Khalifate Era

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storm_lord
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by storm_lord »

Hello everyone. I haven't been posting in this forum as much as I would have liked to but I often visit nevertheless. I've been playing wesnoth since around 1.6 and liked khalifate as soon as I met them and having them added to default made me a very happy camper indeed. I've been reading what the majority of people have to say about the khalifate and fail to agree on most of their points so I thought I'd throw in my few cents as well. Especially because I hate to see changes made simply because someone was louder and not necessarily right.
First off, great job on the faction. I think they are an amazing product and I've been having fun with them for the longest time. Good art and theme, consistent design all across the faction. Simple and intuitive yet deep gameplay and fun as well. They feel fresh and deffinetly add a lot to mainline.
Secondly I disagree with everyone who keeps insiting on comparing individual units and fail to see the faction as a whole. The emphasis people have put to compare Rami and Khaiyal to Cavalryman and Horseman is too high.

I'll start with the gameplay. The way I see it Khalifate rely on a key most cost efficient unit to make up the bulk of their army: the Jundi. As well as a toolbox of different support units to aid the Jundi in battle. The Jundi get the job done and the different supports fill in the niches. This concept by its very nature and the way it is executed is excellent in my opinion and quite fun to play with/against.
In my opinion the Jundi nerf might not have been needed. I think that having their healer and mixed fighter cavalry as liminal is great for balancing as they have to be more careful about their position and works great overall to define the faction in a way as you need to deploy hit and run tactics due to their liminal alignment and high mobility as a faction. But having the key core unit (Jundi) liminal as well emphasises the need to play the faction differently. I don't think the nerf was needed when your key core unit is limited with its alingment. You rely on these guys to do everything, they are the core, and them being liminal bind the whole faction to try and grab key victories in those small times of day. What I'm trying to say is that Jundi are fine as they were I think.

I often compare the khalifate with the second faction I exclusively play which are the orcs. I see a lot of similarities in the way I play both factions in that they both have a key core unit that makes up the bulk of my army acompanied with niche key supports and grab key engangements in my time of day with my core unit's strengths. Khal have marksman, orcs have poison. Khal have +8 healers, orcs have sturdy regenerative trolls. Both have access to fire support damage and ocasional impact damage if needed. So I don't agree with people who say the Khalifate have an entirely new and superior strategy or execution compared to all default factions and how they cannot be beaten or cannot figure out how to stop them. We have all been fighting this type of strategy for a long time now. The difference now is the liminal alignment factor and the new hit-and-run tactics flavour of the khal. I don't think the faction plays overwhelmingly more powerful than other default factions. They are balanced.

On the khal vs loy subject I do agree with the point of khals not having much chance in a high skilled game. The reason being I think is that loys are too flexible and can deal with anything the khal can muster. They have an answer to the khals strategy and after the nerf their core key figure, the Jundi, cannot stand their ground in an assault against spearmen. Defending against a counterattack will be even harder due to loys ability to catch-up and destroy the khals at day while holding their ground at down/dusk with firststrike, HI and those rediculous cavalrymen ressistances.
The problem stems from the fact that the khals are built very simple. They rely on the Jundi to win with the supports helping the Jundi do the winning. If the Jundi falter, the whole faction falters. Nerfs and adjustments to the Jundi should be done with great care imho. Its not like nerfing a spearman, the loys can care less for a nerfed spearman with the amount of other strategies and answers they can come up with. It is a different matter for the Jundi however. The lack of poison/magic/slow/charge or other way of brute-focring their way in except for the Arifs means the Jundi need to be able to hold their own.

Anyway. My last point is to the posts I see of people not understanding why khals have ressistance to blade and weakness to impact and how their stats make no common sence. I disagree. :eng: The way I see it khals are inspired by mongols, persians, arabs and other such armies. And the way I see it they rely either on chainmail (Arif, Khaiyal etc) or thick leather armor (Jundi, Naffat etc) similar to what mongolians or early chinese have used. Example of the thick leather can be seen here Which protects against slashes of blades but is weak to blunt strikes due to not being a solid piece to hold off the impact. Unlike that the loyalists are being depicted of using which is more traditional western heavy armor mainly of plate pieces.
Also I fail to see how people think the refferences khalifate have to real world countries and religions is not okay. Loys refferencing to western medieval europe and chistianity is okay but refferencing to medieval or early asia and whatever religion there is not okay? How? Khals are historicaly correct and fantasy-like as loys are so I truly do not see the problem some people are having with them.

