regarding the tone of the community over the last couple days
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Bonzai: First of all, thanks for posting this. I appreciate your approach to these subjects.
The way I see it, there are three big problems that have led to the saltiness in the ever-growing Screeps World War:
1. Not everyone gets the same story about what's happening, even when everyone involved communicates as clearly and openly as they know how, let alone when we're in an adversarial (albeit friendly) game where hiding motives and goals is part of the play. I live in a country that recently elected a new leader. Presumably we all want a good one, but we sure don't agree on who the best choice is, and we all have wildly different interpretations of what looks like the same information. It's enough to take people who would otherwise like each other and make them stolid enemies. This is one of the things that makes being human interesting, but it also sucks when you want to get along with everyone.
2. We're playing a strategic game with self-organized groups of people, but many of us don't have the investment to enforce the level of organizational discipline and unity that would be absolutely necessary if this were a "real life" political landscape. In other words, many players just want to have fun and be themselves, don't want to do the hard parts of running an organization with people in it, but still want all the benefits of being part of a group.There is perhaps no better in-game example of this than The Culture. We are a loosely organized lot of developers who like hanging out with each other. We don't really have a leader. Our alliance charter (found here under the Charter tab) is eight words long. Our logo is a rainbow butt! And I think most of Culture's members like it this way (maaaybe some don't like the rainbow butt). I am continually surprised by the spectrum of human diversity in our alliance, and I love being a part of it. I have made friends here that I hope will last beyond whenever this game stops being such a big part our lives, however wishful that thinking might be.
But it also means we often don't have a unified voice. I've had a lot fun in the last few days posting Culture News Reports in our public slack channel about the ever-changing "Mouth of the Alliance" and their near constant replacement in violent coups. That was mostly for giggles, but I also wanted to gently impress the idea on the community that we don't have a leader, and we are all grossly unqualified to be one, either from a lack of desire to lead or a lack of disposition. So when we declare war on an alliance that threatens one of our members, we might not have all our ducks in a row for the initial conflict. And our members get to be as vocal or silent about their perspective as they want. We each take whatever role we feel moved to take in the alliance. I know some other alliances in the game are quite a bit more regimented than this (SUN comes immediately to mind), but it seems like each has some level of freedom of expression for its members.
This makes me unsure of where to go with this, because we don't all feel the same about the current war within The Culture, and we definitely don't have a "this is the message we will communicate to the world" beyond our declaration of war to show solidarity for a member. If I step back from the situation, this doesn't seem fair to the other alliances, that our political position is the aggregate of what our most vocal members say in Slack and in in-game messages. I don't really know what we would do differently, though. Maybe this is my own personality and damage coming into play, but I have a lot of resistance to telling people what to do or what to say. I could also point fingers at the words and actions of players outside of our alliance, but I don't think that's necessary, nor do I think it would help (see point #1 - we all have experienced this conflict differently).
I do agree with Bonzai's assertion that the larger, more vocal players shape the culture of the entire community, and that a big part of the draw of the community (for me, at least) is that we're a generally friendly lot and want to have a good time together. I hope we can hold on to that.
3. The in-game military conflict has taken an emotional toll on some of the players. I think this looks different for each person involved, but I know of more than one person that has lost sleep over this and has let things that are important to them in real life slide to stay involved. I know I have, and I've barely seen any of the conflict. My own personal damage means that I take the responsibility for everyone's safety and happiness on my shoulders, so I really struggle when one of my allies gets attacked. I want to do what I see as my sacred duty and protect them, and if I am anything less than overwhelmingly successful, I feel terrible about it. The game stops being fun and feels like another job, a job that is taking time away from the job that pays me money and the people in my life. I can barely focus on anything else.This reaction is a problem with me, not the game, but I imagine a lot of people have their own version of this. We get emotionally invested in this because we enjoy it, because it's an avenue of self-expression, because we care about our in-game buddies, and it's hard to let go of that if things don't go our way.
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I guess none of the above suggests a clear solution to improving relations between the players while the wars rage on, but I think it's a big part of what's contributing to the current drama.Again, thanks for opening a discussion here, Bonzai. I've been thinking about doing something similar, and it's good to see others wanting us to all enjoy this in the end. And I'll talk to you about your and my personal shortcomings outside of this thread
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It is sort of useful that tedivm posted as such, because it is a perfect example of what has been going on constantly on slack.
tedivm said the following:
A lot of the accusations you see in the Thunderkitten letter do not make sense without that context. We don't really care that the SUN/TK coalition is doing things like attacking inactive players (heilios), but in the context of atavus asking us not to attack his newer members, us agreeing, and then them taking out an inactive player . . . well, I'm sure you can see how it would be frustrating. We have two instances now where The Culture has made agreements with this other coalition only to have that coalition break those agreements.For the record I attacked heilos well before Atavus suggested those RoE. So he is just huffing and puffing and not being honest. I simply looked at which members were in range of one of my portals and picked the only one. And only after asking if all members wanted in on it, to which tedivm affirmed. I didn't know heilos was inactive or that those were his only rooms. He started around the same time as me so I assumed he had climbed a bit higher in GCL than he did.
