Alliance Category Voting - Official

[Seeker]

Just now, Hope said:

y’all nominated them, im only contending that the fact that it’s obvious votes were coordinated so that only people in IQ would win.

 

 

because it just so happens that the majority of people in the community find Sval hilarious? if that was the case then you’d think people on both sides would agree with you. or that people on both sides find Thantos to be the best community addition..oh wait that isnt the case

:shrug: 

at least you can stop complaining the forums ars biased against IQ players now

It would appear that the majority of people who voted think that's the case (look at current results).  What does the opinion of another person have anything to do with whoever is voting?  The purpose of voting is to enable the individual to vote on his own volition, he doesn't need to be validated by anyone else to credit his vote valid.  That's absurd.

[Element]

16 minutes ago, Hope said:

the issue isnt that IQ is winning the polls or whatever. it’s that we all can’t set aside our political differences for literally a couple forum threads to just vote who we think is best deserving. i think it’s pretty obvious IQ doesn’t even believe their own votes are the best choices in many of the categories

yes, EMC has done the same thing before. no, that doesn’t mean IQ doing it this year now gives them a free pass

usually people say “this is why we can’t have nice things” as a joke, but im being completely serious when i say this. we as a community are unable to set aside our IC/OOC drama to do something fun together. yes, it’s a competition. no, it really doesn’t matter that much if you win or lose. 

im aware im guilty of doing the same thing as well, but i’m more disappointed than anything atm that something that was supposed to be fun has devolved into this

 

edit: telling your members to go out and vote their conscience? that’s a load of shit and you know it. you told them who to vote for and if you say otherwise that’s a lie and you know it

I can say I have set aside any differences and voted for who I truly thought was best deserving of each award. 

The same thing as what? Voting based on a personal opinion like I did? Wow, that is pretty low and here you are being a hypocrite then. But I digress. I guess voting based on my conscientious decision and personal opinion is "rigged" and I must be politically correct by voting based on your personal opinion instead. I'm sorry. 

In response to your edit, I truly don't recall being told who or what to vote for. I'm pretty sure I was just told to go vote if I haven't done so already. So think what you want if it makes you feel better. If it makes you feel better, my personal opinion says you deserve the sore loser award. 

[hidude45454]

I haven't really commented much on this yet since I'm more or less done with the game, but I'll give my best shot to try and be as unbiased as possible.

First, while IQ are telling their members who to vote for, this doesn't constitute putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to vote against their will. Anyone from IQ can still vote for whoever they want, and if they do so they won't get caught. There are still probably a fair amount of IQ members who have done this, and I don't fault them for believing what they believe.

Second, for the IQ members that are vote brigading, while distasteful this is still a fair strategy. I don't see this as any different from real life, where avowed Republicans will always vote Republicans into office and avowed Democrats will always vote Democrats into office regardless of how well they actually know the candidate. Similarly, in the UK in the House of Commons it's frowned upon for a party member to vote contrary to the party, and in the US Congress much the same thing happens (albeit with a few more deviations). If EMC cares so much about winning at least a few of the categories, then they can just adopt the same strategy IQ did and fight a voting war of sorts, at least to release steam from not actually having a war in-game. Being a democratic poll, we should respect the results because that's what a democracy entails.

However, third, I think that IQ needs to understand that their brigading extends beyond their supposed initial intent not to take many of the categories seriously. Bezzers and the rest of AIM worked their butts off to make sure that the voting would proceed smoothly, and the level of disappointment this has caused combined with a total lack of appreciation for the work they've put in disappoints me as well. And seriously AIM - thank you so much for making it happen this year, I was just excited as everyone else waiting for this to happen and I'm glad that it could still continue this year. In addition, the total lack of civility in these threads is detracting from the inherent purpose of these awards itself - to provide an additional boost of confidence and motivation for those that need it to succeed - and there are still voters out there that want this to happen, such as Buorhann and myself.

