Jump to content

PVP: The Other Side


ForzaProiettile

Recommended Posts

As we all know when it comes to PVP in this game there is many ways to approach it. There is the obvious blunt force trauma approach and then there is alternative 'methods'. I am a great fan of taking the strategic initiative to gain the advantage, in particular I have won many battles without doing much heavy lifting on my own part. I must admit I quite enjoy this aspect of PVP, the diplomacy and politics mixed in with some phycological warfare probably more then just the regular combat.

 

One of my first success was back in the early days of ARK. Basically we were playing on an Official PVP server and there was 3 main tribes including ours that were allied up. There was also some smaller tribes, but the server was for the most part pretty peaceful for a PVP server.  At that time our tribe was still a normal/conventional tribe but after a while this kind of got a bit stale and then an opportunity came along, a reasonably large but peaceful Chinese tribe joined the server. I was acutely aware of the hostility and suspicion towards such groups on other servers and games and decided to implement a new tactic.

I and my most trusted lieutenants went ahead and bought a 2nd copy of the game and then created some fictitious Chinese alts with plausible Chinese style names as a well as fake tribe to go with it which soon became quite infamous called the ABC. We also implemented a strict set of rules to ensure our ruse was a success. All communication be it global, local or voice was entirely forbidden, in the several weeks that the campaign was run we didn't say a word. It was also forbidden to go near our main base except to deposit loot and to stage attacks.

With the rules of engagement in place we began our campaign of terror, attacking all the non Chinese tribes on the server and in particular our allied tribes. Up until this point what little PVP there was on the server had been a fairly tame affair, it was mostly fairly gentle combat and raiding. Much of it was the smaller tribes stealth raiding each other where they would for the most part leave the base intact and avoid killing their dinos. I realized for our plans to work we needed to usher in a new era, things had to become more brutal so to speak. Orders were put through that nothing was to be spared during our raids. The passive tames and indeed everything in their base including the foundations was to be deleted, maximum damage and trauma was to be inflicted. It was important that the victims were fully aware who had attacked them and thus h we made no efforts to hide our actions. The more publicity they generated the better. We wanted to terrorize the server and thus be able to channel the hate and anger that we knew that would likewise follow our actions towards the Chinese. 

Occasionally we would also attack ourselves to keep up the ruse. These were staged attacks where we would blow up a wall or two of the outer walls, we'd also occasionally ritually slaughter a low level dino or two so we could show the body to our allies who we called over to assist us fight off the evil bandits. The loot we gained from out raids would be deposited in our vaults via using a pin coded little hut in the woods just outside of turret range of our main base, which acted as the transfer depot. Over the course of our campaign, the storage space in our multiplied. We started out with 2 vaults and by the end had added 4 more floors to the base and another 12 vaults.

Things worked pretty well for us with our two tribe separation ensuring there was little chance of discovery. Even in our tribe only about 4 of us out of about 15 knew of the scheme, everyone else was told the story that the accumulating wealth was from over zealous farming. At one point we even used it to inspire our workforce as well as give ourselves a pat on the back. We implemented a sort of quota system where we'd award small prizes for exceptional farming efforts in the form of high tier weapons and armor set, which we naturally always won. This allowed us to present ourselves as examples of the devout farmer, the ideal tribe member that all others should aspire to. I would take the regular members to the mining hut and show them the thousands of ingots one of our heroic 'farmers' supposedly farmed that day and say to them look how much Bob farmed today.  Of course these farming efforts were fictitious, and no one in our tribe managed to get anywhere close to our farming achievements but it was a good source of inspiration to the rest to work harder and work they did. Overall farming profits went up and we were the first tribe to have an entire ring of full metal bemouth gates around our base on the server. 

The scheme went very smoothly until the one time when one of us got lazy and was photo'd collecting loot boxes thrown to him by one of the Chinese by a guy in a French tribe. Luckily for us the leader of the French tribe was also quite unscrupulous and instead of going public with the information he simply added me on Steam and sent me the photo. In order to keep things quiet we agreed to a deal where we wouldn't attack his main base and we would also give him our excess loot. He and his small tribe eventually became extremely wealthy and no one seemed to notice this little French tribe of 4 with a large base and wealth seemingly well beyond their means that always managed to beat off these fearsome raiders.

