Best Of

Eve said:
Now. Lag, yes that was the issue. Both sides had it, both sides fought through it. One side won in a huge upset. Things happen. I have to look at this the same way I look at sports because seals are competitive in nature. You want them in order to get to Ascension, you have to earn them. In American football, do they change the outcome of a game because a player slips on some ice and breaks their ankle? No. In some way, that is what has been done here. We all went to the Super Bowl of Lusternia, and it was a GREAT game. But one side lost, the other side won.  However, they've both been given the rings. The side that "lost" will now be given a special event in their honour and the player they "supported" will now be gifted a unique TA title, while the guy the "winning" side supported gets treated like every other Joe Smith that came before him.

Bolded parts the the big points and the crux of why a lot of people are upset. Special events and unique titles are much more of a reward than the standard one (which Choros got).

Orael said:

Again, accusations of bias and doing this specifically for one person. How many times have we heard these same accusations regarding Glomdoring and Xenthos in particular? We didn't favor Glomdoring and Xenthos back then and we're certainly not favoring Magnagora and Ixion now.
 

Eve said:

<response>

As someone who has been participating in combat and showed up for the Final Trial, it wasn't GREAT. We were told that the counter to Creeping Doom was to raise shield in the 10s it took to explode; guess what doesn't work during lag. We were also told that Creeping Doom was the crowning gem of the Equinox strategy specifically because it worked well in lag. You could argue that that is great gameplay. I would argue that it's playing in bad faith. 

 Gaudiguch's epic quest has been (still is) broken; specifically, two items are not functioning at all. Furthermore, Gaudiguch's power quest is bugged wherein there are times that Drachou does not accept stones at all (and prevents us from topping up on butterflies). Yes, there are already pending reports on them (29625, for example). Quest bugs are not unique to Glomdoring and to insinuate that Glomdoring, specifically, is being ignored is uncool. 

Orael said:

We won't be getting rid of TA, that's something too integral to Lusternia, but we can change how that status is obtained. The current situation just seems to encourage people to be toxic and horrible to each other.

This is going to be an issue with any mark or status with this particular degree and depth of prestige. It's also certainly why I ended up exerting no IC desire to really invest towards that end goal, despite having various people suggest such to me. It just doesn't really feel worth going through the trouble to try to usurp every last other option and conceptually just feels selfish over sacrificial.

The one thing that really separates Ascension from the seal trials, imo, is the utter pinpoint focus in it. The sealbearers have no way of all trying to make progress at the same time, as participants in the seal trials do - they just have to make loads of choices and go through their arguments with their allies before they even go up, then deal with enemy contention on top. Everything pivots entirely on who is going to try to hold the staff long enough, and any significant competition between more than two parties would just reeeeeeeally drag it on.

I feel like just letting everyone have a better shot together might go a long way in producing a tonal shift - how to accomplish that in a compelling manner that is balanced between parties, on the other hand, would be quite challenging to map out.

Hi! I've been hiding in the back round for a bit on this. I agree with Snaldo and Xenthos on this one. 
I've sat and sat and sat today trying to figure out how to word my feelings over everything that happened over the past few days. 
YES, people are upset. They have a right to be.

(Shall we get the parts out I'm nervous about saying before I duck out of it? I mean, its silly I should be so nervous about sharing a simple personal opinion, right?) 

A group of people and I have been chatting almost all day about how many things are done specifically for a certain player here. Rules ignored, or simply changed. Requirements dismissed, and now this.  I read the response to war. Its the same scenario. There was an issue game side, it effected BOTH sides. But the seal went on, no changes were made to the event. Our side worked hard and still won in the end, however they were made to work harder for it.  My confidence that the same outcome would have been done if say Malarious would have been in the same boat have dwindled. Our side doesn't complain half as much through losses, I hardly ever see anyone of them accuse the other side of cheating (bug calls aside) and yet its constantly being thrown in our faces. Its demoralizing over time. 

Now. Lag, yes that was the issue. Both sides had it, both sides fought through it. One side won in a huge upset. Things happen. I have to look at this the same way I look at sports because seals are competitive in nature. You want them in order to get to Ascension, you have to earn them. In American football, do they change the outcome of a game because a player slips on some ice and breaks their ankle? No. In some way, that is what has been done here. We all went to the Super Bowl of Lusternia, and it was a GREAT game. But one side lost, the other side won.  However, they've both been given the rings. The side that "lost" will now be given a special event in their honour and the player they "supported" will now be gifted a unique TA title, while the guy the "winning" side supported gets treated like every other Joe Smith that came before him. 

