My turtle needs a buff first! He's so weak and pudgy. Makes me so sad.
I also need Nydekion to evolve into Blastoise, so that I may evolve into Wartortle.

war-toytle?

My intention was and never will be to resort to personal attacks. Perhaps individualized critiques, but moving on. I am sorry that what I posted was misconstrued as such.

Allow me to rephrase:

My current view of the administration is negative, and I do very much believe there is room for improvement. Back in the days of my being an envoy, I was shut out for offering suggestions that I tried to make as professionally as possible. When I brought up that the envoy system was flawed, I was shut out, being told "just quit it if you don't like it." That's essentially what happened.

@Talan:
I agree with your assessment there, that personal bias is not (always) a problem. I believe it creeps in. What I disagree with, however, is that the admins aren't as keen to detect incompetence. I took the stance of not commenting on reports I didn't understand, but I won't say others are so kind, and a lot of the comments posted aren't valid arguments. Quite often they tend to fall into misleading or ignoring certain points or basically shouting matches. There's rarely ever any point, counterpoint, rebuttal, etc.

Bias does slip through, though, and while I still agree that the admin aren't that dumb, I would say that the bias can extend to them as well. Personally, I wish that the only people that could hear the envoy channel were envoys and the admin directly responsible for the decisions involved. That, or having a policy where the others would not be allowed to voice opinions.

I will say that Eventru was the most vocal there, but (BUT!) I am not pointing a finger at him for tainting the waters. Please do note the second clause. I believe I have the ability to point a finger at him, however, or any other god that I have heard speak on the channel (Raezon, for instance). I'd prefer the potentiality deleted entirely. Even if the others don't have a say, if their comments are heard, even in passing, there is outside influence.

As to attacking the system, perhaps you're also correct. Please don't accuse me of running, however. I do not believe that sticking around would have made any progress, and the experience of being an envoy has reduced the game to nothing more than a highly stylized chat client. I've tried to get involved again a few times, but each time, yet another thing happens to just drive the wedge deeper.

I don't believe that the way to fix Lusternia is to go through envoys. I believe it needs to start at a higher level, and I have expressed interest in doing what I can to help. I am quite vocal and probably viewed as a nuisance more than anything, so I doubt I'd be welcomed.

@Neos

Don't mistake me for saying that the admin -never- listen. There are definitely some instances, and I'll be proud to point out a few myself. However, counter examples don't hurt the statement that allows for them. "Some x is y" allows for some x not being y, and even "Most x is y" allows for the x not being y. I would say that most of the time, the admin do not listen.

So how about that ustream.

Down with stockroom spam! The horror! The laggy horror.

Busted.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Jesus christ, I apparently hit a nerve.

I feel like poking fun at that particular comment made on that ustream just highlights my own personal fatigue at the near constant...we'll just call them arguments on choke which has been going on for years now. That skill's been beaten, rezzed, and beaten to death so many times, it's truly disappointing that it gets so much attention compared to other (possibly) equal or bigger issues regarding skills (both glom-related and not) that are ignored because CHOKE EXISTS OMGWTFWHYYY. I assure you, I'm just as tired of choke from the killer end as much as from the victim end, if by the very fact that whenever we get someone with it, the mouthiest of people tend to say, "You wouldn't have killed me without it!111!!".

Whatever people may think of the envoy system, the fact of the matter is, no one can truly be trusted to be completely impartial when it comes to skills because of the time, effort, and possibly money that people have put into them. The best that we can do is put it through a committee. My suggestion? Make it impossible for guilds to envoy skills they themselves have no access to. If they want to nerf something, there should be a command to raise a vote of sorts that it will mechanically require a majority of envoys to agree that there is an issue before a report can be started on it.

Lastly, I don't think I've done anything particularly grievous that warrants an apology. The forums, for the most part, are completely worthless and are only good for a few moments of amusement up until an admin posts a serious topic that asks for honest feedback. Whenever an actual topic is started, I put on my serious hat and contribute like a big boy, like posting about demigod powers, the new city skills, and the envoy war. Otherwise, let me have my fun, I've never gotten seriously in trouble with the forum police, so surely I must be keeping in line! :-)

I like that envoy change idea.

In all honesty, I think the Idiots forum should come back. It allowed for healthy venting of frustration in an out of game environment. Just a great way to blow off steam.

I'm in your mind, knowing all your secret thoughts and motivations.

My sarcasm detector may be broken but I'm not seeing how making it much harder to nerf others skills does anything to dampen bias, everyone will just switch to self-buff reports instead until things get so ridiculous that everyone wants whatever nerfed. While it'd be interesting to see how that turned out I think it'd make skill power levels roller-coaster like which I don't think is the goal of balancing. The glomdoring envoys in particular should be happy with how things are currently because 90% of the time it's a waste of a slot to try to nerf one of your skills (especially choke).

