When the Moral High Ground Becomes The Doormat

[Tamos Shan]

Before I start off, I would like to introduce myself to those folks who do not know me. I've been a long time friend of Ordo, only recently having joined their ranks in any official capacity. Though this happened near the beginning of the year, I took a break and moved to inactive duty due to real life issues. But I have slowly become active again in the past few weeks, even so much as going on my first ever raid with Ordo today. My first raid was lead by Krow Ames, along with 14 others, we attacked CATI. It took about an hour, but we finally left victorious. My second raid, followed a couple of hours later, led by Ron Bleac, along with 5 others, and a few neutrals, against X-Corps. We left within an hour, no true victory claimed. Sure we took a few points, but it wasn't enough or much of anything to claim.

What i'm going to talk about is our assumed Moral High Ground when it comes to those groups who blatantly and continuously break their rules, our rules, and every other unwritten rule when it comes to fair and balanced combat. I understand we're attempting to show we're the better group, the bigger man, what have you. But when it comes down to constantly being beaten, or never even given the chance to win, that Moral High Ground devolves into the Doormat for them to walk all over.

A fellow comrade told me that I should be appreciative of there even being anyone to attack. I can understand such a sentiment, to a point. There IS a line to appreciation. That line was crossed. I cannot and will not, ever, appreciate a group that holds no honor, no morals, no integrity when it comes to combat. We're here to have fun, to enjoy a unique hobby within this virtual world. But when one group unceasingly breaks every rule set forth by this hobby, when this group destroys the fun that this hobby is supposed to have, when this group does everything they can, regardless of it's morality, to claim a hollow victory, it turns this fun hobby into a stressful chore. Not only that, it brings us dishonor, and inadvertantly ingrains into them that they can continue with this reprehensible behavior unhindered.

What do I mean by this? When we continuously entertain these groups in the effort of the Higher Moral Ground, we're inadvertantly allowing these groups to believe they can continue to act as they have. Cheating, breaking rules, utilizing dishonorable tactics to win. With our supposed Moral action, we're allowing these groups to believe what they're doing is okay. They will believe that they do not have to stop. That they can break more rules, go even further into the depths of depravity to garner a hollow victory. We become the Doormat in which these groups walk over with their falsely gained beliefs. We gain dishonor by allowing them to even attain such a thought.

Why do we entertain this? We do we continue to allow this to happen? I understand this hobby, this community, requires other groups to actually be sustainable, but when some of the groups do anything they can to win, do anything they can to make our time as hard as possible, it does more harm to our community than ignoring them will.

Let me make this clear. This is NOT about victory. This is NOT about winning. This is simply about being given a fair chance at attaining said victory. It is the chance to win that drives us. It is the chance of success that pushes us to work harder. But when we allow these groups, these stains upon our otherwise fair and fun community, we allow their actions to become the norm. And like a virus, other groups will pickup on that, emulate that, and spread, bringing our community further down into the depths of immorality, dishonor, and loss of integrity.

We're Ordo. We pride ourselves on being honorable, moral, and with integrity when it comes to combat within the community. We should show this pride by denying these groups our attentions. Otherwise, we become no better than them, allowing them to continue their despicable actions, and turning the Moral High Ground into the Doormat. "If Ordo let's us, then it's okay." Do not let this become our legacy. Put a stop to this here and now.

I, Tamos Shan E-2 Discens, hereby state that I will not actively involve myself with any group who flagrantly cheat, breaks ours and their own rules, or lies to win. I will not stand for it, not now, not ever.

None of us should.

Glory to the Imperator, Glory to the Ordo Imperialis

[Aryte]

That's quite true. Wow. Welcome back, Tamos. Nice post, honestly. The willingness to put up with bullshit likely comes twofold: demonstrating our prowess, and simply having grown accustomed to it.

Edit: for clarity, you speak about attacking other groups?

[Kishoshima Dragonash]

Let me spin this for you in a different direction hon.

When our enemies have to cheat to win.. it just means our training is that good.

When our enemies have to cheat to win.. it just means our enemies fear us.

