Going Rogue - Multiple Games

I recently found the time to browse the City of Heroes board forums.

My search-fu has left me to the point that I have no clue what's in the Mutant origin costume pack besides some costume change emotes (I wanted to see the costumes! :(). Ironic, since there was some kind of contest (that I don't qualify for anyway) to win some of these packs first before anyone else, so you'd think they'd describe the prize.

Still, I found an interesting Prisoner's Dilemma variant run by Marcian Tobay and promptly got sidetreked reading the threads.

Behavioral economics and other predictably irrational (I still haven't read Dan Ariely's book yet, dammit) studies suggest that the crafting of the actual dilemma is quite important - as it has rambifications on how different people come to make their final (often emotionally-based) decisions.

I somewhat skewed my own reactions by reading through thread 2, which stated other people's rationales for the Rogue or Not decision.

On a hunch, thinking backward, my first impulsive decision would have been to cooperate. Mostly because everyone stands to win a small amount that way, and maybe we'd get lucky. I also subscribe to the "most people are nice" (or at least will act nice) philosophy and I've been living in the 75% peaceably cooperative ATITD world anyhow. These are truly emotional and gut-feel reactions.

After reading the first few mathematical breakdowns and conceding that hell yeah, the way the experiment is set up, a miserably small gain even if you cooperate...

(Sidetrek: I believe that civilization is built up on folks standing to win long-term larger gains through cooperation instead of defection, over many repeated non-annonymous iterations of PD. There's an evolutionary advantage involved, imo)

...and standing to win a large amount by Going Rogue. Well, I became convinced that many people, or at least a sizeable enough number to damage the 'everyone cooperates' scenario, would indeed defect.

At which point I grappled with the "Maybe it does make more sense to Go Rogue and hope for an individual payoff then" decision as I continued reading the thread. It's logical, mathematical, rational, self-benefiting.

(I'm avoiding the term selfish on purpose here, as I want to be objective in my account, though that's the word I'd normally and conversationally use. I don't have emotional baggage admitting I can be perfectly selfish when I want to be. I perceive myself as 75% good, but am comfortable that part of me can be 25% selfish as equated with evil cos I'm not a goody two shoes angel... call me a neutral-good Vigilante :P)

Something still didn't feel right though. Maybe because I tend not to want to perceive myself as part of the unwashed masses. Maybe because I don't want to be perceived as a selfish, grabby, opportunistic, competitive (PvP-ish) sort of person. (Though I acknowledge there's a goodly amount of those types of folks who exist in this world and that's okay, we're different.) Maybe because I was convinced in my "expect the worse of humanity and be pessimistic, but maintain eternal hope anyway and be pleasantly surprised" fashion that at least 1 other person, if not 2, would go Rogue and defect, regardless of my own decision.

I hadn't quite worked out the consequences of this yet, but emotionally, I was figuring something like decent probability: I'd get nothing, high probability: we'd all get nothing.

Then I read the other brilliant mathematical calculation - actually the math wasn't that great, but the change of perspective was. On an individual self-profit basis, it made mathematical sense to defect. On a group-benefit basis, it made mathematical sense to cooperate. Supposedly, anyway. I wasn't reading the math in detail now because it suddenly made clear to me, in a very Zen or secular Taoist manner that I had not been seeing the forest for the trees in the way.

If everyone cooperates, everyone gains, a small amount, but it is a gain.

If two people cooperate, and one goes Rogue, he gets the big kitty. Instinctively, we react against this. Chimps do it too. We're biologically hardwired to perceive unfairness and we screech in protest and rather gip ourselves, cut off our nose to spite our face, and reject it all so that we can all be equal in the mud. We punish the defector, the non-cooperative one, because that's how group altruism works. Without enforcers, without enforcement, you get lots of rational self-interest acting for themselves, and anarchy and chaos.

But you know, in this case, punishment of a defector involves defecting yourself? And thus spiting others first before they get to spite you because probabilities indicate a high chance that folks will defect?

It just doesn't feel right.

Just because you expect other folks to play you out doesn't mean you play them out first. That sort of reactionary behavior leads to Mexican standoffs and escalation that ends in a nuclear countdown. Ie. mutually disadvantageous.

So why not take the moral high ground? Especially in this game, which doesn't involve any loss to be adverse to, just a possible (small) gain. What are the personal benefits? There are many. You get to feel good that you're more noble than any others who might go Rogue for whatever reason. Even if they win, you can rationalise it as a happy benefit for them, rather than feeling gipped that it wasn't you gaining.

And if the other two people go Rogue and you were the cooperative one, nobody wins but you come out looking and smelling like an angel. Yea, maybe some people call that being a dummy to be taken advantage of, but those are not the kinds of people you want to hang about with anyway. You want to hang out with the other type, the ones who look out for potential cooperators with good reputations.

(I dunno, maybe it says something about my psyche that I worry about how I look, my reputation, that sort of thing. Maybe it's very Asian cultural.)

