Kantian ethics and group quests

One of the things I have noticed about group quests is that many times when I have done them, I was helped by at least one person who had already completed the quest and was just helping me out of the goodness of his/her heart. When you think about it, this kind of charity is necessary for people to complete group quests, especially as the expansion wears on and most people have completed those quests. If no one helped others with quests they had already done, people who started leveling later than other people or who leveled an alt would probably never be able to complete group quests. I always got the sense for this kind of charity to work, we must be on the giving end of it as much as we are on the receiving end, but I never knew how to consider it further. Luckily, there exists a philosophical system perfectly set up to examine this kind of issue: deontology.

Specifically, I want to look at Kantian deontology and what it may have to say about group quests. Immanual Kant was a philosopher who came up with the idea of the categorical imperative, which is a way to evaluate the motivation for a person's actions as either moral or amoral. Among other things, Kant said that when we chose how we act, we must always "act only according to that maxim by which you can also will that it would become a universal law." What this means in regular English is that when we decide how we act, we should ask ourselves, "Would the world work if everyone acted like this?" Kantian deontology would say, for example, that music piracy is immoral because if everyone pirated music, musicians would have no motivation to make music, and there would be no music to pirate.

So what would Kantian deontology say about group quests? Well, if everyone only helped people with quests they themselves needed to complete, it would be difficult to find people to help you with your quests, especially as the number of people who hadn't completed those quests grew smaller, and it would be impossible once the number of people who hadn't completed that quest but have it in their quest log reached a number below the number of players required to complete the quest itself. Thus it is necessary that those of us who have already completed a group quest help others with that group quest after we have completed it so that they may complete it as well.

But how frequently should we help others with quests we have already done? (What follows is semi-stream-of-consciousness writing about how I derived the system for determining how frequently we should help others, so if you want to skip right to the system I came up with, scroll down to the second-to-last paragraph, the one that begins with "Here's the short version." Of course, if you do that, you'll probably think, "My God, why is this so complex?", since you skipped that parts that showed why it needed to be so complex, and dismiss it outright. Do what you will; there's a simpler less at the end, anyways.) We can't always be the recipients of charity without helping others in return, for if everyone refused to help other players with quests they themselves weren't on but expected other players to help them, no one would ever help each other, and we have already determined that we can't have that. So a balance must be found; when others help you, you must help someone else.

It's tempting to make a simple statement like, for every person that helps you with a quest without being on that quest, you should help someone else with a quest that you aren't on. This works fine when group quests are done in pairs, but not when they are done in groups of three. Here's why: suppose one person in a group of three wasn't on the quest involved. If we accept the statement I made before, then both of the members in that group who were on that quest would need to go out and help someone. If all group quests were three-man quests and all people went out and helped someone with a quest they had already done for every person who helped them with a quest that they had already done, this would create an imbalance of givers and recipients of charity, with the balance skewed toward the givers side.

Allow me to explain what I mean. Suppose Alice helps Bob and Carl with a group quest. At this point, neither Alice nor Bob nor Carl has helped a group with a quest they weren't on, nor have they been the recipient of this kind of charity. However, Alice has already completed this group quest with a different group, but Bob and Carl have not. So Alice helps them complete the quest, and by the assumption made before, Bob and Carl must now go out and help another group with a quest that they aren't on. As you can see, though one act of charity, Alice has necessitated that two acts of charities be performed. This will continue in an endless cycle as Bob and Carl go out and help people, creating an even greater imbalance between the need for this kind of charity and the availability of it. And it's only going to happen faster when 5-man group quests enter the equation (though I have yet to encounter a "5 players recommended" quest in Wrath of the Lich King that couldn't be done by a competent tank (yours truly), a competent healer, and a DPS for good measure).

You may not see a surplus of people wanting to do good for other people as a bad thing, and practically applied, it probably wouldn't be, but this system would still not work from a deontological perspective because we would run out of opportunities for people to "pay off" their "debt" of charity. As such, those who were late to the game and didn't have the opportunity to pay off their debt would get the long end of the stick (metaphorically), while those who go there first and had the first opportunities to pay off their debts will have done more work that those who got there late. A system like this would result in a scenario where there is more debt than ways to pay it off, and that can't be a good thing.

So then, for all this to remain balanced, there must be a system whereby for every time one person helps a group with a quest that they themselves aren't on, one other person will do the same thing. This means that when Alice helps Bob and Carl with a quest she herself isn't on, either Bob or Carl must do the same for another group, and that will allow things to work out. In more general terms, when a group gets together to do a quest, for every person in that group who isn't on that quest, one person in the group who is on that quest needs to help another group with a quest he/she isn't on.

But even that system is too simple to be applied universally. Suppose both Alice and Bob have completed a group quest that Carl has yet to do, and they help him with that quest. By the logic above, he must now twice help a group with a quest he hasn't done. But suppose our group of three are the only players on a realm (work with me here). If Carl helps Alice and Bob with one quest (rather than two) that he has already done but they haven't, surely he has repaid his debt to them. After all, if he had to help them twice, then he would have had to help a group with two quests he had already done, while Alice and Bob would only have to do that once. As such, Carl would have done more work than Alice or Bob.

