Resource NU Community

[honchkrow]

Well, as I'm sure most of you know at this point...I've quit Smogon primarily due to the fact that the NU community is really cancerous and being surrounded by such negativity constantly made me stop enjoying the game.
So I figured I'd share a few thoughts.

I love how people are referring to "the clique" as if it's some mystical thing that nobody is certain of if it exists or not. There is a clique, everyone knows if they are in it or out of it. Simple.

How did this clique start?

Well, I believe either late 2014 or early 2015 I created a Skype group with a group of 10 friends from Smogon. Most of these people were NU players as it was the tier I was playing the most at the time, and I said at the beginning of the group that this was meant to be a small group of a core group of friends with a reliable group to discuss teams for tours/chat/and just have a good call to fall back on. It was never intended to have people added to it. However, despite it being my Skype group, people slowly began adding people without even asking me first, and the majority of these additions were people that had power in Smogon, it was really an extreme form of ass kissing tbch. Due to the supreme level of ass kissing, most of the people in this skype group started getting promotions within the NU room, or sometimes even globally regardless of whether or not they deserved it. Over time, the group got larger and larger as more and more people were added, and I didn't even know around 80% of the people in the group. Complete strangers in MY group. This was pretty aggravating to say the least. Now this group has climbed up to around 50 users (predominantly NU players or other smogon auth) and the general consensus was that the chat was "cancered" up by a few people they added (shocking I know, adding a bunch of people you hardly know because you're trying to get ahead sounds like a great idea!). So they made a new skype group, the NU group. This group is basically just as large as the old one, but with new additions from people from PO and also kicking out old users that they did not like anymore for some reason. Somehow I made the cut despite the fact that I rarely even participate in this chat, but it's really intriguing getting to see what's happening. (fascinating chats full of (monkey),(celebrate), and "xd" as the only forms of communication!)

Why does this matter?

I know it's completely normal to have a group of friends, as humans we're going to be drawn towards certain people. But in an environment where you're trying to create a culture and/or a feeling of community, its important to make everyone feel accepted. The first example I'm going to use is with Orphic. I really don't know Orphic at all, and that doesn't really matter. The fact that you, hollywood, say that "maybe its because you're not a good teambuilder" is actually fucking laughable. I was there and you know that there were discussions about keeping Orphic out of teambuilding lab as well as preventing him from taking over BOTW because the group didn't like him. If you really believe that someone who is not only badged, but has also consistently been a good presence on forums isn't capable of teambuilding (or running a poll every week (so challenging)), then maybe this would be a good opportunity to take in a user who is trying to contribute and talk with him more about general teambuilding ideas. Or bounce ideas off each other and try to improve as a community. But no, "oh I don't like him, don't let him do it".

Secondly, the constant feeling of superiority among members of the clique is amazing considering many of them have actually done nothing significant in any sort of tournament scene. There have been countless times that I was shot down for not being good enough, or not playing this tier enough, or not agreeing with the hive mind that is the clique despite the fact that I had actual SPL experience and went 2-2 against the four best NU players in the tour. Any time someone makes a suggestion that those people disagree with, it's "kys" or "that nigga is fucking retarded". I'm not really sure that that's how auth are supposed to act. Was I a perfect auth member? No. But I was willing to stand up for what I believed in (not treating people like shit constantly) and publicly stated my frustration knowing full well that I'd lose my position.

(If you're curious about that. In a game that iplaytennislol was playing, his opponent made an amazing play going for HP Fire with Magnezone on a Talonflame predicting the Ferrothorn to come in and got a kill. I said "oml" in the chat. This caused tennis to put on modchat and say "why don't you talk now goomy? oh wait, you can't...you're not global voice".) Classic.

What about Alienation/Participation?

Before I got into NU, I was predominantly an OU player, and as such had a lot of OU friends, including being a part of a private OU room. Why does this matter? Well, in the end I invited a few of my NU friends to this private room, and the sucking up to the people with power continued here as well. At this point, people literally said "I would suck your dick for an NU private room". ... So an NU private room was created. However, this was not a room for the NU community. It was a room for the clique. In the end, users like Teddeh and Sir Kay 9 were excluded from the private room for fear that they would bring "their followers" into the room. Teddeh and Sir Kay are a few of the people that contribute most to the NU chat, why would they not be included? As it stands, the private NU room is basically a ghost town because the only people that are in it are in the Skype call anyway and why talk in a private room on PS when you can just post something in the Skype group?! And most of these people don't contribute to the actual NU chat at all anyway because they don't want to talk to anyone outside their group or that they see as "beneath them". I have also received word from people like Shuckleking87 that say they felt alienated because they didn't want to do the things that these people were doing.

Memes?

Memes are funny to an extent. I've generally been viewed as someone that has a track record of making "meme" posts (which I don't really understand since most of my likes came from SPL victories or RMTs), but the majority of the NU chat is currently "venom" or stuff like that. It's just not conducive to a good community. Making fun of people with memes is something that happens far too often, and really the only time I believe it's acceptable to go after someone on forums is when they have consistently shown that they are ignorant and the only way they will learn is through discipline (ex:) Leremyju or flowre.


