Best Of

Parhelion said:

I would really prefer not to be given anything extra, thanks. I'm not interested in being that ascendant who got a bonus because his opponent was so close, and I dont want to be the guy people point at next year and say, "He got this, why dont I get it?!?!?!"

I hear you, and for the record I think you've been an incredibly gracious winner.

But consider Terentia or someone else giving Parhelion some kind of cool and unique token because of this. :x

(I'm kidding. Kinda. Your wishes should 100% be respected though.)

Hi everyone,

I've taken a few days to cool down from the announcement post, because I was upset and honestly angry and I wanted to walk away and explore why I was feeling that way. Now I'm going to post this as a caveat before I get tainted with being toxic.  I have nothing OOC against Ixion, I don't know him. 

Mboagn said:

The Seal of Time, damaged from the hiccup, needs repairing. But it's too soon for another full Trial of Ascension. Avechna decides that this must be sudden death. Parhelion and two companions must face off against Ixion (/whatever his TA name will be) and his two companions. The two teams will be on Astral by themselves, where they must fight once more for the Staff. Since this is a quick-and-dirty Trial, they only need to race to 1800 (only Ixion and Parhelion can get points, but their companions can run for the Staff).

Firstly this is a horrendous idea . In theory it does sound amazing, but you are pitting one of the best PK'ers off against someone who PK's because they have to. The RP behind it is sound, but the actual application means that Ixion wins (My opinion).

Okay so why was I upset by this? I agree that lag was a massive issue for both sides during Ascension, and it was the worst lag we have had during the event. What I feel is being massively brushed under the carpet here by a lot of people is the following:

1) Celest/Glom/Halli has 2 seal bearers. This means we had one person who could be a runner, and one person who was able to run for the staff. With a few Hail Mary's Ciaran managed to grab the staff on several occasions. This is before six other people who were able to act as runners grabbed it. This was while both teams were fighting with lag. Now if Mag/Seren/Gaudi choose not to allow all of their other seal bearers baring Ixion to be runners, that's really down to them.

To clearly lay out my thoughts, this is like the finals of the premier league football. IHC had all 11 players on the field. Equinox had 6 players. With just them 6 they managed to win. Ref decides that the ground was too wet and everyone was slipping over on both sides. So we're going to just award the trophy to both sides this year.

2) OOCly I only cared who won Ascension based on sides. This isn't because I didn't want Ixion to be ascended, I didn't want my team losing. It could have been anyone on IHC's side up for TA, my feelings wouldn't have changed. Like many I see this as a competitive sport. ICly Aknarin is going to be crushed by the idea that someone from Magnagora and is Tainted is also becoming a TA. As the Queen of Celest, her duty to the Supernals, the Citizens, the Tide Lords, Divine etc etc is to stop the Tainted and remove them from the Basin of Life... this is just another step further away from it.

3) I don't feel a RP event for both sides helps to negate the negative feelings this decision has fostered within Equinox. Of course everyone is IHC is going to rave about how good it is, you're also getting something etc. A special event for Equinox in my honest opinion will not in any way, shape or form make them feel equal. I honestly don't have a solution that hasn't been suggested by @Xenthos or others during this thread, which isn't very helpful I know and I'm sorry. I'm just stating the fact.

Feel free to call me whatever you wish, but I honestly feel that IHC are always going to say 'this is good, accept it, stop being toxic' because generally they are benefitting from this. I also feel Equinox are going to push for something until they're blue in the face, because although people are saying "we're not taking anything away from you" you are giving the side that did not win the top prize.

If the admin's position is that it will be better for the game in the long run, and less people will quit/retire/be bitter, I get it. But please don't try to act as if it's fair. What would have been fair would have been to cancel the event, but since it couldn't be done after the fact, the next best thing was to try to compensate both sides of the competition. The problem is you forgot to compensate my former alliance. Orael's position, as I understand it, is that ascending Choros is the compensation, but he doesn't seem to realize that Choros' ascension is only a compensation if he is nullifying the fact that Choros won the ascension event.

So by my understanding, winning the event was made impossible by active admin intervention, something completely out of the hands of anyone within our alliance.  Can you see why this is not well received?
...

There is absolutely no question that there is no malign intent or bias from Aonia, Oreal, or any of the other Godmin. I just think they've made a series of mistakes here that we as the aggrieved parties are failing to properly convey.

And I am not sure how to convey it.  But I think your post is important, especially the bits I clipped out here.

It's been three days... why are we still continuing to make this such a big deal? Just drop it and move on. There are more important things to concern yourself with than this. Like you know... how we could possibly change Ascension to make it a bit better in the long run so this entire 'I hate you, so I'm going to do everything I can to stop you from Ascending' stuff can just not be a thing. Just... sheesh. It's sad that this has to come from a guy who barely knows anything about the game itself.

Edit: I'm just going to stop. This needs entire thread just needs to die down.

I decided to go to bed early last night because my responses were not relaying what I was attempting to convey.

I think the main issue here is that I'm coming from a different perspective than everyone else. We're attempting a solution that takes everyone into consideration and people are speaking from their personal perspective and not the game as a whole. That's on me for not portraying things properly.

I'm not against doing something small to acknowledge Parhelion, but I think there's a distinct difference between that and doing something like giving a Demigod power only accessible to one alliance. 

(Also, who asks for Paypal donations for Ascension? I've not heard of that, that's crazy, I'm certainly not a fan of that and hope people aren't feeling obliged to contribute - this is off topic and don't continue this line of commenting though, I'm asking rhetorically.)

Xenthos said:

I think it is a fair point to say that the competition did not involve $ (that I know of, at least).  This has not always been the case.  Final Ascension challenges in the past actually have had seal holders requesting significant Paypal donations for support- personally this feels extremely metagamey, but perhaps the mere fact that it has happened helps you understand how invested players are / think others are in the outcome.

Beyond that, though, a competition does not need to involve money to be treated as a competition.  There is the prestige involved in gaining something that is a "limited-time offer," for example.

A question for you at this point: if Ixion was raised TA, but something else minor was done to acknowledge Choros' win in addition to that, would that offend you?  Would you be as demoralized as you say you were after the event ended?

Oh wow - I didn't know that first point has happened in the past.

For your question, I 100% would not be offended if something minor was done to acknowledge Choros/Parhelion being the real victor because that is what happened. If he got a special honors line, a special item, a special typecast - I'm not sure what else might be minor but still be recognition, but I would not only be okay with that - I would be happy about it.

I get that people are unhappy, but this argument is becoming cyclical.

Both sides end up with a TA. Rather than try to convince someone of something @Xenthos
 why don't you give an option that is manageable and not some mechanical impact? "A perk to all of our people" is a no.  "A better improvement to Choros" would somehow benefit him for having the luck of lag (as stated by Orael). Look at something that isn't just trying to one up people and you may actually get it. Otherwise, we should just acknowledge it and move on. 

Xenthos seems to be the main one driving this whole thing to continue, and he had a special event to get his old name back.