[[Sphere] Fate Lies in the Stars]

48 minutes ago, Pascal said:

But I thought this sphere had nothing to do with HW ? Oh wait ...

How dreadfully simplistic.

 

Politics never occurs in a vacuum. Do you not factor other spheres' power into the viability of your current or prospective position? That does not equal "OMG ITS ALL ABOUT XYZ" 

(although tbf. Where WANA has to make a calculation a variety of factors and take a more balanced stance, my retirement permits me the liberty to tell you that HW as an entity is incredibly restrictive to the political meta due to the sheer unassailability of its tiering by any one single grouping).

[[Sphere] Fate Lies in the Stars]

10 hours ago, Pascal said:

Yes, yes. Because 2 spheres holding 65-70% of the c30s+ in the game is not bipolarity.

Tripolarity ? You're just trying to consolidate the upper tier to make yourself unkillable in that tier. As if Clock could stand any chance to beat Ro$e or HW at c30+ by being outnumbered over 2:1 by Ro$e or outtiered by HW, so spare me your moral grandstanding.

I see you as the kind of guy who tries to fight fire with fire.

Why are you bemoaning tS and not hw for being a catalyst in the first place?

[[Cancelation] tCW / Wei Notice]

Looks at cynic

[[DoW] DoDoW]

7 hours ago, Yosodog said:

BK Declares that we Declared War on Blackwater or something like that

 

/s/
Militarized Autists

Who are you?

[[Peace] Make Love Not War On Valentine's Day]

@Buorhann Mark my words fool. The next time you send your pathetic henchmen to hit me, I am diving deep into TCW and @Sphinx.

 

That's not a threat.  That's a promise. Don't mess with Tjest.

[[Peace] Make Love Not War On Valentine's Day]

Just now, katashimon13 said:

teachers have no concept of time anymore due to swapping between staggered, hybrid, online, and in person so many times

i have none cause i dont sleep >_<

rawr

Eat this downvote Kata.

[[Peace] Make Love Not War On Valentine's Day]

I see you've finally had enough. I hope you've learned not to mess with me again.

[[RON Exclusive] Politics are dead!]

8 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

There is no such thing as a good CB, it does not exist.  You could have the worlds greatest airtight CB, and the side you hit will still argue that your CB is garbage.  Also hitting people to slow down growth is basically 90% of the reason anyone goes to war, but is generally never mentioned, because game mechanic reasons for war don't make for fun politics. 

What is more interesting? Grumpy attacking tS for revenge, or Grumpy attacking tS because they are concerned about the growing glob on 32-35 city nations continuing to grow unchecked, and want to slow them down, so that Grumpy can retain its security in the upper tier?  (I look forward to this statement eventually being used against me)

Almost every major war is about game mechanics, and knocking someone down so you can jump ahead of them, we just paper over that with politics to keep it more interesting.  Most of the established alliances are smart enough nowadays not to go around giving people reasons to hit them. (except me for some reason)

If you want wacky shenanigans go join a micro and get involved down there where they get into wars for all kinds of weird or fun reasons.

See! Ronny is trying to strangle the game with his locked down top tier!

 

(Happy to oblige hehe)

[A Proposal on the Culture of Orbis (Poll Included) - Published by HarvardU]

5 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Again what is this magical world you are talking about before IQ?  I have been in leadership positions since the start of this game, and I am straight up telling you, we are currently in the golden age of interesting politics in PnW.   Back in this magical land of PnW you seem to remember, I believe my old alliance VE fought Guardian almost every single war.  We had 2 major globals a year and people would complain constantly on the OWF how boring shit was because we would go months between wars. It would generally be the same groups hitting each other, with a few alliances shifting back and forth every war.  Go to the wiki, go look it up.

Alliance leaders are not going to dissolve their blocks, because its not in their best interests, you would have the 3 or 4 biggest alliances just roll in and destroy anyone they want.  That is the entire point of having blocs, it gives smaller alliances the chance to compete on the same footing as the big dogs.   This is why alliances form blocs in the first place, for security, and to help them work toward their political goals.  If you are in a bloc, and you don't agree with what your bloc is trying to do, you should leave your bloc.

Now I cannot speak about how all blocs work, but I can say that in my bloc, all member alliances have a voice, its not just Guardian, or TKR, or TI, that decides what our bloc does.  If someone really doesn't want to do something, either we don't do it, or we go our separate ways (except Oblivion, they just do whatever they want) If one alliance is railroading your entire bloc, again, I would recommend you leave your bloc, and find one that is more in-line with your politics.

For the record, NPO did not create bloc politics, we have had blocks since the start of the game.  The reason we are seeing more isolated blocs is because when the treaty web was an actual web, treaty chains would cause huge headaches with things like opsec, and also allow shitty alliances to dodge out of wars, and no one likes it when alliances hide behind their treaties to avoid wars.  Isolated blocs forces everyone to fight and people know exactly who they can count on when the time comes.