Anyways after several weeks of plunder, we decided it was time to take the next step. These attacks had generated a huge amount of anger and suspicion towards the Chinese from the rest of the server. The real Chinese tribe repeatedly denied having anything to do with us but despite several weeks of searching no one could find our base on the island (this was before server transfers existed). Up until this point there was a lot of hostility between the Chinese and the non Chinese tribes but since there was no direct evidence linking the raiding tribe and the Chinese there was a reluctance from the others to go to outright war. We aimed to change this. In the dark of night one evening, I swam across to Herbivore Island which was where the real Chinese tribe's base was located and took out of my pocket a ready to go metal base. I plonked it down in the name of the fake Chinese tribe as close as I could to their walls and then swam away.

I then went onto my allies Teamspeak and told them what we had discovered near the main Chinese base. This was for me the most challenging part, I had to engage in a bit of acting and fake outrage but they swallowed the whole story and with my urging they decided to go to war. Despite furious Chinese denials, the very next day, they us and the other ally began the invasion of Herbivore Island and so began the war.

 

Here is a video of this event. It's taken from August 2015 and was uploaded after the events by a fairly large YouTube streamer from the time who was in one of our allied tribes. The video shows the initial invasion of the Chinese island and he gives a brief background to the situation.

 

 

Anyways I am curious though to read about what other adventures and schemes some of our most enterprising and ambitious PVP players on here have pulled off over the years. I am sure there are many great stories still waiting to be told.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok so you just told a story of you and a bunch of other people being extremely racist towards chinese players because they have a "reputation", defamating them without giving them a chance to defend themselves for NO reason then ganging up on them to straight up erase them from the server, people that did absolutely nothing to deserve this... And you say all of this stuff as if you're proud of it??? What the hell is wrong with you PVP people jesus christ, i understand that raiding is part of the game but lying and manipulating people like this is straight up evil, i dont even understand how this is allowed

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, melissa4963 said:

Ok so you just told a story of you and a bunch of other people being extremely racist towards chinese players because they have a "reputation", defamating them without giving them a chance to defend themselves for NO reason then ganging up on them to straight up erase them from the server, people that did absolutely nothing to deserve this... And you say all of this stuff as if you're proud of it??? What the hell is wrong with you PVP people jesus christ, i understand that raiding is part of the game but lying and manipulating people like this is straight up evil, i dont even understand how this is allowed

Oh sweet summer child....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, melissa4963 said:

Ok so you just told a story of you and a bunch of other people being extremely racist towards chinese players because they have a "reputation", defamating them without giving them a chance to defend themselves for NO reason then ganging up on them to straight up erase them from the server, people that did absolutely nothing to deserve this... And you say all of this stuff as if you're proud of it??? What the hell is wrong with you PVP people jesus christ, i understand that raiding is part of the game but lying and manipulating people like this is straight up evil, i dont even understand how this is allowed

This happens in real life when playing the game of countries.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Sphere said:

We are real people, and thus, real life comes into the game.

The average person has very little insight into states-warfare and politicking at that scale.  States-warfare is not "real life" as the grossly vast majority of people experience it.  Real life, for people who want to maintain somewhat healthy relationships, is not manipulative posturing.  I'm not saying that real-life isn't part of playing online games, Sphere.  I'm saying that the common practices of extreme hostility and psychological attacks prevalent in online video games' (including ARK) synonymy with "real-life" is not a really strong comparison/parallel to make, and certainly not strengthened by referencing the fact that wars, conflict, and subterfuge-based coops have happened (at some point in history).  That's all.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ark PVP is every Narcissists and Sociopaths wet dream. 

 

People that can't live out their degenerate fantasies IRL can in Ark PVP

It's just how it is and seeing someone defending this aspect with ''The same stuff happens IRL'' concerns me on how much some people solitude themselves from the ''Normal, real society'' and make up a fantasy on how that ''Other society'' actually is.

Normal people do not make schemes to exploit, hurt or take advantage of their fellow human being @melissa4963 explained the post pretty well: he for no reason other then to feed his own degenerate fantasy did this and came here to brag about it how @TheDonn very well stated.


