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The Horizon Accords
thishorizon
Member Posts: 1,158
Throughout the past 2 years, i have been lucky enough to learn from, be influenced, and team with some of the best pilots and ship builders in the game. These pilots and mechanics were also gracious enough to allow me to build a level of credibility amongst the top fleets in the game. its been a great journey. i've gained many friends, made few enemies, and continue to learn and grow in this game, and our community. this has enriched my life to a level that few may understand. most of you just know me as the drunk who has fun and kills bad guys... and probably dies a little too often....and as shimmerless would say "flies like a chicken wailing around with its head cut off."
So, in that spirit, i am going to put my neck out there. you see, i make a living in the business world as a person who grows the environment. through the enrichment and heightened awareness of the people involved in any given set of boundaries, i have been successful in finding a reasonable balance between workloads, employee satisfaction, and productivity that has been both beneficial, and profitable for everyone involved. this skill set does not come easy, and i've dedicated the past 15 years of my life attempting to grasp it. so i find myself in this environment that i love, with people that i value every day. yet, there is no solace in my dedication, due to the divisive nature of that environment, and the differing opinions of its participants.
In the study of our environment, i have come to some fairly solid principals, and accepted many things as just the nature of this environment. they are as follows:
1. Cryptic, try as they might, has yet to strike a value of game play that is accepted by the dedicated PVP community at large.
2. Many of that dedicated community will leave from time to time, may stay on as a permanent resident, or leave all together based on dissatisfaction.
3. All fleets have players interested in battle against other humans, as a team, and as individuals.
4. The opinions of the community vary greatly on what is acceptable, and what is not in team play, and in 1v1.
5. The Environment shows no sign of ceasing to change
6. We all love Star Trek
In conclusion, if there is no reasonable accommodation that can be made among the participants in this community, we will never see it grow to the environment we know it can be, and most of us wish it would be. with all of the recent threads on what fleet will do this and that, i have thought greatly about what accommodations would enrich this game play for all involved. i present to you: The Horizon Accords.
Accord 1: Pay to win in a free game.
We all pay for the game. through subscriptions, with our credit cards, through time. all ships and consoles should be accepted as reasonable in a premade 5v5 or 1v1 match up. How can we find common ground? my suggestions are as follows:
A: With so many "Unique" consoles available, a wide variety of combinations can be struck, but how much is too much? In a 5 man team, 2 "Unique" consoles can be slotted, and give the player enough space to maximize their build through standard consoles. Any more than 2 "Unique" consoles and you start to lose a balance of effectiveness vs. annoyance. Some players like to run them all, some none at all. If we can agree to 2 max per ship, and no more than 2 of the same "Unique" console per team, a balance may present itself.
B: PUGs are not held accountable for what they bring to any match, and therefore can not be held responsable for the composition of the team.
C: Accord "A" applies to 1v1 matches.
Accord 2: The Duty Officer System
A: Due to the nature of the Duty Officer System, self accountability and community accountability poses problems. therefore, Duty officer combinations at this time should not be held accountable by any. the game provides them boundaries at which you are free to do as you wish.
B: Some Duty Officers offer vastly more potential for maximizing and 1 players performance, and that of the team. Fleets and players will have to hold themselves accountable for the reputation they garner for their Doff choices. Reasonable combinations should garner more competition, and over use of some may detract from future competitiveness and available matches for that player or fleet.
C: Future doffs will change game play further, and should be evaluated as such.
Accord 3: Bridge Officer Abilities
A: Every ship has its own "Unique" Boff layout. All powers that can be slotted by that ship are available for game play. Some Boff abilities have hard counters, some have soft counters. it is up to the player / fleet to decide on what they will and will not use. The player / Fleet will garner reputation for consistancy or non consistancy of the Boff abilities they run. Future game play and match options will be the result of that consistancy.
B: There will be no "Broken" or "Overpowered" bridge Officer abilities. all options and combinations are acceptable.
C: Future Ship layouts will change the game further, and should be evaluated as such.
