Thinking of coming back - just one question...

[Manyo]

I think it's unlikely that the moderators as a collective suffer from getting triggered too easily due to personal issues. Any community has set rules and if broken will take actions. Considering that the forum rules state 'flaming' and i often see moderators letting minor stuff slide by, i just can't see them beeing too harsh overall. In some cases it might seem that way depending on the perspective, but from what i personally have seen i don't doubt they are trying to do a good job.
I mean if you got evidence that im wrong on this please show it.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Is there not a section where we can post pure unadulterated, unfiltered & uncensored stuff?

4chan? r/imgoingtohellforthis?

Personally I think it's okay that we censor out people posting "memes" that have pictures of the actual recently deceased from Las Vegas. I think people need to show some respect for the victims and their families.

Off-topic section is more lax as always, but there are clear rules which have always been there to limit what can be posted. Whether there's been a moderator keeping an eye or not is a different question.

 

[AaronAaron]

WHEEEEY Alright mate! Wondered where you went

Big man frank

 

[SeV]

...is it true that the game has deteriorated into a SJW/leftist bubble, censoring all forms of comedy and banter/edgy humour? I've heard people have been banned for posting stupid photos, that certain people have left the team due to this 'Iron Fist' mentality.

I refer chiefly to Puppytine's farewell, eezstreet's farewell, the censorship of K4far/Kwinto/Hessu/Billy/Aaron/Etc in the photo thread.

The game I remember and love is one of all sorts of people intertwined into one community: trolls, elitists, roleplayers, trigger-happy admins & the genuinely nice gamers (I'm looking at you, Hex). People had their arguments, their fights, but the idea of censorship & banning someone for expressing their thoughts as per a free society, on a game (!!) no less, is somewhat troubling.

It is what made MB2, MB2. You could play however you wanted. If people didn't take kindly to you, they could ban you - fair enough (but on their own private servers, not on a more 'global' scale). From what I've been told, however, the game has taken a turn for the worse due to the self-righteous administration of both the forums and the discord. The idea that feelings are more important than freedom of speech, that being sensitive to things warrants completely shutting down banter and/or edgy mediums of expression.

Can someone set my mind at ease? Are Viserys/Catlady/et al really acting as per how I've been told?

Cheers, and hope all are well.

PS. I hope for some positive discourse between staff/community, as opposed to just censoring/removing my post. The idea of freedom of expression (yes, even on a game) is important to talk about, should it be under threat.

Hey mate, it's nice to see you. To be honest game's been feeling quite, I dunno, grey and bland since like 1.3 but the 1.4 iterations build wise have really not been very successful. With regards to the community, it has sort of been reflecting the geist of society to a certain extent. By that I mean that there's been an influx of talentless trolls with no class and a tightfisted authoritarian response which sort of destroys the spirit of MBII. But both sides are to blame, not just the devs. (It's easy to just point fingers at the devs and say its all their fault, but the community bears responsibility aswell).

I for one welcome you back. I'm not playing atm only doing beta tests until we get an unbuggy, not shit build. (1.4.6 I hope...)

Vis has done many things with which I disagree, but she hasn't been so bad. Catlady on the other hand just seems off the rocker to me in general. But talking about individuals is probably missing the point a bit. Though I do think the authoritarian censorship cuck bent is slightly worrying it is probably a symptom and not the problem in itself.

Beta is a mess though, so is the game atm. The state of MBII dueling is pathetic and ridiculous, full of bugs and a brain-dead singletrack meta that quickly gets boring. Open mode changes to jedi/sith likewise kind of feel off to me. I'm happy to see you, but I would perhaps advise to wait for a new patch before jumping in, getting frustrated at how bad sabering is and then leaving again.

Read up on the 'paradox of tolerance' theory if you don't think freedom of speech should have any limits whatsoever. It's a concept worth thinking about.
With Gumba and myself there already seem to be two persons who would fit into your definition of 'SJW/leftist bubble', so it most certainly is spreading already.
It could be a bit too much for you to swallow, thus i sadly can't guarantee a comfort zone for yourself in this community.
Can't speak for the quality of the dev team (don't know them, don't know games development).

