Further escalation of the clusterfuck-tensions

in relation to https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/32271

quote: If you demand perfect wording every time then you demand that the moderators spend a lot more time doing a thankless task.

i don`t think that is thankless because without it the whole discussion would have been a lot more fruitful. Neither Lu5ck nor me doubt that czesio crossed the lines with teamkilling and and that spam of hostile comments. I don`t "demand" perfect wording either. It is just that the "playing badly" part has spawned a lot of discussion and conflict in the recent past already.
(Btw, Lu5ck was is czesio's team in that game)

quote: Making your case with relation to GBrankczesio will just make your argument look terrible.

completely agree and support.

so:

If the position of the admin-team towards the way clusterfucks are regulated is completely unquestionable (unquestionable things being problematic in general imho, but anyway), then be it so. Still, this creates at least two problems. The smaller one is that it unintentionally contributes to things like the thread linked above, even if it in no way justifies this behaviour. The second one is that it somehow undermines effords for decent team-play. It is hard to take those games serious at all when you always have at least one troll or really bad (plus maybe even uncooperative) player in your team, for whatever reason. This creates a cycle where more people feel that putting efford into the game is punishing, hence they play below their abilities as well. I think Firepluk has already said countless times that he feels that way.

I accept and understand that the All-Welcome-Room should stay All-Welcome. But are you, independant of this, comfortable with a situation where a player like Manu12 only plays once every two weeks or Sigero not playing at all anymore because of this?
Thats why i suggested having the paladium more often. This would basically leave the AWH untouched and at least offer us some more posibilities to have satisfying games.

I could also host a private passworded room, but i suspect i would have to keep it up for a LONG time until enough players are aware of it. It also has some other disadvantages:

- It would also be even MORE exclusive to many people as they couldn`t even spectate.
- I would be afraid of password-leaks. I wouldn`t like to be forced to kick people out.
- I suspect the room wouldn`t be visible for many people, because of the "hide passworded rooms" option. So i would have to constantly announce it in the lobby-chat.

quote: doubt that czesio crossed the lines with teamkilling

He also reclaimed patrician paladin to build his singu in same game. As it wasn't his first grieving action in recent times then it could be also ended with ban.
I think that was marked as 'playing badly' not just singu building.

katastrophe I think I have to address some meta-level things, given how frequently this conversation has repeated itself.

quote: If the position of the admin-team towards the way clusterfucks are regulated is completely unquestionable (unquestionable things being problematic in general imho, but anyway), then be it so.

Here you fail to draw the distinction between "unquestionable" and merely having received a disagreeable answer. The regulation of the big teams rooms has been questioned, answered, and even experimented with on multiple occasions. You keep asking the same question and receiving essentially the same answer. Asking again isn't going to change the answer unless someone comes up with new ideas or the situation changes significantly.

Setting up the "other side" as being unquestionable is a very bad way to start a conversation with that "other side".

The answer to your question is the combination of a few simple facts:

• Being welcoming for new players is a necessary condition of the ongoing health of the multiplayer community.
• Not having any public games available to join and play is unwelcoming. Being able to see an active game but being excluded from playing it is particularly unwelcoming.
• Enough people dislike high skill variance in games to make them choose to play in an elo-restricted room rather than an All Welcome room.
• The playerbase during a not-insignificant amount of the day is only large enough to support a single large team room.
• Seeding new rooms is risky and difficult, to the extent that people often end up spectating a game they cannot play rather than go create a game that they can play.

The conclusion from all these facts is that a permanent elo-restricted large teams host would result in the destruction of the community. It wouldn't be swift or noticable at the time, but after a few years we'd look at a shrinking community, wonder why all the new players dried up, and then realise that no new players came in because it was too difficult for them to play a public game.

In short, this

quote: Thats why i suggested having the paladium more often. This would basically leave the AWH untouched and at least offer us some more posibilities to have satisfying games.

is plain false. The All Welcome room would obviously be impacted by the creation of an exclusive room because the two rooms would compete for players.

Before you pick apart the minutiae of the five facts I presented, the facts are not making black-and-white claims. I'm not saying that seeding a room is impossible or that the high-elo room would invariably be the only room available. The facts are all merely factors that make it a bit harder for new players to enter the multiplayer community. If you make it hard enough for people to enter a community then the community dies. Look at how many of the currently active players joined within the last year and halve that number.

katastrophe it is all a matter of tradeoffs. Your repeated posts of this nature certainly tell us that this is something at least a few people care about, but it doesn't tell us how many people care about it and to what extent. There isn't much data with which to make this tradeoff. The thread by Manu12 is a bit better but isn't much data because, while most people would agree that having more strategies and less skill variance in games would make the games more fun,

• people don't say (and are probably bad at judging) how much they value this improvement,
• the forums is likely a vocal minority that doesn't accurately map to who plays games,
• people who talk on the forum wouldn't necessarily start playing low-variance large team games, and
• the thread was about meta and balance too, not just skill variation.

