@celina: heh, im not scared of droods. i'd fight you 1v1 or 5v1 if you let me pick my team.

Honestly, this was the comment that really upset me.

The entire thing, including the last sentence having been tagged onto the first block of... stuff.

There does seem to be a lot of idiotic things being said, for instance, a lot of people saying "Yeah, well, maybe this IS over powered, but OTHER people have something overpowered tooo, waa, waa ",and that's imature, it's not the issue at hand.

BUT, at the end of the day if the change is a bad one the admins can just say no, can't they? Where's the problem here? We can trust the admins to only go for the good changes, can't we?

It isn't always obvious which changes are terrible when you haven't been a player ever/in a while, which is why they let envoys comment on each other's stuff in the first place.

I could be an envoy

Joking... sorta.

It could always not have to come down to that, couldn't it? Removing all the ones that have gotten into the habit of being childish, have you told them to cut that out? I like to hope that deep down everyone has SOME semblance of a reasonable person inside them... Most of the time.

to me, to be an envoy you'd have to have some understanding of the mechanics of the game which in all respect i dont think you do, lawliet.

I think the system has gotten a little more aggro lately but that seems to come in waves. I would guess that this next cycle will be a little more calm. There were just a whole lot of hot button report this month that seemed to have raised some tension levels.

The ol' divide and conquer? I thought that's how it was: An envoy was supposed to focus on the skills and issues that relate directly to their guild/org/whateversomething or to the general skillsets.

Originally that was the case, but sometimes it's way better to nerf something (example: choke) than like...put passive choke-nerfing skills into the other 3 org's main skillsets. If the Glom envoys didn't want to nerf it, or maybe more legitimately thought it needed a nerf but that it wasn't that important and that there were other priorities, what were the other envoys supposed to do? Just not balance the game?

Here's an idea to cut down on the spam. When a report is listed, everyone is able to post only one response to it, maybe with a letter limit (100?). If they want to spend their time responding to other people's disagreements, so be it, but they loose their chance to try and change it.

I think the need to fully discuss the issues is more important than reducing spam and digressing into twitter speak to get your point accross.

I... guess... but wasn't the choke report Administrative-initiated (i.e. not initiated by an envoy)? Maybe each envoy should be asked to focus on their guild's skills but then have a central pool wherein the envoys can collectively submit... I don't know, I'm just throwing out random ideas at this point. I agree with you though, far better to tweak the one skill than mess with a million. Of course, the whole thing would be a moot point if the envoy people were guaranteed to be emotionally divested from the game, but their investment in the game is precisely what makes them valuable.... blah.

Choke has been in many reports. The one that changed it to being a single target was admin initiated.
Keep in mind that envoys can only make suggestions and then comment on those suggestions. We don't actually change things on our own. The admin has to sign off on everything before things are changed. So even if some get a little off track there's still that last check to keep things from devolving into chaos. It's by no means a rubber stamp even if we all agree to something. Also, they frequently turn us down for technical reasons and reports have to be resubmitted for multiple times.

I can envoy for all the missing Celest envoys, teehee.

Right, I understand that since I pride myself on reading the reports at least once every 2 weeks, but my point wasn't that everything the envoys do is rubber-stamped. It was that perhaps some aspects of the individual envoys should be restricted to prevent these comment-war 'omgnerf' type things. I was just trying to think of ways to maintain the flexibility that they need to get their job done. After all, when was the last time the player of a Divine character was 'on the ground' for in-game combat/influencing/revolts/debating/whatever? Sorry, Charune, I love you, but from what I understand of the contracts with IRE, you're not allowed to participate in those.

EDIT: and Desitrus, with regards to your comment, doesn't that make you some sort of "super envoy"? Is that even fair to the envoys in orgs with all 5 present and accounted for?

That's not a literal can, pie-man. I was saying I am capable of it should they require it as I have experience in every archetype.

Ah okay. Bile-head

Maybe a prereq of being an envoy -should- be experience in multiple archetypes.... *ponder*

The ever-dwindling number of envoys would ever-dwindle harder, I believe.

But aren't envoys admin appointed? If the envoys are dwindling in number, then more should be appointed.

That brings us to our current problem, no? A bad envoy is worse than no envoy, I'd think.