It makes it so you can't easily envoywar skills you don't like. You know as well as I do that there have been many reports which have no overly good reason to be reported other than 'Wah I died to it'. In that regard, it does dampen bias.

If you think that everyone will switch to self buff, this may be true, but honestly, I haven't really seen a ton of purely ridiculous/selfish self-buffing lately. All the requests for buffs that I've seen are for skills which many players have access to, or are generally innocuous/necessary ones like asking for flesh channels or burning/cloudy regen. Nothing wrong with being pessimistic however. I feel like if my suggestion went in, if the envoys do manage to vote for a nerf to something, I'd feel the admin would take it more seriously vs. a report that a whiny envoy on the other side made.

Lol, you've got got me again, while the gods were meeting in San Francisco yesterday, I called Estarra up on her private cell phone (because I paid a lot and so I can suggest, no, demand immediate changes) to applaud her on keeping my e-org's skills safe. The reason why it's a waste of time to nerf glom skills is because you guys keep asking for utterly ridiculous solutions (delete choke, give them AEON, just DELETE BRUMETOWER) to skills when entirely more reasonable suggestions may be preferred. Or you guys just keep on envoying nonproblems.

This is almost as ridiculous as the Pliers Being 2k Are Glom's Work conspiracy.

I'm fairly certain that if people have been complaining about something for YEARS, it's probably not an unfounded complaint.

The problem with that is that it's been nerfed for years too.

Okay it seems you guys are super hung up on what I posted about choke still, so I'm going to spell it out for you:

Choke has its issues, but your continual whining about it (for years!) as well as your utterly ridiculous solutions (which has been done over and over and over to varying degrees of success, the no-more-multichoke being the latest) Is. Not. Working.

I haven't said one thing about whether or not your complaints are justified (personally I think it is, but not as much as you obviously), but you guys are being such pains about it.

Edit: Since this thread is probably going to get closed soon since we went offtopic so much, I might as well give a half-hearted attempt at bringing this topic back on track to express my pleasure at them reducing the necessary +1's down to 500.

And my point is the admin normally doesn't listen to those reports and so it's a waste of a slot. Why do you care?



Didn't see the report where Nydekion (I think it was him anyway) asked for 1k damage on Jellies?



I think I may not have made my self clear. I'm not saying it's a waste of a slot to envoy your skills because of some hidden agenda. It's a quite open agenda, choke for example is how the producers envision the game. It's like how druids have tried forever to get rid of sap and get something else. I'm not saying that the admin isn't willing to tweak things (like disabling multi choke) but the skills as they fundamentally work aren't going to change. Choke will always be a guaranteed aeon lock, so it's silly trying to reduce it's effectiveness at doing that because your report will just be discarded.

Choke isn't a guaranteed aeon lock, as previous successful escapes will show.

I'm iffy on that. And I suppose I do care, I'm just incredulous that you guys seem so set on pursuing a fruitless endeavor, one that goes against The Vision.



Not seen a ton != no purely selfish reports ever.



Seems we agree then that going against the Vision is just pointless, I've made my peace with it, I suggest everyone else should too.

Edit: Since Al said something, choke is a guaranteed aeonlock, but it's a potentially very short one. Group combat is group combat. Please don't let us get into that again.

Finalsting will require a change to its cure because even with a change to its ka, short of being really really lowered (like usable DURING a slitlock) it will not see use. Other option is to hide the tic message, but then wouldnt that mean you never know you have it? So you could use it for funsies?

Choke is a pain in the arse, but what else would you all change? I think fae should start going passive or leaving the room, thats about as close as you might get it, so over long fights their offense vanishes. That wont fix it in groups, so what do you want it contagious? Anyone who hits someone choked becomes choked?

Brumetower I suggested to act like gravity so it doesnt 100% stop druids. I think raise cudgel should be at a higher % rate to fail if done against groups (like very unlikely to pull people because of the gravity). Seize should get a delay from it too maybe. But 1v1 that will still allow the druid to fight if they raise cudgel.

Bonds is far more OP but no one envoys it because you usually have distort anyway so its less useful.

Ok done with my random points

and Bad shuyin! devolving threads. Now Neos isnt even a squirtle you made him a droplet in his moms eye

Brumetower is fine as is, it's limited to only being in 1 brumetower per nightuser, there would be an issue if you could brume every room, but you can't.

and I think finalsting is fine

FinalSting is fine as is... after a great amount of in-guild and forum discussion, I'd prefer to see the recently added Ootangk lowered from 500 to 450 ka so there is a three-form window that reduces curing to a 75% failure rate. Ootangk could also be combined with Sprongk (at heavy mo loss) to hinder curing even further. So to pull our insta, one Nekotai would need to FS while the other has the target grappled in an Ootangk (and maintain till target tumbles, cures, or dies). Not to mention Sidd pointing out using FS within Choke...