Independent CUO Association

You can check the PrUn discord to fact check that. Saganaki left for a variety of reasons. Regrettably, one of his newer corp-mates was impacted by CUOP and left.

This brings it to 3 players, only 1 of which was directly because of CUOP.

Maybe madnewmy can do it, unless you don’t want a player who engages in frivolous slander and character assassination. He certainly values cooperation having built up a little empire selling overpriced goods to those he claims to represents.

Maybe tex can do it, unless you don’t want a player who demands others leave the game and promotes open piracy as a means to target individuals.

Maybe you could do it, unless you don’t think that character assassination and a gross mishandling of facts might get in the way.

Maybe carepanda could do it, unless you want someone willing to cooperating with people.

These players I’ve listed all appear to be bent on turning this into something personal. Now you tell me, how would that be good for the community?

I’m just trying to test the game mechanics available to us. I’m not meaning for anyone to take it personally, what I’ve said and done is simply to better test the game mechanics. I’m not sure if this axis of evil are attempting to test the game mechanics, as has sometimes been bandied about, or really think they’re improving the universe, but all i know is I’m testing the game mechanics in targeting these players, yourself included.
I do understand some people resent people testing the game mechanics but i think it is important to remember this game is in development. After all what is wrong with testing the game mechanics?

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Goodness people…this is supposed to be a war of PRESS RELEASES! I don’t know what all that stuff is, but it is most definitely not PRESS RELEASES!!

There is some misinformation above that I do want to respond to however:

I am not currently in possession of any CUOP Cartel Member’s goods.
I have not breached a single contract in the last 6 months. I do not have any contracts currently in “Violated” status.

Anyone who claims otherwise above is a bald faced liar.

Now, with that said, am I willing to sacrifice my “A” reliability rating to defend the community against bad actors? Yes, yes I am. And frankly, I am PROUD of that willingness. I hope there are others who would do the same when the community is under attack.

The only thing that makes me hesitate is the question of whether the community is truly under attack here. Various members of the community seem to have differing opinions of that. And I can respect those opinions.

I would ask those who think the community is not under attack to go reread the Press Releases issued by CUOP. The ones where they announce that they are indeed attacking the community. The ones where they state that they are starting this in order to test our ability and willingness to respond to them.

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Could you please advise how many contracts you currently have open with CUOP members? We’ve deliberately left the unfilled as it is clear where your ethics are.

Saying “I’m not a pirate”, then “I would if the community was under attack, but it’s not clear”, then “it’s clear the community is under attack” amounts to calling yourself a pirate.

I know we’ve discussed the piracy issue in private, and I’ve made it very clear where CUOP boundaries are.

At least be upfront Tex. You’re advocating unilateral piracy. You’ve advocated bullying and harassment tactics in the PrUn general discord.

Pray tell, where is your moral high ground? You so adamantly claim to be a defender of the community, yet you are becoming what I cautioned you about.

It’s a game, and ingame mechanics are fair play. I’ve made it abundantly clear what the scope of CUOP is, and we will not cross these lines.

Your choice to tolerate and lead an escalation into the realm of character assassination, incitement to bullying and harassment, and personal attacks speaks volumes about your character.

Between yourself, bobemor, and madnewmy, you have created a toxic culture that is currently poisoning this community. The standard that you walk past is the standard you accept.

I’m all for pushing the game to its limits and I will gladly accept the ingame repurcussions of leading this test. What I will not accept is you continuing to promote a culture of toxicity. I know you’re better than this Tex.

Before you start saying “it’s not me”… You’re the leader. You are accountable for your team’s behaviour. Own your position or yield it to someone who will.

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I trust that you know me well enough by now to know that I need neither leadership or incitement to know when honor and decency has been violated.

Character assassination? It would seem to be more a case of character suicide. Has anyone suffered a loss? I’m afraid it is the members of the cartel who have taken first loss when each of you chose to sacrifice your respect in the community.

I am afraid you all have made yourselves indeed, by deed, the ‘evil corporation’ that you have feared so much more than any of the rest of us. You have become your own fears. Sadly, you will soon suffer the ultimate fate of evil everywhere. Not only to be crushed in conflict, but you will carry the stain of shame and disgrace of betrayal for many years to come. My friend Brene Brown studied shame and disgrace for many years. She says that shame comes from the act being excluded and the fear of being exiled from the tribe. Did any of you consider, for even a moment, that you would be shamed by your actions? Did any of you think, for even a moment, that any of us would consider your actions a betrayal? Do any of you think, for even a moment, that this will ever be forgotten?

Forgiveness is short. Memory is long.

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Prdgi,

You seem quite confused. YOU are the toxicity in the community.