I mean, it even says "bonzai is sorry" on the RoE that bovius posted, obviously it had already happened.
One really relevant point-
> The day the war started he expressed that we wouldn’t attack each other overnight, at least to begin, and I agreed and appreciated it, but then woke up to a wall Reini had knocked down while I was asleep.
From our perspective Thunderkittens has been very dishonest. They agree to terms, such as the one above, and then we wake up to find out that they didn't mean it. They talk about how they want a fair fight, then we find out SUN is involved with all of two minutes notice before an attack. It doesn't really matter to us whose idea it was when we have both alliances attacking the same rooms.
Again, a really misleading and self-serving assumption here. I simply gave Skorp assurances that I would not attack, I did say "we." And I just did it as a favor, because I knew he didn't have automated defense. I explicitly said he could attack me at night, and he did.
It has been non-stop with this kind of stuff, whether I respond to tedivm or not. If it continues, I'm going to request some sort of administrative action, and I think I'd be justified for doing so.
Good or bad, diplomacy is a major part of the game. Often times the narrative gets determined by who complains the loudest/most often, regardless of whether it is true. This affects my playing experience and those of my alliance, and it really isn't acceptable.
Thank you for weighing in. I can appreciate that each alliance is unique in its own ways. I look forward to more of the fun stuff that comes from The_Culture members. I think it says a lot that almost everyone agreed that you shouldn't be interrupted from your art project, which I saw for the first time yesterday. It is inspiring!
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I'll just leave this here:
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Erasing this post as I missed bonzai's other post and am reading it now.
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I will post shortly on behalf of the Screeps United Nations (pompous self and all). Until that time, I want to point out that the attack on Heilos took place at 11/18/16 12:31 AM.
https://screeps.com/a/#!/history/E52N63?t=15365220
The rules of engagement between SUN, TK and TC were agreed upon and made valid at 11/18/16 5:39 PM almost 17 hours later.
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(Edit)
This statement was made in response to Tedivm's edited post.
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Alright, I've come to a decision here-
1. I am not going to talk about peace or in game behavior in a thread like this. The entire first post is filled with accusations and insults, and so expecting anything other than that from other comments in this thread was a mistake I won't make again.
2. I do agree that the atmosphere has gotten toxic and needs to deescalate a bit, and I will work to do that on my end. This does not mean I won't call out bad behavior, but it does mean I'll try to keep an even head when doing so.
3. I still believe that SUN involving themselves in this conflict was completely dishonorable. I feel that SUNs proxy wars in the north (where they engineered situations to try and hide their involvement) shows that SUN can not be trusted. I believe that Thunderkittens accepting their help goes against the spirit of what bonzai has said multiple times, so my opinion of bonzai has changed as a result of this.
4. SUN and Thunderkittens are some of the more aggressive players, and seem to do so "for fun". The Culture prefers wars with reasons. This isn't a condemnation of either side, but rather a question to the other alliances- who would you rather have as a neighbor?
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hum ... .I'm sorry ... but what "reasons" would there be to trigger a war in a game ?
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> 1. I am not going to talk about peace or in game behavior in a thread like this. The entire first post is filled with accusations and insults, and so expecting anything other than that from other comments in this thread was a mistake I won't make again.
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Thank you Bonzai for opening up an important discussion.
I would like to believe that this community is made up of reasonable adults where issues can be solved through constructive discussions. Unfortunately, I must confess the recent days have made me doubt this perspective. It is difficult to tell if the "rumors" spread around are out of genuine ignorance or veritable malevolence.
I do however have to stand up for my alliance and my colleagues. The Screeps United Nations (SUN) has never broken a treaty and will never do so. It is true that I have sought to establish relations with capable partners. It is true that this has lead to military operations against neutral parties. None of these actions were ever in violation of any of our treaties. Throughout our existence, SUN has always treated those we dealt with in a respectable manner. Any deviation from this policy was immediately rectified.