Do I feel that both sides should be compensated for putting up with a clear cut issue- yes. However, rewarding the side who did in fact "lose" with the grand prize while leaving the side that did indeed win here the same prize and a fist bump for doing so well doesn't seem fair or reasonable. As it was put (last night, was it?) it is a huge slap in the face, however unsurprising in the end. I mean, this is the same side who persistently remained calm in 4x2. This same side who took being told to "shut up and stop guilt tripping us" on the discs about it on their shoulders. We still won quakes, we still participated in villages, heck we did pretty alright given what we had. I mean, for heavens sake Glom's epic was bugged for how many months before it got noticed? What quest had been openly talked about being borked, but remained unnoticed until Glomdoring was able to benefit from it?

Guys, we get it, most of us can take a hint.  

 
There is one thing that everyone who participated in this event spent that we can't get back. Time. Ironic as that is. Time figuring out a plan, time figuring out how to best use skills in order to get a decent shot at things, and time implementing them and ensuring everyone knew what to do. Not to mention the countless credits / essence spent in order to acquire anything that would help our side out.  Are us everyday people in the end the ones who benefit from winning? No. But as with what is unraveling in the world around us- every day people make the world run. Perhaps instead of rewarding the two, "winner" or "loser" a reward should be offered to those who helped make the event happen. 

Edit: I found a typo!

I guess I misunderstood what you meant by back-end conversation Xenthos, I don't view our conversation with Parhelion or Ixion as 'back-end.'

I assumed you meant responding and answering things like messages in-game, on the forums, or in discord rather than having people go through the proper channels. After discussion with Aonia, we decided that we should apply a boundary there and require players to go through official channels (such as ISSUE ME, emailing support or posting here on forums). That way we can avoid accusations of bias because everything is either done in the open (on forums) or in an official capacity where there is a record of the discussion easily accessible. 

This isn't really the thread to promote the creation of an official discord so I'm not going to comment on that at this time. 

To the topic at hand, I feel like we're being open and transparent. We've responded to questions and things being brought up, we've re-iterated our stance on things several times now. I really don't feel like I'm talking at you but I apologize if it does feel like I'm speaking at you and not with you, I've mentioned this before, but it's important to remember that listening and hearing you does not require agreeing with you. 

Discussions are typically two-way streets, so to be honest, it's frustrating when we're told things like we are only 'attempting to appease one player.' This has never been an attempt to appease one player and it has never been portrayed that way. It causes us to feel like our attempts at being open and transparent are futile because you are going to believe what you believe despite what we actually say. Another example of this would claim that I've said 'Wyrdenwood Creeping Doom' is 100% fine and balanced. Yes, I've certainly defended it in the past and even recently( in this thread in fact), but that doesn't mean a report won't change how it functions. I've defended both monks and warriors as well and yet they both got changes pushed through in the last report cycle.

While things like this make us feel like it's futile, we still strive to be 100% open and honest and transparent about what's going on. I don't think we've done any less here.

The decision process occurred as a conversation with the rest of the admin team, volunteers, etc. We discussed the pros and cons. Yes, it was brought up that players may feel like it was a slap in the face, that we were dismissing their efforts. Yes, some admin were worried that it would look like we were buying into complaints and it would just encourage people to complain more to get what they wanted. Some admin pointed out that giving Ixion TA doesn't actually solve the lag issue (which it doesn't, but we've addressed that as well).

We considered just giving a 'present' of some sort to all the players as a way of apology, or even doing a re-do but we ultimately decided that anything short of our decision would just be considered another slap in the face by those that were already upset.

We even consulted higher-ups in IRE to get their opinion on it.

As far as players, we didn't consider asking the player base as a whole. I'm not sure why that's even being considered as a possibility, to be honest. Players are given agency in a lot of situations but I don't think this situation, or a myriad of other situations, should allow players agency in them. That's just the reality of the situation.

This situation, the biggest event of the year, was affected by the horrendous lag that had an effect on the outcome. Nobody is disputing that. Can I say definitively that Parhelion only won because of lag? No, I cannot say that. Can I say definitively say that Ixion didn't lose because of lag? I cannot say that either. We'll never know what the result would be had there been no lag. Either way we went - we would have a lot of upset players, so we disregarded that. We discussed what we think the -right- thing to do is, and we went with that. 