As for post war terms, that is a slippery slope, you put crushing terms on someone, but they are going to come back and try to do the same thing to you, and its going to escalate back and forth until you have a 9 month war, and a 10 page peace document.  In theory you think putting terms on somebody is fun, and it can be fun to wield that power over a defeated opponent.  But what is not fun, is when someone does it to you, and you have no leverage to stop them, the only leverage you have is to drag out the war and hope that the winning side decides its better to end the war than humiliate its opponent, this is how wars drag on for months.  That is not the game you want to play, I promise you that.

You refer to GnR as an example of Rose getting white peace and that being boring.  Here is a little secret we haven't shared, holding down 3 blocks at the same time is not easy and extremely resource intensive.  It was in our best interest to get that war ended when we did. We def won that war, but if they wanted to drag out the peace negotiations because we asked for something crazy, there is a chance we could have eventually lost.

As for people being able to build back after a war, this is what all well run alliances should be able to do.  This has been the case since the beginning of the game.  If you have half a brain, you don't start a war you cannot afford to recover from, plus your econ department should always have enough funds to be able to bounce back afterwards, that's why its called a warchest.  If it takes you more than say a week to get back up and running after a war, your alliance has failed you.

Would it be more fun for everyone if alliance leadership could get its entire membership involved with large scale decisions, I bet most alliance leaders would love to do it (I believe grumpy is the only alliance in the game that does this).  The problem is they cant, because you always have a few people in every alliance that cant keep their mouths shut, and that basically destroys any chance of an alliance being able to do anything.  So 98% of the player base is stuck in the dark till the absolute last minute.  It's why general membership loves leaks, because it lets them in on the secret, but the sad part is, if they could be trusted to keep their mouths shut, they wouldnt need leaks, because their alliance could just tell them.

 

if there's not 5 e's its not SWEEEEET Ronny D!

You should break up gg, Ronny.

 

Love

 

Parti

 

 

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

1 hour ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

I find this to be true, this game is always more fun if I have someone to in-game hate.  The hate is real helpful in terms of setting future goals.  Currently my in-game hate is directed at tS, which is why we are rolling them.  After this war ends, I will find someone new to in-game hate, or if tS are oldschool BK levels of pain to deal with during the peace process, I will continue to in-game hate them.

If GOB are oldschool BK levels of pain to deal with during the peace process, I will continue to in-game hate them *and* yell at them.

[[DoW]The Fear Has Struck]

C heap cardboard ripoff of glorious tjest art, led by pretender with a pinky toe of workmaster fragglesans charisma declares on huggers.

[Return to the OWF, fellow Orbisans]

I have a radical idea to make things better!

Be interesting.

One of the things I harped on since the onset of the decline of forum posting, is the necessity for flavor. that is to say:

- Take on a persona and disconnect your OOC from that persona to some degree. This both helps solidify the IC-OOC divide (which is needed to reduce toxicity) and it allows for the creation of drama and narratives.
- Take (political) risks and have an actual agenda *at all times*. Having an agenda is not bad: Just be consistent and clear with it (unless you are roleplaying something that isn't, but that does mean you deal with more adversity in other forms. It can be fun, like a *game*.
- Don't all try to play the hurr durr honorable good guy. Be righteous. Be self serving. Be egotistic. Be bullheaded or any other controversial characteristic you can think of. *that* is how you create narratives.
- Your alliance culture is 90% chance cookie cutter. That makes you flavorless and boring. Go build an actual culture. Mold it. Alliance variety drives the game's flavor.
- Don't base everything you do on who you like OOC. I've been signed to every rival i've had at one point or another and most of my rivals have been allies eventually. Come to think of it, only UPN does not make that list. !@#$ you UPN.
- post actually interesting stuff. Hurr durring about needing more WoTs is a good start. I applaud you. Now go actually be interesting in game-related things.

[War Propaganda Thread]

17 hours ago, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

well you have that issue because you guys only fight in dogpiles.

Why don't you split up that humegatron whale tier and fight yourself instead of bothering us with your whalegasms, old man.

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

1 hour ago, Mayor said:

Hey buddy, you going to rejoin the game yet? Or does Syndicate really have so little support these days that they need to dust off all their old leaders to get them into this thread? I can't say that I was surprised to see you pop up in here but it just makes me so sad because you remind me of the old Syndicate.

You urge me to respond constructively but why should anyone take Syndicate seriously, they are not a serious alliance. They use trash CBs, they are hypocrites, and they obviously don't want to change. I think after this war everyone is fine relegating them to the trash bin of Orbis and forgetting about them. Maybe if you wanted "actionable grievances" you actually read what many in this thread have posted instead of trying to blame Orbis as a whole for their behavior. tS in a year from now will be acting the same way, with the same allies, with the same tactics and rhetoric.. Nothing will have changed.

