The style of the event took away the advantage of having multiable seal bearers on your team for sure which opened up the playing field to the seal bearers who didn't have anyone to run the staff for them or had a limited number.
"Kethuru was destroyed by the sublime might of Deichtine, as was foretold in the verses of Magnora"
Noticed this on Veyils honors scroll. Guessing it is a mistake on someones part, unless it means there will be no more ascension events. (Guessing it should read Ghani, not Kethuru)
Never put passion before principle. Even if you win, you lose.
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
"Kethuru was destroyed by the sublime might of Deichtine, as was foretold in the verses of Magnora"
Noticed this on Veyils honors scroll. Guessing it is a mistake on someones part, unless it means there will be no more ascension events. (Guessing it should read Ghani, not Kethuru)
I think you missed a little bit there:
On the 24th day of Vestian, 498 years after the Coming of Estarra, the
predestined Avatar of Kethuru was destroyed by the sublime might of Deichtine,
First, I want to genuinely congratulate Veyils/Deichtine and the greater Glomdoring for winning Ascension. From the perspective of a mostly out of touch/uninformed player, it's been my impression that these players put in extraordinary effort and demonstrably had the passion to win. At the onset of the trials, many of us wrote off Glomdoring/Gaudiguch as legitimate contenders based on the political alignments and the palpable, prevailing e-hatred towards Glomdoring from a lot of people. They seemingly had many setbacks in the diplomatic arena, but even though they may have been at an alliance disadvantage, they made up the disparity through individual skill and in fostering/inspiring their new talent. This year's Ascension was also made more difficult with the new mechanics, which required some on-the-fly thinking and adaptation. So definite kudos to everyone who participated and was able to put in a good showing throughout the trials. All in all, whatever scandals and grievances aside, I think a deserving team won, and I give all the credit for their efforts.
Second, I want to acknowledge the Admin team for their work in making the events fresh. I'm glad to see that new content was added into the game's competitive scene, even if I don't necessarily agree with some of the changes or the way some discrepancies were handled. But particularly regarding Final Ascension, I echo previous sentiments, in that I think opening the field of competition to enable all the seal bearers was a good change for the spirit of the contest.
That said, I have to say that I had very little fun in the final event; despite being an experienced player, I spent two hours legitimately feeling -lost-. No map plus the movement and dispersing mechanics made this team-based event extraordinarily and unreasonably frustrating. For most players who adopt supporting roles to the competitors, we felt pretty helpless. It was extremely difficult to interfere with the seal bearers progress when we could not establish any control (no melding) or bearings (no fudging idea where I am) in the area. We couldn't help our seal bearers very much either. Locating and chasing Ghani under those limitations was rough, and getting your seal bearer into position thereafter was just exasperating. Also, I know some eyes will roll, but let's all just acknowledge that STEALTH IS SO WTF ELITE IN THESE EVENTS HELLO. Anyway. With some tweaks, I think this format could be made better, or maybe players will figure out how to adapt. I don't know. While I like the concept, this year was pretty disheartening from a competition standpoint.
Finally, I'm just going to come out and say it: the PATH SHORTEST issue won Ascension. And I seriously doubt anyone will convince me otherwise. Whereas we were walking aimlessly for two hours, the winners figured out a way to actually track the objective using an obscure bug. The impact of this on the outcome cannot be understated. And yeah, you tried a new event, and bugs happen, and you can't foresee everything players will do, yada yada. But no one was watching? Or you didn't think something was wrong? The losing side absolutely dominated the overall presence in the event and especially in the player killing. Personally, I didn't die once during the event. Taevyn died twice maybe? I don't remember if Ixion died at all. And yet there was such a huge disparity in the score accrual throughout the event. I didn't grab the final scores, but despite a lot of harrassment, Veyils was consistently heaps above everyone else. And I do have to question how all of the observing Admins didn't realize something was wrong and didn't identify the problem - either in seeing player actions or your clan eavesdropping. When you choose to run a brand new event for the most important contest of the game, I would have really expected there to be more oversight and accountability for ensuring fair competition during it. But, maybe next time. Sadly for a number of folks, there won't be a next time, and that is pretty unfortunate. I think good changes can be made, but this one felt really sour.
I'm pretty sure when Avechna yelled at 50 points that people were only halfway there was a collective groan.
I agree with Kaimanahi's sentiments, except I would have added a lot more. With much stronger wording.
Would I wake up again at 3 am for an event like this? No. I mean, I appreciate all the hard work that went into it, sure. Nobody can question the amount of work or the many hours that went into it. But did it translate to fun? Not really.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
I had a draft going in notepad, but Kelly hit almost every point. I appreciate the idea of changing things up (even though as a relative newbie Ascension had not yet gotten 'old' for me), I am sure it took a lot of work and a lot of thought.
