The problem is that often the players and the admins just don't see eye to eye on what is and isn't a problem and can't figure out why not. We often just don't get what the big issue is with a particular requested change that will just make everyone's lives easier/less messy. Admins often don't know what it's like on the ground, and don't (seem) to understand what really irks/is a problem to large sectors of the player base. That becomes an issue when you've got a single go to make a change in any given month and you have to guess at what will come up as 'not a problem' or "We've got a big issue with that change." usually without much to go on. It's gotten better with more expressive decisions, but it's still very confusing to lay out a long problem explanation, have a lot of debate that concludes that "yes, this is an issue" and get a report rejected on the grounds of it "not being an issue".

EDIT: Unfortunately, the only solution (that I see) here is more talking "face-to-face", which isn't always feasible. That or having admins play the game, which is... messy.

Also, I don't want Envoys to be a committee that overrules admins, but I don't accept "Well, all of you hate this idea and have extensive arguments against it, but I think it's for the best, so you can all go stuff yourselves." mentality that sometimes (seems) to come off admins. Even if that's not how it really is, if no one can tell the difference, that's what gets believed.

Enyalida, on 08 November 2011 - 05:45 PM, said:


Also, I don't want Envoys to be a committee that overrules admins, but I don't accept "Well, all of you hate this idea and have extensive arguments against it, but I think it's for the best, so you can all go stuff yourselves." mentality that sometimes (seems) to come off admins. Even if that's not how it really is, if no one can tell the difference, that's what gets believed.

One of the divine is Roark. One of the test characters is Galt. Honours Galt- it's John Galt. Roark is the leading protagonist in The Fountainhead whereas John Galt is a plot element/character in Atlas Shrugged. Both are books by Ayn Rand that support the general philosophy of objectivism.

A theme in both is, essentially, telling controlling groups of people who insist on binding and domineering the creators/originators of a thing to "stuff it."

Little surprise then that the creators/originators of Lusternia would tell a group of people who insist on trying to bind and control them, essentially, to also stuff it.

I approve of the philisophical consistency, and leave the eternal debate over the quality of objectivism untouched.

Any ongoing game, especially a commercial one, has to have a good interaction between player expectations, designer vision, and coding reality. I'm sure that our admins understand this; and personally I feel they do a pretty good job of it, better than most games. The point is, without good player/admin interaction, you don't have a playerbase, which means that the game doesn't make money; after all, the point of a commercial game is to please people for money; if people aren't being pleased, they aren't paying.

If the admins suddenly decided to do away with any sort of player feedback about the game, or otherwise drove it into the ground, I would cancel my Iron Realms membership. The fact that I have one in the first place means that I think the admins do a good enough job to keep the game fun. The only reason I am posting is to point out problems in the hopes of having a better game.

Since my name came up... I'm more into Thoreau than my namesake's novel. And some of the other folks at Lusternia and Iron Realms are can be very similar or opposite of me, it's not really accurate to claim the game is tied to some philosopher. Really you will probably find more Nietzsche in Lusternia than anyone specific real world philosopher (sprinkled in Magnagora's skills), but certainly no one in the admin is an adherent of Nietzsche. Also, the books with the original Roark and Galt were more about creative people rejecting violence perpetrated against them by mobs. A little different than this thread.

One consideration is cost. Don't mean dollars cost, but also negative side effects to make a change. To cite a famous economist, one must consider not just what is seen but also what is unseen, a mistake that almost all professional economists make. For example, I'd like to make all warrior weapons identical. The benefit for that is clear for all to see. But what is unseen to most is the cost of doing that due to some code I've often regretted reusing from Achaea (and why monks didn't copy warriors). Hard to explain why, suffice to say that it's a large barrier. Still haven't given up on it, but until I think of something, that idea must unfortunately be rejected.

We got Roark love, that's huge.

I still wish you would simplify formulas so we could figure them out with ample testing. The fact things like skillrank come into play heavily skews things and nothing is linear as is.

Roark... tell Iosai to recode the warrior things <.< Problem solved! Bwahahahaha

As to the envoy thing.... What if we allowed something like.. RECONSIDER which would place a vote to bring it back up. It would require say... 6 people to agree to reconsider then the Report itself is changed from rejected to Consideration Pending. This should be limited in some way but it would resolve specific times where we have things missed or misunderstood. Perhaps make it require 12+ envoys? It is NOT a veto against admin, it requests someone get to ensure that everyones on the same page. My favorite example of this is Report 428, where at the end of a solution we worded it in a way that did not directly look like it reflected the problem (a problem not noted was placed before the actual problems solution), this was later corrected. Had we been able to directly contact admin and say hey, the goal is this, that might have been avoided or done with more agreement.

(Thanks to Sior who saw the topic on forums for it though).