All in all the faction is great in my opinion with consistent design, theme and gameplay. I would like their original core conceptsto be kept and think that any major change both in balance or aesthetics would only be for the worse. Thank you!
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Temuchin Khan
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Temuchin Khan »

Thank you, storm lord! I always sensed that there was a problem with those critiques of the Khalifate, but I could never quite put my finger on it.
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iceiceice
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by iceiceice »

storm_lord wrote:Its not like nerfing a spearman, the loys can care less for a nerfed spearman with the amount of other strategies and answers they can come up with.
I agree with some of what you wrote but definitely not this. If you nerfed spearman damage by one point, I think it would have an enormous impact on balance and dramatically weaken the loyalist faction in all matchups.
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Whiskeyjack »

I can not speak for previous threads since I did not read them carefully (even if I remember being somewhat astounded about the great problems people have with passive and semi-religional references to stuff mostly gone for more than a thousand years), but in this thread I saw almost noone having a problem with the religious theme per se but rather one of the two following:

1) The Khalifate being not fantasy-ish with no magic and no magical creatures. This has absolutely nothing to do with religion and in my opinion is not a valid point since (like other people pointed out before me) the anti-magic-society is an established fantasy-trope as well and the percepted overly strong reference to medival arab people may stem from the fact that we have neither background story nor campaign for the califate so it just gets filled with other (non-fantasy) tropes we have in our heads.

2) The problem with Khalifate being a word for a muslim state. Now when I saw an earlier thread like I mentioned above, I could not really understand the problem. But in the meantime ISIL came up (or more like: came up in the general western view of the middle east conflict). And in my opionion this changed things greatly. For me personally it is a very insensible name if you think about the gruesome things that happen in the name of errecting such a Khalifate today. And most people (in the west) who are not historically sensibilized are more aware of the word because of recent events than because of history. And on this one point I believe almost all arguments made by iceiceice to be very bad comparisons:
- Paladins are a word known to most modern people through the fantasy genre and you had to look up with the wiki article to be able to bring it in the concrete context of history over a thousand years past. And while Holy Water is still in praxis today, it does not slaughter people for whatever (un)believes they hold (and I´m painfully aware of the fact that Isil is slaughtering anyone, Muslims included. That does not make the use of the word Khalifate any better, to express it sarcastically).

What I did not see (most) people complain about is the fact that a middle eastern-ish faction is included into the game. In fact I´m very hyped about it since the old medival europe fantasy starts to get boring in most cases and I always like it when someone brings in a different flavor and something inspired by other cultures (and of course you won´t be able to completely extinguish religion since culture is all about religion if you go at least a couple hundert years into the past). Comments here lead me to believe this was a problem in past threads but in the current one I mainly saw the concern for solely the name because of the connection to recent real-world events and no problem with the inclusion of a culturally muslim instead of christian flavored faction.

I would not have brought this up again since I can understand the problems this discussion has brought for you in the past if not for stormlord expressing his incomprehension for peoples problem with the religious references (which where not the problem in this thread, see above).

PS: I understood the point about this being no thing of the near future so I do not want to urge anything here, but just state that I´m one more person in favor of changing the name and I found some suggestions like Wassanid in this thread to have a very nice ring to it.

PPS: If anything of this sounds weird: My English is mostly selftaught by reading fantasy books and I do not intend to insult iceiceice or anyone else.
Last edited by Whiskeyjack on March 4th, 2015, 6:23 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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storm_lord
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by storm_lord »

I beg your pardon but I strongly disagree with the intention of changing the Khalifates name. The point of which it is said it needs a change to me is completely moot and in no way should it be considered seriously. You and possibly others as well feel sensible about the name Khalifate because of "gruesome events in history" related to that word.

Do I even need to begin to explain the "gruesome events" (which is putting it extremely lightly) that are related to the paladins and from there the crusades as well? Do you not feel offended or sensible about the hundreds of years of mindless slaughtering in the holy lands? Or maybe because they were muslims or maybe because you do not feel a connection to those people because they belong to a different culture or time?

