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Post by Yojimbo on Mar 25, 2014 15:40:11 GMT
I think that sabre and kratlin has hit some good points and ideas. Make a server notice that shows when the first map of a run has been entered and disable anon status on parties over a certain point. I know Discovery players who play with Ahala and vice versa. I have partied with Shenja and even DT in the past without troubles and at times on a "guild" run because the guild still had room for more players. I am certainly not going to exclude someone from a Discovery guild run because they aren't in discovery unless we have 10 Discovery players signed up for it and after so much time waiting for any missing guild mates I would take someone else. The only reason I wouldn't or at least would hesitate is if I knew it would ruin my or others enjoyment of the game though currently under this rule this would be a suspended aspect of party formation or result in disbanded party because a loss of a key or a loss of a key role as players, including myself, my drop should someone we can't/won't party with joins. I will say there are few to none for people that I personally wouldn't party with so this rule is a relative none issue for me.
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Post by chainlink on Mar 25, 2014 17:01:52 GMT
I would think that 'blacklisting' is a potential issue where a run is shouted then somebody is turned away because of this factor (assuming they can bring whatever was shouted for to the party), if a run isn't shouted then I'd feel uneasy myself about showing up on a server and expecting to be invited. Some players by their actions have proven that they are to be avoided although fortunately there have only been a few of these that I can remember during my time playing here, in fact if I see certain player names log in (and they seem to come back even if its after a very long time) they start me twitching
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Post by Xiayu on Mar 25, 2014 18:36:26 GMT
Anonymity was used in order to avoid unpleasant feelings to others and the guild itself, since the guild preferred to run with their own members.
Runs were shouted when necessity dictated. However, when you have an almost full party, risking the chance that some selfish player joins the run: For example, rushing spawns and having no regard for the party, ruining the run for everyone. Alternatively, a disliked player can often cause a domino effect, whereby one player feels they don't want to play with the aforementioned disliked player, and chooses to drop party. The problem is, the other members of the group don't want to play without that group member, so the run becomes a bust.
No other game that I know of has the control of players HG Webdash and !who all command have on this server. Of course, it seems some players with the power to watch over !anon prefer to stare at webdash all day, in hopes of joining an already ongoing run, bypassing the formation and organization which goes into covering the core roles, so they can play whatever they want. I find this to be very selfish and inconsiderate. Instead, they could take the initiative to start their own runs.
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Post by mish on Mar 25, 2014 19:29:29 GMT
I admit, I was the most recent victim of blacklisting, but unlike everyone in the past that took it in silence, or quietly left the server permanently, I made a stink about it. Even before bringing it up with Funky, I spent several hours amicably attempting to discuss/resolve the issue with Raj. Instead he gave me an excuse that he couldn't talk during the run he just joined, so I waited until it was over. He then still refused to tell me the reason other than that some sole UT member did not want me around, and refused to elaborate.
After that, when discussing it with my own guild, I had discovered that KE had also been blacklisted for months(or years, unclear) and had basically given up on any sort of endgame progression, resigning himself to just solo farming Oinos for eternity.
Knowing that this wasn't a recent development, (UT as a whole has had a long history of blacklisting/using the threat of blacklisting to blackmail players, even DMs over the years, into not reporting exploits, not posting things that might get their pet classes nerfed, and abusing DM powers) I then contacted Funky, which led to this rule.
FWIW, the players I can think of off the top of my head that have been victims of UT blacklisting/blackmailing:
Myself KE Archmage(this led to the first great UT exodus to Everquest 2, when Arch refused to abuse DM powers, and Funky used the 'drug dealer' analogy) Trazik Tom Groo(this got him defrocked for not saying no to abuse DM powers)
There are more but I cant remember them.
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Post by mish on Mar 25, 2014 19:57:58 GMT
TL;DR:
This is not a singular event, but a long pattern of behavior from the same people over many years.
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Post by Torin on Mar 25, 2014 20:05:15 GMT
Thanks Mish, your post makes a lot clearer. Via search I found an old post "A complaint about bad behaviour". If you read that (16 pages) too I think its clear that the new rule has good reasons.
If we bound it to my suggestion "only guild members must be invited", and maybe some other constructive ideas, this incident should be cleared out soon I guess/wish.
Thanks
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Post by Xiayu on Mar 25, 2014 20:24:11 GMT
Since you have finally come forward, I want to say that I have never had a problem with you but I really dislike liars.