So in this case, by cooperating, it is mathematically better for the group, you get the personal benefit of feeling morally superior, and the only place you stand to lose is the loss of personal pre-emptive justice in case there is only one Rogue who wins big and crows that all the rest of you are losers... but that is easily rationalized off as an acceptable loss, you get to feel spiritually good for that guy in a karmic sense, even if he is too small-minded to notice.

So instead of a physical dollars-and-cents kind of win, we've reframed the dilemma into a philosophical, emotional type of victory.

And so we return to square one. I'd cooperate, and shrug my shoulders if someone else wins. Because it really shouldn't bother me if some other guy benefits more than I. -I- am not losing anything here, for one thing, what I stand to gain is only a potential win and leaves me unaffected if I get nothing.

Of course, what's interesting in my consideration is that I have given zero thought to what Marcian Tobay gains or loses, I am not attempting to help or hinder him at all. To me, he has budgeted for all the possibilities, he came up with the game/experiment, and therefore, he does not have to be considered in the equation.

For others, he might be a factor that matters, and that changes the situation as set-up once again.

The whole thing is one nice unexpected thought experiment though.

---

I've found an amusing niche in ATITD. The self-sufficient hermit builder. It's an expensive niche, since it's costing me 4 accounts per month now.

Theoretically, I don't have to have the two extra accounts every month, but I think I'll keep it going another month because I am a slacker in-game who works a little too hard IRL to have spare time and having the offlined items every day is exceedingly convenient.

It seems the year I cross into the next decade and into supposed 'maturity' is the year my relative values of time and money switch sides. 15-20 years ago, one had not enough money and too much time. I won't say I have too much money now, but enough for some discretionary 'fun' purchases to make up for the not enough time.

This server works well for this niche. I'm left alone 90% of the time. I've staked out a good portion of the surrounding territory (though one fella has parked his CP near my mines and asked if I could remove them. Hello, they were there first. You chose to build near them yourself.) And by being more or less self-sufficient by dint of throwing cash at Teppy, it removes much of the perceived obligation to cooperate and make nice with people.

Fortunately, I'm not playing the cooperation game as laid out by Tests - those are highly political. I'm just playing the 'gain enough levels to build stuff, and amass tons of resources to plunk down scenery in the landscape' type of Sim-building game. Along with the odd "purty beetle patterns" bad habit.

So you might call me a bit of a Rogue in ATITD too. Just not a griefer.

---

I played a bit more of Guild Wars: Nightfall over the weekend. I actually had the sudden urge for a different kind of MMO game, a very old one, but the servers refused to cooperate and update it in time, so I had to look around for another classic. I blame the urge on reading a library copy of 'V for Vendetta.'

I also realised to my chagrin that after they put in the account security check where you have to key in a character name in addition to everything else, that I've completely forgotten anything on my barely-played second account (I think I only made one Nightfall character and ran it to get some heroes, just so I could prove in theory that grouping 6 heroes together would work), and am in the midst of contacting support to cough up a character name for me.

I chose Magrid the Sly. Mostly because I felt obliged to break Kormir out of prison, rather than go off demon-hunting with the uber-cool Master of Whispers. I know, roleplaying in a game that is about build-exploitation for farms or PvP, what will this crazy Rogue player think of next?

And if the above Rogue reference is lame, there is an unspeakably good reason for it. *cough* *hem*

---

I gave in to the Steam sale they were having for EA Games. Most of them were either crud games, or I already owned them, or they were still too expensive.

On Saturday though, they were offering Mass Effect for $4.99 and Mass Effect 2 for $29.99. Or the Digital Deluxe version for $35.99.

Dayum.

What encouraged me was the lack of "YOU MUST HAVE THE STEAM VERSION OF SO-AND-SO GAME TO INSTALL THIS EXPANSION/SEQUEL/DLC/WHAT-HAVE-YOU" requirement notices.

Some creative forum search-fu later, there was a distinct lack of people howling that their PC retail Mass Effect save games were incompatible with the Steam version of Mass Effect 2, and only a few very old references to 'just point your launcher at your save game directory' and it will find the save games, no problem.

The save game directory happened to be in My Documents/Bioware/Mass Effect anyhow, which was promisingly disentangled to any specific Mass Effect game version.

So I thought, what the hell, I'll give it a go. For $50 sgd, which is the normal price of a Tec-Drome game, I could get the digital deluxe version and the goodies - quite a decent steal.

Just in case, I thought, what the heck, Mass Effect 1 is only $4.99, it's not getting any cheaper any time soon, I better get a Steam copy of it too. After all, we -are- expecting Mass Effect 3, it's a long running franchise, and if I want to replay ME1 with different characters, I rather not have to keep looking for a disc to stick in my ailing DVD drive for disc checks.

