Leaving

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Leaving

Postby Wu Han » Thu Jan 03, 2019 1:45 am

Hello all,

I am writing this post with mixed feelings, but with irreversible conviction in my decision to leave the game and the broader Particracy community. My resignation, as it were, will happen gradually as I look to publish everything in my draft folder, and will likely occur in earnest around the end of this month. I will be leaving the Particracy discord immediately.

Quickly, I'd like to thank many of you with whom I have had positive, enjoyable and substantive OOC conversations and RP collaborations with. Particularly I'd like to thank Pandowlpaws and Zhongxian/Ryouta, two players which have been essential to both my personal enjoyment of the game and who are always fun to talk with. Strangely, I also feel compelled to thank the game itself for providing a creative outlet for me, as well as opportunities to expand my knowledge on a variety of topics.

I want to congratulate Wouter and the broader community on the test release of the new Particracy. I will likely continue to play it from time to time, though with no where near the same level of involvement as I have had with Classic. Simply, this is because they are two different games: Classic is a roleplaying game while the new Particracy is a strategy game. There is nothing wrong with this difference, though I was drawn to Classic because of what it is.

Classic, however, has flatlined and my interest in it is at an all-time low. Particracy is like the land where time stands still, both in terms of that which is obvious (interface, etc.) and in the sense that meaningful reform, development and evolution is nearly impossible. Either worthwhile reforms are not implemented and result in pages and pages of unnecessary debate, or changes are made very quickly, which almost always results in more issues than they solve. Prior to my resignation from the GRC on 01/11/2018, I wrote a list of recommended changes to make the organization more viable and better organized. Nearly every member of the GRC at the time (to my memory, as the post was private) agreed that at least one of my recommendations should be implemented, and yet nothing has changed. Now, perhaps my changes were bad: nonetheless, I think this point illustrates that even with a broad consensus of moderator/GRC/community support, nothing changes. Blatantly, interest has shifted: Wouter Lievens has stated on Discord that "[he prefers] to make no significant changes to Classic," (14/11/2018), and moderators have put forward some RP changes, but are focused on assisting with the development of Alpha more than anything else.

Now, on the topic of the community I must air a few grievances which I'm sure may alienate me, but nonetheless, have continued to bother me. I don't think there is a single person here that would dispute the very simple fact that Particracy's community is toxic. I would also go as far as to say that it is unsafe. There are a large number of open secrets in this community. One example springs to mind specifically for me: the one player in his late 20s who attempted to solicit a player in his early teens to send him explicit images through Discord. I'm not going to disclose their identities, but most players know who I am talking about.

In my conversations on Discord, I have been quite transparent about my personal life, including my racial identity. On a number of occasions, I have received messages in which players feel that it is acceptable to directly use blatantly racist slurs against me, particularly early in my involvement with the game. Whether it was one time on 19/01/2018 when a certain player called me a "wannabe chink," and "squint eye," or one other message I received on 05/03/2018, in which another different player called me a "gook," which is of course very specific to my Korean ancestry. I allowed these messages to go unreported because not only was I desensitized to racism to a certain extent, but because I felt a pressure to let it slide, so as to fit in (the first message was sent by someone who, at the time, was a prominent member of the community). Of course, since then I have become far more vocal in my denunciations of racism and other forms of discrimination on the Discord server. However, I have often been irritated by how frequently these protests go unanswered. In their desire to prevent criticism, the moderators and the administration of this game have often looked the other way, or put someone with a history of such actions into a temporary Discord timeout/ban, only for them to return to the exact same sort of activities which got them placed there in the first place. The widespread ambivalence toward discrimination here has led to myself and another player trying to maintain a poll of the times that players mention his Jewish ancestry unsolicited: we lost count.

In conclusion, Particracy is like a bad relationship. You get a marginal level of joy with her, but it doesn't out-shadow the fact that she calls you a chink, is unable/unwilling to grow and solicits children behind your back. I truly wished that if I ever left this game and community, it would be a happy conclusion, but that isn't the case. Until next time.

