215 replies to this topic

[Allen Wren]

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 06:41 AM, said:

Quite funny.

But to be honest, I don't get all the fuss in here. We got Goons who want to lead the ConCap, we got people who want Metro. In the end, Community Warfare means fighting about borderworlds as mercs and some mid-level planets as factions, while certain events will be in the hands of the Devs and already written BT fluff. So none of you will be leader of the ConCap because it has a couse dictated to a certain degree by canon. Whoever leads the Goons and Metro should be viewed as capellan generals commanding different groups of the capellan forces. That would fit best and I hope there will be reasonable cooperation.

Then we got some Goons overreacting about "bad" Developers. Metro postet a statement that the Devs won't let anyone break the game. Maybe he could have been more general or diplomatic on this one, but the question in the topic was directly pointed at the Goons. That means, even a more generalized answer would point at them, no matter what. What I don't get there is the behaviout of the Goons who always say they do not want to take over or break MWO. So why now this hostility to the Devs? Why don't you keep to your earlier words an support this statement? Something like "we don't want to break the game, so we support this". No you start to rail against the Devs. That does not strengthen your position.


After saying all that I want to make clear that I have nothing against the Goons. I played a game against squawking people once. They fought hard and it was a good fight. This is not EVE, this is not WoT. So stop ******** around about those games.

And concerning honor - in nearly every game I played, my enemies tried to shoot me in the back, leg me or get me when I had a shutdown in my Jenner. There are some missileboats, Gaussopults, 7 med laser Awesomes. I have no problems with that. The community as a whole plays harder and I like that. Just tell me, what will the Goons do that is more honorless or disturbing to "the old guard"?

The concern on the part of the goons (at least, the goons who I've had a chance to read the opinions of---we are not a homogeneous mass with a single opinion) is that we're concerned about continued anti-goon bias and conflict of interest on the part of the forums moderation staff. We applaud the devs for their efforts thus far and hope that the game, once out of beta, brings the dreams of all the ladies and dudes who enjoy heavily armed robots to life. It's reasonable that the average MWO forums-goer hasn't seen the extent of the things we're concerned with because who wants to follow eight zillion threads where various folk have aneurysms over the possibility that goons might ruin everything.

While I don't have on hand the whole of the evidence (because I'm busy with other things and don't have the time to compile the file) I imagine some of my brothers and sisters from the Word of Lowtax could provide more substantial documentation about the issues we have. It's not about "leading" House Liao, I assure you. The short version of the issues...well, here's a few items. The moderation on these boards has on multiple occasions closed and locked threads involving goons discussing, in a rational and reasonable manner (barring the occasional squawk) strategy and consideration of future community warfare implementation, while continuing to allow goon panic threads (like this one) to roll on unabated. We are concerned about forum moderators who appear to have conflicts of interest moderating. We are concerned about the fact that some persons on the staff cannot tell a joke or a troll from a serious point. We are concerned with the fact that our Liao contingent (spoiler warning - there are goons in every great house. No, wait. I don't think we have any Kuritans. But that'll probably change.) runs up against continued pushback from self-entitled, self-satisfied persons both on and off the forum staff who are more interested, ironically enough, in fighting the goons than fighting robots.

It's been said before by Xarbala and others. Here's the secret goon gameplan:

1. Fight some robots.
2. Do some goofy stuff because Far Country is hilarious.
3. Help our goon comrades build better Hunchbacks.
4. Laugh about the stupid things we see on the internet, especially involving grognards.

That's really about it.

[Agincourt]

Samuikaze, on 04 August 2012 - 11:46 AM, said:

A shame you lot weren't around back in the MW2 TKZ days, it would have been nice to have killed you lot there as well.

Good day.

Since many of us have in fact "been around" since netmech/kali days, it's safe to say that we've probably already killed you a few times under different handles.

You're already dead, you just don't realize it yet.

[TG Xarbala]

Allen Wren, on 04 August 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

The short version of the issues...well, here's a few items. The moderation on these boards has on multiple occasions closed and locked threads involving goons discussing, in a rational and reasonable manner (barring the occasional squawk) strategy and consideration of future community warfare implementation, while continuing to allow goon panic threads (like this one) to roll on unabated. We are concerned about forum moderators who appear to have conflicts of interest moderating. We are concerned about the fact that some persons on the staff cannot tell a joke or a troll from a serious point. We are concerned with the fact that our Liao contingent (spoiler warning - there are goons in every great house. No, wait. I don't think we have any Kuritans. But that'll probably change.) runs up against continued pushback from self-entitled, self-satisfied persons both on and off the forum staff who are more interested, ironically enough, in fighting the goons than fighting robots.

I concur with everything this good fellow's just posted, though I'm bolding the parts that should be extra important.

At least the players on the Marik subforum are cool cats, even if I really only lurk there.