Please stop trying to make this look normal, it seems more like a mental illness and is striving away from anything that could be called ''normal''. 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This is a fairly common tactic to use alt accounts to start drama, not sure why so many people are getting worked up about it. Must be PVE players.  As for comparing game actions to real life is beyond dumb, sounds like something you might hear from people who don't actually play games, seems strange to be coming from fellow gamers.  Sounds like some of you need to do a little growing up, I found forza's story to be interesting and well written and I can't wait to check out the video when I get home from work. It better not be one of those dumb ones with generic crap music playing through the whole thing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, melissa4963 said:

Ok so you just told a story of you and a bunch of other people being extremely racist towards chinese players because they have a "reputation", defamating them without giving them a chance to defend themselves for NO reason then ganging up on them to straight up erase them from the server, people that did absolutely nothing to deserve this... And you say all of this stuff as if you're proud of it??? What the hell is wrong with you PVP people jesus christ, i understand that raiding is part of the game but lying and manipulating people like this is straight up evil, i dont even understand how this is allowed

I and my tribe wasn't racist towards anyone. Business is business you take whatever opportunities you get. If others choose to be racist because of what actions a certain nationality Is perceived to be doing to them then that is not my fault. I will admit once things got started a lot of tribes started using dino names with a distinct anti Chinese flavour to them.  With regards to ganging up on them, that's the nature of PVP. It is not some gentlemanly pursuit where both sides shake hands at the end, its a fight to the death and the winner takes all.

Also using alternative tactics to elicit a win is well within the scope of PVP. As a mode PVP encompasses various things including obviously combat but also  the overt or subtle use of diplomacy and politics. A good PVP player can master all of these aspects to his advantage.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, TheDonn said:

This isn't real life, it is a video game played by many for enjoyment.  This is another brag-thread.

This thread aims to tell the other side of ARK PVP that is rarely told. These kind of things are rarely publicly discussed except within the inner circles of most tribes for obvious reasons.

I am hoping to bring these events out of the shadows and look forward to hearing of other interesting plots and special actions that players pulled off. The point of this thread is to try and discover how widespread these practices are in ARK. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nothing like that can happen again. To many variables added in to the game that make this impossible.

First thing you would have to do is lower the rates back to old 1x so it takes forever to grind materials. If you notice in that video he is using 8 bullets because losing a stack of 50 pretty well got you kicked or delegated to dino duty for the rest of the raid. 

Second is the way the game worked back then. Guns were strong but birds were stronger. No whips no bola if you got picked you lost gear to the enemy which in turn made the enemy lose power allowing the defending tribe to be able to make a successful push on their FoB and a successful retaliation raid.

Third no breeding. Most of the old big Island fights came from people fighting over giga's quetzals and if we go back further rexes/spino's or the sniping of said tame if you came across it.

I could go on and on with the reasons why but ultimately i said this in another thread so no real need to repeat this.

 

Ark developers are doing what Blizzard did with WoW. Added to many features that are ultimately just time gates/filler content that makes no sense. If classic was actually classic you would see people playing it more because they would feel satisfied with raids. Right now classic is just no tek+a few creatures. I watched a raid on classic and people are like this feels so much like raids back in the day but honestly no they look nothing like raids back in the day. Spam clearing was not really a thing. Camping for 30+ hours was not a thing because one side ran out of supplies 

Ark at the moment comes down to Fun = numbers + time. If you have both of them you are having fun. Back in the day fun was if you had numbers but not the time you had fun. If you had time but not the numbers you had fun. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, SlipperySquid said:

Nothing like that can happen again. To many variables added in to the game that make this impossible.

First thing you would have to do is lower the rates back to old 1x so it takes forever to grind materials. If you notice in that video he is using 8 bullets because losing a stack of 50 pretty well got you kicked or delegated to dino duty for the rest of the raid. 

Second is the way the game worked back then. Guns were strong but birds were stronger. No whips no bola if you got picked you lost gear to the enemy which in turn made the enemy lose power allowing the defending tribe to be able to make a successful push on their FoB and a successful retaliation raid.

Third no breeding. Most of the old big Island fights came from people fighting over giga's quetzals and if we go back further rexes/spino's or the sniping of said tame if you came across it.

I could go on and on with the reasons why but ultimately i said this in another thread so no real need to repeat this.

 

Ark developers are doing what Blizzard did with WoW. Added to many features that are ultimately just time gates/filler content that makes no sense. If classic was actually classic you would see people playing it more because they would feel satisfied with raids. Right now classic is just no tek+a few creatures. I watched a raid on classic and people are like this feels so much like raids back in the day but honestly no they look nothing like raids back in the day. Spam clearing was not really a thing. Camping for 30+ hours was not a thing because one side ran out of supplies 

Ark at the moment comes down to Fun = numbers + time. If you have both of them you are having fun. Back in the day fun was if you had numbers but not the time you had fun. If you had time but not the numbers you had fun. 