Finally, fourth and most importantly, the voting highlights some inherent flaws found in every democracy. No matter what, there will always be uneducated voters who are unable to observe the world outside a limited scope, and there are always those who internalize beliefs that others tell them to believe. Indeed, there are probably many in IQ who genuinely believe that who they voted for is the right choice, but there are also those who don't really know what they're voting for or why they should be voting for a certain candidate over another candidate. IQ's argument seems to be resting on the fact that we can't know what their members think and that they voted using their own free will, but the fact of the matter remains that IQ did push a list of candidates to vote for and that there are people who voted for candidates that were not serious choices or that they don't exactly know why is the best choice. I don't blame IQ for this, rather democracy itself, so as said before, as long as there is a winner they should be accepted without so much anger towards IQ. However, what bothers me is what I perceive to be the results of the awards, which are, in and of itself, propaganda. Throughout history, while slightly modified, there's been a phrase that largely remains the same - if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Disregarding whether these results are lies or not, there are inevitably going to be those that voted along with the horde in order to be part of a group, and as a result of any cognitive dissonance they have as a result, adjust their own opinions to fit with the rest of the group until you could swear that it was their own original idea in the first place.

Inherently, there's nothing wrong with adopting the opinions of others, but I suppose you could say that this isn't exactly the best way to go about it. To those brigading for any candidate, including those from last year's Syndisphere, I sincerely hope that you explore beyond your own sphere and come to your own independent decisions about PnW in general beyond a list or just what you're told by others. And for the current situation, no matter how you portray it, IQ isn't the best at everything, and people shouldn't vote nor act based on those beliefs. Although I'll accept the results of the polls, they don't mean very much to me, but I genuinely hope that overall PnW will become a much more exciting place in my absence and that these polls won't cause hurt and aggression beyond what's happened so far.

Anyways, I'm probably gonna get a lot of tl;dr's and people generally mocking me for bothering to write something this long and stupid, but I guess since I'm going to be gone from forums from now on I just wanted to put some effort into expressing my feelings about all of this.

[Edward I]

29 minutes ago, Hope said:

because it just so happens that the majority of people in the community find Sval hilarious? if that was the case then you’d think people on both sides would agree with you. or that people on both sides find Thantos to be the best community addition..oh wait that isnt the case. nobody has heard of him besides GoG

IQ has around 500 players. Obviously that's not a majority of the player base, but it's a lot. I don't know what to tell you other than our lack of posts doesn't correspond to a lack of opinions.

This thread is illustrative of why there tends to be a lack of IQ posts.

[Guest Curufinwe]

1 hour ago, Hope said:

 

[Buorhann]

I do find it amazing that these topics are pulling IQsphere aligned players into posting here, lol.   So that should count for something.

[Flanderlion]

We missed y'all. I discovered there is an IQ bloc today, and evidently we're part of it (I think). Forums are just as salty and anti-NPO as when I last logged on. It's a vote, if you don't like the result and think it's exclusively us voting, then either suck it up or get your own guys to vote.

[Prefonteen]

8 hours ago, Buorhann said:

Small correction.

Mensa coordinated votes on themselves during polls (At least the early ones after we started up and had 50+ members).  I think TKR coordinated theirs one year too, but beyond that - that was the only coordinated stuff.

So yes, we're guilty of it, but not as a sphere.  That was also before Sheepy decided to give awards to players who won the votes.

However, I honestly care less about the votes.  It's amusing.

See. That's the attitude you should have towards this :P.

 

As for giving awards to players ingame; that's something I never really was fond of anyways, if only because it creates IC incentive to coordinate votes (as evident) :P.

 

Plus... he never retroactively applied my awards

7 hours ago, hidude45454 said:

I haven't really commented much on this yet since I'm more or less done with the game, but I'll give my best shot to try and be as unbiased as possible.

First, while IQ are telling their members who to vote for, this doesn't constitute putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to vote against their will. Anyone from IQ can still vote for whoever they want, and if they do so they won't get caught. There are still probably a fair amount of IQ members who have done this, and I don't fault them for believing what they believe.