Accord 4: Respect and Sportsmanship
A: General back and forth banter is acceptable, and encouraged. Disagreements lead to conversations, and to the resolution of those disagreements. If no resolution can be found, the players / fleets should cease competitive game play until such a resolution presents itself.
B: The use of derogatory and inflamitory language is heavily discouraged. and sometimes acceptable among players. The use of racial or sexual orientation language should be reserved for those that are familiar with one another, and have found succh language acceptable.
C: Accord 4 does not apply to OPVP chat, but what is said in OPVP will most likely impact the reputation of that Fleet / player, and will endanger future game play and possible competitive opportunities.
And last, i do know this has been tried before, by many. many of you may post that it will never work. please remember these Accords should only apply to agreed match ups between fleets, and those teams that are joining the PVP queues with the intentions of using their teammates to maximize their opportunity to win against a PUG.
If we do not do something soon, we will continue to stagnate, and blame each other and Cryptic for the failures we are faced with at this time. objections and ideas on changes to the Horizon Accords are open to discussion, and welcomed at all times.
have fun kill bad guys
Horizon
So, in that spirit, i am going to put my neck out there. you see, i make a living in the business world as a person who grows the environment. through the enrichment and heightened awareness of the people involved in any given set of boundaries, i have been successful in finding a reasonable balance between workloads, employee satisfaction, and productivity that has been both beneficial, and profitable for everyone involved. this skill set does not come easy, and i've dedicated the past 15 years of my life attempting to grasp it. so i find myself in this environment that i love, with people that i value every day. yet, there is no solace in my dedication, due to the divisive nature of that environment, and the differing opinions of its participants.
In the study of our environment, i have come to some fairly solid principals, and accepted many things as just the nature of this environment. they are as follows:
1. Cryptic, try as they might, has yet to strike a value of game play that is accepted by the dedicated PVP community at large.
2. Many of that dedicated community will leave from time to time, may stay on as a permanent resident, or leave all together based on dissatisfaction.
3. All fleets have players interested in battle against other humans, as a team, and as individuals.
4. The opinions of the community vary greatly on what is acceptable, and what is not in team play, and in 1v1.
5. The Environment shows no sign of ceasing to change
6. We all love Star Trek
In conclusion, if there is no reasonable accommodation that can be made among the participants in this community, we will never see it grow to the environment we know it can be, and most of us wish it would be. with all of the recent threads on what fleet will do this and that, i have thought greatly about what accommodations would enrich this game play for all involved. i present to you: The Horizon Accords.
Accord 1: Pay to win in a free game.
We all pay for the game. through subscriptions, with our credit cards, through time. all ships and consoles should be accepted as reasonable in a premade 5v5 or 1v1 match up. How can we find common ground? my suggestions are as follows:
A: With so many "Unique" consoles available, a wide variety of combinations can be struck, but how much is too much? In a 5 man team, 2 "Unique" consoles can be slotted, and give the player enough space to maximize their build through standard consoles. Any more than 2 "Unique" consoles and you start to lose a balance of effectiveness vs. annoyance. Some players like to run them all, some none at all. If we can agree to 2 max per ship, and no more than 2 of the same "Unique" console per team, a balance may present itself.
B: PUGs are not held accountable for what they bring to any match, and therefore can not be held responsable for the composition of the team.
C: Accord "A" applies to 1v1 matches.
Accord 2: The Duty Officer System
A: Due to the nature of the Duty Officer System, self accountability and community accountability poses problems. therefore, Duty officer combinations at this time should not be held accountable by any. the game provides them boundaries at which you are free to do as you wish.
B: Some Duty Officers offer vastly more potential for maximizing and 1 players performance, and that of the team. Fleets and players will have to hold themselves accountable for the reputation they garner for their Doff choices. Reasonable combinations should garner more competition, and over use of some may detract from future competitiveness and available matches for that player or fleet.
C: Future doffs will change game play further, and should be evaluated as such.
Accord 3: Bridge Officer Abilities
A: Every ship has its own "Unique" Boff layout. All powers that can be slotted by that ship are available for game play. Some Boff abilities have hard counters, some have soft counters. it is up to the player / fleet to decide on what they will and will not use. The player / Fleet will garner reputation for consistancy or non consistancy of the Boff abilities they run. Future game play and match options will be the result of that consistancy.