It is also hard to judge how often a bad situation comes about from skill variation, and there could be other social or mechanical solutions to these bad situations that don't involve room management.

To hold more fruitful conversation on this topic you will need to:

• Propose solutions from the perspective of realising that your desires are just one of many sets of competing desires. Simply stating "here are my desires and how to fulfill them" is redundant I know your desires and don't disagree that your proposals would satisfy them (at least temporarily until the proposal kills the community). A tradeoff must be found.
• Acknowledge and address the five facts above. Find solutions in reference to those facts.
• While not necessarily required, it would be useful to gather convincingly impartial information that can be used to gauge the magnitude of the tradeoffs. How many established players are significantly negatively affected by the current system? Would a proposal fix their problem, or was their problem an unconcious proxy for a deeper problem? What does player influx and retention look like at the moment?

On your reference to the previous thread:

• If you want to claim that moderation issues around "playing badly" are common then cite examples that are actually relevant.
• It is ridiculous to expect Lu5ck to be paying attention to who started what between czesio and patrician.
• czesio has "high elo" so you're not going to be excluding him from a "high elo" host.

quote: He also reclaimed USrankpatrician paladin to build his singu in same game. As it wasn't his first grieving action in recent times then it could be also ended with ban. I think that was marked as 'playing badly' not just singu building.

Yes, he Damage with his pure badly playing and griefing/sabotage the games.

quote: I will limit myself to just point out when we get more drama and people snapping or leaving because of this.

Communities have drama and people leave. It is a thing that happens. I for one am not going to be impressed when you try to shoehorn each instance of this into your narrative.

I was already not impressed by you dragging your pet topic into the czesio thread when it seems pretty clear that czesio is acting like a jackass even when he doesn't have the excuse of playing in a clusterfuck.

quote: I was already not impressed by you dragging your pet topic into the czesio thread when it seems pretty clear that czesio is acting like a jackass even when he doesn't have the excuse of playing in a clusterfuck.

criminality-prevention doesn`t claim that criminal acts are justified nor does it claim that the victims of criminality are to blame. what i am trying is to do conflict-prevention as far as possible.
recognising what lead to czesio acting like a jackass doesn`t excuse the behaviour and trying to prevent cases like that is beneficial for everyone here.

I have talked to him in private and observed his comments for a long time. I sadly cannot look into his head. I cannot prove ANYTHING definitely but i think i got a pretty good understanding.
As far as i see it:

- was a pretty unremarkebly player regarding his behaviour for really long (correct me if i am wrong)

- got upset about people that he percieved to be playing bad on purpose in clusterfuck

- got upset about being percieved as someone who is elitist in general

- https://zero-k.info/Forum/Thread/32223

- gets ONLY shit (although deserved) in the above post

- feels as even more unimportant to you

- for whatever reason (real-life, addiction to zk maybe) avoiding zk is not an option.

- throws next temper-tantrum, assumingly because he sees no other way to vent. Goes way overboard.


I don`t know about anything you or other admins communicated in private obviously.

(need to finish paper in the next 30 hours, will insert answer here later)

Hi~

As mentioned in the previous thread, I am aware the reason behind the ban aka czesio's reclaiming and teamkilling. However, I would like to highlight again that I also understand his/her rage aka the root of the issue.

In another thread, I also mentioned that there is a difference between being untalented and being deliberately bad/trollish.

The thing is in cluster room, while most people are playing to their capability, you only need a few black sheeps to fuck it up for everyone. These few black sheeps are enough to make some people stop playing. GoogleFrog, regarding about the amount of people that cares, cares enough to complain, I think it is reasonable to say that people also believe the administrative team is not gonna do anything about it even if they do complain. I mean, the complains weren't first of its kind either. It is a old problem, it has persisted.

Take for example, there was a match where Snowlob was building fusion at frontlines and beside players' factories, I reported it, was he/she warned for that? I doubt. Does he/she know is a bad thing to do? Of course, that is why he/she did it.

Shaman, top 50 in the casual ladder, he was seen building newton jump pad, was it useful? You tell me.

How about patrician? He usually seen building strider at the back, many times building 2x to 3x the caretakers of his income. Sometimes even starting detri off the start, as someone who played thousands, as in 7k+++ games, don't tell me he doesn't know that (detri right off the bat) is frown upon?

The list could go on.

As mentioned in other thread, why should these people's fun be more important than others?

PS: Just to elaborate, I don't agree with czesio becoming part of the issue like trolling like they did/do.

I think the attitude problems of certain community members overshadow the damages of individuals doing silly stuff by a considerable margin.