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Hyper-Fixation on Competence


Raphael
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This is going to sound very counter-intuitive and counter-meta but I promise there's some nuance here so bear with me.

A current problematic trend in the community, especially the FA community, I've noticed is a hyper-fixation on competence. I can't believe I'm on "this" side of the argument, as usually I'm a very gitter-gudder type person, however I think as with many good things we have taken it a little too far and gotten a little too elitist with it.

It's not even the focus on competence that is the issue, it's the attitude of superiority or "skillfulness" that some people have taken to the extreme. Politics and War is a trash game with no skill involved, if you read the worst war guide in the game you're probably a master of the war system. If you read one econ guide, you can probably get your nation setup correct on the first try. It's not hard, skillful, or even impressive that you're playing the game correctly; it just means you know how to read.

 

Instead of helping people "git gud", we utilize news servers to constantly mock and deride people to the point where they don't even want to interact with the community. Including people who genuinely want to help. We, as a community, are incredibly toxic to new or perceived-bad players. It's now a "rare" thing for even an individual player, let alone a coordinated group, to reach out and even attempt to help people. We should, both as alliances and as players, be reaching out at least to offer help to groups who are lagging behind. It leads to a more interesting game across the board.

I've made other posts about how important protectorates are and why we should utilize them to the fullest (not simply drop a treaty and occasionally fend off a raider, but actually work with and train groups so they are at least aware of the meta.)

 

On the complete flip side of this argument, if you're in an alliance that is willfully ignorant of the meta, "community focused instead of militarily focused", or otherwise getting repeatedly clapped in wars but refusing to read a guide or ask for help.... You're the other half of the problem and I promise you this community won't leave you alone to suck-in-peace. PnW is built on punishing bad players and bad communities - your best defense against getting rolled every 2-3 months (looking you WTF, Fark, Polaris, UPN, TFP, etc) is to achieve baseline competence and then you need to actually suck it up and start doing the very minuscule things you need to do. Members won't comply? Boot em, send them to another AA that you're not treatied to so they can get rolled by themselves.

 

 

just my two cents.

 

tl;dr - stop being mean to people and help them git gud, or if you're being bullied then git gud yourself.

Edited by roberts
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I kinda agree that a cultural change to something less brutal and less mocking would be beneficial, and it does get tiresome watching people being mocked to the point they no longer wish to interact with the community. I'm not sure if news servers are the cause of this but rather further ingrains that culture, it was certainly an issue way before those servers got popularised. If I was a new player and on the receiving end of that treatment, I sure as hell wouldn't stay.

 

On the broader argument that we should be helping out individuals or groups - I don't really see the logic of why we should be expected to compromise our own FA/security. The game itself needs to do a much better job at explaining the game mechanics to new players. That would be a better place to start in regards to player retention. Hasn't that been on Alex's agenda for at least 2 years? 😛

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Roberts,

I find the overall idea behind the ending portion of your post commendable. I also think that we as a community should try our best to help out the alliances that need it. However, at the same time, I find it rather weird that you juxtaposed this idea with your opening statement, that the game is so easy that anyone could obviously do well if given even the barest minimum of support, doesn't that mean that, if in your opinion, the game is so easy, that no one should need help?

At the same time you're over here telling the community at large to take in and help these alliances that need it, and critcizing people who are harsh towards underperforming alliances, but you undercut your own point when you, in your own post, start literally calling out alliances, more or less shaming them for not having the 'decency to take simple advice'. No wonder they don't want to participate in the public discource, even when people are trying to take up for them, they still get called out. 
 

3 hours ago, roberts said:

On the complete flip side of this argument, if you're in an alliance that is willfully ignorant of the meta, "community focused instead of militarily focused", or otherwise getting repeatedly clapped in wars but refusing to read a guide or ask for help.... You're the other half of the problem and I promise you this community won't leave you alone to suck-in-peace. PnW is built on punishing bad players and bad communities - your best defense against getting rolled every 2-3 months (looking you WTF, Fark, Polaris, UPN, TFP, etc) is to achieve baseline competence and then you need to actually suck it up and start doing the very minuscule things you need to do. Members won't comply? Boot em, send them to another AA that you're not treatied to so they can get rolled by themselves.

 

I want to draw attention in particular to this portion of your post. You're over here trying to tell specific alliances what to do, and saying "Well it's so easy to fix your community, just do x, y and z." If it was really that simple, don't you think that they would have done those things already? If it was really just that easy to fix an alliance, don't you think these alliances would have fixed themselves? You're up here on your high horse, in a priviledged alliance, trying to lecture the underpriviledged by telling them "It's easy, just do what we do." Have you ever stopped to think that perhaps they can't do these things? I feel like you, someone who recently had an alliance fail on them, would understand their plight, and see how a post like this, telling them to just "do something" doesn't really help much at all to address their problems. 

Your post makes no sense, and is doing nothing to actually help the alliances that need help. You want to help them? How about you go join them, and recruit and raise new members for them for a good week or two. That will do more than anything else you've done in this thread. 

 

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4 hours ago, hidude45454 said:

Every time someone posts something like this that's an automatic cue for me to not treat their opinion on the matter seriously :v

What's wrong with that statement of his?

 

On a sidenote:  A lot of players who say they're good, or tell others to "git gud", aren't even good themselves.

