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Starting 2018 the Right Way


RightHonorable
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Take a look at the last big war, at how long it lasted and how much it cost and you might be able to figure out why most people are a bit hesitant to do that again especially after the changes sheepy made to resource production and pollution.

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3 hours ago, LeotheGreat said:

Just like BK and NPO couldn’t :P 

or Mensa and Rose, was the joke I think you missed there

Dec 26 18:48:22 <JacobH[Arrgh]>    God your worse the grealind >.>

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13 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

It's not the same. The problem is that you're working towards that becoming a reality in spite of your sphere denouncing Syndisphere for having achieved that (nevermind that opposing an all-powerful hegemoney was the main reason you bunched up to begin with).

And if the fragments that split from EMC ever cooperate in taking you down (which is, then again, not a guarantee), it'll be mainly as a result of IQ's unwillingness to give up the power they've amassed and their intent to consolidate/expand upon it. It'd be more of a self-fulfilled prophecy situation than one of feigning a split just for baiting purposes, as you seem to think is the case.

 

I don't see how we're working towards it. Achieving that level of dominance isn't viable anytime soon. Nobody who isn't tied to IQ as of now sees it as the safer/better option, which was the case with Syndisphere and which is what contributed to their dominance. You aren't going to see some of these elite-style alliances tie into IQ and there will be continuously be a divide between those ahead and those behind.

I disagree. When people have a consistent pattern of holding power, they're typically going to try to keep winning by any means possible with few exceptions. In some cases, they even have a #1 spot to protect. 

6 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Ever since the last major war, with two major alliances disbanding, and quite a few others cutting official ties or going in a different direction - there was a prime opportunity to wipe the slate clean.

However, that didn't happen for various reasons.

I certainly don't fault IQ doing what they're doing.  In fact, it should've happened sooner rather than later.  And while the current leadership is at fault for stagnation, so are the leaders for other alliances - including previous aligned EMC/Syndisphere.  

In any case, I would've humored the EMC breakup to see if it was honest.  That is, if any alliances wanted to mend past transgressions at all.

Aside from Mensa merging into Guardian, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The other paperless moves weren't exactly a reset button relations-wise and for better or worse we have an idea of the opinions held by those involved.

The EMC break up hasn't really even fully happened on paper aside from the Rose cancellations and they weren't the ones instigating it and I mean I don't think most people on that side see any past transgressions to mend. When it materializes and people actually have alternative visions besides "splinter the low mid tier group to shore up our only weakness and add third parties", then you may see more openness.

 

 

1 hour ago, Big Brother said:

We did gloat, we celebrated our victories. I accept that you hold a personal belief that no one has the right to gloat but I hold the personal belief that it's perfectly acceptable to celebrate your wins and lash out at the opposition. It's very human to do so, it happens all the time. This isn't meant as an excuse but the fact that it does happen frequently means that it is accepted in human society, to a point. You can call it arrogant and unnecessary if you'd like but this just strikes me as defeatist bitterness resulting from feeling uncomfortable about winning and what that entails. I don't understand why you want to make winning less fun for the victors.

If you want to gloat, don't expect people to not resent it, which was Starbuck's point. If a group puts heavy stock into winning and debases others for not winning, it only engenders bitterness and resentment and it makes it hard to judge the motivations of those doing it being anything besides prolonging a winning streak. It also shapes the wider culture since people will tend to gravitate to the winners if the defining value of game culture is winning/material superiority.  Depending on how many people remain, there will be a group of people not part of that circle that will want to offer resistance  and that's what he was talking about. 

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49 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

Aside from Mensa merging into Guardian, I'm not sure what you're talking about. The other paperless moves weren't exactly a reset button relations-wise and for better or worse we have an idea of the opinions held by those involved.

The EMC break up hasn't really even fully happened on paper aside from the Rose cancellations and they weren't the ones instigating it and I mean I don't think most people on that side see any past transgressions to mend. When it materializes and people actually have alternative visions besides "splinter the low mid tier group to shore up our only weakness and add third parties", then you may see more openness.

There was roughly 10 members out of 36 Mensa that merged with Guardian.  Rest had quit/VM'd.

TEst was the other major alliance.

