they get to have fun at that character’s expense.
This is me.
@Kestrel said in Non-toxic PvP:
…is basically a service you’re providing other players…
you’re welcome.
