Best Of

Apologies were already given and admin have already acknowledged they believe they may have been able to handle it better.  There is not much farther this can go and people are feeding a cycle.

So, I will say something new.

I came into Ascension on the assumption of a loss, because seal holder count wasn't the most important factor, skills would be. People can say planning, which we did a metric ton of. People can say organizing, which we also did. You have bonds, we do not, so only one of us has to plan around that. We have to acknowledge we cannot reliably break a group the same way the other side can. We found easy ways that there would be almost nothing we could do to stop creeping as currently functions. The only counter is shield, so you need to stop the group and shield, a guarantee stall. You could also use creeping and just start removing shields, even if we try to shield, people will get hit. If everyone attacks, it'd be a sweep from creeping.

The fact Ixion lived as long as he did is because we had to give up the standard bunker setup, because you could not reliably act in the lag. Organization became impossible and some people were backed up considerably. If you died, disconnect and reconnect to clear backed up information. Attempting to engage in the opposite, as some of you noticed, if the two groups got to the same room............ it was a total lag out. Organization didn't matter when no one could move. We would have the attack commands prepped and somehow they would never fire, instead being hit 9 times and dying before the command that was already sent went through.

I am not belittling the point. I firmly expected people to use something with no real counters in a group based event. I do not even fault Admin that it was allowed to continue that way, because if they did change it, it would look biased. I think both sides did well in their prep, but no one can deny that the lag greatly changed how every fight could have gone. 

It was a good run, you have an ascendant, we are getting an ascendant in recompense to acknowledge the issue. You have not "lost a victory" or had it diminished. The only way you feel you lost something is if your goal was to avoid an ascendant, not to raise. If you are playing to avoid other people, especially at an OOC level, you need to rethink things. 

The alliance shift made things interesting, but the abruptness came off as being OOC motivated. It has been acknowledged that this was OOC motivation for the sudden swap. Much of the discussion was not even in game about it. People wanted to make it interesting, that is fine. Although last year, I did it in character, during ascension, not back channel out of character. 

Put down the torches and pitchforks, acknowledge both sides WORKED (not just played) hard, and consider that admin are not perfect but are trying to make it better. The real equalizer would be to redo the event, but then you'd lose the ascendant. This gives everyone a win.

Xenthos said:

How can this situation be fixed at this point?  I am kind of at a loss.  There was a rush to make and post a decision asap.  The clearest possible alternative to undoing the decision would have been to raise Ciaran as well, I guess.  Something is not as special if it is shared, and giving a "bonus ta" to both sides might have been easier to swallow.  The event could have been thus presented as a unified thing for all sides to come together on... but, well.  That is not possible now.  I know Ciaran asked them about the possibility, no idea if he ever got a reply though.

I guess we can see if people would put their money where their mouth is.  Aramel was the runner up for Justice; Aramel was also (arguably) the most key person on our team.  If anyone deserves recognition for the win, I would rate her highly.  Evette and Jaspet were just short on Death, putting in an incredible performance, and one of them was tagged as MVP by Choros for simply keeping him alive.  Tarken was the runner up for War, and ceded the seal to Ciaran because he couldn't see us having a chance and thought someone who did not have a seal should get one.

We are already bending the event here.  Would any of you people be willing to accept one of these four as a "runner-up TA" (whatever the heck we are going to call it)?

As I said in my previous post, we're just not seeing the consideration going both ways here.  I don't think that this idea is even seriously on the table from the admin pov btw, it is simply a "food for thought" query.

I've refrained from commenting thus far, because it's the forums and mirroring what a few others have said - It's wandering into a fire, but I'm choosing to do that now. Should it be a fire? No. It's a game, but I understand that as humans we all have feelings which can bleed through, just like reading a book etc.

I could add further opinion and comment, but I think it's adding fuel to the fire? I will in some shape or form, but hesitantly.

A) We all suffered the lag. I don't think there is one person who joined that didn't.

We don't know who would have won because Aramel and a few others really did go to town on pulling people together. Those people they banded together also spent out to help. Just like the opposite side did, I presume. 

C) What if there was no lag and Parhelion won anyway? 

