Nerd Raaaaaage 17: The Hat War

[andrewducker]

If you're interested in how insanely stupid people's behaviour can be, then I can think of no finer example than this, which Nick just emailed me. It's about Team Fortress 2, an online FPS (think Doom/Quake):

Valve added unlockable weapons, based on achievements. People used software to unlock the achievments, Valve got their rage on and were all "seriously, just play the game" and took these people's items away. Fair enough.

Valve add hats into the game.  These hats are totally cosmetic and do NOTHING in-game apart from look neat; They are dropped very randomly (every few hours, you have a less than 1% chance of getting one) so are quite rare

People WANT hats.

So some one sets things up so you can stay logged in and just idle without getting kicked in order to acquire said hats.

Valve decide the other day that this isn't a good thing, so remove the hats people have gained through idling, give a free hat (actually a halo, in fact) to everyone who -hasn't- used this idling method and announces that going forward, they'll remove ALL the items from people who use the idler to get hats. That's all - they don't ban anyone, they don't take away the hats people got on normal servers.

Cue insane internet rage and factionalism as some servers ban people with halos, some ban people without and the steam forums erupt into outright war

All this over completely free items that have no in-game effect.

Comments

[broin.livejournal.com]

A grubby, smelly duffel and a swish leather jacket might keep me warm, but they absolutely have an in-game effect. Same diff. ;)

Hell, I wrote a short book of gear for D&D about items with minimal effect, but which were exceedingly stylish. If I got a good artist, I'll bet it'd sell.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, if it were all about in-game effect, the characters would be monotone boxes. But no, the characters are animated, amusing, flavorful and idiosyncratic.

[andrewducker]

Worth cheating for though?

[broin.livejournal.com]

How are we measuring 'worth'?

We both know a gamer who used to cheat at tabletop RPG rolls. I've used cheats in Cave Story.

[andrewducker]

And when found to be cheating - whine like a 6-year-old because the toy you cheated for was taken away?

Like I said - an example of the stupidity of people.

[broin.livejournal.com]

Remind me how much stuff you've torrented. If from tomorrow you couldn't download American shows... wouldn't you be annoyed?

When you click on a YouTube link and that copyrighted video doesn't show up, aren't you irritated?

Or when Gmail goes down?

[andrewducker]

There's irritation and then there's flamewars, banning people from games because they didn't cheat, and generally acting like a dick.

Sure, if I couldn't get the finale of True Blood on Monday then I'd be annoyed - but I wouldn't be refusing to have anything to do with people that had seen it.

[broin.livejournal.com]

This is the internet. Flamewars are trivial. It's no big deal.

[andrewducker]

Flamewars are trivial.

And an example of human stupidity.

[broin.livejournal.com]

You're in a funny mood. =)

[andrewducker]

How come?

[broin.livejournal.com]

Because 'stupidity' doesn't explain anything. It's just a box to throw things you don't understand or empathise with, and they're two things you strive for.

[andrewducker]

I'm not trying to explain anything. I'm being amused by appalling behaviour. I can understand something and still find it stupidly insane.

[endless-psych.livejournal.com]

Call yourself a spoiler-phobe!

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Don't see why that is insanely stupid, tbh. Interesting, sure, but the behaviour doesn't seem too irrational.

People like hats.
Hat gets taken away.
People no longer have things they like.
People get upset about this.

Added:

Some people think getting a hat without earning it is cheating. People get upset about cheating.
Some people think that people with halos have collaborated with the people who took their hats away. They're upset that their hats were taken away.

[andrewducker]

They were using a 3rd party app to get the hats, and thus cheating. Liking something is not a good reason to cheat to get it, and then complaining that someone took away the toy you cheated to get is childishness of the highest order.

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

But like you say, the hats aren't worth anything and have no in-game effect. So they can easily say "well, we like hats, and it's not affecting the game that we have them".

I'm not saying the hat-thieves are right, but "insane" isn't a word I'd use to describe a very human reaction.

[andrewducker]

I don't find "very human" and "insane" to be contradictory.

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

[snork] This, though, I agree with 100% [giggle]

[seph-hazard.livejournal.com]

People use 3rd party apps in games all the time - god, you should *see* some of the greasemonkey scripts/firefox addons/whole seperate progams we use over on KoL, and the makers don 't mind in the slightest, in many ways they make the game work better/be more interesting (can concentrate on strategy rather than endless clicking, for one thing!)

[andrewducker]

I'm fine with it - if the makers of the game are.

World of Warcraft has all sorts of allowed plugins. And some things which are completely banned, as they make the game unfair.

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

WTF People, it's a bloody GAME, and the hat gives NO VALUE. Christ on a cracker, people actually came up with a hack to get a hat that does nothing for your character? No status boost, nothing?

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

It's very, very common. People really like items that make their characters look cool.

Quick comparison - what is the practical use of a Prada handbag compared to a normal high street one? Because there are a lot of people who are quite addicted to that non-value-adding thing too.

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

In the game that I play the most City of Heroes, there are cool items but I either earned them or bought them. So I don't cheat the system for an item.

As for the Prada comparison, I wouldn't know since I'm not brand crazy and see no value in parading around someone elses name on my ass or bag as a status symbol.

[broin.livejournal.com]

That wasn't the question. =)

Some people do a thing you don't get (Prada). Some people do a thing you don't get (hats in TF2). The hats in TF2 don't keep you any warmer than going hatless, but they're stylish.

[broin.livejournal.com]

What value does the game have?

[dapperscavenger.livejournal.com]

Well, of course people want hats! Who wouldn't want a nice hat?

[kashandara.livejournal.com]

Darn it, now I wanna hat!

[cybik.livejournal.com]

*gives you a hat*

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

VALVE TAKES AWAY YOUR HAT

[cybik.livejournal.com]

Today's Ctrl+Alt+Del is pretty topical..

[andrewducker]

Yup - with him all the way!