All in all, this website as a whole, but particularly the NU community is so bad that I'm not willing to be considered a part of it. I hope that at some point I will be able to rejoin this community and start my way back up from the bottom. But for now, I will continue to play Splatoon and VGC. Good luck Raseri, and I still love you CanadianWifier.

Im sorry for doing that and I already apologized. I know it was a dick move on my part. Additionally, you havent always been a perfect user, stop picking on people jesus christ. I can think of many examples where you were a sub par user. If this gets deleted then so be it. I just needed to get this out

 

[CanadianWifier]

I honestly really want to make a long well-written post as well, but I feel everything has been covered at this point. (Also I'm on mobile lol)


There exits a clique, yes. This happens in EVERY COMPETITIVE BASED COMMUNITY. Smash bros? Mk8? Splatoon? Cod? If you aren't good at the game, your opinion just doesn't matter as much, despite how nice you may be. It's a sad, sad truth but it's how society and communities work. You can't expect a new guy to fit right in Day 1, have as much game experience and skill, know the general "feel" of the friendships, know all the inside jokes. This is why I agree with FLCL, people need to lurk more before tying to fit in. I've recently been added to a bunch of very high level MK8 chats and I probably say like 2 or 3 things per day. Why? Not because I don't have a lot to say, but I'm still trying to feel out the community, how people react to stuff, the inside jokes, etc. You just simply cannot jump into a community and fit in right away and have it be perfect. If you do, you WILL be excluded rather quickly as people are quick to judge by nature, and there's not much we can do to fix human nature.

Also, super proud of Steven to do finally drop some names in his arguments; you can't get anywhere in a discussion until you actually drag in the offending parties and hold them responsible for the shit that's going on at their account. Now, I hate to be a dick suck, but if you haven't read Goomy's post yet, and I mean really read and thought about what it says, go and do that. It hits the problems 100% on the head.

That's really all I have to say. Do I think the NU chat will ever be this "perfect rainbow land" where everyone is instantly accepted and respected? No. I think that's literally impossible in a competitive community. BUT, I do believe it can get a lot better than it is currently.

~Stay Fresh.

 

[Cased]

There were definitely problems with the way many of us treated contributors such as yourself, cbt, JCM, celever, and Draggi, among others. If it was possible to change what happened, and treat all of these people better when they first arrived, I'm sure all of us would do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately that is not the case, so instead of focusing on the past, instead we are choosing to learn from it, improve ourselves both as individuals and as a community, and move forward to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.

Because if we choose to forget about the past, it'll never happen again right? People won't change unless there is something at stake, I think it's pretty straightforward that if a member of staff is caught blatantly alienating users then they should be demoted or warned, w.e choice of punishment you choose, I couldn't care less but just know that nobody will stop unless there's legitimate consequences, because the only difference between a lot of the players who seem to be at fault for alienating in this thread and the people they alienate, is power. I think it'll work considering that almost every single member of staff is at fault for it, including the two tier leaders.

You also have some fucking nerve to go around saying on Skype that I was playing the victim in my post, and then post your half-assed two minute response talking about how you'd take back the "alienation," or whatever you want to call it in a heartbeat. Your ability to take blame off yourself and any of your friends who were apart of it is incredibly impressive, you could've easily Pm'd if you felt this way, but nope, let's post some sappy garbage that you know isn't true then go around on Skype talking about how you did absolutely nothing wrong and all the IRC alts PMing me / everybody talking about how bad I was is all in good fun. I'm pretty much over it considering I'm friends with some of the users who did insult me, namely Zeb and Fooly I guess, but I see no reason why anybody should trust you to stop the alienation, when you've been one of the biggest supporters I can remember from BW2 and probably even now. I'd advise somebody with more power than you come in and handle the situation, but I think the only logical choice would to be demote any person in power who's alienating someone to the extent that people deem harmful to the community.

I know you're scared of confrontation Raseri, and maybe it's easier to run to others and voice your side of the story (although of course it matches nobody's description of pre-SPL 5, active players at the time agree with me) and hop on Smogon and say a totally different thing in order to look good to anybody on the outside reading it. But I think since everybody is being honest in this thread, we should expect the tier leader to do the same. But hey I guess I was a dick during SPL 5, clearly to not fault of your own or anybody else you knew who fucked with me. But I can only take so many insults from a bunch of players who have made fools of themselves attempting to play this game (yourself), or players I beat previously that season.

man fuck this thread it's making me so salty beyond belief jesus christ

 

[jake]

while it is meant for discussing issues with the community, some of the coming posts will inevitably turn into a swimming pool of vitriol, so i'd really like if we could do our best to focus discussion on positivity where it's applicable instead of drowning in the *mad*.

