Jubaris

Happy birthday Kyphis!

Eh, I change my mind actually (sorry for double posting... again :P). Boosting all levels of all creatures seems too overpowering, considering the bird also has other useful auras, just compare it with the imp. Perhaps boosting just level 3 creatures? (the point would be, like I guess is the case with the imp, to avoid boosting already too powerful creatures such as the windy)

The description implies intention for it to boost all levels, so yeah, I too would make sense to make it so. If it would boost only level1, it would be too much of an advanced technicality, perhaps used for fun by some knowledgeable players in for-fun rituals rather than really useful?

Seems so! I tried to pair windy (has more than 3 levels) with an imp, he doesn't seem to get boosted (though chaotic attacks are hard to keep track of for me)

Now here's a funny thing. I did a third fight, putting a max imp instead of a bird: max ara did 47 damage (boosted), the imp did 185 (his attack stat is 130, so he boosted himself too), but level 1 ara did 15 damage (no boost at all?!)* edit: *actually, not weird at all, announcement about abilities of imps says "at LVL3 does increased damage of level 2 and 3 creatures plus increased initiative (no more effect on level 1 creatures)."

With the bird aura? Magohi and Mythrandir set up a tree for me (no tokens, no influence, etc.), so I tested it a bit. In this specific case - seems bird attackbonus indeed boosts only level 1 creatures (and I heard this from Lifeline years ago, but I also remember a forum discussion recently where it was said that bird auras work properly, one of Ary's discussions) First fight: 10th anniv. aramor max level doing 28 damage, 10th anniv. aramor level 1 doing 15 damage Second fight (adding a bird):max ara doing 28 again, level 1 ara doing 27 (boosted)

Nah, I don't think Dark Demon and Fang suggested ignoring the blog because of the blunt way Dst expresses her thoughts (on her private blog anyway), I think it has something to do with them being used as an archetype of idiocy on 90% of the posts in the blog. I think it's stupid to use their two posts as a proof to announce that a flame war on Dst began. The discussion itself was pretty decent all-around, and despite being insulted as selfish, Witty was very nice and gave her points. Someone brought up the thought if somebody else posted the thoughts, it would be different. Yes, it would probably be worse, this way people know it's Dst, and know she usually has a more provoking way of manifesting her opinion. That freedom was the whole point of the blog I believe, good for the soul, counter-productive for the relations with other people :P Even Dst (or at least I have that feeling) closed the matter, and had a mild reaction to the reaction on her thoughts. Keep it to the usual reputation system war for the posts that are already there to let go of the last drops of frustration, and maybe we should consider closing the topic. Nobody is entitled to adepts, "poor" EE as one of LR leaders and a respected veteran can actually speak for himself thank you very much, the system needs a fix for years now, everything has been said on the matter. You want to help the situation? Become an adept of someone who wants to be mp6. There's a lot of room to be cynical here and make the stuff bitter with some words and conclusions, but I believe Witty sees this as a misunderstanding of her intentions and wants to clear out her name. Please let's avoid the rudeness while we talk forum-face to forum-face.

Slot usage is basically already charged with more 'expensive' creatures, if you take a windy for example, you ensured you can't go all 6 creatures. Slider is not allowed :P Similar thing that could be legit is allowing combo, but I am still very distant from considering it really.

Budget max/point system sounds like a good idea and can work. But without allowing tokens, as Sunny suggested. I need to meet up with Clock Master so we can test around combinations of rules, see if something would work out. I'll consider this a good alternative to try out if standard stuff don't give satisfaction. I gave some thought on how would the points be distributed though: [spoiler] max:100 pts snowballs,birds=10pts*(number_of_freeze_auras_in_the_rit) //that would make two snowballs cost 80 pts (40 each) in a ritual for instance windy=40 pts elemental=15 pts darkling=25 pts imps=20 pts ... etc. standard recruitable creatures should be 15 pts, anything more rare, more expensive depending of the quality [/spoiler]

Didn't notice anybody talking about this, so here it goes: Whenever I login, the player section where you click for more details shows fugitive stuff by default. Everything else is fine, I can click around, it portrays the right stuff, when I click on myself it's the usual stuff, just the default pic on login is that one.

@Myth: heat war, maybe, will need to check on the rules, could be quite nice! I chattered a bit with Clock Master, gave some thought... Trying with max 2 freeze auras (maybe even go with only 1 ?!), an option to take off your badge (longer fights would be more interesting, but number of people, especially ally leaders, will not look kindly on dropping their badges), should come either way. List of creatures (draft): - heretic archer and bloodpact - elemental - bird - water being - knator - lr archers and sharptrooper - remains - unholy priest - tormented soul and soulweaver - darkling? - nutcracker? - santa? - imps - anniversary aramors? - aramors - grassans - pimped grassans? (let's not make a charade? :D) - jokers and dream mutations ...?

