jayroe

Beautiful. It's not your problem, so it is not a problem. Would it be a problem for Russians if France got an IP-range ban? Nope? Then it's ALL okay. This isn't racism, it's a natural response to someone engaging in an ethical discussion with blatant disregards for everyone but himself. If 90% of the cheaters in-game are Danish, would it be racist to allow admins to enforce anti-cheating rules knowing that this would largely only affect Danes? Nobody's asking for anti-Russian rules, we're asking for rules to allow admins to enforce consideration of other players than yourself. If you feel this is aimed at only you or Russians, it might be time to reflect.

Unless you're a hunk of metal saying "I'll be back" in an Austrian accent, there's nothing realistic about having a wall of text scrolling past your visual field. Regardless of the language. The chat is there for communicative purposes and if you want to give it a touch of realism, ask people not to use the global chat, because there is nothing remotely realistic about magically eavesdropping on a conversation 10km away.

Does it hurt anyone, if a server features a localized language? Do you have to play on every single server to enjoy this game when all servers feature the same unified experience? If all the servers are the same, what does it matter to you if a server you don't even use adheres to English, Russian or Klingon? Do you have to play on generic server #472 to enjoy the game? This is on the level of throwing a tantrum in the movie store because you found a Spanish dubbed version of The Dark Knight. Yes, that could be very offensive, if it wasn't for the fact that you could just pick from one of the hundred copies of the undubbed version. But no, EVERYTHING has to be the way you want it, there's no room for anyone to have anything the way THEY want it. Forgive me, but that seems incredibly intolerant. If you have hundreds of copies of something, does it hurt you, if some of them are customized to people with different wants or needs than you? If it does, it's the good ol' intolerance acting up. Let people be.

So it's not really about racism, but about disrupting the play experience of others? Well, in that case "can't we just ignore what the racists write?" "we don't have to read their messages." "Nobody's forcing us to read them." I'm strongly opposed to racism, but from the perspective of someone disrupting my play experience, one line of a foreign language takes up just as much of my often inadequate chat box as one line of racism. At least that's how my chat box sees it. It's a real bigot. What do you call this thing where you one second tell players who feel that their play experience is disrupted by foreign chatter that they can simply ignore the chat and then the next second you argue that racist chatter is wrong, not because of it's malicious nature, but because, wait for it... It disrupts the play experience.

Rocket, I respect that and especially your decision to leave the thread open for people to discuss. I'm a strong advocate of free speech, even if it serves no other purpose than to be heard. Should you later review this debate, I hope you'll consider the following analogy: You have three fields at your disposal and 66 players. 22 Players are asking if they can get the first field for soccer. 22 players are asking if they can have the second field for football. The remaining 22 don't care what they play on the third field. Designating a field for soccer is discriminatory against football and vice versa, so naturally the open minded thing to do is having a mix of everything on every field. But the truth is there's no intolerance in wanting to play a specific sport or speak a specific language, especially if it's all you know. Allowing people to have a place where they can play a specific sport or speak a specific language, that's actual tolerance.

Thanks, you also quoted that the first time and it's still a non-sequitur. I was trying to underline the difference between bigotry and not being able to understand someone. That would have been obvious, had you not omitted the first half of the quote. Let me reiterate. If you prefer to play with a group of people based on their color or nationality, then you're probably a bigot; if you prefer to play with a group of people because you speak their language, then you're probably just a social player. I see Russian players ask if there are Russians on the respective servers all the time. They care about socializing too. Why do we all have to be so ridiculously ashamed of wanting to meet and hang out with people we can understand? In the real world you have body language, handshakes, friendly gestures etc. to aid you when you don't understand someone, but in the game there's absolutely none of that. All you have is letters and thus there's absolutely nothing to gain by forcing people together. And note I'm not saying anyone's forced to converse with someone they don't understand. I'm saying that players are forced to group with people they don't understand. More often than not, that leads to one half taking over the chat and the other half ignoring it, rendering it useless for one half to communicate anything. This leads to increasing frustration and racist remarks on the servers and it doesn't even have to be that way. It's only going on because if we don't discriminate social players, it will look like we're discriminating against, what, Russians? I don't buy it. By the way, the word "force" is contextual and in my posts the context is the game. If you want to play the game, you're forced to play on multilingual servers.

Prove what logically? That I've never heard of a single developer that banned localized servers? That this forum has a Russian section? That nobody thinks localized entities are racist? The latter is an hyperbole along the lines of "everyone loves ice cream." We have localized Mac Donald's; Google offers a localized version of their site, so does Facebook; imported goods often come with localized manuals; some of our tv networks have localized channels where the local news are just that, local; foreign movies come with Danish subtitles and cartoons often come with multiple audio tracks so we can select whether we prefer Danish or English audio. Everything here is localized and not once in my entire life have I heard anyone say that being able to select a language on a DVD is racist. This language confusion is pure poppycock. And I never said that anyone has forced anglophones to have a conversation with non-anglophones. Lastly, if some Russians prefer a Russian speaking server and some anglophones prefer an English server, what is the purpose of forcing these two groups together? It's like I'm supposed to be ashamed by the fact that I appreciate being able to understand and be understood what goes on around me.