But the final event was not fun. Sorry. And it wasn't fun long before the end result was clear. I won't re-list the reasons that have been articulated, but I will say one thing that maybe hasn't been clearly stated.
Old style Ascension is a zero sum game - only one person can hold the staff. One person having it means another person can't have it. Other people 'stopping' an opposing force or Seal Bearer makes a difference. Coordination among allies makes a difference. Especially since they themselves can't do much. All that going out the window meant there was more fending for one's self than there might have been otherwise, AND there was really minimal benefit to 'stopping' an opposing Seal Bearer. It just didn't matter. Fast respawn and instant travel and access to toys and Stealth trumps all that. I didn't fully understand what was happening, and didn't have any of the lucky cool skills. Maybe we needed more communication and coordination.
But, you know, oh well. Kudos to @Veyils and team. You figured out what was happening and used -every- means at your disposal, and the final result wasn't even close no matter how many times we killed you. You made a plan and executed it.
I enjoyed the format (thematically and mechanically). The one major thing I would probably say detracted more than added was the mass teleport - this didn't really bother me that much, but I know our newer people got hopelessly lost after one hit. In a maze with rubble rad was a pain and that was just the one room. Not everyone has fly, and I think that was an enormous factor in terms of personal mobility for non Ghani focussed individuals.
My favourite events are the ones that make us have to do things a bit differently to how we normally go about things, so I derived a fair bit of enjoyment from this. That's easy to say as someone on the side that won, obviously - its quite possible my perceptions are coloured by that. I did feel all through the event like I could make a difference, which was nice.
That's easy to say as someone on the side that won, obviously - its quite possible my perceptions are coloured by that. I did feel all through the event like I could make a difference, which was nice.
While I still think I would have found the event ultimately un-fun even had it ended different, I want to underline the last part of this statement. That's how I felt last year - even as a fairly novice combatant. It felt good. Also, we won. This year, I feel like literally nothing I did made any difference at all. Zero.
That's easy to say as someone on the side that won, obviously - its quite possible my perceptions are coloured by that. I did feel all through the event like I could make a difference, which was nice.
While I still think I would have found the event ultimately un-fun even had it ended different, I want to underline the last part of this statement. That's how I felt last year - even as a fairly novice combatant. It felt good. Also, we won. This year, I feel like literally nothing I did made any difference at all. Zero.
As someone who was on the winning side, I thought this event was pretty lousy for me personally. Without any of the artifacts or promo items that allowed quicker movement (or flight) I was stuck aimlessly wandering around hoping that I ended up being a distraction for the enemy team. Evidence would suggest that I was at least slightly a distraction since I died 3 times to enemies. But I legitimately felt that I, and a not insignificant portion of our team could've left after 15 minutes and the result wouldn't have changed significantly (unless I'm massively underestimating how big a distraction we/killing us was to the opposition). That being said, I liked the concept, I just think it needs some work.
The worst part is that you weren't even a distraction really. It turned out that, aside from having one person spam scry or whatever, everyone else was largely auxiliary. I ended up just leading a death squad for sheer fact of having something to do. Even killing Veyils was inconsequential, despite being the most effective thing we could do. In the span of killing her 10 times back to back nobody else could make as much as a 5 point gain.
(I'm the mom of Hallifax btw, so if you are in Hallifax please call me mom.)
== Professional Girl Gamer == Yes I play games Yes I'm a girl get over it
Did you guys have someone hindering Ghani for your candidate? That seemed to help a good bit, though admittedly figuring out what hinders Ghani couldn't just walk through took some trial and error (pfifth finally let's me down).
If you have a tool but don't use it, that doesn't mean the other side cheated. That means you didn't use all the tools at your disposal. Especially since most of the actual competitors on your "side" have been gone for most of the year, and only showed back up for Ascension.
IJS.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
I sadly had no chance to be at the ascension event. From the outside point of view it looks really cool idea wise. I do like in particular that every seal bearer could've made a run for it.
I do understand though that a lot of people felt they were left out of the supporting roles and I think that's maybe something to consider and adress for next time Kethuru rears his ugly head. I'm hoping that things keep changing up, because I felt it was a lot more different then the other two ascensions I got to witness and, strictly focused on the challenges, it was overall better to see changes ( speaking generally ).
I'm in love with pandemonium and the orrey, those are cool new areas!
Now to the thing Idislike about this ascension and that, from what I hear, this path shortest thing was a major advantage if you figured it out. It's the admin's call to evaluate something like this and decide how to classify it, but I can very well relate to any frustration of others having advantage due to figuring out an obscure syntax that did work despite path finding generally being blocked.