Second, for the IQ members that are vote brigading, while distasteful this is still a fair strategy. I don't see this as any different from real life, where avowed Republicans will always vote Republicans into office and avowed Democrats will always vote Democrats into office regardless of how well they actually know the candidate. Similarly, in the UK in the House of Commons it's frowned upon for a party member to vote contrary to the party, and in the US Congress much the same thing happens (albeit with a few more deviations). If EMC cares so much about winning at least a few of the categories, then they can just adopt the same strategy IQ did and fight a voting war of sorts, at least to release steam from not actually having a war in-game. Being a democratic poll, we should respect the results because that's what a democracy entails.

However, third, I think that IQ needs to understand that their brigading extends beyond their supposed initial intent not to take many of the categories seriously. Bezzers and the rest of AIM worked their butts off to make sure that the voting would proceed smoothly, and the level of disappointment this has caused combined with a total lack of appreciation for the work they've put in disappoints me as well. And seriously AIM - thank you so much for making it happen this year, I was just excited as everyone else waiting for this to happen and I'm glad that it could still continue this year. In addition, the total lack of civility in these threads is detracting from the inherent purpose of these awards itself - to provide an additional boost of confidence and motivation for those that need it to succeed - and there are still voters out there that want this to happen, such as Buorhann and myself.

Finally, fourth and most importantly, the voting highlights some inherent flaws found in every democracy. No matter what, there will always be uneducated voters who are unable to observe the world outside a limited scope, and there are always those who internalize beliefs that others tell them to believe. Indeed, there are probably many in IQ who genuinely believe that who they voted for is the right choice, but there are also those who don't really know what they're voting for or why they should be voting for a certain candidate over another candidate. IQ's argument seems to be resting on the fact that we can't know what their members think and that they voted using their own free will, but the fact of the matter remains that IQ did push a list of candidates to vote for and that there are people who voted for candidates that were not serious choices or that they don't exactly know why is the best choice. I don't blame IQ for this, rather democracy itself, so as said before, as long as there is a winner they should be accepted without so much anger towards IQ. However, what bothers me is what I perceive to be the results of the awards, which are, in and of itself, propaganda. Throughout history, while slightly modified, there's been a phrase that largely remains the same - if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes the truth. Disregarding whether these results are lies or not, there are inevitably going to be those that voted along with the horde in order to be part of a group, and as a result of any cognitive dissonance they have as a result, adjust their own opinions to fit with the rest of the group until you could swear that it was their own original idea in the first place.

Inherently, there's nothing wrong with adopting the opinions of others, but I suppose you could say that this isn't exactly the best way to go about it. To those brigading for any candidate, including those from last year's Syndisphere, I sincerely hope that you explore beyond your own sphere and come to your own independent decisions about PnW in general beyond a list or just what you're told by others. And for the current situation, no matter how you portray it, IQ isn't the best at everything, and people shouldn't vote nor act based on those beliefs. Although I'll accept the results of the polls, they don't mean very much to me, but I genuinely hope that overall PnW will become a much more exciting place in my absence and that these polls won't cause hurt and aggression beyond what's happened so far.

Anyways, I'm probably gonna get a lot of tl;dr's and people generally mocking me for bothering to write something this long and stupid, but I guess since I'm going to be gone from forums from now on I just wanted to put some effort into expressing my feelings about all of this.

You know. I don't like you. But you make valid points. So uhhh. Kudos?

 

I feel dirty now.

[Bhuto]

BK has better military than TKR ??? 
Is this based on the stats of the last orbo world war I fought in or ayyliens coming from parallel universe voting for BK ??

[Felkey]

10 hours ago, Who Me said:

 

So your plan to throw in a few marginal candidates along with the players and alliances you wanted to win backfired on you? Poor babies.

Kind of like having Arrgh one ship beige you so you could rebuild in beige right? BTW, did you have to pay them for that?

I think you're missing the point that damage value is a rather absurd statistic to use as it can be easily skewed to the losing side. Hitting over inflated infra with nukes while having nothing but rubble left hardy qualifies you for best military. It definitely qualifies you for most stubborn though. 

[greatkitteh]

This thread pulled IQ players in but not me shitposting?

[Seeker]

8 minutes ago, greatkitteh said:

This thread pulled IQ players in but not me shitposting?

I have been waiting for the messiah to return.