Happy birthday Witty, all the best! :)

Tag game - yes, could be nice! DOM on the other hand is too much of a separate world.

Digression that could be useful for the future: [spoiler] I did imagine it like a world cup of a sorts Richie, Olympics if it had more disciplines. Hypothetically, if it would succeed, and then some other annual contests to arise (only strict procedure stuff, without subjective judging, for instance Trivias), we could host MD Olympics. Trivias would require credible people to host them, and since it requires an effort to lead it, trivia host needs to get payed somehow (i would like to avoid full-volunteer stuff). This hypothetical Olympics would need a budget to pay for the staff it uses as hosts, and it would be funded by making an entrance fee, a couple of silvers per participant, and 100% coins would go into the pockets of the hosts. Sounds good, but need more disciplines. Any ideas for MD traditional stuff, that doesn't require subjective judging, that can be used as a contest? Something for the mind too, not just mechanical stuff like combat [/spoiler] Back on topic: Helping the quota sounds delightful. A 'guard' ensuring some level of quality for the contest can be good, but it wouldn't affect what I had in mind there, one combination of creatures being the most used and decisive in the tourney. The problem with the rules will need help from experience of some people like Clock Master and Sunfire (who were in the finals of the Miq's last tourney which allowed all creatures), and probably everybody who participated in statless BHC competitions. I had experience in Miq's tourney with recruitable creatures only, and it's fun, but people tend to stick to birds and elementals. I am playing with the thought of adding only specific creatures, aside the recruitable ones: - Imps - Bloodpacts - Sharptroopers - Soulweavers ... ? etc. Probably banning windies because of big big stats in comparison with the others, but may consider it if they can be countered without relying entirely on luck of freeze. Limiting number of freeze auras? This is the most important part of the discussion, and feedback is very welcome. It will probably be an experiment in the first few contests in any case, but we are looking to minimize the potential damage to the balance of the contest.

There are no official contests that are held annually, something that players can look up to and prepare. Christmas and MD birthday are great, but you never really know what type of quests/events it will bring. Combat tournament (statless, tokenless, more requirements optional) is a natural idea. I was thinking that it would be held two times a year, maybe three (once in every four months). With WP restriction gone, it can be done 'on our own' until it gains admin support (if it doesn't get it straight away), I can sponsor first few years of the competition :P What interests me is: - Are there enough interested people for this. - Best combination of rules for the competition to be unpredictable, and avoiding the situation of having one ritual that bests all the others. (experience of players that participated in a lot of tournaments of this kind that would answer some questions as in - should premium creatures be allowed or not, should there only be recruitable creatures or does the presence of those other creatures really not make a damage to the balance) I am also considering it to have rules that makes people from the same land avoid each other as much as possible (so the competition gains some inter-land contest image, fighting for the glory of your home, etc.)

Chewy, why do you keep deleting your posts? That's a bad habbit :P

Phantasm rewarded with WP, congrats!

I didn't judge it purely on how people perceived the post as you say. That phase was brought not as an originally planned phase (as you can see on the main post), but as a result of my dilemma between Z's and Phantasm's entries. The race of voting in the phase was very close, I couldn't rate Z as a decisive winner. It wasn't the very fact that someone tried to elaborate the vote that helped for Phantasm to win, but the arguments that were brought made me give Phantasm's entry an edge over Z's, tight vote race considered, I think that's one of the misunderstandings. I can't comment on people hypothetically not reading given instructions. This is a similar to my Books and Library quest, where the entries were very nice, and everybody received a very valuable reward in the form of a book. Technically, Lashtal's post was the winning one there, with a slight edge over the others (a very tight call, like I said, in that type of quests), but as a questmaker I had a very big luck that my request for the rewards was approved, otherwise a lot of people would have been deprived of deserved reward compensation for their awesome entries. Sadly, I didn't have that sponsorship support here to reward each and every one based on their entries, and because of the competitive spirit of the events made in MD, it seems like we have a winner, and a bunch of losers, which isn't the case. Someone had to be chosen as the winner, but I appreciate each entry in its own way, they are results of people's creativity with their own mind set and hard to compare, what I want to say in this unrelated-to-Chewie's-post-paragraph is that for people not to try to put a concrete value on the work and feel disappointed theirs is "lesser" to somebody else. Because of the subjective nature of the assignment, the result won't be "fairly made" no matter how you do it. Is it a vote based on a subjective opinion of a number of people, or my subjective opinion, or someone else's subjective opinion, etc. No matter how you turn it, it's gonna be that way. If you feel the result is not in favor of the real situation on the field, please state it so, and please elaborate why do you believe Z or someone else was wronged in the matter and should have won the quest instead.