I would hope for the future that, if something like this is discovered during the event, that it's caught, rules to either allow it generally (and then notify everyone of the syntax allowed ) / allow it this time / stop it from being used, even though I do realize that is hard to achieve mid event. However, it both makes things sore for the ones who won and for the others who didn't, because it diminishes the achievement and makes those who loose feel sour, so it's essentially loose/loose.
Maybe we could establish an kind of 'alert' thing/way where such things discovered by players, could quickly be communicated during such events directly to the admin running / overseeing the event?
I personally had a lot of fun! I've never attended an Ascension before, and it's given me a lot of incentive to learn more of the game's mechanics. It sounds like Glomdoring was really inventive and clever with figuring out how to get to Ghani, and while I would have loved to see my side win, it does seem well earned from where I'm standing (even with the Stealth advantage!)
I totally get the concern others have expressed, and I feel bad that the event wasn't as fun for everybody as it was for me. I definitely think there are some things to take away from this Ascension for next year's, but I hope the Admin keep coming up with new ideas to try for it and aren't scared off from shaking things up. But as a person who's been playing for < a year, I wanted to throw in my opinion for what it's worth.
Amazing beautiful stunning avatar by Gurashi! ~ A gentle breeze ruffles your wings and whispers in your ears, as if for you alone, "Dragonfly's words shine... seeds, sown and tended, inspire... a forest harvest." ~ Maylea reaches out, Her fingers poised in midair. "Now you are of Me, even more than you were before." Her golden and azure eyes glitter. "Walk well, Eldin. Shed glory in My name, and bring life to the lifeless."
If you have a tool but don't use it, that doesn't mean the other side cheated. That means you didn't use all the tools at your disposal. Especially since most of the actual competitors on your "side" have been gone for most of the year, and only showed back up for Ascension.
IJS.
Would just like to point out that this is a really messed up stand point, especially considering the quick patch made regarding PATH SHORTEST. Bug abuse should not be something that is encouraged.
I did not know of any bugs, and I only attempted path track a few times (which all failed for me). My own mapper did not work in this area either. I do not own wings or any skill that would let me just suddenly arrive. I did not have access to portals (which is at least a delayed action, and can be stopped). I also had no idea that 100 hits won the game, I thought that just unlocked the staff.
I was in second place, I believe. I do not remember the exact score, but I think I did a rather good show.
As with chaos... what would everyone have done? Complaining will not result in them descending someone, because the bug was theoretically equal. At BEST, you may expect them to raise second place (since there was no intended abuse), which would still be a southern glom/gaudi win. Unless someone has a reasonable proposal that does not try to retcon.... I do not think this topic will get you anywhere useful.
EDIT: And I have no idea how you would justify a second ascendant now.
You're absolutely right that this decision can not, will not be reversed. Would everyone knowing that PATH SHORTEST was a tool you could use have gotten a different winner? Maybe not. Would it have evened the playing field? Undeniably. (This sounds suspiciously like the Chaos Seal problem/argument)
I don't know if anyone's been following along, but a lot of the players in the north have felt a keen sense of disenfranchisement over the past months, or even years. The results being decided by one team knowing of a tool and not saying "hmm, this seems to give an unfair advantage/is not the spirit of the Final Ascension", knowing that they have several players with access to the Envoys channel to voice a concern, only contributes to the north's disenfranchisement.
Note how I haven't cast any -real- doubt on Glomdoring's players. The only certainty is that we feel pushed out of having fun. Again.
EDIT: I guess I shouldn't say 'we'. I was not there; I decided to sleep instead. Doesn't make what I said any less true though.
Dude, just stop and think about what you're saying. Are you seriously suggesting that during the absolute clusterfrick event where seasoned players and god-tier pvpers were staring at their screens and saying "wtf is going on right now?", after the mind-and-soul-destroying epic struggle between divine SSC and divine mandate, and whilst getting AFd by an ubermeld the likes of which have never been seen... Are you seriously suggesting that whilst that was going on anybody was thinking "Ooooh, this bug looks really tasty and I bet the other team hasn't found it"? And "Oh, this strategy which is working isn't in the spirit of Final Ascension"? Seriously? Nobody had a damned clue what the "spirit of final ascension" was during that couple of hours. My laptop damned near went across the room during that event on more than one occasion. I repeat, NOBODY knew what they were doing. You can abuse flag me all you want, but having "decided to sleep instead" you don't get to turn up two days later and take up the mantle of the 9am jury.