Also, I stated "prime opportunity" to reset relations.  Didn't say it happened, said it could've happened and it would've been a good time for the slate to be wiped clean.

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1 hour ago, Roquentin said:

If you want to gloat, don't expect people to not resent it, which was Starbuck's point. If a group puts heavy stock into winning and debases others for not winning, it only engenders bitterness and resentment and it makes it hard to judge the motivations of those doing it being anything besides prolonging a winning streak. It also shapes the wider culture since people will tend to gravitate to the winners if the defining value of game culture is winning/material superiority.  Depending on how many people remain, there will be a group of people not part of that circle that will want to offer resistance  and that's what he was talking about. 

I can't say I ever truly expected anyone to not resent it. That is only natural. But tell me, why would anyone not want to prolong a winning streak? If you're fighting a series of wars, certainly everyone would consider it preferable to win those wars and continue to win them in the future. Wars are inevitably going to happen and people are going to want to win them. People will gravitate towards winners regardless of the defining values of the game culture. When given the choice between winners and losers, no matter how you define winning and losing, people will choose the winners. Fostering the values of winning could mean a great many different things but the result of that, whether those values are material superiority, nukes launched or something else, will be the same. There will be people willing to offer resistance, that's true. Many of those people will probably experience our gloating as arrogant and unnecessary. But does their opinion mean we should refrain from victory celebrations? I don't think so. We did what we had to do, we succeeded and I don't see why we would let anyone make us feel bad about that.

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orwell_s_1984_oceania_s_currency_by_dungsc127_d97k1zt-fullview.jpg.9994c8f495b96849443aa0defa8730be.jpg

 

 

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1 hour ago, Buorhann said:

Also, I stated "prime opportunity" to reset relations.  Didn't say it happened, said it could've happened and it would've been a good time for the slate to be wiped clean.

If that were the case perhaps EMC should have toned down the rhetoric about any and everything that IQ did during and since the war. If you are going to act like &#33;@#&#036; don't be surprised if we tell you to &#33;@#&#036; off.

37 minutes ago, Big Brother said:

I can't say I ever truly expected anyone to not resent it. That is only natural. But tell me, why would anyone not want to prolong a winning streak? If you're fighting a series of wars, certainly everyone would consider it preferable to win those wars and continue to win them in the future. Wars are inevitably going to happen and people are going to want to win them. People will gravitate towards winners regardless of the defining values of the game culture. When given the choice between winners and losers, no matter how you define winning and losing, people will choose the winners. Fostering the values of winning could mean a great many different things but the result of that, whether those values are material superiority, nukes launched or something else, will be the same. There will be people willing to offer resistance, that's true. Many of those people will probably experience our gloating as arrogant and unnecessary. But does their opinion mean we should refrain from victory celebrations? I don't think so. We did what we had to do, we succeeded and I don't see why we would let anyone make us feel bad about that.

Yes, everyone wants to win but you don't have to be &#33;@#&#036; about it all the time. To be fair, not all of EMC were but as always the more vocal will always get the most attention and if they are dicks you will all get painted with that brush.

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13 hours ago, Dr Rush said:

Or you know totally miss my point. Which is that EMC has already made a rather risky move and has no others unless IQ makes the next one.

They have a variety of moves to make, one being solving past transgressions with IQ alliances and you know actually work towards their stated goals of a dynamic game? 

11 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

As for the 2nd paragraph, it's quite simple. Don't push a rhetoric of opposing to an evil single hegemonic power is killing the game with stagnation, etc etc, and then, when you're finally in a position of being the remaining center of consolidated power (in case I have to make myself clear again, no I'm not saying that it's identical to Syndisphere in the early months of 2017) your group's course of action is to do exactly what you criticized Syndisphere for. Also, I find it quite amusing about how paranoid you're about EMC setting you up with undisclosed MDP's and whatnot, while in reality, you could could play along and do exactly the same thing (have undisclosed MDP's as an insurance if your theory were to materialize). From a PR standpoint, you'd turn out winning due to EMC trying such an underhand tactic to shut down IQ. 

