When someone is used to being smashed on the toe with a hammer every minute for a year, offering to cut off their hand instead of smashing them on the toe with a hammer makes being smashed on the toe with a hammer a lot more appealing. Even if it's just cutting off their hand just this one time, then they get to go back to being smashed on the toe with a hammer.

Honestly? It's the lack of two-way that makes the envoy system so pointless and depressing. If envoys knew why you "don't deem this to be necessary at this time" and were given a chance to explain to you what you might be missing that does in fact make it important enough to envoy, that might help. Hell, even just a process of "problem acknowledged, solutions insufficient, go work on improving them. Here's why these don't work" and then letting them resubmit the report with the desired modifications next go round might be helpful.

The real mindbogglers are things like the shield changes. Warriors said... well damn, these crazy artifact shields pretty much shut down our wound building pretty hard. Any chance we could get that fixed? None of the solutions were accepted. Instead? Non-artifact shields (which were never the problem in the first place) were nerfed into obscurity. Essentially, all it did was make it -more- necessary for people to get the same bloody artifact shields that caused the problem needing fixing! I can understand if you don't see a problem. I can understand not agreeing with the proposed solutions. What I can't understand is going with a solution nobody accepted or wanted that only makes the situation worse and left me with the lingering (untrue, but still perceived) feeling that a complaint was lodged, and it received a slapdown and STFU or we'll make it even worse next time. Yes, I know that was undoubtedly not the intent, and more my frustration and emotions reading into it, but that's what it felt like.

Correct.

Erm, the fallout from Monk changes is still happening to this day. I'm dubious of Revan's candidacy.

Everyone is, including Revan.

If most of the report is going on the forums, then I don't think the head person really matters, assuming they don't slip in any phantom changes, in which case most likely we would be able to review the reports anyways. Shuyin's idea of just throwing up on the forums is probably going to be the best way to do it, since I remember last time with the big report 3? years ago, we just did it through the envoys on a wikipage that only the envoys could log into.

Just a question: The report would be all-inclusive, so no question is off limits? Like, racial balancing, constructs, plane design, bards and monks in general?

Regarding a "group" report on this as opposed to a single person:

I will be blunt and direct.

I dislike this idea.

-It runs afoul of the same problems that afflict envoys. That is, the rational strategy is to willfully maintain bias. If someone is reasonable, when the "middle ground" between two factions is reached, the "reasonable" one loses, while the one gunning for a strictly favorable solution tends to win.

-It is prone to give and take, rather than cogent and structured descriptions. Pet opinions and ideas get stuck in through the back door, or worse, the whole thing gets hung up on one nail when a single party decides to run away with the topic and the other participants have to react.

-If, say, some parties are absent from the discussion, the remaining parties can plow ahead, and when criticized say, "its your own fault for having a bad representative" regardless of how disgustingly bad the result was. (see: pyromancer/aeromancer special report).

-As someone who is prone to thinking highly of her own opinion? One thing I have learned is, the number of people who actually want to hear your (or mine, or most people's) blathering is smaller than you think or wish it to be. As important to you as your three page diatribe meandering between morale issues, class idiosyncrasies, and relating some half-attached concept your assistant prof related to you is, even the people who asked for your input probably don't want to read it. If we had four to six people trying to smoosh all this in to one report, there is a very real risk of it turning in to an unfocused walk in the park. Like, spongebob chasing butterflies grade.

-One, perhaps two people, well chosen, the Admin can not only be more familiar with that person's personality, goals, and whatever biases they do carry, but are far more likely to be able to carry out a coherent dialouge in some sort of effective and efficient manner. Removing "levels" of communication facilitates this as well.


Those things said, I would reccomend:

Shuyin for what has been said.
Fillin, for his large knowledge base, ability to see things clearly from a coding perspective, and experience.
Veyrzhul- A solid combatant who has been across every org but Magnagora, and, importantly, has found ways to win with a great many archetypes and classes.

Bias is unavoidable if involvement is present, but involvement is essential to achieve relevance. What to look for is a mix of:

Knowledge- know what is going on, understand the mechanics of what is going on reasonably well.
Engagement- be involved enough with the game to experience first hand the consequences of what is going on.
Known Quantity- you can't escape bias, but you can know where people have been and where they are likely to be coming from, and at least acknowledge this,

That seems too broad, I'd be interested in doing mechanical skills based changes only.

