so long, and thanks for all the fish

[straelyn]

I deleted my 2 characters. it was fun levelling with some of you. blahblahblah. sorry, but I think the game is going nowhere, and your organizational structure is Duck. the game needs more levels and less cops.

PS, the 'no auto-follow' rule sucks ass; have any of you even played Secret of Mana?

[Cassy]

I guess this is bye then. You've been pretty quiet and I have no idea why you stopped developing (it was actually nice to work with you), but I guess you'll have your reasons.
Hope you'll be fine.

PS, the 'no auto-follow' rule sucks ass; have any of you even played Secret of Mana?

Hmm, yes, a few douzand times, including a hard mode hack and other related stuff.
What do you mean by that?

Btw "no auto-follow" is not true as it's actually "no cheating, also not by using auto-follow". Auto-follow is allowed, just not in fights as this is a kind of botting.
(If you didn't know that already)

[veryape]

Sad to see you go.

Can you or are you willing to elaborate on in what way the organizational structure sucks? Like for development, or TMWC or what?

Well, what can I say. I hope to see you back someday.

[straelyn]

I'd rather not use this thread as a soapbox. Once I decide to go, I'm gone. That's just the way some things need to be done. I've come to the conclusion that helping people in this game is no longer a good thing. It's not a game, it's a torture chamber. In regards to Secret of Mana, I'm surprised you'd even have to ask, considering that whole series of games you play a few different characters who follow eachother around, and you switch off between them. Every other oldschool rpg has you playing a few characters at once. Was that ever considered cheating? Quite frankly, I am INSULTED that someone would accuse me of dishonor, putting me on par with botters, hackers, cheaters, and such, just because I want to play the game in my own weird little way. If someone has a problem with someone else having fun, go somewhere else. If you have a problem with someone speaking a weird language, go somewhere else. Half the people who Female dog, wolf, fox or otter never put in any real game time,, they just appear out of nowhere and suddenly have a voice. IT'S Duck PATHETIC.

[veryape]

I do not clearly know what has happened. Who called you a cheater? From what I gather you have been using the follow-feature in mana+ and was warned that it was against the rules?

I doubt someone is considering you a cheater, the problem however is that if we allow auto-following we open up a pandoras box for the real cheaters, there has been lengthy discussions about this in other threads. It is an necessary evil imo, because botters can easily stack up and say "no we are just autofollowing" when they are in fact using autofollow + heal or autofollow + auto attack. I do not see that you were kicked/banned in the gm-logs. So I guess you were only told that autofollowing is against the rules.

When it comes to the only speak english in public... well, that's just one of those things. If a game is supposed to reach a global (albeit small) crowd we have to establish one language to speak in public. If we did not do that we would have to have GM's that speaks all the languages to be able to moderate insults etc this is plainly inpossible. The other route to go is to quit moderating those things and tell people to use the nuke/ignore feature in the client. This has also been up for discussion but as I have understood it the majority of the players do not want a totally unmoderated game.

I'm sad to see that so many people get angry with gm's for just doing the tasks that gm's are supposed to do. I botcheck people all the time, not because I think that everyone is cheating, but because I want to catch anyone that does. I do it to my in-game friends, I do it to well known players and I do it to players I've never seen before.. So that the fact that I do botcheck someone is not equal to me calling someone a cheater. I guess the same applies here, you were told about the rules you are not in the GM-logs so you were not kicked/banned (so you were not considered a cheater).

I think that the rules should be up for discussion a lot more, this is a community and the community have a great chance of influencing game rules, unfortunately most people does not recognize this but think that gm's makes the rules and that is not the case and neither should it be. If we would like a rule change we would have to ask the community for input.

And also, " Half the people who ***** never put in any real game time,, they just appear out of nowhere and suddenly have a voice. IT'S Duck PATHETIC." who is that directed at? Game masters? developers? other players?

[o11c]

In regards to Secret of Mana, I'm surprised you'd even have to ask, considering that whole series of games you play a few different characters who follow eachother around, and you switch off between them. Every other oldschool rpg has you playing a few characters at once. Was that ever considered cheating?

There is a HUGE difference between cooperative multiplayer and massively multiplayer. It's not worth comparing them at *all*.

[blackrazor]

Secret of Mana, Final Fantasy I to VII, Chrono Trigger, Baldur's Gate heck even Ultima on the Apple ][+. You had a group that followed together, fought together, but it was a single player RPG, so having multiple characters that you controlled was as "multi" as it was going to get. Online games, which substitute real online players for multiple shadows of yourself, are a completely different thing. That being said, neither Secret of Mana nor The Mana World is multiplayer co-op nor massively multiplayer. Well, I guess Secret of Mana had a co-op multi feature, but the default was to have the other characters AI controlled when you were not on them. And TMW is not massive, not with 30 to 100 online. When you have many hundreds at least, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands online at once, then you are massively multiplayer. TMW is just MOG ... multiplayer online game, not MMO, not massively multiplayer online.

