Debates are not arguments

[Tiergan]

People shouldn't have to censor themselves from having a tame discussion about something relevant and important to the game itself. The topic does indeed matter.

 

While I agree with Sounsyy that making folks feel uncomfortable and just sort of continuing on with making people uncomfortable is kind of a shit move. I also agree with Faye that if people are having a civil discussion about something relevant and important to the game, it's kind of strange to force them to censor themselves from talking about it in the game itself. It's VERY easy to divert your attentions elsewhere for a short period of time - and as long as everyone involved is keeping it as a respectful debate and not a snipefest, what could it really harm?

[Kage]

I find it hard to believe that anyone in this current community would be uncomfortable or be upset by any discussion or debate that is simply over lore/RP. Any time it starts to get heated is the time I've seen people start to put their theoretical foot down and it's because it brings what is normally a bright chat channel into one where the mood is more muted, somber. Something usually triggers it into a downward spiral "so and so is doing it!"/ "why am i being the target of criticism" etc.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

I find it hard to believe that anyone in this current community would be uncomfortable or be upset by any discussion or debate that is simply over lore/RP. Any time it starts to get heated is the time I've seen people start to put their theoretical foot down and it's because it brings what is normally a bright chat channel into one where the mood is more muted, somber. Something usually triggers it into a downward spiral "so and so is doing it!"/ "why am i being the target of criticism" etc.

 

You would be surprised then. In some of the linkshells I've been in (and threads here), there is plenty of evidence that people can get upset by lore/RP topics. Everyone's different, and they certainly have different levels of tolerance, but disagreements should be expected. It's just the nature of any community.

[Edvyn]

believe it or not, the most outright offensive thing you can say to a disgruntled rper is "your opinion is wrong". more people i have encountered have burst into condescending, melodramatic bitchfits over being told they don't know what they say they know than they have over any personal attack or slur. internet people are very, very insecure in their own intellect and react incredibly poorly whenever it is challenged or questioned. 8-)

[Val]

believe it or not, the most outright offensive thing you can say to a disgruntled rper is "your opinion is wrong". more people i have encountered have burst into condescending, melodramatic bitchfits over being told they don't know what they say they know than they have over any personal attack or slur. internet people are very, very insecure in their own intellect and react incredibly poorly whenever it is challenged or questioned. 8-)

 

..Pretty much this. The sad truth is that in a lot of RP circles, telling someone that their opinion is wrong will cause more fights than it'll solve, and I've seen too few people be able to actually have a debate without eventually making an argument out of it.

 

I can agree that debates are NOT arguments. Except when they eventually become one due to one person getting offended by the other.

[Aldotsk]

While debating is okay, but when it comes down to the discussion of "You should be RPing like this" is just considered rude. There is no -right- way of roleplaying since we aren't really 100% synchronized to our own PC living in that side of lore or that world. Even the so-called pro-Roleplayers get a lot wrong and they try to correct others when they aren't really right and they aren't perfect. Why? because they feel that they are veterans and know more than the new players or new people who are getting into lores. Even rookie roleplayers can do a better job than pro-roleplayers,  honestly. 

 

Debating can turn into an argument - depending on how strong their opinions are. If the debate is not resolved, then people will start pointing guns at each other because they can't agree or respect each other's opinions.

 

Roleplayers or Non-Roleplayers - This logic is a human logic than a roleplayer logic. Political debate has never been resolved, neither did religious debate.

 

Edit: Also, no one should slam down on someone's roleplaying style just because you don't like it. It's either you find other people to roleplay with that you feel comfortable with, or just quit Roleplaying for your own good. Easy as done.

[Edvyn]

Roleplayers or Non-Roleplayers - This logic is a human logic than a roleplayer logic. Political debate has never been resolved, neither did religious debate.

 

Edit: Also, no one should slam down on someone's roleplaying style just because you don't like it. It's either you find other people to roleplay with that you feel comfortable with, or just quit  Roleplaying for your own good. Easy as done.

not all humans act the same way. the fact that a group of people engaged in the same activity are likely to behave in a particular predictable way shouldn't surprise anyone. the whole "politics and religion" taboo only really applies when the people involved are emotionally invested in it. interestingly enough, the people who get too emotional over their religious and/or political views also tend to know the least about politics/religion.

 

nobody dislikes something for the sake of disliking something. if someone is "slamming down" on someone's "roleplaying style", they'll have a reason. you might not agree with their reason, but there will be one and usually they make the reason quite clear. it's very attractive and very convenient to write off anyone who criticizes you as "haters" who simply hate things, but it's not even remotely close to how people actually work. 8-)

[Aldotsk]

Roleplayers or Non-Roleplayers - This logic is a human logic than a roleplayer logic. Political debate has never been resolved, neither did religious debate.