So we must revise our previous claim. When a group quest is done, for every person in that group who isn't on that quest, someone in that group who was on that quest must help one person with a quest that they themselves aren't on. If we take the situation above and Carl goes out and helps a group of two with a quest that he isn't on and both of them are, he has fulfilled his debt. If one person in that group isn't on the quest, and one person is, Carl has fulfilled half of his debt, while the other person in the group who isn't on the quest has also fulfilled part of his own debt, whatever it may be, and the person who was on the quest has incurred his own debt. Because the other person in the group used the group to pay off some of his own debt, Carl can't claim that he has paid off all of his debt by helping that group. With a system like this, the number of people who help people with quests they themselves aren't on and the number of people who receive that kind of help will remain balanced. Thus it is deontologically sound.

But how to put it into practice? I suppose that since I have already used the word "debt" to describe this phenomenon, a currency system of sorts isn't out of the question. For now, we'll call this currency someone's "charity value". Obviously, when a group does a quest that everyone in the group needs to do, no one's charity value would change. A person's charity value would go up when they do a group quest that they aren't on and help someone who is on that quest, while a person's charity value would go down when they are the recipient of such help. In order to keep things balanced, a person would need to work to keep their charity value as close to zero as possible. This doesn't mean trying all the time to keep it at zero; it just means not letting it fall too far in either direction.

Working out the exact values by which someone's charity value would go up and down is a bit more difficult, but it can be done. Let's look at our final conclusion again: "When a group quest is done, for every person in that group who isn't on that quest, someone in that group who was on that quest must help one person with a quest that they themselves aren't on." Here are some formulas we can start with: when a person helps a group with a quest that they aren't on, their charity value would increase by an amount equal 1 divided by the number of people in the group who aren't on the quest. When a person in a group is helped by someone who isn't on the quest is question, their charity value would decrease by an amount equal to 1 divided by the number of people in the group who are on the quest. This means that the total debt and credit in the system would always be equal to zero, and it would not incur any sort of inflation or deflation.

To give you an example of this system in action, suppose five people are grouping together for a quest: Alice, Bob, Carl, Daniel, and Ethan. Alice is the only one in the group who isn't on the quest, so her charity value would go up by 1, i.e. 1 divided by 1. Bob's, Carl's, Daniel's, and Ethan's charity value would decrease because they received Alice's help, but because most of the people in the group were on the quest, their charity values wouldn't decrease by that much. There were four of them in the group who were on the quest, so their charity values would decrease by 1/4, or 1 divided by 4. So the charity values are as such: Alice: 1. Bob: -1/4. Carl: -1/4. Daniel: -1/4. Ethan: -1/4. The sum of the system is zero, showing that it is balanced.

Now suppose the next day, Bob helps Alice with a quest he has already done. Her charity value decreases by 1, and his increases by one, so the values are as such: Alice: 0. Bob: 3/4. Carl: -1/4. Daniel: -1/4. Ethan: -1/4. Again, the system is still balanced. Now suppose Carl, Daniel, and Ethan help Alice with a quest they all have already done. He charity value goes down by one again, while theirs go up by 1/3. The values would now be as such: Alice: -1. Bob: 3/4. Carl: 1/12. Daniel: 1/12. Ethan: 1/12. The system is still balanced, and reflects the general amount of charity given by each person: Alice has received help twice and given it once, so she is in the negatives. Carl, Daniel, and Ethan have been on the receiving end of charity towards a group and the giving end of group charity, so they are close to zero. Bob, however, is an anomaly; he was on the receiving end of charity towards a group but helped Alice alone, so he is in the higher end of the positive spectrum.

Bob's charity value illustrates a potential problem with this system: under this system, if you give or receive charity as a group, your general debt towards or credit in the system won't change as much. What I mean by that is, if you and some of your friends help one person with a quest, your charity value won't increase as much as it would have if you had helped that person alone. And if you receive help in a group with other people receiving help, your individual charity values won't decrease as much as they would have if you had each received help on your own.

This issue can be addressed by changing the formulas slightly to reward more credit or incur more debt based on the size of a group. We can change the formulas thusly: when a person helps a group with a quest that they aren't on, their charity value would increase by an amount equal the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who aren't on the quest. When a person in a group is helped by someone who isn't on the quest is question, their charity value would decrease by an amount equal to the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who are on the quest. Under this new system, your debt towards the system would be much greater if four people help you than if one person helped you, and your credit would be much greater if you help four people than if you help one person. Since it would also keep all things balanced (the sum of everyone's charity value would always be zero), we can conclude that this is the superior system out of all of the ones we have derived here.

Here's the short version. Everyone who engages in group quests would have what is known as a charity value. That value would increase when a person helps a group with a quest they themselves are not on or have already completed and would decrease when a person is helped by someone who isn't on the quest or has already completed it. Because of these parameters, a person's charity value would not change if everyone in the group is on the quest in question. The exactly values by which it increases or decreases would be as follows: When a person helps a group with a quest that they aren't on, their charity value would increase by an amount equal the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who aren't on the quest, including themselves. When a person in a group is helped by someone who isn't on the quest is question, their charity value would decrease by an amount equal to the total number of people in the group divided by the number of people in the group who are on the quest, including themselves. It will be everyone's responsibility to try to keep their individual number as close to zero as possible.

Whew, well that was a doozy. If you understood what I wrote, then great; if not, just take this much away from it: when someone helps you with a group quest that they have already done, try some time to help someone else with a group quest that you have already done. It's only fair.