[Tiber]

I too am shocked and appalled that this anonymous internet poll has not gone as expected. 

[Keegoz]

Not entirely sure why people care all that much. These have always practically been a joke and I don't foresee them not being one.

It always has been a circle-jerk it just seems like a few people are upset it is no longer theirs. You could always I dunno, start a war if you're really that upset about it.

[Who Me]

2 hours ago, Felkey said:

I think you're missing the point that damage value is a rather absurd statistic to use as it can be easily skewed to the losing side. Hitting over inflated infra with nukes while having nothing but rubble left hardy qualifies you for best military. It definitely qualifies you for most stubborn though. 

No, you are the one missing the point. These awards have always been a BS popularity contest and in their current form always will be. We are just pointing that out in a rather obvious way. Now about those Arrgh beiges durning the war...

[durmij]

15 hours ago, Buorhann said:

The only thing BK did was show how stubborn they are in a war.  Same along with NPO.  durmij wasn't entirely wrong.

You guys should've been able to put away Rose/Pantheon/Syndicate's mid-low tier nations, but you didn't.

Fact of the matter is, BK took more damage than what they dealt, and you guys still sold shit off to avoid the stats being inflated (Or resources being wasted, either or).

 

In any case, BK shouldn't be up there for Best Military, but really - a lot of options shouldn't be up there to begin with.  So it's whatever.

Basically this, but I feel NPO executed their plan well enough to earn shot at the prize.

Bk had twice the nations and 50% more score than Rose, plus the first strike advantage. You failed to tie us down and we were able, how ever slowly, to get out and join other fronts. We did about 40% more net damage (don't try and use raw damage, anyone whose been through at least one war knows it's not an appropriate statistic), and this is with us taking the last 2 weeks of the war basically off.

I don't care other than my fetish for accuracy. I'm not in Rose or even in the opposing sphere anymore. And I'm not arguing that Rose should win, we didn't have a coordinated game plan out of round one and just kind of waddled about. But you aren't going to improve until you start admitting that things went wrong, so you're going to keep taking Ls unless you get a massive set of circumstances to hand you a free win. This is something to keep in mind for real life btw.

[Shadowthrone]

3 minutes ago, durmij said:

I don't care other than my fetish for accuracy.

I think at some level update screwing up also harmed any advantage we had with our first strikes. I mean it definitely screwed me personally when I was hitting TKR folks with 14-15 cities as a 9 city nation and having the first strike/update adv p much off for a while, curtailing any momentum we had with a coordinated blitz on those nations. Made me have to cut my infra down and look at drop downs to keep within the meat grinder instead of successfully pulling down more folks. 

[durmij]

1 minute ago, Shadowthrone said:

I think at some level update screwing up also harmed any advantage we had with our first strikes. I mean it definitely screwed me personally when I was hitting TKR folks with 14-15 cities as a 9 city nation and having the first strike/update adv p much off for a while, curtailing any momentum we had with a coordinated blitz on those nations. Made me have to cut my infra down and look at drop downs to keep within the meat grinder instead of successfully pulling down more folks. 

It was a factor, but it did not completely negate the advantage. IQ still got more wars off before the later update. It was unfortunate BS though.

Also, how is Cerberus best rookie alliance after they got caught being over half multis? Jesus !@#$ing Christ people.

[Shadowthrone]

2 minutes ago, durmij said:

It was a factor, but it did not completely negate the advantage. IQ still got more wars off before the later update. It was unfortunate BS though.

 

Agreed. But it did have a huge effect because well, I was up till 1 AM for update and the later update was impossible for a bunch of us to get on. Overall though there were a lot of things that went wrong, updated included that really hit our razor-thin advantage in my mind. Numbers is one thing, but there existed the lack of tier cohesion which really affected our overall advantage. Hopefully, if theres ever another war again, the mistakes of the past can be corrected. But having fought TKR/tS/BK at various points, I'd have to say fighting BK was the most fun/difficult of the bunch. 

[Guest Karl VII]

3 hours ago, durmij said:

Basically this, but I feel NPO executed their plan well enough to earn shot at the prize.

