How the hell did you recall a 13 year old post? 8-()
It was the first time I saw how utterly dysfunctional disco staff was. Of course there were countless other times, but you know how one tends to remember the first times most. The thread was also home to such classic lines as "your fun is not as important as other people's fun" which was later linked and noted in Nooblet's "Book of Noted".
Also, I have above average memory because I'm like... pretty smart.
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The most fun PvP for both sides is when a fight is butt-clenchingly close, with the fight going down to the last two or so people standing fighting it out with their remaining handful of nanobots and other consumables. I think most people would agree on that, unless they're just interested in steamrolling so they can brag about their Ep!C Sk1LlZ.
This very often doesn't mean 4v4 or 5v5 or 6v6. It can be that, or it can be a 3v7 with some strong players facing a larger group of average-ish players. It is admittedly often very hard to predict ahead of time how a fight will go, and thus what amount of restraint is "correct". If someone gets it wrong once that doesn't necessarily mean that you should go on Discord and declare them Enemy Of The State and that they should be ganked a hundred times to make up for their grave mistake. That is how every dumb cycle of "Ganking the gankers" starts. This may come as a surprise, but ganking the gankers also doesn't actually make for better PvP encounters moving forward. It just guarantees they're all underwhelming.
Some people also just have enormous but extremely fragile egos. As their own self-image is incompatible with losing, they will likely never give you an interesting fight unless you have a larger group and can dictate the odds.
Who cares about fair? Could someone make it more fun and easier to learn?
My attempts at going to Connecticut and fighting people were kind of jarring so far. Felt like absolutely wasted time. I do the EK-thrust-reverse turning routine. I'm pressing wasd in a sequence to dodge enemy shots. It doesn't really work out for me. Switching from high to low speed weapons only allows me to deshield enemies more consistently. I still rarely hit the actual snub.
I have no knowledge and cannot identify my mistakes. Thus, the game doesn't really make sense. I cannot get the hang of the gameplay loop at all.
What's the solution? Surely the balance devs in their infinite wisdom have accounted for pepegas like me. Surely PvP is much easier to learn now than it was five years ago when I started playing.
(02-14-2022, 11:37 AM)Karlotta Wrote: No. Dab was a dysfunctional staff member and not smart at all.
Well he was a kid at the time so his hubris was excusable.
Anyhow, lacking anything better to do during lunch, I skimmed thru that post and a couple of things stuck out:
1. The problem is not so much people ganking on each other, but the blatant OORP involved. Eg, a couple of pirates in low-level ships appear in a house system, looking to cause mischief. They are challenged by a couple of local police. A good fight ensues. Then *bam* a half-dozen military types, including caps, suddenly appear and blow the pirates to hell. Not only do they charge in without so much as a by-your-leave, but it also smacks of meta-gaming ("ooh look, i'll log out of my trader and go join the feeding frenzy!")
2. Ganking can ruin fun on both sides. Eg, said police characters are looking forward to an epic battle with a couple of evenly matched pirates. But then the caps show up, and the original police guys just cruise away shaking their heads as the caps blow everything to hell.
3. There is a time and place for ganking... when it's bloody Roleplayed properly.
These points are as valid now as they were 13 years ago.
Now @Karlotta you took the liberty of highlighting the statement: "Your fun is not as important as someone else's fun". I submit that statement shows a level of humility and empathy which, if more people applied it in their gaming here and their lives in general, would make Disco and the world at large a better place.
Conversely, ridiculing the above statement denotes a complete disrespect for other people, the kind self-centeredness that says "I don't give a crap about anyone's gameplay experience but my own." Oh, it also leads to the rulebook bloat we enjoy today.
I remember back in 4.79 (yeah here we go) when you could print the rules on a postage stamp, and there were virtually no in-game restrictions on what factions could fly what ships mounting what weapons, in whatever bloody systems they chose. As long as it was properly RP'd. We didn't need a lot of rules, because we played by a set of ethics which placed everyone's fun experience as paramount.
Buuuut then along came the powergamers and lolwuts, who only cared about their own personal fun and egos, rudely pushing at the envelope of "what's permitted" (not to mention good taste); and so the admins, such as you admonished, were obliged to reign them in. (TBF, many PvP servers shutdown around that time, leading to a lot "I don't care about RP I just wanna kill" players streaming to Disco. And some of those players actually smartened up.)
And so today, it's the reason we must navigate the byzantine array of game-enforced restrictions on ships, weapons, weapon types, cargo, bases, and associations a char can avail themselves of. It's also the reason the rules are imprinted with things like "no hate speech, no racism, no sexist remarks, be respectful". Stuff which should be obvious to anyone with half a brain; which, sadly, is all too often not the case.
Anyway back OT. Ganking can be cool, but not all the time, and only when it's RP'd. If you don't want a bunch of ganking QQ leading to yet another insertion in the bulging book of Rules & Regs, apply Onca's Law of Good Gaming: "Don't be an insufferable douche".
Here's another saying, stilted though it is, you might want to take away with you:
"It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game."
Just fight people the way they fight you. Find people that will fight fairly and with fun in mind (because this is a game, right?). Get ganged up on? Do it back to them. Spin and cycle until one side loses interest and leaves the community, lower player base. Such is the Disco way. Just don't bitch if you're a ganker and get ganked.
It ain't about what you are capable of, it's about what you're willing to do.
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(02-14-2022, 11:37 AM)Karlotta Wrote:
(02-14-2022, 03:38 AM)onca Wrote:
(02-13-2022, 07:06 PM)Karlotta Wrote: Also, I have above average memory because I'm like... pretty smart.
Dab, is that you?
No. Dab was a dysfunctional staff member and not smart at all.
Dab....my day was going rather well until I saw this name. He and I strongly disliked each other in and out of server. I can't think of the amount of times we fought with each other. I hated his power/metagaming and he hated the fact that I kept calling him on it. I don't miss him.
(02-16-2022, 12:31 AM)Doc Holliday Wrote: Dab....my day was going rather well until I saw this name. He and I strongly disliked each other in and out of server. I can't think of the amount of times we fought with each other. I hated his power/metagaming and he hated the fact that I kept calling him on it. I don't miss him.
Yeah ol' Dabby had that effect on people. The epic slugfests between he and Hoodlum in flood were the hilight of my day
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