B: There will be no "Broken" or "Overpowered" bridge Officer abilities. all options and combinations are acceptable.
C: Future Ship layouts will change the game further, and should be evaluated as such.
Accord 4: Respect and Sportsmanship
A: General back and forth banter is acceptable, and encouraged. Disagreements lead to conversations, and to the resolution of those disagreements. If no resolution can be found, the players / fleets should cease competitive game play until such a resolution presents itself.
B: The use of derogatory and inflamitory language is heavily discouraged. and sometimes acceptable among players. The use of racial or sexual orientation language should be reserved for those that are familiar with one another, and have found succh language acceptable.
C: Accord 4 does not apply to OPVP chat, but what is said in OPVP will most likely impact the reputation of that Fleet / player, and will endanger future game play and possible competitive opportunities.
And last, i do know this has been tried before, by many. many of you may post that it will never work. please remember these Accords should only apply to agreed match ups between fleets, and those teams that are joining the PVP queues with the intentions of using their teammates to maximize their opportunity to win against a PUG.
If we do not do something soon, we will continue to stagnate, and blame each other and Cryptic for the failures we are faced with at this time. objections and ideas on changes to the Horizon Accords are open to discussion, and welcomed at all times.
have fun kill bad guys
Horizon
Post edited by thishorizon on
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Comments
HOW will you or others enforce this and punish offenders?
PaxOttomana: gawd mirror event is like fighting a tsi premade, they keep comin and comin!
no punishments.
fleets / players sign the accords, or they don't.
agreement to the accords will benefit future competitive game play.
Do you even Science Bro?
@Aquitaine985
Lag Industries STO PvP Fleet - Executive
A Sad Panda of Industrial calibre.
2010: This is Cryptic PvP. Please hold the line, your call is very important to us...
I do like these accords as guiding principals. What amazes me is that you have thought of and refined in between your bouts of drunken playing (j/k).
I'll be refering these to my small group of friends/fleetmates.
In the meantime, have some cookiees!
Imperial House Of Pancakes
all im saying is that i make living doing this. a pretty decent one.
so this is my effort to try and get some of us together.
i can only stand for my credibility with those i know, which luckily for me, is a great bunch of the lot of you.
and with all of the latest fleet rage posts, i figured the guy who has some respect, and PUGs it out all the time, might be able to find some common ground.
what ever u decide good work man u have my support.
Kraven@Livin
~The Eleventh Order~
11thOrder Youtube
kai: all ships and consoles are available for you to play. so why pick and choose which ones? everyone has likes and dislikes for certain ones. yet there are counters, hard or soft, to all of them...save maybe that time bubble thing, but...never the less. what i seek is moderation, since the game doesn't provide it for us. run whatever you want, but its in excess that i aim to influence a "so to speak" curbing of. no one like fighting 5 grav pulses chained. or 5 thetas chained...ect ect. which we all know any half dead competent can put together.
livin: there would be no governing body, but ourselves. i seek some kind of respect among peers. ive been on just about, if not every teamspeak or vent server out there. all i find are great people for the most part, that just have different ways of attacking the game. and different opinions on what is okay to run, and what is not okay.
regulus: of course all of this has been proposed before. but everyone always picks and chooses specifically what can and can't be run. in this proposal, everything is okay. just in moderation. nothing wrong with a little self restraint for the sake of better gaming, is there?
did everyone not get the gist of the threads created by devoras and tripwire, and several others across the past few months? everyone has a specific list of what is okay, and what is not. the following vitriol only fuels the divide between this small group.
and if you are out there pugging it up.... who cares, run whatever. nothing wrong with just q'ing up to have some fun..... in a solo manner. and there are lots out there that wish to do just that. why q up with a 5 man and "super cheese" however you define it...the opposing team to death. which is all i see out there for the past 6 months at least. no one out there organizing good even matches through opvp.