I did not know of any bugs, and I only attempted path track a few times (which all failed for me). My own mapper did not work in this area either. I do not own wings or any skill that would let me just suddenly arrive. I did not have access to portals (which is at least a delayed action, and can be stopped). I also had no idea that 100 hits won the game, I thought that just unlocked the staff.
I was in second place, I believe. I do not remember the exact score, but I think I did a rather good show.
As with chaos... what would everyone have done? Complaining will not result in them descending someone, because the bug was theoretically equal. At BEST, you may expect them to raise second place (since there was no intended abuse), which would still be a southern glom/gaudi win. Unless someone has a reasonable proposal that does not try to retcon.... I do not think this topic will get you anywhere useful.
EDIT: And I have no idea how you would justify a second ascendant now.
For me it's nothing about whether Glomdoring won or not ( it's an achievement to win, they should be proud for getting this far, I know they did a lot of effort ), for me it's that not having a very distinct and swift response to a problem such as this leaves players feeling as being defeated not by peers with better knowledge/preparation/skill but by not knowing an obscure sub-command was working to give you a fast paced tracking advantage. The real impact on the outcome of the ascension is almost secondary in my eyes, it simply hurts the game as a whole, regardless on which 'side' you were on and hence is why I personally highlight it in my comment as well.
For me, this is not about detracting from/changing the outcome of the ascension that happened, but hopefully highlighting the issues that were there in a hope that they can be avoided in the next ascension and thus keeping all participants reasonably happy.
You're absolutely right that this decision can not, will not be reversed. Would everyone knowing that PATH SHORTEST was a tool you could use have gotten a different winner? Maybe not. Would it have evened the playing field? Undeniably. (This sounds suspiciously like the Chaos Seal problem/argument)
I don't know if anyone's been following along, but a lot of the players in the north have felt a keen sense of disenfranchisement over the past months, or even years. The results being decided by one team knowing of a tool and not saying "hmm, this seems to give an unfair advantage/is not the spirit of the Final Ascension", knowing that they have several players with access to the Envoys channel to voice a concern, only contributes to the north's disenfranchisement.
Note how I haven't cast any -real- doubt on Glomdoring's players. The only certainty is that we feel pushed out of having fun. Again.
EDIT: I guess I shouldn't say 'we'. I was not there; I decided to sleep instead. Doesn't make what I said any less true though.
Regarding realising it was a bug, you do realise anyone who hasn't updated their systems to use path track go that uses gameside pathing uses path shortest by default, right? This wasn't an obscure command: its the default for any gameside pathing for a pvper that fights in enemy territory. I 100% appreciate your frustration, but if I'd not updated to use path track go a few nights before, I absolutely wouldn't have realised anything was working out of the ordinary. I know that doesn't help at all, but hopefully it'll assuage the concern (existent or not) that anyone specifically did not mention something that should have been mentioned.
... which would still be a southern glom/gaudi win. Unless someone has a reasonable proposal that does not try to retcon.... I do not think this topic will get you anywhere useful.
EDIT: And I have no idea how you would justify a second ascendant now.
I think you missed the reason people are mad, there are people in every org I've seen complain about this "bug abuse." It isn't just OMGUS.
Bug abuse implies intend and knowledge. It is abuse because you know it is bad, and you are doing it anyway.
So unless they realized there was a bug, or someone pointed it out to them (in which case, they would have spread that knowledge), it would not be bug abuse.
Keep in mind there is intent behind abuse, you are making a different claim than "it was unfair because someone else used something that did work".
Well, I have no serious reason to weigh in here, but on the grounds of procrastination, here goes:
To the people bickering - you're wasting your time. The most relevant dialogue here is between the participants and the admin. Self awareness note, I'm no participant, but my intention is to waste my time, so THERE.
Dear admin, Thank you for having the courage to make a big change to the ascension event. Innovation will keep the game interesting, and I dare say, Lusternia wouldn't have nearly the population issues that it has now if that attitude had been consistently present over the last 10 years.
The complaints are completely valid though, at least the ones directed at the admin. Veyils (congrats btw) is in no way guilty of discovering the most effective way to win the event. The main issue is that there was a flaw in the competition. One party had the luck of stumbling into a far more effective way to compete, while everyone else was left behind.
The main point I see made against the 'complainers' was that anyone could have PATH FIND SHORTEST'd their way to victory. The implication of that argument is the that it's OK for the most important part of the competition to be discovery/mastery of obscure syntaxes, rather than thinking on your feet, adaptation, group coordination, individual strength, diplomacy/alliances, etc. Feel free to make that argument, but it's pretty weak.
