MA groups are ruining the game!! (according to Discord keyboard warriors)

[Tgo01]

So there has been a multi-year smear campaign against me on the official Discord headed by Tikba and Geijon (who is laughably a mentor). Tikba in particular is the reason the GMs had to implement a "No politics" rule because Tikba just couldn't stop calling everyone a literal Nazi if they disagreed with him. Tikba is toxic personified and yet has the audacity to call me and everyone else he disagrees with toxic.

There was a thread created to call out the supposed MA armies ruining the game, yet the original poster (another part of the hate brigade but to a much lesser extent than Tikba) only really called out me. Since there is a supposed "no harassment" policy on Discord, they aren't allowed to say "Dreaven is ruining the game", but apparently they are allowed to describe me to a T and smear me in that fashion.

Here is an example of what I mean:

Here is an example of 29 accounts grouped together doing bandits. The last time I encountered them in the Adventurer's Guild, it crashed my front end. I've also had characters die in IMT hunting areas due to this huge group's screen scroll overloading the FE as well.

>go track
[Icemule Trail, Snowy Forest - 2499] (u4044217)
The wide track leading to the clearing east of you is free of snow and has been pounded flat by the heavily-laden carts headed toward the southeast. The forest is filled with the sound of heavy objects striking wood. You also see a halfling thug, the MasterBot disk, the Character11 disk, the Character9 disk, the Character12 disk, the Character27 disk, the Character23 disk, the Character21 disk, the Character1 disk, the Character19 disk, the Character3 disk, the Character26 disk, the Character28 disk, the Character17 disk, the Character13 disk, the Character2 disk, the Character20 disk, the Character16 disk, the Character4 disk, the Character10 disk, the Character14 disk, the Character15 disk, the Character22 disk, the Character7 disk, the Character25 disk, the Character18 disk, the Character24 disk, the Character5 disk, the Character6 disk, the Character8 disk and a human highwayman that appears stunned.
Also here: Character27, Character26, Character25, Character24, Character23, Character22, Character21, Character20, Character19, Character18, Character17, Character16, Character15, Character14, Character13, Character12, Character11, Character10, Character9, Character28, Character8, Character7, Character6, Character5, Character4, Character3, Character2, Character1, MasterBot
Obvious paths: northeast, southwest

Mentioning 29 characters all doing bandits in Icemule. Gee, I wonder who it could be? Anyone who still plays this game knows exactly who they are referring to, yet they can openly call me a bot (implying I am afk and don't respond to the game environment) with no repercussions. I'm just surprised they haven't tried "I'm not naming names, but this person's name rhymes with Breaven." I mean why not? It would probably work. From this point on in the discussion people were free to openly smear me by just referring to me as "29."

But Tikba, as per usual, just couldn't help his hate-filled self and had to take it too far with this comment:

Also to be clear you’re absolutely right, we should be clear that MA of all sorts where multiple characters are gaining experience is against policy and those account should be banned just as dreaven’s accounts should be banned for policy violation

Just flat out saying I need to be banned from the game, which is of course the real entire point of the discussion to begin with, under the flimsy pretext of "No no, it's ALL multi-account groups!"

And again rather than actually, oh I don't know, doing something about Tikba in particular since he seems to be the reason why so many rules need to be made and why so many discussions need to be shut down, they once again shut down the discussion, and of course before I had a chance to reply to most of the nonsense the usual suspects were spewing from their various orifices.

Since I know a lot of these people secretly visit these forums (they can't admit it in public or they too would be shamed), I'm sure some of my replies will find their way back to them.

Here is a comment from everyone's favorite clown: Whirlin

No, I'm with Alastir on this one.

We were talking about abusive gameplay and the detriment on collective experience.

The solution isn't to further enable such behavior by creating new mechanics and special bespoke areas for it to be executed within.

It's already been done via OSA, and dismissed for 'reasons'. That's a lot of time away from class reviews, gemstones, finalizing the Empath service, and total development time for an area that may be OSA-like and ignored for 'reasons'. Where in the end, that ends up being time away from gemstones, archetypes, the Empath service, the bard review, etc.

Basically the number 1 complaint is supposedly that MA groups are creating large swarms making the hunting grounds unhuntable for non-MA groups, so people, who don't even have multiple accounts, were trying to come up with solutions such as having particular rooms in hunting grounds that swarm and other rooms that are normal, that way the MA groups can head to the swarming rooms and everyone else can stay safer in the non-swarming rooms.

