#we're WAY past the sunk cost fallacy point and into 'if I stay it's only out of sheer spite'

[drkineildwicks]

oh my god, I didn't know httydragongrounds was still going! I left the group/da in general a few years ago, haha. if it's not too much of a hassle... I would love to hear about the mod drama that's happened lmao

Yeah, it's still around--finally joined it...eh, couple years ago after watching it for a while...gotta say it was before Eclipse was put into effect because that just--utterly destroyed DA for me and really made groups suffer in general (group submission expired? Hey what if DA decided to clear that out of your feed so you can never find the comments on the piece again?).

Okay buckle up naughty children it's time for Kineil Rants:

(under the cut because OH BOY HOWDY IT GETS LONG AND SALTY)

Since eclipse made working on DA a chore, I joined up with the Discord server for HTTYDragonGrounds. It was fun for a while, yes, but eventually I left because of said drama. Let's get into it.

HTTYDG is, as a rule, very, VERY strict with designs. Like, painfully strict. Like I have sworn off doing light-colored dragons strict. But the issue for me came from doing up the actual info. Because see, I'm a fast reader, and to me it makes sense to have the current stats on the far right side, so you can see where you are with it at a really quick glance. So it looks like:

Base stats -> max stats -> current stats

Which has been approved before, but starting a couple of months ago one of the mods INSISTED that it be like this:

base stats -> current stats -> max stats

And no amount of explaining that it would be more convenient for me, the person using the ref nine times out of ten, would change their mind. The order they insisted on was nonsensical to me and I said as much, and I said on the discord channel that I would insist on that order, partially out of protest, partially out of spite.

The mod's response?

Basically, "If you keep this up, I will make life miserable for you."

This is a MOD. Saying this IN PUBLIC. Not a back-door threat, in front of witnesses.

What made it worse was that everyone on the channel at the time jumped up and onto the mod's side, so it kind of ended up looking like those shunning circles you see in high school dramas. Yeah this is basically high-school levels of pettiness.

IT GETS BETTER THOUGH.

My thing had some actual points because some people would have difficulties reading in certain ways so this is actually kinda excluding to those people. But shortly afterwards someone on the channel got their way on a seven-year-old rule because they just kept complaining about it all day. No amount of pointing out that it would be appealing to a minority at best or saying it was an established rule changed anything, they weaponized 'inclusiveness' and then got what they wanted.

Again, the majority including the 'impartial' mods hopped on their side.

By this point these incidents, coupled with some nasty religious/political comments, made me leave the discord channel. And then shortly afterwards, I discover that an alligator!Loki dragon was allowed through. Like, you couldn't even tell the base dragons, it was just alligator!Loki.

Basically, tl;dr, HTTYDG has turned into what amounts to a "good ol' boys" clubs run by the senior members, and they're able to get away with it because the founder, who has the last say on everything, has been mostly absent due to health reasons for several years now and they've just taken advantage of that. I like the dragons, it's really the only HTTYD ARPG out there, but good night has it become pretty scummy.

...Oh gosh apparently I've been bottling this up for a while...yeah outside of just minding your own business the group has gone downhill and that's just sad to me considering the fun I used to have with it. :\

Hope you enjoyed the salt-fest, and thanks for an excuse to get it off my chest! ^v^/