What if Tanks were designed like Healers?

[Icecylee]

This is deeply off topic and also wound up fairly long so I'm going to put it behind a spoiler, but in answer to your question, Ren...

For what it's worth, Ren, I have noticed (and appreciated!) the effort you've put into changing how you've been formatting your text since that thread the other week. To me, at least, you *have* been coming across as a bit calmer, a bit less shouty.

Not everyone is out to get you. There have been, on occasion, people that have popped into threads and agreed with things you've said or spoken up in your defense when the dog piling was getting particularly bad from an outside perspective. It doesn't happen a ton, but it has happened. And not everyone that's arguing with you is then immediately going on to upvote the post dunking on you; I, at least, don't usually push 'like' when Semi's just swearing forex or when Roe's in a particularly snippy mood. That said I also don't think it's that strange that the opposition opinion is typically getting less likes, and it shouldn't really be that surprising to you either. I do on occasion like your post too, as there are some points we agree on, but often you wind up writing massive posts covering a fair number of different topics, some of which I don't agree with, so it's pretty infrequent in the grand scheme of things.

With regards to the frequency of calling other people out though, that's a fair question to ask. I think in part you tend to get a lot of noise about how you present yourself specifically because you sell yourself as a nice, friendly person who only wants to reach some kind of compromise or middle ground, but for whatever reason, are often perceived as arrogant, headstrong and aggressive by others which creates a layer of dissonance that's hard to ignore. Meanwhile Semi has always presented themself as a bit of an asshole, and crucially, tends to make short one off quips and then dip out of the conversation for a week or two at a time, with the odd longer, more thoughtful, less hateful post here and there divorced from the bile. So it doesn't seem as... how to word this... worth while to address as a "problem" vs someone like you who is very frequently posting several paragraph long responses to everything that most anyone says, multiple times a day. We see a lot of what you're thinking and saying! Roe can be kind of aggressive, but she talks the same way to everyone and no one else really seems to care, and usually when she crosses the line she'll come back a few hours later and apologize before moving the topic along. So, low priority in addressing for different reasons. Ty and Sezby, on the other hand, spend the better part of 6~8 months trying to be nice and cordial and find some kind of middle ground before deciding it simply wasn't there and losing patience. And it's kind of hard to blame them. Likewise I do not, generally, blame you for getting frustrated at others because there is pretty clearly a major disconnect in thought process between you and the regulars and it does suck not being able to get your point across clearly.

For my part, and I suspect several other infrequent-poster-but-always-lurking types, I know we've argued on occasion and a few of those times after a certain number of posts I'd wind up deciding that the conversation was not worth continuing because nothing productive was going to come from it, and I just didn't feel like wasting more of my time of emotional energy on it anymore. Particularly *because* of those long post you so often make, and more specifically, because of... Hm. You sort of remind me of some of the autistic kids my mom used to work with back when she was a teacher. You seem to have this incessant need to not only explain yourself, but over explain yourself, especially if you think you're right about something and someone else is wrong, or they just can't see why you're right. Even if it's not something than an objectionable fact, but mere opinion. Most of the stuff we wind up talking or arguing about here are, ultimately, just things we'd like to personally see. Sometimes things are presented more like facts, especially when people start going into Game Design concepts, but even then it's more of an art than a science so there's still a large degree of "this is what I think based on how I feel" going on there. And you don't always need to convince everyone your feelings on a matter are the best way. I don't think you usually mean anything bad by it usually, you're just trying to explain your thought process and make sure everyone is parsing what you're saying correctly, but man, it can be exhausting to deal with. I think, ultimately what it boils down to, is that arguing with most of the regulars here feels like talking with peers at best, or slinging shit at other kids at worse. Where as arguing with you tends to feel more like arguing with a teacher or other figures that's presenting itself as authorial. Maybe that's not the way you want to come across, and maybe that's not even the way you try and come across, but that's sort of how it *feels* from over here, at least.

Anyway I this got kind of long and rambling, but it was typed in goof faith and offered because you seemed to genuinely want an answer, and I wanted to make sure you got at least once.