Ultimately, it's clear that there was a flaw in the competition. The value of breaking out of the 10 year old routine vastly outweighs the cost of the error, however. The hope is that such mistakes will be avoided in the future, unfortunately Ianir is put in a basically impossible situation of trying to innovate without making any missteps. This is where some modicum of understanding and patience from the playerbase is required. At the same time, a lesson could be taken from this: When innovating a new event, perhaps break it into two parts, with a built in intermission at the 1/3 mark (Ketheru diatribe/whatever). This would give the admin a moment to review/deal with unexpected issues that crop up.
Hopefully clear heads will prevail and realize that Lusternia is overall a team effort, admin, players, and, well, bystanders included. You all gotta find a way to enjoy each others' contributions. Good luck!
If you have a tool but don't use it, that doesn't mean the other side cheated. That means you didn't use all the tools at your disposal. Especially since most of the actual competitors on your "side" have been gone for most of the year, and only showed back up for Ascension.
IJS.
Would just like to point out that this is a really messed up stand point, especially considering the quick patch made regarding PATH SHORTEST. Bug abuse should not be something that is encouraged.
You're absolutely right that this decision can not, will not be reversed. Would everyone knowing that PATH SHORTEST was a tool you could use have gotten a different winner? Maybe not. Would it have evened the playing field? Undeniably. (This sounds suspiciously like the Chaos Seal problem/argument)
I don't know if anyone's been following along, but a lot of the players in the north have felt a keen sense of disenfranchisement over the past months, or even years. The results being decided by one team knowing of a tool and not saying "hmm, this seems to give an unfair advantage/is not the spirit of the Final Ascension", knowing that they have several players with access to the Envoys channel to voice a concern, only contributes to the north's disenfranchisement.
Note how I haven't cast any -real- doubt on Glomdoring's players. The only certainty is that we feel pushed out of having fun. Again.
EDIT: I guess I shouldn't say 'we'. I was not there; I decided to sleep instead. Doesn't make what I said any less true though.
I think one of the problems we're having is that people seem to think PATH SHORTEST is some kind of bug, or hidden command, or something Vadi gave Glomdoring. It's not. It's literally one of the two syntaxes given when you use the Path command; it's what you use when you want to get somewhere fast and you don't care what path you take.
Path Shortest wasn't bugged. The other path command was bugged (or really, just didn't work because of how the rooms were flagged), and it affected everyone including Glomdoring. So, in essence, Glomdoring (And anyone else who noticed PATH SHORTEST still worked) didn't abuse a bug: they used a syntax that wasn't affected by the bug. Not semantics, but fact.
------------
Now, I've heard a crapton of complaints about this event and the result. Every excuse in the book was used, like "a certain admin kept dropping Ghani near Veyils", to "admin was giving Veyils extra points", to "Glomdoring skills are just too good, and "Glomdoring should bow out of events because they have an edge". I'll tell you how Glomdoring actually won: they focused. While Team NotGlomdoring was busy trying to kill Veyils, Veyils was busy trying to kill Ghani. She kept her eyes on what she wanted, had the full support of her commune, and she worked her ass off. Every single person in that commune that won a seal put the commune above themselves, knowing that Veyils was the best choice to succeed. And it paid off.
Everiine said: The reason population is low isn't because there are too many orgs. It's because so many facets of the game are outright broken and protected by those who benefit from it being that way. An overabundance of gimmicks (including game-breaking ones), artifacts that destroy any concept of balance, blatant pay-to-win features, and an obsession with convenience that makes few things actually worthwhile all contribute to the game's sad decline.
In order to abuse a bug, you have to know how the feature is intended to work, know how the feature actually works and then purposefully exploit the difference between the two.
Nobody knew how Pandemonium was supposed to work. There was no player-side indication that the area was intended to be unpathable until the changelog that fixed the issue. Every other room in the game that is flagged as a maze has no map, no visible exits, has a single valid route through it and has all of the rooms be identical to each other. Pandemonium, on the other hand, had a perfectly usable map that looked pretty much just like the Gaudiguch Nexus world, but bigger. The failure message for pathfinding failing in a maze rooms, PATH FIND failing due to no route that isn't through enemy territory and pathfinding failing due to a lack of any valid paths are identical and in fact use the same code (the maze flag just tells the path search algorithm to ignore flagged rooms when pathfinding and the enemy flag tells the path search algorithm to ignore enemy territory rooms unless you're doing PATH SHORTEST). There was no way (and no reason!) to tell these possibilities apart with the information available.