Bk had twice the nations and 50% more score than Rose, plus the first strike advantage. You failed to tie us down and we were able, how ever slowly, to get out and join other fronts. We did about 40% more net damage (don't try and use raw damage, anyone whose been through at least one war knows it's not an appropriate statistic), and this is with us taking the last 2 weeks of the war basically off.

I don't care other than my fetish for accuracy. I'm not in Rose or even in the opposing sphere anymore. And I'm not arguing that Rose should win, we didn't have a coordinated game plan out of round one and just kind of waddled about. But you aren't going to improve until you start admitting that things went wrong, so you're going to keep taking Ls unless you get a massive set of circumstances to hand you a free win. This is something to keep in mind for real life btw.

.Was this BKs best war performance ever? No it wasn't. But saying we suck because we had problems fighting rose, pantheon and wtf at the same time (and TKR came in at the end too) is just objectively insincere.

Edited December 6, 2017 by Karl VII

[Guest Curufinwe]

4 hours ago, durmij said:

Basically this, but I feel NPO executed their plan well enough to earn shot at the prize.

Bk had twice the nations and 50% more score than Rose, plus the first strike advantage. You failed to tie us down and we were able, how ever slowly, to get out and join other fronts. We did about 40% more net damage (don't try and use raw damage, anyone whose been through at least one war knows it's not an appropriate statistic), and this is with us taking the last 2 weeks of the war basically off.

I don't care other than my fetish for accuracy. I'm not in Rose or even in the opposing sphere anymore. And I'm not arguing that Rose should win, we didn't have a coordinated game plan out of round one and just kind of waddled about. But you aren't going to improve until you start admitting that things went wrong, so you're going to keep taking Ls unless you get a massive set of circumstances to hand you a free win. This is something to keep in mind for real life btw.

I think this is a good example of where you stand dictating what you see, since we obviously remember very different wars.  The update glitch (which lasted for about 4 hours) had two main consequences - it prevented our attackers from rebuying and locking down ground or air control in wars where they'd achieved superiority and it allowed Pantheon to enter the war during the glitch (they started declaring about 2.5 hours in) and get a free rebuy/disrupt our wars.  Both of those were a pretty big hinderance of our initial blitz, since it basically allowed Pantheon to downdec our guys and get a free hit while simultaneously hindering our ability to respond.  WTF and TKR both entered the war (against BK) toward the end of the first round, which further increased the pressure and pretty much guaranteed the first round was going to be a wash.  Given that the first round went FUBAR basically from the minute the update didn't roll over properly, measuring our overall performance by the blitz in a war that lasted for 46 days is kind of like measuring a football game by the initial play - it gives a woefully incomplete picture of the game as a whole.

As for the rest, I cited those statistics to disprove your assertion (which you haven't repeated) that BK was carried by Zodiac and NPO and, given that members of your side compiled them and used them during the war to demonstrate how well EMC was doing, it's a bit hypocritical to turn around now and say they're not relevant (Buorhann tried to make a similar claim regarding 'hidden' damage, but since there's not way to substantiate it either way I saw no point in disputing him).  And this isn't to say that Rose didn't do well - your lower and mid tiers (below 13 to 15 cities) had some trouble, but you did have an active core (yourself included) which did some nice downdeclares and prevented us from further penetrating your ranks.  I have had difficultly understanding why you insist on diminishing your own accomplishment by insisting we're awful though.  If we truly were ineffectual as you and others in your AA have claimed, then Rose didn't really accomplish much at all - you were just part of a coalition of 7 or so AAs (Rose, WTF, TKR, TCW, Mensa, Guardian, Pantheon) who fought an easy opponent.  If you could get past your partisanship and recognize that we did put up a decent fight, you'd actually have more to brag about and wouldn't have to (falsely) claim that Rose soloed BK singlehandedly (the amount of damage we inflicted was three times higher than the amount of damage Rose took, so obviously we fought someone other than you) or that we were (falsely) carried by our friends.  Personally, that's the narrative I would want my members to internalize, since otherwise you guys don't really have as much reason to strut.

