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This Week inside Rotavele: Pacifica's Return


Beauty

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Dear admin, someone claiming Red is weak and falls for stupid PR. Pull your head out of your own delusional fantasy of being important and figure out who you are actually talking about before you spout nonsense. (Sorry I forgot who I was talking to)

 

Also, Red is right, at least when the NPO was the "big bad" there was something to work against, now there is no foil to play off of. The practice of EZI and PZI while atrocious in my view was at least something polarizing in the political world.

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I would support the return of this former NPO. If they decided to eradicate this plague of lulz diplomacy and plagues of micros and protectorates stagnating the entire treaty web and this realm in general I would support that too. I was on an EZI list once upon a time and in hindsight after losing a good dozen nations to them I can truthfully say it was the most fun I ever had going from conflict to conflict taking them on every chance I could. I could have done what a few others did and bent the knee or disbanded but where would be the fun in that?

 

Like Tony said

 

What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of <insert bad term>. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be? You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through! Better get outta his way!

 

 

 

So yeah, bring back the old NPO please.

Edited by Charles the Tyrant
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I actually share Red's opinion on those events and have wondered when someone would attempt to resuscitate them.

 

Never understood the route y'all took as being a permenent one.

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I have to say I'm not quite sure where Red gets her ideas about the lack of anyone stepping up to be the villain in the post-Karma period. 

True, there was a brief period of uneasy peace and coperation in "SuperGrievances" but GOONS, MK, Poison Clan, etc soon strode forward with the specific goal of becoming the new villain.

 

Whereas Pacifica's offenses were made out of a pragmatic approach toward an ideological goal and global primacy, MK especially formulated its moves with a self-awareness: to become a villain to inflame passions, and to use destruction to force creation.  MK's strategy, which guided its actions, was presented to the world outright by Ardus in his essay Creative Annihilation.  The difference is that NPO had to fight for primacy, and its offenses were part of the clawing to the top, then threats to their power were mostly sedition, which required targeting specific people and ideas, thus PZI of individuals to shut them up, with occasional wars over petty crap to keep everyone else in line, and to keep their pack of supporting allies both happy and in line.  MK was launched to primacy by Karma, its offenses were a psycopathic attempt to play Admin--this required picking an alliance, not individuals, and going for it, and while out-and-out PZIs would have caused uproars, there was no reason to push it because it wasn't the kind of tool DH/Pandora's Box needed.  For their part, Poison Clan and its stupid satellites (now NG) also pushed the villain game bypushing the limits of raiding (such as the Red Safari). 

For both NPO (as Red notes) and DH, a pack of lesser AAs were more than happy to ignore or partake in the offenses for a seat at the table.

 

In the same period, C&G- and DH-aligned talking heads began OWF campaigns to decry the Moralism boogey man, claiming that those who focused on the more ethical edge of Karma were stifling and even killing Digiterra.  Azaghul and Londo Mollari posted the two most notable essays/diatribes.  The biggest problem is that Moralism is not a real philosophy, it is whatever idea, action, or protest that DH and Pandora's Box needed to lampoon that week, and any given AA or person that one might mock by calling them a moralist will have done things that a moralist would never do--NpO, for example, stomped its fair share of innocent victims, or Schattenmann spent a year spying for Goon Order of Neutral Shoving.

So, one would naturally think that an essay against moralism is an argument for a return to things like EZI, real politick stompings, war on neutrals, etc, but since such an essay argues against something that doesn't exist (there is no such thing as moralism outside of its use as a pejorative) then these arguments are, rather, arguments for inter-alliance violence without limits.

 

In the end, what has stifled Digiterra is not that there was no "new NPO" no new villain.  But that, like NPO's allies before, the allies of Poison Clan and Non Grata, and of DH and Pandora's Box accepted their offenses without question or reflection.  Non Grata's vicious and disgusting attacks on the real person's behind Van Hoo III and KaitlinK, for example, were not met with the cancellations they demanded.  MK's hollow, boring wars against NPO and Super Friends were met with universal apathy.  Fear and greed and friends>infra made and continue to make Digterra boring. 