Pax has extended his teamspeak tons of time on the forums and in chat. all of the turks, who i found to be one of the most intellectual groups ive been around since panda hay day, all run modest, team oriented builds. and the matches are great.
bootcamp is up, kind of. why not build on these things with moderation, and respect for the opposing team's position in mind?
edit: the only other option out there i see, is just take the gloves off, and go at it. but we've all seen how that turns out.
Honestly, this is better compared to...larger treaties we have in the real world.
To compare, the biggest single thing is that it's like the Geneva Conventions, 'governing the rules of war' pretty much. By extension, the Hague Conventions as well can apply to this.
It's kind of like the START accord in that it's aimed at least partially at a 'nuclear' reduction, namely in the manner of 'P2W' consoles in this case, to limit their usage in PvP to a degree.
Just a few thoughts I had is all.
yes mimey. you have the thought there. or the spirit at the very least.
since the game, and the systems and mechanics keep us from policing each other, it would be great, for gaming's sake....to just humble ourselves, in spite of what we could do, to just come to agreement... when q'ing up together, as a team...or 1v1...just to give ourselves this minor limitation.
this will bring the player himself/herself to the fore front of the match. instead of just.....well, using the ample weapons at hand to just utterly void piloting, and play style, or in your example....
if the USA really wanted to win any war, we would just incendiary carpet bomb whoever into oblivion....like.... we did to Japan. i think as human beings we have moved past that. neglecting any humanity to win at all costs.
THIS IS STAR TREK!
we are here because we hold very similar values in the future of humanity.... and well, gaming... and there are star ships!
i have dedicated my professional life to exemplify this thought process. and i just can't see past my own personal experiences, with all involved in this game, that we cannot achieve this. in some, silly, minute manor.
have fun.......kill bad guys
That said this is a good idea and as far as 'enforcment' goes fleets could simply add in their ruled/description that they are or are not compliant. This would give fleet members ample warning as to what kind of behaviour is acceptable. As far as organizing matches you could simply ask the other team if they are or are not compliant and make a decision as to continue or not from there.
Basicaly you could use such an agreement as a standardized rule book that everyone is familiar with.
Not everything you see on the internet is true - Abraham Lincoln
Occidere populo et effercio confractus
Wow thank you for taking the time Captain Horizon. I agree 100%. It is amazing how some very well known players here have mostly shot down your idea with out so much as giving it an effort. Mail me or when you see me in game please feel free to ask for the teamspeak info for Nova Core. We have always been willing to work with any other fleet that wishes to do the same. Perhaps while I have not been around our reputation has been boiled down to rubbish. Fine.
If the community believes that strongly that the setups our 5 man's run are not acceptable then lets talk about exactly what some of the community has seen. Let's address them as a community instead of simply attacking from a purely "we are better than you" holier than though kind of attitude. And the now 5 fleet leaders of Nova Core will voice our concerns and put forth every effort to work in unison with the community to come to some kind of agreement until maybe Cryptic delivers us from this p2w hell we are living in.
Excellent suggestion and thank you again Captain Horizon for putting what appears to be some very detailed and intellectual thought into what may be our best diplomatic solution to absolve some of this very highly heated animosity between fleets.
Let no other Captain discourage you from what you believe you can achieve in PvP. Debuffs and Disables be damned! Charge up your Backstep and Forge your build out of Lock Boxes, Consoles, and Flash Sales feeding off of only your pure will to chain, spam, and hax your way forward. You will not be forgotten to history.
I don't think it makes them bad people by any means but the problem is there.
vids and guides and stuff
[9:52] [Zone #11] Neal@trapper1532: im a omega force shadow oprative and a maoc elite camander and here i am taking water samples
always more than happy to swing by your teamspeak. already have the info.
really its all about good gaming. and really what i posted is just drawn out language on approaching our disagreements through moderation and civility.
There seems to be few out there genuinely looking for good competition. yet, this is an mmo with thousands of players, looking for gaming about trek. something just isnt right with that.
