' Wrote:Edit: @Overload: No. There was a notice about that around here somewhere...I'll see if I can get it for you.
No need, I saw it when it was posted a few months back. My question was more due to the fact that rules are being changed up here as it is, and so I figured it may be best to ask if this was one such thing. Thank you, at any rate.
(Same thing to Agmen.)
THEY TOLD ME I COULD BE ANYTHING SO I BECAME A SIGNATURE PLS HLP
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As much as some people would like to derail this discussion off into the issue of trust, my objections have nothing whatsoever to do with trust. But let's go down the trust road just a little further first to see where it leads.
Should faction leaders have control over battleship purchases because they can harm smaller ships?
Should faction leaders have control over cruiser purchases because they can harm smaller ships?
Should faction leaders have control over gunboat purchases because they can harm smaller ships?
Should faction leaders have control over bomber purchases because they can harm smaller ships?
Should faction leaders have control over who logs onto the server with a password?
Once you say that answering no to the first question makes that person distrustful, then the same holds true for answering no to the rest also. Would we all have to be labeled as distrustful if we didn't want faction leaders having control over who logs onto the server with a password? After all, that is the ULTIMATE preventive measure against abusers, isn't it? Of course not. This isn't about who can or cannot be trusted at all.
But if it was about trust, then why do so many people automatically distrust anyone who wants to buy a battleship? Why are those people the immediate target of so much distrust that they have to be examined, tested, evaluated, and regulated before they spend the credits that they just spent dozens or hundreds of hours earning? The accusation of distrust is a knife that cuts both ways, and the fact is that this proposal is founded on a premise of distrust at its core : a distrust of anyone who wants to buy a battleship who isn't in a player faction.
But throwing the issue of trust and distrust around is really just a slightly modified version of the classic ad hominem argument. In this case it is implicit rather than explicit. If you disagree with giving faction leaders control over battleship purchases, then your motives are labeled as distrustful, and the necessary implication is that you are a suspicious, paranoid driven nut whose opinion should therefore be ignored. Voila! If you can't defeat somebody's arguments, then you make them look either evil or foolish, because nobody wants to agree with evil fools.
But fortunately for me, I've been around the debate block more than a few times and I don't fall for such cheap tactics.
I trust myself implicitly. I trust my second in command in the Lane Hackers implicitly. I still do not want either myself as a faction leader or my faction involved in regulating other people's ship purchases. Doing so is fundamentally unjust to them, and unjust to our faction.
What this has come down to from the beginning, for me, is the connection between two competing needs : effectiveness and freedom. We need a server that has effective safeguards in place to create a fun and safe gaming experience. We also need to protect player freedoms as much as possible. The test of any policy regarding control or power is whether or not it produces substantially better results than the absence of the policy and an assessment of the degree to which it needfully or needlessly restricts player freedoms.
Both before and after this proposal there is only one thing that removes a problematic battleship : Admin intervention. Restricting the freedoms of people who have done nothing wrong does not assist in that intervention.
If there are problematic battleships that ought to be removed, then Admins can remove the ship or the player, and they don't need to sit around waiting for permission or a nudge from any faction leader in order to do so. They also do not require a new bureaucracy in order to accomplish that. A new bureaucracy that imposes restrictions on the front end adds nothing that makes identifying problem behavior easier ( a rule violation report is a rule violation report is a rule violation report ), it needlessly restricts people who have done and are doing nothing wrong, and it criminalizes a simple ship purchase. Turning ship buyers into sanctionable criminals is an absurd way to punish whatever behavior is regarded as bad enough to take a ship away.
We should punish bad behavior, but there is no legitimate justification for imposing further controls on people who have done nothing wrong. The Admins only need two things to intervene : a name and evidence. Restricting everyone's freedoms does not provide either one of them. With or without this policy, the person with a name and evidence has to do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way : report it to the Admins. So the policy contributes nothing of value, and takes away freedoms.
But let's step back from this specific issue, now. A few months ago I started a thread about the rules and asked for specific, positive measures that could improve Discovery. I received precisely zero answers from any of you.
For the past year every Administrative response to problems has been to micromanage with more rules, restrict more freedoms, exercise more control, and wield more power. What's the result?
Is this community more harmonious than it was a year ago?
Is it more cooperative?
Are there fewer problems?
Is it more fun?
Just take a look around the forums and it's easy to see that the answer to those questions are no, no, no, and no.
It's time for all of us to wake up, myself included.
We need to stop with the micromanagement. We need to stop with the control scheming. We need to stop with concocting some new rule for every occasion that miffs us. We need to stop fooling ourselves with this illusion that just one more rule, just one more restriction, just one more line in an ID, just one more phony "power" which amounts to nothing but an excuse to punish normal behavior is going to solve any problem. They haven't yet, and they won't. The more rules, restrictions, and controls that we add, the worse things get. The effects have been detrimental, and proposals like this have been a large part of the cause.