i didn't actually fucking mean 18 hours later wtf



this is not a public callout thread and never will be. nothing positive will come of this thread if it becomes a hatefest on other users.

the funny thing is that *EVERYONE* is guilty of telling off some kid who has been dumb or loudmouthed or just wasn't a part of whatever group of friends in the past (who remembers Fun With Knives?). i will leave you at your point of "legitimate consequences" because i think that's a point worth discussion, but the rest of your post is literally just shots at raseri for no particular reason other than your dislike of him and complete neglect of the fact that his post was not meant to torment you but to re-steer the discussion away from "oh deary me i got slammed before SPL 5, people cannot change so fire them" into change for the future.

on top of all of this, i cannot think of a single recent example where raseri has actually actively alienated someone from the community. what the fuck were you even trying to achieve with the last two paragraphs? talk to me in PM if you actually want to resolve the situation, or talk to senior staff, or perhaps actually talk to both raseri and hollywood if you have such a problem. i don't want to see any more of this conversation in this thread.


this thread is actually turning into a nightmare faster than the ubers thread did. the point is to improve the community as a group of people who care about it, so slow your roll and don't use this thread as a soapbox.

 

[Ares]

Ok so this thread up to this point has just been users pointing the finger at the other side. As someone who has seen the perspective of both sides I just have to say that both sides do things that contribute to the problem. No one user is perfect, so instead of pointing the finger and using this thread as a callout thread, lets try to achieve a solution to the problem at hand.

The first thing is to address new users who feel like they're alienated. I think the best solution that they should happen is something that has been stated multiple times in this thread, and thats to lurk a little bit before you make a post. Plenty of users I know have lurked, including myself, before making their first post and usually the quality of post is way different then that of someone who just joined. Lurking isn't a bad thing. For people who don't wish to lurk but want to contribute as much as possible, please realize that you can't just jump in and expect to run multiple projects and take over threads. You need to build up to that and realize that there are tons of other people out there who are asking to run the same thread. Instead I suggest making posts in the np thread and viability rankings about your favorite Pokemon in the meta and start out from there. I myself didn't run a single thread when I got my CC badge, instead I just had a positive presence in a majority of threads and was contributing to a lot of the projects that seemed to have died off.

A big point I would like to make is that if at first you don't succeed, dont be discouraged and learn from your mistakes. People don't make fun of someone for a bad first post, they tend to laugh at people with 50 bad posts who haven't seemed to learn what they're doing wrong. The good thing is that there are people in this community who like to help you. Ironically enough a lot of the so called clique enjoys helping out newer users who ask for assistance. I've got a really good example of this: New C&C boltsandbombers was actually rejected for the QC team not once, but twice. Reason was he was newer to C&C and his posts weren't up to the standards of QC. He took me aside and told me how discouraged he was by being rejected from the QC team and I told him that he just needed to stay positive and continue to post and work on his posts. He worked hard and continued to post in C&C, despite being discouraged. When he was finally accepted into QC his posts got better and better and we felt he deserved to be a C&C moderator. My point is that if you learn from your mistakes and keep at it your will be rewarded.

I think that a solution to the issue at hand is to have more of a community outreach, sort of like how the mentorship program was. I think that the original concept of a mentorship program was a good one it just devolved into that thing it was. So instead I think a list of people you can PM asking for assistance in NU would be a good step. You could PM one of them asking the best ways to contribute or if you don't understand something or how to improve as a user in general.

--

Also from this point forward all call out posts will be deleted / edited. Instead the focus of this thread should be on how to move forward and to address the issues that have been made clear already.

 

[Saria]

You also have some fucking nerve to go around saying on Skype that I was playing the victim in my post, and then post your half-assed two minute response talking about how you'd take back the "alienation," or whatever you want to call it in a heartbeat. Your ability to take blame off yourself and any of your friends who were apart of it is incredibly impressive, you could've easily Pm'd if you felt this way, but nope, let's post some sappy garbage that you know isn't true then go around on Skype talking about how you did absolutely nothing wrong and all the IRC alts PMing me / everybody talking about how bad I was is all in good fun. I'm pretty much over it considering I'm friends with some of the users who did insult me, namely Zeb and Fooly I guess, but I see no reason why anybody should trust you to stop the alienation, when you've been one of the biggest supporters I can remember from BW2 and probably even now. I'd advise somebody with more power than you come in and handle the situation, but I think the only logical choice would to be demote any person in power who's alienating someone to the extent that people deem harmful to the community.

Kinda laughable that Raseri, the person who made a thread for people to talk about issues within the NU community and cliques alienating users, complains about a person he doesn't like voicing their concerns in this thread and goes as far as saying they are just playing victim. You are quite literally alienating users outside of your clique, which is the problem everyone keeps talking about. Undermining complaints you don't like by saying "they are playing victim" or "just a callout post because they mentioned a name" is as counterproductive as it gets.