People who don't use serverside autowalking didn't notice the bug at all - either they don't have an autowalker to be effected by the bug, or their autowalker worked exactly as it usually did in a newly discovered area; awful until you fully mapped the place and then normal. People who's serverside autowalker used PATH FIND saw immediately that their autowalker didn't function at all and (correctly) assumed that pathfinding was supposed to be disabled for the area. People who's serverside autowalker used PATH SHORTEST saw that their autowalker worked normally and got no indication that pathfinding was supposed to be disabled. (It didn't work if you were in the wrong 'layer' of Pandemonium, but that doesn't sound like 'no pathfinding allowed' to most seasoned players, that just sounds exactly like Malacoda, the only other area in the game to use Pandemonium's layer shifting mechanic. Which DOES allow pathfinding.)
In order to notice the bug, you have to either A] be aware of the design of the event (like the admins were) or B] spend several minutes purposefully trying out both syntaxes for the pathfinding system in a new area in the middle of a chaotic event where everyone and their mum is trying to kill you, on a hunch that it might work screwy in the new area.
Did PATH SHORTEST bug influence the outcome? Yes. Does this indicate cheating, abuse or bad behavior on anyone's part? No. Did anyone try to hide the bug to their own advantage? Also no. Nobody but the admins knew there even was a bug until it was already fixed. The Admins didn't drop the ball here, nobody cheated and the situation was handled exactly as well as it could have been given the circumstances.
The "bug abuse" thing does seem a bit of an overreaction; I think that people who know me also know that I take a very dubious view of intentionally abusing bugs and I tend to... perhaps go a bit overboard in reporting them / clarifying whether something is a bug before I do it (missed out on a great deal with Yendor while waiting on an email response saying it was okay to sell aethership / manse arties ).
I can see a definite point to Kelly's comment about Admin noting it mid-event and going "hmm," but at the same time... Admin were running Ghani around and were embedded directly into the event itself. It was probably pretty crazy for them, too. I know for us, there was a great deal of "wtf is even going on" while trying to figure out the multiple area thing, rad, duststorm, etc. It was quite chaotic.
I will, however, note that one bug concern was raised to Envoys and was immediately addressed (regarding Monks, and there was no bug), so from my standpoint the administration was also trying to be as on top of things as they could be. It is really easy to look back at it now and go "Oh, there was a bug!". And I totally agree, there was in fact a bug and it would have been preferable if it had not existed. But that is not the same as knowing there is a bug mid-stream and intentionally abusing it, in my mind.
In the end though, I do strongly feel that a win without bugs involved would have been better. I also suspect that without it I would have died a lot more using Crow Track to get Veyils to Ghani. Would the end result have been the same? It is impossible to tell, as others have noted, but for this format of event Glomdoring (and Magnagora to a lesser extent) had the better mechanical skills to most readily counter it, and then access to the artifacts that helped counter other portions to boot.
Comments
Noticed this on Veyils honors scroll. Guessing it is a mistake on someones part, unless it means there will be no more ascension events. (Guessing it should read Ghani, not Kethuru)
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
If olive oil comes from olives, where does baby oil come from?
If vegetarians eat vegetables, what do humanitarians eat?
I'm pretty sure when Avechna yelled at 50 points that people were only halfway there was a collective groan.
I agree with Kaimanahi's sentiments, except I would have added a lot more. With much stronger wording.
Would I wake up again at 3 am for an event like this? No.
I mean, I appreciate all the hard work that went into it, sure. Nobody can question the amount of work or the many hours that went into it. But did it translate to fun? Not really.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
But the final event was not fun. Sorry. And it wasn't fun long before the end result was clear. I won't re-list the reasons that have been articulated, but I will say one thing that maybe hasn't been clearly stated.
Old style Ascension is a zero sum game - only one person can hold the staff. One person having it means another person can't have it. Other people 'stopping' an opposing force or Seal Bearer makes a difference. Coordination among allies makes a difference. Especially since they themselves can't do much. All that going out the window meant there was more fending for one's self than there might have been otherwise, AND there was really minimal benefit to 'stopping' an opposing Seal Bearer. It just didn't matter. Fast respawn and instant travel and access to toys and Stealth trumps all that. I didn't fully understand what was happening, and didn't have any of the lucky cool skills. Maybe we needed more communication and coordination.
But, you know, oh well. Kudos to @Veyils and team. You figured out what was happening and used -every- means at your disposal, and the final result wasn't even close no matter how many times we killed you. You made a plan and executed it.
My favourite events are the ones that make us have to do things a bit differently to how we normally go about things, so I derived a fair bit of enjoyment from this. That's easy to say as someone on the side that won, obviously - its quite possible my perceptions are coloured by that. I did feel all through the event like I could make a difference, which was nice.
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
== Professional Girl Gamer ==
Yes I play games
Yes I'm a girl
get over it
IJS.
