Hey. Since there is a huge discussion about punishment and its effects I thought Id share something from my masters in behavioral analysis. Feel free to disagree, its what we do when we train humans, animals and the like to increase or decrease any behavior.

If you do not care about the definitions skip a bit down.

First the very simple terms. Do not confuse them with what you define as positive or negative.

Positive reinforcement very simply put increases a behavior by adding something. You present something and the behavior increases. As an example in cf, you make a role, and you are rewarded for it. This increases the likelihood of making a role in the future.

Negative reinforcement is when you remove/prevent something form the situation that increases the rate of the behavior.

Now for punishments.
Positive and negative. Positive adds something to a situation that reduces the rate of behavior. And
Negative removes something to reduce the rate of behavior.

So in CF we basically have a few things happening. We kill stuff and get rewarded, (xp, gold, items, glory) ALl positive for you.
Being killed is negative for you, but positive for the other person. The person killing will have his behavior increased in the way that oh killing this person gave me that, and his/her behavior will probably be increased.

The person killed will have his escape behavior increased, as he may have tried to run, but did not manage(Not have potions, spell perfected, ran fast enough, caught in a room). The player may try to recover in some way. This is for us returning to the corpse finding some of your items. Not finding any would equal to a punishment(see punishment definitions) for returning to your body when a certain player has killed you.

Ok with this in mind X kills Y, X full loots Y. Y returns to his corpse, finds nothing. Y will now (especially as a new player), avoid X at all costs. (older players who have experienced both parts and if able might gear up and try again)
X chases Y because he has some reason to kill Y, and Full loots Y because Y runs and hides. Or Hides when X is on.(you might not know if Y hides any other time, or if it is X that is causing him to hide)

If you do not see the evil circle here then Im sad. If a player attempts to maintain some sort of playerbase do not punish people simply because they do not play to your standards. If you want to have more people to play with, make sure you give them some sort of reason to come back. (Ei not full looting, punishing stuff. You might not punish the thing you want)

When we make statements like, I full looted you because you were hiding in a forest, and did not fight me. Heck, the other side of the argument is that I hid because you massacred me earlier. You clearly "own" me in a fight. I hide because you left me nothing the first time. You give me no reason to fight you. THere is nothing about your behavior that gives me any reason to stay and fight.

The effects of punishment are never good. Punishments will work as long as they are maintained by something. Reinforcement will last a very long time. Even if it is not continually maintained.

The effects game wise.
X kills Y and full loots. Same as before, Y will now hide/run when X is on. Y finds 10 friends kills X repeatedly and takes all of X gear. Until X leaves.
X kills Y and thinks he is punishing hiding and it results in what? Oh more hiding, getting better at hiding!.. geez.!. Look at that.

To give a small hint of what makes a good player ki*k ass. Is the players whom pay attention to what the other person is experiencing. How did my behavior affect the other players behavior?. If we in our selfish world can make it so that we do not punish what we do not like, and reward what we like, we might actually get more of what we want!... its wierd!..

Just my 5 cents. Sitting with behavioral issues all day, and wanting to play a game I have found to be reinforcing because of rewards, and challenges.

Lars

How should reinforcement be used instead of a full loot?

Also, don't you have just as much chance of reinforcing the wrong behavior as you have of punishing the wrong behavior?

I guess a big part of the problem is this: how do you train or untrain a behavior without at all being able to control the parameters of the training session?

Ok so this is fairly "easy". You pose some really good questions here.
You as a player have a chance of punishing a behavior or reinforcing it. Both are detected shortly after it has been applied. However, when you do something to someone think a moment before doing it, and ask yourself, would this increase the chance of this player returning to fight me, play with me, and so on. If any of that is no then you are likely to have administered a punishment. Your still talking about what is most probable.

As for training a behavior. In this you cannot unlearn anything. You can however replace it. Think of it as a cup of water, that will always have the same amount, you cannot pour out of it(excluding Alzheimer) but you can still add to it.

You are very correct about difficulties of parameters of the training session, you cannot control other peoples behavior. However that was not the intention of my post. It was to make people think about how they are affecting others. And to create some discussion about how we all as players may make CF a better place to play.

And to answer some other questions, Im not russian or american. So I do not really feel the "insult" or aversive's posted. I see some arguments that do not reflect much of reality for most of the playerbase.