You barely make any sense here. Agent isn't looking for a comfort zone, that would be exactly what he doesn't want. Also, freedom of speech should not have limits, because it goes against the entire concept of the thing. Either you have freedom of speech or you do not, there is no in-between state. Also, who are the moral arbiters who will regulate speech and can they be trusted? What about ones right to listen and discern and make decisions on ones own accord. Freedom of speech is precisely what enables humans to have agency of their own and not be subject to some sort of authority under which they become mere slaves. You literally cannot have civilized society without freedom of speech because it would impinge the free exchange of ideas, something upon which modern civilization is predicated. Besides, sunlight is the best disinfectant for bad ideas, and if you suppress bad ideas they are left to germinate and fester. Case in point, alt-right, alt-left.

Post-modernism in itself is sinister nonsense and if not tackled will be the downfall of western civilization. This dangerous move of non-absolute free speech is a step towards disarming the west and robbing it of everything that makes it great. Once the west has lost its weapons for self-defense and the general populace has been disarmed, making them unthinking, genderless braindead zomies that cry outrage at everything which doesn't fit their own world view, you create a ripe grounds for extremist ideologies to take root. Identity politics of any kind, us versus them and all that. This dangerous lack of education is what is producing these ignoramuses, because anyone with any grounding in history would quickly realize that what is happening is just history repeating itself. And you would perhaps not be so keen on partial censorship if you'd read Hitlers Mein Kampf in which he says that the way to dominate a society is to very gradually take steps to remove peoples freedoms, then when they finally notice whats happening its too late to fight back.

 

[Subaru]

 

[SeV]

I was speaking about society in general because I see filth reflecting over to the MBII community. Also, I am not very impressed with you putting what isn't even any form of counter argument in meme form. It's true, but also kind of irrelevant since I was replying to Manyo not strictly commenting on the state of the MBII community. A salient thing to consider would be sticks and stones vs OFFENSIVE SPEECH ERMAGERD SAFESPACE. which is more along the lines of what I was getting at, since manyo's reply included a reference to finding a safe space, a ridiculous notion. Safe to what? Be a sheep? Safe to follow the consensus, safe to parrot the zeitgeist and what the hipsters think is cool to believe in? Or safe and free to discuss what the devs approve of you to discuss? That kind of thing.

I will say though that I do see a few people conflating MBII forums with a totally free and open platform, which it clearly isn't since the people running aren't for that kind of thing. So your inane and childish picture is making a point, albeit in a slightly vapid manner. Some take it too far and go berserk on the free speech, censorship front when it comes to MBII but I didn't because I realize that MBII isn't society as a whole. I sort of felt like making a thread replying to teh new forum rules, but tbh they aren't so bad and this forum is the MBII forum not /pol or whatever. People just need to not conflate the two things.

However, I see no reason not to point out the sticks and stones thing, especially when it comes to free speech of the kind we at one point had on the forums.

 

[SneakDissing]

You didn't tho. Is this an attempt to 'win' the moral high ground?

it's over, i have the moral high ground

 

[Manyo]

@SeV: The comfort zone line was just a little ironic tease in response to agents slightly provocative undertone against leftists. (comfort zone here meant as place where you can act however it pleases you without consequences, in reference to alt-right claiming leftist just want a save space when their ideology gets attacked). You really should'nt read too much into it.

You made some good points why freedom of speech is important, i could give you my thoughts on the matter but that would go far beyond what is needed in context of the OP (plus it's a complex topic and im barely making any sense to you already, im not assuming to have the right answers on the topic either). I refer you to my post #21 to get my opinion about the issues at stake and get back closer to the OP.

 

[agentoo8]

Hey frank, good to see you

Very nice to see you too, SeV. Would be good to catch up and discuss post-modernism on Discord =P Tell me how is the saber system? I saw that the most recent duel tourney was yellow only...are we really back to those days again? :/

Fair points btw Ben & others. Will be good to come back

 

[SeV]

Hey frank, good to see you

Very nice to see you too, SeV. Would be good to catch up and discuss post-modernism on Discord =P Tell me how is the saber system? I saw that the most recent duel tourney was yellow only...are we really back to those days again? :/

Fair points btw Ben & others. Will be good to come back

Yeah would be good to catch up sometime.

