Yeah, I don't think most Steele people realized that with gaining Sephora, our obstacles also increased in frequency. So, no, her slight speed boost and Esther's block everything bad boost are not comparable in any way. They cannot ever zero each other out and make the playing field even.

And this entire thread has been about programming/staff. Don't try to make it about yourself because you somehow think Gold just wasn't working hard enough. That's bs and you know it. Even with Sephora, we were only averaging roughly 10% ahead. 10% is a far cry from 30%.

I stand by my statement that staff did not think this through. These boosts should have never been part of this plot. The NPC's should have joined up simply because they wanted to help out. It should have been some sort of "moral dilemma" of which team to choose, and we had to convince them money or adventure was the way to go. And then maybe in the end, you got a prize that was that NPC theme or something.

Team Steele can ONLY have good or neutral weather. Assuming constant frequency, every time GOLD gets ANY (good or bad or neutral) weather, Steele speeds up.

Also, obstacles are irrelevant since its assumed both sides have the same amount and types.

And lastly, STEELE finished 3hours+ faster than the no-buffs race from day1. I mean thats insane.

Even with Sephora's 10% speed, GOLD beat that by 1.5hrs. That means that in essence Ester provided a 20% increase. And that's comparing among leg races, so how team GOLD did in the last race isnt relevant at all in that comprison.

I think it's worth discussing why NPC boosts were so strong in general. I know some disagree, but Sephora was a very strong boost. Day 1, Wesley appeared useless, but once food consumption was tweaked that boost became pretty crucial. Esther's effect we're already aware of.

I don't think they should have had that dramatic an influence. Moral support and maybe a slight influence, but the presence or absence of an NPC shouldn't be a deciding factor over who wins the leg.

Conversely, it might also not matter so much if there weren't stated prizes for the winners of each leg. I think we'd be less frustrated if there weren't a perceived cost for losing.

Unfortunately, i don't think it's as easy as kicking inactive players off each team. In theory, because Gold does have slightly more on their side, the amount of inactive players should put you guys roughly around the same amount as Team Steele, possibly still higher if Steele's got any slackers too.

But that's a different can of worms altogether and not the purpose of this particular thread. I do agree about the stupid windstorms. It'd have been great if they had brought back one of the Tempest's plot baddies for players to fight off from the very start of this event, which would have given Gold a chance to keep up at a better pace with Steele.

Unfortunately, there's not much left for this plot it seems and it sounds like Elwood is gonna give us rocket boosters or something to get us to the volcano (finally). And in the end, both teams each won two legs of the race, so everybody should have more or less the same amount of bonus plot points racked up.

We've also got Wesley, so it makes a little bit more sense as to why we pulled off a fast time. None of us knew what the hell we were supposed to do on day1 anyways, so I don't think that's a fair comparison.

Gold won Days 1 and 3, Steele won Days 2 and 4. It all worked out in the end, regardless of how the journey went for each team.

Though I do agree with the general opinion about the weather effects in general being a bad decision (I don't mind the monsoons either but yeah, I do really hate the fact that you could be moved backwards). I'm not sure how big of a difference Blake + Wesley's effects made on the food stores for Team Steele but they did get ridiculously hard to keep up with on Team Gold.

I'm really hoping we do work together from this point, only to save us all a headache. I like being there and supporting my team but things are just getting too heated on all sides regarding the way this plot worked out and I'm honestly just so tired of it.

Idk, since staff already said it won't be a problem tomorrow, I'm going to trust them and just see what happens tomorrow. Luck on this site has always been weird anyway. It's bad luck that Team Gold got bad luck. I do agree, however, that the weather perk should have been just to negate bad weather. If weather was an uncommon occurrence, it wouldn't be so bad. Anyway, let's just see what tomorrow/today brings.

From the conversation with the NPCs at the temple, I get the vibe we'll be working together going forward, but I'm just assuming.

We got pushed back by gust of winds extremely often when you guys got Sephora. We also had a leg of event completely ruined by weather, the third one.

As soon as we managed to get back within decent distance OOPS GUST OF WIND AGAIN.

I am still incredibly mad over how bullshit the 3rd leg was for Team Steele.

The monsoons might be less bullshit than the gusts of wind, but they're still terrible. Monsoons can completely scrap a speed boost if you happen to have two in the same hour, and there is nothing you can do, so yeah, no, fuck the monsoons too

As a member of Team Steele, I have to agree the weather is just stupid and needs a major overhaul, or be removed all together. At the very least the windstorms need to be removed to give Gold a chance now.

Competitions are fun when its friendly and well balanced. I love the team-based plots and stuff on Subeta! When both teams got good and bad weather it was frustrating, but balanced, and it kept it fun and fair. Yesterday wasn't balanced in the slightest; It was a slaughter the likes of which would make a slasher movie villain turn green at the gills.

Poor Gold, I really feel sorry for you guys. Every time I looked we at Steele had a speed boost going and good weather giving us another speed boost, and my friends on Gold were always complaining about being in a monsoon or windstorm and going absolutely nowhere. Steele is assured to win since we have only good weather, and Gold can't do anything about getting pushed back. The 10% speed boost is just 10% more chances to get bad weather now...

That's not fun, that's not a competition. That's sitting down and shooting golden fish in a tiny barrel. There's no hope, no escape, no way to stop it; You just have to sit and watch everyone go belly up. I don't want to compete anymore knowing that the other team can't do anything about the bad weather-It isn't fair.

I hope whatever pizza related fanfic magic Elwood is going to cast will fix the weather, or reveal the 'evil spirits' causing the bad weather so Gold can beat 'em and get back to speed faster. Or something. I guess we'll see soon.

Thank deus ex machina for based Elwood.

No more trail, yay!

I was frustrated, but now I'm happy. It seems to have ended 50/50 despite my own side's setbacks.

I gotta say, Deus ex Elwood's Van was pretty great.

I'm a little disappointed that instead of trying to balance the scales, they just decided to cut this all short

Eh, I don't really mind that much. I don't think the unbalanced elements are the only reason people were getting frustrated.

To be honest, the trail steps were interesting at first but just got tedious the longer they went on. I understand their integration into the story, but doing the same thing every other day (especially a step where people need to be around constantly to get through the obstacles and such) was just wearing down on people.

I liked the team aspect, but I also like the kind of thing we're doing now where everyone can do the steps on their own and then be finished until the next part.

I'm actually really happy with this resolution, haha. We're even in extra plot points now, and we don't have to suffer through the repetitive trail stuff anymore. I liked the first day once we got into it, but by the last day, it was getting pretty old.

I like moving into puzzle rounds!

Hey, I know that this is late and that no one probably cares about this anymore. However, I'm just going to throw out that if there's ever a plot/event like this again that, perhaps, the obstacles be flagged or something when they happen.

You know, something like Wind happens, and it gets a cooldown counter of, say, 2. Then, that event couldn't occur again for 2 turns. Each obstacle turn decreases the counter by 1. So, instead of: WIND WIND WIND, it would be more like: wind, rps, ravine or whatever. Maybe I know nothing, but couldn't that add a little more forced variety in the randomness (for the future)?

Just something to think about, since I really enjoyed completing things as a team, right up until that unstoppable storm the last day.