DarkStarr Quote and Why I Stay Despite My Frustration

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Bayard, Jul 25, 2018.

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  1. Synergy Blaize

    Synergy Blaize Avatar

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    Well said...
     
  2. HoustonDragon

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    Not discounting legitimate criticism that some folks may express there, but Reddit is generally a wretched hive of vile scum and villany, particularly of late.

    They don’t even moderate the extreme crazy, so their opinion has to be taken with an extreme weight of salt, preferably mixed with tequila and a lime.
     
  3. raxxus

    raxxus Legend of the Hearth

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    Agreed!!! Can't wait for the physical items this month too!!
     
  4. StrangerDiamond

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    Oh common chillout... I checked it out and it seems like a joke, anyways those sub-reddits have a very small reader base, much less than blogs or review commentaries.

    You should all focus less on reddit and not give your attention away so mindlessly, the more it bothers you the more you will encourage trolls anywhere, it is known.
     
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  5. 2112Starman

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    Right.. except the fact they have actually done it. Some posters here on the site who have been victoms may speak up about it (Jamma?)
     
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  6. StrangerDiamond

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    I doubt Jamma will want to weigh in right now... he's quite busy. That is not forum material anyways... lets call it unilateral trolling for now.

    Reddit is meant for people to gather into like thinking compartments, its not meant as a forum, if you give it exposure you might worsen what bad apple might or might not be rotting in there that can take many disguise (more than you'd imagine). I've learned to accept that I do not know, and simply be myself, I'm still here too. That usually suffices to repel any fomenting bad intentions.

    What matters is that we understand we're all human here, and nothing is new under the sun... such situations always happen and always have since money ever entered the RPG equation... but in the case of SOTA, its niche and its not the treasure of Tiamat, so people that tend to inhabit those circles will be loud mouths that are generally disorganized. The venting might prevent them from doing something worse, the same way I don't judge someone who wants to dress in tiedye and be a hippy steampunk in SOTA. Some might favor other games and want to drag people there, some might have a distinct interest in discrediting others for pecuniary matters... god knows what else... but one thing remains true most of them have no intention of organizing anything, they just like to vent and burlesque about much in a wolf pack type scheme and will not bite unless you give them a reason to.

    Coming in strong and accusing many at once of committing such subversion, can be seen by the pack as an aggression, regardless if right or wrong... Just a heads up from an old lone wolf. And remember that Lord British himself said : Talk good Talk bad, you're talking about it ; but never cross the beams. I added the last part, dig ? right.
     
  7. Turk Key

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    Compromise? "Compromise is the soul of mediocrity" Compromise breeds discontent because in every compromise all parties are losers. No one gets what they want and eventually gripe about it. If we choose not to compromise a solution at least about half of the people are satisfied. There is a better solution, it is called consensus. Explaining how consensus works is a futile effort nowdays. The word has been used interchangeably with compromise for so many years that folks don't want to spend the time to explore it. Suffice to say it is not necessary to suffer the ravages of compromise because there are better methods of handling differing visions.
     
  8. 2112Starman

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    This is well said and a point I use quite a bit... simplify it to one word "bubbles". If you have read anything I have posted or responded to, my *main* point is asking people why there is such extreme reactions to a video game. Internet stalking, attacking people who like playing a video game? Posting tens of thousands of pages, walls of texts with deep conspiracy theory (and a vast amount of time invested grinding that) about a video game. Spewing the hate an anything on the internet related to the game. You can define the term "social engineer" any better. Understand my goal is to 1) get people who wander into that place to understand that this is what is going on and 2) Try to pop their bubble with reason. The thing I say the most is "Guys, this is a video game".
     
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  9. StrangerDiamond

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    Yeah, I have the same core belief, it SHOULD be just a game. I treat it as such always, but at the same time I hardly tolerateplaying with those who are in it juuust for money "aka the silent gold miner, or the anti-social did you want to buy from me or you're just wasting my time with stupid roleplay".

    There is a huge spectrum of motivators to join this venture, sadly not enough that use the word play.

