40 replies to this topic

[Void Angel]

Baron Blitz Fokheimer, on 21 December 2025 - 07:06 PM, said:

Great, because I never said that all of them do. But that number is still above zero, and considerably so, and is thererfore a tangible problem that needs to be addressed for the general health of the game. Now, can we please dispense with the strawmen?

Most players do not have an enjoyable time playing 4-minute, 12-0 score matches, whether they're losing or winning. I personally hate such matches even if I wind up on the winning team, and even if I pump 800 damage and get 4 kills out of them. It's just not fun. It becomes like work at that point, like grinding for gold in a MMORPG. The only people who seem to disagree with this take are the stat-padders who rely on this environment they can exploit to grind stats. Because having 5.0 win ratios and 10:1 KDRs in a random drop matchmaking environment isn't rational. But I don't expect those people to agree or identify with this sort of morality, and my posts aren't for them anyway.



I play many multiplayer games, and if someone brings up cheating, I don't immediately get offended and start denying its existence just because I or people I know have good stats or reputations of efficiency or whatever. My first reaction would usually be to ask them to describe the situation(s) that led them to believe that there's cheating involved in order to analyze what actually happened and see if there's merit in the accusation(s) (and there sometimes is!), instead of immediately bandwagoning for my "world champ" friends.

So yes, it absolutely is psychotic behavior.

OK, since the troll has apparently gotten to enough people to keep my notifications pinging, I'm going to amuse myself at its expense!

Now, Class, is what's called a Mott and Bailey defense. It's a well-known, sometimes deliberate, way for a troll or internet crazy to argue for an outrageous position. First, the troll will take up its Mott position (named after the outer perimeter in certain medieval fortifications, as I'm sure some of you know.) This is what they really want to talk about -

From 20 December 2025 - 05:10 PM:

You're misinterpreting the situation. They're not scared of these players themselves; they're scared of the cheats they use.

From 20 December 2025 - 10:03 PM:

The point is that the "top" players as a collective in MWO specifically sabotage the community by getting to that "top" by stomping on the regular players, and also being heavily involved in the cheating scene of this virtually unpoliced environment.

That's a very questionable position, to put it mildly, which is impossible for it to defend. It knows that, so it just hopes that the rest of its screed throws off enough smoke that the initial premise goes unremarked while it tries to hijack my post into complaining about all the mean cheaters. Then, if its nonsense premise is challenged, the troll will retreat to its Bailey, the actual fortress it thinks it can defend: the matchmaker (in the context of all these total cheaters, of course.)

From 21 December 2025 - 05:37 PM:

So...you see how I didn't actually say anything bad or offensive, right? I haven't shamed anyone, and haven't personally attacked anyone. I just advocated for matchmaking improvements and/or efforts to combat cheating

Now, this is a childishly laughable attempt. It can't even bring itself to fully let go of the Mott position, and tries to smuggle the hackusations back in - but the clumsiness of its attempts make this a good way to examine the structure of this kind of deception so we can recognize it in more sophisticated posters.

A better attempt at this kind of bad-faith dishonesty would be to back away from the Mott position entirely, claiming that the troll didn't mean to accidentally imply that the elite players at issue in the original post were a bunch of cheaters! We've all just misunderstood, and what it really meant to say was that while cheating happens, it's actually all the matchmaker's fault (and never mind that this is untrue, and that its "solutions" are both mathematically impossible and have been tried in testing.) But this troll isn't very sophisticated, so it trips over its own feet by tipping its hand with unambiguous opening statements and an inability to let go of its initial subject (like the myth about how they catch monkeys with a rock inside a coconut.)

0/10, would not be gaslit again - but the gaslighting it tries are another class period!