When suggestions were brought up of changing loyalists to crusaders nobody bat an eye. But having a faction named khalifate is upsetting? I find such behaviour to be arrogant and hypocritical to say the very least. Were the crusaders not responsible for hundreds of years of slaughter? Who is to say which event in history was more gruesome? Or maybe you do not feel bad about the crusades because they were started from our guys? Because we are western people?

I strongly suggest that we stray far away from such discussions since I believe wesnoth's community is more mature than to delve into prejudices and hypocritical matters. You cannot choose for which refference in history you get offended about and to which you are not. If we begin such an argument it would have no end.

Or that is at least how I see it for myself. The game should not suffer because of the hypocritical personal bollocks of individuals.
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iceiceice
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by iceiceice »

I'll happily admit that not every argument I made in that thread was well articulated.

Let me try a different way to explain my point of view.

When I was college I used to listen to a musical group called Massive Attack. Fairly popular British group, electronic music "downtempo" "trip hop" "alternative" whatever you want to categorize it as. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Attack

Sometime in 2003 they changed their name to "Massive", out of concern that people would associate them with terrorist attacks, or whatever. It was the "Post 9/11 era", and nothing in that time can be apolitical. It doesn't matter that "Attack" is a term associated to sound engineering, and that this would surely be a more appropriate association than planes flying into building. It doesn't matter that it's just some goofy electronic musicians who surely mean no one any harm. It doesn't matter about artistic expression, about their right to identify themselves and their work with whatever name they choose. Their record label and their producer pressured them to change it. Not that I fault them for pressuring the band to change it -- if I were the guy whose job it was to look after the bottom line, I surely wouldn't want to risk it all over something like the name.

A little later they got rid of that producer and that label, and they want back to the old name. I'm sure they feel rather silly about the whole thing now.

In wesnoth, we have no profit motive. There is no "bottom line". To the extent that there is a "financial guy" it is Noy himself :lol: . But nevertheless, I wonder if the gap is not filled by a bunch of people who want to "look out for the project as a whole" and express all the concerns that a reasonable, corporate type would express.

I really don't like this argument "well many people may associate Khalifate primarily with ISIS". If they aren't going to use their brains, if they aren't going to try to figure out what Noy intended Khalifate to mean when they play the game, I don't particularly care what they think. If we don't care about making money off of them we should be free to ignore them, and make artistic expression as we like.

There are some things that are patently offensive, like if there was a campaign with Swastikas, or if there was a campaign that depicted violence against women. I fail to see that there's anything about the Khalifate faction that is offensive like that.

There's any number of potentially legitimate reasons to change the name, but I don't right now see "it's offensive" as one of them.
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Whiskeyjack »

@ iceiceice: Fair enough. I understand your point of view and even if mine is different I can accept that. I do think, that "not bowing down to terrorists" is probably the strongest argument for not changing the name and for me its a close call on which side to lean.

@ storm_lord: Sorry, but that post made me pretty angry, what probably was not in your intention:
You and possibly others as well feel sensible about the name Khalifate because of "gruesome events in history" related to that word.
If you try to put the crussades for modern western culture and christianity on the same level with ISIL now that is just awful. Let me explain that point to not get it wrong:
I do not mean that the crussades were´nt as bad or perhaps even worse (I´m never a fan of holding two evils against each other and saying: this ones the worse, because thats insensitive to the suffering of people involved. Its terrible in both cases and thats all). I will spare the discussion to differentiate about the crussades (childrens crusade, involved reasons etc. etc.) even if "the crusades" as only a slaughter of christian murderers on muslim people in Palestine is such a limited view of history that it makes my skin crawl. What I do need to mention is that your notion about Paladins seems wrong and you do not seem to have read what was written earlier in this thread. Paladins have nothing to do with the crusades. But that too is beside the point.
The point is, that you try to make this a christianity vs muslims kind of thing by comparing events that lie hundreds of years in the past with stuff that happens now. To add to the fact you also imply we (as in: the people that are for a name change) would see this as a problem because now it are "muslims" who commit the crimes.
First, like I tried to reason above this is obviously no christianity vs muslim thing since ISIL is mostly not waging war on christians but pretty much on anyone that does not hold their particular point of believes.
Second: Yes I do think there is a big difference between ISIL and the crusades and that is time. I would be against a faction named "crusaders" but that is again beside the point because my biggest problem is not, that ISIL is supposedly muslim. My problem that there is war right now in Iraq and Syria and there are people who are slaughtering other human beings today in the name of a Khalifate. And for me it is a kind of respect and sympathizing with the victims to be sensible around stuff like that. And no, I see no reason to personally sympathize with all the victims history ever produced because that would drive me insane. All I can muster for stuff that lies long in the past is understand what happened and sensibilize my view for stuff happening today all the more. I am NOT responsible for what happened in the crusades but I am responsible about my stance and action about things happening today.
Third: Noone seriously wanted to rename the Loys to Crusaders. The reason nobody bat an eye is that (apparently contrary to you) most people seemed to realize that the first 1,5 pages of this thread are heavy ironie and sarcasm. I have to confess excluding that stuff when I wrote my earlier post because obviously some people tried to make a point there in a different way. Mostly the same people afterwards reasonably argued, why they have one or both of the problems I mentioned following to this:
I can not speak for previous threads since I did not read them carefully (even if I remember being somewhat astounded about the great problems have with passive and semi-religional references to stuff mostly gone for more than a thousand years), but in this thread I saw almost noone having a problem with the religious theme per se but rather one of the two following:
To say this is about prejudices and therefore hypocritical just shows to me that you understood almost NOTHING I wrote and a lot of other stuff written in this thread too. This is not a muslim vs christian thing, but a past vs today thing.