 

Edit: Also, no one should slam down on someone's roleplaying style just because you don't like it. It's either you find other people to roleplay with that you feel comfortable with, or just quit  Roleplaying for your own good. Easy as done.

nobody dislikes something for the sake of disliking something. if someone is "slamming down" on someone's "roleplaying style", they'll have a reason. you might not agree with their reason, but there will be one and usually they make the reason quite clear. it's very attractive and very convenient to write off anyone who criticizes you as "haters" who simply hate things, but it's not even remotely close to how people actually work. 8-)

 

Majority of the reason is really for their own pleasure than other's pleasure. They just want it for themselves to enjoy their own roleplay than what other people think. That's why sometimes we people can be pretty cruel in matters, and we can't really seem to please everyone else since we look after ourselves first before anything.

[Edvyn]

Roleplayers or Non-Roleplayers - This logic is a human logic than a roleplayer logic. Political debate has never been resolved, neither did religious debate.

 

Edit: Also, no one should slam down on someone's roleplaying style just because you don't like it. It's either you find other people to roleplay with that you feel comfortable with, or just quit  Roleplaying for your own good. Easy as done.

nobody dislikes something for the sake of disliking something. if someone is "slamming down" on someone's "roleplaying style", they'll have a reason. you might not agree with their reason, but there will be one and usually they make the reason quite clear. it's very attractive and very convenient to write off anyone who criticizes you as "haters" who simply hate things, but it's not even remotely close to how people actually work. 8-)

 

Majority of the reason is really for their own pleasure than other's pleasure. They just want it for themselves to enjoy their own roleplay than what other people think. That's why sometimes we people can be pretty cruel in matters, and we can't really seem to please everyone else since we look after ourselves first before anything.

im not entirely sure what you're implying here - should I uh, not roleplay for my own enjoyment? is there a roleplay charity i can donate to so i can be a truly selfless rper who looks out for everyone else and forgoes my own pretendy fun times to ensure that other people's pretendy fun times are the most pretendy and the most fun? is it really selfish to do something fun for my own fun?

[g0ne]

Technically, arguments are not even supposed to be a negative thing. They are the use of proper reasoning, examples and logic etc. to convince the other person of your viewpoint so when we associate to argument as a negative thing, it's actually not. 

 

That said, it's fine to debate or argue or whatever and all, but I personally don't. I tend to avoid them. Why? Because everyone has their own opinions and stuff, and I respect everyone and their views and opinions. If someone says, oh, I like X, I say, oh, that's good. No need for me to say I don't like X because of reason 1, 2 and 3. 

 

Plus, sometimes, even if you don't want to, you turn negative or aggressive, unwillingly and unknowingly. And even if you're cool and calm, the other person might not perceive you as such, because well, it's a debate/argument, and lets admit it, even though it's not supposed to be a negative thing, that's how most view it. 

 

Also, respect other people. If they feel uncomfortable, you've got plenty more means to continue your discussion elsewhere, even if your discussion is completely calm and poised. 

 

There you have it. My two gil.

[Perth]

If its that intrusive for you, just temporarily black list them or turn the channel off for a while.

 

Why should anyone have to do something so obtuse over 2-3 people that can't be bothered to back off before things turn sour?

 

This was the whole point of my first post: have consideration for your fellow players. It really isn't that hard, folks.

 

It's not sour though, it's a conversation, not an argument... I think that's the big difference folks are missing here. Conversation where two folks are talking from opposite perspectives or "sides" is not an argument, which is, well, the titular purpose of the thread alone... to raise awareness that disagreeing is not rude or toxic at all. Or at least, it shouldn't be.

[Gone.]

I'm saying when it does get sour, not that it always is or does. >_>

[Verranicus]

While debating is okay, but when it comes down to the discussion of "You should be RPing like this" is just considered rude. There is no -right- way of roleplaying since we aren't really 100% synchronized to our own PC living in that side of lore or that world. Even the so-called pro-Roleplayers get a lot wrong and they try to correct others when they aren't really right and they aren't perfect. Why? because they feel that they are veterans and know more than the new players or new people who are getting into lores. Even rookie roleplayers can do a better job than pro-roleplayers,  honestly. 

 

Debating can turn into an argument - depending on how strong their opinions are. If the debate is not resolved, then people will start pointing guns at each other because they can't agree or respect each other's opinions.

 

Roleplayers or Non-Roleplayers - This logic is a human logic than a roleplayer logic. Political debate has never been resolved, neither did religious debate.

 

Edit: Also, no one should slam down on someone's roleplaying style just because you don't like it. It's either you find other people to roleplay with that you feel comfortable with, or just quit  Roleplaying for your own good. Easy as done.