I totally get the concern others have expressed, and I feel bad that the event wasn't as fun for everybody as it was for me. I definitely think there are some things to take away from this Ascension for next year's, but I hope the Admin keep coming up with new ideas to try for it and aren't scared off from shaking things up. But as a person who's been playing for < a year, I wanted to throw in my opinion for what it's worth.
~
A gentle breeze ruffles your wings and whispers in your ears, as if for you alone, "Dragonfly's words shine... seeds, sown and tended, inspire... a forest harvest."
~
Maylea reaches out, Her fingers poised in midair. "Now you are of Me, even more than you were before." Her golden and azure eyes glitter. "Walk well, Eldin. Shed glory in My name, and bring life to the lifeless."
I did not know of any bugs, and I only attempted path track a few times (which all failed for me). My own mapper did not work in this area either. I do not own wings or any skill that would let me just suddenly arrive. I did not have access to portals (which is at least a delayed action, and can be stopped). I also had no idea that 100 hits won the game, I thought that just unlocked the staff.
I was in second place, I believe. I do not remember the exact score, but I think I did a rather good show.
As with chaos... what would everyone have done? Complaining will not result in them descending someone, because the bug was theoretically equal. At BEST, you may expect them to raise second place (since there was no intended abuse), which would still be a southern glom/gaudi win. Unless someone has a reasonable proposal that does not try to retcon.... I do not think this topic will get you anywhere useful.
EDIT: And I have no idea how you would justify a second ascendant now.
I don't know if anyone's been following along, but a lot of the players in the north have felt a keen sense of disenfranchisement over the past months, or even years. The results being decided by one team knowing of a tool and not saying "hmm, this seems to give an unfair advantage/is not the spirit of the Final Ascension", knowing that they have several players with access to the Envoys channel to voice a concern, only contributes to the north's disenfranchisement.
Note how I haven't cast any -real- doubt on Glomdoring's players. The only certainty is that we feel pushed out of having fun. Again.
EDIT: I guess I shouldn't say 'we'. I was not there; I decided to sleep instead. Doesn't make what I said any less true though.
Regarding realising it was a bug, you do realise anyone who hasn't updated their systems to use path track go that uses gameside pathing uses path shortest by default, right? This wasn't an obscure command: its the default for any gameside pathing for a pvper that fights in enemy territory. I 100% appreciate your frustration, but if I'd not updated to use path track go a few nights before, I absolutely wouldn't have realised anything was working out of the ordinary. I know that doesn't help at all, but hopefully it'll assuage the concern (existent or not) that anyone specifically did not mention something that should have been mentioned.
So unless they realized there was a bug, or someone pointed it out to them (in which case, they would have spread that knowledge), it would not be bug abuse.
Keep in mind there is intent behind abuse, you are making a different claim than "it was unfair because someone else used something that did work".
To the people bickering - you're wasting your time. The most relevant dialogue here is between the participants and the admin. Self awareness note, I'm no participant, but my intention is to waste my time, so THERE.
Dear admin,
Thank you for having the courage to make a big change to the ascension event. Innovation will keep the game interesting, and I dare say, Lusternia wouldn't have nearly the population issues that it has now if that attitude had been consistently present over the last 10 years.
The complaints are completely valid though, at least the ones directed at the admin. Veyils (congrats btw) is in no way guilty of discovering the most effective way to win the event. The main issue is that there was a flaw in the competition. One party had the luck of stumbling into a far more effective way to compete, while everyone else was left behind.
The main point I see made against the 'complainers' was that anyone could have PATH FIND SHORTEST'd their way to victory. The implication of that argument is the that it's OK for the most important part of the competition to be discovery/mastery of obscure syntaxes, rather than thinking on your feet, adaptation, group coordination, individual strength, diplomacy/alliances, etc. Feel free to make that argument, but it's pretty weak.
Ultimately, it's clear that there was a flaw in the competition. The value of breaking out of the 10 year old routine vastly outweighs the cost of the error, however. The hope is that such mistakes will be avoided in the future, unfortunately Ianir is put in a basically impossible situation of trying to innovate without making any missteps. This is where some modicum of understanding and patience from the playerbase is required. At the same time, a lesson could be taken from this: When innovating a new event, perhaps break it into two parts, with a built in intermission at the 1/3 mark (Ketheru diatribe/whatever). This would give the admin a moment to review/deal with unexpected issues that crop up.
Hopefully clear heads will prevail and realize that Lusternia is overall a team effort, admin, players, and, well, bystanders included. You all gotta find a way to enjoy each others' contributions. Good luck!