Tedivm's analogy is a bit difficult for me to digest. Indeed the perspective of the 3 main participants in this war are all wildly different. Culture is a lighthearted civilized collection of city states (Greek), TK is a barbarian horde (Germanic) and SUN is a militaristic empire (Roman). The clash of these civilizations has produced a whirlwind of death which is now gobbling up all the bystanders.
Is this diversity a bad thing?
It is true that diplomacy with Thunder Kittens has been particularly difficult because of their decentralized nature. We would like to treat TK as a nation when it is in fact a multitude of independent tribes which sometimes agree on the same thing.
What has taken an unprecedented toll on my enjoyment of this fine game has been the frequent name calling, the unreasonable reactions and the refusal to engage in civilized dialog. I have to commend Dissi and Bovius for remaining the voice of reason in difficult times. I do hope you two will continue to temper the intense spirits of fellow players.
Kind regards,
Security council member of the SUN
AtavusSUN charter can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/zf3jgsg
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> Not everyone gets the same story about what's happening, even when everyone involved communicates as clearly and openly as they know how
I just want to highlight on what bovius has said here, as I think it is an important point. Communication _is_ hard, and even with the best of intentions, mishaps exist. The best online communities I've seen tend to have an unwritten rule of asking members to be charitable to one another. That is, to presume everyone is acting in good faith, and miscommunication should be the first line of assumption, rather than malicious or dishonest intents.
I'd like to ask that to apply to all of us here. As it happens, saying enough things and we are bound to make fun of ourselves a couple of times. It is then fairly meaningless to pick on individual sentences/ phrases/ wordings as a justification for others' wrongdoing. Words are a meant to deliver intentions, as necessary as they are, they are not an end to itself.
Just as an example, and I don't mean to be picking on bonzai here. It's just the easiest one I can find an example of - it could have been another quote had I found one in this thread:
> With the sacking of so many rooms, each player’s sense of sportsmanship is put to the test.
Most of the most damaged players: Skorp, DT, vvr are all acting in exceptionally good sport. It probably can't be overstated that these guys had a cool head (I'd make a joke about vvr here, but then he wouldn't understand and I have to explain it to him again). The specific statement is therefore of questionable truth. But that is hardly irrelevant to the point bonzai was making: that was a shitty weekends for us.
From the principle of charitable reading above, I'd call for everyone to stop he-said she-said, as it is evidently not productive. With the latest development today, it's safe to say that we are all pretty confused. I know I do.
And this is a bit out there. But even though I called bonzai's quoted statement "of questionable truth" because of specific circumstances, it is in fact a safe prior for normal cases: as the war goes on, it is likely to be more salty (this thread by itself isn't enough to be resolving it, unfortunately). If at all possible, I'd like to have a cease-fire for 7 days for all fronts. This is, after all, a week of gratitude. And this is unrelated to any potential strategic implication in the war. In fact if anyone want (and the ceasefire is reached), you would have my words that I will not work on a single line of code related to any war plan during the week.
Yes, some might benefit from it, and some might lose some advantage. At this rate, this war is gonna end with several players leaving the game. This is coming from my experience playing other cutthroat games. And yes, that would include myself -- I take great care in interacting with others, and being called "toxic ramblings" does, in fact, bother me.
At this point, I'm more interested in still having a place to chat, and a game to play, rather than the consequence of the war. The war did expose some strange (not just in balance, but enjoyment) mechanics in the game, and that is on top of the apparent degrading in community's mood
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Overall, I'm really encouraged at the direction that the discussion is going. There is still some back and forth, but nowhere near the level of toxicity that we saw in slack. And Bovius seems to have a really strong chance of leading us to a common ground, his statements are very appreciated. It actually seems like this back and forth could at least lead to some conclusions. Even if a few of them end with grumblings, the important part is that they see an end. I'm going to ignore most of the insults and just address the points that seem part of bringing things to a conclusion.
> I just want to highlight on what bovius has said here, as I think it is an important point. Communication _is_ hard, and even with the best of intentions, mishaps exist. The best online communities I've seen tend to have an unwritten rule of asking members to be charitable to one another. That is, to presume everyone is acting in good faith, and miscommunication should be the first line of assumption, rather than malicious or dishonest intents.
I agree with this, and I look forward to a time that it seems reasonable to return to this mode of interpreting each others statements. For the time being, I hope you can appreciate how that is difficult. It is not because of an unwillingness on my part, I'll let the kind of language that you can see in this very thread be an example for why that is currently difficult to do.