In April 2017, Syndisphere/OO was the hegemonic power stagnating the game, leaving NPO and co. few opportunities to build ties unless parts of them broke off, which is indeed what happened. We haven't gone about building a network as large as tS/OO nor do I see such a bloc in the foreseeable future seeing how any and all avenues between EMC and IQ alliances are still blocked. The paranoia stems from the fact that for all the requests that IQ needs to break-up, none of it has come along with EMC trying to mend bridges. To quite a few of us, it seems like you want us to split up and then well roll the new mini-spheres as such. 

11 hours ago, Shiho Nishizumi said:

As for the final one. No one's jamming narratives down your throats. People are simply holding IQ to their rhetoric. You know, the one they pushed so much, when it proved politically convenient to them. And to be quite honest, knowing your leadership (going by how they behaved during the peace talks for the last war), they either told the former EMC's FA teams to fulfill some unrealistic requirements for them to tag along, or outright laughed at them and told them to bugger off. So no, I'm quite sure that it isn't a failing on EMC's part, but rather, it's just IQ switching their narrative so they don't look like a bunch of hypocrites because their original narrative was rendered obsolete with EMC splitting, and needed reworking for it to be serviceable.

This is pretty much confirms a lot of what I've been saying. You folks have been calling for us to break up, when you've conceded the situations/scenarios are different, without trying to seriously put in any effort to work on assuaging our concerns or our questions really. That's pretty much the definition of jamming your narratives down our throats. Either we break up or we're evil people. The latter half of your paragraph goes on to prove that you don't trust us and we don't trust you and neither of you folks want to put in real effort in becoming friends with any of the IQ alliances or heck even working with them. The fact that you can callously call our leaders out and state theres no reason to work with them, further proves my point in questioning the point of all this "EMC is broken up dialogue" because at the end of the day the hostility from EMC alliances towards IQ has not changed. Why should we take anything you say at face value, when you refuse to even work with any IQ alliance or leadership? Like Buorhann said, you folks had the chance to work on a clean slate and get out and actually build trust amongst the folks rather than demonise them and then go about calling out their leadership and telling us there's no point because well, you're intentions aren't really for the good of the game or dynamism™, but just to demonise and weaken other folks while having to do &#33;@#&#036; all to seriously work out issues. 

Our narratives of EMC splitting hold valid because you folks don't trust us, you folks refuse to work with us, yet you claim some sort of split, and then go about trying to demonise us and tell us theres no point working with us, then why the &#33;@#&#036; should we believe that this split is real and not just a gimmick to weaken any of our ties and allow you folks an advantage? My criticism of your FA holds valid, you folks have failed at truly working on making the game dynamic again.

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1 minute ago, Who Me said:

If that were the case perhaps EMC should have toned down the rhetoric about any and everything that IQ did during and since the war. If you are going to act like &#33;@#&#036; don't be surprised if we tell you to &#33;@#&#036; off.

Yes, everyone wants to win but you don't have to be &#33;@#&#036; about it all the time. To be fair, not all of EMC were but as always the more vocal will always get the most attention and if they are dicks you will all get painted with that brush.

 

Calm down, kosmo.

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46 minutes ago, Who Me said:

Yes, everyone wants to win but you don't have to be &#33;@#&#036; about it all the time. To be fair, not all of EMC were but as always the more vocal will always get the most attention and if they are dicks you will all get painted with that brush.

We weren't dicks about it all the time. The activity that you have actually seen and continue to see on the forums and on Discord is not all there is, just because that's what you notice. I understand where you're coming from but your perspective on it is going to be flawed because there's plenty of activity other than gloating that remains unnoticed because it's not perceived to be as provocative.

If the vocal few lead you to condemn the many, that is a result of your failure in developing a nuanced understanding of people. Don't blame us for your belief in blanket statements and generalizations of whole groups due to the actions of a minority. Why should we change ourselves to accommodate your shortcomings? You are clearly no less capable than anyone else of comprehending that the actions of a few people don't necessarily accurately reflect the characteristics of the majority, which is what you should do.

orwell_s_1984_oceania_s_currency_by_dungsc127_d97k1zt-fullview.jpg.9994c8f495b96849443aa0defa8730be.jpg

 

 

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Impressive that the conversation in here has been successfully changed to gloating. But, it's a bit funny to talk about Syndisphere gloating when some of the most egregious participants now make up the strongest of IQ's core. Now that IQ is the most powerful grouping it's strange to turn that into a reason for being upset and not wanting to make any sort of changes when many on that side have actively participated in it. 