    If you're interested in the history of how it became so serious, I suggest you look at stratics a little, where Lord British himself came to ask veterans how they would like their ultimate RPG if he ever was to make one. The clear answer was a real game for gamers by gamers, one that is not tainted with RMT and people who get extreemly serious about pixels on a screen.

    I'm keeping this very simple here so we don't end in conjecture : there are some people that have been fighting not the presence of RMTers in the game which is inevitable, RMTers who are using the money to feed their family ? NO PROBLEM. But there are those people who's game and friends were hurt by those RMTers who wish to influence the game core concept.

    Example : to control the value of gold so its juuust out of reach enough for many people to tell themselves "should I grind 100 hours or pay 20$".

    Do you see how that splits people fundamentally ? One veteran spent 2 years perfecting his character the old way, but here comes Mr. X who used to play duke nukem who paid 200$ for a leveled up character and wreaks havok in the community because his RMTers friends are also hackers. The veteran soon falls by the wayside, noone is interested in his escorts or help leveling anymore, oh sorry I know you wanted to help me but I was told I can pay 40$ to level up my character, don't need you anymore.

    but then came Trammel. We thought our veteran couldn't fall anymore... well he did cause now noone even needed him to protect people against the bandits, his last role just died a quick and violent death.

    I see you are beginning to get confused here... but here it goes : people didn't need anymore protectors... whom by no surprise are those vets who usually play a game to play and not grief or profit.

    Then comes Lord British telling them : in my game you will be important, you will have a role, you can be yourself.

    Those veterans then tried to get involved, tell their opinion about how RMT once ruined the game to replace it with a grind... but they were shut down by banhammers and whatnot.

    Look I don't like to call out people like that but I'm thinking of Kelmo and Tazar in particular here. Both PILLARS of the UO community... I mean they had so many friends there, came here, did all they could to warn that thinking you can control RMT leads straight to chaotic zizany, and attacks, and doxes.

    I have been doxxed and threatened more than once myself, you build a kind of immunity to it but you're always in fight or flight because they work behind the scenes to discredit you, to make you look like a bad person with ill intentions, and it often works.

    Long story short, it isn't just a game anymore, its an ultimate collector with a RPG skin.

    I am fine with it, because as soon as 2014 I was up in arms about it, telling, warning Portalarium that it would lead to this exactly, so I had time to tuck my head in and dodge the headshots.

    But for many who are UO vets, the realization came after they became really involved and decided perhaps to leave UO behind with all the hopes and concepts RG fired at them like a love cannon. These are not bad people...

    The problem now becomes about sympathy... because at first they were only critical, it was very risky to ban them and then ignore them. What I realized tho is that many don't need to be vindictive at all, they need to regroup together and laugh at the situation because they were fooled.

    I too was fooled, if only by Lum's presence, who is known since 1998 as the main voice against RMT and corruption in video games... he was my hero back then there was RG telling us how it was EA's fault for creating a game that attracted this type of corruption, that they stifled his creative vision. 1+1...

    So we all told ourselves : SO THIS VISION EXISTS, lets support it with all we've got... lets leave UO and our community behind to help what we saw as the solution to all our woes, only to find more of the same.

    That is when I started harping about a siege perilous server... but then I was accused of trying to split the community in two servers, instead of people acknowledging I was rather trying to create loyalty for the product by offering a haven for those who had been slanted by organized RMT and corruption in UO.

    You see how the wolf pack lost sympathy for our community ? When they have more sympathy for the random (even anonymous) troll in a subreddit... then you should start asking yourself serious questions, methinks.

    Instead of rounding them up and putting intentions into their mouths, you should look at the reason why they all left, it will all lead you back to a moment where they had a run in with organized RMT. When that happens for long enough, sympathy becomes like a scared wild animal.

    It's complex, yet simple.
     
  10. Mykll

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    Fun. Post got deleted because "Removing combative dialog/attacks towards group of people (reddit)" when I never mentioned reddit. When in fact, I meant being the victim of that person, on these very same forums, in this community here. Want to see the abusive PMs sent here, in this community?
     
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  11. Floors

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    Yeah, it's awful. And the worst part is, there are people posting there that also post here and pretend to be loyal upstanding backers with real concern for the game, but then go over there and make fun of everyone like little kids.