If it is to happen, everyone also has to make a good faith effort to avoid mishaps as well. On several occasions you have said something to the effect of, "oh, that is not what I meant by that." This could be because I am predisposed now to interpreting your statements in a negative light, but you also need to consider your own responsibility for the situation. Your words often come across as condescending, whether you are meaning them that way or not. Take this for example:
> I'd make a joke about vvr here, but then he wouldn't understand and I have to explain it to him again
Maybe you just meant this as good-natured ribbing, but I hope you can see how it might be interpreted as condescending. Not only is it possible, it is likely. If you can't see that, then I propose that this is the root of the problem. You should probably ask yourself why it keeps happening for you.
> If at all possible, I'd like to have a cease-fire for 7 days for all fronts.
It seems strange to simultaneously attack us for our honor and then appeal to it to try and work out a break for the holidays. I assume you are appealing to our sense of honor here because, as it stands, we would not benefit from such a ceasefire at all. You haven't done the kind of damage that would cause us concern.
I'll repeat some of the things I've said about this question already. Since this is a game about automation, asking for a ceasefire because you are unable to monitor how things are going is really a stretch. To quote QzarSTB for the second time today, "attended defense is OP." As you were the ones who effectively scheduled this war, don't start complaining about the time conflict.
That being said, I personally am going to need to spend less time on screeps during the holidays, and I don't trust the effectiveness of my unattended raid code to not throw away resources needlessly when defense parameters are changed in ways it can't yet account for. No one wants to see anyone spend time managing screeps that they'd rather spend with family and friends. So I hope that serves well for this purpose. Seven days is definitely out of the question, it will probably be more like 3-4.
> However, I am going to be honest about the fact that I have lost a lot of respect for members of SUN and Thunderkittens, who from our end of things have gone out of their way during this war to both misrepresent facts and escalate things where escalations was not needed.
In regard to the question of respect, I won't be losing any sleep over it. On the other hand, I have always respected you. You and some of the members of your alliance have provided the community with some excellent tools, which is an incredible service. I will admit that I've lost some of that respect for you too, but to the extent that this all might just be a drug-induced fit of unfortunate behavior, I'd be willing to try and find it again some day.
As for misrepresenting the facts, I'll let your own discredited statements in this thread speak for themselves on who wins in that regard.
Finally, very surprising you are accusing us of escalating things when they are not needed, I'll point to the situation with Skorp and your decision to start this war in the first place. You've protested constantly about how warlike we are, but your alliance chosen to take a very reasonable response to a strategical move by Skorp as evidence of "repeated acts of war" on our part. It seems like this overreaction was the heart of your mistake. From what I can tell, The_Culture expected us to quiver in our boots at the idea of war with them, thinking that as the largest alliance in the game in terms of combined GCL, they could throw their weight around. They only decided to start crying "no fair" when they started losing.
Culture is a lighthearted civilized collection of city states (Greek), TK is a barbarian horde (Germanic) and SUN is a militaristic empire (Roman).
Definitely enjoyed this analogy
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And finally, I'd like to take this opportunity to bow out as a major contributor in these discussions. I've found the direction they are taking encouraging, and I'm sure others can keep the ball rolling that way. This is bigger than just our alliances, as it has to do with the ideals that we have for our community in general. So hearing from other folks might be a good thing too. I've spent a lot of time talking that could have spent coding, so it is time to balance that out.
I know that a lot of TK members are already busy with the holidays and other stuff, and probably just checking in to manage raids, so don't take a silence on our part as a sign that we are ignoring anyone.
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> Maybe you just meant this as good-natured ribbing, but I hope you can see how it might be interpreted as condescending. Not only is it possible, it is likely. If you can't see that, then I propose that this is the root of the problem. You should probably ask yourself why it keeps happening for you.
Very fortunately for me, the incidence with you is the first time I've encountered it. I've explained things, jokes and otherwise, to vvr numerous times. Ask him.
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I hope that bonzai will deign to remain in these discussion instead of bowing out - it is interesting to see the viewpoint of the other side in long-form.
I would like to throw my 2c in here - most of the tone in this thread has been rather brash & aggressive to my reading.... and I don't see why this is a problem, so long as we can act reasonably to shield new players from the drama.
In a war shit-talk occurs. On the internet shit-talk occurs. Egos are bruised and months of work are crushed under relentless waves of invaders, so of course emotions are high. For many of us, this marks a huge step from screeps into the "eve" style game, where suddenly this strange politics thing is just as important as our beloved code, so tempers are not surprising at all.
So can someone explain to me why we suddenly have this little circle of insults? Accusations of dishonesty, backstabbing, etc I understand... but the tone here feels more like a playground where people are called out for typing things that are misunderstood? Honestly I don't get that. English is imprecise, especially for any non-native speakers, and a lot of cherry picking seems to be going on.