Mojo, everything you write seems so far rooted from the real world. Nobody thinks bigotry just because a game, forum, tv network, etc. has localized entities. It's how the actual world works. Even this very forum has a separate section for Russian and I haven't heard a single person talk of racism. I've never heard of a single developer that banned localized servers and yet I'm to believe that Rocket has to ban them to avoid being labeled a bigot? All your theories fall flat in the face of reality and you might as well try to prove that a bumblebee is too fat to fly. Not talking to a person because he's black, Russian, Danish or whatever, that's bigotry. Not talking to a person because you don't understand a word he is saying, that's just the reality of our linguistic shortcomings.

There's nothing illogical about players being able to understand the language spoken on a server. If the game had chat windows for different languages and I could close the ones I don't understand, there wouldn't be a problem. However, there's only one window and all languages go into it. Once one side starts to dominate the chat, the other starts to ignore it -- as you can read in this thread -- effectively rendering it useless to the non-dominant half. What is so harmful about letting people join a server where they understand the language? And as for my movies, books etc. example above, the game isn't a bookstore, it's the book, the little nugget of entertainment you indulge yourself in. If anything, the Arma 2 lobby is the book store and the only books that aren't allowed to be translated and localized are the DayZ books. They have to remain 50% incomprehensible to the readers or someone will shout racism. How a basic human desire like being able to follow a conversation can be translated to racism is utterly beyond me. This whole thing is upside down. Players don't fail to understand Russian because they're frustrated or racist, they become frustrated because they don't understand Russian. This frustration is often expressed through intolerance and racism and ultimately a server policy that was meant as a way to fight racism, instead feeds it. I know you want us all to get along, Rocket and I find it admirable, but you can't expect people to socialize with people they don't understand when their only means of communication is a chat, so why force them? Why not give people the option to play and socialize with people for whom that is actually possible?

How do you abuse a language selection? All an admin gets to decide is the language: "This server is multilingual" or "This server is language A and language B" You're not losing power' date=' you're simply choosing not to needlessly exert it. But doesn't the forum have a Russian section? Couldn't people just post in Russian or whatever language they want on the English forum? If we don't understand it, we can just ignore it. It'll be even easier here than in the game, cause you can scroll up and down as you please and there's plenty of time to do so because you aren't being chased by zombies. You can even let Google translate the foreign language, a luxury you don't have in game. Nobody's asking you to abandon your judgment, but to reconsider it, because forcing people against their will to play with people they can't understand isn't helping anyone. All it does is cause racism and frustration. The very thing you're trying to counter I assume.There's nothing racist about letting people choose whether they want to play with people they understand. I assume you buy books, movies, engage in conversations, socialize, debate etc. in a - or translated to - language you understand. Not because you're racist, but because you have an interest in knowing what's going on. That goes for players as well. Some are loners and don't care about language and some are social and sees the game as a place to hang out and socialize.

Instead of enforcing multi-language rules at the top level, why not let the admins make the decision? -It's a win for you and the devs (it's one less thing to worry about) -It's a win for server admins -It's a win for players (there will be something for everyone and the constant language fights could finally die) I understand that you have a great deal on your plate and I respect that, but forcing people together against their will just doesn't seem tolerant to me. robollama, this has nothing to do with xenophobia. It's about letting people choose whether they want to engage in a social game on a server that adheres to a language that they understand. I don't join Russian servers because I don't understand Russian. Same reason I don't buy a German book or watch Italian news. It has absolutely zero to do with xenophobia and everything to do with communication and understanding. All this talk of xenophobia, racism and intolerance is a cheap shot at an argument that's 100% about communication and 0% about any of the former. I guess I can speak any language I want as long as I don't disagree with you. "Quick close the thread before someone posts a counter-argument." On a last note, doesn't the forum feature a Russian section? I guess keeping languages apart on the forum is common sense, but on the server it's xenophobia.

I was able to run around in debug forest once. Me and some other survivor killed a spawning bandit. Is it possible that one of these mass-killing "cheaters" that's been mentioned, spawned and killed everyone stuck in debug forest?

Why are so many people confusing Lingua Franca with racism and patriotism? It's the opposite. It's a way for people of different languages to communicate. All this talk of respect for individuality leads to the exact opposite. Some people don't mind foreign languages, some do. Why not accommodate both groups by having servers where all languages are allowed and some where predefined languages are allowed? Then there's truly something for everybody. Allowing server admins to cater to different segments is true respect for individuality. Both for the admins and the people who play on their servers.

I don't get that either. I've never been on a forum where people used the setting of a game to excuse insensitive or malicious behavior.