And, as long as we're dispensing free life advice, here's some for you - despising your opponents is a great way to underestimate them, so you'd do a lot better treating them with a modicum of respect.  That way if they do perform better than you expect next time it won't catch you by surprise, since you won't be assuming they're completely incompetent to begin with.  That's also something that's applicable to life outside of PW. 

Edit: typos

Edited December 6, 2017 by Curufinwe

[Prefonteen]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe said:

I think this is a good example of where you stand dictating what you see, since we obviously remember very different wars.  The update glitch (which lasted for about 4 hours) had two main consequences - it prevented our attackers from rebuying and locking down ground or air control in wars where they'd achieved superiority and it allowed Pantheon to enter the war during the glitch (they started declaring about 2.5 hours in) and get a free rebuy/disrupt our wars.  Both of those were a pretty big hinderance of our initial blitz, since it basically allowed Pantheon to downdec our guys and get a free hit while simultaneously hindering our ability to respond.  WTF and TKR both entered the war (against BK) toward the end of the first round, which further increased the pressure and pretty much guaranteed the first round was going to be a wash.  Given that the first round went FUBAR basically from the minute the update didn't roll over properly, measuring our overall performance by the blitz in a war that lasted for 46 days is kind of like measuring a football game by the initial play - it gives a woefully incomplete picture of the game as a whole.

As for the rest, I cited those statistics to disprove your assertion (which you haven't repeated) that BK was carried by Zodiac and NPO and, given that members of your side compiled them and used them during the war to demonstrate how well EMC was doing, it's a bit hypocritical to turn around now and say they're not relevant (Buorhann tried to make a similar claim regarding 'hidden' damage, but since there's not way to substantiate it either way I saw no point in disputing him).  And this isn't to say that Rose didn't do well - your lower and mid tiers (below 13 to 15 cities) had some trouble, but you did have an active core (yourself included) which did some nice downdeclares and prevented us from further penetrating your ranks.  I have had difficultly understanding why you insist on diminishing your own accomplishment by insisting we're awful though.  If we truly were ineffectual as you and others in your AA have claimed, then Rose didn't really accomplish much at all - you were just part of a coalition of 7 or so AAs (Rose, WTF, TKR, TCW, Mensa, Guardian, Pantheon) who fought an easy opponent.  If you could get past your partisanship and recognize that we did put up a decent fight, you'd actually have more to brag about and wouldn't have to (falsely) claim that Rose soloed BK singlehandedly (the amount of damage we inflicted was three times higher than the amount of damage Rose took, so obviously we fought someone other than you) or that we were (falsely) carried by our friends.  Personally, that's the narrative I would want my members to internalize, since otherwise you guys don't really have as much reason to strut.

And, as long as we're dispensing free life advice, here's some for you - despising your opponents is a great way to underestimate them, so you'd do a lot better treating them with a modicum of respect.  That way if they do perform better than you expect next time it won't catch you by surprise, since you won't be assuming they're completely incompetent to begin with.  That's also something that's applicable to life outside of PW. 

Edit: typos

 

!@#$ off. Don't associate me with Rose govt.

[Felkey]

5 hours ago, Who Me said:

No, you are the one missing the point. These awards have always been a BS popularity contest and in their current form always will be. We are just pointing that out in a rather obvious way. Now about those Arrgh beiges durning the war...

If they're so bs why are people like curu trying to argue so hard that people like seeker deserve awards such as best alliance leader? Or how about the people who are trying to argue so adamantly that this was not at  all a coordinated effort but the genuine opinions of the people in your sphere?

[Yosodog]

Holy !@#$ you all need to get some more memes in your life. Y'all are angry as !@#$ over awards that everyone knows doesn't mean shit.

[Guest Curufinwe]

Just now, Felkey said:

If they're so bs why are people like curu trying to argue so hard that people like seeker deserve awards such as best alliance leader? Or how about the people who are trying to argue so adamantly that this was not at  all a coordinated effort but the genuine opinions of the people in your sphere?

I've already outlined the reasons why I think Seeker deserves recognition in the Player awards thread.  If you disagree you're free to vote otherwise, but in the end it is the voters who will decide which of us is correct.