Whats With All The Flaming?
Fat_Man_Little_Coat
Join Date: 2003-12-02 Member: 23857Members
Join Date: 2003-12-02 Member: 23857Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Jeez, the community is changing...</div> I've been playing NS for years, since 1.04 and one of the best things were the community behind it. I visited the boards regularly, and finally decided to start posting last year.
I stopped playing for awhile (when Unreal 2004 came out), and didn't visit the boards either, now that I'm back, I can't help but notice a few things:
1) a lot of energy is spent complaining about relatively silly things(ex:bunnyhopping)
2) there is a lot more flaming going on.
One of the best things about the forums used to be that you could actually have discussions without the worry of it falling apart into a flame war as it does on so many, many, many other forum boards out there on the net.
As a result, I see a lot more moderator intervention (which is great) but it used to be pretty rare to even have a need for it.
Granted, the forums are still pretty hospitable, and still beat the average forums you'll find on the net (ex: Battle.net) but still seems to be getting more about pointing how other people are wrong, or how your ideas or strats are better.
Maybe it was the worry of Combat realized (so many people worried that the influx of CS players would bring the same kind of immaturity found on those games here)or so many older players leaving or something altogether, but one way or another I hope that it's just me being paranoid.
Miss the days where the forums had tons of topics on specific map strats, efficient tech builds, and key alien ambush locations and debates on that rather than the validity of bunnyhopping or clans vs pubs issues.
I stopped playing for awhile (when Unreal 2004 came out), and didn't visit the boards either, now that I'm back, I can't help but notice a few things:
1) a lot of energy is spent complaining about relatively silly things(ex:bunnyhopping)
2) there is a lot more flaming going on.
One of the best things about the forums used to be that you could actually have discussions without the worry of it falling apart into a flame war as it does on so many, many, many other forum boards out there on the net.
As a result, I see a lot more moderator intervention (which is great) but it used to be pretty rare to even have a need for it.
Granted, the forums are still pretty hospitable, and still beat the average forums you'll find on the net (ex: Battle.net) but still seems to be getting more about pointing how other people are wrong, or how your ideas or strats are better.
Maybe it was the worry of Combat realized (so many people worried that the influx of CS players would bring the same kind of immaturity found on those games here)or so many older players leaving or something altogether, but one way or another I hope that it's just me being paranoid.
Miss the days where the forums had tons of topics on specific map strats, efficient tech builds, and key alien ambush locations and debates on that rather than the validity of bunnyhopping or clans vs pubs issues.
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Comments
But I don't know, I started playing NS about 3 months ago, and started browsing these forums about a month and a half ago, so I really don't know the community in the past.
*<span style='font-size:8pt;line-height:100%'>1.0 release till present day</span>
Edit: What kavasa said. :/
In general, yeah, you are right.
Though altogether, I'd have to say that the moderation load has stayed roughly the same... even though we've added a few more mods, I see that as more to counter the expanding userbase. Obviously when you have more people, you're going to have more flames, flamewars, and trolls. Thankfully, it's still a percentage-based thing. So out of every, say, 100 people who sign up on the boards, 1 turns out to be a smacktard. Expand to ~25000 people, factor in lossage, inactivity, and duplicate accounts (which are quickly deleted).. and you get a pretty good mental picture of a mod's day. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html//emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo-->
More than you'd guess.
tell ya this talesin, if you know what's good for ya, vote yes.
We are <b>so</b> much better than Counter-Strike, and there's no amount of complaining that can change that.
tell ya this talesin, if you know what's good for ya, vote yes. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
if you're looking to get banned, then why not just *not post?
We are <b>so</b> much better than Counter-Strike, and there's no amount of complaining that can change that. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
And there's teh winnar non-1337 attitude that keeps the forums so clean!
Way to be un-biased! Woooooo!
</sarcasm> :P
Why people continue to hate on CS just because it's popular is beyond me. It got to where it is, for better or for worse, because it's a damn fun game.
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tell ya this talesin, if you know what's good for ya, vote yes. <!--QuoteEnd--> </td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'> <!--QuoteEEnd-->
Nah, we don't do polls. We keep paper-trails on 'problem users', and once it gets to a consensus point that they've gone over the line, they get warned. If they do it again, they get suspended. If they still act like an asshat once they're back from their forced vacation, they get dumped in a pit with Grendel and his sock fulla quarters.
