Torn is great. And most players are friendly. Until you mildly annoy one those certain long time players who have been around forever. Then they ensure an army of people destroy you in every way. And often over something meaningless and petty.
And it really doesn't take much. That's why I rarely post in the forums about even the most mundane things. Even trying to post my personal experiences as non-binary was met with an barrage of the most dehumanizing crap I have ever seen, most coming from people here claiming to be non-binary. All because I explained how my experience was different from the original poster.
I barely even talk to players I don't know because this behavior is certainly not limited to the forums.
Yeah, I have seen whiners and idiots in the forums, but usually the reaction is a mob of delighted a-hiles piling on who to see just who can be the most brutally destructive. There's some who do it in a friendly and light hearted way, but once the mob has formed those voices get drowned out fast.
I won't say this is the worst, but it is brutal in ways I don't think most gamers have much experience with: being targeted nonstop for lengthy periods of time by entire communities who never let go of a good target for their sadism.
Ok. After reading most of the first 5 pages, here's my 2 cents:
Is a single person assuming this is intentional racism anything other than a white American?
As someone who isn't (and has been on the receiving end of plenty of actual intentional racism as well as other blatant gender discrimination), it certainly seems like the people trying so hard to be offended are just like all the other American white saviors trying to be offended on the behalf of us folks who only get offended at actual intentional racism.
To be honest, I feel that savior complex crap to be not only dehumanizing but also infinitely more racist than a kinda sorta racist name (racist if you're a white American "progressive" at any rate).
Maybe ask the player about their name before ASSuming too much. That was brought up in this thread and it does not seem to even register as an option to all the wannabe saviors around here.
If you think there are racists in every bush, stop be surprised when you see them behind every bush.
Maybe they are racist. Maybe they intended it to be racist. But I see zero actual evidence of said racism.
I see a lot of players in this thread (and all of these threads) basically talking about how people shouldn't expect to be treated like human here. Talking about how the brutality was shocking for them but now their used to it and if you can't learn to be like that then f off. Telling everyone to not post in forums of in chat because it makes you a target.
Regardless of the op and whether they "deserve it," perhaps this mindset is why so many of these posts about getting crushed keep popping up.
As for new players, yeah there's a lot. Retention rates are piss poor, though. Far worse than any of the many browser games I have played at length. But Torn seems to have really cranked up the targeted ads even more than since I joined up, so retention rates don't need to be high.
I'm not a qualified expert or anything, just an old person with a whole lot of life experience, a whole lot of learning, and a whole lot of regrets. So take my advice with more than a few grains of salt.
Seems to me that you are really the dad in this situation already. I think it may be time to act like a dad should. Don't reward his bad behavior. Stop bailing him out and force him to deal with the consequences of his own actions. You don't have to cut him off or ghost him; you can always be available to talk or hang out or whatever you do together, but make it clear he gets no more help out of bad situations he has gotten himself into. You can be supportive and help him contact organizations that exist to help out people in his situation, but make some very clear (and it seems very reasonable) boundaries.
Unless there is nothing redeemable or good in him whatsoever, I'd highly discourage completely eliminating him from your life. Burning bridges is a dangerous habit that is surprisingly easy to develop (and almost never turns out for the better). One thing that makes people human is that human connection. The less of it one has, the less connection one has to humanity.
I sort of collect bottle caps. Stored them in my bazaar. Had to keep raising the prices because my collection kept getting bought out at absurd prices. Guess I'm not the only bottle cap collector. Back up to 3400ish after another week or two.
I've put the price so high now that no sane person will buy any of them.
White Bengal Tigers are naturally occurring and can be found in the wild in India.
There are unscrupulous people who think they look cool and have been trying to breed them in captivity resulting in inbreeding and all sorts of genetic issues, but they are not, in fact, a result of inbreeding.
Most people with a bazaar are NOT full time traders and don't spend hours on it.
I do buy and resell (or did) for good ROI. But it was income I could make by spending a few minutes here and there every day. That is no longer a realistic option for me (or the hordes of people, especially newer people) to pick up some side cash. Hits hard after nerfing flying income for those of us that log in fairly often but don't have hours at a time to devote to another full time (fake online) career.
I made a lot of cash by playing smarter, bot harder. Now the option to play smarter is all bit gone. Instead, this change will primarily benefit the handful of full time traders already established and (maybe) the people who are good at all the bs self promotion crap.
This is contrary to what I have seen. The changes that make playing more of a chore and/or eliminate/nerf income are not eventually liked. They are still hated; players just get tired of shouting into the void, where at best they are subjected to condescending, demeaning replies from the usual suspects about how everyone who doesn't like reducing the fun of the game is a stupid cranky basement dwelling incel loser who deserves a horrible fate.
Maybe if the changes didn't keep forcing me to spend more time and effort to make less imaginary money (which has been the result of every major change since I started playing), people wouldn't b*tch so much.
And maybe the backlash wouldn't be so over the top if the criticisms were taken seriously and not met with some of the most dehumanizing abuse aimed at the fan base since Disney decided to only make entertainment for white upper middle class college kids and discovered people were sick of all the "improvements" dictated from upon high for the sake of us lowly peasants too stupid ro know what's best for us.
I play Torn because it is not like other games, not because the same carbon copy mmorpg crap getting cranked out nonstop.
I don't want Torn to turn into every other mmorpg (only with worse graphics and a much slower pace). I want it to stay a game where it's hard to explain because it doesn't fit the mold. I love that they want to improve and add, but maybe they should stick to creation that appeals to the casual player, which is the bulk of the player base. Yeah, they make the money from the hard core folks, but without the large player base, how long will that keep up?
You click on a forum where every post is limited to a single sentence when it begins to dawn on you that you have inadvertently stumbled upon a sentence which, although at first glance seems reasonable, is actually a parasitic psychic time-vampire trap that leaves you helpless to break away as it sinks its nefarious mind-tentacles into the depths of your brain, pulling you further and further in while you desperately search for grammatical inconsistencies in the ever expanding horror story built from an ever-stretching run-on (but, from a technical standpoint, grammatically correct sentence while simultaneously being unacceptably lengthy by any modern day conventional standards of written language [not to mention containing entirely too many standalone sentence fragments, more unecessary descriptors than any respectable teacher and/or professor would tolerate, and a deliberately blatant use if the Oxford comma just for fun]) sentence, but instead of finding what you seek your mind instead slowly degrades further and further into a maelstrom of madness as you try to see the light at the end of the infinity sentence which is final word as you careen through the dark tunnel of pointless metaphor, all while longing for the sweet release which is an end to the tumultuous tsunami of a slithering sentence that shuns the very notion of reaching a finale or conclusion, eventually leaving your brain a mushy lump of useless gray goo unable to to allow you to so much as wipe a tiny bit of the rapidly expanding river of drool escaping your paralyzed, empty mind like it owes Duke about three-fitty.