I received my first few messages from plunderees, but none matched the one attached.
*Facepalm laughs at the PoC stereotype shaming*
As a person who cares to shift the zeitgeist in that regard... That's why education will always be touted as needed for people like this. Only bad or ignorant racists will believe that skin color will affect kleptomania. Socioeconomic status, location & culture would be the bigger salient variables for someone 'stealing'.
Then again, stereotype usage is also a good way to track ignorance in humans. Another reason why education > worrying about reinforcing negative stereotypes... especially in a video game where there is no way to determine if the avatar matches the player.
Unless you sent an intimidating message in Ebonics & declared something racial to get em riled up, I think we can safely assume they, unfortunately, need more education on stereotypes and how to better work for what they want in society.
Regardless, Pillage them some more. Maybe change your avatar to another PoC or a whitie and send em a message asking if the change is helping with stereotypes.
Why in God's name do people keep playing a game that they clearly despise? Your stress level will come down and the rest of us won't have to listen to you.
I know it was mostly rhetorical, but I have a weakness to answer those kind of questions.
I believe there are multiple variables at play. One being the anger you describe with these people ending up despising the game. They like the game, but only X bits, so when the Plunder part 'interrupts' their X bits they get angry. Instead of understanding the bigger picture of the game (and the relatively minor lose plunder is, in said big picture) they get mad at the interruption. Those darn plunderers! So the anger is directed at them. They find other fellow players in the same boat and try to figure out what to do about it. Since they do not try to adapt their style or care understand how they could adapt, they narrow their options in the usual threads we see. Plunderers bad -> Inno allows plundering -> Inno bad & must change it!
Thankfully, this group is a small minority. Most players adapt in some way to plundering. The small minority that trickles through to the 'will not adapt, learn or empathize' are taking that stress and throwing it as us in the forums. It's their only route of 'therapy' due to the limitations they have placed on themselves. On the plus side, assuming these complaining types are earnest in their stress and do not have troll ulterior motives, they sort themselves real quick. They either quit, or hopefully a few of us give them guidance to adapt their city.
Anybody that complains more than once about pillaging, is either trolling or falls in line with your description. To avoid their existential dread of investing time in a game they 'like' but don't want it 'ruined' by that god-awful 'pillaging', they vent their frustration, reseal the breach from the existential dread and go back to collecting every 24/48 hours.
That's my theory at least. I rarely see anyone earnestly argue & discuss a banning of pillaging. The ones that do 'argue' have a distinct way of ignoring the other side of the argument to favor their narrow view. After a certain point, I label em trolls or the blindly selfish & closed-minded. I stop investing energy in the argument and thread, unless other fellow forum posters make some interesting point.
Anywho, all that, just so I can say: They don't despise the game, they love it. They love it so much it drives a few of them to an extreme point of view that removing pillaging will somehow make it the perfect harmonious paradise of a game.
Then again, I also think the opposite of love is apathy. So anger & despise can potentially be argued to be a shade of love or passion. As we've seen is many of the 'ban pillaging' threads, their passion is usually a flash in the pan.
On the plus side, I think cultural settlements will be a nice bolster to our arguments against the few anti-pillagers that pop-up. A side settlement, immune to pillagers that gives prizes that are effectively immune as well.
Merry Pillaging all Y'alls.