When that video was filmed there was no Gigas or Quetzals, the best dino a man could get was the T-Rex. Funnily enough the best T-Rex from the streamer's tribe drowned swimming to the island. With regards to air power at that time there was the argent and maybe the Pteradon but most people only used the argent. Then of course breeding was allowed and dino levels went up crazily and so did all their stats. Pteras became all the rage for a while and Argents quickly went out of style. That said I don't recall the aerial dinos from that time being as bothersome as they are now, there was none of these ultra combat birds such as  Wyverns or Manas or Griffins.

It is true that once picked you up you were fairly helpless but I don't recall it being too big of an issue largely I think because the health of the dinos back then was much reasonable unlike today. Back then you couldn't just charge into a heavily defended area pick someone and fly away, you had to be a lot more cautious. But anyways as much as I love the old ARK I realize that today's young ARK players want all the shiny toys and less of the balance.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 hours ago, ForzaProiettile said:

When that video was filmed there was no Gigas or Quetzals, the best dino a man could get was the T-Rex. Funnily enough the best T-Rex from the streamer's tribe drowned swimming to the island. With regards to air power at that time there was the argent and maybe the Pteradon but most people only used the argent. Then of course breeding was allowed and dino levels went up crazily and so did all their stats. Pteras became all the rage for a while and Argents quickly went out of style. That said I don't recall the aerial dinos from that time being as bothersome as they are now, there was none of these ultra combat birds such as  Wyverns or Manas or Griffins.

It is true that once picked you up you were fairly helpless but I don't recall it being too big of an issue largely I think because the health of the dinos back then was much reasonable unlike today. Back then you couldn't just charge into a heavily defended area pick someone and fly away, you had to be a lot more cautious. But anyways as much as I love the old ARK I realize that today's young ARK players want all the shiny toys and less of the balance.

Ptera speed was still a thing back then at least on my server. The good thing was if you had good snipers birds were less of a threat because they took more damage than they do today...Well at least from primitive weaponry.

That video you linked even showcases why wars were good back in the day. Materials were hard to come by and they ran out of materials while attacking so they had to come back the next week? i think it was next week maybe it was the next day.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/24/2019 at 8:22 AM, melissa4963 said:

Ok so you just told a story of you and a bunch of other people being extremely racist towards chinese players because they have a "reputation", defamating them without giving them a chance to defend themselves for NO reason then ganging up on them to straight up erase them from the server, people that did absolutely nothing to deserve this... And you say all of this stuff as if you're proud of it??? What the hell is wrong with you PVP people jesus christ, i understand that raiding is part of the game but lying and manipulating people like this is straight up evil, i dont even understand how this is allowed

Let's put it this way. Do you want this person and others like him playing the game this way, or do you want him handed a gun and sent to a foreign country?

Civilian deaths have decreased overall, in Wars. We're basically setting up football games for soldiers. This is the best available option.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Oldster said:

Let's put it this way. Do you want this person and others like him playing the game this way, or do you want him handed a gun and sent to a foreign country?

Civilian deaths have decreased overall, in Wars. We're basically setting up football games for soldiers. This is the best available option.

As a former servicemember who served overseas with gun in hand, this post, from the bottom of my heart, is a pile of hot nonsense.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, SlipperySquid said:

Ptera speed was still a thing back then at least on my server. The good thing was if you had good snipers birds were less of a threat because they took more damage than they do today...Well at least from primitive weaponry.

That video you linked even showcases why wars were good back in the day. Materials were hard to come by and they ran out of materials while attacking so they had to come back the next week? i think it was next week maybe it was the next day.

Yes the ratio between weapon damage and dino health/dino armor rapidly widened in the years since that video. Back then you had a reasonable chance on foot to defeat another player on a dino, now its fairly suicidal especially with certain dinos. Even against things like tamed wolves, they will delete you very fast certainly faster then the 100 bullets you need to hit it with.

You are also correct the resources were much more scarce and harder to obtain. Back then a medium sized metal base was a real achievement for most tribes and took many hours of work. Now days metal bases are kind of akin to wooden bases from 2015. Better then thatch, fairly easy to make but not at all that strong.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/26/2019 at 9:06 AM, TheDonn said:

As a former servicemember who served overseas with gun in hand, this post, from the bottom of my heart, is a pile of hot nonsense.

Your heartfelt feelings simply melt away in the face of statistics. Also you've made an argument from authority fallacy.