You weren’t blacklisted. You aren’t making a big deal because of that. You asked and joined UT guild with one character only, that you got guild tagged, and as soon as it was removed, this all started.
I was on when that happened, and you started to complain, I tried to explain to you their views on it, I asked the party the reasons behind this. Your constant rushing and disregard for other party members got you to that point. This was explained to you by Raj. For what it is worth, the run hadn’t just started, it was already ongoing when you logged on and you were invited right after the run ended, as you have been invited for other runs after this issue. You are very selfish on anything that you play lately.
Let me say this, you are the worst thing a party with new players can have – Quite a few ‘new’ players have complained about this already, not wanting to even play HG because of how unpleasant that kind of experience was. Rushing spawns, not waiting for anyone, telling them how useless they are when you are the first one to claim that you don’t pay attention to the game while playing?
This list of victims is quite laughable.
- Mish: reasons above. You were invited to party, except on that run that had already started and people were telling you about this issue. Your problem is your attitude, you refuse to change your selfish playstyle. And after such lies, I wouldn't even want to play with you, even if that warrants me a ban.
- KE: has never been ‘blacklisted’. UTs simply stopped seeking him out. He has never been refused a spot had he come asking.
- Archmage: really? He has always joined UT with no problems at all. In fact, when they see him online, he is usually asked to come.
- Groo: your comment on this is as misguided as it is funny. - Tom/Trazik: I won’t comment on this as I don’t know the exact reasons. But as far as I am aware, neither side enjoys the company, so why would they even seek each other out?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 25, 2014 20:31:07 GMT
Mish, I do not know what led to you the conclusion that you were ever "blacklisted." The last time I remember you interacting with UT was after a run (zio?) when Raj de-guilded your assassin from UT because we concluded that you had a tendency to rush forward/spawn without consideration of others, ignoring party chat and doing other selfish things (like saying "lol" after we asked you to please stop re-girding to lower AC on fellow cleric using MV and continuing to do so, attacking demon boss before we were all buffed, etc.). Even after this you were offering to bard for us after your BC reached 80, which really would have been helpful to our party but we wanted you to just be a little more considerate of others in your playing.
Please Mish, although I cannot and do not want to speak for Raj or other UTs, I will say that for myself you were always welcome into my parties but that I wanted you to work on being a bit more considerate of other players.
I am in UT, and am a guide and I personally go anon with UT whenever we did guild runs because we want to play in a small group for reasons Xiayu touched upon, or when I want to farm certain loot or play by myself. I do choose to avoid partying with certain people on the server because I think they are not very considerate of others, and other people and DMs do so as well. What I do not do is shout public runs and then refuse spots to people because they are on a "blacklist", and whenever I am not anon I will invite anyone who shows up on the server and wants to come barring certain unusual circumstances (mostly me forgetting to use !anon to and having to go intermittently afk during the run and wouldn't really be compatible with another person joining).
I am also not a very long time member of UT. I think I tagged my toons in 2012? and I wasn't even on the server before 2011. I tagged my toons recently because I enjoy playing with friends and many people of UT I believe are very considerate, nice and skilled people. I did not even join the server when incidents involving most of the players on your "blacklist list" happened. KE is a DM with very high integrity and has always respected UTs decision to party with who they want; I do not want to cause bad feelings by discussing why I prefer not to run with him (though I would never refuse him a spot in my party if he showed up to a non-anon or shouted run). I will just say that it has nothing to do with exploits, ruining builds or whatever (in which case I would have decided to avoid paryting with Raj long ago, the damn drug dealer wants karsus and RG nerfed!) but very simply his playstyle and consideration of others while playing.
Groo and Arch are both people I highly respect and I would never even think about blacklisting them, let alone not actively trying to recruit them on my runs. Tom is a person who I think has a great sense of humor and when I used to ran with DTs before they want -HC- enjoyed playing with.
I want to say all this from a perspective of a DM who likes to run with UT members. I really appreciate what Funky and all other members of the DM Team have done for the server, but some people, even some DMs and long term vets I simply do not have much enjoyment in partying with, and it doesn't have to do with 'reporting exploits or ruining builds', it comes down to wanting a small party size in the first place because I find the mod boring with 10 people and furthermore to enjoying partying with players who volunteer to play useful classes, to bank, to actually use important party support like S2F/PT2, to pay attention to party chat and how the party wants to spawn and to not only play to top logs.
