Are players leaving?

[Harun]

You are a 100% right, that's a huge problem. Now who is doing that?

Zangief, most prolifically, and generally using names taken from Lord of the Rings. You are correct that it creates certain difficulties in monitoring. One way of checking is watching patterns in PK. If someone is behaving in a way in response to information that they could not have through in-game means, that would be a warning sign. One explanation would be that another player is logged on to the other side and feeding information. That certainly seems to be true some of the time. I witnessed that first hand in the one PK session where I hopped into voip with that crowd. We were being fed information on where LS was running by someone logged onto their Sedai. It's also been confirmed to me by a number of players who used to group with them regularly (Rig, Fiddler (RIP), Anansi), and who also benefited from it at the time. They're my friends, and I'm happy to say they were wrong to do that.

I have trouble believing that this was in any way a secret to those of you regularly voiping with him. It's certainly not a secret for Jaster, whether or not he did it himself.

Re: Vannor. No, I don't think you were using VPNs to snipe globals and I'm not making a veiled critique of you using crossrace voip once you were a known darkfriend. I don't like it, but I understand the reasoning and can understand why it happens. To me that's a problem of the darkfriend system.

[zankou]

What happened to fiddler?

[Foil]

To be completely honest, I have never seen him do it. Granted I have pk'd with him maybe 8 times in the last 10 years. So I have no clue, I have never known Jaster to do it.

If people are cheating the deserve to be punished. There has been plenty of exploiting of the game over the years and there are probably very few folks in the community that can honestly say they haven't benefited from cheating in some way. If we sat down and made a list of all the things we consider cheating we would find ourselves falling into a lot of different brackets.

There is no grey area on using VPNs to spy cross race during pk however, I agree 100%. Anyone caught doing this should be punished. My biggest complaint with my punishment was my name was being drug through the mud for no reason. I hadn't actually cheated in this manner so at first it really got under my skin. After thinking back on it, I can understand why it is a tough nut for the staff to crack. I still think the action was unjust and un warranted. But of course I would right? It happened to me, everyone in jail is innocent after all.

[Vannor]

Yeah same as Foil, never been exposed to a single incident of it. Maybe it happened in the past, idk, but reasonably sure it's never been the case in any of the PK I've been part of. Lance is too busy listening to me repeatedly chanting 'im dead. Gonna die here. Gotta run etc'

VOIPing is its own thing, and definitely imbalances PK to a high degree for those not in one. But that's one of those 'it is what it is' examples. It was bizarre to me the heat for using it you lot have given me for it. LS almost never genuinely narrating things when I was on, and I almost paid no attention to them given the high level of misinformation and so on. I used it primarily to communicate with my groupmates, no different to many other pk groups. DF was a terrible experience, but I mostly voiped with foil and myzec, both great guys and they helped in a large way to make the experience as fun as it could be. Kudos again to them.


As far as punishment goes, there have been some specific examples of worse cheating I'm aware of. Some examples, which I didn't benefit from or was part of.. a layered system of scalp hand ins to get multiple awards from the same scalp. Another was for lack of a better term 'prearranged PK'. No idea if it still goes on, probably does, idk.

RJ probably said it best along the lines of 'The harder someone tells you they're honest, the tighter you should hold onto your purse strings'

Just wish people would jump off their moral high horse and tend their own backyard before they start looking over the fence. There's bullshit going on all the time with various exploits and bugs in the game

[byrg]

Yes

[Jaster]

You are not supposed to turn in the scalp and have your friends steal it from the mob to turn it in as well Vannor? Or was it turn in the scalp with a scalp of a random mob so they can steal it when the clerk doesnt eat it?

[Harun]

You are not supposed to turn in the scalp and have your friends steal it from the mob to turn it in as well Vannor? Or was it turn in the scalp with a scalp of a random mob so they can steal it when the clerk doesnt eat it?

For the observers trying to sift through the information and decide who to trust: I encourage you to pay attention to when people are deflecting in order to confuse the issue, and when they're being responsive to what other people are saying. Deflecting is a common tactic designed to divert attention from one's own failings or wrongs in order to muddy the conversation. It's a method used to create confusion and doubt so that nothing changes or happens, and so that nothing can be resolved. It creates false equivalences in order to make observers walk away rather than arrive at a fair judgment. I also encourage everyone to pay attention to who demonstrates self-criticism and who will never, ever admit fault. That looks like different things at different times.