You got bored, you decided to organize a group to screw with the game. You posted a “Press Release” stating that you were an evil monopoly that we needed to evict from the game.

So, we are. Trying to do exactly what you asked us to do.

And now, like every bully, you are angry that we are fighting back. Because you didn’t expect a response. You thought we would fold and let you have a copper monopoly for a couple of months.

And why did you want a copper monopoly? Because you think it will let GDP lock everyone else out of ship building. That way GDP can have the first player built ships. If the rest of us can’t hire Technicians and higher, and can’t build electronics, you think we can’t do ships. Only GDP can do that, and GDP will again “rescue” the game from a debacle created by GDP.

But no, we aren’t going to fold. We aren’t going to hand over our lunch money and cower in front of the bully. We are standing up and fighting. We are telling the bully no more. And like every bully, this bully is trying to setup a bunch of rules that make everything the bully does ok and everything anyone does to the bully unethical. Yep, that’s how bullies operate. They shift the lines of ethics to benefit and protect themselves.

And let me be clear…letting the cartel operate in relative peace for a month and then taking the planets back from them at the next election is letting the bully win. We must respond in a way that brings you to your knees now.

The bully accusing me of character assassination is quite rich. Maybe you should think about what you have pushed Bobemor, of all people, to. He is the kindest, most agreeable person in the game. When he is mad at you, it should tell you something about your behavior.

You have driven people out of the game. You have thinned out our already too thin community. They left before we even started to respond, so you can’t blame that on us. That is all on you. Yes, it is on you, YOU are the toxicity.

I’m not sure how to approach your last paragraph, because, well, I’m not the leader. It’s not my team. There is a group for whom I agreed to be a public spokesperson, but they aren’t taking direction from me. We are agreeing together on some specific actions. But there are other people who you are complaining about who aren’t part of that group at all. I know there is another completely independent group taking action as well. Because everyone but you realizes that you are the toxicity.

I offered you a way out, and you have declined it. It would have been much better for the community had you taken that offer. Now deal with the consequences of YOUR choice.

Oh, by the way, Comrade:

  • There has been ample CUO and CU supply for the number of people running the buildings that consume it. Much of it is traded away from the exchanges near production because of its weight. But many of the people working with CU use the exchange prices to benchmark that LM trade. The thing is SCN and IND/HMS are much easier to transport than the CU or CUO, so you produce onsite or nearby.
  • We would have gladly welcomed additional CU players to the market. Honestly, one of the biggest problems I had was that, due to thin supply, my SCNs were frequently bought out by flippers and reprised much higher. We probably would have even given you a loan to help you establish a CUO base had you chosen to do so in an honest manner.
  • I fail to see how raising taxes to drive all the existing SCN and HMS manufacturers out of the market helps you to fix the problems you claim you are wanting to address.
  • But I’ll take you at your word…lower taxes on your planet back to reasonable levels, and help us put an ample supply of CU based products on the exchanges. We would be glad to work with you to achieve the goal you claim to be pursuing. The problem is your actions suggest you actually have different goals.
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Nice narrative.

CUOP has not engaged in any actions that are not within the realm of legitimate uses of mechanics. We have not engaged in any name calling, threats, or hostility outside of the explicit scope of CUOP. It is strictly the opposition to CUOP that is engaging in behaviour that breaches the community guidelines.

The fact of the matter Tex is that, like has occurred with Dirk, there is a perceived breach of a social norm.
You don’t appear to understand that PrUn is economic pvp mmo game.

We have not directed any action towards an individual, whereas you have explicitly targetted individuals within CUOP.

Your response is clear, and it tells me everything I need to know right now.

I’m still confused why CUOP are getting so upset if they genuinely wanted to test the community’s response to abuse and nefarious tactics. Almost as if that wasn’t ever there intention…

All responses to CUOP have been within the uses of gameplay mechanics. Individual targetting is much better than the carpet bombing that CUOP have engaged in.

I do think Prdgi raises a really interesting point in trying to define the game in a strict economic pvp mmo gameplay situation. I’m not sure how one can possibly suggest that is the case with 0 scoreboard, a chat, corporations, a forum, and various other social aspects. Infact a MMO by definition will always tend away from pure pvp economic competition in many ways. To suggest social norms are in no way part of the game seems a weak argument.

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Uh, I think the verbal vitriol that has been directed at them exceeds “within the uses of gameplay mechanics.” Suggesting that a player or players should be driven from the game is definitely not within.

It’s one thing for us to play a tough game together. It’s another to declare that people are Scoundrels and toxic. If I mounted a campaign to convince the entire playerbase that you, @Bobemor, were a despicable person who no one should do business with ever again… that’d be within the uses of gameplay mechanics, right?