Edited by TG Xarbala, 04 August 2012 - 03:05 PM.

[Duvanor]

This is a point I can completely understand. I hate people whining about thinks that have not happened and probably will never happen.

On the other hand there are some people belonging to the Goons posting in a rather annoying way. That was especially Supremacist in the "oranizing House Liao" thread and you, Xarbala, in the same thread and here. Supremacist attacked Metro on a personal level and I got the impression, you might try to weaken Metros position by discrediting him. Supremacist has of course the right to have his own opinions, but it would be great if he would keep it to himself or learn to communicate in an appropriate manner.

As for you, Xarbala, it is just my impression gathered in some few topics. I do not know all the backgrounds but I as a Mod or Dev would be annoyed by the posts I read.

Ah, and then we got this old boys club thing. I read about these concerns of Goons and I understand it. Some of you are new to the Mechwarrior Community, as are many more, I hope. There are some contradictions which I fail to understand. Maybe someone can help me out there. I mean, the problem with old boys clubs is you don't get easy access. But the Goons for example seem not to be interestet in access to the community. They post in these forums, but they try to bring their own culture and reject large parts of the community. Of course that alienates lots of folks.

Goons openly reject BT fluff while the ISN News Flash for example is clearly BT fluff and part of the game. I would never expect players to embrace all that stuff. Why should they. Would I just want that kind of fluff, I could read my sourcebooks or novels. We all can agree on the fact that we are here to play a game and have fun, right? And that should be all that is required and expected. But Goons seem to want to be alienated from the rest of the community. Is that the case?

Edited by Duvanor, 04 August 2012 - 05:13 PM.

[wargames]

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

Goons openly reject BT fluff while the ISN News Flash for example is clearly BT fluff and part of the game. I would never expect players to embrace all that stuff. Why should they. Would I just want that kind of fluff, I could read my sourcebooks or novels. We all can agree on the fact that we are here to play a game and have fun, right? And that should be all that is required and expected. But Goons seem to want to be alienated from the rest of the community. Is that the case?

How are we rejecting BT fluff? If anything we are embracing it with the Tetatae. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tetatae

[George Ledoux]

wargames, on 04 August 2012 - 05:18 PM, said:

How are we rejecting BT fluff? If anything we are embracing it with the Tetatae. http://www.sarna.net/wiki/Tetatae

Perhaps by embracing the ******* child of BT fluff, goons are perceived by the BT masses as rejecting the fluff.
Personally, I like the fluff. But my fondest memory is of the time that I was embraced by a fluffer.

But that's a tale for another thread.

Edited by George Ledoux, 04 August 2012 - 05:27 PM.

[TG Xarbala]

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

As for you, Xarbala, it is just my impression gathered in some few topics. I do not know all the backgrounds but I as a Mod or Dev would be annoyed by the posts I read.

That's fair, and one of the problems with airing one's concerns frankly. Even if it means personally offending someone with power and authority over my privileges. Now, I'm fairly certain PGI doesn't need you to white-knight for them and I'm not entirely sure why you're annoyed by my posts. Unless this is about the whole "footnotes twice as long as the actual post" gag, that I could understand. Frankly, if someone speaking candidly annoys you, perhaps you might need to take a step back from the issue and see things not in the light of "what is this stupid Goon saying now," but rather, "what is the point this person is trying to make and how do I feel about it?"

I'm not actually one of the Goons who was participating in the trolling campaign that bothered everyone so much, but I could see a lot of the fallout and how people reacted, and in some cases over-reacted. To say I'm trying to discredit Metro probably assigns more malice to my intentions than is necessary, when really it's more disappointment. I don't actually dislike the guy as a person, but I don't think he's as impartial as his responsibilities as part of PGI's public relations efforts would require. I was not casting aspersions for the sake of it, I was making my own suspicions known, possibly in hopes of seeing them addressed.

Those posts I made were customer feedback on the one hand, and candid criticisms made to other parties in the thread on the other. Also, Goon PR damage control, because this stuff is really getting out of hand.

Also, I don't so much reject BT fluff as I am willing to savage the worst parts of it. As anyone should be. The Battle of Tukayyid was a cop-out ending to the Clan Invasion and you know it.


EDIT: Oh, wait. It could be my blatant and aggressive anti-Davionism that offends. Yeah, I'm not apologizing for that.

Edited by TG Xarbala, 04 August 2012 - 05:48 PM.

[Duvanor]

@Wargames: I don't care about stupid birds The novel was terrible. But I read RoboJox and Gundam instead of MechWarrior for example. Great things, I assume, but alien terminology used to stick out of the community.

@Xarbala: What I mant is the following- if someone comes and tells me as a Mod or Dev, he regrets spending money on my game and thinks my company is an old boys club, I would be annoyed. I might be wrong here, but as far as I know, you are in no position to have enough abjective information to get to this conclusion. This lets me assume you want to provoce and exert pressure on the Devs to get Metro out via public opinion.

