Is it ethical to downvote farms?

Hmmm? Ethical? Well, let's think about it...

The Devs, according to my understanding, made it very clear that AE was not for farming. Yet, players continue to make every type of farm possible and many players, it seems, using it only for farming.

These "farmers" might, just might even be down rating anything that isn't a farm. In other words, they "punish" authors for actually making the arcs the devs intended us to make with AE, because they are not farms....

Sorry, my ethics meter just exploded... what was the question again?

Do you enjoy farms? No? Then okay, downvote them.

Farms don't even seem to be that big a problem any more. I just tried getting back into running AE arcs and the two biggest problems I've faced are terribly written/origin "Look at me!" stories or having the profanity filter bug preventing me from playing potentially good ones.

What I've pointed out dozens of times before, but I feel the need to do so again, is that the star system is not evenly weighted. To raise a single 1 star rating to a 5 a total of SEVEN 5 star rates (36/8 =4.5 which is rounded to 5 stars). Simply put, the system in place weights lower ratings more than higher ones. Example: an arc with 10 plays has 7 5 star ratings, 2 4 star and 1 1 star. This arc would be 4 stars under the current system.

WN

I'm going to try to avoid the debate about farms vs story arc, and about intended use, etc, and just answer the question as asked as precisely as I can..

"QUESTION: Is it ethical to 1-star obvious farm arcs in AE without playing them? Why or why not? "

The question has two parts.

"Is it ethical to"
Part one: 1-star obvious farm arcs
Part two: without playing them

Part one: I'd say that giving you opinion or feedback, positive or negative, when it's specifically been asked for, has no ethics tied to it at all, unless by your feedback you were specifically trying ot be hurtful or abusive. If you opted to use the email feature to say things about someones parentage, then we may have ethical issues, but if you stay in the star rating area, I'd say you have avoided any issues of ethics at all.

Part two: This is when you get into the ethics problems. Obvious. Well, it was obvious at one point that the world was flat, heavy things fell faster than light things, and that electrons were tiny little balls of matter that acted just like tiny bullets. Until people investigated things further, and realized that it wasn't true, regardless of how obvious it was. The star system is in place for those that have investigated to report their findings. If you therefore misrepresent your investigation into the matter, you are being less than honest as to your level of knowledge about the topic to others that may be relying in part on your information to make a decision. Depending on how you look at it, then this could be lying, or more akin to just spreading rumours without verifying, as it's not an outright intentional dishonesty (except for the part where you by implication assume a position of knowledge that you know you don't in fact have).

However, if your goal is to sort of 'clean up the lists' to make it easier to locate story arcs, then you'd be using dishonesty to help people (or some people, at least) but you'd do so knowing that the chance existed that you hurt a small few number of people who you guessed wrong on.

So we have at this point the absolute good idea (lying being an always bad) vs the relativistic good idea (doing a minor bad to cause a greater good).

But, even beyond that you have the issue of if you're trying to game the system to produce a result that you think is the greater good (making stories vs farms more obvious, if that is your intent), then you are taking it unto yourself to judge the best results for other people that never asked you to be a judge of the good for them, and thus your appropriating power over others to some degree, which is usually by most ethics standards assumed to be bad, unless, again, you judge it to be better to remove peoples choice for their own good to be a good thing.

I'd say you could debate the answer tot he question either way, but by the modern ethics standards of most of the western world, you'd have a fairly hard sell that it would be ethical.

I'd say the best ethical choice in this case, which avoids any potential ethical issues is to play the arc, then vote as you feel.

Is that a joke, Crysis?

Eco

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow [The Incarnate System is] Jack Emmert all over again, only this time it's not "1 hero = 3 white minions" it's "1 hero = 3 white rocks."

What's the difference between intentionally downvoting one Arc and not another? ***hattery is ***hattery. The only thing that differs is the elitist opinions of a bunch of snobs who think that one type of mission is somehow more valid than another based PURELY on the description given. We have a two page thread condoning neg-banging a mission that hasn't even been played.

Play the mission. If you don't like it, neg it. If you do, pos it.

For me, I'm just enjoying watching new story arcs start off with less than 5 stars.

If fixing AE farms were a NCSoft priority, they'd address it as a priority. It ain't.

Ironically, I enjoy a lot of the arcs created by end users. I also enjoy using the farms to create alts. Wow, I'm using the AE system as it was intended...an opend-ended, user-created subsidized content platform. Go figure.

Rate bombing....now there's an idea. I wonder if I can get the SG to support this as a fun little past-time?

I like to farm, it's fun for me in the same sense that I used to *love* playing Diablo 2 and roll with the 'Gamble' NPC to see what goodies I could get. It's just fun for me. That said, I honestly don't give a crap if people 1-star my farms.

What gets me is that I rarely have more than a single farm published as I like to keep my story arcs - that I actually spend time and thought on - published and on a rotation but people feel it is necessary to downrate my actual storyarcs because I also have a farm published.

Don't be a jerk, folks.

If you've played it and don't like it vote it down. Voting it down without playing it is just childish. Doing it because its a farm just proves that you can't handle the truth. Majority that visit the AE go there to farm, not to try out the latest player made arc. A fact that's hard to swallow but until the devs squash it, which would be a bad choice, it will continue.

the question should be "Is it childish and petty to downvote farms?"

I always wanted to ask: Why do people hate farms?

Is it because they can't farm?

Because they don't know how?

Too afraid or lazy to learn?

Jealousy?

Control issues?

...or are the -real- farm haters the RMT's that don't want the playerbase to become independent, wealthy and beyond the temptation of their "services" ?

...

Is it Ethical to uprate your friend's arcs without playing them simply because they are made by a friend?

Same question different perspective.

Besides with how many people farm AE (including myself) how is one person going to be able to down-rate anything enough to beat the farmers who uprate stuff?

You can vote however you please, but I think it is only fair to actually play though at least the first mission.

People are still using AE to farm after all the changes the devs made to discourage farming? I've honestly never seen anyone spamming for a farm team in ages. If I saw one I might even report it. Gives MA arcs such a bad name.