Hope you're well!

Unfortunately your response is not going to invite much beyond resistance or escalation.

I will choose to focus on the more civil responses in this thread.

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

12 hours ago, Mayor said:

Yes very interesting to see tS CBs which boil down to members ghosting for raids in KT, attacking Oasis (of all alliances) to being a threat to BW and tS. Literally the worst bloc in the game a threat to tS? What a sad joke. Your threads and allies threads have been a barren wasteland as well, this thread by HC is only thing seemingly to get tS to wake up and actually do something for once. So forgive me for not believing that tS brings anything to the table when it comes to interesting and fun gameplay regardless of being "honorable". Syndicate are not good guys or bad guys, your boring guys.

 

 

12 hours ago, Mayor said:

Yes yes, we all know tS prominent early activity and early wars. Many times tS won outnumbered and facing the powers of the game. What happened to that Syndicate? Because all I see is an alliance that whines every global they lose about it being a dogpile, and an alliance that dogpiles every chance they can to win against anybody else. Oasis? threat to tS gotta dogpile. Rose, we can take those guys on with another entire sphere. Oh do we not have enough allies to fight HW? Better decom all military and give up. Like Jesus. If your mentality was forged in greatness before by now that has withered and left an empty husk and that is the current Syndicate.

 

 

Hi Mayor,

It's unfortunate that you pick BigBro's (half)trollpost to repeat a few cookie-cutter grievances which frankly could well apply to 90% of alliances in the game across multiple eras. What you've just described is the long-proven standard of political browser sims such as this one.

Even if I were to take your post seriously, it quickly boils down to "Damned if we do, damned if we don't". Do you happen to have any actionable grievances with a degree of validity that we should look at?

If not, we will leave it at this and focus on the complaints we've gotten from others.

 

P.s. given your earlier krampus-related behavior, I urge you to respond more constructively, or not at all.

15 hours ago, Hodor said:

Up vote, but it bears further reiterating: this is exactly the takeaway I'd say is the important part and you've summarized, at least my grievance, perfectly.

 

11 hours ago, Adrienne said:

 

 

Seconded. This thread has certainly been a wild ride and an interesting read, to say the least. Thanks for putting up with us, Syndi, and I'm sorry for some of the bs you've had to put up with on your way to being able to have a more productive discussion. It was nice chatting with y'all this morning on your discord as well.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll reach out on a personal  level to get a better understanding on where you believe that fine line exists if you don't mind.

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

7 minutes ago, Cooper_ said:

Just want to point out that I think ideological disagreements are good and healthy for the game because we should be having discourse from multiple viewpoints.  One of the things I've always appreciated about T$, whether you agree or disagree, is that y'all are willing to take a stance and stick with it for the long-haul.  That isn't something I personally want to see the lost because more principled actors in the game means more interesting and diverse politics (*coughs in Rose's direction*).  

The other question, and the one I feel is more at stake here, is how you go about doing it, and it feels like especially after you left Partisan that things have gotten nastier and exhausting to deal with it.  Adam nailed the point that you splitting the middle expertly, between pushing your points but also stopping before you got too inflammatory.  Issue is that basically nobody is going to be as good at being you as you.

And as I said in a previous post, I don't think it's just y'all but also the environment you're in.  It's one thing to have eumir be eumir on the forums and then have you making tounge-in-cheek "friend" comments.  It's another to have a half-dozen syndi gov and ex-gov relentlessly attacking you in the RON public chat.  I don't need to be called an idiot 20 times before I can finish typing a sentence to know that y'all have valid disagreements with me.  Having been both your ally and enemy, I can say it sucks on either end.  

Obviously, this isn't everything at issue here, but I'm trying to leave the comments on current politics to the active politicians.  

Aye. I think one of the key takeaways of the critiques t$ receives here is for us to reflect on our playstyle in a way that maintains the ideological (core) facets  of t$ that add flavour to the game, while also considering behaviorisms that may have escalated for the worse. I haven't been fully read up on recent memory, but would it be a safe assumption that if on a gov-level, we decouple gripes surrounding our communication style from gripes surrounding our political style,we'd be casting a big enough net to address the most pressing criticisms levied at t$?

Sidenote- I speak for Partisan and not t$, although t$ gov naturally reads this thread.

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

3 minutes ago, Hodor said:

You misunderstand me. I don't prefer OOC outrage. What I am saying is that IC outrage shouldn't be able to be confused with OOC outrage, and I think it often is. IC outrage can be really entertaining and enriching to the game if done well, but I think too often the veil between IC and OOC is very thin if not non-existent.

