Is there anomosity between the ToL and FoL / i42 Forums communities? If so, how can we repair the relationship?

That wasn’t my words

For real tho if you think something that fol players do should be gamethrowing please do tell me.

Also how do we lack common sense?

Those weren’t my words.

I tried to answer the question actually asked in the first question of the OP, but I don’t think I can do so in a way that doesn’t seem like it’s putting blame on specific people, so instead I’m going to do my best to answer the question “what, in an ideal world, would the relationship between the ToL community and the forum community look like?”

…and I’m two paragraphs in and it’s already unnecessarily passive aggressive. wonderful. disclaimer: the below is not maximally diplomatic. It also occurred to me partway through writing this that I wasn’t part of either community in February, so I postdated all the drama to do with that.

The first thing I’ve noticed, lately more than ever, is unnecessary passive-aggression from people involved in either community towards the other community. In an ideal world this wouldn’t happen, basically ever. There is no reason to randomly go into threads that aren’t really related to it at all to talk about how all ToL players are bad, or all FoL players are elitist toxic gamethrowers, or what have you. This isn’t changing anyone’s mind, and it isn’t helping anyone; all it’s doing is representing our respective communities poorly to each other, and making people pointlessly upset for no reason. This paragraph isn’t about any one specific person, because I haven’t seen it solely from one person.

I think the next thing I want to say is that we should recognize that in some circumstances the needs of the communities are different, while simultaneously not implying that that makes one better than the other. ToL is fundamentally going to involve more mechanical solving due to the nature of the playerbase, and FoL is going to involve less, and both of these things are fine and neither of them means that one community is fundamentally inferior to another. I’d like to be able to discuss ToL balance without ‘mechanical solving is bad’ being brought in as a guaranteed premise, because there will always be a substantial amount of that in ToL (this is not a statement about whether the amount currently present is the optimal amount). Conversely, I’d like to discuss FoL balance without it getting derailed by discussions about whether it’s ever okay to execute someone who might be BD, because ‘only execute confirmed evils’ is fundamentally not viable for the forum environment.

But at the same time, I’d also like it if the communities would be more receptive to ideas that come from the other community, without assuming that those ideas are bad solely because of where they originated. I’d like to hope that none of us are so confident as to think that either ToL or FoL is perfect and needs no changes, and that’s not a position I’ve heard anyone argue. I don’t want “you’re just suggesting that because it’s what the forums do” to be the be-all and end-all of discussion, nor its reverse; both communities can have good ideas, and we ought to be open-minded enough to consider ideas on their own merits rather than to dismiss them out of hand due to their origin, or due to the fact that the person proposing them is more involved in the other community.

I don’t know. Maybe we’re past the point where the communities can ever truly reconcile. But I’d like to hope that we can stop with this pointless passive-aggression and dismissiveness towards each other, and build a healthy community that can understand when we need to take different tacks, and when we can learn from each other.

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if you get one thing from this post I want it to be ‘stop being mean to each other :frowning:

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boomer

Not the players. The game. There’s not much in fol which has the real meaning of the original classes.

Just tell me, how many times do players leave as evils? That’s the worst thing I’ve seen, cause it’s almost in each game

thank god somebody made this post so I didn’t have to

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I have no idea where to go with my wall post as every time I start writing with my emotions my emotions shift when I think more about it

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meh

I give up on my wall post

you’re not a wallposter
just spam your thoughts

To simply describe the issue

FoL and ToL employ different skillsets and are vastly different. People compare apples to oranges then start infighting with people who enjoy one skillset over the other

The answer therefore is to understand background

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thats my job

The people of ToL and FoL are not substantially different beyond this level to make an actual judgement of character

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And meanwhile people like Arete and I who are very active in both communities and enjoy both kinds of games a ton end up very sad because we see animosity on both sides of the issue.

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that’s in FM

Outside the game I can wall post, and I don’t even know what I’m writing. I know I’m writing something, I’m just writing stuff.

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tbh I couldn’t “get” into the discord because my main method of communication is shitposting and general isn’t the best place for that

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Oh wait

Yeah now I remember

I despise memes and shitposting so that was never an issue for me.

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