    It's Buccaneer's Den, and I know who the Buccaneers are, matey !
     
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  12. Forseti

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    Has everyone asked themselves why this situation exists?

    I walk into a watch store, see the standard lineup of every brand, from the top Rolex to simple Casio's. Some people are dropping money on rolex, I get a decent Tag heuer. As time goes on, I notice rust on my watch, and it turns out it's a knock off brand. I bring it back to the store, and they apologize and replace it. This time the face scratches easily, it's another knock off. I return to the store and just want my money back and I'll take my business somewhere else. There's some customers inside and the employees all assure me this is a good product, and there's no refunds. These customers love their watches, and they seem to love the employees even more for some reason. We get into an argument about the quality of the watches, and I'm told I'm not welcome in the store anymore unless I'm going to buy something.

    I go outside and wonder if I am crazy. Then I see a large crowd outside with signs saying "boycott this store" and such. I start asking around and it turns out the majority of people that bought watches here are unhappy and claim they were sold knock off brands. One guy's sign says, "I was promised a free casio mailed to me with my purchase."

    I look back at the store windows that are plastered with advertisements, "SALE SALE SALE" "CLOSING SALE" "Buy my blood receive free watch!"
    All the warning signs go off of a sleazy store, and I'm ashamed I spent my money there. Of course when the store opened, none of that existed, and the employees claimed to be upstanding and experts.

    Then I start to wonder about the happy customers inside the store. I guess if they enjoy what they've been sold, that's fine... but wait, it turns out some of them are just reselling the knock off's and making money for themselves with the blessing of the store owners. They claim adamantly that they are NOT knock-off's. Am I crazy, really? This watch is really bad quality!

    I return to the crowd, where experts and amateurs alike all agree this is a dishonest business. In the face of all the hidden information and coverups, the crowd has put together comprehensive evidence that the business creates more dissatisfied customers than return customers. I'm shown their financial documents that they were forced to disclose the millions that were brought in and spent somewhere, obviously not on legit watches.

    For every customer that is happy spending their money at this store, or is involved in the reselling of the watches, or just loves the employees so much they'll support it no matter what, there are at least 10 customers who have their honest money stolen from them and are unhappy about what they receive. So I look at the unhappy crowd and nod. I warn them not to be too disrespectful to the loyal customers, because chances are one day they'll be outside with a sign of their own. But by all means, warn everyone you can.

    The store would do fine if they sold what they advertised.

    This situation doesn't come out of no where.
     
  13. DeadnGone

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    This is quite a harsh analogy, making it seem that for every happy player here, there are 10 unhappy ones. Certainly doesn't seem like that from playing the game. Just because players have complaints, which is common to every single game ever, doesn't mean they are not happy with it.

    I'm not even certain there is a possibility of reasoning or discussion anymore. It's usually the same people defending and making negative statements, repeatedly... even if there was just a thread about it the day before... constant clamoring for something, or making statements about the game and sometimes not having even played lately due to the wrong information presented, or just ignoring any constant works and improvements to say they are ignored. I don't think anyone in the community can rationalize with them as they refuse to see it any other way and anyone who tries to show them otherwise is a "white knighter", "fanboy", or worse. Heaven forbid anyone say anything nice about the game before they come out with the statements "but they didn't give us everything they promised" to counter any positivity on the game.

    Can't we just play the game and move on with the possibility that the game is getting better? With the possibility that every release brings more to the table? Is everything available yet? No, but it's getting there. Why do we have to have constant threads rehashing the same things and same complaints of moderation when people deliberately push the boundaries? I've seen a lot of complaints used to defend those being overly negative, the "assumptions", that are then used to in favor of their negative views toward the player base or those defending the game. Just play the game.