WuHán.
(he/him)
Current: Cildania
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Re: Leaving

Postby Cirith » Thu Jan 03, 2019 1:57 am

Again, this is a real shame , it has always been a pleasure RPing with you back in the days before I gave up on that.
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Re: Leaving

Postby jamescfm » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:15 am

Needless to say this is a devastating shame but it's difficult not to see it as part of a recent wider trend that has seen relatively long-term, experienced players driven away by the toxicity of the community while the game's leadership seems content to ignore this as they shift their focus to the new game. Hope to keep in touch Wu Han and thanks for the those early times when we were both in Indrala!
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Re: Leaving

Postby Zongxian » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:20 am

This is very saddening news and I've definitely come to consider you a friend in this game. My time RPing with you and pandowlpaws has probably been the most enjoyable in my 11+ years of playing this game. I wish it could continue but we share similar feelings on the state of this game and I, too, will soon quit.

It feels as though toxicity has reached new heights in recent months and despite concerns being expressed at numerous times in different ways, nothing has changed. At all levels there are problems that need to be addressed. Wu has pointed out numerous examples. I also don't think the continual secrecy of moderation does nothing to help this situation. It just fuels the toxicity and leads to people blindly point fingers or spread misinformation. Part of me wants to continue in Classic, but it seems like interest has really turned against the game with the new release and it just doesn't feel like its worth the effort to try to role-play in this environment. And it really is a shame when there are still other players, putting hard work into Classic, including Wu as he wraps up the enormous creative work he has done for Indrala.

Wu's departure is a great loss for this community but I will always remember the enjoyable role-play I was part of with him in Indrala and Dankuk. I hope that everyone takes a serious look at Wu's statement and that of others in the past and really try to put this community in a more positive direction. The toxicity is real and it is eating away at the community.

It's been great, Wu! I will miss the RP.
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Re: Leaving

Postby cm9777 » Thu Jan 03, 2019 2:47 am

Sorry to see you leave Wu Han. There certainly are issues in the community that need addressing. Till next time indeed
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Re: Leaving

Postby soysauce » Thu Jan 03, 2019 3:48 am

I feel in many ways I share Wu's sentiments. I don't really enjoy being in this community any more to be honest.

The game is a headache, the bizarre internal mechanisms which have sprung up, and to be honest seem to grow in complexity every day. While the game should be very simple to run, the rules and mechanisms seem to be redrafted as regularly as possible, with each further amendment more incomprehensible than the last. The game seems to be run with as little common sense and as much frivolous litigation as humanly impractical. Why?

This community is beginning to feel seriously toxic. It's not something I can really ignore any more to be honest. There always has been an awkward situation where a level of racism, homophobia etc has been present. As a member of a minority myself I've been sent a fair number of insults and threats. I recall a while back a white supremacist I came into contact through the game told me exactly what their people would do to "people like me". While that may be an extreme example I'd generally concur with Wu that hateful behaviour when reported was often not acted upon properly, or some toothless and ineffective measure was taken to counter it. Indeed I have sometimes been made to feel like it's my problem, and that perhaps I'm a troublemaker for reporting incidents. On more occasions than I'd have liked, getting something done required convincing an indifferent moderator that maybe they should do something, or told that it wasn't "bad enough", or asking me to . Although I'd thank some moderators for doing an excellent job in this respect.

In recent times it has been as bad as ever. Just a few days ago I was sent a rape threat by another player, while I have reported it the player who sent them is, I believe, still present in Discord and in game. I'm told it's being dealt with, but I don't have a huge amount of confidence really. It seems like no-one takes the matter very seriously...

This game is at least theoretically run by adults, I feel like everyone should know better than to tolerate this kinda stuff when it happens. People should know what's right and wrong. Yet, it happens, there's a promise that things will be done differently in the future, then it happens again, and again, and again. We're not idiots, we've been told that "something will be done" so many times that we just don't believe you anymore.

So yeah, I might have had enough of this game too, sorry guys...
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Re: Leaving

Postby Yolo04 » Thu Jan 03, 2019 4:55 am

Perhaps I am just lucky, however I haven’t experienced as much toxicity in the community as in the past when I was a new player.

However I’m mainly reserved to the forums anyway, so perhaps the main discord is the major source of this toxicity.
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Re: Leaving

Postby pandowlpaws » Thu Jan 03, 2019 4:59 am

I'd like to preface my post by saying that I am saddened by this news, despite its clear validity, and that I personally have come to know you and Ryouta as friends, discussion partners, and great roleplayers during our shared time in Indrala. In fact, I think it is honest to say that without the two of you, my stay here in the Particracy community would have been much shorter, and 100% less interesting. i hope that we will be able to work together again in the future, perhaps on an upcoming project.