I don't want to white knight anyone here. I just want you to consider that maybe some of your posts are read in a way you did not mean them.

And to those Goonhaters, stop it. The forums need some rest. Cool down and wait for the game to start. Nothing has happened yet and probably nothing bad is going to happen.

Edited by Duvanor, 04 August 2012 - 05:57 PM.

[TG Xarbala]

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

@Xarbla: What I mant is the following- if someone comes and tells me as a Mod or Dev, he regrets spending money on my game and thinks my company is an old boys club, I would be annoyed. I might be wrong here, but as far as I know, you are in no position to have enough abjective information to get to this conclusion. This lets me assume you want to provoce and exert pressure on the Devs to get Metro out via public opinion.

I don't want to white knight anyone here. I just want you to consider that maybe some of your posts are read in a way you did not mean them.

Well that's reasonable. I tried to specifically word my suspicions to indicate they were only inference based on what we see in public, and to be fair Metro is the public face of moderation in the Liao subforum. That I could even come to these conclusions at all is because of the background regarding the fiasco surrounding Goons and the community at large. Things PMed to specific Goons might make the rounds on other forums if the content is just that interesting or, in some cases, troubling.

I really only spoke of Metro because that's the Liao subforum and we had his own posts--his own words--to draw upon. If you knew that some other mods referred to all members of the SomethingAwful community, sight unseen, as "Lowtax trash" in their PMs then you'd be worried about what's going behind the scenes, too. No, that moderator was not Metro. But this is the kind of thing that bothers me, as a customer.

We're also well aware that the BT community is a long-lived one, and has had to endure a lot of tumult over the years. A number of Goons are also part of that community under other names. MWO is a labor of love for the people at PGI. This also means they're longtime fans, and probably part of the community too. There's nothing wrong with that. But when we see staff members whose conduct or tone causes some alarm, it's natural that we might start to suspect things. Or when incidents might crop up where people might have some outside influence over the staff, we might also be worried. These sorts of fan communities can be rather closely-knit, and while there might not be something necessarily wrong with bringing in someone one personally respects or with whom one has a good rapport with from other contexts into a position of responsibility in a company, when there's even an inkling that these other contexts might still have some sway on the person brought in to handle these responsibilities, outside observers might start growing concerned.

After all, in the Organizing thread we actually saw another community figure publicly and confrontationally call out Metro using his social capital outside of MWO and this community figure actually took offense when Metro couldn't answer, through no fault of Metro's own. That this could happen says that there's a lot of community context and relationships that we as MWO posters might not necessarily see and when problems or signs of bias show up, it's natural that a person might assume the worst.

Edited by TG Xarbala, 04 August 2012 - 06:20 PM.

[Duvanor]

Yeah, I read the post of Warhorse and I hope, there will be no more posts like that. Same goes for this thread. "A mild concern" is a bad joke.

As for Metro - at least he did not delete posts by Supremacist or others concerning his person. He has to be careful to keep a neutral point, especially being so deeply involved in House Liao.

[Exilyth]

10 pages and no one invoked godwin's law yet?

[Blue Footed Booby]

Allen Wren, on 04 August 2012 - 02:55 PM, said:

....
4. Laugh about the stupid things we see on the internet, especially involving grognards.

That's really about it.

I'd just like to point out how often we are the grognards we make fun of. Holy hell, did you guys SEE that "propaganda" megapost?

Exilyth, on 04 August 2012 - 07:18 PM, said:

10 pages and no one invoked godwin's law yet?

You're literally Hitler.

[Fugu]

Exilyth, on 04 August 2012 - 07:18 PM, said:

10 pages and no one invoked godwin's law yet?

Ahem...

Blue Footed Booby, on 03 August 2012 - 01:58 PM, said:

People have literally compared us to Nazis.

Kinda. Site six. You didn't think this thread could go on for 10 pages without the term "Nazi" uttered at least once, now did you, Exilyth?

[Supremacist]

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

On the other hand there are some people belonging to the Goons posting in a rather annoying way.

Deal with it

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

That was especially Supremacist in the "oranizing House Liao" thread and you, Xarbala, in the same thread and here. Supremacist attacked Metro on a personal level and I got the impression, you might try to weaken Metros position by discrediting him.

Yeah, And? Metro has been discredited, his position has been nullified. However, he continues to be a moderator, every single action he takes must be examined with a skeptical eye as he has more than a single interest, that is not proper for a moderator.

Deal with it

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

Supremacist has of course the right to have his own opinions, but it would be great if he would keep it to himself or learn to communicate in an appropriate manner.

Its completely appropiate, the only requirement is that the words are said, you or the communitys acceptance and understanding of those words are not required.