    Despite any doom & gloom prophecy for the game, I see more new people now than ever before. We have more new people in our guild than even what launch/episode 1 brought. We had more people on today than I've seen before and people socializing and having a good time. Our guild town is livelier than ever. Just play the game. Use "nearby players" (0 on keypad) to see others in open/multiplayer mode. Add people to your friends list. Find good guilds and social groups who do activities. Hang out with those people. Plenty of stuff going on in the game and you don't just have to listen to those that either don't know where to look or don't *want* to look. Plenty of very friendly and nice guilds out there that do stuff all the time. EVL, PRISM, are just a couple. Plenty of nice players out there willing to help you as well. Check the forums for event dates as well and join in the festivities, tune into to some of the DJ's radio plays as they usually will let you know when something is up as well. Try and get away from the negativity... as the saying goes, misery loves company.
     
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  14. Forseti

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    "Experiences may vary"

    Honestly I'm even a bit jealous that mine is different than yours (unless you spent a boatload of money). I tried for a long time. I kept running into walls that were designed to turn me around and point me to the cash shop. It wasn't because the game was "hard", the mechanics were too tedious to take the grind route.

    Even if the future of this game is bright, that doesn't erase the errors of the past, or the offensive advertisement schemes. It doesn't make most of the negativity illegitimate. Portalarium brought this on themselves.

    The constant works and improvements most of the time looks like fluff. They should have spent ALL of their energy and resources fixing the MAIN complaints of this game. Do I really need to list them again? Well combat.. why did that never get an overhaul? The other things never changed because they were tied to RMT and would directly burn the biggest spenders in this game, such as the barrier to housing and loot drops. As the money dries up from the big customers, they've started to relax that barrier. And the whole single player experience, I don't really know what to say about that, beyond it looks like a complete bait and switch.

    So I realize these aren't huge complaints for you or others, because you all are enjoying the game. Again, I'm a little bit jealous. :)
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2018
  15. Jorhoto

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    There are insuperable mistakes like doing the game in an inappropriate engine (which could be ok for smaller/amateur scale MMORPGs). It leads to bad performance and huge memory leaks in an hyper instanced world with outdated graphs.
    *Big companies have their own engine or go for Unreal Engine (license was around 200K when SOTA dev started with full source access), or those working in Unity, purchase the source for a similar price.

    17M isn't bad at all to do a proper game (it is the second most funded game after Star Citizen) and you relied entirely on bakers to fund your game development, risking 0$. When Camelot Unchained ran out of crowdfunding money, Mark Jacobs put his hand in his own pocket and paid for development himself (2M).

    Arguing now that you don't have the same budget than WOW is ridiculous and pathetic. LOL
    Do 1/4 of the game size and content, but do it right and listening to the community. You claimed to be the spiritual successor of UO, and that is what people backed. Do you think SOTA experience represents this?
     
  16. jammaplaya

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    Nice
    I remember that! Glad to have you back Stunny !

    [​IMG]

    I think not, sire. Tis just a message board categorized into topics. Most subs actually aren't echo-chambers because they don't have a small group of individuals chasing away contrary opinion via abuse of the voting system. It's typically a problem for gaming subs, and ours are no strangers to the technique.

    Now, I'm not saying that all of the local Redditors are banned from using our forums here, but I do believe some of the few that are seem to have taken it upon themselves to either participate in this exploitation of Reddit mechanics, or are simply using it to their advantage in order to amplify their voice as a larger percentage of the total population than it really is.

    It's unfortunate in my opinion because as you say, "if you give it exposure you might worsen" this situation, and it does just that when some of our users, in the face of moderation on their comments here, willingly join said echo-chambers as it empowers those extremists. What is especially humorous to me is how some people have tried to disassociate themselves with the forums here for that exact purpose: to help further the narrative that the forums are full of extremist White Knights and thought-policing moderators. BUT as Starman posted in this thread, this is simply a false narrative, and as such many of those individuals came crawling back within 12 hours, pretending it never happened, because nobody is buying that here. There are however a few who are still intent on pushing that narrative and are still holding out that they will sway anyone to believing their White Knight fairytales, so they won't post here, but still come to vote-brigade here.

    I feel strongly that @Cerus should download URL Censor for Xenforo which will automatically convert links to unwanted sites (such as either of the two subs that generally host attacks against Portalarium staff) into links to the main forum page or website.