Quite frankly the system is a mess and is in dire need of fixing. Not sure what to say beyond that. I'm sure devs are aware of it. There's much less individuality in dueling nowadays, and only one meta dominated by grinding out ACM with weak swings. Feels like you're impotently flailing at each other until one pulls ahead on ACM, then its time to dodge-parry lockdown the ACM lead and slowly use/abuse that to grind the opponent down. It feels like its all tactics and no strategy. Very inelegant and boring. BP isn't a primary mechanic any longer. It's all about the invisible, intangible ACM mechanic. Retaining it through scummy tactics, trying to out slap the opponent etc. There's no raw BP drain aggression style any longer cuz its not nearly as feasible. ACM also killed style switching and all halfswings have been homogenized. The system is bloated by superfluous mechanics like perfect parry that do nothing significant and just muddles things up, along with invisible perks all over the place in an attempt to balance styles against each other and shoehorn them into specific categories. Blue for example is limited to two swing combos and has a PB perk. Also, there is a horrendous block anim bug that replays block anims after you get slapped, which essentially enables someone to 4 hit combo, slap into 4 hit combo and lock you down if the bug happens. It also frequently throws off your timing and counter attacking by playing block anims inappropriately, making the system feel like a beta testing build gone wrong.

We need a fix, and to return to a solid base from which to work. Cut away all the garbage (Like Perfect Parry, random perks, Open mode shit mechanics like slow FP drain, flinch and low fp dmg), and make some basic changes like basing parries on bodyhit percentages and fixing block anims. Have seen a nice influx of new players though. It's a shame there isn't a good build for them to play

 

[Chocorope]

Yeah would be good to catch up sometime.

Quite frankly the system is a mess and is in dire need of fixing. Not sure what to say beyond that. I'm sure devs are aware of it. There's much less individuality in dueling nowadays, and only one meta dominated by grinding out ACM with weak swings. Feels like you're impotently flailing at each other until one pulls ahead on ACM, then its time to dodge-parry lockdown the ACM lead and slowly use/abuse that to grind the opponent down. It feels like its all tactics and no strategy. Very inelegant and boring. BP isn't a primary mechanic any longer. It's all about the invisible, intangible ACM mechanic. Retaining it through scummy tactics, trying to out slap the opponent etc. There's no raw BP drain aggression style any longer cuz its not nearly as feasible. ACM also killed style switching and all halfswings have been homogenized. The system is bloated by superfluous mechanics like perfect parry that do nothing significant and just muddles things up, along with invisible perks all over the place in an attempt to balance styles against each other and shoehorn them into specific categories. Blue for example is limited to two swing combos and has a PB perk. Also, there is a horrendous block anim bug that replays block anims after you get slapped, which essentially enables someone to 4 hit combo, slap into 4 hit combo and lock you down if the bug happens. It also frequently throws off your timing and counter attacking by playing block anims inappropriately, making the system feel like a beta testing build gone wrong.

We need a fix, and to return to a solid base from which to work. Cut away all the garbage (Like Perfect Parry, random perks, Open mode shit mechanics like slow FP drain, flinch and low fp dmg), and make some basic changes like basing parries on bodyhit percentages and fixing block anims. Have seen a nice influx of new players though. It's a shame there isn't a good build for them to play

Yeah... Very well said Sev.

I used to play MB2 everydays since a lilbit more then 2 years, now I dont even touch it anymore... Infact I deleted the icon it self on my desktop.

I just come on forum time to time to see if there's any updates, and spectate all the drama happening around since a moment.

An huge RIP.

Just not fun anymore and the community is not helping too. To be honest, mostly everyone involved, 90% of the whole community feels like a bunch of scummy assholes... Assholes, childish behavior like I've actually rarely even saw, met in my entire life.

The game is not appealing anymore, on all aspects.

 

[RC-Delta]

Can I ask how you got out?

 

[Chocorope]

Can I ask how you got out?

I just come to realise that every coming update, these promises of a better game which actually simply turned out to be another fun killer, killed the game, slowly..

Layers after layers.

The community playing the game being nothing else but a bunch of extremely, extremely toxic kids spiting onto one another the whole day, heck.. Even on the fucking forum you can't have a single moment of peace out of it, every post there is some bitch trying to slut you up.

All of that among all of the other details...

When you compile all this up, you can only conclude this became to be an extremely shitty game, a pure waste of energy.

MB2 is not a place you come to have fun? To end your day on a happy note? No.

It is a place you come to be mad, angry, and make the all the others feel the same way.

And if you are not one of the 90%, another cancer cells, they jump on you like a bunch of crazy, mad monkeys, laugh togethers like little kids at school, until you become sad, or angry, just like them, an entire part of their sad world.

It's pathetic, it's cancerous, its literally damaging to the mind it self.

I laugh now that I think about it, because I used to say for fun in the past that MB2 was a gateway drug for antidepressant MEDs, and now, I actually understand it so much clearly since it becomes so more clearer reading, interacting with all of you.

Even if you dont talk, even if you dont interact with anyone...