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10 hours ago, Betulius said:

or Mensa and Rose, was the joke I think you missed there

The joke was actually aimed at Roq and his flying monkeys. He's spent the better part of a year telling me that I didn't actually sign Mensa because I liked them, that I was just bandwagoning to avoid being rolled. It's a pretty good example of what goes on in his mind, tbh.

Also, I'm at 2 Roq dislikes. Who want's to start a pool on how many I can get before the thread is locked?

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1 minute ago, Buorhann said:

You and Sketchy seem to be in competition for it

He got worst poster, he's not getting this too.

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1 hour ago, durmij said:

The joke was actually aimed at Roq and his flying monkeys. He's spent the better part of a year telling me that I didn't actually sign Mensa because I liked them, that I was just bandwagoning to avoid being rolled. It's a pretty good example of what goes on in his mind, tbh.

Right, because Mensa would totally want to protect Rose if there were no reconciliation.

Dec 26 18:48:22 <JacobH[Arrgh]>    God your worse the grealind >.>

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We'd have much rather have more people to potentially roll, not less.

But durmij, Oblige, Lilac, and Yang put in some serious work to reconcile differences between our alliances then.  There were some others as well, but those four stood out.  We even constantly made fun of them in our embassy thread, but they took it in stride and showed us that they had some humor.  Really good times.  I actually went back to read some old posts there.

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9 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

We'd have much rather have more people to potentially roll, not less.

But durmij, Oblige, Lilac, and Yang put in some serious work to reconcile differences between our alliances then.  There were some others as well, but those four stood out.  We even constantly made fun of them in our embassy thread, but they took it in stride and showed us that they had some humor.  Really good times.  I actually went back to read some old posts there.

&#33;@#&#036; Rose!

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Slaughter the shits of the world. They poison the air you breathe.

 

~ William S. Burroughs

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10 hours ago, Big Brother said:

I can't say I ever truly expected anyone to not resent it. That is only natural. But tell me, why would anyone not want to prolong a winning streak? If you're fighting a series of wars, certainly everyone would consider it preferable to win those wars and continue to win them in the future. Wars are inevitably going to happen and people are going to want to win them. People will gravitate towards winners regardless of the defining values of the game culture. When given the choice between winners and losers, no matter how you define winning and losing, people will choose the winners. Fostering the values of winning could mean a great many different things but the result of that, whether those values are material superiority, nukes launched or something else, will be the same. There will be people willing to offer resistance, that's true. Many of those people will probably experience our gloating as arrogant and unnecessary. But does their opinion mean we should refrain from victory celebrations? I don't think so. We did what we had to do, we succeeded and I don't see why we would let anyone make us feel bad about that.

In this case, the problem is prolonging a winning streak at all costs isn't reconcilable with caring about "what's good for the game", which is the sudden rationale for the splits here.  The issue is the new narrative clashes with the old of always trying to come out ahead. Constantly winning by one group will definitely result in a fairly rigid, unchanging situation.  When people go on about how they've always and insisted the records reflect that and then expect other people to compromise themselves by shedding the allies who have been willing to stay through losing wars, it's not going to get a positive reception. When people tout their record of winning every war, winning every war since x date, and so on any move will be seen as a power play to procure an advantage. Nukes launched is a different thing since nukes launched wouldn't always coincide with material superiority. I mean winning in the traditional sense of material superiority. If there was an alternative culture where people cared about the nukes launched or whatever, then it'd be a different value system. The two could co-exist.  No one is trying to make you feel bad about succeeding but when people(I'm not talking about you specifically since obviously you're not in a mainstream alliance) who have been part of that  start preaching about how they're making changes for the good of the game, they're going to get a lot of cynicism rather than taken at face value. That's why it matters a lot.

1 hour ago, durmij said:

The joke was actually aimed at Roq and his flying monkeys. He's spent the better part of a year telling me that I didn't actually sign Mensa because I liked them, that I was just bandwagoning to avoid being rolled. It's a pretty good example of what goes on in his mind, tbh.

