The White-knight Paradox: The fear of consequences.

[Cmdr Lucca1985]

Had an interesting thought.

Radid White Knighting of Elite Dangerous, even in the face of legitimate complaints, is a symptom of the fear that frontier might induce a hard reset on anyone who has progressed via an exploit, including the true vets who had to scramble their way up through 'wholly legitimate' means?

Been playing since a few weeks before Horizons launched and have been signed up to the Forum for a similar amount of time. I have complained whined and even went into to full on hate rant during the search for the guardian ruins myself, so I am by no means above reproach when it comes to losing my temper, but I am curious about something.

What does it gain a user, if there are broken mechanics and bugs which block off gameplay, to defend these breaks and bugs and to shoot down anyone who just wants to vent their frustration. I don't see how it harms another player or the game if a level of dissatisfaction is made abundantly clear to a developer. It would appear that this is one of the primary functions of this forum.

Salt or no salt, being attacked is an over reaction.
It might be easy to say TROLLS!!! TROLLS!!!
This is how these saddos get their jollies.

My thought's however are as above. I believe that the perpetual defence of these definite mistakes and attacks on so called 'salty posts' are actually the Vet player base trying to overemphasize their satisfaction with the game over upstart noobs, so that frontier do not introduce any mechanic which could not be circumvented by a large credit balance and an RNG Godship, say for instance a retroactive punishment on anyone who gained their position through exploits.

I haven't seen one 'balance' or 'exploit fix' since playing that has not served to, in one way or another, punish or impede those with low bank balances, that isn't defended by the true vets. Vets who seem willing to allow the game to stagnate into tedium, as long as their top dog, day one, I trudged the hill so should you, position is maintained.

It is the only explaination I can think of.

Why they are listened to or at least agreed with by the developers is beyond me.

 

[Alex Brentnall]

Personally I value criticism but too many people take the proverbial [expletive] and seem to imagine that it's all carefully controlled by FDev out of spite whilst at the same time claiming they are out of control and unable to develop a game. Which is it?

Sadly we live in an age with Trump politics where facts are the enemy and having some reasonable middle-ground is punishable by death.


I've been actively stopping myself posting the last few weeks and to be honest I've not opened the game in a good few weeks now. Partly due to irl lack of time, partly my utter disgust at some of the people I'm sharing a game with. I made a few posts about the progression system. My personal view is the exploits are exploits and need to be fixed but in the same brush the progression is wrong especially for high end stuff which increases in price exponentially like the armour and powerplant and fuel scoop.
Low bank balance progression is actually too quick, I can go from a fresh game to an Asp E skipping half the ships in game (15) in the process within a few hours of bounty hunting.

Similarly ranking. Yes it takes too long but the core issue isn't the time. It's that doing it is boring as hell, my vote goes to making it a personal narrative. Game sees you doing empire missions and offers you a mission - BGS shows this system about to enter war state. Go ensure we win that war private and you'll get promoted! Other pilots of the Empire will be nearby too!
The game says the same to a few players trying to rank in the Federation to fight for the other side.. In one swoop it promotes BGS integration, PvP, co-operation and gives clear rank-up boundaries.
If you don't do that then the next time you get the mission in your inbox - This system has been hit hard by famine, go bring emergency supplies, it must exit famine soon to support our nearby systems in a war state!
Integrate it together and it'll be more fun and should work. Early ones can be pointed towards low population systems, late ranking missions can be things like "Rout a capital ship" or "put that Fed system into elections state so we can increase our influence" or whatever.


Overall I'm not fearful of consequences, I just disagree with the attitude/approach and honestly believe there are too many people just focussed on the problem in front of their nose when they should be looking at the root cause.

 

[Saool]

Nope. Some people like the game. It has issues, like every game ever. But Dangerous Discussion is winge central. And whilst here and there, there are good points and legitimate concerns, a lot of it is just entitled garbage and personal opinion.

If you challenge that, the common response to that is to shout 'white knight'.

Watch.

 

[Rubbernuke]

Depends. Quite often the various sections of the forum take turns to snipe each other, regardless of white or dark allegiance.

For example, shield and hull balancing along with sensor grade affect gimbals was shouted down because it affected people with big ships.

Regarding credits, FD have listened, when I started a long time ago a good mission payout was 50,000 credits, and it took me two weeks to get to a Cobra. Now you can do that in a day. Personally I think thats far too fast, but its up to FD and game sales to decide.

Plus, game forums are generally full of idiots. In this forum the only useful part is the focussed feedback and about 1% of posts. The rest is noise and should be ignored.