I agree with that. Playing around that line myself quite often, it's easy for things to progress south. Even so, as a community I would prefer seeing self regulation in the form of defining that line through IC (roleplay) means, rather than shirking away from it entirely and denouncing anything remotely controversial.

My initial point wias not that you prefer OOC outrage- it was that I haven't seen many viable alternatives to IC drama, even if IC drama is a fine line. The alternatives I've seen (as noted above) have not been pretty. If I am to make a choice, i'd still choose my (and/or syndi's) approach to the game.

With regards to hostility or alienation, I do think tS and a good few in Orbis are at odds due to animosity which has developed since NPOLT. Having been t$' leader during that period and having seen the internal dynamics of t$, I know where t$' hostility stems from. I also do think I hear the gripes some of you voiced here with regards to said hostility. It's a bit circular as one reinforces the other.

With regards to t$' historical play: I do agree that our style was the norm for a long period (even if we were not necessarily the ones to introduce it. We did adopt it and became adept at it. The norms have now changed  and yes, t$ is resistant to those norms, both due to the aforementioned alienation, and because we genuinely don't understand the appeal. If I were to pinpoint a few:

- Discord diplomacy vs forum discourse

- Coalitions of convenience vs treaty warfare (or bloc warfare)

- The "Fight for fun" mentality vs political pragmatism

- An OOC-centric view vs an IC-centric view

and so on, and so forth. I can't say I take all posts in this thread seriously. Some of them (like yours), I do, because I know you to be a consistent actor with a more IC focus. There are also a good few in this thread who are currently eggin WANA and/or t$ when their history is ridden with OOC-related incidents and/or contradictory behavior that goes against the fundamental logic behind their qualms with t$. Those responses are yielding hostile t$ responses. That's something i'd like to differentiate with perhaps disproportionally hostile responses to genuinely intended criticisms. Certainly, from its position, t$ may be guilty of those. But I doubt it's at the scale or as generizable a  it appears to be from this thread.

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

1 hour ago, Hodor said:

Thanks for the write up WANA, I think this touches on some interesting points. I think for one, in the post NPO era there's been a conscious effort to reduce the toxicity and excess in IC RP. This has been more or less adapted by all alliances, but something critical happened to t$ that didn't allow for it to make the shift as well. I wonder if the tension and borderline animosity surrounding people labeling t$ a hegemony in the period after NPOLT isolated you all and has been informing your mindset since. At that time, I was taken aback at how vociferous t$ was, but maybe this is chalked up to your isolation? or people like me misread it because we still had a bad taste in our mouths from your actions and silence in the first half of NPOLT?

Regardless, the more I think about it, the more I think I've always taken an issue with the way t$ is playing the politics of outrage right now, but it was the norm in the game for so long that it would have been useless to rage against it. Now, t$ alone is still playing that old game and it's much more stark of a contrast to the game the rest of the world is playing. It's always my belief that IC outrage shouldn't be able to be confused with OOC outrage and that a healthy separation should exist between the two and in this style of play the line is very thin.

You're correct as to one source of the disconnect between ts and the community at large. The aftermath of npolt alienated ts strongly, and subsequent events reinforced that over time.

 

Another source you touch on imo is philosophy and style. I can't pretend I'm not confused at your preference of non-ic outrage when the only 2 alternatives I've seen over the years have been some pretty nasty ooc stuff, or boredom

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

1 minute ago, Horsecock said:

Maybe actually read it, and then learn to type in English.

Don't bash my shoddily mobile typed response to you friend.

[[DoW] Containment Procedure 81274 Initiated]

Hi synderkut

[[DoW] A Grumpy Old Bastard's Declaration of War]

If you stopped being a big unstoppable hyper whale force with constricting tendencies I might consider not hitting you.

 

Just saying

[An Appeal to The Syndicate]

If I am understanding you correctly, you seek for ts to take the politics, the vigor and the flavor out of its demeanor. To do so, across the game,would leave an empty husk of ooc meta arguments, fragmented drama about irl politics and general hattery. The void left in the wake of the departure of roleplay and IC drama invites something altogether dumber. Darker. Boring.

 

Is this truly what you wish Orbis?

 

[Creepeth Were Whales Image In May - Terminal Jest communique]

 

Winged Dry Be Moving Great Wherein

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In Herb Saw

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Seed

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To Be

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[[RoH] Bad move Bucko]

 

[Recognition of Hostilities on My Senses @everyone @here]

8 hours ago, 丂ħ̧i̧₣ɫ̵γ͘ ̶™ said:

Can y'all recognize hostilities in game instead? For real smh

Some of y'all had a better RoH on the forums with more posters replying than nations countering

Let the steamrollers make the better threads that each 3-20 pages worth of salt and go off topic w/ numerous attempts by the mods to shut it down.

Magic eight ball says:

 

no!