With all that said, I do not think there is a problem that needs solving in the first place and think that forcing people to party up with people who they do not enjoy partying with is both morally and ethically wrong and can only harm the server in the long run. I apologize if this post is off topic but I hope it clarifies the situation a little. I did not mean to hurt anyone by playing with only my friends and trying to avoid partying with people who I feel are inconsiderate of others and underperforming (and even sometimes you did upset me with your playing style in party Mish, I still enjoyed partying with you). Many times it was only 2-3 of us that wanted to do some low-man abyss for a new taste of end-game runs for fun so we'd just go anon to not cause bad feelings involved with someone joining server and wanting to come. For me, it has nothing to do with politics. If I'm one of the bullies and it would make things simpler to ban me than try to enforce and code around this new rule, then please for the betterment of the server ban all my accounts and CD Keys.
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Post by mish on Mar 25, 2014 21:10:35 GMT
This list of victims is quite laughable. - Mish: reasons above. You were invited to party, except on that run that had already started and people were telling you about this issue. Your problem is your attitude, you refuse to change your selfish playstyle. And after such lies, I wouldn't even want to play with you, even if that warrants me a ban. - KE: has never been ‘blacklisted’. UTs simply stopped seeking him out. He has never been refused a spot had he come asking. - Archmage: really? He has always joined UT with no problems at all. In fact, when they see him online, he is usually asked to come. - Groo: your comment on this is as misguided as it is funny. - Tom/Trazik: I won’t comment on this as I don’t know the exact reasons. But as far as I am aware, neither side enjoys the company, so why would they even seek each other out? Me: The weeks leading up to the 'incident' I had heard nothing from any of the UTs about how I was playing. Did you just discuss it among yourselves on skype, fuming the entire time. Also, Sarcasm. The day of the incident, I used the word 'Blacklisted' specifically when talking to Raj, which he confirmed, he would not tell me the reasoning behind my 'Blacklisting' other than that someone in UT didn't like my playstyle. (which took over an hour waiting for his current run to finish to hear). That is all he was willing to tell me. I didn't hear the rest until the night of the update when Jean PMed me in the middle of the night on skype to bitch at me and tell me how he was quitting HG. ( log, cut off the end because it just turned into a rant based on incorrect notions that I quit HG already) KE: Yeah, its really hard to be 'rejected' when everyone in the party is just flat out ignoring you, and refuses to invite. Arch/Groo events: Happened before you and laser had joined the server, check the forum archives going back to 2007-2009, unsure on exact year. Tom: Why do you think he formed DT in the first place? Trazik: not much needs to be said. -EDIT- Looks like the 'drug dealer' comment came during the trazik incident, which prompted the SECOND GREAT UT EXODUS in 2008. The arch/gemli incident must have been before that. -EDIT AGAIN- the first UT exodus looks like it might have happened in 2006 when DDO launched.
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Post by mish on Mar 26, 2014 4:23:26 GMT
Before bed I'd like to touch on a few other things mentioned:
The messages in the chat log easily get missed for me due to the high volume of messages from taunts and inter-server chat messages, and 2+ years habit of relying on voice communication for online games. I mentioned this a few times, that I was trying to break old habits. (Some of which are literally ingrained in muscle memory, and are still not forgotten, even after spending so much time away from wow.)
Another example is chain pulling trash to save time. In WoW, any time spent wasted on trash was that much less time spent on actual boss attempts. Yet another bad habit for HG that I find myself doing when I stop thinking.
Finally, I've been working on a few projects lately, which if someone calls/texts/IMs me about in the middle of a run, I have to afk for a 30 seconds, or a few minutes. And when I return I am sometimes disjointed on what recently happened in the run while I was away.
While from the UT's point of view this might seem intentional malice. I do remember discussing most of these points with Raj personally. I don't know if it was forgotten, or not understood, but I wasn't intending to piss everyone off.
I had stated when I came back I wanted to focus on 1 character at a time, first Battle Cleric, then Bard. With my current gear reserves I don't have enough gear to spread around to play multiple characters without swapping 4+ bags each time. It does seem odd that you complain about me not playing cores, when I was blacklisted IMMEDIATELY after my Battle Cleric hit 80, and I had geared up my Bard as my primary character.
From what I can see, There are 3 reasons why this entire thing happened: There was a mis-communication between Raj and myself (He is not a native English speaker, so plausible). He forgot about the discussions I had with him. He intentionally misled and withheld information both myself, and the UT guild, to cause drama.
Maybe I jumped to conclusions based on the 6+ year history I have with events uncannily similar to these. If so, I apologize for the annoyances I caused during this whole thing.
