Drox Operative

[Wanderer]

Obviously a human is behind the persona, but I don't want to know their name or too much personal information, it would drive me insane. I have a healthy social conversation life outside the web, but inside the web I am eRe4s3r, and not anyone or anything else. Unless you contact me via email and even then I wouldn't give you my real name unless you'd be asking for it and I'd feel obliged. I think what a lot of people in the Information age do wrong is consider the web as an extension of real life. The web is there to enhance your life, but not to intermingle with your real-life (as you can tell, I would never use facebook). And so when I know someones name it would be absurd to talk about them by name in a forum topic. It would indicate that I know them, which I do not. And unless I physically meet someone I do *not* know them, and thus am not feeling that I should know their name, or use it.

Perhaps that is the difference.  For the record, I don't use Facebook.  However, my real life DOES intermingle with my online 'persona'... my real name is in my signature there.  However, it's a professional site and one of the purposes of it is exposure for future consideration for work, as I'm an IT contractor.  Because I have professional articles written there as well as using it as a reference for my resume, it actually IS an extension of my real life.  Is this game?  No, not particularly, unless someone wanted to see my approaches to problem solving and resolution in a non-professional environment. 

That exposure over the last two years, however, has made a significant difference to how I approach posting on forums and general web interaction.  I don't expect a persona to hide me when I meet a person.  There are people who use personas like you say that I'd like to real life punch in the face, right through their masks.  I don't get mad at the internet, I get mad at specific people using it, though usually I'm a Troll Hunter not the opposite.  It's fun to calmly blow them up...  Errr, I'm seriously derailing this conversation.

We can start a new topic if you like on the pros and cons of this but suffice it to say we have very different viewpoints on internet interaction.  I don't use facebook or livejournal or any of those because I really don't feel like I need everyone up in my bizness, including my bestest friends.  I consider a forum conversation to be just the same as a number of personalities sitting down around a table having a conversation with a CCTV hooked up for everyone in the hallway, with the door unlocked.  I try to treat it the exact same way as I would if the person I'm about to piss off was right there able to take a swing at me, or how badly I'd feel if I made them cry in person.  Personas and the view you take removes that from most people, including me.  It's one step away from the anonymous of 4chan.  I don't want TOGO to become my primary internet experience, I spend far too much time in the interwebs for that to be my approach.

[eRe4s3r]

If you make a topic I will post there tomorrow but name it something proper, not just "Wanderer and eRe4s3r talk about social interactions on the web" Just to not end this without a reply, that are good points and very interesting to know.... and now a big .. wall of text

I consider a forum conversation to be just the same as a number of personalities sitting down around a table having a conversation with a CCTV hooked up for everyone in the hallway, with the door unlocked.  I try to treat it the exact same way as I would if the person I'm about to piss off was right there able to take a swing at me, or how badly I'd feel if I made them cry in person.  Personas and the view you take removes that from most people, including me.  It's one step away from the anonymous of 4chan.  I don't want TOGO to become my primary internet experience, I spend far too much time in the interwebs for that to be my approach.

I consider forum conversations like a flowing river with personas floating by, your avatar defines how I see you, i throw stones with scribbles in (posts), (the river is the topic), others pick them up and walk with them and then throw 2 or 3 scribbled stones in further down the river that then get picked up by others, or me. That is how my conversation style goes, I do not expect specific replies and i positively hate when people quote 1 sentence and reply to it specifically. You either pick a stone or you don't. (Even though I quoted just your paragraph, I am really replying to your post as such, but it gets kinda cluttered if I'd quote all separately)

But as for seeing personas as humans. You would find me a stone. You would have to do something extremely hardcore to make me even care as a human (anymore). To me, personas are digital lifeforms. Puppets yes, but still more or less independent from their puppeteer. You can make me care if it's a topic that I feel strongly about, but on a gaming forum those are like, non existent. And equally I am active on the intertubes and I find that any other approach makes me care too much. And that is never healthy to a conversation, at least in my case. I won't deny that I can be made to care, but as far as most web topics go.. nah. I can sleep soundly after all discussions ^^