[Vannor]

You are not supposed to turn in the scalp and have your friends steal it from the mob to turn it in as well Vannor? Or was it turn in the scalp with a scalp of a random mob so they can steal it when the clerk doesnt eat it?

For the observers trying to sift through the information and decide who to trust: I encourage you to pay attention to when people are deflecting in order to confuse the issue, and when they're being responsive to what other people are saying. Deflecting is a common tactic designed to divert attention from one's own failings or wrongs in order to muddy the conversation. It's a method used to create confusion and doubt so that nothing changes or happens, and so that nothing can be resolved. It creates false equivalences in order to make observers walk away rather than arrive at a fair judgment. I also encourage everyone to pay attention to who demonstrates self-criticism and who will never, ever admit fault. That looks like different things at different times.

I'm saying if the VPN stuff is/was happening I'm not aware of it, if it is going on it's incredibly under the radar, even to those who are grouped with them

The latter of my post is firsthand accounts of things people told me they were doing

[Harun]

Sure, I don't really have a reason to doubt your own experiences and it wouldn't be productive since I don't have any way to prove it one way or another. As I mentioned in the Discord, my sense is that they didn't need a statter on LS for a lot of your PK together, because you were already on LS to provide information on narrates and, in some ways more important, the wholist. Once again, not a knock at you because the DF system is just structured to create resentment and frustration all around. But I think the DF experience does create a skewed perspective on things, since you don't recognize how your presence on the wholist is warping the behavior of the side. Which it does anytime a known DF is active. I think you're interested in creating a positive environment even if we disagree about where some of the blame lies.

But things don't have to be false to be deflections. For instance, I could bring up Aang being declanned from Gaidin (hilarious), but it would just be a way of muddying the waters even though it's true.

I also think you're taking shots for Jaster when you don't need to. At some point he has to take accountability for his own words and actions rather than surrounding himself with people who will take the heat for him and bait other people for him. In the end, a lot of this comes down to a split between Jaster, Zangief, Rig, Fiddler, and Anansi. The rest of us have taken sides or are oblivious. I have seen Rig, Fiddler, and Anansi all take responsibility at various times for their own part in creating a toxic environment. And none of them would complain for being punished, as long as the punishment is consistent. I admire that kind of self-criticism and trust it.

[Jaster]

You are not supposed to turn in the scalp and have your friends steal it from the mob to turn it in as well Vannor? Or was it turn in the scalp with a scalp of a random mob so they can steal it when the clerk doesnt eat it?

For the observers trying to sift through the information and decide who to trust: I encourage you to pay attention to when people are deflecting in order to confuse the issue, and when they're being responsive to what other people are saying. Deflecting is a common tactic designed to divert attention from one's own failings or wrongs in order to muddy the conversation. It's a method used to create confusion and doubt so that nothing changes or happens, and so that nothing can be resolved. It creates false equivalences in order to make observers walk away rather than arrive at a fair judgment. I also encourage everyone to pay attention to who demonstrates self-criticism and who will never, ever admit fault. That looks like different things at different times.

I hope the observers will notate that after people gave actual feedback to the posts question and were dismissed, the WBs came to the rescue to say how they were all the victims in this atrocity. It was all a major ploy to grief them? Or perhaps the observation was the one throwing stones about who hangs with who, has company who does the same behaviors he complains about(They have thus fixed their ways) or their very own form of rule breaking? That he participates in their own merry band of griefing to players as exampled by being "humbled by feneon" and it only becomes a problem when it potentially is directed at them? At the end of the day I am not using a VPN to crossrace snipe pk you. How you can read that and pk at the same time is beyond me. Have I statted characters while friends were crossrace pkin? Yes. There are times when I am downstairs watching tv while friends are playing and I may run a statter. I think a lot of people do that. Hence a lot of statters on.

The funny part is yall are more involved in this "spat" than myself and that party. I didnt harp on it or grief them down over it. I didnt go around trying to rally troops about what happened between us. In most cases I said they were alright. I said multiple times Rig was fine and there was no beef. It wasnt on me that we are here years laters and some still going on about it like highschool kiddos. I think half of it is really stupid IMO because I was some big old bully to rig which is not even close to true. And from what I hear yall way harder on him than me Most of the times its the ones trying to convince you WHO to trust that are the most untrustworthy. I dont need to tell people who to believe or trust. Thats silly.

P.S. If you want to talk about it, I am open to discuss so that this thread can continue