But I sure bet it would upset you.

Just such a weird take.

If I was actively attacking you/the community and you felt it necessary to do this to galvinise the community to action and dissuade such attacks in the future. It also wouldn’t upset me if I explicitly asked for such actions to be taken and publicly said that that was a large part of my aims in that I wanted to test the ability of people to organise.

I also wouldn’t do this, because I quite enjoy working with the community.

You’re right though I do find it an odd take to say they want a community reaction and then appear put out and annoyed with the form that that is taking. Like they want to have their cake and eat it. It also seems they haven’t thought of the longer term implications of such behaviour.

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Are CUOP upset? I haven’t seen this evidence.

TLDR:
CUOP steal other player’s production ability no less than if they pirated shipments, but claim its not OK to pirate in response.
They turn up on a planet with one player and shut them down, leading to that player and then their corp mate to quit but claim it isn’t personal.
Their members quit a corp and backstab it, leading to another player quitting, but then claim its the resistance causing lots of players to quit.
Their members go on chat and forums talking about how great their aims and methods are while talking down anyone who criticises them or tries to find ways to counter CUOP, and then accuse the resistance of being toxic.
One member of CUOP can’t take the response to this comeback and doesn’t just quit, he takes tonnes of goods from bystanders with him impacting the player base even more, but again GDP and CUOP blame the resistance rather than taking ownership of the course of events they and only they are responsible for unleashing.

Prdgi, your and CUOPs actions are rightly seen as harming the community. Tex is right that bullies try to control what is considered bullying to their advantage: I know from bitter personal experience. Your actions may be bad enough, but the longer you fail to get that you and CUOP consciously chose to cause all of this, the longer you try to tell us what is and is not bullying to suit you, the longer you claim that the resistance caused more harm than you did, then the longer you will be treated as a pariah. Your call…

What I find the most disturbing about whole the CUOP thing, is that a Dev is agreeing with it, and even backing it… It should have been clear that people will be annoyed by such a “test”.

“Tests” should be officially announced and followed up. As I said before on the discord, this should have been an official test with guarantees that impacted people will get reimbursed for what they lost.

I was going to pay the monthly fee , but now that many of my trade partners quit the game, or aren’t actively playing anymore, my projects are slowing down, or coming to a stop, I’m not sure if I will subscribe. It sure isn’t as fun anymore to play as a few weeks ago, now it really feels like doing chores.

I had some players quiting the game that provided me with products I needed, now I either will need to find some other people and convince them making a new production chain, or do it all myself. ( What seems more reliable than counting on others, although this game is meant to be played the other way around ).

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Are you referring to me? While it is true, that COUP came to us to ask if they can pull it off and if it is within the game’s rules, it is not true that we are backing it in any other way. Of course we anticipated that people will be getting upset about that, but that is true for pretty much every large scale operation.

We haven’t made any public statements about COUP and counter-COUP so far, because there is no obvious technical problem (like for example the insufficient rating system) that can be solved easily. When COUP started we started having game design / gameplay vision meetings to clarify our own vision of the game and make it communicable to the community. We are trying to answer questions like “Do we want this kind of economic conflict in the game?”, “How easy should it be?”, “What can affected players do to strike back / defend themselves?”. All these questions don’t have a single, simple answer and are hard to implement into code. So I kindly ask for a little patience, so we can sort these things out.

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Hey molp,

thank you for this.
A post like that at the beginning or shortly after would have been very appreciated!
I think that’s all anyone really is asking for.

We know that coming up with changes (if at all) takes time.
A short “we are watching and evaluating” goes a long way.

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While I’m not Thuan and cannot speak for who he was referring to…Nick appeared to be the member of the Dev team who was actively encouraging CUOP and trying to coordinate timing of the attack with a YouTuber joining the game.

This had absolutely nothing to do with a YouTuber joining the game. I made that absolutely clear weeks ago.

Nick and I had spoken about a time when a YouTuber wanted to try something similar. There has been nothing else said by Nick, myself, or cuop that suggests this was in coordination with any social influencer.

You posted a screenshot of your DM conversation with Nick in Discord. Clear as day.

It was clearly encouraged by Nick at the request of a social media influencer he was recruiting. Thus Thuan’s statement above is 100% accurate.

By the way, anyone who has DM conversations with Prdgi - They aren’t private, he posts screenshots and sells you out when it suits him. He tries to blame the person he screenshotted for his actions and doesn’t take responsibility for them himself. You’ve been warned.

I disagree. If you’ve got access to whatever I posted, go read it again.

Are you trying start flaming again?