People are talking about their personal experiences, in which they were "victims" of the community issues mentioned in this thread, and mentioning people who made them feel bad / discouraged / etc. How do you make a serious complaining without:

1) Talking about the issues you have experience
2) Mentioning the people involved in those issues

Remove those two things and you have baseless complaints with no concrete points to address. If some users don't like people reminding them of their wrongdoings, maybe they should behave better. And if the whole thing is just a misunderstanding, they can explain things from their point of view and address the issue themselves.

If the point of this thread is moving forward, then actually start showing progress and addressing the issues people are bringing up. Saying you are doing something is pretty easy, but if you don't actually do anything the thread is pointless. And if you really want to fix a community wide issue, you start from the top. (ie: the staff)

 

[Stratos]

im convinced that whenever a community needs a thread like this its cuz they dont have enough all comers tournaments for ppl to focus on winning + proving their skill so instead ppl focus on proving their skill by bein dicks to each other

edit: i was notified that the neverused league is actually already a frequent all comers tournament (my b, i at first thought it was a premier league). in that case all i can say is that it's up to the community leaders not to let people get away with johns for consistent poor finishes or, vice versa, to discount people's consistent good finishes.

 

[shaian]

i picked a hell of a time to starting playing nu......

 

[Raseri]

Kinda laughable that Raseri, the person who made a thread for people to talk about issues within the NU community and cliques alienating users, complains about a person he doesn't like voicing their concerns in this thread and goes as far as saying they are just playing victim. You are quite literally alienating users outside of your clique, which is the problem everyone keeps talking about. Undermining complaints you don't like by saying "they are playing victim" or "just a callout post because they mentioned a name" is as counterproductive as it gets.

People are talking about their personal experiences, in which they were "victims" of the community issues mentioned in this thread, and mentioning people who made them feel bad / discouraged / etc. How do you make a serious complaining without:

1) Talking about the issues you have experience
2) Mentioning the people involved in those issues

Remove those two things and you have baseless complaints with no concrete points to address. If some users don't like people reminding them of their wrongdoings, maybe they should behave better. And if the whole thing is just a misunderstanding, they can explain things from their point of view and address the issue themselves.

If the point of this thread is moving forward, then actually start showing progress and addressing the issues people are bringing up. Saying you are doing something is pretty easy, but if you don't actually do anything the thread is pointless. And if you really want to fix a community wide issue, you start from the top. (ie: the staff)

Large scale changes do take time to implement, considering we are on day 2, and the majority of day 1 was spent on identifying issues within the community. Even so far today we have accomplished a few things of note, such as:

• Sorting out a long term feud between 2 users that would often carry over onto the PS room and occasionally the forums
• Identifying a problem with tournament hosting being rigged

We have also begun to work on changing our staff policies for the NU room, but as that is a much larger project, it will take more time before everything can be worked out, as these kind of major policy decisions need to be discussed in detail to make sure the changes we are implementing are the proper ones, if I posted changes to that now, they would clearly be rushed and incomplete, and would not solve anything at all.

 

[flowre]

I want to thank the community for the great acceptance towards me as a new user. What can I say. It feels good to be targeted as a retarded shitposter since the post #1. I also like that sensation when I put effort on making a post and I know that in the end it probably will be deleted. But what I enjoy the most is when the entire room goes to battles I'm losing to make fun of me. I appreciate your effort :^)
By the way, I don't know what are you talking about on this thread but I would recomend everyone to care less. Don't take Smogon or Pokemon Showdown as a place to make friends. This kind of threads should not exist.
On an unrelated note, I like how people complain about Xatu after banning Sneasel :^)

 

[Mar1onette]

I think the root of our problem on showdown as a whole is that we're not all the time willing to accept other ppl's opinions when their opinion disagree's with our's causing us to not be able to breath their opinion in and out, and that i think that we take the people who try to ruin something (trolls) to seriously we let them bait us into an argument ruining the chat presence for everyone. I think all of us, our community needs to be accepting and to be the "better man" and let things go, I my self am no exception, i do let my self get baited i do allow the conversation to go to far, im willing to defend my opinion to great lengths, but i let things go to far when i can just accept they don't agree and that they believe differently, i let the trolls of all ppl bait me into convo's when in the back of my mind i figure out they're trolls but i still keep going to defend my opinion. I Believe We Need To Become Accepting and To Be The Better Person.

 

[Disjunction]

Hi, I'd like to take this as an opportunity to clear the confusion with that small incident as I'm involved and can still retrieve logs.

Tennis only warned hyun because hyun had openly insulted his opponent after the battle (he's TSM ryan, for those unaware). Afterwards, yes, there were a number of users who were attacking hyun unfairly so I told them to stop because that's fair. We all know what it's like to get 6-0'd and it's not nice giving someone shit for being 6-0'd, especially when you don't even know who they are. (As a post thought, I figured I should say that I'm only mentioning this because I don't think it's fair that tennis is being targeted out of the blue for something he didn't do. My intention wasn't to call out Hyun, but make sure everyone understood that tennis had no blame in this).