Well put Horizon...8D
~The Eleventh Order~
11thOrder Youtube
Whenever I team with friends or fleet-mates from my large KDF fleet I will ask them to remove certain things if I find that they are using things like AMS, tric mines, or siphon drones. I actually find friends, fleet mates, or just random people on my team much more responsive to my requests than if I were to ask the opposing team the same thing. This is pretty much all I can do, and I think if just 1 person on a team did this when they teamed up with people then the matches would be much cleaner and more enjoyable for all. There are probably some other things I should add to my list, but I find these 3 things suck the enjoyment out of a match more than anything else.
@DevolvedOne
Kind of like 5-man KDF passive proccing siphon builds that have no direct counter. That will literally "suck" the enjoyment out of a match more than anything I've ever seen when it comes to fighting FvK.
Let no other Captain discourage you from what you believe you can achieve in PvP. Debuffs and Disables be damned! Charge up your Backstep and Forge your build out of Lock Boxes, Consoles, and Flash Sales feeding off of only your pure will to chain, spam, and hax your way forward. You will not be forgotten to history.
That's all I read. lol jk.
Yeah, well I remember you sending me a private message appreciating my convictions on making this stuff better after reading the sub nucleonic treaty thread.
I feel the same way about this thread too. And too many people jump the gun and say "nope not gonna happen, don't think its ever gonna happen, know why? it's not gonna happen" etc..
But TRIBBLE those guys... They fade away in the face of people like you and others like you that want to make this stuff good. Thanks for posting this.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Thank you, if it's alright, I will continue my analogy/comparison.
This is all still as I put in my earlier post, and in many ways, you PvP fleets agreeing to this, are much like those treaties as again, shown before.
However, just be careful of one thing, this could also be considered a means to other fleets as showing the 'haves', you all here, to hurt the 'have nots'.
The 'haves' in this case being PvPers and various super-powerful things (SNB DOFFs are a good example). The 'have nots' being newer or less rich PvPers (or even non-PvPers), who do not own the super-powerful things.
It could potentially be seen, should others learn of this, that in a way, this is to say, 'we, the major PvPing fleets have all agreed upon that certain things are never to be used, but we aren't getting rid of them, we just won't use them, and help curb the use of anyone else using them as well.'
Perhaps it'd be an extreme case, but don't you all think that maybe, just maybe, someone could get the wrong idea? Think if you were looking at this (as I generally am) from the outside. What if you were looking at PvPing, and heard about how all these big PvPers were basically saying 'well we aren't gonna use these, and neither should you'; sure no one can police it, but it's not like people wouldn't be worried about getting flamed even under the suspicion of doing something.
Or they'd get mad, and basically give a big middle space-finger to the 'rules' and do whatever they want anyways, because why should some other people decide what's right and what's wrong? Especially since they, the person who's mad in the first place, never agreed to such a thing to begin with.
Now again, this is just the extreme end possibly, but something worth bringing up, because some countries in the world, DO feel that way when it comes to how more powerful countries treat the possession of nuclear weapons.
I'll use myself as an example:
I bought 3 SNB DOFFs off the exchange the other day. So, does that automatically make me 'bad' to own them? I suppose it makes me a 'nuclear power' in that I DO own them, true. Can anyone here stop me from using them potentially in the queues?* Not really.
*And before anyone does jump down my damn throat about it, I'm not gonna use em anyways.
Also, let's not forget there will always BE something. If not SNB DOFFs, than Tric mines. If not trics, then the Breen Energy weapon (to be decided of course). If not that, then something else. There will always be something, just be wary of that, and try not to jump on things too quickly to declare them over powered.
I have a question now:
Could you all, with absolute, and complete, 100% truth, tell me that if asked, would delete your SNB DOFFs, along with every other 'forbidden' item in PvP, forever?
I know everyone is ok to not use them, but deleting them for good is a different story. It's much like nukes in the real world, easy to say 'ok, let's NOT blow ourselves to kingdom come', but very difficult to agree to 'I need to get rid of these? You still have some though, get rid of them as well. If you do, I will too.'
I don't doubt that many of you here, who would agree to this accord, would though. At least...at first. You trust yourself, and I can probably guess right in that you trust your fleet mates. But do you trust each other? I don't think there completely would be.