As for the CS thing, it's not a linear progression... it's a geometric progression. You get one decent person, then you get ten flat-headed teenangsters who complain and whine and generally act like... well, immature dolts. Sure, there are some cool people who play CS. I used to, but left at Beta 6, when the flood of morons started to really kick in.
After that, playing CS became stereotyped on that group of idiots. The game may be fun (don't know, haven't played in years) with a select group of cool people, but in the general pub you'll get enough smacktards to reinforce that 'moron CSer' stereotype even more strongly.
Unfortunately, when I've ventured outside the safe confines of Lunixmonster, OldF, and a couple other servers I frequent.. I've seen nearly the same thing happening on the NS side of things.
I put it down simply to the larger volume of posts.
I was around a month or so before 1.0 was released, and the concept of having to the the boards to max out the # of posts per page so that I could actualy see stuff was silly then.
now I often see a section with possbily 10 read topics (thats 30 unread)
and 2-3+ pafe posts are comon (again, thats 80-120+ post threads)
so with that many posts, welll.... your bound to get more smacktards.
also, as comunities get larger, they do attract more idiots (finding a sane fun person in a sufficently large group is like trying to find a rational number on the number line. There is an infanatly large number of them, yet your probability of finding one is 0.)
Stealin' my word...
/grumbles
Funny you should mention that, because the way I see it, the NS community is slowly turning into a replica of the CS community. Been that way since 2.0 pretty much. All I see is elitism and better-than-you attitude all over. Not just in-game, but on these boards as well.
Still, I must say it's rather amusing to see how people go on and on about how CS sucks and the community is all elitists h4x0rs and whatnot, without realizing that they are not much better themselves. And most of those that do see that the NS community is going downhill simply blame it on CS players comming here.
At least, that's my opinion.
Funny you should mention that, because the way I see it, the NS community is slowly turning into a replica of the CS community. Been that way since 2.0 pretty much. All I see is elitism and better-than-you attitude all over. Not just in-game, but on these boards as well.
Still, I must say it's rather amusing to see how people go on and on about how CS sucks and the community is all elitists h4x0rs and whatnot, without realizing that they are not much better themselves.
</snip>
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I wouldn't have put it quite so harshly, but I've found this is generally correct. NS does have elitism, generally towards other 'lesser' games. However, that is compiled when you get the '1337' people who are then twice as bad towards the new & unlearned.
However, there's not a lot that can be done. Generally, the instant I see a player say 'Owned' or 'n00b' in any server, mine or otherwise, it's instantly put them down a notch in my opinion. But then you realise that's hypocrisy, because that in itself is generalising.
Of course, stereotypes don't spawn mysteriously out of thin air. You act like the stereotype, you tend to be or become the stereotype.
Long-standing NSers were all there when it began. We all started learning our heads from our posteriors at roughly the same time, PTs excepted. There was a community because everyone was confused. It was a free exchange of ideas, comparing notes, and general comraderie. Sure, we had a few pinheads cruising by to troll, but they were pretty obvious when they came around.
Fast-forward to 1.04, past the growing pains and some interesting development, to the fruition. Clans are established. The HMG/JP rush is living large, and Hives are going down like no tomorrow. The free trade of information dries up here, in the name of competition. After all, any clan that comes up with a surefire way to defeat the JP/HMG rush will be king of the hill. But if the secret gets out, well. They'll have to figure out how to beat the Next Big Thing, and figuring out this one was hard enough.
2.0 storms in. After massive tweaking based almost solely on a certain segment, the original plan and dynamic is scrapped two days before launch. The public misses out on a slower-paced, but infinitely better balanced game leaning more toward the RTS aspect (capture and hold), rather than the FPS aspect (run around and shoot crap non-stop). A certain segment is pleased, another segment is displeased, and the general populace is **** due to the imbalances.
2.01 is released fairly quickly to deal with the worst of the problems, remaining on the FPS side of the split. People are still ticked off about imbalance and dynamic clashing.