I'm gradually distancing myself from this thread because it's quickly degrading into the community pointing fingers at anywhere but themselves. It's embarrassing the amount of shit flinging and outright viciousness that has spawned from a humble request that we all get along. If you all want something to happen then there needs to be compromise because that's just how solutions between two parties with differing opinions, yet similar goals, accomplish their goals. But if you have no intention to compromise, I don't think you have much of a right to be contributing to this thread. And yes, I'm of the firm opinion that everyone here is to blame, myself included for standing by and letting this happen to a community I love so much.

 

[Orphic]

Is everyone gonna ignore the fact that goomy pointed out there were full on discussions about keeping me out of contributing because the clique didn't like me? This shit is disgusting, how do you expect to attract contributors doing that? As goomy said, maybe if you actually took the time to speak to me and accept my contributions then you'd perhaps find a friend? The fact that a tier leader has instigated all of this is awful, I've never really spoken to you much hollywood yet you seem to have some sort of vendetta against me, and now so does your clique

It's a shame I genuinely respected your first response to my complaints, I thought that might be a turning point and I still feel like it can be if you're willing to give me and others who you unfairly prejudice the time of day.

Oh and with that I'd like you to reconsider me joining the lab and take my request seriously. Perhaps use it as a stepping stone to move forward with this community, show people you're willing to let others in and get to know them.

hollywood iplaytennislol Can-Eh-Dian Raseri Kiyo and I can't remember who else, maybe The Goomy as well, either way thanks for your support

 

[TSM ryan]

Hi, I'd like to take this as an opportunity to clear the confusion with that small incident as I'm involved and can still retrieve logs.

Tennis only warned hyun because hyun had openly insulted his opponent after the battle (he's TSM ryan, for those unaware). Afterwards, yes, there were a number of users who were attacking hyun unfairly so I told them to stop because that's fair. We all know what it's like to get 6-0'd and it's not nice giving someone shit for being 6-0'd, especially when you don't even know who they are.

I'm gradually distancing myself from this thread because it's quickly degrading into the community pointing fingers at anywhere but themselves. It's embarrassing the amount of shit flinging and outright viciousness that has spawned from a humble request that we all get along. If you all want something to happen then there needs to be compromise because that's just how solutions between two parties with differing opinions, yet similar goals, accomplish their goals. But if you have no intention to compromise, I don't think you have much of a right to be contributing to this thread. And yes, I'm of the firm opinion that everyone here is to blame, myself included for standing by and letting this happen to a community I love so much.

there's no confusion regarding the incident. what happened from a bad battle is natural and is just based on how people take losses. iplaytennislol's actions and behavior in pm is not acceptable from a room moderator and someone clearly trying to get global auth due to their high position in the clique. this isn't even irrelevant calling out either, this is exactly the problem that our community has, only favoring people in the "in-group." what a damn joke. like an elementary school.

i've been kicked from the private nu room on showdown, and it's probably only a matter of time 'til i'm out of the skype group too for going against the bs isolations that are being done.

wow. alienation. who would have guessed?

 

[honchkrow]

Is everyone gonna ignore the fact that goomy pointed out there were full on discussions about keeping me out of contributing because the clique didn't like me? This shit is disgusting, how do you expect to attract contributors doing that? As goomy said, maybe if you actually took the time to speak to me and accept my contributions then you'd perhaps find a friend? The fact that a tier leader has instigated all of this is awful, I've never really spoken to you much hollywood yet you seem to have some sort of vendetta against me, and now so does your clique

It's a shame I genuinely respected your first response to my complaints, I thought that might be a turning point and I still feel like it can be if you're willing to give me and others who you unfairly prejudice the time of day.

Oh and with that I'd like you to reconsider me joining the lab and take my request seriously. Perhaps use it as a stepping stone to move forward with this community, show people you're willing to let others in and get to know them.

hollywood iplaytennislol Can-Eh-Dian Raseri Kiyo and I can't remember who else, maybe The Goomy as well, either way thanks for your support

Look, let me start this off by saying I am so sorry. This was not an intentional attack because we didn't like you. I'll be honest, most of the lab members just hadn't seen you battle or build enough solid teams. I personally said no to you only because I didn't know you well enough. In hindsight, we should have asked you submit some teams that you are proud of. I'm sure this would have never happened had we gone down that route. Again, I am so sorry you feel offended. Last thing I want to say, not everything in Goomy's post is true. A lot of it is a matter of opinion and not fact.

 

[Orphic]

Look, let me start this off by saying I am so sorry. This was not an intentional attack because we didn't like you. I'll be honest, most of the lab members just hadn't seen you battle or build enough solid teams. I personally said no to you only because I didn't know you well enough. In hindsight, we should have asked you submit some teams that you are proud of. I'm sure this would have never happened had we gone down that route. Again, I am so sorry you feel offended. Last thing I want to say, not everything in Goomy's post is true. A lot of it is a matter of opinion and not fact.

