Yeah guy, I read the Thief of Heart post, that's why I was messaging you. I can see how that Thief was being a creep, and between that and all my coplayers thinking I'm deranged, I figured I'd try and get some advice on how to be better.
Real shame then, that your advise is basically "don't feel the way you feel asshole". Not helpful!
The reason I mentioned not respecting my coplayers is because I'm *AWARE* that might be a fucking problem. But I can't help how I feel.
You can tell me I'm not the main character all you want, but how am I supposed to internalize that, when so far, I just keep wining? You say Sburb will punish me for it, but that proves nothing, because the game punishes everybody for everything. I don't actually trust it's sense of moral judgment.
To be fair, most of the time I get messages like the previous one it's from someone who has done 0 introspection whatsoever, and the "go for the throat and call them fundamentally unlikeable" strategy is enough of a psychic shock to get people to fall out of their chair and start thinking. But I will give it a second try.
So when I say "SBURB's usual response to the I JUST CAN'T STOP WINNING attitude is to knock you down a peg", I'm not making a moral statement or that you deserve to stop winning so you eat humble pie to the face. It's a statement of fact, that anytime someone becomes too certain of something, the game pulls the rug out from under them, because it's "dramatically appropriate" and "provides an interesting narrative". A Thief sending a statement like "I don't feel anything when I get one over on an Underling, beating them is the bare minimum" reads identically to a Waste saying "I love being so powerful and outputting so much energy, there is literally no downside to this class". It's also a statement that "Thief wins forever" is a temporary state. Even if Underlings are kinda stupid and it's unsatisfying to outplay them, the game can throw enough of them at you that it still becomes a puzzle. A Thief of Mind can probably render them brainless or rob them of their ability to make optimal decisions, but doing that while 20 Imps try to mob you, an Ogre is throwing boulders, or a Lich is handing out psionic mind-whammys is a bit much. Not to mention the Dersite Agents (who are much more competent and ruthless than your average Carapacian), your Denizen (no more needs be said here), or the many issues the game will just throw at you (BUGS BUGS BUGS). Not to mention, you're not ALWAYS a Thief, right? So I was basically doubting the factual and logistical merits of that claim.
On that note, I don't imagine "I don't respect my coplayers as people and part of my self-actualization revolves around being a jackass to them" is a brainpoison that only kicks in when you become a Thief and it stops happening when you unbecome a Thief, because that would be a bit silly, so I'll dispense with the overtly game-theory frippery and get down to business and engage in Amateur Psychology. My first observation being that you realized you had a shortcoming, messaged me about this vulnerability with the intention of getting help, and when I brushed off any attempt at actually helping in you favor of essentially calling you an emotionally stunted cognitive nonentity, you got rather pissed off. You were probably thinking that hey, that's a really fucking unfair read of your character, right? Sure, you have your faults, but you also have a lot of things going in your favor, and you like to imagine you're an all-around decent person. So the fact that I not only discounted your entire being, but then turned your message (about a shortcoming you have enough humility and self-awareness to acknowledge and want to fix) into a public spectacle, a huge joke at your expense, and a denunciation of your worth as a person, is somewhat bothersome.
I won't continue this format because I think the point has been made, but if I don't have the right to treat you however I want under the reasoning of "I don't respect you because I'm so much better than you (several replays under my belt, huge brain, huger meat, mildly successful pitsblog)", then you should rethink your stance towards your coplayers. That's me attacking the intellectual basis of how you feel, but there's an instinctual/emotional basis here that only you can deconstruct. Namely by socializing with and attempting to take an interest in them. As a baseline, "one-hour meeting once every week, not necessarily in person" is a good strategy for maintaining mental health, camaraderie, and cooperation (in roughly that order), but you can do more. Organize dungeon raids, especially the ones that NEED another player. If you're facing some sort of trouble, you can ask for help, either over a chat client or by doing Soulsian Jolly Cooperation. Active Class =/= doing the entire game by yourself, you just need to fulfill the conditions of your Title within a team dynamic. "You distract him and draw aggro while I sneak around and mess him up" is perfect for Thieves and Rogues. Sidenote, but why do so many people go through MULTIPLE sessions solo, struggling with the difficulty and the loneliness the entire time, when Unbreakable Unions (which literally give you free RP and a unique ability when you do them right) are right there?
But even outside of the game, it's a good idea to Touch Grass and chat, or organize social events sometimes. You don't have to like everybody, and some dudes are spiritually coworkers in the body of a replayer, but there's still value in it. I had a guy who would marathon those old black and white cowboy TV programs, the mildly-to-extremely racist and sexist ones and sometimes Ronald Reagan is in there. It didn't do anything for me, and I was questioning the dude's ability to critically consume media the entire time, but we at least had something we could talk about. Not to mention there was, and I'm not even kidding, one movie with an honest to god Samurai as one of the main characters, decades before the jokes about "samurai and cowboy flicks are the same" meme was a thing. It's called Red Sun, look it up.
The final thing I'll note is that you said that Thieves are about gaining independence, which means stepping on other people's toes. I won't dispute the first part, all Active Classes are some variant of "be really cool and awesome". Thieves take all the rewards and all the power for themselves, Pages are walking combat machines who Doomguy their way through SBURB, Witches are neck-deep in inscrutable mysteries and they literally aren't even allowed to let the other players know how much mystery they're in or what's going on. So being an Active Class is basically the game giving you a license to be "really really cool". But as we all know, the archetype of "cool well-liked guy who's an asshole to everybody else and views coolness or whatever as a zero-sum game where it's not enough for him to win, everyone else has to lose" is oftentimes a bitter and insecure loser who, regardless of whether or not he eventually slips up and loses it all, can never actually enjoy the fruits of his success, because he's too busy making sure nobody else gets to taste his apples. It does not have to be this way. I may be "the smartest motherfucker in the room", but this isn't comparative. If I lose my status as a walking encyclopedia who knows how to put it all into action because somebody else knows a thing or two about the game, or can come up with an ingenious plan, then I never really had it in the first place, I was just the biggest intellectual fish amid a pond of drooling babies. If I can remain a genius even when I roll into a session full of other scholars and prodigies, then your independence and ability to perpetually accumulate can survive integration into a greater whole without having to undercut your contemporaries. Do you understand what I am saying?