All these racist shit around? These laugh, ''jokes'' about authistic, disabled, aka handicaped people every 2minutes? What the hell.

I played alooooot of games, I went to aloooot of place, yet I never saw such a mind cancerous behavior in my entire life.

Why would anyone want to stay and interact with any of this bullshit?

Gameplay is now bad, community is extremely, extremely, like, EXTREMELY poisonous?

What else remain.

 

[eezstreet]

Think I should chime in here, seeing as how you mentioned my resigning thread specifically:

The reason I resigned had little to do with any kind of "forum censorship." It was only tangentially related at best. I disagree with the notion that we need to create forum rules which are meant to provide a "safe space" as it's put. Forum rules should exist to prevent people from getting excluded, being flamed, being harassed, doing illegal things, etc. That's why, like @SeV, I'm pretty much mostly okay with the rules as they are now, or at least okay with their original intention. (The only rule which I'm firmly against is the "No mocking tragedy" one, for a number of different reasons)

The stuff that you're pointing out on the forums is really a few isolated cases of admins going nuclear over little things. (Although some continue to do this over and over, and I have no idea why they're still moderating, to be quite honest.)

The main reason I left was due to differences in leadership, vision, that sort of thing. I wanted what I thought was more in-line with what the community wanted, while the devs would much rather go their own way. To address your main concern: the game isn't at all filled with "SJWs", it's actually more trolly than it was years ago and that's pretty great in my opinion. To a point, anyway. When people start making shitty 4chan names like "rainbow n*gger" and spam stupid crap, I just tend to tune out (and so do the majority of players). If you feed those types of people attention, they'll continue doing it. You get this kind of thing in every community, where people act dumb and immature.

To summarize: I think the game is plenty worth getting into, as long as you ignore the saber system, which is currently kind of dull and overly complex for what it plays out as, a spamfest. Open mode is still great as ever. Full Authentic is pretty good also, but nobody really plays it unfortunately.

 

[RC-Delta]

I just come to realise that every coming update, these promises of a better game which actually simply turned out to be another fun killer, killed the game, slowly..

Layers after layers.

The community playing the game being nothing else but a bunch of extremely, extremely toxic kids spiting onto one another the whole day, heck.. Even on the fucking forum you can't have a single moment of peace out of it, every post there is some bitch trying to slut you up.

All of that among all of the other details...

When you compile all this up, you can only conclude this became to be an extremely shitty game, a pure waste of energy.

MB2 is not a place you come to have fun? To end your day on a happy note? No.

It is a place you come to be mad, angry, and make the all the others feel the same way.

And if you are not one of the 90%, another cancer cells, they jump on you like a bunch of crazy, mad monkeys, laugh togethers like little kids at school, until you become sad, or angry, just like them, an entire part of their sad world.

It's pathetic, it's cancerous, its literally damaging to the mind it self.

I laugh now that I think about it, because I used to say for fun in the past that MB2 was a gateway drug for antidepressant MEDs, and now, I actually understand it so much clearly since it becomes so more clearer reading, interacting with all of you.

Even if you dont talk, even if you dont interact with anyone...

All these racist shit around? These laugh, ''jokes'' about authistic, disabled, aka handicaped people every 2minutes? What the hell.

I played alooooot of games, I went to aloooot of place, yet I never saw such a mind cancerous behavior in my entire life.

Why would anyone want to stay and interact with any of this bullshit?

Gameplay is now bad, community is extremely, extremely, like, EXTREMELY poisonous?

What else remain.

Not everyone is a satanist preaching, racist monkey man waiting to pounce on you. and uh, some people are bad and not very noice, but, there's saying something, and meaning it, and I doubt most of the people on here are actually racist or mean half the shit they say. They just don't have any good jokes left. (I'm trying to help dont hurt me pweaze)

 

[{Δ} Achilles]

In short: Yes.

In long: Yes.

 

[AaronAaron]

Dueling isn't fun at all

 

[Puppytine]

...is it true that the game has deteriorated into a SJW/leftist bubble, censoring all forms of comedy and banter/edgy humour?

It's true, it's true.

This is a forum and a forum gets moderated. And how it is moderated lies in the hands of those who own it.

If some idiot thinks its okay to post stuff that the devs don't want after the 10th warning its fine to ban them in my opinion. You are still free in whatever you want to say in the game chat. But please note that even those servers are private owned and have the option to mute you.

Free speech doesn't doesn't save you from reaction to what you say.