HOWEVER. It's played (and playable) enough to the point where it's getting fairly simple to pick up and play. CSers (among other mods) start picking it up and trying it out. The same budding elitists from earlier see a wave of 'CS nubs' crashing in, and feel that they're better as they've been around longer. Which may or may not be true... or may be fear that they'll be beaten at 'their own game' by the nubs.
3.0-Beta. Current day. Elitism lives large, snobbery is still on the rise, with every new player who joins in. The community fractures between CO and NS, each complaining that their favored game mode is unbalanced... those unbalances coming from balancing measures in the other game mode.
Short version. Yes, we have CS-nubs. That's NOT neccessarily a bad thing. The problem is when the long-standing members see the CS-nubs and write them off as worthless, second-rate, pointless people. THAT's where the hostility seems to mostly come from, at least from what I've seen.
Sadly, through writing this post I've come to notice my own elitism. Not by 'skillz' or standing; rather that I feel that NS should have continued with what made it unique.. the RTS side, rather than focussing on 'what the people want'.. the FPS side. And I can't help but feel that following that track was the wrong thing to do, catering to the mass market rather than staying true.
- Shockeh
Edit: And wow, I see a bunch of you guys blaming NS' community going downhill on CSers. I don't think I can think of a more stupid way to describe it. CS is just the scapegoat for all your problems? Anyone who is an idiot MUST BE A CSer! There is no reason to think that the proportion of idiots/aholes in CS is any higher or lower than the proportion in NS. Stop blaming CS for everything, and don't say I'm a CSer, never been in a CS clan. Pubbed a few times but that's pretty much it... it was much better from Beta1-5.2
Most of the time when I play Combat, it is undistinguishable.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->3.0-Beta. Current day. Elitism lives large, snobbery is still on the rise, with every new player who joins in. The community fractures between CO and NS, each complaining that their favored game mode is unbalanced... those unbalances coming from balancing measures in the other game mode.
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Elitism was just as big since day one as it ever was.
<!--QuoteBegin--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Sadly, through writing this post I've come to notice my own elitism. Not by 'skillz' or standing; rather that I feel that NS should have continued with what made it unique.. the RTS side, rather than focussing on 'what the people want'.. the FPS side. And I can't help but feel that following that track was the wrong thing to do, catering to the mass market rather than staying true. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><div class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
This doesn't make any sense at all, because in each new version of NS, fps skills becomes less important than strategy then did in the last.
Think about it:
In 1.xx each side had exactly one strategy, and on top of this marines were so overpowered they could just base LMG rush your hive and expect a good chance of winning. The JP/HMG rush was only stoppable by uber lerks on your team as well.
In 2.xx you were introduced into a support lerk, marines had many ways of winning (HA, JP, Phase), but aliens still only had one really good strategy. On top of this aliens did not have a dumbed down hive dependancy with the linking of their evolutions, and therefore the game went just from hive control to node control as well, a monumental change.
Now in 3.xx, you have marines who have a wide virety of strategies, although not much more complex than 2.xx. Aliens, however, have much more strategy now, with lerks being more dynamic, hives having more emphasis, aliens being able to go defense or sensory as a viable strategy (although sensory usuage widely depends on the map).
Combat, if anything, is to compensate for the fact that NS moved from it's traditional FPS roots and went more to a complex strategy side, where combat is once again about overall skill of the team. Combat still needs work though, but it's getting a lot better with each new patch.
Alot of people refer to CSNubs, and alot of people automaticly assume we blame CS.
CS Nub refers to a specific type of player we all know and hate. And every game attracts these types of players once it gets larg enugh (they are actualy always around however it is mor knowticable in the larger pupulations, as they are either more prevelant or just louder).
I have run acrose people I would mark donw as a CSNub whos primary game was DoD, TFC, some retail games (UT etc) and now, NS.
Honestly, we have had stupid people from the get go (I have been around a month or so before release).
How many of you remember what alot of early games of NS were like?
10 rines, 1 alien. Repeat. (And for those of you who think I am joking/exagerating, I have played many of those games. Alot of them were morel ike 7v4 but the 1 Vs alot was also stupidly common.)
Good players respect good players. When a great player is stuck with a huge team of nubs then you see the elitism.
Remember this, please.