Lore isn't up for interpretation in most cases. It may be your opinion that your character is the secret love child of Cid and Nero and that Chocobos come from the moon, and that's great, but you'd be wrong. If someone corrects you or wants to discuss something like this, they're not trying to upset you or troll you, they're usually trying to save you further grief down the road.

 

Also I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of a 'pro roleplayer'.

[Aduu Avagnar]

How does it shut everything else out? It's textual communication. Everybody's posts and responses can be seen regardless of what's being discussed. If Guy A and Guy B are calling eachother mean names over the LS, it's not like I can't see Guy C's replies, or that my conversation with Guy C about bread is somehow negatively affected by Guy A and Guy B's spat.

 

Because negative attitudes have this tendency to overpower everything else in the room, textual or no. It's also incredibly difficult to follow more than one conversation in something like an LS due to the lack of line-by-line color segregation.

 

Maybe you've never been in this situation before, but trust me, this is exactly how it happens and it's not a good thing in the slightest.

 

I've been in this situation countless times and could still carry on a conversation just fine. An argument only turns into some big thing that engulfs the entire chat when people who aren't participating in said discussion cause a big stink about not wanting it to happen. I suppose I just lucked out and none of those arguments were strong enough to 'overpower' my unrelated conversation.

 

Mod edit by FreelanceWizard: text from posts removed was removed from this quote.

 

can we leave the personal finger pointing to private please? that is what turns a debate into a shitstorm.

 

that being said, I am all for debate. And a debate should never /ever/ have the words 'you shouldn't RP like this'. That is a closed statement, that states that it is ironclad. instead, a better way of presenting it would be 'This is what the lore states, this is what I have extrapolated from this, and this is how I think it applies.' that is how a debate starts, and should continue. when you start getting into personal attacks, is when it starts getting negative and should either be removed to a private channel, or simply dropped and people should just agree to disagree.

 

That said, if I am debating something in a LS, if no one says anything, then I will assume they either don't have an opinion on the matter, or simply don't care, not that they find it uncomfortable.

[Aldotsk]

Lore isn't up for interpretation in most cases. It may be your opinion that your character is the secret love child of Cid and Nero and that Chocobos come from the moon, and that's great, but you'd be wrong. If someone corrects you or wants to discuss something like this, they're not trying to upset you or troll you, they're usually trying to save you further grief down the road.

 

Also I couldn't help but laugh at the idea of a 'pro roleplayer'.

 

Hmm. I'll give this as an example since I've actually ran into people who claimed that they were veteran roleplayers and slammed on new roleplayers before. 

 

Like if a player A liked to short phrase and didn't like writing a paragraph or just kept roleplaying by just entering lines every seconds, the player B corrects the player A saying "that's not how you should RP", by telling him/her that they should write it in  a paragraph instead of spamming the chat with one short line.

 

Other example is, like controlling multiple characters in the scenario when they aren't physically in the game. Player A has two characters in the RP scene with others. One is his character that is  actually in the game and we can see the person. But the other character is someone we can't see but the player A reminded us that the character is there. Then player B says "the character is not  there" and says "no roleplayers should need a second character to RP in a group RP"

(This has happened a lot in FF14 RP before, and before I usually pull player B stunt, I ask player  A OOCly how the player is there and see if I can fit the person in majority of the time. Or have player A know or ask us if that second character to be there first)

 

My last example is when player A decides to write his RP in a skit / play script style of Roleplay in a game or forum RP, a player B says that the player A's writing style does not fit for RP because player A refuses to write it in a novel type like everyone else.

 

I agree with you of lore  correction.  But my debatable argument was focused to mostly RP b y writing styles, and interaction, more than abusing lores. About how people should treat roleplaying not always the same for everyone else and really should not correct the way they should roleplay.

 

Also to relay what Edvyn said, it is right for everyone to enjoy their own roleplay, but it doesn't mean they should go and make other people feel bad just because you want to feel happy for yourself by correcting their roleplaying.  (outside of lores)

 

Technically, Verranicus's example was right that RP such as "Cid's secret son" should never really happen since that is just actually touching the actual lore and try to change it. (I don't think that's really correcting one's roleplaying style than just correcting the lore to fit into it). - While I've also encountered WoW's player claiming to be Uther's son when Uther never really had a son and died being a lonely paladin.

[Kage]

That said, if I am debating something in a LS, if no one says anything, then I will assume they either don't have an opinion on the matter, or simply don't care, not that they find it uncomfortable.

see that silence? It's because the overriding negativity (if there is such as is the case with most topics that start to become heated are) is the big fat pink elephant in the room.