When our enemies have to cheat to win.. it just means our tactics are solid.

In the end, if they have to cheat to beat us, that flat out means everything we do.. everything we stand for works. I completely understand your disdain and your frustration. I understand your hatred of the situation, but we take the highroad for a reason. When those same enemies come here and try to take us out.. they cheat... we play fair and we Ffff their shit up. When those same enemies bring their friends and THEY cheat.. we STILL Ffff their shit up. Why? Because we dont have to cheat to achieve our objectives.. and our ultimate objective is to maintain the honor of Ordo and to enjoy ourselves but not at the expense of others. Dont let this get you down, we are Ordo... we are better for a reason and the reasons are for exactly what you posted above.. we dont cheat.

[Tamos Shan]

Attacking other groups, yes. I will always defend Titan regardless of who is attacking. It is my duty to defend it. But on the assault, I will not entertain those groups we know to be flagrantly cheating, breaking rules, or using cheap and unfair tactics.

[Mark Karlfeldt]

Personally, I find the entire concept of expecting "honour" and "morality" in a videogame to be rather obsolete.

[George Reisman]

I think he means that he wont fight groups that have to cheat to win. And I agree, it's bullshit when they do that and something should be said when they do.

[Tamos Shan]

I am not expecting it in a "video game". I am expecting it from fellow human beings.

[RazorFox]

Well, there's a reason we don't attack groups like Vanguard or Valor or ARK.

[Tamos Shan]

And yet, we don't go far enough.

[Aryte]

It's difficult to nurse our own appetite for combat while attempting to persuade groups to act in a manner we deem appropriate. We easily come off as controlling.

[Tamos Shan]

I can understand that. But if we only act in accordance with what others perceive us as, we're never going to show how we truly are. I'm not saying we bully anyone. I'm not saying we tell others how to act. I'm saying...we should mentor these newer groups. Show them how it's done, rub off on them. Become...an example. You're more likely to get abetter reaction that way, than any other way. And if they don't wish to follow our example, and go their own way, fine. But if it goes beyond what we see as honorable, then we should not entertain their habits. As an example.

Edit: And what I mean by Mentor, is not just do what we're doing now, but invite these groups to Titan or Chronus. Show them how we do things. How we fight. Tactics, how to take advantage of your surroundings fairly, etc. Joint training ops, etc. That sort of thing.

Why do you think Erebus was the most fun to fight against? Many of us, though we may groan when they show up, love fighting them. why? Because they were mostly Ex-Ordo. They followed the example they were taught while in Ordo. They were a hell of a good time to fight. Some of the most fun i've ever had.

Edited July 26, 2011 by Tamos Shan

[Kishoshima Dragonash]

Erebus is a different kettle of fish.. and most of the time they are as guilty, if not more so, of flagrant rule abuse on Titan BECAUSE they know how we operate so well. They find every loophole they can come across to get away with whatever they want to get away with. That, in and of itself, is cheating. Mind you it's not ALL of them, but a good majority.

Groups like X-Corps, CATI.. basically the ones we hit on a daily basis.. dont play like we do and they dont because they dont want to.. period. CATI has made huge strides towards fixing that, I will fully admit it, but they have a helluva long way to go. We play by the rules we play by, and are part of Ordo for the plain and simple fact that we hold ourselves to a higher standard. We dont lower the bar so the other kiddies dont feel left out.

As for the invitations and such, we have a Diplomatic Corps that does exactly that.. they go out, talk to leaders, meet with groups, invite them to Titan. Those same diplomats also help try to coach them into seeing why we do what we do, but again MOST groups only take the invitation so they can learn the layout of the sim, learn our weaknesses and use everything they have to exploit them. Its a fact of life in the SLMC.

You have to keep in mind the mentality of those we're going against.. these are the SAME ppl that use the cheat codes in games to beat the thing in two hours and brag about how Ffffing epic they are. These are the SAME people that do nothing but play HALO on XBOX, and even then they get banned for using exploits and cheats. There's no sense of "fair play," its all about the "W." And again, Ordo doesnt operate that way, this is why (as Aryte pointed out) we're the largest military on SL, have the most active members, etcetcetc.

