'Smurfing' on the ladder... very un sporting!

I know it did and I may have chuckled at a few things on the first page, but that is still revealing a persons (true?) personality without his consent and could lead to gossip of some sort. Hence the deletion of your post. (However it was once again a good read mind you!)

Anyways we might be derailing this thread at the moment haha.

@elodea Please tell me this was you.

@icycalm

I can say you do look different than exected, haha, guess it was the profile pic setting me eskew.

Worth noting the vast majority of the 'pro' comments are unsourced or sourced to his own forums members, of which there is rampant speculation he sock puppets many. And of the ones he doesn't, it is no surprise a condescending homophobe with a god complex attracts some followers - just look at /r/theredpill.

All I have to say is whatever else anyone does under no circumstances should he or his website be trusted with credit card details. You've been warned. I also think @exodusesports should review their inclusion of Cult in the clan wars tournaments as i'm not sure they want to be endorsing an admitted scam artist or his organization.

Gives a new meaning to the name "Cult" doesn't it? People were wondering about that when we first appeared, so now they know. It's a in-joke that riffs off the fuss people make about my "OMG UTTERLY UNACCEPTABLE" opinions. It's ironic, it's not meant seriously.

Btw, do you want to join philo? It's only 35 euros a year.

lol no that mr popo isn't me unfortunately. *You know, i wouldn't be surprised if he's just making most of those quotes up himself. He doesn't bother sourcing properly.

I think what philo posted was relevant to this topic of discussion and should not have been deleted.

If someone starts crusading for ethical behaviour on the ladder, I think it's fair game to ask whether this person e.g. is wanted for wirefraud, fled the country, showed remorse, or took responsibility for their actions.

Apparently someone's feelings over losing 25 ranks is more important than the feelings of people defrauded out of over $100k real money. Almost too laughable.

*I didn't name any names or post any links, but if this gets deleted, i guess I had it coming.

That's a good objection, elodea. But ethics doesn't mean good vs. evil. Ethics is merely a set of rules by which a community or an individual choose to live their lives and conduct their affairs. Choosing to play fair in the playground and on the basketball court is not the same thing to choosing to play fair in LIFE. If you play fair in life, you will LOSE. Or at least you will end up a mediocre player. Let me quote myself from a site that I'd rather not link here:

"There is no "metagaming" in life, because nothing exists outside of life, and that's why everything is allowed there. But in a game everything is NOT allowed, because there IS a space outside a game, and a rather vast space at that too, and everything is forbidden there. For this is the essence of gaming: The lack of complete freedom, which is not imposed on the players, but voluntarily assumed by them. It consists in the unanimously agreed upon and absolute sovereignty, not of laws, but of rules."

You need two things. Jail time and therapy. Preferably by Dr. Bubba.

Blah blah bla, that's alot of words for saying nothing yet assuming everything. I said nothing about good or evil.

The ethical inconsistency was pretty clearly outlined. This person in particular chooses at random and without principle who's hurt feelings they want to care about. It's even funnier when you consider that this person has previously ranted in this thread about how ranks are illusionary compared the real world, and that all competitive players are neurologically diseased because they prioritise the illusion over the real.

This is like the gift that keeps on giving... and christmas is already over!

Dang, what a great thread.

There's no ethical inconsistency on my part because my ethics consist of doing whatever improves my life and the lives of the people I care about (and I don't care about everyone). Stepping on a bee and hurting its feelings does not mean I cannot defend the feelings of people like cdrkf and mot, with whom I've played many matches of PA and who are two of the very few people who have welcomed me with open arms here.

This is probably my favorite thread in months on here.

I think that we've covered most of the options to reduce (elimination isn't going to happen, lets not kid ourselves) smurfing, and it is a tad too warm in here for my enjoyment.

I really like the idea of casual and ranked matchmaking. I'll probably never play ranked because it's ranked, but I want to be guaranteed to play against a similar skill level, hence my desire for a casual ranking system. I'm thinking that it would hardly split the community, but perhaps it could make it harder to find ranked matches. There also needs to be some sort of decay over time. Maybe start after 5 days or so, to be fair to the fact that we have lives outside of PA (shocking, isn't it!).

Oh, and does anybody really care if you're moved down 20 spots of out two thousand? A 0.1% difference isn't very much. I wouldn't even consider 0.5% to be much of a big deal, and the ladder grows every day, so eventually it will keep reducing the difference to the point on insignificance entirely.

Yea, these logic games really don't cut it. Bees lol. If what you believe or stand for is subject to change on a whim, then don't expect people to take what you're saying with any seriousness. Really as simple as that.

You should also check out the inconsistency you wrote regarding life having no rules and games having rules. You kinda conveniently 'forgot' that all these experiences are a subset of life.

What I believe hasn't changed. It just seems that you can't grasp the concept of helping your friends and attacking your opponents, based on what you like and what you dislike. It's empathy 101.

This is a tough one to answer. The short answer is that a rule that holds in a game should be inverted when we try to extrapolate from it to arrive at a rule for the Great Game. Why should it be inverted? Because Gödel's theorem. I really can't explain more without linking entire books and posting entire essays. So the rule in games is "don't break the rules", but the rule in life is "break all the rules, because there aren't any".

Trying to argue with a sociopath/narcissist will only further feed Icy's various complexes. It is best to just ignore and talk past him.

I'm sad to have to to lock this thread but I'm frankly surprised that anyone feels this is an acceptable way to use this forum.

I asked everyone earlier to criticise the arguments and not the people making them. The rule exists for very good reasons.