Your argument has been addressed in the previous thread by Ench, but you chose to ignore it. Suffice to say, your philosophy is not one shared by everybody, as is evidenced by the introduction of this system in the first place. In fact, I summarised the difference in this thread, though it obviously cant answer every facet of your argument simply due to its diminuitive size. Philosophical differences are pretty much unreconcilable with each other.
Firstly, this method of changing things is often used in disco. You've been here long enough to have seen it before, yet I do not remember hearing your voice quite as loud any time before as it is now. If anything, you should've attempted to stop it sooner, before it gained momentum as a practice and affected you and your interests directly. If anything though, it is a method of action justified by history and past trends.
"Equality isn't a virtue, and we aren't all equal." Great, I can understand the underlying beliefs of that, but this also means that you are vehemently against equality legislation such as the human rights act, if you're an EU person, or whatever equivalents of equal pay/conditions at work/freedom of expression/constitution you have over there in your country. If people are not equal, they are not equal on any level (equal is term used to describe an absolute) and should therefore lack a basic floor of rights, rights that you and I have been accustomed too. This is because, as people are not equal, their needs cannot be adequately addressed by a floor, which may not be applicable to some or overbearing on others. In fact, if this is truly your belief, your calling lies against the laws of the land in which you live rather than the laws of a cyberspace community that wouldn't exist if somebody swept the right hard drive over with a magnet. Chaos is the logical destination of freedom just as sterility, as you pointed out, is the logical destination of equality. Which would you rather? Chaos I suppose, since that fits your agenda, but notice how the world in which you live is governed by rules that work against chaos and wonder what your life would be like if you werent afforded the protection of the law as a citizen of your country. In fact, all you have to do is look at Somalia to see what it's like without an attempt at law and order and equality.
The argument that this precludes a certain type of character beneficial to the roleplay environment is one that is based purely on opinion, which is a concept and totally fluid from person to person. However, even if I were to take this at face value, this has been the argument against every change to the rules so far. This was the argument against IFFs being used to denote and enforce faction alliegance back in the day, and it was used against IDs as well. More IDs were formed, such as the researcher ID, but then there were gaps in that too. And importantly, there still are.
But people are still here. A lot don't even remember a time before IDs, so they don't know what kind of shinannegans they missed. What balance of control and freedom is right for you? Is that right for other people? Probably not, as both control and freedom are concepts, whose understanding is again, totally fluid.
As for your experiences with Yoko Mori, a lot of that is unfortunate, but you analyse the impact of the rules and regulations of the server only from your own narrow viewpoint with respect to your character. Even though you've been here a long time, you seem to have forgotten why those rules were introduced in the first place, which was namely to stop people finding a cheap excuse to shoot anything they wanted with minimal reason or RP backing. Even if they were told to create one, it ended up being something incredibly cliche like "insane, lol". Now, unless you love the concept of micromanagement, there's simply not time to deal with this. Human understanding is based upon generalisations and steriotypes rather than specific knowledge, and the implementation of that knowledge into actions, such as the action of control is no different. You do it, I do it, the admins do it, and everyone's the worse for it. Yet you have no way of knowing that, for all the restrictions your character experienced because of the laws, what would have been had those laws not existed. Yes, you would have had the freedom to do all the things that the rules stopped you from doing, but would you have encountered those situations in the first place? The Outcast tagged Kusari battleships roaming around, or some random dude with no actual justification for having a KNF Odin? You have absolutely no way of knowing what may have been, and you can think all you like that it would've been rosier and greener on the other side had the rules not been in place, but the reality is, in another dimension, more likely something else. Why? Because of balance. There is balance in all things. Happiness and sadness, good and evil, yin and yang. Tricking yourself into believing that one path is better than the other is awefully naive.
I wont pretend to you that my characters havent been impacted by the rules here like your characters have. Of course I've seen and experienced the effects first hand. I do whenever I play on the server, which is unfortunately nothing since September this year. It affects the development of my characters ingame, what actions they can and cannot perform regardless of what they would do in a certain situation. But I do not feel cheated or hard-done by because of this. Everybody abides by the same rules, so the playing field is even. In fact, this argument is much like the equipment balance argument. Why is the Guardian not significantly better than the Eagle, when the former belongs to a military that spends an inordinate of resources on research and development and the latter is a ship thats on the civilian market and free to purchase? Because of balance. Here you argue, at least according to the philosophical underpinnings that you choose to use, against this balance. Because a military is a military, it should automatically have better stuff than a pirate organisation like the Liberty Rogues, for example? This is the RP of a military, but it is the rules and the stats of the ship, rather than the RP behind the group, that is the main influence on how I have to treat my character and the organisations as a whole. I guess the question here is, are your values consistent? Would you apply the same philosophy to equipment balancing if you were balance lead? But then, if you wouldn't because it would be too unfair against certain groups and not fun, but would apply those concepts to RP for the same reason, you would also be against consistency. If consistency is against your philosophy as well, then you truly are an advocate of chaos.
That's all very convoluted and fairly deep philosophy for an internet forum, but I hope it rings a few logic bells with the people that choose to read it.
And Dane, you read my words but didnt comprehend their meaning. My understanding of the new system is that you will have the choice of one additional tech line if you have a generic ID, but you'll have to get their tag. For example, Odin with Natters? FL ID but Hessian tag. I did like your sarcasm but honestly, save it for when you're actually right.