Im sad to see that some decide that I make this assumption, so Ill do this to "remedy" it. And the consequences are stronger "clicks". Or groupings.

Cheers all.

I pretty much expect to be misunderstood and perverted as my name at this post will make people biased while reading. But...

Not every punishment is good, nor every punishment is bad.
The same applies to rewards.

It really depends on many factors.

I will use your full loot example.

Your example:
Ok with this in mind X kills Y, X full loots Y. Y returns to his corpse, finds nothing. Y will now (especially as a new player), avoid X at all costs.

This can go both ways. I will use sarcasm and provocation in my answer. Feel free get enraged on that, but once you're calm reread it again and try to actually fetch the key point.

1) If Y is a whiny american, he will probably try to hide even more each time that happens or ultimately leave CF. In this case the punishment was bad for the game (even if valid).

2) If Y is an adult russian, he will probably learn which of his action leads to the situation and try to fix the root cause. Obviously, if you try to hide even more, you're not fixing it, you just try to avoid consequences. So, Y may try different approach. He go and fight X with courage. Sometimes, if X is a douche, he may loot again. In this case we call it "fix failed" and follow the option 1. But more often than not, the X will be impressed and return the favor by not looting. In this case, I think, we all agree that the punishment achieved its goals and is overall useful for the game.

.

Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

So while whiny American is hiding from douche-bag X and otherwise enjoying his CF experience, adult Russian (emphasis on adult) is on the forum crying a ####ing puddle of commy tears in broken engrish over the whole incident, which of course leads him to being banned.

Cool.

you sure missed that part of Dwoggurd post: I will use sarcasm and provocation in my answer.

Sure he understands that there are americans that will follow the point 2 of Dwoggurd post. And there are russians who will likely follow point 1. But you are too dumb to realise it :). You only heared "Whiny American" andd "adult Russian".

Ohhhh, I didn't know I had to SAY I was going to use sarcasm and provocation before I did it!




Retard.

>>Retard.

Personal insults sure shows your IQ :P

>1) If Y is a whiny american, he will probably try to hide even
>2) If Y is an adult russian, he will probably learn which of


Even if I take your scenario at face value (and it is flawed) I think there is a boatload more of #1 than #2. I think #2 is a very, very rare occurance. So while you might be doing what you think is right by trying to teach with punishment, you're still going to be causing more harm than good because 90% of the people who play this game are the people you refer to as "whiney americans"

So go ahead and feel superior about your ethnicity or whatever, but remember that you are driving off players. Now maybe if you were heavily recruiting adult russians to replace them, that would be fine. But how many people of these calm, rational people have you brought here? Would playing only with that 10% of people be fun for you?

I think I'm going to say what other immortals are too kind to point out. Since my return, I've noticed a couple of things about you.

A: You've become a whiney little bitch.

B: You seem absolutely miserable.

In fact, you remind me of professionals who get certified in a specific field, make some rediculous attempts at logic but have absolutely no practical, real-world experience.

In short - you don't have an ounce of common sense.

This statement is based on observation and lacks any semblance of logic, with which you will try to use to refute my post.

Since we decided to go completely offtopic and talk about unrelated things, I have something to say as well.

>A: You've become a whiney little bitch.

This is called "following other's steps" syndrome.
I haven't changed that much. I'm very the same player as I was 5 years ago. I'm just too old to change that much.
You observation is completely wrong here as well:
- I'm not "whiny", you basically repeat for other say without any verification. I don't think you will find more than one post where I whine. In fact, I whine much less then 90% of players here.
- I'm not "little". I'm taller than average and heavier.
- I'm not "bitch". After all, I'm a dude.

>B: You seem absolutely miserable.

And you come to this conclusion because...?

>In short - you don't have an ounce of common sense.

In fact, I have much more sense than you ever had.
You had no sense before your leave and I was glad you left so I could play Battle again.
You didn't bring much sense since your return as well, so you're probably beyong repair.

PS. You and other could also try to discuss the original post in this topic instead of my response. I understand that I'm more popular, but I don't mind to share my glory.

I'm absolutely positive you're spamming the refresh button but what the heck, I'll feed the fat kid.

It's sad that you are the self-proclaimed greatest. It is also completely inaccurate.