What we need to do is not control each other more, we need to actually Lead, with a capital L.
That means Admins.
That means faction leaders.
That means faction members.
And that means YOU.
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I keep going to say something, but can't actually think of anything encouraging or contentious that will actually ADD anything to this topic.
So...I say lets try it (the OP), and refine it. If it really doesn't work we'll all know about it.
All I would add is "don't forget the Casual player." Hard core RP is fine, but please don't forget us who log in for half an hour to an hour to play, then log off.
Sovereign Wrote:Seek fun and you shall find it. Seek stuff to Q_Q about and you'll find that, too. I choose to have fun.
' Wrote:Everyone quoted Xoria on this , but not one person actually tried to answer the questions he raised.... This is nothing but stimulation for the factions to try to be at their best at all times. That is what I believe in.
Well, Xoria quoted me so I need not answer it, considering he answered it himself, I believe, in his own post. There is no way anyone can conclusively prove bias.
Your second paragraph was already addressed by the Demonic Stray, so no point in saying anything about it.
You say people are over-reacting because of what "might happen"? We are talking about things which have happened, and failed in the past. You are more than welcome to do what you want with "your" faction and "your" members, just leave the independents alone.
It is a plausible scenario. If it can be conceived, it can be achieved. Likely and plausible? Yes, it can be. Some official factions which represent parts of an NPC faction are not all the best of friends. Hence, this situation is not only plausible, but is likely to occur.
People should not feel inspired to improve their RP in order to control independents, but simply for the benefit of RP and the community. Your difference which you want establish will be a split in the server, not exactly something I want, but then again I do not know about you.
You want to feel trusted and important? Welcome to Earth. There are seven billion of us, most wanting exactly the same thing. There are over 9000 people in this community, again, most wanting the same thing. You fail to realise an independent's need to feel important. Oh wait, your answer to that is to join a faction and work your way, eventually gaining enough rank and respect to feel trusted and important? Unfortunately, some of us have a life outside FL, regardless of how difficult a concept that is for some people to realise. Hence, some cannot be in so many official factions. (Also, how hard do you think it is for an independent capital ship to gain respect on this server is? How about to gain trust and to be important? It is not a walk in the park.)
' Wrote:And that's the crux--its equally applied or its unfair. Factions don't want meddling--agreed. Neither do the rest of us. Let it stop there then.
As said previously, the situation miraculously changes once the boot is on the other foot.
' Wrote:A sad day for Right 5, in my opinion.
People always read these things and extrapolate the notions into these massive moral questions and you read it and you're like 'Man, it's freelancer. Sure in theory I don't want to discriminate against anyone or whatever, but when I'm playing my spaceship game I don't want to have my little spaceship chased by 5 giant spaceships who don't talk english.'
Turning this stuff in to big objective questions about right and wrong and people's rights just doesn't fit for a little computer game designed for fun.
Right, then you should have no problems with independent, non-english speaking capital ships killing you or not following your orders right?
' Wrote:Overload, I'm going to add the fllowing to Right 2.
Official Factions cannot, under any cicrumstances, require another player to follow non-canon RP if that player doesn't want to.
That do?
Thanks. Can't say it matters much in my case, but I wouldn't want to see an issue arise similar to ones past because of a miswording. (I don't have much better to do than nitpick, it seems.) At any rate, what you have there works for me.
(Sorry for being pushy. I didn't mean to seem that way.)
THEY TOLD ME I COULD BE ANYTHING SO I BECAME A SIGNATURE PLS HLP
I wouldn't call what I wrote "tactical". I don't have any agenda in this entire debate. There is nothing to be won here. Like I said, I think the real, fundamental problem inherent in playing a game like this where interactions on a forum are through an exchange of public written statements is lack of real communication. In game, real communication between players is even more limited.
The ad hominem arguments are implicit in arguments against this proposal as well. In fact, some of them are quite explicitly so. Trust is not something I would bring up here lightly. Trust is a fundamental part of this debate. Trust seems to be thin on the ground, based on what I read on the forums.
It might be cultural or it might be personal. I suppose just as I implied that people might be paranoid, the people on the other end of the spectrum could be described as slavish drones who would sell their inheritance for a mess of potage.
I never thought for an instant that "controlling" distribution of BS licenses would be anything more than encouraging communication between players, simply because I think that in-game a BS should be a significant presence and if not rare, then at least not de rigeur. Like I said before, a small ship does not a good player make.
There has to be control in all games. If the structures for controlling the game aren't working, then what is the alternative? People complain that admin sanctions are too harsh. People complain that there is not enough regulation or too much. Maybe people shouldn't complain as much.
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' Wrote:Because the Lane Hackers are better than the rest of us factions.
Why, thank you! We've always thought that nearly all of the Outcasts are mighty swell also.:ylove:
And besides, although you can grind an artifact into dust, it always goes down dry and gritty and without that peculiarly Maltese flavor we love so much.
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