 

And just FYI, I have as many reservations about this data is you do, as it comes from my ideological enemies. But it's the best I've heard to date.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

All this screams to me is;
"We were too scared to lose our stuff but wanted to raid people"

But hey if you had fun and enjoyed playing in this way then fair enough. You do you. Personally when I played PVP I fought enemies off for hours daily and didn't lose much at all until we got player capped by a 'mega tribe'. Our rule was if your gonna fight then fight don't be a sissy and play like a scared 12 yr old.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, Oldster said:

Your heartfelt feelings simply melt away in the face of statistics. Also you've made an argument from authority fallacy.

 

And just FYI, I have as many reservations about this data is you do, as it comes from my ideological enemies. But it's the best I've heard to date.

The point you are making is nonsense, regardless of authority, and not backed by any data as far as I know from reading about human aggression, my own accounts and struggles with PTSD, and various non-fiction books I have read about war and combat.  Also, as far as you have provided, it isn't backed by data.  So again (not about authority), hot nonsense.  Let's have a closer look at why it is hot nonsense, and why I might be an actual authority.  There are many authorities on the subject I'm sure, and they might have different ideas than I do about how this all unpacks and relates/fails to relate, but I nevertheless am an authority.  raptor it, I'm owning it now.  I'm a better authority on this subject than someone who can't provide this data from their "ideological enemies" (Insert left/right leaning bullpoop politics attack here).

On 9/26/2019 at 11:06 AM, TheDonn said:

Let's put it this way. Do you want this person and others like him playing the game this way, or do you want him handed a gun and sent to a foreign country?

Civilian deaths have decreased overall, in Wars. We're basically setting up football games for soldiers. This is the best available option.

I quoted it so we can keep up with it.  An ARK sociopath's only choices are to exhibit patterns of hyper-aggression in online video games OR be sent overseas with a gun to shoot civilians?  Is that the correlation you are trying to make?  There is zero, and I mean zero, link between these two things.  They are not at all, in any way, mutually exclusive.  It is not one or the other:  It is more like one, or another of literally hundreds of other choices.  Also:  "Handed a gun" makes it sound as if this person isn't choosing?  Like, someone just comes up to a stranger and gives them a gun and a raptoring plane ticket to a warzone?  That is the dumbest poop I've ever heard:  Again, as an authority coming from my time in the service which is an all-volunteer force, everyone makes the choice to serve.  It's a pretty weak thread to pull about "choice," I'll admit, but I feel like it is worth addressing because due to my interpretation or your word-choice, it feels like it comes across like that.  So there we go.

And again, as an authority, when overseas with a weapon in my hand, it was easy to not shoot civilians, even if I didn't play football or be hyper-aggressive in video games.  All I did was:  Not shoot civilians.  It was pretty easy actually.  Again, as the Supreme Authority of Judgment in this case, fallacy and all (which is the fancy-language equivalent of someone saying "trust me" or "believe me" because I've been part of it), that quoted stuff is hot raptoring nonsense.

*Bangs Gavel*

@ForzaProiettile as much as I disagree with your methods of play, I didn't really want to distract from your discussion like this.  Hopefully this is the end of the derailment, but Oldster might provide some data from farmersonly.com and this discussion might continue.  Yes, that was a needless jab at Oldster but I'm hoping to read this inscrutable data so...  Yeah.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

8 hours ago, DazzSHADOWS said:

All this screams to me is;
"We were too scared to lose our stuff but wanted to raid people"

But hey if you had fun and enjoyed playing in this way then fair enough. You do you. Personally when I played PVP I fought enemies off for hours daily and didn't lose much at all until we got player capped by a 'mega tribe'. Our rule was if your gonna fight then fight don't be a sissy and play like a scared 12 yr old.

Well given the situation I believe I made the right decision. To try and fight two of my allies would have been suicidal. It was better to have them fight the Chinese and weaken themselves in the process.

I'm a guerrilla warrior at heart, I like the feeling of being able to log off at night and not care if one of my little bases gets raided. I did the whole big base/tribe thing for the first 2 years of the game, while also running our raid tribe. Over that time it dawned on me that it's not worth investing too much time into base building and taming when all it does is force you to be heavily invested in the game.

My strategy ever since has simply been to join one of the large mega tribes (preferably a Chinese one since they let you be quite independent) and offer to work for them on a combat basis. With this kind of setup I have a secure base to work from and have access to good farming tools (tames) and farming locations to farm very efficiently. It also means I have a well secured base to dump loot into but at the same time I'm not responsible for it. I don't have to sit around defending and if it dies well no real loss for me.

This setup lets me focus much more on PVP and less time on farming and because we raid using our special tribe there are no diplomatic problems with the main tribe. There's no link back which means we can effectively target anyone. If some of the enemy servers get too well defended, we just transfer to a random allied server and get to work.

