In the discussion on the State of Lusternia, I posited that I may be open to having one player construct a report on the "major issues" (if any) on behalf of all players. Here's how it would work:

1. Submit Report.
2. Meet with Admin to discuss report.
3. Adjust report based on admin meeting.
3. Post results on forum for feedback.
4. Meet with Admin for final time to discuss forum feedback.
5. Submit Final Report

So the question becomes: Is there an objective, fair, and knowledgeable player who could speak on behalf of all players?

If you would like to be considered and are willing to do the above, then feel free to submit your name. If there are enough candidates, we'll run a forum poll and then put the top names from the poll up in an in-game referendum.

The bolded will never happen.

I'll echo Akui and suggest Shuyin.

Of course, Shuyin would first need to apply! We're not in the vote stage yet.

Well maybe he will feel encouraged now, I hear he loves reading praise of himself on the forums!

I do search for my name on the forums every day.

I don't think anyone's really fair and objective, but we should keep trying our best to be that way, as Akui has said.

I'd be up for it though.

I would have recommended Geb.

Perhaps a better thing to do would be to have one, yes -one-, person from each org.

They, -together-, work on a report, and anything that they cannot agree upon or compromise on shouldn't be put into the report. Unanimously.

This is just asking for another pyro vs aero mage report if there is only one person, and it puts someone in too strong of a position.

What can happen is that said report has biased content in it, and if envoys are allowed their input at all, they can be easily dismissed as being biased themselves. You have said it yourself that you rely on the envoys to convey balance issues, and I fear that if you only have one person, the admin aren't familiar enough with every detail to the point where they can spot issues.

As much as I dislike the current envoy system, I fear that having one person from within the game acting getting a report is a bad thing, and even if said person can be objective, unbiased, it won't stop people from pointing fingers and blame. It's not a can of worms I want in, nor want anyone else to open.

If I had played every class and knew every in-and-out, I'd consider putting my name in, but even though I'd be anal-retentive about being objective, I still wouldn't trust myself.

Why do I get the feeling that whoever this "fair, objective" player is, they're going to be certain there isn't a problem with reality/choke/brumetower/assorted other . Call it my inner cynic.

Edit to be equitable: Or certain there isn't a problem with... bah, give me a minute to come up with something that won't look silly set beside that.

Edit2: If you didn't guess, this was a less than subtle "Not I".

Well, as a note, the last time that was tried, it was with monks where Revan ran away with the super buffs, then Desitrus, Nejii, and Kaervas proceeded to chase after him with...changes of their own.

Other than that, the forging change (which has been generally been agreed to be a good change) was largely an individual's, and so were the demigod and races revamps. I'm not saying these were much much better than the monk committee, but you have to admit that these were overall not violently excellent -or- terrible.

With that said, I'm not overly opposed to the idea of someone from each org -again-, but I don't really believe it'll be any better than one person doing it. Might as well just have envoys take care of it.

P.S. Your bitter's showing.

I actually think Sahmiam's idea has merit.

But even if we went that route, or stuck to the one person, I'd really just like it if this person were to post on the forums, survey everyone and then post their drafts. The community at large participates in the writing of this report. Naturally this person needs to be level headed and be able to decide fairly when a controversial topic arises (or be able to spot when someone brings in BS, for lack of a better word).
This person becomes an envoy but not one who came up with his own solutions entirely, or is representing the voice of only their org/guild but instead speaking on behalf of everyone for the betterment of the entire game.

This may be out of left field...but what about me participating?

Now, since I don't directly participate in combat, I would not really have the ability to draft a report myself, but I could go through all of the various envoy reports and review the envoys and at least try to eyeball balance. I have some background in game design (thought that's more PnP), and I think I have at least some reputation of trying to see all sides, and I could review submitted combat logs and see if there's a pattern of potential abuse.

I might fit the first two items (fair and objective). Since I'm not a member of any in-game organization, nobody could really accuse me of having a bias towards one organization or guild. As for my OC ties--I really don't have any to any of the player base outside of my forum presence here, and I am not a member of any OOC clans or really have any of the "friendship ties" to Lusternian people on an OOC level, so I also doubt people could accuse me of being part of any OOC "cabal", which I know comes up from time to time.

At the very least, perhaps I could join the envoys and be part of the review process, if not this proposed "ombudsman" role. That way I could participate in the process.

Am I wrong in recalling that there was a report for those outdistanced skills (Runes, Dreamweaving, Tracking and others) and that there was the envoys and then one person from each Org?

I think we can all agree that there is no way to be objective and fair if you are asking for someone from the player base, who has money/time/energy invested into xyz. We are human.

Wow... someone I'm not immediately hostile to the idea of being said individual. However the lack of combat knowledge is a big thing. Learning the ins and outs of each skill and being able to gauge both ease of use vs top-end lethality and individual vs group threat, is something that only really comes with a lot of experimentation and practice. Without that knowledge it'll be pretty hard to know when someone's feeding you a line, and when what they're saying is legitimate even if a dozen others are howling that it's not.

True, I'm not suggesting taking the primary suggested role, but maybe to start being added to the envoys process, at least on some level to act as some sort of "Devils Advocate" role, or come up with other suggestions based on the back and forth feedback.

I hope you're not referring to my bitter, because I'm not being bitter.

The benefit of the group is that it eliminates some of the blame for bias, but I agree with whoever that said it should be a public affair.

On a side note, the only thing I would think I stood a chance at balancing would be monks, but my ideas were always too code intensive.

This is a bit of a tangent, but this is also something we need to consider and worries me. We don't have a terribly huge amount of resources and sometimes we look at problems like monks and we wonder if the only way to fix them would be very large revamps and redesigns that may suffer due to the coding challenge or due to it not really sticking to the vision. Having to compromise around those things is something that may need to be considered as well.

I think he's referring to -my- bitter, Sahm. Apparently outhanging bitter is e-genetic.

Nah, not you. The entire thread has been largely civil except for one post.

I do believe when Desitrus headed the forging change, he did make a thread to talk about it, which did help smooth out the entire process.

If we're going name names for this committee, I'd have liked Nydekion, Fillin, Rivius, Shedrin, and Sidd. But each may be unavailable or unwilling, so bummer.

I'd go with Rivius, Shedrin or Fillin. Don't know Nydekion too well, but I can say that I've had enough painful discussions with Sidd to have issues there (Like the guy, but do not share the same idea of 'balance' in the slightest). Strangely enough, you, Shuyin, also come damn close to being really reasonable, except when it comes to a few hotbutton bits, and even then at least you'll -listen-. So... hrm.