Shrouded New Member

Join Date: Oct 2014 Posts: 4

Re: Star Conquest, the 2018 Saga Part VI. - Space Trump



You read that right. Donald You're Fired Trump. Only in space. This would be the first and only time I saw hosts run a plot. Actually, it seemed like I had gotten there after it was all well underway.



As I was zipping around the galaxy in my corvette Little Red (hahaha get it?), a transmition came over the general channel, something very long and selfcongratulatory about how the speaker did not support bigotry, nationalism or hate in any form whatsoever, and that she disavows everyone in the AEU who does. My first thought was "Wow, the chubby girl from my Poli/Sci class plays SC?" Then I gently kicked myself under the desk for being unkind and asked in character, "Like, whatcha talkin' 'bout, chick?" This prompted a flood of replies from seemingly everyone in comms range, explaining that as a citizen of the AEU, I had Eric Best, an incredibly hateful and bigoted president to answer for. "He wants to kick all the unregistered pilots out of AEU space! He wants to make the AEU great again," and so on. There was a lot, and all of it had all non-AEU characters in a selfrighteous tizzy. And as an AEU pilot, if I didn't transmit something long and virtuous about how much I hated Eric Best, well then I was just as bad as he was, damn it! A few minutes looking over my news device confirmed this. Pretend dogfood commercials, gossip headlines about fictional celebrities, advertisements about NPC companies and new products had taken a back seat to moment-by-moment coverage of just how horrible President Best was. The AEU's president sucked, and thus the AEU sucked, and thus my friends and I made up the vast majority of the then active AEU. All save for the girl who was fast and loud about distancing herself from everything AEU until the president stopped doing his thing.



Part VII. - Starlol and Spacekek



You know how you totally log on science fiction games to argue politics instead of zooming through the void, flirting with cute spacer chicks and blasting holes in aliens? Me neither, but apparently that's what the SC hosts had in mind for me. There was absolutely nothing you could do as an AEU pilot to not be part of the fray, short of turning off your comms unit, ignoring any and all forms of contact and just flying around in space salvaging and doing asteroid belts and wearing panties on your head, and whatever else people do when they're alone. The thing is, I don't go on a MUD or MOO for a single player experience. I have single player games for that. So instead of hiding, or self-flagellating for the acceptance of the other factions and the host-driven media, I got my patriotic unioners together and we set about giving the game the villain element it so desperately railed against.



Honestly, it was probably the most fun I had that entire time. We argued, "If the unreg pilots want the rights and protections of AEU citizens, maybe they should just become AEU citizens!" I gleefully called out over comms, "We are gonna project a great forcefield! It will be an incredible field, and we're gonna make the unregs pay for it!"



"Project the field! Project the field!" my cohorts chanted in support of me and our president, who we had decided didn't hate unregs necessarily, he was just looking out for us. AEU first!



Predictably, the few AEU who were not onboard with this gaped in horror and scurged until they bled, while characters in other alliances seemed confused at what to do now that they weren't just arguing against an NPC who never responded to them. Debates usually ended with laughter and pro-AEU slogans on our end, and either namecalling or comparing Eric Best to the Outsiders (which I think is supposed to be the SC equivalent of Nazis) on theirs. We even got a shoutout from President Best on the news. "The Elite of Pilotdom", he had called us.



It was awesome! We had taken a pervasive, one-sided metaplot, and turned our faction from scapegoat and whipping post to actual player for the first time in what was apparently a long time, given how dead the AEU was when we had initially arrived.



Part VIII. - TRIGGERED



This was not to be. A group of new and active players scoring points for a figure modeled after Trump could not stand--the hosts would not allow it. Sure the player base was more vibrant and engaged than it had been in a long time, but that was taking away from the main message: ERIC BEST IS TRUMP, TRUMP IS BAD. To show just how bad Best was, one of the AEU's planets, Hyperion, took to the airwaves with just how bad life under him was. They were all over the news, burning union flags, starting a separatist movement and protesting. In response to these NPC protests, NPC officers of course brutalized them, and Eric Best of course said that was the right thing to do, which in turn was of course the fault of everyone playing AEU at the time. As my crew and I had decided to own it, we told the detractors where they could stick it, that the protesters were probably violent and disorderly as their real-life counterparts tend to be. This, of course, was disproven when hosts decided to make it explicitly clear that the protests were completely peaceful and lawful, and that the officers were murderous minions of Best. "Explain that!" demanded the staff-vindicated entire rest of the game.