[Dravus]

Everybody has the right to do whatever they want when it comes to role-play. Nobody is really contesting that. It doesn't suddenly mean that criticism can never be directed in someone's direction and if they're doing something bizarre then they'll end up drawing attention to themselves even if they don't want any.

[Havoc Snow]

My personal opinion on the matter is that there is nothing wrong with people having a debate, even a heated one, in a public area such as a FC or a LS so long as the rules of said medium to not forbid it. The primary difference between a debate and an argument is that debates are a battle of the mind, while arguments are a battle of the heart. If you can keep a level head and not get overly offended then all good! For those who are easily prone to becoming butthurt, all I can say is you probably shouldn't be on the internet if a simple debate rustles your jimmies this much.

[Aldotsk]

So my theory about people debating turns into an argument is literally true since this is what is happening when everyone was debating and then people starts to make sarcastic remarks and someone doesn't get it and gets insulted and defensive by attacking each other... And then get the thread locked.

[Dravus]

So my theory about people debating turns into an argument is literally true since this is what is happening when everyone was debating and then people starts to make sarcastic remarks and someone doesn't get it and gets insulted and defensive by attacking each other... And then get the thread locked.

 

Not every debate ends up in an argument and the commentary within this thread is incredibly tame compared to what can be found elsewhere. It also strikes me as counterproductive to lock an entire thread just because a handful of individuals are losing their cool. It'd be far more efficient to just deal with those who can't restrain themselves instead.

[Aduu Avagnar]

That said, if I am debating something in a LS, if no one says anything, then I will assume they either don't have an opinion on the matter, or simply don't care, not that they find it uncomfortable.

see that silence? It's  because the overriding negativity (if there is such as is the case with most topics that start to become heated are) is the big fat pink elephant in the room.

when I say no one says anything, I do of course mean apart from the person/people I am debating with.

 

bottom line! if you feel uncomfortable about something, speak up, otherwise people don't have a clue. We are not mind readers.

[Kage]

That said, if I am debating something in a LS, if no one says anything, then I will assume they either don't have an opinion on the matter, or simply don't care, not that they find it uncomfortable.

see that silence? It's  because the overriding negativity (if there is such as is the case with most topics that start to become heated are) is the big fat pink elephant in the room.

when I say no one says anything, I do of course mean apart from the person/people I am debating with.

 

bottom line! if you feel uncomfortable about something, speak up, otherwise people don't have a clue. We are not mind readers.

That's exactly what I mean.

 

I see far more people entirely leave Linkshells or brood upon the negativity and -then- leave Linkshells because of a small group of peoples' general attitudes over arguments that start to overwhelm Linkshells (negativity, not knowing when to stop, things get heated, etc). Sometimes it's because people who are not part of the debate do speak up and no one listens or it's because they're typically non-confrontational people so when put on the spot to do something about it people would rather mouse away ("I don't want to be the one to deal with this drama llama").

 

And these people usually tend to be the more level-headed people.

 

You start to get people sending /tells about how negative it's becoming etc than to have the big fat fucking elephant get talked about.

[Melodia]

That said, if I am debating something in a LS, if no one says anything, then I will assume they either don't have an opinion on the matter, or simply don't care, not that they find it uncomfortable.

see that silence? It's  because the overriding negativity (if there is such as is the case with most topics that start to become heated are) is the big fat pink elephant in the room.

when I say no one says anything, I do of course mean apart from the person/people I am debating with.

 

bottom line! if you feel uncomfortable about something, speak up, otherwise people don't have a clue. We are not mind readers.

That's exactly what I mean.

 

I see far more people entirely leave Linkshells or brood upon the negativity and -then- leave Linkshells because of a small group of peoples' general attitudes over arguments that start to overwhelm Linkshells (negativity, not knowing when to stop, things get heated, etc). Sometimes it's because people who are not part of the debate do speak up and no one listens or it's because they're typically non-confrontational people so when put on the spot to do something about it people would rather mouse away ("I don't want to be the one to deal with this drama llama").

 

And these people usually tend to be the more level-headed people.

 

You start to get people sending /tells about how negative it's becoming etc than to have the big fat fucking elephant get talked about.

This. This 100%.

[Dravus]

Experiences differ, I suppose. I'd be very happy if I could join an OOC Linkshell where debate and conversation is actually a thing in the first place. Those that I've joined tend to be very quiet and very few people end up responding if attempts at starting a conversation are made.

 

Then some of the Linkshells that are active tend to be guilty of ignoring anyone who isn't 'in' with whichever crowd of players happens to dominate it.

[FreelanceWizard]

So as you all may have noticed, I've already had to moderate this thread once (thankfully, the posts were easy enough to slice out). Please remember rules 1, 2, and 5 in this discussion. Thanks.

 

#magicAdminHat