And as I am freelance artist and all my art is under eRe4s3r I have it easier I guess. Never a need to be "me" on the web. But my persona gets all the credits, it's how I want it to be. Anyway, If you want to, please make a topic relating to this, it ought to be interesting

It's true that dispersonification of personas can lead to trolling and flame wars, but I hope I never cross into that. If I do, tell me Anyway, if you want, quote my wall-of-text in the new topic

[Cyborg]

Going to chime in. My "persona" is different depending on the forums. I feel somewhat compelled to hang around here just to make sure nothing crazy happens to AI war. Look away for an instant, and who knows what's going to go on? You need hard-core players around to maintain player freedom and ensure that the skill ceiling is high enough that players feel like their own abilities can make or break a war for the human race. I see that as my purpose here, seeing as this is probably one of my top five favorite games of all time.

On other forums, my purpose is different. I, too, shy away from trolling, although I want to be specific about this: there is nothing wrong with a passionate discussion about game mechanics. If people get fired up, they start tossing words around, that's fine within reason… I wouldn't want anyone screwing up the game for my experience, I can understand they feel the same way.

[zebramatt]

This conversation has taken a slightly techno-sociopathic turn...

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Didn't realize that we would take the sub-forum title "off-topic" so literally for these threads

King

[Bluddy]

Didn't realize that we would take the sub-forum title "off-topic" so literally for these threads

King

Seriously. If you guys want to keep talking about whatever it is you're talking about, please branch into another thread.

[keith.lamothe]

Didn't realize that we would take the sub-forum title "off-topic" so literally for these threads

Taking together the prominent behaviors on these forums into a single image, it would probably need to be a bunch of dwarven ninjas colliding with each other while helping passengers onto a train that obviously has only a tenuous connection with the tracks

[Wanderer]

Didn't realize that we would take the sub-forum title "off-topic" so literally for these threads

King

Seriously. If you guys want to keep talking about whatever it is you're talking about, please branch into another thread.

Yeah, sorry about that.  I realize most people didn't read our rambling but that's precisely what we decided to do there at the end.  I don't think either of us realized how... involved... we were going to get on that topic.

[eRe4s3r]

But reading what we wrote might be more educational than many other topics in this forum ;P

The latest patch for Drox did indeed fix some major complains regarding the GUI I had, thats very nice to see ;p Though I still don't know why I am playing drox, I don't seem to have a goal and it's just fed-ex quests and monsters so far.

[zespri]

Ok people, I know this thread was created with a sole purpose of making me buying the game. You all can relax now, I've bought it as of yesterday =)

[keith.lamothe]

Ok people, I know this thread was created with a sole purpose of making me buying the game. You all can relax now, I've bought it as of yesterday =)

Mission accomplished, time to call it a day!

[zebramatt]

But reading what we wrote might be more educational than many other topics in this forum ;P

Well, I read it all and now I think you're both quite mad. 

[madcow]

Another patch (0.905) adding more race-specific ship touches was put in today. It looks pretty cool.

Since I'm already posting, one thing that I think could use some reworking is victory conditions. Personally, I would love if we had a bunch of options and could pick the victory condition we wanted on starting a new sector. The "one race left an allied with it" seems counter to wanting to play a mercenary and make as much money as you can. So it would be cool if there were a variety of victory conditions you could pick from when starting a new sector (or leave it up to chance).

[keith.lamothe]

Yea, I think it would be cool if each sector had a "special win condition" like "find super-powerful artifact X" or "destroy the superboss Y" or "destroy race Z" (which would start big or with some kind of special guardian or whatever).

And you could win either the "normal" way (good relief valve in case the RNG sticks you with a nasty special-win-condition) or the special way.  The latter might be more of a "marginal victory" in the wargame sense: the entire sector hasn't been brought under the thumb of the Drox operatives, but a significant gain was made nonetheless.  So it could give you a smaller reward chest (or just one really high-roll item) and then you could decide to go for the full victory (and the full reward chest) or just move onto the next sector (without penalty, unlike normal abandon).

Or the special win condition could be more Dins-ish: a collection of (super-)quests that have to be done to "win that way".

[Mánagarmr]

Aye, I'm currently working on a document with different win conditions that I intend to suggest on the Soldak forums. It definitely needs more than "Kill everyone except one race and then ally with them".