Even though this would in theory solve the number 1 complaint, this was shot down by people such as Tikba and Whirlin for various reasons. The laughable reasons Whirlin and other gave is "But...but it pulls time away from the GMs!!111!" Okay so fixing issues affecting players suddenly isn't important if the GMs have to actually, oh I don't know, WORK?

Some of their solutions to ME (yes, literally telling me what -I- have to do because they have a problem with the way I play the game) is that I should do OSA. I told them I hate OSA, I honestly truly just don't like it. If I found it enjoyable why wouldn't I do it? Their other solution was for me to play Shattered, like why? Why should I play Shattered when a solution (swarm/non-swarm areas) has been presented? Oh right, because it has nothing to do with swarms, it has everything to do with the fact they want me removed from the game, and they aren't even shy about saying this, the GMs just laughably say "Well...they didn't specifically say your name!!!"

Whirlin putting reasons in quotes, as if I A) owe him or anyone else a reason to begin with and B) basically accusing me lying about the reasons I did give, but he's too much of a coward to admit this because while it's obvious it's open season to smear me on Discord, he's too afraid to tempt it and risk his precious Envoy status.

Whirlin and several others heavily imply (with one person flat out saying it and again with no repercussions) that the reason I am not moving to OSA or Shattered is because of "making" money off the game. Which is funny because I never/rarely see them bitch about people who make money off of paid events such as DR and EG. I guess they are fine with people making money from the game as long as they are plopping down 1k at a time in the form of SimuCoins. Imagine having to live with someone this insufferable that they turn a blind eye to something they supposedly hate as long as a multi-million dollar company is making more money.

[Tgo01]

Here is a laughable post from Alastir, but a few other people share the same "We don't want no stinking solutions! We just want bans!" mentality:

Let's accept a few facts as ground rules:

You cannot control 9, 15, 29 characters at the same time without using a script, AFK or not.

The groups of 9, 15 and 29 characters are being disruptive in some areas by increasing the difficulty of said areas above and beyond their intended difficulty, due to number of creatures present.

There is no increased difficulty when you have 9, 15 or 29 characters.

This is just dumb on the face of it. Does anyone really believe I have an easier time hunting with 29 characters than someone does with 9 characters? It doesn't scale like that and anyone who honestly took 2 seconds to think about it would realize this.

Take it from someone who has actually gone from 1 character, to 2, to 3, to 4, to 5, to 6, to 8, to 10, to 11, to 15, to...I forget how it went after this, after 3 characters there are some serious diminishing returns in regards to difficulty based on the number of characters you are hunting with, and this goes for if 1 person is controlling 3 characters or if 3 people are controlling 3 characters.

I obviously can't give an exact percentage, but just to illustrate my point it goes something like this:

2 characters = 75% easier than hunting solo
3 characters = 50% easier than hunting with 2
4 characters = 10% easier than hunting with 3
5 characters = 1% easier than hunting with 4
6 characters = 0.1% easier than hunting with 5
7 characters = 0.01% easier than hunting with 6
etc.

How many characters does it take to disable most/all critters in a room with a single cast? Here is a hint: 1
How many characters does it take to do some serious damage to most/all critters in the room with a single cast, while also knocking down/stunning most of them? Here is a hint: 1
How many characters does it take to unstun the group, use a sanctuary spell/130 if things go wrong, heal the group, and cast powerful defensive spells such as 140? Here is a hint: 1

I'm talking about a wizard/bard/empath combo. Anything after that is just fluff. So this idea of "Oh noes! 29 characters is trivializing all risks!" is beyond absurd because the risks almost all but disappear as soon as you get 3 people in the game group. Are we going to ban grouping altogether? Of course not, because as usual, this isn't about groups or MA groups, it's about their favorite punching bag.

Don't even get me started on the gear some of these people have. A single attack having 20 different flares going off, 50,000 points of damage padding and crit padding, a warrior with enough SK spell items to have every single spell on the game on them, even in areas where outside spells aren't typically allowed. "But the risk/reward structure!!!1!!"

Another post from the idiot:

"But they'll just break it into groups of 5."

This sounds like Game Mechanics Abuse, which is also against policy.
The Prime instance has rules. There is another instance that has no rules.

LOL. "Game mechanics abuse" by hunting in groups of 5. These people are just beyond absurd.

[Tgo01]

This person Meliyara is the biggest joke of all in this discussion.

They went from "But too many critters is ruining my experience! I don't even care about afk hunters! It's the large groups creating swarms that is the problem!!!!"

