anonrerising | It's All Made Up, Anyway.

"The Battlelisk familiars from Warrior's Way have had their blades removed from their legs, as this positioning too closely referenced a blood sport that abuses roosters."

I can see the reasoning, but I really wish they had found a way to repurpose the blade rather than removing it entirely, since as it is the new battlelisks have literally no Warrior's Way theming over regular basilisks unless you count the tiny masks :/

I think the reasoning is rather silly. Let's have an entire event themed around battling (clearly referencing that last year's champion was killed), with knives and weapons. But a familiar that vaguely resembles real blood sport? No that's too much.

Better retire the battlemares as well, since it's referencing cavalry horses. Dragging horses into human wars isn't animal welfare either.

Sometimes I really am unsure what exactly FR staff really want to take the direction of some things. I feel like the staff wants to have some slightly rough violence ideas in the game, but either a combination of the players or maybe their rating that is actively restricting them.

And what’s wrong with a historical reference to things? Players get to learn more stuff from history and understand what makes it bad. Jeez

in this case its the players. there were multiple complaints / discourse Moments about how the battlelisks resemble cockfighting and how its offensive. not sure why this specific one is suddenly worse than the other historically accurate references to violence. i definitely feel that some of it is people concern trolling because they're mad about UMA gore/blood rules and want to force the staff to be more PG.

I don't care much either way but fwiw cock fighting is still very common in some parts of the world and not just a historical thing

Yeah this seems racist af

Do you mean removing the cock fighting reference? Because uh. Even if cultures still practice it that doesn’t make it not animal abuse. There’s a reason alternatives to bull fighting happened, to preserve the harmless (well, mostly. Still really dangerous for the person) part of the practice without it still being cruel. Bloodless bull fighting is basically all the showing off without any of the horrible prolonged death (or any death. Which means bulls can actually be used more than once)

It’s not like saying its cruel to raise x species as livestock or cruel to hunt x species. There’s practices that can either be updated to be less cruel or practices that should be dropped in general because there is no way to make it not cruel.

Re: WW status update

(Anonymous) - 2022-09-04 19:38 (UTC) - Expand

It's the players. This isn't the first time they've made an abrupt change due to someone starting Discourse (remember when the serthis were nagas? Then lamias for five seconds before they changed it again because people were still discoursing?)

There’s a difference between fights to the death and a friendly competition. Last years champion wasnt killed during the festival. They died because they were an idiot and tried to solo an emperor. In fact if I remember the lore brochure properly there’s not really supposed to be death during the festival.

its dumb but I already done knew that fr staff make some wild decisions based solely on how many people complain about something.

Idk how many of you know this but in real life cock-fighting, they do actually put little knives on the roosters spurs. I can completely understand where the people who were complaining were coming from, if you know about the "sport" it would be a very disturbing reminder of it to see. I can also see where, if you didn't know about it, you wouldn't be able to see it. Or even if you did you might not see it, heck i knew about it and didn't make the connection until i saw the argument against it. I wasn't one of the ones arguing for a change but i'm not super upset about it either. Also it's a bit of a stretch to say "why not do that with battlemares". One is a bloodsport pitting animal against animal for the sake of human "entertainment" and money. The other is a tamed herd animal that has bonds with it's riders taking them into battle. You really can't compare them.

I've always known about the sport, I made the connection, I wasn't disturbed. I think its a little condescending to assume the only people who dislike the change just didn't know, you yourself even admit to not having been disturbed despite being familiar with the concept.

i get where you are coming from but you could say the exact same about many other parts of the site that nobody ever complains about. battlestones like "shred" and "eliminate" pretty explicitly reference violence and murder, and when used they're killing countless creatures in the coliseum, many of whom are directly inspired by IRL animals. meat and seafood items dropped in the coli sometimes depict severed limbs or hunks of meat and bone, meaning that these coliseum animals are actively being killed, butchered, then consumed much like in the real world.

why does the cockfighting reference go too far when nobody bats an eye at the vast majority of the coliseum? since its inception FR has taken aspects of the real world and added a fantasy element to them, which includes things with cartoon-ified violence.

DA
Agreed here. I would understand why there would be backlash if the familiars were an explicit reference or glorification of cockfighting, like if their flavor text involved them competing in any way, but they don't? And falconry hoods have nothing to do with cockfighting either. So there was no objective reason to perceive any more animal-harm than usual.

When the entire dragons VS beastclans lore is essentially just watered down colonial genocide, but we're all able to suspend our disbelief on that one, this just seems like the most pedantic shit to get up in arms about.

oh not this shit again

Re: WW status update

(Anonymous) - 2022-09-03 21:15 (UTC) - Expand

Wow, great double standard. I (like some other players) mentioned starting with announcement thread that gaoler gnarlhorn'ed claws look uncomfortably close to how dog claws look on like on severely neglected dogs and perhaps those can be adjusted somewhat - got ridiculed. Tiny blades on random familiars got fixed immediately. Absolutely amazing.

If it helps, I think you both are ridiculous

^^

they didn’t change it because of players whining. the staff had solid reasoning and came to their own conclusions. and frankly i wish i could block anyone who’s up in arms about ~aesthetic~ and ‘whiny playerbase’ when the staff CHOSE to remove what they came to view as a reference to animal abuse. wah wah things are being sanitized and the chicken familiar i barely looked at for more than five seconds before the drama got changed :’( jfc who cares, if you’re upset about an art asset being cEnSoReD you’re ten times more annoying than people who were rightfully unhappy with the implication of horrific animal abuse.

I don't know what you were expecting by purposefully going into a thread where people would be expressing views you wish you could block them over. Have you considered closing the thread and doing something else

sa
this is a wider issue than this thread though, i blocked several players for complaining about it onsite :shrug:

but this was an art asset that the FR staff DREW and APPROVED before adding it to the site, this isnt some usermade thing that the admins suddenly discovered and said "hey we cant have this on our site!!!" this is official onsite art.

they evidently were okay with it until people started complaining about it and then decided to quell the drama by just removing them. idk how you can interpret that any other way

Undel said she didn't approve the final art tho. So it's entirely possible she saw it after the fact and decided against it.

Source:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220903225059/https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/frd/3166048/11

Anon i dont have any stake in this fight (i think the whole things kinda a nothingburger on both sides tbh) but undel explicitly says "I approved the original familiar" in that link

She also says "and no, I didn't know what they looked like when I did so." In that same sentence.

Now I don't really care as I haven't been active and thus missed warriors way and didn't know what the fans looked like but I just have to ask.......why approve something she straight up didn't see like....I'm going into game development and I have classes where we are making a game as a team over the semester and I make sure even the smallest of things that change visually gets someone higher up eyes on it and approval before I move on. Mostly because I'm paranoid but also to make sure it still works with the theme/idea. So the whole 'approving without actually laying eyes on it' thing straight up *baffles* me.