The problem is none of you even took me seriously, I'm badged, well known on these forums and why wouldn't you take the time to get to know me or whether I'm good enough for any other reason except keeping me out of a little group. I accept your apology and stand by my post and hope some things change as a result of this.

 

[QueenOfLuvdiscs]

I'm gonna voice my opinion on this situation now. Orphic, I was the only one who didn't say no to you for the teambuilding lab. My reasoning was simple; we needed builders and that I believed you could make this team, but we had to go with a majority vote and for that I'm sorry. For BOTW, I'm also sorry for that as well, anyone can run that thread. Someone like you could easily manage because you're more than competent to do so and are very active on the forums but again, people didn't want you for some reason.

I know people are gonna see me as part of the problem because I am in this 'omnipotent' Skype group and yeah, people can hate me and I can't change that; you can't please everyone, but a lot of you are making out that we didn't get shit in our early days. Do you really think I enjoy, even to this day, being known as the 'stallfag' or words to that extent or still get reminded of bad tour runs? The hell I do, but people that don't even know me well refer to me as that and newer users just seem to know me as that as well, usually from their frens that already are familiar with NU. I know I'm not a model user, I'm far from that, but at the end of the day, I just found some people that I can hang out with, play mons and spam Skype emotes with and there is nothing wrong with that.

I'll admit that our attitude towards some users can be extremely unfair and again, I'm sorry for anyone that has felt victimised by this and if I get demodded as a result, then so be it, at least I've said I'm sorry.

 

[Orphic]

I'm gonna voice my opinion on this situation now. Orphic, I was the only one who didn't say no to you for the teambuilding lab. My reasoning was simple; we needed builders and that I believed you could make this team, but we had to go with a majority vote and for that I'm sorry. For BOTW, I'm also sorry for that as well, anyone can run that thread. Someone like you could easily manage because you're more than competent to do so and are very active on the forums but again, people didn't want you for some reason.

I know people are gonna see me as part of the problem because I am in this 'omnipotent' Skype group and yeah, people can hate me and I can't change that; you can't please everyone, but a lot of you are making out that we didn't get shit in our early days. Do you really think I enjoy, even to this day, being known as the 'stallfag' or words to that extent or still get reminded of bad tour runs? The hell I do, but people that don't even know me well refer to me as that and newer users just seem to know me as that as well, usually from their frens that already are familiar with NU. I know I'm not a model user, I'm far from that, but at the end of the day, I just found some people that I can hang out with, play mons and spam Skype emotes with and there is nothing wrong with that.

I'll admit that our attitude towards some users can be extremely unfair and again, I'm sorry for anyone that has felt victimised by this and if I get demodded as a result, then so be it, at least I've said I'm sorry.

Uh, kiyo was the only one that didn't say no, not you? Either way if both of you didn't say no then that just further proves it wasn't about teambuilding at all. I accept your apology again.

 

[Shuckleking87]

I'm gradually distancing myself from this thread because it's quickly degrading into the community pointing fingers at anywhere but themselves. It's embarrassing the amount of shit flinging and outright viciousness that has spawned from a humble request that we all get along. If you all want something to happen then there needs to be compromise because that's just how solutions between two parties with differing opinions, yet similar goals, accomplish their goals. But if you have no intention to compromise, I don't think you have much of a right to be contributing to this thread. And yes, I'm of the firm opinion that everyone here is to blame, myself included for standing by and letting this happen to a community I love so much.

I do not see this as just willy-nilly pointing fingers at people for no reason (but maybe Cased and Raseri should try to find common ground). I think at some point, especially with more esteemed users on the site, there has to be some form of accountability. Otherwise, people might not necessarily know there are part of the problem. Now of course, being "part of the problem" can place the onus on this Skype group rather than the normal nonbadged or non voiced showdown user, which might not be fair, but being a distinguished user on either site i think comes with some sort of responsibility to better the community than it was before you came here. And it seems like people are trying to find a compromise, like iplaytennislol and queenofluvdiscs are giving a reasoning for actions, apology, and a view for better future. Now I dont think everyone has to spill out their emotions and secrets apologizing for every person they have ever excluded or talk to like they normally would not in real life (I hope, and this site is real life lol), but I think people would earn more respect for admitting and moving on, even if you thought you did not deserve the blame in the first place.
And I would also disagree that everyone here is to blame, some people have been trying to shape this community for awhile with either no prevail or because they were in the minority in this effort. Like Im not sure who Ive pissed off, but if I have, send me a pm of have much of a terribad user that I am and Ill apologize haha.

 

[Aladyyn]

The amount of hypocrisy in this thread is disgusting.

The amount of blame this "clique" is getting from some people in this thread is disgusting.

The best thing that can come out of this thread is that every person who reads it looks inside of their heart and tries to improve themselves and learn from their past mistakes.

