Aw, thanks. Can't believe how crazy the donation drive was - mainly through site errors, I suspect, but the Gold team did very well there too. :)

I'm trying to think of suggestions for better ways to do things like the drive to save the servers. But it's tricky to find something fair to all.

One idea was that each team member had to donate (eg) 50 items a day over (eg) 2 or 3 days. With the option for the not-given total to roll over so you COULD blitz it on the last day?
If the percentage of participants who complete it is (eg) over 85%, this is a 'win' & would then give points/boost/etc.

Anyone else got any better ways for item donation during events?
I think we need suggestions after the 502-fest.

Ya, I don't know... I have no idea how to make it easier on the system and fair for all.

Personally, it would be nice to have stuff start earlier in the day and guarantee like 10 or 12 hours for it... 6 hours for anything isn't long enough since somewhere in the world someone is sleeping (assuming average 8 hour night of sleep) and it guarantees certain time zones will be left out completely. But I am biased here because I'm having to stay up crazy late, the questing started just before midnight for me. O.o

Also, can people still sign up for teams after the event has started? Someone said they knew someone who did but haven't actually confirmed this... so depending on when the late entries show up means whoever is winning or recently won a segment may get a lot of stragglers that aren't super active but want to be on the winning team. I liked in the snow man building that stragglers could cheer and do other things if they missed signups. I definitely am in favor of if you miss sign ups, you are without a team and maybe are given some other tasks to do to earn points but miss out on the team aspect. But then I think sign-ups should last like a full week, not just a couple days.

It's so hard because people have school, work and real life stuff all cutting into their proper Subeta time! :p

Time zones are a further screw-up for challenges.

Hence, I think something where you do X amount in a day - I guess a bit like quests work - seems to strain things less than the free-for-alls do!

There sould definitely be a clearly set out time for sign ups, and I did like the 'cheer for a team if you didn't make it in time' option. That felt very inclusive to me.

I honestly don't know if people can join late for this - would you happen to know?

Ah, so just how quickly is y'all's food going down? Because some of our team was complaining about it depleting faster on the third leg, but we still didn't really have any trouble keeping it above 90% or so.

^ & I have no idea if people can still sign up for teams or not, but even if they can they'd be missing out on some big parts of the event already.

It was definitely depleting faster was a struggle to keep it up early when there weren't as many people around, there were a couple emergency pings going out to keep it high enough to not decrease our energy. >.<

Ah okay, so it seems like our food boosters were definitely having an effect then. That's good to know!

And hopefully the good weather boosts will help even out the speed thing, because I did notice on the last one that we were catching up not only when our own speed boost was activated but also a couple of times when we got good weather.

We got hit by the wind over and over again right at the end. It was brutal... >.<

That's happened with us a couple of times too. Get hit by the wind and then a monsoon right after or something. Good to know it's been affecting both teams so far.

Not that I think this would happen, but I wonder what staff would do with an NPC if teams tied for turning stuff in/quests/whatever. :P

(btw I ping you guys since you all are admins for your team... and cuz you're awesome too of course!) I got a anon gift from someone on Team Steele, very sweet of whoever your team gifter is! Today was my one day that I had RL stuff to take care of and was out of the house for part of the day... and it was the craziest day yet for Team Gold. :P

Aww, yeah a few people were sending out gifts to some of you guys because of all the hardships with the weather and stuff.

Sorry to hear that some of your team ended up giving up. But hopefully with Elwood helping both teams now, we won't be competing so much to get to the top of the mountain.

The Team are having a bit of a commiseration for the goldsters, we had shocking luck with some things, and then you had shocking luck with those winds.

As said, hopefully everyone's spirits are boosted a little with the arrival of Elwood.

Pizza and WOOD will do us all good!

Ya between the wind gods hating us and machus stealing our food just when we'd make some progress gathering, we really didn't have a chance... but that's the thing about random chance, sometimes it's great and sometimes it's horrible. >.< And taking a break was only decided after it was clear that the team couldn't catch up.... without weather obstacles to slow you down, only a glitched obstacle could have let us catch up... and I wouldn't wish that on anyone. :P I do wish it had been handled a bit differently to avoid fellow players being upset but I couldn't be as active today as earlier in the week so can't say too much since I couldn't do more than post a couple times. shrugs At least a lot of our dedicated players are hopefully resting up for whatever they have in store for us next. :)

So just to be clear, we actually DO have the night off? No expected news posts at 6pm, right? I feel a bit weird going to bed at a normal time. >.<

Ah late response, but yeah I'm pretty sure Elwood's surprise is going to come at 6 PM tomorrow or just before we set out on the trail again.

I fell asleep... lol... thanks! I'm glad the staff realized we all needed a day off. :)

Yeah, me too.

I'm also pretty convinced now that we'll be working together for the last leg up the mountain, and not competing as teams. Especially because of 's response here.

I guess we'll find out exactly what's going to happen later, but that's just my guess.

I kinda hope so... mostly for the fact that I'm really tired of discussions about 'random' when humans are scientifically proven not not grasp how random works because our brains are wired to find patterns. >.< It annoys me...

I'm just kind of tired of trying to be around constantly in order to participate in the trail portions and help my team.

This break has been really nice. I like events, but I kind of prefer the ones where you can do your steps and then you're done until the next part is released. Having to be around so much for this part has been stressful. D:

Although it has been fun chatting with my teammates and all.

I second what said. I enjoy Subeta and chatting with you all, but I'm tired of this caravan-race-up-the-trail thing. It just isn't fun and quite frankly exhausting.

I'm SO hoping that we end up working together and just have some individual plot steps to do. I'm very over playing that hunting game and clearing very repetitive obstacles.

Yeah, my kingdom for something different. The trail's getting to me. The break last night was so delightful.

I'm definitely ready for a change of pace. I'd really like it if we could all adventure together.

Elwood brought a van, we are good again!

Glad for slow plot day, been so busy.

Hurry up weekend...