That being said, I have not made my decision quite yet on my future here in PT Classic. There have been many great times that we all together have shared in Terra, and I think in some ways my reluctance to leave is in part to that. But, I believe that eventually, I will come to face the facts that classic is no longer the game it was when I began my journey here. Things have slowly been disintegrating, and I feel like the release of the alpha was all but the killing blow to an already injured beast.

Besides this, so much has gone wrong in the past few months from confusion with moderation, skewed punishments, and lack of implementation of needed rp and rule updates, as many before me have said. Furthermore, I know I have been frustrated with the fact that many brilliant ideas that the player base had come up with have been completely ignored or thrown to the side, and I can't imagine how the people who have actually put so much time into it, such as James, feel.

Last Sunday, the 30th, marks the anniversary of my entrance into Particracy, my usage of discord coming quite a bit later, and despite being moderately new to the community, especially when compared to Ryouta, the toxicity hasn't been hard to find. I have given away little information about myself to the community, partially out of personal preference, and partially because of how harmful the community has become. It certainly makes players feel unsafe when others are demeaned by the people they should be working with to create not destroy. I know that if I was a parent, I certainly wouldn't want my child on this game.

I feel like as of lately this toxicity has transferred both ways between rp and ooc contexts, and that players have been ripping themselves up over a fictional world, although I will say what I see as the creation of "fetish" states recently has been alarming.

Anyways, I just want to wish the best of luck to Wu, Ryouta, and anyone else who is leaving, plans on leaving, or is thinking about leaving. - Thanks, PandowlPaws / MuggleMuffins
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Re: Leaving

Postby Yolo04 » Thu Jan 03, 2019 5:15 am

I agree with pandowlpaws about one major thing: Particracy 2 has been the killing blow to the Classic

While I will continue playing classic, it isn’t going to be the same as so many players are leaving classic for PT 2.

Based off the recent events going on, I’d say PT Classic has MAYBE another year of life left in it. Afterwards it’s just a dead carcass being paraded around.

By the time either PT Classic shuts down or people quit RPing, it’s highly likely that most active RPers will be gone. Those left will most likely be juggling between PT 2 & Classic.

I feel like it’s come to a point where the RP has fallen hard. Before in maybe mid 2018, you’d have at least 10-13 news articles published in a day. Now, you’re lucky to find 10 maximum.

One thing me & other PT players discussed was how to end the game once it got deactivated. We came to the agreement that we should RP a nuclear war & the end of the world. We all believed that would make for the best ending for what was a great game. And yet, now it seems ever more unlikely that shall occur & it seems like PT Classic will end with a whimper, not with a bang.

While I’ll continue to work on RP and I hope you all may continue to read & appreciate(or despise) my work and the works of others, it seems increasingly obvious that the community has engulfed itself in toxicity, lack of RP, & lack of updates.

However I think one major failure some of us hold is not helping new players find there footing in the community. I remember when I joined the game, no one messaged me with offers of assistance when I wrote my first article nor did anyone try to assist me with creating and perfecting the RP. That led to me writing garbage & unrealistic RP. & I was condemned for that, even though I had no clue how RP worked at the time.

That drove me to take a break from PT for around 1-2 months. After I’d rejoined the community, I asked the advice of several PT veterans, who thankfully accepted to give me advice.

However, why did it have to take me directly messaging several players for assistance to finally fix my RP & push it to a passable standard?

The community I believed failed when it came to assuring new players that they would be assisted & helped in PT.

I hope this is a lesson for PT 2. We should assist new players who are obviously struggling and make it a point to recognize that everyone starts as a novice on this game.

Wu Han, I hope you live in continued happiness, alongside everyone in this community.
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Re: Leaving

Postby soysauce » Thu Jan 03, 2019 5:29 am

Yolo04 wrote:Perhaps I am just lucky, however I haven’t experienced as much toxicity in the community as in the past when I was a new player.

However I’m mainly reserved to the forums anyway, so perhaps the main discord is the major source of this toxicity.
Not to point the finger, but I remember you calling for gay people to be lynched on the discord. Perhaps you were part of the problem?
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