I want to address TCW's post somewhat. You're saying that cliques are normal in competitive communities. Yea that's true. What is also true is that those cliques are never good for those communities. Let me tell you a story, a personal anecdote somewhat. I've been a part of the Czech/Slovak competitive Team Fortress 2 community for almost 3 years now. I've seen players come and go, mostly go to be honest. When I started out most of the players in our community were pretty low level with a couple standouts. Everyone got on well with everyone and the more experienced players helped new players like me learn the game. Actually it sounds like a pretty decent comparison to what I experienced in BW2NU. Anyway, then the good people slowly started losing interest in the game and participating in the community. And so the upper tier of the worse players took their place as they improved. Unfortunately the attitude of those players wasn't quite as good. The amount of shittalking that went on was quite unbearable and I got my fair share of it (often it was deserved so I didn't think that much of it).

As I improved, I started to get to know these guys a little better, they were really not as bad when they started somewhat respecting you (I was not quite on their level but I was eager and had a decent understanding of the game). Shame that most of the community started viewing these guys in a negative light because they acted like jerks to them. And then the snowball effect happened. New people that started playing the game looked up to those players and started trying to emulate them. At that point they started "fading away" from the community and forming a sort of a "clique". During that I often helped new teams with understanding the 6v6 metagame and tried to do as much as I could to help them improve because I hit what I thought was my ceiling thanks to hardware limitations. Now we come to the sad part. As those guys improved to my level and started surpassing me, they started looking up to the "clique" more. They started acting like jerks, even towards me sometimes. People that were my friends at one point and those that I mentored were now shittalking me when we played together now. And that was what started the downfall of the community.

I recently took a hiatus until I could get better hardware and when I came back I found people that I really enjoyed playing with turned into jerks too! Some of the best friends I made while playing the game were now insufferable. And the behaviour spread to lower and lower levels. I got a new team that I really enjoyed playing with but we disbanded after one season after some people started showing the symptoms too. Where there used to be close to 10 active teams, we now have... 3. One of them is the whole "clique" and it's not even the best one anymore. Shame the community's dying fast as people lose interest in it and instead start looking at joining multi-nation teams. And when someone brings up an idea to improve things he gets laughed at and shittalked. We are not in this phase yet and I don't think we'll ever be just because of the fundamental difference between TF2 and Pokémon (one is updated and improved every couple of years and one has barely been touched since like 2010 up until recently). It's just a cautionary tale of what bad role models can do to a community.

Also the most disgusting thing in this thread is Goomy's hypocritical post getting 50+ likes. You can't possibly complain about "memes in chat" when that was 80% of your activity for a couple of months. Also the one auth I know that would come to the room on an alt just to troll. Distancing yourself from the community is fine but then acting like you're disgusted by it when you played a big part in its evolution is just cowardly. Don't even get me started on the shit "bad user" tennis used to get back in the day and now you're calling him out...

 

[Steakburgers]

If you wanna fix a community, you gotta treat others the same way you would want to be treated
It's kinda lame to see someone get muted for blatant spamming, and then seeing someone else doing it, but its regarded as a "joke" so they get unmuted instantly
Naw, they can sit 7 minutes just as well as others can
Like i get unmuting someone for a mistake but for a joke? Like how does that look to someone new to the room? Oh, here you can joke around and as long as its funny to someone in power, you'll get unmuted
Thats not something that looks good imo

Also for the love of everything holy
Please stop using cancer as a damn insult
Its offensive as all hell, and some of you use it like youve been cursed to forever say it
How would it be if we got a cancer patient in the room and the first thin they see is "ur being cancer" or something stupid like that
If you feel like someone is doing something you dont agree with, find other constructive ways to say it

 

[Teddeh]

The only way we can move on as a tier is if everyone does their bit, as many people have said. That being said, I've not exactly had the best time this past couple of months or in fact over the last 6. People who are to blame should take it upon themselves and do the right thing and change how they interact with the community outside of their clique but it's also our job to help them.
I've made up with several users who have made me feel not welcome, i feel better now because of it. If you've been treated unfairly or badly by members of the clique previously, you need to take it upon yourself to be the bigger person and move on. If it happens again, then it's clearly a fault in their personalities, but there's nothing we as a tier can do unless you decide to take action yourself and move on. This doesn't mean shit talk people from a year ago or act salty because of something that happened a month ago, the important thing now is that we move on for the good of the tier and for the people that come into NU and see that we're working together to make this place as enjoyable as possible for everyone that participates in it.
I do also understand that some people may have stepped out of line with what they did to make people feel unwelcome or victimized, for example rigging a tournament or excluding them from a project on this forum. Actions should be taken for this sort of behavior but it's up to the mods to sort that out, for now we move on as a tier.

 

[ryan]

Orphic and I talked between ourselves, which I had every intention of doing even before The Goomy decided to "expose me" or whatever that post was intended to do, and with actual perspective from each other on why we did or said some of the things we did, I believe we've settled things and can move forward. I had no intention to explain that to everyone because it's really no business but our own, but again, I've been "called out" and wanted to clarify that I'm not ignoring these things.

