In the beginning of that round I was pissed someone was using my nickname, because as @The_LiGhTgUnS said, after winning a couple rounds, you obviously get targeted and painted with a bulls-eye on your back as soon as the round starts. I actually do wonder if it helped you that round, I expect it landed you a couple NAP offers?
In some rounds playing undercover should still be an option, in case for attackers, if they have a slow round, like I am supposed to have/be having atm, I’d rather not give all the people I attacked a chance to somewhat try and get even when I play banker/non attacker bonus race for example.
IC is a game with an emphasis on the community, imo that is most of the reason I (and we are) am still playing this game. Just like RL anonymity should always be an option for people/players who want (or think they need) that.
In my honest opinion trickery, betrayal, mischief, downright asshole-ish behaviour have been part of this game for as long as I can remember.
While the game is about statistics and order, this game has thrived because of people who wanted to mix things up.
Acting like an asshole should not be protected, but it should just be part of the game. This game has become full of rules now and the result is MW. It’s boring and predictable. No real surprises have happened all round.
Over 10 years ago I played round with people that would NAP you 1 tick and rape your family the second. This isn’t great behaviour, but it’s the way real wars are won too. The name of the game is Imperial Conflict, not Imperial Exploration.
Screwing over one family and being screwed over by another. Most of those don’t play the game anymore because they would be punished in this current form for playing their type of game.
I remember some of those rounds because I screwed people and I was backstabbed by others.
Highly doubt I’ll ever remember this round in the future…
I always tell this story, but my favorite of this was (Sogil?) doing the “48 Hour” nap cancellation but he specifically interpreted it as 48 in-game hours, which given the old time conversion was like 17 minutes or something.
Trickery is right, and is just as valid as playing the brute. No-mercy with the Harks, widely-feared Tortuga Nebula Thugs, etc.
The game has no personality if we force rules on everything.
That said, I do think anonymity is a form of protection. In the spirit of everything above, we should do away with anonymity and let unofficial alliances flourish. It’s the only way the community could ever police itself and make “honor” have any meaning.
When impire left he asked me to save the custom races he liked " solders of impi" and a few other ones.
I still have many of those custom races. Including munchers etc etc. Am i impersonating? Should i delete those? Is that IA?
its interesting to me that when I brought up bullying in IC , people said it didnt happen, yet this thread points out numerous occurences of bullying, and that should be the reason that people dont want to be open with who they are.
If we know who people are it does these things in my eyes
lets us know how they did last round and the rounds before
we can make sure they are not impersonating anyone
lets us see if they have violated any rules in the past or been banned
gives us the option to choose who we play with
Yes there are drawbacks, but i think these outweigh them
Pretty much everyone there confirms it happens, albeit not to them in particular. I think LG and I both make a number of suggestions of players that have been, or are being bullied.
On the points you raise:
If we know who people are it does these things in my eyes
1. lets us know how they did last round and the rounds before Doesn’t this also tell the bullies where their target is? 2. we can make sure they are not impersonating anyone This is not really an issue, as the mod team can confirm this now as well 3. lets us see if they have violated any rules in the past or been banned So you could see I have been blocked and deleted, doesn’t serving my time is already enough? Or should a mistake in the past hunt me forever? 4. gives us the option to choose who we play with So apart from anonimizing, we should also play full draft going forward? Else this is not really the case.
The idea of whether anonymity should be disallowed gets brought up every once in a while. I am greatly in favor of adding identifying information to ingame empires. The greater community of players is what makes the game fun and not knowing who other players are detracts from that aspect of the game. Granted, you know everyone in your own family so it’s not total darkness out there. With a tag in the empire page or another column after race with account name it would add lots of good drama to the round. You can see who is playing with who, you can speculate as to what intra-fam ego conflicts will blow up the biggest, and you can have a revitalization of forum topics with pre-round predictions and PvCs with all fam information.
With the whole Mag7 debacle and resulting fallout with IAs everywhere it might be hard to do this though. And bullying definitely happens. Maybe not to the most well-liked players but it also might not be a great idea to force someone at risk of being targeted for bullying to play without anonymity.