Empirism
| Empirism | |
| General Policies: | Less pvpers |
| Namesake: | Empire-based crews |
| Relative Size: | Sizable Minority |
| Followers | >60 active members |
| Associated Crews: | TAS |
For the religion, see Cystianism
'Cysteenism', named after its most prominent advocate, Cysteen, is the server political movement that believes PMC requires more moderation of vocal minorities, such as followers of Anarchism. They believe that many members, especially of the pvp community, are using language and actions against other players that are deemed damaging and toxic to the community, and are possibly driving people away. The additional moderation they seek is normally basic, such as improving the chat filter to remove words such as 'L' and 'ez', but also to enforce certain existing rules more harshly; such as harassment, bullying, and giving staff attitude.
The main crew associated with this movement is The Asylum (TAS), which contains most of the server's veterans from the 2014-16 era who are not too mad about pvp, but wish to keep the server a toxic-free and friendly environment. Cysteen has long been the main advocate for this, and several of her suggestions have been acted on by staff in order to curb levels of toxicity.
Along with Conservatism, Cysteenism lies more or less in the middle of the pvp/no-pvp spectrum, only advocating for improved moderation of toxicity, language, and attitude as a whole, as opposed to changes in levels of pvp.
Example Policies
These reflect commonly suggested changes players from these crews suggest and aim to show the general aims of this group.
- Most of the policies of Conservatism:
- Development of plugins, warps, and events to get more people involved.
- The need for staff to moderate drama so it doesn't become a hostile environment for the rest of the server.
- Keeping current functions, mechanics, and rules.
- Try to ensure both pvpers and non-pvpers can be satisfied with given updates, changes to rules, as to keep both playstyles viable and successful for all players.
- Increase and improvement of the chat filter to block racist, toxic, and immature phrases and words.
- Increased moderation of players who are deemed 'toxic' or 'damaging' to the community.
- Increased enforcement of certain rules, such as bullying, harassment, and attitude.
Followers
As outlined above, the main followers of Cysteenism are members of TAS, although there are some members of other crews who also agree with its policies. One big reason for this isolation of these followers into one crew is that many of them joined in 2014-16 era, and experienced PMC at a time where rollplay was big, and toxicity was very very low. It wasn't until the appearance of Horsia in late 2016/early 2017 that the question of banning toxicity was raised.
Many members in TAS feel that the server has become a bit too lax on the attitudes of these players, many of them being physically older players above the ages of 18, and disliking the immature and rude attitudes of some of the younger players. Several other players spread across crews share this opinion, such as leaders from SPQR and BE.
Criticisms
The main criticism of Cysteenism is that it is too strict and that features already exist in-game to reduce the amount of toxic chat you need to read, such as blocking players. Players from the more pvp orientated agenda regularly argue that people who follow Cysteenism are driven by 'hurt feelings' and 'butthurt' about comments or attitudes in chat.
They have also criticized staff members for being too aligned to Cysteenism, making them 'TAS/Cysteen pets' and accusing staff of subsequent bias against non-TAS members. Staff members have repeatedly said that this is not the case; arguing that any rule changes originating from TAS suggestions are due to the overall improvement they would make to Piratecraft, as opposed to being blindly driven by this group of players.
The other big criticism comes from the other side of the spectrum; those who believe Cysteenism policies aren't tackling the problem at its roots; namely too much freedom when it comes to pvp. A lot of drama and all these issues could be prevented by introducing new rules or disabling certain aspects and freedoms of pvp, essentially removing the 'toxic' players from PMC altogether.
People who associate themselves with Cysteenism are generally unpopular with the pro-pvp group. A big reason behind this is that they feel that Cysteenism is not a centrist/neutral viewpoint, and instead aiming to reduce the number of pvpers - thus being an anti-pvp movement.