 

[citro]

If you wanna fix a community, you gotta treat others the same way you would want to be treated
It's kinda lame to see someone get muted for blatant spamming, and then seeing someone else doing it, but its regarded as a "joke" so they get unmuted instantly
Naw, they can sit 7 minutes just as well as others can
Like i get unmuting someone for a mistake but for a joke? Like how does that look to someone new to the room? Oh, here you can joke around and as long as its funny to someone in power, you'll get unmuted
Thats not something that looks good imo

They are different things though. If the user in question is known to the mod and often contributes normally, the mod can be pretty certain the spamming, or joke, whatever it is, won't continue for very long, and they will probably stop straight away if asked. (I guess quick mute-unmute is one of the ways to curtail it, actually). If it's a random spammer or someone trying to promote their own stuff, the mod can't really rely on them to stop before it disrupts the chat significantly and creates an annoying wall of text. So it's not just a case of oh, you're friends with the mods, you won't be punished. It's about keeping the chat reasonably healthy without being too strict

I agree on your other point though. I would like it if people stopped using slurs in general, for example, I'm not a personal victim but "retarded" can be hurtful to people with disabilities, which makes me feel guilty since we don't know who could be behind a username in the chat. That said we can't really expect that kind of language to leave western culture any time soon, and the last place I'd expect to start disassociating from those kind of slurs is a teenager-filled website built around trash talk, so yeah. It sucks.

 

[mdchan]

I've been playing competitive (and NU) for about two and a half weeks, but already, there was one minor problem and one huge problem I encountered a couple days ago which has written me off of ever participating in another NU tournament (and nearly chased me out of NU, completely).

The first is that there's no way to deal with extremely rude people (even if they're winning, some people will say rude things; it goes beyond being a "sore winner" and more of mocking the person they're against) except to mute them.

A way to report a player for being a jerk (and have the incident looked into instead of a blind decision based on someone's word, such as the replay link as proof or even a screenshot of the behavior) would be nice.

The second is running the clock.

I'm actually not talking about people who purposely run the clock...I'm talking about people who report others.
For example, someone I faced either thought I was running the clock (or was just being obnoxious, as they were certainly rude in what they said during the match) and obviously PMed a mod about it because my clock was adjusted to a mere 30 seconds on my next turn without so much as a warning (while I was both trying to decide my next move because I was in a tight spot, and asking them to stop being rude since I didn't know at the time about that "ignore opponent" option).

My issue here are two things:

1. That the mod took what this person said at face-value.
--Is there any consideration that someone might be lying about their opponent running the clock when a mod is PMed? Just because someone takes more than 10 seconds to make a decision, or even more than 30 seconds, doesn't mean that they're running the clock. Someone could be looking things up (such as base speeds/stats and common sets), particularly if they don't have every stat memorized.
During a tournament, they can even be running a calc.
These things take time to do, and should be considered when someone accuses another use of running the clock.

A warning about running the clock before it suddenly is adjusted would be nice, as well as a mod considering/seeing if there's a reason why it's taking someone so long to make a play before coming in and adjusting the clock on someone.


2. The person being accused might not "think on their feet" and need that extra time.
--I'm sure I'm not the only person who has an actual disability who plays pokemon. While I can write this up nice and neat (though even that takes time), it might take me a few moments to actually make a decision in the game/real time.
When I first started competitive, I was nervous because I'm not very good when on a time limit. However, I found that even I can manage the 120 second limit, and usually make a decision within half that time (possibly more if I need to look something up).
When my timer was adjusted to 30 seconds that one time, I couldn't make a decision fast enough and timed out.

To me, it felt like discrimination (even though I know the mods had no way of knowing), and I was hesitant to continue to play in the NU tier again (I even switched tiers for a little while; nobody in UU ever complained about how long it takes me to make a play, and there also weren't as many rude/alienating people; not even in their tournaments did anyone ever complain. But in NU, if one takes longer than 30 seconds to make a decision, they're either told to hurry up or have their clock adjusted).


I still play in the NU tier because it's usually fun, but I almost always play on an alt now, and I don't sign up for tournaments because I don't want to feel pressured/worry that my opponent might PM a mod to shorten my clock since I sometimes take a little longer to make a play.



To sum it up/TL;DR:
It'd be nice if:
-There was a way to report (with proof, please) a player being rude/obnoxious/cruel (I've also been a victim of someone screaming obscenities and ill intent in all caps about being haxed, or laughed at when I got haxed), and

-That the mods don't "jump the gun" on adjusting someone's timer when they're taking longer than 10-30 seconds to make a play if their opponent complains.
--Perhaps give a warning before the clock is adjusted, and-or consider that maybe there's a reason it's taking someone so long to make a play.

If someone waits until the very last second every turn (or every other turn) to make their play, a penalty is understandable. Otherwise, it'd be nice to see some consideration.