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The Pointsfix and the Game Listings [message #405549]

Tue, 06 October 2009 01:36

Spoony
Messages: 3915
Registered: January 2006

Karma: 0

General (3 Stars)
Tactics & Strategies Moderator

OK, so people think the pointsfix should be optional for each community. I agree. This is a reasonable position to take.
(although, it MUST be said that most people who say this tend to actually disagree with their own position when you give
them an example, i.e. when i wanted to use the pointsfix in the clanwars league... when that happens, it seems to be that
a community's admin ISN'T allowed to decide this, must instead submit to bullying and manipulation from a bunch of cheaters)

So let's make the pointsfix optional. What will happen?
Some servers will use the points bug, some servers with the points fix. Players can take this into consideration when they
decide where they want to play, just like they take all the other server settings into account (map rotation, game size,
rules about whether flaming APCs are allowed...)
Everybody's happy. Right?

Wrong.
I present to you the problem of the a00 nicks. One community has a monopoly upon them, and therefore, the game listings.

While this monopoly remains, no new server has a chance of flourishing. For example, there is currently nowhere with the
ideal ladder settings (i.e. pointsfix, zero start credits, no donate... in other words, the default version of renegade!),
and there is no way a server with these settings could ever hope to draw new players.

Let's examine the validity of the two "dictatorships" here. TT's authority to patch the game, and the Jelly community's
monopoly on the a00 names.

TT is a group that EA has entrusted to patch this game. That's quite impressive.
Why does the Jelly community have the a00 names? One reason and one reason alone: they got there first when WOL changed to
XWIS. That's all. There is no special reason why they deserve this. Anybody could have gotten there first. We can, if we
like, speculate who else was trying to do the same thing at the time, or what would have happened if they got there five
minutes before Jelly did. This authority was not given to Jelly by EA or by Westwood or even by Strike-Team. This authority
was not elected by the community either. This authority was seized.

Now, Jelly himself is my friend, and I will admit that there are many people who could have abused this situation far more.
But that does not change anything.

Now, even though the anti-pointsfix crowd has lost every single debate on the subject AND has been caught using the most
appalling tactics imaginable, TT is still making this concession: make the pointsfix optional. So, I think it is fair for
the Jelly community to make the same kind of concession on the dictatorship THEY enforce on renegade... which, unlike TT,
they have no valid claim upon.

Clearly one group must have control over these names. So who? If anybody deserves this authority (and someone WILL have it
no matter what), who deserves it more than TT? And please don't say the Jelly community, that would be a bad joke and not
even a very good one.

So, I propose that TT acquire the a00 names and take on the responsibility of distributing them.
I absolutely swear that I would do everything to ensure they are used fairly. For example, the Jelly community certainly
deserves one (as do other long-standing communities like n00bstories), but it doesn't deserve as many as it wants, and it
doesn't deserve to say who else gets one and who doesn't.
(For Jelly himself: I've often seen you complain about the way you get flamed over your choices in this matter. Sure, some
of the flaming against you has been excessive, but if you can't handle getting criticised for wielding power, don't wield
power at all, especially when you seized it in the first place. I CAN handle it.)

Need another argument to support my position?
The points bug has taught players all kinds of bad habits that some people just aren't good enough to shake off. I suppose
it's OK if they want to host a server where they don't have to get any better at the game, where they can shoot tanks
ineffectually instead of doing something useful, and where if they run out of money because their refinery and harvesters
keep dying it ISN'T their fault for not doing something more useful to prevent it. Well, if you wanna keep that in your
server, go ahead. But the same people who think this also have an undeserved, unchallengeable chokehold on the game
listings... do I need to spell out the enormous problem here? Any new player is gonna jump straight into these flawed
servers and end up corrupted by the same bad habits, not knowing what Renegade's points system was supposed to be like.

And if anyone says I'm asking something unreasonable here, then don't act like TT would be unreasonable to make the
pointsfix mandatory. At least TT's authority in the matter of the pointsfix was actually EARNED.
If anyone from the Jelly community said: "no, they're ours, suck it up", then it would be IMPOSSIBLE to argue that TT would
be wrong if we said "no, the decision to make the pointsfix compulsory is ours to make, suck it up". If anyone from the
Jelly community still wants to whinge about dictatorships when they talk about the pointsfix, how about they start by
relinquishing their own dictatorship over the game listings?

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Renedrama [ren-i-drah-muh]
- noun
1. the inevitable criticism one receives after doing something awful