 

It is not until alliance leaders begin to acknowledge the Truth that allegiance is endorsement, and friendship is not a foreign policy that what drives Digiterra--inter-alliance intrigue and war based in true conflict--will return, thus revitalizing our existence.  NPO's villainy was driven by ideology and produced ideological resistance, the villainy that came after was metavillainy with no real aim except to be vile, and it produced nothing but acceptance of villainy for villainy's sake.  We were promised by these architects of the new villainy that they were actually saving the planet, they simply made it boring, and the greatest testimony to the obvious failure of their ideas is their own non-existence.

Edited by Schattenmann
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I have to say I'm not quite sure where Red gets her ideas about the lack of anyone stepping up to be the villain in the post-Karma period. 

True, there was a brief period of uneasy peace and coperation in "SuperGrievances" but GOONS, MK, Poison Clan, etc soon strode forward with the specific goal of becoming the new villain.

 

Whereas Pacifica's offenses were made out of a pragmatic approach toward an ideological goal and global primacy, MK especially formulated its moves with a self-awareness: to become a villain to inflame passions, and to use destruction to force creation.  MK's strategy, which guided its actions, was presented to the world outright by Ardus in his essay Creative Annihilation.  The difference is that NPO had to fight for primacy, and its offenses were part of the clawing to the top, then threats to their power were mostly sedition, which required targeting specific people and ideas, thus PZI of individuals to shut them up, with occasional wars over petty crap to keep everyone else in line, and to keep their pack of supporting allies both happy and in line.  MK was launched to primacy by Karma, its offenses were a psycopathic attempt to play Admin--this required picking an alliance, not individuals, and going for it, and while out-and-out PZIs would have caused uproars, there was no reason to push it because it wasn't the kind of tool DH/Pandora's Box needed.  For their part, Poison Clan and its stupid satellites (now NG) also pushed the villain game bypushing the limits of raiding (such as the Red Safari). 

For both NPO (as Red notes) and DH, a pack of lesser AAs were more than happy to ignore or partake in the offenses for a seat at the table.

 

In the same period, C&G- and DH-aligned talking heads began OWF campaigns to decry the Moralism boogey man, claiming that those who focused on the more ethical edge of Karma were stifling and even killing Digiterra.  Azaghul and Londo Mollari posted the two most notable essays/diatribes.  The biggest problem is that Moralism is not a real philosophy, it is whatever idea, action, or protest that DH and Pandora's Box needed to lampoon that week, and any given AA or person that one might mock by calling them a moralist will have done things that a moralist would never do--NpO, for example, stomped its fair share of innocent victims, or Schattenmann spent a year spying for Goon Order of Neutral Shoving.

So, one would naturally think that an essay against moralism is an argument for a return to things like EZI, real politick stompings, war on neutrals, etc, but since such an essay argues against something that doesn't exist (there is no such thing as moralism outside of its use as a pejorative) then these arguments are, rather, arguments for inter-alliance violence without limits.

 

In the end, what has stifled Digiterra is not that there was no "new NPO" no new villain.  But that, like NPO's allies before, the allies of Poison Clan and Non Grata, and of DH and Pandora's Box accepted their offenses without question or reflection.  Non Grata's vicious and disgusting attacks on the real person's behind Van Hoo III and KaitlinK, for example, were not met with the cancellations they demanded.  MK's hollow, boring wars against NPO and Super Friends were met with universal apathy.  Fear and greed and friends>infra made and continue to make Digterra boring. 

 

It is not until alliance leaders begin to acknowledge the Truth that allegiance is endorsement, and friendship is not a foreign policy that what drives Digiterra--inter-alliance intrigue and war based in true conflict--will return, thus revitalizing our existence.  NPO's villainy was driven by ideology and produced ideological resistance, the villainy that came after was metavillainy with no real aim except to be vile, and it produced nothing but acceptance of villainy for villainy's sake.  We were promised by these architects of the new villainy that they were actually saving the planet, they simply made it boring, and the greatest testimony to the obvious failure of their ideas is their own non-existence.

 

 

The absolute truth that will fall on deaf ears. Those that need to hear this are the same that have all but left this planet. Those leaders that sit idly by barely running their alliance. Thinking that dealing with a rogue here and there is the extent of their duties and that they will 'roll' with their friends that they have always stood by. 