Also, I'm at 2 Roq dislikes. Who want's to start a pool on how many I can get before the thread is locked?

When did I say that?  I used stockholm syndrome multiple times. Either way, it entailed bandwagoning to avoid getting rolled or avoiding disbandment I guess(since people are saying Mensa saved Rose from disbanding) and you joined the dominant side by doing so shortly after a war. It contributed to the most unipolar situation the game has ever seen in its existence and it will always appear that to many people. The fact it got a fairly uncritical reception by the mainstream crowd doesn't change that. I definitely don't think you would have signed Mensa if it was them that had kept getting rolled, however.

29 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

We'd have much rather have more people to potentially roll, not less.

But durmij, Oblige, Lilac, and Yang put in some serious work to reconcile differences between our alliances then.  There were some others as well, but those four stood out.  We even constantly made fun of them in our embassy thread, but they took it in stride and showed us that they had some humor.  Really good times.  I actually went back to read some old posts there.

That doesn't really square with what you said about wanting to diminish the potential opposition through signing Rose(wanting more people to roll not less). I'll give you the benefit of the doubt with the Yang citiation since Yang wasn't even there until later on. I don't really think I ever made the claim that Rose wasn't talking to Mensa presigning which is what people are saying here.

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48 minutes ago, Roquentin said:

That doesn't really square with what you said about wanting to diminish the potential opposition through signing Rose(wanting more people to roll not less). I'll give you the benefit of the doubt with the Yang citiation since Yang wasn't even there until later on. I don't really think I ever made the claim that Rose wasn't talking to Mensa presigning which is what people are saying here.

There are definitely more reasons than just one for a move such as that.  Rose approached us to reconcile and find new friends.  I looked at it much differently than what the rest of Mensa saw it as.  Half the membership in Mensa didn't want to sign Rose because "&#33;@#&#036; Rose" (Or similar grudge like sentiments, plus it'd be less war for us overall).  The other half trusted my judgement on the matter.  Regardless of which side a member was, we did appreciate and enjoy the conversations we've had with them on our embassy thread for them.  It was good friendly banter.

However, "I" won't deny the fact that it served multiple purposes.   I've been a long time advocate against people who are shitty leaders for their alliances, and Rose was one of the alliances I was adamantly vocal about in the past (Both Keegoz and Pubbie can agree with this).

Here's a list:

-I actually enjoyed a lot of conversations I had with Rose members, so getting me to work on signing them wasn't too hard to persuade me with

-I wanted to show them how we operated in Syndisphere and why we were effective

-I wanted to lessen the growing numbers of a coalition forming against us, especially considering the fact we were starting to lose members for various reasons

-The fact Rose was being thrown around like a ragdoll between alliance ties, I honestly felt bad for them.

There are other reasons, but those are the four that stand out to me from the top of my head.  Notice something there though, I stated " I " a lot.  While I was the FA of Mensa and one of the more vocal leaders in the Syndisphere coalition, I had to take all of that and talk to our allies and Mensa's own members to get them on board with it.  There were quite a few people not happy with the idea of it, but quite a lot of people trusted me on the matter.  And I'm glad they did, because I worked hard to be honest with all of my connections and the communities I've been a part of.

Anyways, getting on a tangent here.  In short, I had to put down a lot of work to get it done and I made sure not to step on too many toes.  It was roughly a week or so of talks to make it happen.  I also told my Rose contacts what we expected.  They just wanted to be protected while they fixed their internal issues and reform, but we told them we don't do protectorates.  So if we were to get attacked, we wanted them immediately on board with us.  If they were to get attacked, we would immediately jump to assist them as well.   None of this lollygagging bullshit that some alliances do.  We gave them our expectations, nothing more, nothing less.  I'd like to think they appreciated the upfront honesty and dedication we were to provide in assisting them in rebuilding.

 

Sidenote:  You did claim that Rose was talking to Mensa "presigning" in the past arguments with durmij and Sketchy.  Other than us making fun of each other and just keeping in touch, that wasn't the case.  When I was approached "about a protectorate tie", it was a complete surprise.

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