 

[Vardaugas]

"White Knights", "Black knights", "Fanboys" and "Haters" are all equally useless when it comes to worthwhile feedback.

 

[lokvette]

There are times when yeah I can understand some of the whiteknigtness some of the forum memebers have, a few of them even back it up with good aguments then there are some who go out of thier way to derail a thread and just insult people with an air of "ohh look at me im so witty im making fun of somone on the forum", "nah mate your making yourself look like an a rse", its got a lot worse of late.

Like most things in life there is good and bad in eveything, even some of the brightist white knights have been known to show a bit of darkness.

I dont think ive read a thread in any of the sections of this forum,as in all of the posts for somtime now, but tbh I do use the new post tool rather than digging through the subs as not one of the games many things holds any more intreast for me over any other anymore.

I defend FD if I think it needs defending, but the blind leading the blind faith has never been for me.

Depending on the OP its a fore gone conculsion now days to who is going to post and what they are going to say even if they are useing differnt words to say it. Its funny as why not just let the thread die rather than adding what one would expect in thier tiny self centred minds is a funny one linner, yeah that showed them...

Forrum warriors? Who knows maybe they cant afford that big car thus need somthing elsse to make up for well you know--

Sorry I seem to have gone off on one, and have ended up doing what I was making a point about.

I haven't seen one 'balance' or 'exploit fix' since playing that has not served to, in one way or another, punish or impede those with low bank balances, that isn't defended by the true vets. Vets who seem willing to allow the game to stagnate into tedium, as long as their top dog, day one, I trudged the hill so should you, position is maintained.

It is the only explaination I can think of..

Ive never understood this way of thinking in any game, been gaming a long time and yeah I can repsect other players who are better than me, been playing longer, or go out of their way to add to the whole thing, 3rd party devs, youtubers etc.

But being a founder or any off the above means sweet fudge all if you act like a , respect is somthing you earn it is not a given.

 

[zarking]

I'm in the middle
I'll praise what I love about the game, but I'm also happy to point out where things need to be improved.

Some people are good at pointing these things out in a way where you think "yeah that guys right, that is a problem, well spotted that guy", whereas other people are not so good at pointing these things out and just rant and go way over the top, taking one minor issue and blowing it up out of all proportion, in those instances people will react by defending the game.

Usually, people have pretty good arguments to make, positive or negative, but we're not all experts at communication. The whole white knights/haters thing is just reactions to someone else going off the rails in one direction or the other.

One good thing though, no matter how salty things get on here, I've never seen actual vindictive bullying or nastiness (though criticism of the devs can get a bit close to the bone at times), we might all scream and fight but compared to a lot of other forums I'm on, this one isn't as bad as we might think.
The other thing is, ED has this weird age range of players a lot more middle aged people than other games, and that sometimes causes a conflict between older players that have a certain way of speaking or approaching things, and younger players that are sometimes more used to forum chatter, the two sometimes clash in humorously failed ways, but can be funny to read if nothing else

 

[Franc Kaos]

'I'm coming, just need to reply to someone who's wrong on the internet.'

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Please no wall of texts with weak attack attempts to people who dare to question your outrage.

 

[VR Morgan Grimes]

Yes, that's a great way to incite good conversation, start out by insulting everybody who doesn't agree with money being easy to make...

 

[lokvette]

Please no wall of texts with weak attack attempts to people who dare to question your outrage.

Ohh come on that wasnt really a wall of text, or are you being sarcastic, damn its hard to tell nowdays.

 

[Stigbob]

I'd put forward an alternative theory, this is the current front page of dangerous discussion. I've red boxed all the most obvious whinging :

Maybe people are just sick of hearing it.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I'm in the middle
I'll praise what I love about the game, but I'm also happy to point out where things need to be improved.

Some people are good at pointing these things out in a way where you think "yeah that guys right, that is a problem, well spotted that guy", whereas other people are not so good at pointing these things out and just rant and go way over the top, taking one minor issue and blowing it up out of all proportion, in those instances people will react by defending the game.

Usually, people have pretty good arguments to make, positive or negative, but we're not all experts at communication. The whole white knights/haters thing is just reactions to someone else going off the rails in one direction or the other.

One good thing though, no matter how salty things get on here, I've never seen actual vindictive bullying or nastiness (though criticism of the devs can get a bit close to the bone at times), we might all scream and fight but compared to a lot of other forums I'm on, this one isn't as bad as we might think.
The other thing is, ED has this weird age range of players a lot more middle aged people than other games, and that sometimes causes a conflict between older players that have a certain way of speaking or approaching things, and younger players that are sometimes more used to forum chatter, the two sometimes clash in humorously failed ways, but can be funny to read if nothing else

Good points. I like to see myself being somewhere in the middle as well. I love ED, but there are aspects that frustrate me and design decisions and developer priorities that totally mystify me.