    Of course, we do not want to censor criticism of the game itself, but we should at least be taking measures to censor the extremists using the same tools that other games commonly do. In the meantime I do hope that those who can still post here will do so civilly in the future because by doing so, and by rejecting those communities notorious for over-the-top attacks against Portalarium staff, they will help to expose the extremists on their end of the argument and essentially eliminate them.

    On the White Knight end of the spectrum, I can say that, aside from one over-the-top enthusiast (who always came across to me as sarcastic) that seems to have lost his voice of late, we have had a few vocal users here who have engaged in uncivilized discourse. I believe however that by first resolving the issue with the extremists on the critical side, who delight in launching hate-filled attacks against the developers and our community, that any extremism on the White Knight side will simply fade away. After all, the bigger problem has been the extremists on the critical side, and some of the fault in my opinion for the current situation lays with those who are not distancing themselves from such extreme attacks against other community members. I also do not believe that eliminating uncivilized White Knight extremists first will cause any disruption whatsoever to the other side, who seem dead-set on pushing their false narratives right until the game loses all of its supporters.

    I do also fault previous moderation for not having taken the steps that are commonly used like the above in order to protect this community, but that the attacks have even been launched against us on these forums (with many of the attackers still doing it today) has been the source of almost all White Knighting that has happened here, with a tiny margin of those who White Knight just to troll, and another tiny margin of individuals who have White Knighted to "protect their investment." For the most part people have just been upset at the all-too-lenient moderation we've had here compared to what other gaming community moderators would have done given the circumstances.

    At this point, everyone needs to be aware
    that they are putting the cart before the horse by placing free speech ahead of civility. By doing so some critics have actually lost power, in that they've lost their ability to be taken seriously when voicing their concerns.

    The whole point of free speech is that it gives power to people without any so that they can alter the system to better suit them. People need to be sure to express their concerns in a civilized manner otherwise there is simply no point, unless the intention is of course just to attack someone to harm them in some way, which I believe has been the sole intention of some extremists. Just remember that nothing in life is free; you can say whatever you like however you like but that doesn't mean it comes without cost. Expressing freedom of speech in an uncivilized manner will only detract from the power of your voice.

    I for one am looking forward to embarking on the greatest quest Shroud of the Avatar has to offer with each and every one of you, for which the rewards will be better than any other I can think of: Restoring civility to our community. Our community which is our greatest asset.

    This should be an easy task for any Avatar, I should think. We all practically came out of a Virtue Simulator before arriving here so I'm not sure why this has been a challenge for us at all. Least of all Ultima's self-titled "greatest fans" wouldn't you agree?
     
    Last edited: Jul 30, 2018
  17. Fungus

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    Got to agree with the OP it's always good to see people admit they got it wrong, however spectacularly the interpretation of the mistake may be construed by the loyal supporter base that encompasses us all.

    I got a forum warning for 'disparaging comments or intentions to mock players or groups', wonder if the same will happen for some of this threads content? I doubt it, a bit like the forum user who quoted me and amended the quote to suit their own personal agenda. I say this purely due to the fact I've just rolled my eyes at the very thinly veiled attacks at perceived forum enemies of the game via inspirational MEME's & the differentiation between white knights and black knights *sigh* No wonder there seems to be this rush for certain people to post on an unregulated and toxic media that has been linked countless times already and doesn't need any further publicity from me.

    I really hope SotA gets the love and attention it deserves from the dev team, admitting your mistakes is half the battle but now you have to turn actions into words, as I stated before I won't be playing SotA for 6 months as there isn't an actual game to play at present, I hope some of the other grinders & PvP guys come back too as every player type is needed in the long term to make any game of this type successful.
     
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  18. Fungus

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    what a chimp!

    I meant to say 'words into actions'

    I can't edit posts at present if anyone asks why I haven't just changed it ;)
     
  19. Floors

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    What would be better also is if the disaffected didn't infect every single discusssion with their doom and gloom negative outlook.

    There's another side to this coin of "don't push us away".... don't push those of us that enjoy the game, support it financially still and have a decent attitude about it.....
     
  20. Tsumo2

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    I have a friend that thinks the vendetta against Shroud is driven by a corporate disinformation campaign.
     
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