Well that's what it boils down to for me -- how exactly does being a roleplayer afford some kind of special dispensation from consequences of their RP in Eve?
First off, it doesn't. Actions have consequences. Apparently I made as much sense as someone who's been awake for 20 hours does. Ok. So, what I meant to say was that roleplayers are a minority. Minorities often expect solidarity from their own and other minorities. Now I'm not a certified psychologist, but I'd wager that is how it works on a psychological level for most. EVE is a different beast than most games, where you can actually if you have the skills/money/friends to do so, enforce consequences if someone slights you. Most roleplayers are not accustomed to that, at least those who come from other MMORPG's like, say, WoW, where you can't enforce much anything at all.
Why should the the inability to cope with the non-consensual nature of conflict in the game by others place an onus of responsibility on me, the player? Eve allows a pretty open exploration of human conflict through its game mechanics and yet if some want a denial of the concept for a character: If the reasons to go through with a shooting match are sufficient for ME then it doesn't matter what YOU think; it leads to a ludicrious scenario for me of, "I have to agree and consent to your reasons for wanting to shoot me."
I agree with you and I don't. Yes, one of EVE's most undeniable charms is that everything matters. But you can't IMO just wash your hands on also your own actions; I'll explore what I mean with this below:
The thing is for me, the people on the one hand who scream the loudest about some attribution of motives about the players of other characters are also the ones who seem to expect that those same players meta-game their own damn characters to satisfy their perceived requirements that roleplayers should be afforded some kind of special treatment that "non-roleplayers" would not get. That somehow kicking over the sandcastle of a roleplayer group or person is some kind of egregious offence but doing so to those not considered to RP is just all fine and dandy.
Ok, the thing is, like I said, if you piss off a dragon, you better be ready to deal with the aftermath, or don't complain if you weren't. However, what I think is what pisses off many people in RP conflicts brought to bear as wardecs etc. is that the other, often the vastly outnumbering side with possibly hundreds of people, goes out of their way OOC to manufacture IC reasons to crush another group of maybe twenty players and their alts.
One recent drama-conflict I followed from the sidelines was basicly in the most base sense that "These guys called us poopooheads. So we destroyed everything they own and laughed after they quit the game." Okay, sure, someone calls you a poopoohead, since you are a demigod with the temperament of a child, excessive retribution is to be expected. But then these people went OOC to boast and laugh how they drove these people out of the game, and that will rub some people the wrong way, because new, enthusiastic roleplayers are a really precious and finite resource.
It is kind of like how killing and otherwise harassing newbies and taking advantage of their ignorance in this game is frowned upon. They simply might not know that mouthing off might result in a bloody nose, and they are punished for it with not just a broken nose but pierced lung, broken ribs and smashed kneecaps. While some accept that this is the nature of the game, some wont, because of the previously mentioned solidarity thing. Other people will take offense if you drive prospective roleplayers away just so you could feel powerful, as one example.
So to sum up, if you kick over a roleplayers sandcastle because of IC reasons, that is fine, as long as people are in agreement that the reasons are purely IC. But believe it or not, people can pick up if you have OOC motives for it, like that you hate the player behind the character and go out of your way to antagonize their character and get an excuse for an IC wardec, and if that is the case, you should not expect that everyone accepts this kind of behaviour. Yes, there are people who do this, just like there are people who act like you say.
Thing is, roleplaying does require some level of consent, because there are still things you can't do in this game, like pry someone out of their pod and throw them in a jail - you'll have to get them to agree with this kind of roleplay, you can't just do it. The only thing that does not require explicit consent in this game is, obviously PvP, but to an extent you need general community approval as well, unless you want to appear as a bully, and if you don't get this approval, then you can't complain about being called a bully. Getting approval isn't usually hard, just don't go out of your way to be an ass.
I re-read your opening post and you know, I don't really get what this thread is actually about other than venting?
So far the most rational posts in this thread have come from Utari IMO, btw.
Edit: TL;DR: Ok, shit where I think I'm going with this is that you play the game however you wish. Ignore the players that overtly annoy you, if possible. You simply cannot make everyone play the way you do and threads like these really achieve nothing but maybe some pressure release for the OP.
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Topic: Re: Self-identification vs. Non-identification in RP (Read 1946 times)