Otherwise, we can spend all day talking about domoths, affinity, constructs, races, houses, and so on.

I'm tempted to throw my name in the hat then, and play organizer to just enforce the one person per org thing. And no, I would not be the representative of Mag or anything, and I'd probably just keep my own opinions to myself.

My understanding is that, once someone is decided on, they'll be meeting with the admin and given guidelines and scope. IE mechanical skills only, godrealms, domoths, etc are off limits, what have you - whatever it is that is decided, anyways.

It's up to them to remain in bounds and such.

Having participated in and been witness to a half-dozen design-by-committee attempts, I'll gladly echo Estarra's sentiment on their productivity, and add that I cannot think of a genuinely good attempt at it in which people haven't looked back and contemplated the wisdom of doing another one!

And why you're posting "Hmm, maybe I'll apply!" or "Soandso should apply!" is a bit beyond me. To the e-mail box, kids!

Yes but keep in mind that the person in charge will be meeting with the admin (including me) where we'll discuss what is and isn't doable and how some things may need to be dropped (if everything under the sun is brought up, obviously we'd need to focus quite a bit more). It could be that the 'major issues' that are a concern have nothing to do with specific skills but rather with races and constructs, which is fine by me. I'm not sure what you mean by 'plane design' but anything involving creating areas or redesigning areas is probably not going to fly far.

I will officially apply then if it will only be one person, but that one person have the freedom to use other people as resources

So official applicants are Sojiro, Revan, Sahmiam and Morbo.

Anyone else?


(We'll give plenty of time for people to apply. There is no rush on this.)

I'd like to put my name up there. Although I can't say I'm the post popular player, I'm incredibly fair and unselfish.

Edit:

To make this post a bit less vague, I believe I'm capable of doing this for the following reasons:

-Experienced customer service/communication skills
-Strong listener and very flexible
-Played Lusternia for almost 6 years(what, has it been that long already?)
-Aware of the various player-perspective atmospheres of the game, now and in the past

I've also pooled a lot of time into Lusternia and would like to see it improve. The game has come a really long way and it'd be a great to be involved in that process.

But I'll stop now because this is starting to sound like a resume.

I'm gonna echo Geb or Rivius with advisers of their choice, 1 per org.

I will apply, I am cited for advice on most topics and I feel confident in my knowledge of most every skill. If I do not know something I am known to go find out or inquire in some way. I can also attest that I have had a hand in most reports in one way or another though generally more minor things. I am not afraid to talk to people though.

I can give references if desired.

Whether or not Estarra decides to go forward with this, it's already started shaping up into a rather interesting commentary on people at large.

I shall be immensely curious to see where everything goes.

You are trying to tempt me to apply, I just know it.

I shall not be swayed!

I am drowning in meta, stop.

I'll throw my name in the hat, though if Estarra was willing to give the pimphand to more than one, it should go something like Shuyin, Malarious, Fillin, Akui.

Try defending Vortex. The raiders can at any point break a room and you have to run from your nexus all the way to an end to defend properly. While most planes have much more defined areas to break closer to the nexus.

Take this for all planes, Fire/Air are heavily divided and harder to make use of things like scent. Celestia may be one of the easiest to defend. And Nil I can tell you where enemies will always stand because there are very few places to break from. Yada yada yada

I feel that this opportunity should be less about individual skills and more about aspects of the game affecting multiple organizations, such as raids, domoths, godrealms, aetherspace, and especially orders and major problems with archetypes as a whole.
I am of the mind that individual skill balance is better served by the Envoy system, while gamewide problems should be address though this report.

Attempting to remedy individual skill issues though this report is inevitably going to cause major controversy when the selected representative is found to have buffed his own guild/org while nerfing enemy ones. I don't believe that there is a single one amongst us who has both played long enough to make effective changes to individual skills AND who is unbiased enough to do so fairly. Therefore, I feel that only those who are willing to put aside the issues or their own guilds or orgs and instead focus on more central problems is fit for this task, and those unwilling or unable to do so should rescind their applications.