Now dont get me wrong, Im not saying there arent good groups out there... but they're so few and far between, or so small, that they never make it to Titan. This is why we have so many lonewolves out there. This is also why so many larger groups refuse to attack titan.. because we force them to play by the same rules WE play by, and they cant take the fact that we dont cheat to Ffff their shit up.

We've been friends a long time Tam, I know -exactly- how you feel about the situation. ALL of us feel the same way, but we either accept the fact that we have to deal with it and play by our rules when we go out, regardless of what the other guys do.. or we turn into Vangard and sit in our sim all day long doing Ffff all and watching porn.

Does it take some of the fun out of it.. yes.. but the way I see it, Id rather go stomp a mudhole in someone's ass and KNOW that I did it with integrity. Its nice to have both the win and the mudhole, but if I had the choice, Id take the mudhole over the win 10/10 times. Like I said, I dont see things the way a lot of ppl do, I dont take it personally if I lose.. only if I lose from my own mistakes and not because I was in a Kobeashi Maru.

[George Reisman]

sit in our sim all day long doing Ffff all and watching porn.

In all fairness, that is what I do all day anyway. You just don't know it.

[Inoue Katsu]

[Altus Nirvana]

Tamos, your preaching to the choir.

As I see it, having some kind of bushido among all the military groups within the SLMC community isnt going to ever fully and truely work because of two major problems.

1. Its SL. No im not being a pessimistic smartass this time, but you got people developing Weapons of Mass Fffftardation and people encouraging or standard issuing them.

2. Its still SL. Also Still trying not to be a smartass, but there will always be a large number of people who decide just not to follow gridwide regulation, because there wont be enough people to provide a negative to those who decide not to. I mean we had IS and ANVIL just before. They sure are going strong nowdays arent they?

Its sort of a quasi sort of commentary on anarchism. How do you, or, how could you enforce regulation across such a wide array of factions within the SLMC that are all based on "voluntary decisions" who all have rivaling opinions of each other? Could it be enforced by the actual militaries themselves? Wouldnt that spark debates of bias? Maybe a much larger yet neutral group to oversee "rules of warfare" like some SL variant of the UN(God help us)? But again, who all would listen? Especially factions out there that know they've been chastised all across the road, what would encourage them to follow? Finally be respected? How much is that worth to say, Vanguard, whos still made it this far although blocked by every other military.

In a typical FPS game, you had to adhere to the assigned weapons, how they function...all of that written in and solid. Unless of course you did some hackwork. Breaking the rules would get you removed from the server, and nowdays consistantly doing it removes your IP from most games. In SL...Linden Labs dosent give a shit if you wireframe, or shoot through prims, or use like 9,001 firecores with a nuclear underslung.

Granted ive been up since 9am yesterday and probably just attempting to make sense with all that...probably the case, and ill accept. Yet really, if you want to enforce the Anti-Fffftard Laws of Common Combat, you have to have everyone onboard. If one military is blocked by another for bullshit, everyone will have to follow. You have to deny alternatives. "Oh, Ordo blockaided us, but we still have everyone else here open for fighting". The community has to deny itself to the blockaided army fully or atleast to a real extent for them to be truely encouraged to change their ways.

Or start sending envoys out, even to blockaided militaries, discussing these concerns and get a more up to date stance on how everyones mentality is at this point. Hell, back in the day there was whole conferences where leaders of militaries showed up in person. Who all do you gotta harass to get one of those started again? Might we worth it, atleast itd be a boon to the beacon of our values that we strive for the community to see from us.

/morethanjust2cents

[Maverick Garfield]

Like I said on the raid, just do what you can.

[Aryte]

It's honestly incredibly difficult to take the role of mentor. We've been trying with, say, Exilion Enclave for a long time now. A group is really only as professional as its leadership permits it to be. Some are more interested in just being internet tough guys.