I think one of the problems we're having is that people seem to think PATH SHORTEST is some kind of bug, or hidden command, or something Vadi gave Glomdoring. It's not. It's literally one of the two syntaxes given when you use the Path command; it's what you use when you want to get somewhere fast and you don't care what path you take.
Path Shortest wasn't bugged. The other path command was bugged (or really, just didn't work because of how the rooms were flagged), and it affected everyone including Glomdoring. So, in essence, Glomdoring (And anyone else who noticed PATH SHORTEST still worked) didn't abuse a bug: they used a syntax that wasn't affected by the bug. Not semantics, but fact.
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Now, I've heard a crapton of complaints about this event and the result. Every excuse in the book was used, like "a certain admin kept dropping Ghani near Veyils", to "admin was giving Veyils extra points", to "Glomdoring skills are just too good, and "Glomdoring should bow out of events because they have an edge". I'll tell you how Glomdoring actually won: they focused. While Team NotGlomdoring was busy trying to kill Veyils, Veyils was busy trying to kill Ghani. She kept her eyes on what she wanted, had the full support of her commune, and she worked her ass off. Every single person in that commune that won a seal put the commune above themselves, knowing that Veyils was the best choice to succeed. And it paid off.
In order to abuse a bug, you have to know how the feature is intended to work, know how the feature actually works and then purposefully exploit the difference between the two.
Nobody knew how Pandemonium was supposed to work. There was no player-side indication that the area was intended to be unpathable until the changelog that fixed the issue. Every other room in the game that is flagged as a maze has no map, no visible exits, has a single valid route through it and has all of the rooms be identical to each other. Pandemonium, on the other hand, had a perfectly usable map that looked pretty much just like the Gaudiguch Nexus world, but bigger. The failure message for pathfinding failing in a maze rooms, PATH FIND failing due to no route that isn't through enemy territory and pathfinding failing due to a lack of any valid paths are identical and in fact use the same code (the maze flag just tells the path search algorithm to ignore flagged rooms when pathfinding and the enemy flag tells the path search algorithm to ignore enemy territory rooms unless you're doing PATH SHORTEST). There was no way (and no reason!) to tell these possibilities apart with the information available.
People who don't use serverside autowalking didn't notice the bug at all - either they don't have an autowalker to be effected by the bug, or their autowalker worked exactly as it usually did in a newly discovered area; awful until you fully mapped the place and then normal. People who's serverside autowalker used PATH FIND saw immediately that their autowalker didn't function at all and (correctly) assumed that pathfinding was supposed to be disabled for the area. People who's serverside autowalker used PATH SHORTEST saw that their autowalker worked normally and got no indication that pathfinding was supposed to be disabled. (It didn't work if you were in the wrong 'layer' of Pandemonium, but that doesn't sound like 'no pathfinding allowed' to most seasoned players, that just sounds exactly like Malacoda, the only other area in the game to use Pandemonium's layer shifting mechanic. Which DOES allow pathfinding.)
In order to notice the bug, you have to either A] be aware of the design of the event (like the admins were) or B] spend several minutes purposefully trying out both syntaxes for the pathfinding system in a new area in the middle of a chaotic event where everyone and their mum is trying to kill you, on a hunch that it might work screwy in the new area.
Did PATH SHORTEST bug influence the outcome? Yes. Does this indicate cheating, abuse or bad behavior on anyone's part? No. Did anyone try to hide the bug to their own advantage? Also no. Nobody but the admins knew there even was a bug until it was already fixed. The Admins didn't drop the ball here, nobody cheated and the situation was handled exactly as well as it could have been given the circumstances.
I can see a definite point to Kelly's comment about Admin noting it mid-event and going "hmm," but at the same time... Admin were running Ghani around and were embedded directly into the event itself. It was probably pretty crazy for them, too. I know for us, there was a great deal of "wtf is even going on" while trying to figure out the multiple area thing, rad, duststorm, etc. It was quite chaotic.
I will, however, note that one bug concern was raised to Envoys and was immediately addressed (regarding Monks, and there was no bug), so from my standpoint the administration was also trying to be as on top of things as they could be. It is really easy to look back at it now and go "Oh, there was a bug!". And I totally agree, there was in fact a bug and it would have been preferable if it had not existed. But that is not the same as knowing there is a bug mid-stream and intentionally abusing it, in my mind.
In the end though, I do strongly feel that a win without bugs involved would have been better. I also suspect that without it I would have died a lot more using Crow Track to get Veyils to Ghani. Would the end result have been the same? It is impossible to tell, as others have noted, but for this format of event Glomdoring (and Magnagora to a lesser extent) had the better mechanical skills to most readily counter it, and then access to the artifacts that helped counter other portions to boot.