I think the problem is that a lot of people on the very opposite ends of the opinion scale resort far too much to exaggeration, sarcasm, overreaction, vitriol, and occasionally nastiness. And there often seems to be a lack of perspective or respect for other viewpoints in these kind of posts/threads. That said, I think most of the community seem like decent people with balanced views and who like to share ideas, opinions and experiences, help each other out, and have a laugh together. It's just sometimes, the majority gets drowned out by a very vocal minority who represent the more extreme viewpoints.

 

[lokvette]

I'd put forward an alternative theory, this is the current front page of dangerous discussion. I've red boxed all the most obvious whinging :

https://i.imgur.com/yBcMQ8U.jpg

Maybe people are just sick of hearing it.

I dont think the bot one should be included, but have you noticed the amount of views and replys those threads have, its human nature we like to female dog, and moan with the vain hope that in doing so somthing might change for the better, better for whom though well thats another thing.

 

[zarking]

Good points. I like to see myself being somewhere in the middle as well. I love ED, but there are aspects that frustrate me and design decisions and developer priorities that totally mystify me.

I think the problem is that a lot of people on the very opposite ends of the opinion scale resort far too much to exaggeration, sarcasm, overreaction, vitriol, and occasionally nastiness. And there often seems to be a lack of perspective or respect for other viewpoints in these kind of posts/threads. That said, I think most of the community seem like decent people with balanced views and who like to share ideas, opinions and experiences, help each other out, and have a laugh together. It's just sometimes, the majority gets drowned out by a very vocal minority who represent the more extreme viewpoints.

I agree... But......
I have to tell the truth, if the forum was filled with well written, balanced, good natured constructive criticism, it would be boring as hell, half the reason I come on here is to read the "RANT OF THE DAY", and laugh or get annoyed at the crazy out of control madness, so....yeah we really all should be more intelligent in our responses but, meh, enough of that, really I want to see all the controversy cos that's just way more fun

Bring it...

 

[M00ka]

It is very easy on this forum to get labelled a 'White Knight' - I should know, it happened to me (hence my avatar lol). And what did I do to earn this distinction way back when? I didn't agree with an OP - note I didn't disagree with him, all I did was link in a previous post from one of the Dev's that clearly stated that they knew of the problem and were attempting to fix it. The way the OP (and others) reacted was akin to cyber assassination, suddenly I was standing up for FDev, stating the game is perfect, calling everyone liars and so forth (none of that actually happened BTW). Since then, yes at times I have stood up for the game, since some here seem to describe a game I am not playing - apparently it is so broken no one plays it, it is full of hackers, FD is secretly the technological arm of the Illuminati - you get the drift.

In fact I would be quite comfortable stating that most of the time someone gets labelled a 'White Knight' not for defending the game, but for simply disagreeing with someone's rant. It is as simple as that!

Of all the 'White Knights' here, I have yet to see (well read) one who only every says 100% positive things on the game, some of them are very vocal in highlighting errors or deficiencies in the game. The difference is they tend to post in a non-ranty way.

 

[zombieapocalypse]

I agree... But......
I have to tell the truth, if the forum was filled with well written, balanced, good natured constructive criticism, it would be boring as hell, half the reason I come on here is to read the "RANT OF THE DAY", and laugh or get annoyed at the crazy out of control madness, so....yeah we really all should be more intelligent in our responses but, meh, enough of that, really I want to see all the controversy cos that's just way more fun

Bring it...

I must confess, that is also a guilty a pleasure of mine. Must... resist... the... click... bait...

 

[Ziggy Stardust]

It is the only explaination I can think of.

Well, there's your problem.

Next time, read a post or 2. Let people speak for themselves instead of shoving psychobabble in their shoes.

 

[MadDogMurdock]

There's a lot of this:

My gut response to that is generally this:

 

[Cmdr Eagleboy]

Ohh come on that wasnt really a wall of text, or are you being sarcastic, damn its hard to tell nowdays.

It was wall of text in context it was trying to tell - forum dads are bad, 'newbies' are cool and they need that Anaconda in 6 hours pronto.

Sometimes you don't need to wrap up your opinion in niceties. We understand you. We just don't agree (and that's cool right?) and attempt to paint it again as forum dads vs. newbies, or white knights vs. true heroes, etc. etc. is stupid.

Provide good argumented post offering different POV and you will gain nothing but respect from me.

Provide just weak sauce meta forum attack and...meh.