Granted, there's always room for improvement. It just takes a lot of effort for very little turn around (most of the time). People are fairly wary of receiving help. There's this sense that if they let the Ordo close, we'll gobble them up and make them manslaves or something.

I wish I was kidding.

[Desereck Creeggan]

We've got big SnowWolf tail.

I feel my life has just become shorter. Leaving my lights on tonight.

But I do agree with 90% of what has been said. What makes us great is the ability to suck it up and keep trudging on, and at the end of the battle no matter what the status is we're winners for not lowering ourselves to cheating to win.

Once you cheat it becomes boring. Believe me, I've ruined several games for myself by cheating.

[Marcus Tinamou]

Anytime I have led a raid and the enemy cheats, I make a point to remind everyone that we are only doing a good job. And its true, when I led a 5 man Ordo Raid against 14 CATI and they called us wireframers, rezzed bombs on us and really just had a go - despite us being heavily outnumbered (and still winning), that attests to what we are.

On the flip side, it is your choice if you do not want to attend raids to places that use cheap tactics, you may find yourself being on Titan more then you like. But if that does not bother you, then that is great! More defense. A good point to remember is yeah, we have blockades with VG etc - but we cant blockade the entire community because they cheat, as much as it would be great - it would ruin the purpose of being a military in sl.

All in all, you made some great points though.

[Kraton Foxtrot]

One good point on this subject that I think didn't get much attention is the idea of similar tactics used by other groups, particularly ex-ordo. No one's all-too happy to see anyone go when someone leaves Ordo, but I just got to thinking - and this is entirely hypothetical here - what would happen if some of us who have been around Ordo for a long time, decided to split off and - given the time, cash, and starting numbers - were to make another military group? Now one would probably think, "If they do so with spite towards Ordo, they're no different than the others." or on the flip side, "if they make a group with all the rules and regulations from Ordo in mind, it'd just be a mockup copy of Ordo." And these are very valid thoughts. But, still hypothetically, if someone merely wanted to spread Ordo's high morals to other groups, in an attempt to sort of "breed" our SLMC ideals to others; if they made their own rules etc that neither broke nor directly copied the rules we fallow, and only fallowed identical morals rather than identical rules (these are very different things, keep in mind), then if they had the above mentioned starting 'things' and the drive to keep at it till it works, what are the chances of that turning out to being a very good thing, both for Ordo and the military community as a whole?

My thoughts, albeit highly positive in outlook, are that if this were to happen it could begin to change the community as a whole, just as having children and passing on one's morals and ideals onto those children would further breed those morals and ideals over time.

Now, this may have been an odd idea for me to bring up, and trust me when I say I love Ordo too much to even dream of leaving, but I think it is a pretty positive idea that, if I could split myself in two, I would want the other half of me to spread our higher morals onto others in this way.

Any thoughts?

[Tsume Xiao]

Speaking from the point of weaponry, sadly you find a downward slope that only encourages this behavior.

I worked with X-Corps a while back to bring them a custom scripted weapon. It had two fire rates, four spread modes, two magazine capacities. More than I think any military should have in any weapon. However compared to the weapon they wanted it to replace, the FRAG Opal, it was incredibly tame.

However, The weapon never caught on with their lower ranks, so even the higher ranks stopped using it.

The reason I was given by one of their higher members was quite simply "It's too fair."

She went on to try and redeem her statement by saying they'd be beaten everywhere they went if they used the new rifle because everyone they fought used the guns that vomited out bullets in a fashion that would make Emily Rose look like a sick kindergartner, so if they didn't use the same, they would be out classed. Clearly, the Ordo can go against these types of militaries and at the very least, hold our own, so this logic is a fallacy.

To me, this was pretty much an admittance of "Well we don't want to have to actually train and worry about skill to use a weapon." This is the kind of mark that rests on a military who depends on their weapons shear spam to win. These are the people who, if handed "fair" weapons, would crumble in combat because their skill is simply "aim this general direction, press and hold mouse button" and the spread and spam of the weapon does the rest.

Combine this with over boosted egos, excessive pride, and laziness and you have a recipe for decay.

