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+--- Thread: The Truth about Zoners (/showthread.php?tid=115854)
RE: The truth about alts - Trogdor - 05-26-2014
(05-26-2014, 08:16 AM)Jansen Wrote:(05-26-2014, 01:58 AM)Trogdor Wrote: Some story progress would be nice. The downside to all of that neutrality is that nothing happens. It may be the Zoner ideal to have no enemies, but actually having no enemies is boring. Great for traders, not so great for protectors.Work on it ingame or on the forums instead of crying here, that kind of thing is best done by doing RP with others, then show that RP to the Admins/Devs so that they actually see which way you would want the faction to go. If you just Q_Q around here on how everyone dislikes you, nothing will change as its not really productive.
That is exactly the purpose of the story I was writing before the whole kerfluffle about removing the capital ships started. Until Garret's last post, I was under the impression that was still going to happen, and so I felt continuing it was pointless.
Quote:(05-26-2014, 01:58 AM)Trogdor Wrote: Furthermore, the Zoner npc faction needs some love. In order for our shipline and other technology to make sense, the Zoners need to be percieved as a unified faction, and not as a loosely affiliated group of communities. And we need an official faction that represents the npc faction, in the same way most other official factions do. We used to have this, but it fell apart after we lost Mal, and ever since that time we've been fighting a near constant war to justify the existence of our tech. Since then, our official factions have mostly tended to their own well-being, and involved themselves very little in the affairs of the whole. This is a problem because it is the whole that justifies what the faction has accomplished.
You cant imagine how much fun it was to work with the official Zoner factions when it came to the justification of having your ships. The only one that in my eyes really contributed to the whole thing and wrote some lore ideas down was a permabanned member, go figure.
I can imagine, since I was there in the threads when we were arguing all of this. At least, for a while. At some point, the discussion seemingly moved, and so I (and probably a lot of other people) fell out of the loop.
Quote:(05-26-2014, 01:58 AM)Trogdor Wrote: I don't want to piss on anyone, but it's difficult not to get angry when the faction I love is the butt of so much ridicule. We need to resolve the above issues before the trolling and QQ will finally go away.Exactly, you have to do this. There wont be a white knight coming out of nowhere suddenly making Zoners cool. If you have good ideas with enough justification to back them up, its not unlikely to get them implemented. (This likely wouldnt include turning the Zoners into a Military faction, but I guess you get what I mean)
You don't get off the hook quite so easily. We don't need a white knight beyond the admin team culling the trolls as appropriate. But we do need some better assistance from the admin and dev team.
I have no desire to turn the Zoners into an aggressor faction. However, I think they should be able to defend themselves - and have opportunities to do so.
Herein lies a problem: most whom might otherwise want to attack us - namely, pirates - are discouraged from doing so by the fact that they don't want to end up blocked from accessing our bases, and also because inrp the Zoners are supposed to be supplying them with things that they need. Because of this, we have almost zero practical need for transport escorts, let alone anything heavier.
Then, along comes a unicorn - a full-on house military faction that doesn't like us and doesn't need us. We even had the initial boon of them being rephacked outright hostile to us for a while. But then along came the powers that be, whom decided they'd rather be able to use Gallia as yet another cash cow, and smoothed things over with the group whom could have filled the aforementioned need for a threat.
Hence, my story. A tale of a captain dedicated to the preservation of a burgeoning nation, preparing a peaceful people for war. How far will he fall from what he stands for in his quest for survival? How much can he justify with 'for the greater good'? Whom is the real Macbeth?
Let me pose a hypothetical. Suppose every Faction was like the Zoners, and there were no predefined enemies. There were no inter-house wars, no inherent roles providing the impetus for conflict between police, pirate, and trader. How much fun do you think that would be?
RE: The truth about alts (now a Zoner thread...) - Zen_Mechanics - 05-26-2014
Sabre, humor is to laugh together, and in most cases objectively, not subjectively, or should it be the other way around?
You can have a strong objection to zoners all you like, infact you already are - and im well up for that - but you and some other bunch are driving intentional anger which is crude and simplistic next to something normal, such as feedback. If it was a simple objection to zoners in things that are genuine, such as "they are overpowered" - well then thats a legitimate concern, but you have a very good reputation of defending the kind of people who like to make a mockery out of it for the simple reason of focing those who play it to react, thus causing conflict.
Your humor is not humor and it should be ridiculed with contempt.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - Redon - 05-26-2014
Surgery complete.
Please keep Zonerzonerzoner jokes in this thread.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - Acolyte - 05-26-2014
Sigh. Here we go again.
The simple fact of the matter is that Zoner lore is no less absurd than any other allegedly "small" faction. The Outcast armada probably carries most of the planet's population after the last four years of Ranseurs detonating in New York because it's a well-known (or used to be) fact that the genetic alterations experienced by Outcasts due to cardamine have led to relative infertility among their people.