Again: I see no problem with using words that are part of old history and have a different notion today like Paladin (and again, Paladin is not what you believe it to be...). I would not have a problem with Khalifate too if not for ISIL. I would have a problem with "Crusaders" because that word still has the (historically mostly correct) connotation of Christians waging war on Muslims today.
At this point I could throw this right back at you: Isn´t it your personal bollock to get offended by stuff that happened hundreds of years in the past and has almost nothing to do with you today in the same way people get offended by stuff happening right now?
Besides I do not feel offended by the name Khalifate but for me it is a point about not ignoring what happens in the middle east. I can understand that this is not everones way of emphasizing and like I wrote in my last post I do not expect people to follow my opinion on this. But I cannot let it stand to get my point of view distorted like that.

If something of my writing is offensive to you personally I want to apologize because I do not intend to insult you. I just wanted to express my rejection of some of the things you wrote. I´m not sure if I found the right words because this is a complex problem and there are quite a lot of things involved on different levels. Again, I´m not native and so I´m sometimes not sure about nuances of the stuff I write and sadly nuances can make all the difference in the internet...

Edit: To specify the point that made me angry (because I did not write this explicitely): It made me angry to see you write about Khalifate like it was a thing of history far away from today, like the crusades. My point is always about the Khalifate today and not in general. Because that makes all the difference.
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storm_lord
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by storm_lord »

@Whiskeyjack I can understand the reasoning on which you build your arguments, however I still cannot agree on and will do my very best to express on opinion against a change in the name of the Khalifate.

I understand that you feel a need to sympathise with the victims of the war happening now which involves a Khalifate. However I strongly stand behind the point that the very involvement of the same word is enough of a reason to change the name of the faction in wesnoth. Firstly, having the same name is in no way enough of a proof or a legitimate reason to draw strong or direct comaprisons between the two things. Khalifate has, does and always will mean a lot more than just what is happening in the middle east at this point in time. Secondly, I cannot see how individual interpretations of refferences of various things ingame to various things outside of it is enough of a reason to make a change to the game.
Also I really cannot see such an argument work for a game such as wesnoth for reasons more than one. Firstly, its a game about factions and people killing other factions of people. Do you know how many parallels I can draw even now between ingame refferences to real world disturbing or offensive matters? Where will that ever lead to? And is it necessary in the first place? Do these two worlds really need to be forced to influence the other?

If we even start taking an argument such as this as to change Khalifate's name well then what happens with the Fanatics faction with their units such as "Terrorist" and various scimitar or torch wielding antagonized and heavily archetyped arabian soldiers? What about the Slavers faction? What of the Holy Order faction? With their "Inquisition", "Crusader" and various other units along those lines. Don't muslim players (or anyone really) not have the right to raise an argument about being offended about such direct and strong refferences? About a "Holy Order" faction with units such as "Judgement"? Can they not find reletable events in recent history to ground their argument such as you do? How about all the outlaws? What if someone says he wishes to sympathise to something or someone somewhere sometime with something changed into the game?