Can they just change to the more balanced weaponry? Of course, but they would lose for a while until they learned to handle them.

Could they just train more? Yes, but that means losing (in combat training) or spending time fighting themselves (team training). Either case it would require them to admit they were grossly out of training and relying on their weapons.

Can't they just accept they are out of practice? Again, Egos and pride.

Many companies that had problems with spam in the past have taken steps to repair their image and make their weapons more suitable for fair combat.

I believe P.E. recently rolled out an update on some of their gear that has a standard and overkill type mode.

Companies like CRAIL and A&T, which tried to compete with the "oh boy I can adjust everything and make a spam cannon" methodology of FRAG models are mostly gone. One hit wonder weapon companies that die out of get banned everywhere.

FRAG's new line of gear removed all the adjustables (spread, fire rate, capacity), but still have large spreads (the Free M4A1 has a 2.7m Radius of spread at 200m. By comparison, the Leviathan ACR has, by default, a 1.125m radius spread at 200m. Even the Ordo PDR, a SMG like weapon, has a spread of 1.75m at 200m out.

The problem is, many smaller militaries have started down this path already, so getting them to stop is extremely difficult, especially when they are stubborn.

[Agares Tretiak]

Personally, I find the entire concept of expecting "honour" and "morality" in a videogame to be rather obsolete.

I challenge you, sah, to a du-ehl.

[Tamos Shan]

I can understand the issues with doing anything to stem the tide of unfair tactics and rampant cheating. I totally understand that it's tough. But to me, that's all the more reason to try. When something gets hard, or seemingly impossible, is the best course of action to give up? Is the best idea to just, not do anything? Hell no. You try harder. You step up your game. Change your approach.

I don't see Ordo as the kind of group to just up and quit. We're not quitters. We're also not a bunch of sissies who can't handle a little challenge. (And I don't mean facing cheaters and trying to win fairly. That's not a challenge, that's just asinine.) The community is not going to change itself. Nor should we expect it to. Expecting that would be tantamount to foolishness. We have an obligation to change the community for the better. We're a part of it, and it's our job to make it as fun and as fair as possible. Hell, I think we have more of an obligation than most other groups because of a multitude of reasons; 1: We're the largest SL mil on the grid. Our presence alone is enough to instill fear and respect. 2: We're one of the oldest/longest lasting groups. This alone shows we have the experience, the knowledge, and the ability to shape the community. 3: We're one of the most respected. Many groups and non-affiliated folks within the community look up to Ordo. They may not openly voice such a sentiment, but it's true. Just the activity against us alone proves that. You don't attack a small, weak group to prove your skill, prowess, etc. No, you go after the large, well established groups.

Now, i'm not saying we control the community. Far from it. But we should reach out. Kisho mentioned the Diplomatic branch. I had no idea it even existed. I had no idea we did ANYTHING like that. To me, that means we're not doing enough to reach the community. If a member within your own group had no idea such a division existed, then there are issues that need to be addressed. We focus so much on the combat that the rest gets pushed by the wayside. Sure, i've not been around as much or as long as some folks. Sure i'm not privy to a lot of information that others may be. But what I do know, and what I do see, is that we're so focused on the actual military part of it, that the diplomatic, the community side of it, gets lost, pushed away, forgotten.

My suggestion is we work to change this. We work to open up this diplomatic division we have, push it more. This community is not JUST about the combat. It's about the fellowship, the fun, the shared excitement of something we all enjoy doing. If we cannot highlight this, exemplify this. If we cannot make this valuable, and needed commodity more visible, then we may as well join the rest on the wayside, and watch this community fall further and further until it's just a mess of squabbling children, cheating asshats, and frustration.

Just because it's hard, doesn't mean it can't be done.

We don't give up.

[Guest Ruin Nefarious]

Hey, I totally agree with you. The only fights worth the effort are the impossible ones. :)

[Agares Tretiak]

EGREGIOUS HERESY

It's nice of you to leave the light on for me, Mr. Creeggan. Sweet dreams.