Assembly Hall

I noticed this looking over DUST stuff, and it bothered me.

In RP, no-one seems to be blameless in the struggles between the empires.
Right now, Gallente and Minmatar are crushing their enemies in FW. Amarr and Caldari need a bit of a boost if anything.
When I look at the descriptions of the empires, the words that are pushed the hardest for each empire make Gallente and Minmatar out as the epitome of all that is good and noble and apple pie, while portraying Caldari and Amarr as evil. "Dictatorial". "Slavers".

Amarr has been making a lot of strides toward ending slavery. We have nice people! We do good things! Really we do! We honestly arent any worse than the old British Empire.

Caldari are hard-working and independent people! They're big on collective action and the good of the many! And they're fighting for their independence!

Meanwhile, you have Gallente which is always portrayed as good and noble and wonderful. Gallente would never invade anyone! They just have.. "Humanitarian police actions" and "Occupy" planets and "Assist" them to set up "peaceful, democratic governments by the people" that somehow are always run by a Gallente representative and perfectly echo the will of the Gallente government. That's known as imperialism where i'm from..

And Minmatar is all about "reclaiming their heritage", thats fine and dandy, but they dont seem to mind being repressive and whatnot while they do it, and they seem like they're a lot more concerned with recreating their traditions than they are with, you know, feeding their people or having a coherent government system...

People like to be the good guys, and they flock to the "good" side, and i'd appreciate it if the people who wrote the descriptions for each empire would work harder to try to muddy the issue of which of the empires was which on the material that people first see.

It's pretty hard to put a positive spin on an empire who's policy is literally 'we will invade your planet and enslave your people because god told us to.'

It's all very well saying they're taking strides to end it, but there's still the whole seven hundred years of oppression for us Minmatarr, and the full third of us still in chains.

I'm pretty sure you're playing a different game than me.

And, by extension, an invasion.

Though, you're quoting stuff that I don't believe I've seen before. Got a source? I don't doubt the 'liberation' invasion thing, but you're making **** up with the Mary Sue bit.

Well, if you're a Western liberal, an empire built on slavery and an empire built on social Darwinism is going to be seen as "bad guys" because these belief systems are offensive to us. You are simply imposing your RL Western beliefs on the game, where only one of four faction could be considered "Western".

Also, when the Caldari won all the systems in 2009, there were lamentations about pro-Caldari bias from CCP. Your point is redundant.

You really can't expect introductory paragraphs to be that in-depth. When I read that, all empires are portrayed as having good qualities.

But I can tell from this that you like democracy, dislike slavery, dislike ruthlessness. What if I don't like democracy, like slavery and like ruthlessness, especially that the latter tends to get stuff done far quicker?

There wouldn't be any issue of bias at all. This is all perspective.

While I agree the initial reaction to slavery is negative, that is due only to our preexisting views. Slavery in the empire is a completely different thing than that of the British Empire, or modern society.

Slavery in Amarr history, past and present, is done due to the sacred duty we are given in the form of the Reclaiming. We are supposed to spread our faith, and slavery is a piece of that process. At least the way that I understand it, slavery is intended more as a rehabilitative tool. While you can dispute that with examples of those who simply treat slavery as it is on earth, it does not change the intent and purpose of it in New Eden and the Amarr Empire.

"God named them the rightful masters of the world [20] and tasked the Amarr, through the leadership of the Amarr Emperor, with conquering the fallen people of the universe and bringing them back to His grace" quote. And later, "The Reclaiming is viewed as a sacred duty, with Amarr citizens required by God to teach and guide the other races toward the Amarr faith. Slavery is thus necessary penance for refusing to embrace God."

Remember, that slaves are not necessarily going to remain as slaves for their whole life either. At least the way I read it, proper rehabilitation is supposed to lead to the resulting freedom of the slaves.

Basically, while I know what you're getting at, I don't view this as a problem for the Empire. If anything, it should encourage a second look if someone is interested in getting deeper into the story and lore in the game. And yes, even if the Minmatar weren't existent, I do think it is an important part of the background

As far as the other empires, well sure it depends on your perspective, and the relevant subfaction, but none of them are any 'better' than the Amarr. Caldari are an authoritative regime that has a strict duty-based system, which allows for little at least public freedoms. Gallente call themselves a democracy, but there is a lot of propaganda there covering things up, I would imagine both internally and externally. As for the tribals who call themselves a republic, these are the terrorist insurrectionists in New Eden. Now is that due to my bias, maybe, but there is definitely precedence there supporting that claim. In fairness, I have not studied the other factions nearly as much as I would have liked, so I apologize if I was incorrect in anything that I said in regards to the other empires.

If you want people to see more (negative or positive) of a specific faction, they need to actually be interested in looking at it in the first place. And if they are willing to look at the lore, they will. I'm sure they can find 'negative' aspects by simply looking into the established history and lore of the different empires, so I don't think it is necessary to adjust the intro paragraphs.

I can understand that, but the truth is that the people who care about the background are going to look into it themselves, and they will find it all out anyway.

For a single paragraph description, they do a pretty good job on describing key information on all of the empires. Even the Federation and Republic, because depending on where you live, the very words Federation and Republic suggest more freedom than State or Empire do, which could be considered bias. Really though, it's just the way the empires are, and at least personally, I like what they did with it.