Myers (Twixt) Behavioral CoX Study

This guy played on Champion, Infinity and Freedom. Here is a link to the article and his paper if you want to read it: http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2...fessor_be.html

Here is the letter I emailed him. See what you guys think.

Hello Mr. Myers,

I enjoyed your paper and appreciate your input regarding social interaction that occurs on MMORPG's. I play on Pinnacle, and have spent years in RV as well!

I also possess an advance degree in behavioral sciences (MSM), and had a few observations:

To me, the skill involved in building one's toon (ie...Slotting IO's that enhance specific set bonuses that emphasize the innate abilities of your chosen AT) verses choosing TP -Foe, and NOT ACTUALLY KILLING ANYONE YOURSELF, are two different things. Your paper and the related article do not sufficiently mark this difference. I believe that you drew obtuse comments from others for the same reason that most of America cringes when we hear of someone using a legal loop-hole to defraud or avoid a responsibility. You were viewed as a cheater, and were treated accordingly! Yes, you followed the game rules. But I think you are missing an important issue here: It takes more talent to create a build, slot IO's, and then use that build to personally defeat your opponent than to take 1 pool power and grief others. Other players recognized that difference and I believe, sought to recognize the abilities that requires more talent. You never mentioned if you dueled anyone, or what your scrap build was? Did you ever earn the temp Heavy Power - which is one of the real purposes for capturing pillboxes.

There is a reason one gets zero debt when they are defeated by another player - So the game recognizes the difference between a player defeat and a NPC defeat. You know - I can pop an orange and avoid a teleport, but that doesn't mean I am skilled!

Again, I enjoyed your paper, and hope this has come across as intended: A respectful observation from a fellow RV'er!

Respectfully,

@Mad Jaded

Full disclosure; Here's the good professors reply:

Thanks for your note.

I've tried to overcome the perception that Twixt used one "exploitive/broken/uber" power to "grief" others -- since that didn't happen. I've addressed this repeatedly in my blog -- which, though it might take some effort for you to read, took more effort for me to write

Here are a couple of things I mention in that blog that you might want to inspect:

I provide objective evidence of Twixt's accomplishments (kill vills, win zone) in RV: villains killed, deaths incurred, pillboxes taken. None of the "villains killed" in these accounts include either dronings or npc kills. Typical total: 24/1/84. I also note how many times the zone was won during Twixt's reign: oodles of times. As you know if you have played the game, it is impossible to win the zone by standing by the drones in the hero base.

The paper mentions droning and tping into npcs as two important areas of criticism. The reason I mention these is not because they were representative of Twixt's play, but because they were not. The criticisms of Twixt's play, as I state in the paper, vastly distorted and transformed his play in order to make that play seem unsuccessful, skill-less, unethical, and such. I continue to claim, whenever I have the energy to do so, based on the objective evidence I have and have provided, that Twixt's play was none of these things.

As you can see, however, that perception is very difficult to dislodge, particularly when it is propagated with such little effort, at so little risk, with so great a consequence.

Best, David


David Myers
http://www.loyno.edu/~dmyers/

I remember Twixt being scolded for two things...

TPing to Drones - DEV error (quelle surprise!) - for not granting -TP to the Drones as they give +Per...

TPing to Geometry errors (hot dog stand, etc). Sure, should have been fixed. Using known 'exploits' reduces analysis to 'know better than U' more than a societal commentary, in my opinion.

My thoughts are worth more than two times what you paid for them, btw. ;-)

Wow that ariticle is so retarded, they made twixt seem like a god cuz he had tp foe and made everyone else seem like serial killers, dumbest thing ive read in a long time lol

twixt was better than most of you.

^this

Lessons Learned:

1. It's ok to be a complete toolbag if you are doing it for quasi-academic purposes.

2.; Nah, forget #1, this is just another example of the lolz ivory tower.

Old news is old... but let me add that dmyers does have a point. Although it's probably not necessarily based on concrete evidence as he describes, any half brained player can come to the same conclusion as the professor. With that in mind, the OP explains that skill and tactics should be applauded for rather than simple "cheap" or the easy way out kind of playing. The OP has a point, but he should also remember that the view on how much skill is required to do something is subjective; for example, when I push stalkers into the wall for my team to kill, they would call me unskilled when they have no understanding of how much timing and conjecturing it took to trap them. In the end, with enough research from the intelligentsia of this game's particular PvP system, we can gather the data to determine the difference between skilled techniques and 'cheap' play styles in a relatively objective fashion (ofcourse, to do this we'll need the dev's help such as data mining and other tools). Realistically, this will not happen. We can only speculate that the good Professor is either ignorant to the matters that go on in a MMO or that his approach on researching this kind of stuff is very indifferent.

i wonder why ppl still talk about this bs... do you still care so much o.o? apparently there has to be i hate twixt or w/e thread on pvp boards... he is the winner on this one since he actually got payed for this lol

I beg to differ, he taught many people situational awareness, and showed the effectiveness/viability of fly/tp. While many may have utilized the combo I'd say from my experience, he was the best evader, bar none. Granted, it doesn't take much to evade defeat on a /regen scrapper he still had excellent awareness in regards to his position, and where the threat was coming from. Then he'd find the safest path to the base and usually arrive fairly unscathed.

His presence is zone was known to cause people to come out the woodworks to form "Twixt" Hunting teams, and we used to form Dom/Therm teams to Mez/HE him then we'd have a stalker AS him....which if you think about it, would be flattering in the sense that we'd go through the "trouble" to put together the toons and employ such a strategy, just for him.

He caused many people to realize the usefullness of ornages in regards to TP protection. So I'd say there are benefits to his presence whether or not they outweigh the consequences is debatable.

My favorite part is the heavy editing of the stuff he would say in zones.

I like how the picture on the top makes him look like an Internet Stalker.

Just from reading this I must say this guy is a little nuts. He thinks droning is a personal kill, and that 1 online death threat somehow proves everyones a Serial Killer.