Toxicity is a descriptor that I dislike, it feels like people try to claim moral high-ground through accusations of toxicity. Maybe that is just me, though?
Special shoutout to VVR who wasn't shitty at CopS when we invaded [them].
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I feel wrong for being shown as example of a problem here. I personally see myself as one of most toxic Screeps player and I'd like to correct some things and defend NhanHo a little as it seems like stuff is still unexplained.
Yes, NhanHo is little tough most of the time to me, but I don't really find it toxic. It's way people react to things and it doesn't make me "cry in my pillow". If someone would make joke about me that I woudn't like, I think I'd personally spoke to that person about it, so please - stop using me as example of bullied one.
Edit: If I misunderstood previous posts, feel free to blame me for writing this.
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Apologies vvr, in hindsight it was a poor choice to bring you in to this. I know that you don't need any defending, and that wasn't what I was trying to do. Nhanho, to the extent that I am misjudging you as well, I apologize.
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In case anyone thought Thunderkittens was actually trying keep things civil, they just insulted the crap out of Skorp and when we called them out on it had this to say-
So, if it wasn't clear, the only reason they made this post to begin with is propaganda and they have no intention of stopping the insults and trolling behavior.
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In the spirit of Kotarou's post, a new channel has been added to slack: #exception_thrown
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I'm just really tired. Tonight it was just more of the same. Hopefully the new channel does some good, but I think it is a bit late for me. As you can see from his screenshot, steeler came home from vacation only to catch up on all the sludge being thrown around, and was upset. Tedivm decides to interpret that as a sign that the thunderkittens are indeed the most terrible alliance, just as he has been saying all along. We are getting attacked by it seems like every alliance in the game. That could actually be a really fun event under normal circumstances, but it is getting hard to differentiate between those that are strategic moves and those that are done because people resent us.
On the social aspect, there is just no way for me to compete. Tedivm is an admin on slack. He seems to be the ringleader of the biggest alliance in the game. He has a ton of influence. He is going to get what he wants eventually, which seems to be for me to leave the game. All for having the audacity to challenge one of his alliance members. I have to worry about everything I do now ending up as a negative consequence for my alliance. I log into the game and I'm getting messages like this from random people I've never interacted with sending me caustic messages.http://imgur.com/a/2rTWp
I'm not interested in defending myself anymore, and I don't have a thick enough skin to continue in the community under the circumstances. The community was easily half of my enjoyment of the game, and it just doesn't seem like a welcoming place anymore.
Please don't attack my alliance over something they didn't really have any control over. Just attack my rooms.
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I kindly ask for closing this conversation here as it is. I don't see anything good going out of this.
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*OPINION PIECE*
For what it’s worth...I joined ThunderKittens about 2 days before the war broke out. My history with any given individual member of TK extends no further back than 1 week as of today. I have no deep ingrained loyalties to these guys, but have been in the privileged position of experiencing the alliance chat and being involved with them over the last week as the war has unfolded.
I understand this is a high emotion scenario for some. However to those who have been very publicly negative about the personalities of the TK members, accusing them of trolling, bullying, being hateful people and/or generally being miscreants, you are plain wrong... (Well, except for the miscreant part).
The chat in the alliance for the entirety of the week has been largely focused around how to have a fun war with other players of this RTS. Bonsai went to quite some effort to attempt to have a respectful war where opponents could have fun during the proceedings, whilst maintaining that this is an RTS and wars / combat and other such things should be expected as part of the game and no player should necessarily get a carte blanche exclusion just 'because'. At numerous times he went out of his way to try and negotiate temporary cease fires so that people could resolve issues in their personal lives. He made an active effort to try and involve the community and his opponents in the proceedings on slack.
A lot of unconstructive things have been said in the heat of the moment over the last few days and parties from both sides are guilty of this. Repetitively regurgitating these things publicly, out of context, to others in community only ever leads to more negativity and misunderstanding. People need to stop that.
It’s a real shame. It could have been a beautiful experience. When The Culture declared war on TK. The alliance / sun chat was filled with overly excited comments of people eager to see the battles, political events and adaptations in code that would emerge from the scenario and enjoy a brawl with friendly opponents.
Unfortunately it turned toxic and continued to spiral day after day with both sides saying things in the heat of the moment that should not have been said. In that, no one person is to blame. I really hope the community can heal and that TK can enjoy friendly wars with others in the future and that Bonsai will come back one day.
TL;DR... Bonzai / SteeleR / the others in TK are great guys and only wanted to enjoy a good war in this RTS we enjoy so much. If you believe otherwise then you are mistaken.