Matters such as these ,along with your argument, are comical and in no way should they be considered seriously in my opinion in a fantasy based game of war which is created and built upon heavily objectified and steriotyped units and factions. We all draw parallels or refferences to various things simply because thats what humans do. But we (and in we I mean the creators of content and those enjoying it) cannot allow to let these personal and highly varying refferences of individuals influence our line of work in such a way. As iceiceice said, if they were carrying swastikas on their chests I could see your point. But talking about a word with thousand meanings such as khalifate is rediculous simply because it can be viewed and interpeted in many ways and in many different contexts. Your personal and individual interpretation is your own. Mine is my own as well. And to the creator of the Khalifate faction it is his own and the same applies to all players. We cannot start taking into account every individual interpretation or personal wishes to sypathise to something somewhere because that would lead to endless debates and constant changes of various things in the game.
If you say you personaly wish to sympathise with the victims of war you can certainly do so, but I fail to see how this should affect the product of wesnoth for everybody else, especially since the word in question is given its "disturbing" meaning as a result fo your own personal interpretation. The word as such, on its own, is as far as I know completely politically correct so I see no reason why we should assume that the Khalufate faction should change its name based on any of the points raised by now.
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Whiskeyjack »

You do realize that your whole argument pro Khalifate can be applied to the Swastika as well? It´s a symbol far older and with a lot more meanings than what the Nazis made of it. Perhaps you should stop trying to ridicule other peoples arguments with things like "comical", "hypocritical" and "arrogant" when you are unable to argue stringently and are so inconsistent that you disqualify your own words? (The argument that Khalifate has more meanings than the one ISIL gives it is not a bad argument per se...)
If we even start taking an argument such as this as to change Khalifate's name well then what happens with the Fanatics faction with their units such as "Terrorist" and various scimitar or torch wielding antagonized and heavily archetyped arabian soldiers? What about the Slavers faction? What of the Holy Order faction? With their "Inquisition", "Crusader" and various other units along those lines. Don't muslim players (or anyone really) not have the right to raise an argument about being offended about such direct and strong refferences? About a "Holy Order" faction with units such as "Judgement"? Can they not find reletable events in recent history to ground their argument such as you do? How about all the outlaws? What if someone says he wishes to sympathise to something or someone somewhere sometime with something changed into the game?
I have never seen any such faction or unit in Wesnoth and they are certainly not in mainline. Like people in this thread mentioned if you have the need to reenact the crusades in a historical campaign noone is going to stop you but thats a thing for the addon server. If you want to make a campaign about the moon Nazis again its up to you to do so but it will certainly never get mainlined. And the outlaws, seriously? This is about real world references on which Wesnoth has a semi official policy as far as I understand it correctly. Glorification of crime or whatever someone would want to make of this is a completely different topic.

Again there are strong arguments iceiceice made pro sticking with the name and for me it´s a close call as to wether I would change it or not. But while I personally would change it I never demanded someone do so. I just stated my opinion on the matter because
a) you asked how someone can take this stance and I wanted to explain this (and from your last post I understand that I was somewhat succesfull in that, it was never my intention to "convert" you to my point of view) and
b) because the result the discussion in this thread reached was to wait (it was technically impossible to directly change it anyway) and see how the actual release of the faction would be echoed in the community. Hence
I understood the point about this being no thing of the near future so I do not want to urge anything here, but just state that I´m one more person in favor of changing the name and I found some suggestions like Wassanid in this thread to have a very nice ring to it.
At this point I do not see the need to discuss this topic any further (since it was discussed way to much up to this point anyway) and the important statements happened, namely one person (you) adding their view that they are strongly against a change and one person (me) adding the view that they are pro a new name. I do not think we need to roll up the whole discussion because if we try to find a consent (which we probably won´t and we have nothing to decide anyway) we would have to start the whole drama the predecessors of this thread made anew.
Last edited by Whiskeyjack on March 4th, 2015, 9:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Aldarisvet
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Aldarisvet »

Hey, im from Russia, an im ok with Khalifate name of fraction. Arabian-like kingdoms is often in fantasy worlds, Forgotten Realms, Kalimshan, for example.
The only thing i want to say is that i dont like how Naffat-..-Teenen unit like. Yes, it looks like... terrorist. Just my opinion.
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Xalzar »