I hear ya, Chewy, and I'm glad you opened the subject. There's also one more quote from that post, actually sentence next to the one you quoted: It was to (try to) ensure people will actually vote for the work they really believe wins over the other one I gently asked for explanations. It wasn't left entirely procedural with counting who has more votes for the same reason it wasn't the whole quest wasn't made entirely procedural with the mentioned reputation system (which failed because low number of people rated entries), to have a human factor trying to minimize the errors of the voting system (for example, voting for a person and not for an entry). This type of quests are usually hard to judge and it is expected people will have issues with the results, hopefully minimal. I've seen people employ other people as judges, seems fair from the distance, but in lot of opportunities I noticed poor judging from some anonymous judges. I'm still unsatisfied with the judging system and can't find the indisputably right way to do it, and will consider avoiding such quests in the future just because of the judging part, or just shift responsibility in the hands of someone else :P

Aethon is the only one that didn't respond (inactive I guess). I was pondering how fun would it be if he voted for Phantasm, from pure number of votes perspective it would be 3-3, which would annul the point of this phase. The votes went 3-2 in favor of Z, but, I proclaim Phantasm the winner, because the 2 votes were argument backed, while the 3 in favor of Z were plain votes. It was a really close race, both of the works were very good. I will emphasize again the seemingly subjective part of the quest aside the pure protocol aspect, which lead to this conclusion. Still, before awarding the WP, I will leave a bit of time for possible objections, etc.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ungod I'll quote a part: To divest of godly powers; to strip of divinity. Even in the most extreme interpretations of Ungod's (Richie's) motives, you can only say he's proclaiming himself an enemy (loosely said) of the god concept you take so seriously, rather than insult it. Controversial or not, I find this as per the MD way.

Happy birthday dude, all the best!

Everybody voted in the period of a day or two, except Aethon, who hasn't logged into forums since May 29. The week deadline is expiring soon, and the results will be posted.

We are discussing your case internally at the same time, which may provide delays in our answers to this topic. I think that the general view is that you being part of MRs is not a problem itself, but the conflicting loyalties must be defined. Still, this is only a secondary problem to the one with the KoB thing.

Thank you for your entries! Each was pretty much special in its own way and unique, it was very hard to compare it with each other. I'm sorry there were no rewards other than the one for the first place. I managed to narrow down my dilemma to Phantasm's and Zleiphneir's entries. Here are my thoughts on the entries so far: [spoiler] dark demon: more of a summary rather than an elaboration on how to cleanse the taint, which is the reason why it scores lower. if the steps were worked through, it could have been pretty good. aethon: the construction is pretty good, but i have problems with shifting it to MD perception, it reminds me too much of RL self-renewal rather than MD self-renewal process. the fact that it has +2 reputation (others having 0 or -1, my rep votes are not counted) brings it close to the edge, but i simply can't give it victory. If there were more spots, it would be 2nd or 3rd ranked. myth: very interesting entry with a crude method to take care of the job! however, i am not quite sure the fenth press can do the trick! the altars in their usual use kills the creature, depletes it of its personality, but return its knowledge and energy to the owner, therefore it seems to me that even though we can target the tainted parts of ourself, the press would only return it in different form! MRWander: his one liners can't be disapproved, even by ary! however, not a wishpoint winner this time rophs: another very interesting entry for me! other than the wonderful meaning of wiiya, the process reminds me of meditating in quiet and peace, which does seem useful in combating your personal taint. That argument Phantasm used in the following entry: phantasm: very nice and simple entry, gets to the point. Aeoshattr: Imaginative :D Nice ritual, but avoids hitting the point and meaning, I am not assured the practiser would purify himself, it might get the opposite, being overwhelmed with your troubles in all that silence. Although you do speak about the fight with yourself, so it's not that you assume it is bound to be productive. Zleiphneir: Very good entry. [/spoiler] To be able to get to the bottom of this, I ask every participant other than Z and Phantasm, to vote anonymously to me via forum PM for one of their two entries. Adding a why do you vote for that specific one would be welcome, but not entirely necessary. Based on their votes I will determine the winner. I trust none of the two will try to influence the voters based on my perception of their characters. Deadline: week from now, sooner if the voting is done fast.