I'll agree on the point of teaching players on how to do better.  Mostly on how to spend their MAPs properly during a war.

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6 minutes ago, Buorhann said:

What's wrong with that statement of his?

A lot of war guides are just plain wrong and give really poor milcom advice. Some are outdated. If the game really was that easy then there wouldn't be so many players who've read a tutorial and still do the wrong attacks every time (and reading is different from putting it into practice anyways). Essentially Roberts is suggesting there isn't more beyond the system than the guides that separates some players from the pack so I don't get why certain players shouldn't be considered skillful and others not.

(And I assume the same is true for econ)

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On 6/12/2022 at 5:17 PM, hidude45454 said:

Every time someone posts something like this that's an automatic cue for me to not treat their opinion on the matter seriously :v

tbh this post isn't aimed at you. It's disappointing you disagree with the post because of the first sentence, but I've seen you personally intercede in multiple alliances other people would've written off as "incompetent" such as SoL. Granted, SoL burnt your bridge but props to you for trying in the first place.

I would say we're on the same side of this issue, you just may not agree with every detail of my analysis.

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On 6/12/2022 at 7:25 PM, Callisto said:

How about you go join them

No thanks. I'm always open to helping from where I am though.

 

My point, I guess I didn't communicate properly, was that people shouldn't call out micros or new alliances but actually go and help them.

Alliances which are years-old and knowingly bad at the game deserve some criticism. These are two separate thoughts and non-contradictory imo.

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6 hours ago, roberts said:

tbh this post isn't aimed at you. It's disappointing you disagree with the post because of the first sentence, but I've seen you personally intercede in multiple alliances other people would've written off as "incompetent" such as SoL. Granted, SoL burnt your bridge but props to you for trying in the first place.

I would say we're on the same side of this issue, you just may not agree with every detail of my analysis.

I do make it a point to help worser off alliances like SoL and participated a lot in the HM advice server as well; I just think it's okay for other people to be elite about it and that not everyone has to fill the same role as me (although, it is appreciated)

Ofc, everyone, including community-driven alliances needs to git gud and no one is disagreeing with that, but the fact some people are elite about it is often a reasonable wake up slap to the face for people who think they're good already and don't try that hard for self-improvement.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I think one the big issues that make it less desirable for alliances to try is that improvement is not recognized until you are a part of the top 3-5% of all alliances in these regards. In turn? it doesnt become a matter of being better , or even being good, it's about catching up to the ever-shifting bar that is held by those at the top. Which many see as a lost cause.

And as someone who has arguably lived through that shift , it would kill most alliances (numerically) the game

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53 minutes ago, Grave said:

I think one the big issues that make it less desirable for alliances to try is that improvement is not recognized until you are a part of the top 3-5% of all alliances in these regards. In turn? it doesnt become a matter of being better , or even being good, it's about catching up to the ever-shifting bar that is held by those at the top. Which many see as a lost cause.

And as someone who has arguably lived through that shift , it would kill most alliances (numerically) the game

Who cares what other alliances think, all that matters is what your alliance thinks.  Everyone thinks you are hot garbage, get good and punch them in the face and prove otherwise.  Besides raiders, HoF and Clock, most of the "good" alliances leave the "bad" alliances alone, so they have plenty of opportunity and time to get "good"

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On 7/2/2022 at 9:36 AM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

Who cares what other alliances think, all that matters is what your alliance thinks.  Everyone thinks you are hot garbage, get good and punch them in the face and prove otherwise.  Besides raiders, HoF and Clock, most of the "good" alliances leave the "bad" alliances alone, so they have plenty of opportunity and time to get "good"

I consider it a service that we allow them to test themselves against us.

[11:52 PM] Prefontaine: But Keegoz is actually bad. [11:52 PM] Prefontaine: He's my favorite bad leader though.

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On 6/13/2022 at 8:58 AM, Sweeeeet Ronny D said:

75% of this game is just showing up.  If every member in your alliance can do that, then you can become a real force of nature.

Yep. Absolutely. Grumpy/SRD makes a great point here. If you can just show up regularly, check up on whatever your alliance is up to, take care of any wars for the day, that kind of stuff - even if, like me, you unfortunately have to be at work when the day-change/military purchase reset occurs, or if you're still on snail-speed dialup or DSL - this shouldn't take more than 15-20 minutes over the course of the in-game day (from 12 midnight UTC to 12 midnight UTC). You can split some of it apart, if necessary, just keep track of what you have and haven't done yet for the day.

Some words of advice to any new player that happens to be reading this thread:
If you can show up regularly, and are willing to learn, you will become a competent player of P&W, given enough time. If that can be replicated with everyone in your alliance? More power to you.
Interacting with people in and outside of your alliance will also do you wonders for being recognized as "a fellow P&W player" (the latter - interacting with folks outside of your alliance, that is - can take place in many forms, such as informal chats, PMs between players, making posts on the forum, participating in formal in-game diplomacy, or even just playing video games with other P&W players - just be careful not to leak your alliance's intel).

People showing up or not showing up are how alliances win or lose wars. (A good blitz or numerical advantage can also help you, but those are different threads entirely, ones that I really don't have any right to speak of at this point in time, given the side I'm on in the latest GW that has broken out...)

Edited by Mima
16 hours ago, Koala said:

I would like to thank the PnW servers for standing up for themselves and providing the only valid cb in PnW history!

 

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