Instead, we found that we too could serve the AEU and ourselves go to Hyperion in our battlesuits to subdue protesters, which we gleefully laughed about and then did. By the way, the protesters? Anything but pieceful. They threw rocks and stuff at us in our battlesuits, which only do 2 or 3 damage. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you got 6 or 7 of them all laying into you at once the story changes. Thus, they died. BZAP, laser, no more rock-throwing protesters. (Is it a bzap? Maybe more of a pew pew!)



Part IX. Take that, players! - Star Conquest Staff, 2018



This was what the hosts had been waiting for: irrefutable, unquestionable proof that the characters in support of Eric Best were bad people. Say what you want about that tripe we were spewing before about galactic sovereignty, all of it was to cover up the fact that we were killers, never mind that there is not a single nonlethal option programmed into the battlesuits, or if there is, we a group comprised of five new players and a casual on and off player were unaware of it. And there was no one to tell us about it, because literally (and I use that word in the classical sense, not the contemporary one) no one would have anything to do with us outside very visceral conflict RP that blurred the lines between IC and OOC.



We couldn't play solo under threat of older players with far better equipment blasting us out of the sky in the name of space tolerance or something. As we all lived in different timezones and had different work schedules, we were unfortunately not able to play all together as much as we liked, but all together was the only way any of us could deride any enjoyment from this game. Staff continued to grind their political axe against us with ridiculous endorsements from Best and what they probably viewed as measured and rational rebukes from every other NPC presence they could animate. Hell, there were even shops that wouldn't sell us ship components and other upgrade equipment because of what Best said about X NPC group or faction. We were mechanically pinned and universally alienated.



I watched one friend mocked as he fired off a beacon in hopes of summoning some low difficulty enemies to kill, only to be arrested by NPC spacepolice and thrown indefinitely into spacejail. Apparently you're not supposed to fire beacons near the Nagabokidugurani Fruganfragenwhateverwhatever Cluster, or something? I don't know. It wasn't written in any helpfiles, and when first he, then we all asked for clerification IC, we were basically told, "Shoulda known better you stupid spacenazis!" Asking for OOC clerification over the newbie channel was answered only with choruses of "You punks stay IC!" He quit.



Shortly after him, a different friend for exactly zero reason anybody can think of to this day, got Sausage Lover tacked onto the front of his name. So every time he spoke or asked a question on IC or OOC channels, he was Sausage Lover Jeramiah instead of just Jeramiah (hope you don't mind me putting your real pretend name, bro). It had to be done by hosts, players do not possess the power to change each other in that fashion. He quit too.



Around the same time is when staff told my friend I mentioned earlier to stop submitting concepts and instead sit around emoting for a week or two. That was the third one out.



By this point, it had become pretty clear that this game was not for us. Swanky mechanics not withstanding, it was a sparsely populated wasteland (25/30 players on at peak times of day, counting the six of us) with authoritarian bullies at the top, and an outrage mob beneath them ready to punish all wrongthink in double-plus good fashion. Rather than bother with it, the rest of us made our exits as well.



Part X. - Tender Farewells and Exit report



I think I stubbornly held on the longest, because I really did have fun before. But how often does that turn out well? The game I had previously enjoyed so much had a message, and they were gonna drill that message home, and then hammer it home, and then screw it home, and use any other tool they could find to bring it home. I was frustrated at the fact, and embarrassed that I had brought five friends to such a clownshow. Venting this frustration in an admittedly childish way, I slumped exhaustedly in my captain's chair and said to the empty control room something along the lines of, "This game is SJW trash." I then logged out.



To quote another review, "If you're looking for a mechanically sound game where you get to fly in space and aren't big on a good story. I would FULLY recommend this game to you." Beyond that, I'd give it a pass.