Jun 25th 2010, 18:28:33
When alliance operated under strict political confines that the leadership of all alliances bought into and enforced suiciding made sense. Then if you used special attacks you were effectively suiciding because you could expect to die immediately. Often times a country would self-delete or drop all acres which is how the term "suicide" really came to be. That was when people thought there was no justification for a standard strike other than one standard strike in return.
When alliances moved to land:land, and acknowledged that not all attacks are equal, that is when the whole notion of retaliating in one specific way went out the window. Land:land retals say "you may have hit me once, but we're not equal until I get complete revenge." This was a serious point of contention amongst alliances and caused a number of ideological rifts between clans. This is when standard policy that all alliances believed in became antiquated. 1:1,2:3,3:6,4:10,5:farm/kill were the old standard but a number of alliances chose to adopt independent policies and enforced them or didn't as they were able. This debate raged for years and in some circles is still a debate. Even with land:land retals most alliances abhored retaliating with special attacks. This was for a number of reasons - one it is hard to quantify apples and oranges. Is an SS worth one AB or two? Does it depend on the results? Is it FAIR to attack in some way I might not be anticipating? Mostly it was because people didn't want to have to defend themselves "appropriately". they would rather use collective political power to strong arm people into operating within their confines. This worked to the benefit of many who rubbed each others backs for a long time and just exploited the rest. I certainly know I was involved in that system.
Now, however, things are different again. An increasingly large fraction of the population are fed up with the status quo. People are tired of overbearing policies driving players from the game. There are alliances who choose to farm individuals and clans that they consider easy prey. That is of course something they are allowed to do but it is not something they are ENTITLED to do, which seems to be a point of contention. When people reject their farming, when people stand up to them and say no more, they get upset if that is done in any fashion beyond standard land grab retals. You can't blame them for being upset, I suppose. They have it ingrained in their minds that millions of turrets protects your country from all harm. They feel like they signed up to play a game where you are only allowed to use troops and tanks and missiles and spies if one alliance formally declares war on the other on the game forums.
That mindset is not the rules of the game though, and people realize that and are responding to oppression any way they can. Reacting to repeated land grabs in any way you see fit is legal. It is within the rules. It is fair. Suiciding, or perhaps a better term is "full force retaliation" is perhaps only suicide if that brings around their death. Are the people who farm willing to kill every country that they attack and responds that way? They are welcome to, of course, but I can't imagine that is a way to achieve maximal networth, which I believe to be their general goals.
Full force retaliation is here to stay. It is not suiciding, you don't kill yourself and you are just trying to send a message and go on your way. It may not be officially policy of anyone, but it is not breaking the game and it is not unjust. It is a reaction to being back into a corner and getting poked with a stick over and over and over. If you don't like it, don't provoke it.