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Post by FunkySwerve on Mar 26, 2014 7:20:16 GMT
I see the campaign of absurdities continues unabated, despite my requests to be constructive. Delightful. I'll be brief, since I simply don't have time to cater to stupid, whether willful or otherwise. This rule simply takes away the ability to form groups with the players you would enjoy playing No, it very explicitly does not. It affects an altogether different right than the right to include. Reread the rule. Also incorrect. It was explicitly not aimed at any group. In point of fact, when people suggested just banning the problem players, we rejected that approach, because it would not deal with the larger problem. Read the thread. In point of fact, I wasn't even aware of the guild status of one of the major offenders, because I don't spend any time keeping up with the who's who of guilds, until a certain trend in posting was pointed out, and I asked about the individual. Ah, yes, this. So, there was never any blacklisting going on, but the players who definitely did not engage in this non-existent blacklisting just happened to leave en masse when the no-blacklisting rule was announced. Right. So glad we cleared that up. Even had Laser not just admitted to blacklisting, this doesn't even come close to passing the smell test. Next? The 'issue' is the exclusion of certain players from certain parts of the game by means of collusion, so this is just incorrect, whatever reasons you may be claiming. Further, I've already seen more than enough exchanges from more than enough sources to make this argument disingenuous at best. That's an argument for another day. I've already stated elsewhere, though perhaps not yet on open forums, that I would eliminate guilds if I thought it would do any good at this point, as they've become a liability rather than a benefit to the server. Puts a rather different spin on your question, when you stop to think about it. In point of fact, the rule is not self-defeating. Its purpose is to promote comity among the playerbase, and to prevent the exercise of undue influence by a handful of players. It does both quite effectively. It's only when those selfsame players opt to leave the server instead of having to include others on their runs on the off chance they're asked, that there's a reduction in endgame runs, which has nothing to do with the purpose of the rule. But nice try. It might've almost passed the smell test if you'd couched it as losing players where it was trying to save them, but if you read the thread, you'll see I already addressed that issue in no uncertain terms. If you want me to take your posts seriously, invest a little more in understanding before speaking. Of course, given the number of the mischaracterizations of the rule, this looks more like trolling than it does an attempt to be constructive. Given the context, I'm guessing you're also a member of UT? Either way, I'm going to give posts of this caliber very short shrift in the future, as they seem more intent on grinding an axe than they do constructive discourse. Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Mar 26, 2014 7:22:09 GMT
So has it got so bad on HG that we need a rule to drive these people away. Incorrect. If I just wanted to drive them away, I'd just ban them, as it's far simpler and less costly in terms of time. Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Mar 26, 2014 7:32:28 GMT
Lets recognize this though, not only was said guild running only with its own players. -S isn't this what guilds normally do? is it possible that people get invited to guilds because the guild as a whole enjoys playing with them? also, it seems in poor taste to slander a guild and not provide any proof. whom has whispered in funky's ear I wonder Rather than give you lessons in not only...but also grammar, or explain the ethical issues with hacking people's sentences appart, or point out that it was the other half of her sentence that was her point in that thread, as she was very clearly replying to Xiayu, I'm just going to warn you. You've already been warned about trolling in this thread, to no effect, so I'm warning you again - keep it up, and you'll be banned from the forums. I don't have time to deal with your juvenile antics. As to it seeming 'in poor taste to slander a guild and not provide any proof'...ah, sweet irony. Setting aside the slander/libel distinction, slander must involve claims that are provably false, and you have not offered any proof as to falsehood. Given that you have accused someone, presumably me, of making false statements ('slander'), and not provided any proof, you have just done precisely that which you claim is in poor taste. I applaud the succinctness of your self-contradictory assertion, sir. Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Mar 26, 2014 7:34:52 GMT
I think that sabre and kratlin has hit some good points and ideas. Make a server notice that shows when the first map of a run has been entered and disable anon status on parties over a certain point. Anon status is already disabled on parties of 3 or more. Read the update notes. Other than that, I agree, there have been a few good ideas in this thread. Funky
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Post by FunkySwerve on Mar 26, 2014 8:01:36 GMT
I am in UT, and am a guide Not anymore. Team members are not allowed to exclude players from their parties, or to participate in parties that practice such behavior.. You're charged with a higher standard of behavior, one based on the good of the server, not your own personal enjoyment. Even were that not the case, advocating for such a practice would demonstrate poor enough judgment for me to reach the same conclusion. Funky
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