It seems to me that the issue at hand here is that everyone agrees that lag was an issue, and that it played a part in the outcome. Nobody has said that Ixion and Mag/Gaudi/Celest didn't work hard for it or have a plan, or even 'deserve' to lose it. In fact, quite a few players congratulated them on their efforts, spoke about how well they did. That they should be proud.  Outside a few loud players complaining about the creepingdoom tactic, everyone agrees that Halli/Celest/Glom worked well together too, and put in the effort. This wasn't just limited to the final Ascension event, it was a common thing between both orgs throughout each and every event. This was certainly one of the most competitive Ascensions Lusternia has ever had, and it resulted in the final event being incredibly affected by lag so horrendous that it put a huge halt on the momentum and push forward that we've been experiencing. 

I said when I took over from Ianir over a year ago that my main focus regarding balance was ensuring that people felt like they -could- compete. Putting us in a position where players felt that they had the tools to get in there and have a chance at what they're doing.  Aonia, for her side, has been trying to free up our volunteers from being bogged down by unfun things that may burn them out and instead put them in a position where they are energized to interact and bring great events to the players overall. Players in-general have responded well to both things and we've seen a surge of players coming in and playing compared to a year ago. As we pointed out before - we had over 100 players online for Ascension (not counting the admin). We had groups of 30-40 people fighting each other. The last time we had these kinds of numbers was back in 2017. 

There are two sides here - on one hand, we have players who were incredibly upset, felt like they just wasted their time even trying, that despite all the efforts, they were undone by something entirely out of their control, and now that we've acknowledged that - the other side is making the same exact complaints. "Why should I have bothered, I just wasted my time despite all my effort due to something out of my control. "

We instead rewarded -both- sides efforts because -both- sides were effected and -both- sides did incredibly well despite a situation completely out of their control. In the past, Lusternia has let something like this go, just rolled with the result, which led to an exodus of players. We're attempting a different route here in attempts to curb that. I really do understand that you may feel like we're erasing your effort, but we're not - Parhelion is still a TA, you still are getting what you earned. We're just also giving the other side what they earned. 

This is ultimately why we're going to be re-looking at Ascension and how it functions. We won't be getting rid of TA, that's something too integral to Lusternia, but we can change how that status is obtained. The current situation just seems to encourage people to be toxic and horrible to each other. We've seen people literally wish that players on the other side die.  I know that's more likely an extreme than anything else but we want to work on erasing this kind of toxicity and hatred. 

Snald said:

Orael said:

We instead rewarded -both- sides efforts because -both- sides were effected and -both- sides did incredibly well despite a situation completely out of their control. In the past, Lusternia has let something like this go, just rolled with the result, which led to an exodus of players. We're attempting a different route here in attempts to curb that. I really do understand that you may feel like we're erasing your effort, but we're not - Parhelion is still a TA, you still are getting what you earned. We're just also giving the other side what they earned. 

How was Equinox rewarded in this situation?

Edit: changed what I called our alliance

Parhelion - True Ascendant of Justice

Jolanthe said:

Orael said:

We won't be getting rid of TA, that's something too integral to Lusternia, but we can change how that status is obtained. The current situation just seems to encourage people to be toxic and horrible to each other.

This is going to be an issue with any mark or status with this particular degree and depth of prestige. It's also certainly why I ended up exerting no IC desire to really invest towards that end goal, despite having various people suggest such to me. It just doesn't really feel worth going through the trouble to try to usurp every last other option and conceptually just feels selfish over sacrificial.

The one thing that really separates Ascension from the seal trials, imo, is the utter pinpoint focus in it. The sealbearers have no way of all trying to make progress at the same time, as participants in the seal trials do - they just have to make loads of choices and go through their arguments with their allies before they even go up, then deal with enemy contention on top. Everything pivots entirely on who is going to try to hold the staff long enough, and any significant competition between more than two parties would just reeeeeeeally drag it on.

I feel like just letting everyone have a better shot together might go a long way in producing a tonal shift - how to accomplish that in a compelling manner that is balanced between parties, on the other hand, would be quite challenging to map out.

Yeah, we get that, that's our problem to tackle though. I really think we can do so though.

Orael said:

We instead rewarded -both- sides efforts because -both- sides were effected and -both- sides did incredibly well despite a situation completely out of their control. In the past, Lusternia has let something like this go, just rolled with the result, which led to an exodus of players. We're attempting a different route here in attempts to curb that. I really do understand that you may feel like we're erasing your effort, but we're not - Parhelion is still a TA, you still are getting what you earned. We're just also giving the other side what they earned. 

How was Equinox rewarded in this situation?

Edit: changed what I called our alliance

That sort of thing might be fine if it came with OOC announcements about particular discussions, to alert in-game players to them so they won't miss out. I still won't use discord, but it'd feel like an attempt was made to include me properly.