Deal with it

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

But the Goons for example seem not to be interestet in access to the community. They post in these forums, but they try to bring their own culture and reject large parts of the community. Of course that alienates lots of folks.

Oh well! We are not obligated to "access" the community of nonfactor grognard neckbeards.
Mittani himself has mentioned that we bring our own culture, and why wouldnt we? What a ridiculous thing to be concerned about, whats next? You will censor our posts? Only use words and concepts you or the community approve of?
Alienation of parts of the community is not relevant, and sometimes welcomed. We have no interest in becoming freinds with the likes of you.

Deal with it

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:11 PM, said:

Goons openly reject BT fluff

THE HORROR!

Deal with it



p.s. A single note on the subject of what goons are willing to do to win.
Like the U.S. policy regarding what its willing to do to stop Iran from gaining nuclear weapons:

"Nothing is off the table"

I want our enemies to put that quote in their signatures and make sure to attribute the quote to me.

I want you to remember that quote when you are firing Alphas into our mechs to no effect.
I want you to remember that quote when our Atlas pilots are able to chase down and smash your scout mechs.
I want you to remember that quote when our pilots land every single AC2 shot on your mechs head.

That being said: Goons have every intention of playing by and obeying all rules including but not limited to: NDA, EULA, Software use policy, privacy policy and good sportsmenship and will never under any circumstance use any method or procedure not in line with the spirit and the rules as laid out by the developers of this fine product.

Edited by Supremacist, 04 August 2012 - 08:06 PM.

[Allen Wren]

Blue Footed Booby, on 04 August 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

I'd just like to point out how often we are the grognards we make fun of. Holy hell, did you guys SEE that "propaganda" megapost?

Yeah. If we do something grognardy and push our glasses up our nose and get indignant about Ostscout builds in the pre-Clan era, then yeah, go ahead and laugh. But there's a wide, wide gulf between having a laugh over some nards and the ridiculous playground fights that erupt on these forums.

Duvanor, on 04 August 2012 - 05:50 PM, said:

@Wargames: I don't care about stupid birds The novel was terrible. But I read RoboJox and Gundam instead of MechWarrior for example. Great things, I assume, but alien terminology used to stick out of the community.

We do this to attempt to deflate the ridiculous seriousness with which your average grognard takes their robot fighting fluff. Internet gundamech joxboxing fights are what we're here for. We're okay with letting the developers take the fluff in the direction they see fit, and are in fact very interested in how they're going to deal with their onrushing in-universe calendar, the game's launch date, and the beginnings of the clan invasion. It does not ruin our immersion to have the game not reflect a tabletop campaign we played in 1991 or an online community we joined in 1997 or even any official canon we may remember that Fasa published in the stone age or what have you.

Edited by Allen Wren, 04 August 2012 - 08:03 PM.

[Exilyth]

Fugu, on 04 August 2012 - 07:48 PM, said:

Ahem...
Kinda. Site six. You didn't think this thread could go on for 10 pages without the term "Nazi" uttered at least once, now did you, Exilyth?

Page one was all about serious players being concerned and goons being goons, so I skipped the rest.
If anything bad is going to happen, I'm sure the devs will deal with it in an appropriate manner.
It's not like anyone could outtroll Paul anyway.

Blue Footed Booby, on 04 August 2012 - 07:42 PM, said:

You're literally Hitler.

Last time I literally was someone else, I was mother theresa, so hopefully the karma will literally even out.

[Reverend]

Agincourt, on 04 August 2012 - 03:04 PM, said:

Since many of us have in fact "been around" since netmech/kali days, it's safe to say that we've probably already killed you a few times under different handles.

You're already dead, you just don't realize it yet.

OH LAWDY LAWDY LAWDY THEY BROUGHT UP KALI OH LAWDY! OH LAWD! What next Mplayer? HAH

[Scrooge McDuck]

What's most likely to happen is them spamming these forums.

[Col Cowboy]

I AM a member of SomethingAwful and I can say without a shred of doubt that their attitude about this game has made me commit to not spending any money on it. Dickholes.

[Voyager I]

Col Cowboy, on 04 August 2012 - 09:43 PM, said:

I AM a member of SomethingAwful and I can say without a shred of doubt that their attitude about this game has made me commit to not spending any money on it. Dickholes.

You are not a member of Something Awful, you are a twit with an account that got immediately probated for your embarrassingly poor attempts at trolling. Your personal failings have nothing to do with any game or any online community, you have nothing of value to add to discussions, and if you have been convinced to leave this game by the harsh welcome you received there then I believe the SA crew has done a favor to everybody.


I don't even say this as an SA member, because as far as these things go I don't really count. I speak simply as someone who is literate.

Edited by Voyager I, 04 August 2012 - 10:09 PM.