We have a good relationship with the main leader of this tribe who although Chinese speaks enough English to get by, which helps a lot and he happily turns a blind eye to our activities. Only really him and a few of the other top Chinese leaders know of what we are doing.  For us there is only one rule which we have to follow when fighting and that is we can attack everyone except for allied Chinese tribes, we can attack everyone else just not them.

The setup works pretty well for us, our main issues we have had always come to internal disagreements. This may come across as a bit odd but as a Westerner I much prefer working with the Chinese players in our tribe then the Westerners. For whatever reason players from the West are often very arrogant and far more bossy then the Chinese ones, especially the damn PVE players. They never leave the base and yet you go there for 5 minutes to pick up some explosives or weapons and they always try to get you to farm something or top up the Plant X or feed their baby dinos. If you take a farming dino out to get some materials, they get annoyed because they tamed it (so much for working together).

A few of them have even complained that my group don't farm enough but luckily the leader is firmly on our side and ignores them. Some of them are really nosy too, poking their heads into your vaults and questioning where we got stuff from. One of them not too long ago took exception to a bunch of new ascendant saddles which we're in our vault. He said  these were crafted by one of our allied tribes and that he has a friend in that tribe who told him that one of their bases recently got raided hard by some new tribe and asked how come they are in this vault. It was a little bit of an awkward moment but I just said I didn't know anything about it and to ask the boss. He couldn't prove anything and he got a stern "forget it" from the boss when he asked about it.

Apart from those few issues though this setup has worked well for us.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/27/2019 at 11:53 AM, TheDonn said:

The point you are making is nonsense, regardless of authority, and not backed by any data as far as I know from reading about human aggression, my own accounts and struggles with PTSD, and various non-fiction books I have read about war and combat.  Also, as far as you have provided, it isn't backed by data.  So again (not about authority), hot nonsense.  Let's have a closer look at why it is hot nonsense, and why I might be an actual authority.  There are many authorities on the subject I'm sure, and they might have different ideas than I do about how this all unpacks and relates/fails to relate, but I nevertheless am an authority.  raptor it, I'm owning it now.  I'm a better authority on this subject than someone who can't provide this data from their "ideological enemies" (Insert left/right leaning bullpoop politics attack here).

I quoted it so we can keep up with it.  An ARK sociopath's only choices are to exhibit patterns of hyper-aggression in online video games OR be sent overseas with a gun to shoot civilians?  Is that the correlation you are trying to make?  There is zero, and I mean zero, link between these two things.  They are not at all, in any way, mutually exclusive.  It is not one or the other:  It is more like one, or another of literally hundreds of other choices.  Also:  "Handed a gun" makes it sound as if this person isn't choosing?  Like, someone just comes up to a stranger and gives them a gun and a raptoring plane ticket to a warzone?  That is the dumbest poop I've ever heard:  Again, as an authority coming from my time in the service which is an all-volunteer force, everyone makes the choice to serve.  It's a pretty weak thread to pull about "choice," I'll admit, but I feel like it is worth addressing because due to my interpretation or your word-choice, it feels like it comes across like that.  So there we go.

And again, as an authority, when overseas with a weapon in my hand, it was easy to not shoot civilians, even if I didn't play football or be hyper-aggressive in video games.  All I did was:  Not shoot civilians.  It was pretty easy actually.  Again, as the Supreme Authority of Judgment in this case, fallacy and all (which is the fancy-language equivalent of someone saying "trust me" or "believe me" because I've been part of it), that quoted stuff is hot raptoring nonsense.

*Bangs Gavel*

@ForzaProiettile as much as I disagree with your methods of play, I didn't really want to distract from your discussion like this.  Hopefully this is the end of the derailment, but Oldster might provide some data from farmersonly.com and this discussion might continue.  Yes, that was a needless jab at Oldster but I'm hoping to read this inscrutable data so...  Yeah.

Forgive the terse response, still intend to give it a more thorough ponder.

I'm not familiar with the farmersonly.com reference, curious what it's about.

You've taken me far too literally, although you're quite right that there are many more options available.

The choice issue is not one I meant to bring up, but it actually adds to my point; a volunteer army can be construed to be composed of the more violence prone component.

 In total my assertion is that the systemic emergent consequences of our transition to the modern context are that fewer civilians are killed in fewer skirmishes, thereby restricting the violence to the violent.

Or rather, that that is the assertion of Steven Pinker, who's sources I have not yet bothered to seek.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...