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The absolute truth that will fall on deaf ears. Those that need to hear this are the same that have all but left this planet. Those leaders that sit idly by barely running their alliance. Thinking that dealing with a rogue here and there is the extent of their duties and that they will 'roll' with their friends that they have always stood by. 


Very true. The problem is that it is so much easier to do nothing and ignore this, and we are oh so lazy. Even those who preach this truth at times find themselves attempting to exonerate themselves, citing treaty obligations, blind loyalty or coalition warfare, as if that absolves them from responsibility of the support they gave so willingly through the enabling actions taken.
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I don't know if I fully agree that the world is boring because people aren't cynical enough. A real killer here is that there's only two kinds of conflicts. Very short brush fires or very long, drawn out global curbstomps with large sides comprised of alliances with varying degrees of interest in those wars.

 

If alliances that didn't care about conflicts and had nothing to gain from them and no intrinsic reason for involvement stayed out of those conflicts, it would make just the coalition aspect of fighting these wars less aggravating and more fun. By allowing wars to be more localized, they become less exhausting to the leaders needed to manage them. Everyone has become so utterly panicked about who might not take damage and how they will statistically match alliances they are not even at odds with politically. We're all saving our nations and our alliances for The Big War That Actually Matters For Real, and let me tell you - it's never going to come. The wars that matter are the ones you care about while you are fighting them. If you are in a war and you do not care, you are just gumming it up for the rest of us.

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In the end, what has stifled Digiterra is not that there was no "new NPO" no new villain.  But that, like NPO's allies before, the allies of Poison Clan and Non Grata, and of DH and Pandora's Box accepted their offenses without question or reflection.  Non Grata's vicious and disgusting attacks on the real person's behind Van Hoo III and KaitlinK, for example, were not met with the cancellations they demanded.  MK's hollow, boring wars against NPO and Super Friends were met with universal apathy.  Fear and greed and friends>infra made and continue to make Digterra boring. 

 

 

Erm... Biodad was MK & Jacapo...  

 

But sure, if you want to tar the entire of NG with that era go for it Schatt.

 

I guess we're the New Old New Pacific Order Order Villain?  I call us the NonPoo Villain for short

 

:ehm:

Edited by Stewie
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Erm... Biodad was MK & Jacapo...  

 

But sure, if you want to tar the entire of NG with that era go for it Schatt.

 

I guess we're the New Old New Pacific Order Order Villain?  I call us the NonPoo Villain for short

 

:ehm:

And onwards we go

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I'm honored to accept this award on behalf of Non Grata for villain of the game

 

Oh, and no matter what Stewie says we greatly appreciate it and really value your input and opinion Schatt. You're the reason we wake up in the morning to keep going.

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I do not now, nor have I ever supported true EZI (enforcing zero infrastructure on someone who re-rolled with a new ruler name and nation name and is attempting to portray another character).  True EZI is OOC Internet tough guy bovine scatology masquerading as IC "punishment".

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But we still didn't stab our own alliance in the back with the bubble gum wars.

 

RIP browncoats.

Hahahahaha.  That's true, no, you didn't.  No one in NG creative, daring, or intelligent enough to have thought of anything so magnificent as the Bubblegum War.

Schattenmann: Let's put this AA through 5 days of fake war to stop One Vision from escalating a global war.

Poison Clan: Let's raid Red while NPO is under peace terms.

 

I'm honest-to-mod tickled when someone tries to insult me with that.  It's one of the best things I ever did if it was a little rough in the execution, but hey, it was my first big move.  You're baiting me with stuff I did 50 years ago, I don't know who you are.  That's all we need to know about this situation.

Edited by Schattenmann
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I actually agree with much of what Red is saying. Before Karma War I had a purpose driving me to gain more power and influence (as well as arming my alliance fully with MPs). For the eventual war which was Karma War and defeating NPO. Although after NPO was defeated, it was like when you beat the last boss in a video game. You can stick around and still play, but that sense of purpose was gone.

 

I don't think bringing back EZI is the answer and I don't think that was the point of what Red was saying. Currently people just call them Enemy lists, where they pursue people past ZI until they somehow get off. Which really is no different than what EZI/PZI was. NPO just had the balls to call it PZI/EZI, since they would of liked to see someone try to do anything about it. When you're winning all the time, sometimes you would like to see people bring you a challenge.