And one of the big changes in the new order of this past year, is that the GMs are now by default on the TMWC, so they should have a part in making the rules, not just enforcing them. They should seek community input of course, but there is nothing in the TMWC rules that obligates them to do so. GMs can no longer say "Hey I'm just enforcing the rules, I don't make them"; they are all TMWC members now. Doesn't matter if I agree or not with this structure, it's what you guys chose for yourselves during the "changes".

[o11c]

That being said, ... The Mana World ... is not massive, not with 30 to 100 online. When you have many hundreds at least, or thousands, or hundreds of thousands online at once, then you are massively multiplayer. TMW is just MOG ... multiplayer online game, not MMO, not massively multiplayer online.

The usual cutoff is is the ability to have more than 16 players, though I have also heard 8 and 32 used.

You don't have to be WoW to be an MMORPG.

[veryape]

And one of the big changes in the new order of this past year, is that the GMs are now by default on the TMWC, so they should have a part in making the rules, not just enforcing them. They should seek community input of course, but there is nothing in the TMWC rules that obligates them to do so. GMs can no longer say "Hey I'm just enforcing the rules, I don't make them"; they are all TMWC members now. Doesn't matter if I agree or not with this structure, it's what you guys chose for yourselves during the "changes".

I think you got something completely wrong. From what I understand before we had one person who was responsible for rules, who had the final say on everything.

Now the TMWC are not solely responsible for rules, we enforce them as GM's but as far as I understand we are open for suggestions on rules, however some rules are really hard to enforce and the TMWC will always have a final say, but we at least encourage the discussion. Sure this might not be perfect, but as you rightly say this is not a massive game and we cannot burden ourself with a bureaucracy that is out of proportion with the project.

How do you think that your statement has anything to do with what has happened here? Do you even know what has happened? Is this related to some rule that any GM has made up on his/her own? Or from any rules that the TMWC did make up without asking the players? Or is it just an own rule from before the TMWC times?

Does any of that matter to you? Or are you only talking about a possibility?

The TMWC can veto gm candidates that has passed the polls, but to my knowledge that has never happened.

Please make a post about how you would like to see the game governed instead of just throwing stones around you at those that are trying to make this game move forward. "You suck!" is not a valid constructive comment imo, I think that you can probably do better than that.

I think that the main problem is transparency, once a rule change is in the works you will see how it happens. Since it has not been any rule changes that I know of I don't know for sure how it would work but i bet that if the new rule was concieved by a TMWC member they would post about it in their hidden forum first just to get the impression of what the others feelings about the changes are. Once this step is taken it would be put up on the public forums so that the players can have their say.

If a discussion about rules comes from the player base first it would just skip the first step, there might be a veto because it is "impossible to implement" or that the gm's don't have the means to uphold those rules.

But do you think that the model we had before was better? In that case why? If not, what is your problem with the new model? How can we change it to the better?

[o11c]

The TMWC can veto gm candidates that has passed the polls, but to my knowledge that has never happened.

It happened for Chicka's poll back when it was the GHP and we were under Platyna. Sure, Platyna was the one who actually used the veto in the end, but there was already lack of consensus among the rest of the GHP, which would be a rejection under the current rules also.

[veryape]

As I understood it she was denied to become a GM because she was a developer? Wasn't that the case?

[o11c]

As I understood it she was denied to become a GM because she was a developer? Wasn't that the case?

It was mentioned in the discussion, but not important to the final decision.

(it *was* the critical point in tux's poll).

[straelyn]

Btw "no auto-follow" is not true as it's actually "no cheating, also not by using auto-follow". Auto-follow is allowed, just not in fights as this is a kind of botting.
(If you didn't know that already)

just for the record, all I did is put each account on one of my laptops, side by side, and had straelyn follow sherlocke (who i played with), and ran around tmw shootin monsters, having straelyn heal sherlocke (who was using banshee bow). I didn't bot, botting requires code. I was literally switchin back and forth. If you want to ban multichar, ban multichar, but I don't see any rule against this. I was insulted by this accusation; aren't insults against the rules? I say, ban the gm for her insult.
I didn't really make anything and I didn't hurt anyone. It didn't hurt anything and I gained no real advantage. The game was lacking enough, and fyi everyone, this place is only serving as a testbed for o11c and wushin's new project. That's why nothing is getting finished anymore; it's not supposed to. So, you know, don't get too attached. The world of tmw will *never* get finished. It's been preordained by the powers that be.

[o11c]

just for the record, all I did is put each account on one of my laptops, side by side, and had straelyn follow sherlocke (who i played with), and ran around tmw shootin monsters, having straelyn heal sherlocke (who was using banshee bow).

This is exactly the kind of situation we had in mind when we added the follow rule.

[straelyn]

Doesn't change anything else of what I said.
Nestalgia is a better game anyway. I was playing for all of 5 minutes and I got a companion.
anyways, do you have any idea how many hours I poured into those characters?? How much of my own life I wasted building up those goddamn stats? You have no Duck right to usurp this game, you Duck hack. YOU HAVE NO Duck RIGHT@!