3 CN Mindsets
Entry posted by Dagrr
387 views
This blog feature seems to be alright and I'm a firm advocate of keeping the clutter on the forums down to a manageable level. I'm planning on making a CN related entry every Saturday and dabbling in other things relating to the real world on Wednesdays.
So I lost interest in the war. It was probably the biggest strategic and tactical failure in the history of CN. I'll cover that next week as to why I think so. All this fuss did get me reading the forums again. It eventually occurred to me then that almost everyone who frequents the forums can be grouped into 3 different mindsets, roughly defined as to what kind of character a player is trying to portray. There has of course been some interbreeding between the styles, resulting is some interesting mutations. Be warned that the following may cross the IC/OOC line. Try not to take this too seriously; there are some posters that are legitimately interesting to read, even if they fall into these groups.
The Neo-Moldavists
They are the people who had to read Machiavelli's Prince for school, but bought the Cliff Notes instead of the real book.
In general, they believe, to varying degrees, that "Might makes Right", a term that is harped upon by the Pseudo Intellectuals and the Honhur Club, their natural enemies, who we will cover later. Really though, this style of player is looking out for his own alliance first, his allies second, and is willing to do things that others won't do to promote his interests. They are akin to nationalists and militarists in the real world.
The Neo-Moldavists will sign treaties that make the most sense in terms of Real Poltik. However, once they acquire power, they are usually at a lose as to how to wield it in a effective manner. There have been very few players, especially in the past 2 years or so, that were skilled at judiciously applying their power on the world stage. The annuals of CN history are filled with blunders, with only a small number of outright success stories.
Some of the Neo-Moldavists are more charismatic than others. As a whole, they are probably the most entertaining players to observe and naturally tend to focus on the military aspects of the game. They are also the easiest to counter. You see, most Neo-Moldavists lack the subtlety of the original. You can usually see what their goals are after chatting with them for a couple of minutes on IRC.
In game, the largest grouping was perhaps in "Hegemony". Obviously, in the end, it didn't work out too well for them. Thanks to the forces of Karma, many of of us now enjoy the companionship of upstanding Neo-Moldavists in our homes. Keep in mind though: Hegemony relied on the inaction of the opposition for nearly 3 years and the unwillingness of forces to unify. Action trumps inaction every time. Many of the leaders of the opposition are miraculously still leading alliances today. Who is ready for 3 moar years?
The Pseudo Intellectuals
By far the most toxic group and, unfortunately for the rest of us, they make up the largest percentage of the CN population. Let me put this one out there: pretending to agree with your opponents in some kind of sarcastic humor ploy does NOT make you a master debater. It makes you a moron.
The most active members of this sect are prone to engage in shameless grandstanding by repeatedly spamming the forums with their arguments. The ultimate goal in doing this is to win a long winded debate across a multitude of topics, no matter how unrelated the individual topics and posts may be. In the event that they think that their worthy post is lost in the "trash", they will start a new topic explaining their viewpoint again and explain why it is that they are right. All the opposing Pseudo Intellectuals will flock to this new topic and restate their opinions. In a way, it is like watching greyhounds chase after that fake rabbit at the track. New topic, new race. No matter how fast you go, you will never win an argument in Cyber Nations conducted through words alone. Think about it. How many people do you know that would admit that they are wrong in public? No you indeed.
The popular and well spoken members of this style rise to the top of their alliances, especially in the foreign affairs departments. The blame for this falls on players equating walls of text and thesaurus use for actual intelligence. The less well know members of this group tend to stay within their own internal departments so mercifully, we are sparred from the interalliance community being even more of a royal facepalm than it already is. You'll still know one if you see him.
The worst enemy of the Pseudo Intellectual is their own mouth. If you go back far enough, you will almost certainly find where they have contradicted themselves.
The Honhur Club
Where do I even start? Why the "hurrr"? Because people of the Honhur Club repeat themselves. A lot. The more someone talks about their own or their friends honor, integrity, etc, the more you can be sure that they are trying to hid something. The dictionary I have has 15 different definitions for the word "Honor". The most cunning of this sect have learned to manipulate the definition of honor to meet their political aims in CN. Honor has a different definition for everyone, so when you use the term, make it clear to what exactly you are referring to. This group is usually anti-techraiding though you will find some that believe in the "Honor of the Hunt."
The less intelligent members of this group usually get their alliances killed. They will cling desperately to whatever they have defined honor while the world goes to hell around them. And they are literally allergic to winning. On the rare occasion that they do win, they will usually push for white peace.
Closely related to the Honhur strain are the alliances who base their entire mindset on "avenging" a certain event: usually getting defeated in war and having to pay reps afterward. These players typically have a selective view of in game history, either purposely or on accident. With the amount of alliance migration that goes on, I'm fairly confident that almost every major alliance has at least one senior member who has paid reparations at some point in their careers. Using the revenge card is still a good move in justifying your path in foreign affairs and motivating your alliance to strive forward, but don't hold the illusion that people can't see what you are doing and take appropriate countermeasures.
It conclusion, it should be noted that all three groups are doing what the believe is "right". Very few people set out to fail. The perfect CN player would be balanced between action, words, and pragmatism.
Next week: War Coverage
Have a nice weekend.
21 Comments
Recommended Comments