Edited by Methrage
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My reaction to Red's musings,

 

I like much of what Red said, especially the point about this being the most fun as a political sim, but I think she misses a point that can be gleaned from that. NPO's harsh tactics drove the community to destroy them. Thus, any attempt to reinstate those tactics should be seen as a suicidal political misstep for anyone with less relative power than NPO by those who see this game as a political simulator.The unpopularity and unnacceptability of EZI and PZI should be seen not as the death of CN politics, but as the continuation of them. Let me make a comparison. The practice of slavery in RL is one that still occurs today. Many political factions would argue that it occurs more frequently and is more widely accepted than is commonly believed. But no one who practices slavery today on a macroscopic scale is foolish enough to CALL it slavery. They go out of their way to call it something else, and put trappings on it to make it look justified, because they realize that the world community would reject slavery if they called it that. And just like in CN, the majority of people and governments are totally apathetic. Seeing this pattern in CN is not a failure of the game as a political sim, but a complication and expansion of it.

 

And CN MOST CERTAINLY has a group that has chosen to fulfill the role of CN bad guy or, arguably, has been cast in that role by the community. It is DBDC, and guess what guys? THIS IS IN FACT A SERVICE THEY PROVIDE TO OUR COMMUNITY!!! The way DBDC has been presented to me makes them sound like pre WWII Germany. I don't mean, genocidal maniacs, and I don't mean Nazis or fascists, or even anything negative by this. What I mean is, they have a strategy of aggressively seizing chunks of other large alliances' tech and land with overwhelming speed and force, then offered peace on a fait accompli, leaving their opponents with a choice between fighting a horribly bloody losing war to make them pay just a little, or surrendering what they have already lost. Meanwhile, the complacent west has chosen pacifism and ethnic nationalism over strong alliances (BETWEEN alliances) to form a network that can respond as a group, but how long will this last? I know some people feel it is no fun to play against the top ranks of DBDC, but I imagine the late 30's weren't very fun for the average Minister of Parliament, yet they found a political solution. If you don't think the atmosphere of the game is political enough, you can easily make it more political with your own actions, especially in your own AA.

Edited by John More Dread
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And btw I support PZI but not EZI, personally. EZI is metagaming. The fact that two fictional characters in a fictional universe have the same player should be completely irrelevant in world. However,  by the same token, people who make new nations under new rulers should not hold grudges from their old nations, this is also metagaming and war declarations from your new nation based on something someone did to a nation you deleted should be responded to with EZI.

Edited by John More Dread
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Planet Bob's mechanics are such that you can't really keep someone PZI for very long.  You can keep aid sanctions on for only so long, and with MHP you've made it impossible to actually PZI someone and now so many alliances just willfully accept nuclear rogues.  Even if they didn't, at 5K nuke rogue doesn't face much opposition unless that alliance has 2-3 dedicated super lower tier nuclear nations.  And it just sends up being a waste of time eventually.  That's why forcing a reroll is good for the game.  It forces nuclear rogues to reset their MHP.  With warchests what they are it's really the only way to solve a problem that is nearly universally viewed as a punishable offense.

 

Pretty much everyone that rogues keeps on doing it.  And so forcing a reroll has it's benefits and I'm starting to think it's a good thing for our community.

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Planet Bob's mechanics are such that you can't really keep someone PZI for very long.  You can keep aid sanctions on for only so long, and with MHP you've made it impossible to actually PZI someone and now so many alliances just willfully accept nuclear rogues.  Even if they didn't, at 5K nuke rogue doesn't face much opposition unless that alliance has 2-3 dedicated super lower tier nuclear nations.  And it just sends up being a waste of time eventually.  That's why forcing a reroll is good for the game.  It forces nuclear rogues to reset their MHP.  With warchests what they are it's really the only way to solve a problem that is nearly universally viewed as a punishable offense.

 

Pretty much everyone that rogues keeps on doing it.  And so forcing a reroll has it's benefits and I'm starting to think it's a good thing for our community.