It's funny to read your reply, keeping in mind what you did say earlier on these forums.
Let me refresh your memory a bit:

"The rule of thumb should be: If it doesn't disturb gameplay, it's not the admins job to handle.

There is no reason to be super PC about this stuff. Since we still have a small playerbase we can't just go around kicking/banning people because they said something racist/sexist/moronic. I've been insulted at least a billion times in this game, I can handle it. If you can't handle it just /ignore and it's done.
Not to mention that it is impossible for admins to keep up with chat and the game at all times to punish the players with bad behavior. It would lead to even more people trolling.

Btw does AOD still ban for saying the n word? It was always loads of fun to go there and get instantly banned for something you say in chat.
Let's not be like that, okay?"

Source: Ouj Reviews...
Nice team switch, Gumba

We saw a lot of racism as well as very crude jokes of fresh terror attacks. This essentially served as a wake-up call that the moderation had become lacking.

My pictures has nothing to do with racism, it's mainstream humor these days.
Are you seriously going to blame South Park or GTA for being "racist"? Because things I was posting shared same level of edginess as famous TV shows or videogames, more or less.
Same about jokes on terrorist attack, they are everywhere on US TV.

Overall I don't find there to be anything out of the ordinary within the team nor in the community at large. I've been around long enough to see these happen. Nothing new, people just never learn.

Nothing out of the ordinary? Seriously?
You removed person who spend more time and effort helping players than anybody else, who had most number of posts and likes from forums, as well as you removed a lot of other notable members, you deleted pictures nobody protested against, you enforced rules nobody liked, without discussion of a draft of those rules, without voting, and you call it "nothing out of the ordinary"?

I see a huge logical fallacy on this picture: the fact that laws don't protect people from corporate censorship doesn't mean corporate censorship doesn't exist.
Here is more detailed explanation what I'm talking about:
Censorship in the United States - Wikipedia
Corporate censorship - Wikipedia
Please notice that these are encyclopedia articles, not some web-comic.

 

[GoodOl'Ben]

Nothing out of the ordinary? Seriously?

I've seen things like this over and over again here. One of my favorite shitstorms (albeit largely internal, it waged for weeks) was when I infracted a dev for posting a gif of an owl being kicked dead by a footballer. This wasn't my first rodeo. Shit like this happens from time to time.

You removed person who spend more time and effort helping players than anybody else, who had most number of posts and likes from forums, as well as you removed a lot of other notable members, you deleted pictures nobody protested against, you enforced rules nobody liked, without discussion of a draft of those rules, without voting, and you call it "nothing out of the ordinary"?

I believe in most cases the warning system did the removing as posters would persist despite being told not to. Several moderators acted overzealously one way or the other. Most of these moderators are no longer as involved in moderation.

Worth noting nobody has been removed permanently.

There was a time when a moderator on the old forums banned about 10 people for posting scantily clad women in a thread intended for posting scantily clad women. I believe these bans were permanent. This spurred the banned individuals to go on 4chan and organize a sex/gore spam attack on the forums. Now that was a good time! The problem back then was that nobody internally thought this was a bad move by the moderator. Now things different. This things are discussed internally and attitudes are adjusted. Plus. you are still here are you not? Not exactly removed are now?

To me this was nothing new. Our moderation has had a long history of being sporadic and very self-contradicting. Now we at least have guidelines that permabans require severe misconduct and all bans should generally go through the warning system and as such have a clear expiration date.

If you have further questions, hit me up in a PM or some such. I think I've discussed this enough until the next schism.

 

[Gumba]

It's funny to read your reply, keeping in mind what you did say earlier on these forums.
Let me refresh your memory a bit:

"The rule of thumb should be: If it doesn't disturb gameplay, it's not the admins job to handle.

There is no reason to be super PC about this stuff. Since we still have a small playerbase we can't just go around kicking/banning people because they said something racist/sexist/moronic. I've been insulted at least a billion times in this game, I can handle it. If you can't handle it just /ignore and it's done.
Not to mention that it is impossible for admins to keep up with chat and the game at all times to punish the players with bad behavior. It would lead to even more people trolling.

Btw does AOD still ban for saying the n word? It was always loads of fun to go there and get instantly banned for something you say in chat.
Let's not be like that, okay?"

Source: Ouj Reviews...
Nice team switch, Gumba

???
I still think and will always think that mb2 ingame chat should be free. This is a forum though, and I always made it clear that I want moderation on a forum.
Anyone who ever played with me can confirm that I am very far from being political correct.

You should read more carefully