Aldarisvet wrote:Hey, im from Russia, an im ok with Khalifate name of fraction. Arabian-like kingdoms is often in fantasy worlds, Forgotten Realms, Kalimshan, for example.
The only thing i want to say is that i dont like how Naffat-..-Teenen unit like. Yes, it looks like... terrorist. Just my opinion.
Actually, it seems more Bedouin-like for me. And that is coherent in this faction, which is inspired by various ethnicites of Africa and Asia (Mongols, Persians, Arabs...). :eng:

On the "name" matter, I was once a fierce opposer of the actual one. Now I'm less interested in that subject, and more in the background of the faction and some gameplay issues.

But since the discussion changed back on that, I could make a little reasoning.

I strongly agree that Khalifate is a very bad choice now, but that is mitigated by the fact that the name was invented before the actual events. Nevertheless, it's still quite discomfortable (at the very least) today...but I'm confident that Wesnoth will endure for a longer time than ISIL, and then the name would belong to the past (even if recent past). But there's more.
I came to think that we should have the right to use a word for its true meaning, even if it's abused by others. Problem: the true meaning of the word is a religion-specific term, even if not so strong (in the sense that not everyone recognize this religious aspect immediately). Solution: there is urgent need for the faction background. :eng:
It was an error to include the faction in mainline without the racial description (and I think there was plenty of time for writing it...). Without it, arguments arise quite easily, because there is not an "official meaning" of Khalifate and everyone inteprets it in different ways (even I, ofc). Btw, I quite like the ideas which I read on another topic, on this subject.
I am not accusing the Developers, but retrospectively I can say than IMHO the whole thing could have been managed better, and harsh discussions avoided (mistakes happen, and nobody foresees the future). Ofc, it's no use to look at the past; I think we should spend our efforts to write down the faction background instead of spending energy discussing on the name. :hmm:
Whiskeyjack wrote:argument pro Khalifate can be applied to the Swastika as well? It´s a symbol far older and with a lot more meanings than what the Nazis made of it.
This and the Crusader name.

It's true, if Khalifate is accepted then also Crusaders could (the cited UMC faction is accepted afterall, and I think there are rules for UMCs on what could and what couldn't be published), for the same reasoning. Of course this doesn't mean that we must respect a sort of "par condicio" in the game (so keep calm and Loys remain as they are :P ).
With swastikas and other strong identifying symbols, the reasoning is the same? In a theorical way yes, but actually it seems that symbols are more strong than words in our minds. We tolerate the word "Nazi" of "swastika" better than drawn swastikas, for example. Why? I don't know, but it's a fact. Perhaps our mind works better in symbols.
So in the end the argument works good on words and worse on symbols and pictures.

Now, back on background and faction balance! :D
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by wolkenwand »

I disagree with using khalifate as a faction name. The four first khalifa ( الخلفاء الراشدون‎ or al-Khulafāʾu ar-Rāshidūn ) is very respected in muslim world. This is a matter of subjective point of view, as some might dont care with ( or hate ) these people and dont mind to use these name in any condition. Still hoping that the name changed someday, i dont mind the arabic theme ;) .

Sorry for out of topic :P
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Re: Khalifate Era

Post by Quetzalcoatl »

Hello,

I would like to repropose removal of Wesnoth Khalifate from 1.13 (as beta is already out). The reasons (still valid) are:

- it doesn't fit BfW guidelines (no religion in game - khalifate is religious construct),
- it doesn't fit BfW theme (fantasy game - kahlifate is "realistic" faction),
- no progress on addressing existing issues / faction development:
a) no statement on name change after 3 years,
b) hardly playable,
c) unbalanced,
d) non mainline quality.

Apparently Wintermute is inactive for years now so its impossible to do anything. Furthermore Noy original creator isn't interested in his creation or in this game anymore so no progress whatsoever is possible. Whats disappointing is fact that even being while they both being aware of controversy/problem no action whatsoever has been taken.

My proposal would be: remove faction _for_now_ -> find new people and give them control over faction development -> make faction match BfW quality (balance) / theme (fantasy) / guidelines (no religious reference) -> re-include it in mainline client later on after resolving issues.

Cheers
Q
Ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred without a head.
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