To this:

I applaud the creativity, but as others have said, I don’t think bad behavior should be rewarded. Let’s be honest with ourselves here: players MAing that many characters to faceroll even appropriately leveled content aren’t doing it for the good of the game, they’re doing it to pursue their own rewards. When they’re going down to content far below them, that’s even clearer.

Ah, it's "even clearer" when it's something I specifically do. Noted!

Also what happened to "The swarms are the problem!" Now it's just "But...but making swarms in just particular areas is just rewarding bad behavior! Also they are doing it for their own rewards!" Like, no fucking shit? How dare people play this game in a way they find rewarding! The absolute nerve of SOME people to play the game in a way that -I- don't find rewarding!!

[Tgo01]

Oh yeah, how their arguments went from "All MA'ers are bad!" to "Well...some are good...particularly the people I am friends with!"

Leafiara, you said you have about a dozen accounts you play simultaneously. How often do people complain about you? I haven't seen it

And in case Leafiara is reading this, let me preface by saying I have NOTHING at all against you, obviously, I have nothing against any MA'er, why would I? I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy on display here.

You can't convince me that on one hand ALL MA groups ruin the experience of other players due to swarms, or screen scroll, or loot pressure, or any other reason they seemingly make up sometimes, then say "Oh well this one particular person does it right."

That's impossible. What is more than likely is some people have come across Leafiara's group and said to themselves "You know what? I don't like this area, I'm just going to find a different place to hunt in this game that has dozens of other hunting areas around my level" and those people went on with their lives and didn't feel the need to broadcast their complaints on Discord or in game or with their group of friends.

You can't say MA groups are inherently bad but somehow one person made it work. It doesn't work like that. Either you guys are blowing this all out of proportion for the people you dislike or all MA groups are bad. There is literally no way you can complain about a 9 player MA group creating swarms and screen scroll and say "Oh but somehow this group with a dozen characters doesn't create screen scroll or swarms." The game literally doesn't work like that.

[Tgo01]

And I'll finally end my rant with a post from someone who clearly saw straight through all of this bullshit and called out the well known hate brigade directly:

To be fair, this whole thread is an attack on one person, it's not about a better way of doing things, it's about trying to force a single person out of the game and pretending it's about a better way of doing things. I never thought I'd be on the side of that person TBH, but like, man, we're just gonna kick everyone out of the game until there's no one left because if we just kick enough people out then it'll be magically just like 1996 again or something. It makes ME want to leave the game too. I'm not an MAer, I don't have a stake in if we ban all MA people or not or whatever the outcome is. But like, I dunno, the level of "ruining my playing experience" is super minimal IMHO, and the things I could go for if I was really stretching for band aids were just done immediately yesterday after it was asked for (which still never bothered me much anyway) and people are open to myriad ideas on improving things further. If the person is sharp enough to have 29 characters shake their fist at left shark or whatever when a GM checks on them and build in like ten layers of "sorry I'm doing bandits in your area, hit me up if it's an issue" protocols, I dunno, you do you man, have fun playing that way, the AG is quieter, yay, we did it, let's move on and play together in whatever ways we like to do that in a policy-legal way. There are other people that MA in this game that if there was a whiff of "oh, this is about BLANK" that this thread would have been pulled in a heartbeat. I think it probably still SHOULD be pulled. I'm just exhausted of this level of targeted mean. Probably putting a target on my back where I'm next too! A "ban people with Jungle Samoyeds" thread incoming.

The part I underlined and bolded is especially on point.

[Parkbandit]

What does Geijon mentor people on.. how to be the dumbest and most effeminate guy in every discussion?

And poor Whirlin.. that guy just wants to be someone important! Can't Simu just give him a title of some sort.. giving him purpose in his real life? I feel bad for that guy.. he has literally nothing going for him.

Whirlin is the type of guy who moves repeatedly just to get on the HOA.. but then the neighbors get to know him.. vote him out.. and he has to move again.

[azim17]

I stop by to search for old items and happened to see this. No one is reading this man, and certainly no one cares.

[Parkbandit]

Also: Why the fuck do you pay for 29 accounts and need to play them simultaneously?

But Simutronics will never ban multiaccounting since that is literally their bread and butter. You probably are their biggest customer.

[Parkbandit]

I stop by to search for old items and happened to see this. No one is reading this man, and certainly no one cares.

You read it enough to care.

Don't you feel retarded now?

You should.

[azim17]

Ehh, he kind of seems like a fat comic book store guy from the simpsons. I mean this entire thread is you two. Well and me...shame on me. But stumbling across this was pretty funny...so I stand by it.