Ivorak

I've been testing out the pool table minigame and there are some (minor in the scheme of things) issues that affect playability. - You can't drag beyond the table boundaries for shot strength (this one might be intentional to make things harder?) - Unclear what the reward criteria are (is it one silver coin each after 5/10/50 wins count?) - Angle/strength indicator keeps glitching out - If you accidentally click outside the modal it dismisses the game (there are many modals in MD where this should be the expected behavior and isn't. And here it's the opposite) - I think it lets you resume a game, but it either told me I was the wrong set (stripes vs. solids) or it added back different balls, or something else that made it confusing so I was aiming at the wrong thing.

Any chance of a postmortem here? Curious who this affected and how it happened.

Were changes made here since this post yesterday? I was able to log in initially using my MagicDuel username and password, but now those same credentials don't seem to be working. Also, the concept of a tasker, as alluded to in the announcement sounds really useful.

Perhaps a size limitation, but if so, the error code doesn't make sense. I was trying to upload two photos from Volpaia, Italy that reminded me of the architecture found within the Lands of the East (7 and 10.5 Mb respectively)

I have been experiencing frequent but intermittent errors accessing MD for the last month or so. I thought this might just be my internet provider, but was traveling abroad last week and noticed the same thing.

Picked up some pumpkins to carve with the family tonight; mine is the one on the right. Nothing fancy, but had fun!

I like this proposal. It solves the problems of 1) the same votes always going to the same players, and 2) having to decide which player to "dislike" when there are no active players in the list who I actually dislike (I usually end up choosing at random amongst the player names I don't know well, which I'd prefer not to be forced to do, especially since sometimes those might be newer players). I would also like to bring attention to the karmic cantrips proposal I wrote up at https://miscellaneum.wordpress.com/2023/03/19/popular-≠-interesting/ (section at the end, quoted below). Could be a standalone alternative, or the cantrips (and the reasons given) could be included along the player names as context. This could help with creating a more timely reputation system as well (e.g., I could vote based on the ratio of blessings to hexes a player has received in the past month, and whether or not I agree with the reasons given, rather than a long held grudge or rather I think they picked a cool name at the time of account creation, etc.)

Methinks if a cat is so valuable, kitties would be desired as well. This is a male cat though, and I assume that ownership of kittens would go to the owner of the mother cat under common law?

I'm not so fond of the idea of giving out wishpoints for Christmas, I feel like wishpoints should remain in the domain of special reward for quests and special effortful actions. (Though I will note there is the precedent of wishpoints for cumulative and consecutive active days.) If wishpoints are given out, I don't think it should be random. Make it for all players who show up for Christmas (and perhaps meet other requirements, be it active days, MP level, or some other measure of past and present activity), but please don't make wishpoints a lottery. Other than that I like all of the suggestions above.

I think it would make sense to remove the locate spell from the wish shop going forward, at least until the two evolve to be more different as Mur hinted at. Us vets probably don't need a refund, but if I was a newbie spending my first wishpoint and hadn't learned about /seen yet, I think I would be a bit annoyed.

Sounds fun! I'll be around next weekend!

Some assorted observations/thoughts: Once upon a time it was considered the case that MP6 Protectors had "life and death power" over their worshippers. I think we should make concrete these life and death powers, and also make it clear that worshipping a Protector has tradeoffs. Some players are using their Protector abilities for general aid to newbies. I think this (#2) should likely be a separate function, and Protectors should more "factional", e.g., a group of players aligned on a mission should raise up their own Protector and that Protector should serve their faction before all others. If #3, then I think it likely makes sense to restrict Protector spells to these Protectors (no spell stones). If #4, then I think it also makes sense to give Protectors more powerful spells. If #5, then we should also have ways for opposing factions to hurt/disable Protectors.

Not a meme, but for the lighthouse enthusiasts among us: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/lighthouses-give-away-free-180982261/

I'll take the 3 gold coins

Additional feedback and ideas (cross-post from https://miscellaneum.wordpress.com/2023/03/19/popular-≠-interesting/😞 Some were upset with the notion of ranking (or being ranked by) other players. Others simply found the interstitial screen on log in disruptive and annoying. Personally, I’m not upset with the notion of a reputational system nor the interstitial screen on log in (especially now that the frequency seems to have been reduced), but I’m confused by the feature launch announcement. Are we voting on how much we like/dislike someone or how interesting they are? I struggle to see how one can be used as a proxy for the other, and I also am concerned that if I dislike someone too frequently, that it’s an implied vote for their interestingness and that they may receive some of these “god-like power tools” alluded to in the announcement. Often my dislike for a player stems from their lack of responsibility or common sense behavior, rather than a in-character grudge. In the spirit of constructive criticism, here’s a few other ways to get a sense of a player’s interestingness: Nominations – An ongoing quest where any player can nominate another player, with a short writeup of why they think they’re interesting. Keep the accepted nominations secret and let them accumulate over time until there’s enough cause for a reward to the nominated player. Perhaps a gold coin to the person nominating, for every accepted nomination, or keep whether a nomination has been accepted/rejected secret as well, and have a more substantial “finder’s fee” for each nominator once the nominee is selected for a reward. Called shots – It could be interesting to track what a player sets out to accomplish (ambition) and what they achieve (follow through). A good way to do this is to have a place for a player to record “called shots”, goals that are recorded in advance of tackling them. Two possible ways to implement this are: Called shots are obscured/encrypted in a new log and (at a later date) marked as completed by the player. This way we could measure the duration from idea to implementation (longer time indicates long term planning / forethought). Alternatively the player selects an unveil time when entering the goal, e.g., “I will achieve this within X days/months”, and “I was successful/unsuccessful” upon reveal (with less time indicating ability to follow through on plans quickly, assuming goal was sufficiently ambitious). Personal Change Log – Similar to called shots, but simpler. Players don’t have to pre-commit to a path of action, but are simply encouraged to write up their accomplishments every quarter or year or so. Returning, for a moment, to reputation systems, I think that could be done better than forced voting on an interval as well. Here are some ideas there: Karmic spell system – Each active player gets 3 blessings and 3 hexes a week that they can cast on other players. Maybe they also need to specify a category and write a short reason as to why they’re casting each blessing/hex. These blessings/hexes need not do anything at the time they are cast, besides entering the reason for the use of this cantrip in a log for later perusal in the Log Review Room. Main differences between this and current system, is that each karmic cantrip is a reaction to a particular action and that caster shares a note on why they’re blessing/cursing the other player.