D) People are angry because while we might have won due to pulling together, using up personal time, spending out, staying up late - Everyone worked for him to win. I think people on our side are feeling frustrated, because giving away TA, feels like giving the other side compensation...rather than a win. I don't know either characters very well IC/OOC, so I am not personally going to comment on them. 

E) On the other hand - The other side also spent out and used up their personal time and now have a TA. It's two sides of a coin. 

With all of that being said; What -is- the resolution? Will there be one? Can there be one? What do we want as a resolution? Raise a second TA? Compensate every single person who participated on -both- sides? I am also well aware that having an opinion doesn't make you right, either. 

Moving on: Xenthos Mentioned about making the Discord Official. I support this comment. So many times it devolves into slanging matches and people who want to enjoy the game, on both sides, end up sitting in silence or just QQ'ing permanently. Granted, they have a choice to stay out of OOC, but a lot of things happen on Discord as we can see is emerging. SM have recently made their Discord Official and linked it to the Newbie channel - It's actually a pretty nice addition. While they still have some flinging matches, I don't think it's half as bad. It gives it a formal and moe business like feel (IMO).  I'm also increasingly aware of how easy it is for a minority of people (lately) to spread mal-information between Orgs and lambast others, while sitting pretty and unaffected. Yet, when those Org's come together you notice a completely different side and they are actually pretty nice. I won't go into further detail on this, because I'm trying to be thoughtful. It happens on both sides, though. It's bad that we feel the need to request it, because adults should be able to school their behaviours when online. 

All-in-all...the game has lost a great guy - Ciaran. 

That's my two-penneth worth. 

Xenthos said:

I think if you focus on addressing that, maybe we can get somewhere here.  I guess it fundamentally comes down to the feeling that one party's concerns were rated as more valid than the other's.  One set of concerns got explicitly, publicly addressed, and the other... just wasn't.  Can you see how this comes across to us, from our standpoint?  You've now acknowledged that it was at least considered, but we still don't know anything more than that.  Nothing else was, to our knowledge, done to address our concerns, though they were raised before the decision was made.  We have exactly what we had before this announce post was written, but also all the feelings that came with the post which undermines the achievement of what we managed to pull off despite all expectations (by everyone).  Nobody thought we were going to win this thing.  The fact that it happened was incredible... and then we got hit with this post.

 Any failure on our part to address the concerns of the winning side in our post was simply an oversight. Again, we're not perfect here, so I apologize for that. We should have considered it and we did not.  I don't know that there's really any more to say here. We did consider your side when making this decision, very thoroughly.

Tarken said:

If the admin can honestly tell us that if Ixion had won and Choros had lost that Choros would still have been raised even though this was the expected result, I think that would put a lot of minds at ease among whatever they're calling the Glomdoring/Celest/Hallifax coalition now.

 This was one of the first things that was brought up when we discussed it. We said that had Ixion won while Choros was still at 700ish points, it was unlikely we would have offered him this same opportunity but had Ixion won after Uzriel grabbed the staff, and they were both at 3300 points, we would have certainly considered it, and likely done it. The closeness of the contest was a major factor in our decision. 

@Ciaran and the rest of Equinox - I understand your frustration here better than most. I personally know what it feels like to have all your efforts, planning, preparation, rallying the team, planning for contingencies and how to combat specific strategies, etc, all thrown out the window and your win attributed to lag. We're not trying to push some narrative that you didn't work hard or that you wouldn't have won without it. The issue is that we simply don't know because the score was too close. It's quite possible that the only reason Ixion got within 4 minutes was entirely because of the lag just as much as it's possible that Choros did win because of the lag. The issue with the level of lag that you faced in this situation quite possibly did affect the outcome. That level of lag starts putting much more emphasis on luck than it does on skill. Ciaran even says himself that in the end, it was more about who was closest than who was fastest.

I am disappointed that we're losing anyone over this, but we are looking at losing people whichever way we decided.


The last point I want to address is this. This was not Parhelion or Ixion's decision to make, the decision was solely our decision. This isn't on the other admin who participated in the discussion or any of the players. The responsibility for it lies squarely on our shoulders. We did consult Ixion and Parhelion and consider their input, but they didn't make this decision. We did.