Were that the only reason that PZI were instituted you might have a point.  The problem is that it's a very slippery slope from there to "because it's Thursday and I don't like you" as a PZI justification.  Worse, alliances that issue random PZI orders not only have their bad behavior looked over, but in the past they were declared good members of the CN community and showered with treaties.  It's good that the community as a whole takes a dim view of PZI, for while it still goes on, its use is kept to a minimum.

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Who are you? 

Oh the more things change...

 

I guess this is where we differ, a micro leader talking about the "Good Old Days" on her own forum to me, has very little to do with NPO, and Pacifica's return, but hey ho, if you take one persons thoughts on something as gospel for the whole alliance, then fill your boots.

 

We should encourage every bad thing to be about NPO though, it's just better that way. 

I have to say I'm not quite sure where Red gets her ideas about the lack of anyone stepping up to be the villain in the post-Karma period. 

True, there was a brief period of uneasy peace and coperation in "SuperGrievances" but GOONS, MK, Poison Clan, etc soon strode forward with the specific goal of becoming the new villain.

 

Whereas Pacifica's offenses were made out of a pragmatic approach toward an ideological goal and global primacy, MK especially formulated its moves with a self-awareness: to become a villain to inflame passions, and to use destruction to force creation.  MK's strategy, which guided its actions, was presented to the world outright by Ardus in his essay Creative Annihilation.  The difference is that NPO had to fight for primacy, and its offenses were part of the clawing to the top, then threats to their power were mostly sedition, which required targeting specific people and ideas, thus PZI of individuals to shut them up, with occasional wars over petty crap to keep everyone else in line, and to keep their pack of supporting allies both happy and in line.  MK was launched to primacy by Karma, its offenses were a psycopathic attempt to play Admin--this required picking an alliance, not individuals, and going for it, and while out-and-out PZIs would have caused uproars, there was no reason to push it because it wasn't the kind of tool DH/Pandora's Box needed.  For their part, Poison Clan and its stupid satellites (now NG) also pushed the villain game bypushing the limits of raiding (such as the Red Safari). 

For both NPO (as Red notes) and DH, a pack of lesser AAs were more than happy to ignore or partake in the offenses for a seat at the table.

 

In the same period, C&G- and DH-aligned talking heads began OWF campaigns to decry the Moralism boogey man, claiming that those who focused on the more ethical edge of Karma were stifling and even killing Digiterra.  Azaghul and Londo Mollari posted the two most notable essays/diatribes.  The biggest problem is that Moralism is not a real philosophy, it is whatever idea, action, or protest that DH and Pandora's Box needed to lampoon that week, and any given AA or person that one might mock by calling them a moralist will have done things that a moralist would never do--NpO, for example, stomped its fair share of innocent victims, or Schattenmann spent a year spying for Goon Order of Neutral Shoving.

So, one would naturally think that an essay against moralism is an argument for a return to things like EZI, real politick stompings, war on neutrals, etc, but since such an essay argues against something that doesn't exist (there is no such thing as moralism outside of its use as a pejorative) then these arguments are, rather, arguments for inter-alliance violence without limits.

 

In the end, what has stifled Digiterra is not that there was no "new NPO" no new villain.  But that, like NPO's allies before, the allies of Poison Clan and Non Grata, and of DH and Pandora's Box accepted their offenses without question or reflection.  Non Grata's vicious and disgusting attacks on the real person's behind Van Hoo III and KaitlinK, for example, were not met with the cancellations they demanded.  MK's hollow, boring wars against NPO and Super Friends were met with universal apathy.  Fear and greed and friends>infra made and continue to make Digterra boring. 

 

It is not until alliance leaders begin to acknowledge the Truth that allegiance is endorsement, and friendship is not a foreign policy that what drives Digiterra--inter-alliance intrigue and war based in true conflict--will return, thus revitalizing our existence.  NPO's villainy was driven by ideology and produced ideological resistance, the villainy that came after was metavillainy with no real aim except to be vile, and it produced nothing but acceptance of villainy for villainy's sake.  We were promised by these architects of the new villainy that they were actually saving the planet, they simply made it boring, and the greatest testimony to the obvious failure of their ideas is their own non-existence.

Oh thank Admin you are still around. I almost feel like I have an idea of what is going on after reading this. 

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