Corsairs would be much better served building a thousand Titans and Correos to pirate lanes for funding and food, but they seem to prefer building huge armadas of dreadnoughts and battleships.
The same goes for the Rogues, the Mollys, the Red Hessians, and any other group with unlikely resources. Zoners are the subject of communal nit-picking, and I think it's absolutely ridiculous.
If you want to say the Zoner canon is rubbish, first consider everything else. Once the Bloods and Crips start rolling down the street in APCs, I might accept some arguments provided by the community at large.
On the topic of Zoner unification:
Trogdor is right. We used to be a unified force, first under the Council of Zoners, then under the Zoner Alliance (not what many of you newer folk recognize as the Zoner Alliance). Both of these bodies were formed and ended as a result of community pressure to be more "Zoner-like". People kept whining that Zoners would never pull themselves out of their money baths and meet to discuss independent politics, so we formed the ZA. We effectively moved from a democracy to a republic, and each faction and each independent had a representative vote to decide on issues like FR5ing people or... Well, whatever else came up.
Then come the Corsairs, flexing their muscle and looking for a fight due to ooRP forum stuff. They see an Outcast dock on FP9 and declare all out war. Then people begin to whine because the Zoners would dare defend themselves by forming the ZDF which, after the Corsair incident, went on to become a Freeport police to enforce no-fire zones.
The thing that I genuinely do not understand is that Zoners have provided more roleplay for this community than any other group. On top of that, they have shown the greatest level of flexibility and diversity in their RP. Every other faction is happy to exist inside of their bubble - pirates pirate, navies shoot pirates and eachother, Junkers salvage and smuggle, corporations trade - and that's fine. But I truly do not understand why Zoners are coming under so much fire for providing the server with something fresh. The reason we are able to be so versatile is for the exact reason hat people keep using to try and put us in a box:
We're all independents. If you're with a group of friends, you can do pretty much anything you want - get into trouble, help an old lady across the street, call more friends to hang out and claim a hill as yours, or disband and do your own things; whatever. If you're with a group of friends in the military, you have significantly less freedom and, thereby, significantly less potential.
Thyrzul Wrote:That is what would entirely kill the concept of "Zoner", and turn the faction into a regular one, of which we have already a ton of. That is what made Zoners Zoners, that they are not unified. You better get used to the notion that Zoner unification remains a dream. You don't want to kill Zoners, do you?As a member of TAZ, I would expect you to remember everything that Mal stood for; especially given that he was the one that founded the Council of Zoners and was a founding member of the ZA.
The simple fact of the matter is that Zoners were a much richer group before all this unfortunately narrow-sighted criticism occurred. We totally pulled a Western World on our figurative World War II. We adopted a policy of appeasement, hoping to get people off our back, but the community just kept up the Zonerhate. So now people like Trogdor and I are finally standing up for ourselves. Which, in and of itself, seems taboo.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - lIceColon - 05-26-2014
can't a "zoner republic" be an oorp thing instead? imo even though zoners aren't a single faction inrp, zoners like any other npc faction need a unified representation on the server.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - SnakThree - 05-26-2014
So, can anyone tell me, how Zoners are different from Freelancers and why do they deserve different treatment than those Freelancers traders?
RE: The Truth about Zoners - Garrett Jax - 05-26-2014
The problem with the unified Zoner idea, is that Zoners are their own worst enemy. Except for the shipline redo proposal, they have difficulties coming to an accord on anything. And, even with the shipline, there was dissension to an extreme degree. I'm afraid that a unified conference of Zoners is a fantasy dream unless they can learn to work together.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - lIceColon - 05-26-2014
Basically an emphasis on neutrality.
Freelancers can be extremely affiliated with a certain faction, and freelancers can also be opposing, therefore a freelancer can shoot another freelancer.
Zoners on the other hand try to maintain neutral relations with everybody.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - SnakThree - 05-26-2014
(05-26-2014, 06:20 PM)lIceColon Wrote: Basically an emphasis on neutrality.
Freelancers can be extremely affiliated with a certain faction, and freelancers can also be opposing, therefore a freelancer can shoot another freelancer.
Zoners on the other hand try to maintain neutral relations with everybody.
So a neutral freelancer in a nutshell. With bigger and better ships.
RE: The Truth about Zoners - lIceColon - 05-26-2014
There's nothing overpowered about all round neutrality if you achieve it through diplomacy. then it becomes deservedpower. There's nothing wrong with bigger and better ships. Freelancers don't need bigger and better ships because a good freelancer has to join the faction he's friendliest with in order to get the good stuff. Trent started out a freelancer but in the campaign he was pretty much an lsf/order pilot.
While there is no definite archetype for Zoners, the minimal requirement of a zoner is neutrality, which a lot of freelancers don't have.
Also, don't say "better ships" like its a dirty word. There's always an imbalance, the solution is not to nerf things to the point of unusability but rather to find balance within the imbalance.