Save game worked fine. I was a little miffed to see that my precious level 45 character got demoted back down to level 1. Comes of catching a bad case of dead, I guess. *sniffs*

Truth to tell, it's been two years. My Mass Effect 1 game files say I installed it in 2008. I've forgotten a good part of what the heck the story was about. I had to look up who the heck Udina and Anderson was so that I didn't screw up my story continuity.

ME2's story structure looks interesting though. More compartmentalised. It's still linear enough, with choices of which compartment to pick first.

The streamlined combat annoys me a little. Maybe because I don't remember the control scheme of the first game at all. I have to hit the same button (space) to run, to take cover, to climb and so on. This leads to some unpredictable context-sensitive actions. I haven't got the hang of shooting from cover very well, and often pop up in the worst of it to get a faceful of las. Times like that make me rather thankful for my 'prestige' Collector armor which apparently has 20% bonus health, and some 10% regen increase - maybe it helps, I have no clue.

I look truely odd talking to people in it looking like a female version of my insectoid dominator Malentis. I keep expecting them to scream and run away because I look like some kind of demonic Pred-alien but nope, they have X-ray vision and can see that it is me, Sheperd, underneath that getup.

The ME world feels a little darker. Cerberus is an interesting dilemma, being that I'm playing a goody-two-shoes Paragon. I find myself choosing darker Renegade options from time to time. Is it me? Did I change in two years? Am I not roleplaying the same character correctly from two years ago? Is it the story set up as it is? Is it the character finding herself in more morally ambiguous situations?

Hell, sometimes it's hard to predict the results of one's choices, despite the friendly Paragon/Renegade labels. The interrupts are especially annoying.

Take the more police state Citadel I found myself in. Some quarian got accused of stealing some volus' credit chit. Being a good samaritan and seeing that she was going to get dragged away by C-Sec if I didn't do something, I found the silly volus' credit chit for him. End of story, I r a Paragon, right?

Then there was a Paragon interrupt. I didn't think and just hit it, and voila, my character decided to be hot-tempered and confrontational and yelled in the two recalcitrant guys' faces until they ran away.

Maybe I'm roleplaying in a little too fine detail here, but hey, the game encourages roleplaying. A violent soldier with a fiery temper would have yelled, no problem. If I'd called my Paragon character Flame, I'd have no issues. That's what my character Flame does. Be boorish, tactless, in-your-face, but Robin-hoody good-hearted.

I happened to be roleplaying someone with a little more subtle diplomacy here. So the outburst was... slightly uncharacteristic. Maybe I shouldn't have interrupted then. How was I to know? I'm video-game trained. I see a symbol on the screen, I press it. But then if I didn't interrupt, maybe things would have gotten worse and I'd have no chance to fix it and be forced to look helplessly and passively on - which is even more uncharacteristic.

Anyway I rationalized it away as the character becoming darker, more Rogue-like as an effect of the surroundings she found herself in.

I'm almost a little scared as to how much darker, though. While on the mission to rescue Archangel, there was this big humongous mech that I managed to disable via hacking, which was very characteristic. Sabotage sneakily. If they deploy it, their problem. If they don't deploy it, nothing happens to them.

Then there was this big humongous gunship that I was convinced I didn't want flying around at me when I went in for Archangel, and so I was on the lookout for any opportunity to sabotage it further. A renegade action popped up, I hesitated for a split second, and went for it. Well, my Sheperd decided to become an insane serial killer by grabbing a nearby exposed electrical wire and zapping the repairer with it.

WTF.

I could have tossed a screwdriver into the gunship wiring. You know, I'm really good at hacking. I break open wall safes and personal PDAs all the time. I bet I could've screwed up the electronics but good.

Hell, I could have accidentally on purpose discharged my gun (or grenade launcher) into the gunship and sweettalked (or not) my way out of it. The point is to destroy the frackin' GUNSHIP, GUNSHIP, people, that I don't want ever flying again. There are other people that can repair the machine. If the machine is spare parts, then -it- can -not- take off.

Even if you want to force me to kill the repairer - it's a renegade action, after all - there is such a thing as a clean quiet kill. With a knife. Surely everyone on Mass Effect has a handy long knife. Or a silenced gun. Only a clinically insane mind can think it is a good idea to -electrocute- someone in an attempt to silently disable a gunship. You can't even muffle their screams with a hand since you don't want to be part of a live electrical circuit, right?

*sighs* And the stupid gunship took off anyway.

Little late to say I told you so. Next time, try the grenade launcher. On machine. Not person. Harder to find spares. Collateral damage is collateral damage. That's called smart renegade-ism.

I'll admit, I was pleasantly surprised by the twist in the revelation of Archangel's identity though.

And I read ahead, so I fail to be surprised at the twist that the dangerous convict Jack is a female, but it was a nice setup anyway. I was expecting from the dossier that I'd be breaking out some kind of Riddick, and decided not to go for that convict ship first, as a Paragon.

Ah well, guess I'd play on and see how it all turns out.