I don't mean that as an insult at all, just a bit I'd noticed. I think there would be at least a tiny bit of doubt in any of your minds that 'if mine are gone for good...then I can't counter someone else using them'...
...and then we're right back where we began.
Truly it's a nasty circle. Just as nukes are so difficult to let go out in the real world, so can some of the things that we have here, be as well.
Again, none of this is meant to be insulting, mean, trolling, flaming, or anything else, just what I see as an 'outsider looking in' to all this.
you go ahead, and use your snb doffs. i aim not to take anything away from anyone. but as i've stated in the accords, some one will notice you stripping their buffs.... and that will put your own future competitive game play at risk.
i would suggest being open about what you are running. be transparent. only 1v1 others with snb doffs, maybe take them completely off when you face an unexperienced pug. or, keep them on there when you notice a few good pilots on the other end. you will most likely only have to remember a few dozen names.
i, myself have attack pattern doffs, giving me 100% uptime on attack patterns....pretty sick right. and im not giving them up. they are great, and ive adapted my playstyle to them.
Chillax. No Ego. No Drama.
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tal,
it took me 6 weeks to grind for them.
i PVE'd.
Also you spoke of moderation in the initial post, why not simply make it a rule of thumb where only one zstore/or other 'special console' thats not considered 'standard' be allowed on any fleet premade (or a 5 man team of people in the same fleet, not just premades) its not necessarily the console itself, but the number of the same ones methinks. almost like sci abilities used to be (ex. one person using ss3 vs team of ss3). dunno really, just tossing ideas out there for the brainstorming. got my support as always :P
edit: my line of thought got greyed when i started involving "what about about 5 copies of sci team?" so I edited all that out, time for sleep, but I look forward to where this thread will go tomorrow
Chillax. No Ego. No Drama.
Like my alien? Watch THE VIDEO
Need custom graphics for you or your fleet? Click HERE
i was thinking in regards to passive consoles too. so.... maybe if i wanted to run the tachyo converter thingie, i would have to choose between the borg console and the rommie console.
therefore, in a way, moderating my critical chance hax! (because we all know 10%.....may.....be.....a....little.....excessive.....) lol !!!!
so is being hit by 4 straight grav pulses, or stacked thetas.....
True indeed, but that was more a rhetorical question than anything else. It was more meant for you to ask it to yourself if you really would do it.
I said in my previous post, I wasn't going to use them in the first place...well, not use them in PvP that is. I have more important space DOFFs that I use on the character I bought them on. So there's no need to worry or fuss about that from me.
Attack Pattern DOFFs, eh? I know how good they can be, to always have Omega 3 up, along with the others. But it's easy to give up one thing, but not another. You say they are part of your play style, and that's perfectly ok. I'm just bringing up the point that 'that's not ok, but what I do is ok', or that's how it seems to look to me.
Now don't misunderstand all this, I do like this whole idea you have here Horizon, I'm just keeping a seperate, 'outsiders' view on this whole thing.
mimey, i love your contributions to the thread, thank you!
but thats what i am trying to do, take away the "i like this and not that" stuff that divides us all.
if everything is okay, but in moderation....then, everyone respects one another.... so much more good game play will start to happen!
.....or at least, thats what i hope.
a year ago there were 3-5 great fleets battling it out daily. we don't have close to that now.
i encourage you to get on to Pax's teamspeak sometime tonight. i will be on sometime around 9ish EST. they are all great guys. and they already fly this way. because maxing your build and focusing on timing and piloting is the most rewarding part of PVP!
have fun kill bad guys
Edit:
I decided to start another thread instead of detailing this one
You're welcome, apologies on not seeing this earlier, or else I might've done so.
Moderation is good. We still have nukes in the world, and still could use them, but far far fewer than in the past.
i'm just going to throw this out there...
if i can ever be a moderator for interfleet squabbles, please reach out.
im calm, collected, easy going, and have great a great cadence when orchestrating beneficial communication, or so i've been told as much by many people.
have fun kill bad guys