While the rest was a little fluff, the original comment stands. You have no common sense.

I wasn't interested in commenting on the topic, I just felt it polite to point out what you seem to dense to "logically" grasp.

Why don't anyone of imms point out that Aber is whiny bitch? What makes Dwoggurd so special? Aber sure made a lot whiny ####storm posts(I can post few links), I would like to see where Dwoggurd did so?

>>I'll feed the fat kid.

Are you sure that you are older than Dwoggurd? Because if no it's just immature childish insult. Wait.. it's immature childish insult in any case.

>>>I'll feed the fat kid.
>
>Are you sure that you are older than Dwoggurd? Because if no
>it's just immature childish insult. Wait.. it's immature
>childish insult in any case.

Wow, what's with you and Dwoggurd on this post? I didn't think "Feed the fat kid" had anything to do with age, or weight, or anything else you're making it out to be. It's like "I'll feed the troll". Giving said person what they want to continue what is considered a bad habit. (IE: Food to a fat person)

Honestly, Elhe, calm the #### down?

~

I probably shouldn't have been quite so abrasive myself in my answer, so I apologize about that.

You bastard!

>I'm absolutely positive you're spamming the refresh button
>but what the heck, I'll feed the fat kid.

It may be because I have no life.
Or it could be because I'm in the middle of posting logs.

>It's sad that you are the self-proclaimed greatest.

Why it's sad? I don't feel any sadness about it.
If you envy and that make you sad, I can't cure it.

>While the rest was a little fluff, the original comment
>stands. You have no common sense.

The original answer stands, I have much more common sense than you ever had.

>I wasn't interested in commenting on the topic, I just felt it
>polite to point out what you seem to dense to "logically"
>grasp.

I talk logically, you talk by pure feelings without any sense. We have our differences.

>A: You've become a whiney little bitch.

Eh, don't know how much I'd agree with this. Ignoring his idiotic responses, I find Dwoggurd to be a bit more of a jackass than he used to be, but he doesn't really whine. Just has the whole superiority complex going on.

>B: You seem absolutely miserable.

This, however, I absolutely agree with. Honestly, Dwoggurd's probably the best handle for him, as I think duergar really fits him most days. Supremely confident of his superiority, self-centered view of the world, aggressive towards others.

Now, honestly, I *LIKED* dealing with the original Dwoggurd character. He was a challenge, and I never really dealt with him as a massive jackass. I think unfortunately for all involved, between your playstyle (Dwoggurd, Gzurweeg, etc) which is very planning and overly cautious (compared to others), and the fact that you insist on holding OTHERS to your view of the world is the problem. Once you insist on forcing your views on others, people rebel against it. So now you're the bad guy, even though they may or may not actually be better than you (in regards to whatever they're talking about). So now, you seem just bitter and angry, which makes Baby Floofi sad.

Obviously, you know your stuff when it comes to "winning" in your game, which is the PK game. My advice would be pull a Graatch, and take a break from that. Play a character where the role is the prize, and the PK is secondary, or even non-important. Maybe you're be able to find the fun again. And if not, you can always make an other kill-'em-all character.

Also, secondly...I'd say stop worrying so much about people's responses to you. I mean, if you believe you're right, what do you care what they think? If you're right, then they're just idiots. If you're wrong, accept it and improve so you can be right next time. All this back and forth doesn't really solve anything with you these days.

Take it for what you will, I've nothing against you, I just agree that I probably liked the Dwoggurd I first met, over the one I see in the forums these days.

This is my first "massive" PK character since Nabburak (in four years) ?
Over past years I was blamed more than once for not killing enough people with my characters.
I would appreciate if people would actually train their memory or use notebooks to stay consistent with themselves.

And no, I don't have time Graatch has, I can't just throw away 500 completely boring hours on a herald bard :)
If I even find time for something like that, it will be an acolyte healer.
Now, you cringe about Lornkanamas, be ready for doubled pain if that happens.

>Also, secondly...I'd say stop worrying so much about people's
>responses to you. I mean, if you believe you're right, what do you
>care what they think? If you're right, then they're just idiots.

Like I said before, if I don't answer, any newcomers will take what others say as truth.
It's always good to have both opinions up, mine and theirs. In this case newcomers have a choice.