- Bad memory I guess. :P Thanks for the quick answer.

Well this run of "bad luck" seems to be never ending. 502's waste our speed boost and food, FOUR counts of strong wind blowing us back, three of them in a row, effectively erasing most of our progress, and now another obstacle less then 10 minutes after the winds stop? This is getting ridiculous

And now yet another obstacle less then 20 minutes after the last one. I hope the other team is getting slammed with these this fast.

its like the temptest (or whatever the wind bear thing is called) is specifically spiting team gold. Like this is actually ridiculous. :/

ah well, just gotta keep traveling i guess

[edit]

AND NOW A MONSTER TO FIGHT ... cool...

6:24pm - 6:44pm - Gust of wind 6:50pm - 7:10pm - Gust of wind 7:18pm - 7:38pm - Gust of wind 9:09pm - 9:29pm - Gust of wind 11:05pm - 11:25pm - Sunny weather 1:14am - 1:34am - Gust of wind 2:30am - 2:50am - Gust of wind

Are we sure this is just bad luck? Like are we really sure though?

This plus the fact that everything about this plot, trails and npc's, is so very conveniently split right down the middle. Especially if we win the next NPC event. It's too perfectly even, and the fact that both teams seem to get "bad luck" they just can't recover from on their off days is...well it's something to think on.

I've asked this before, but still can't see an answer on the front page, sorry, if it gor answered somewhere inbetween:

What happens to the plot during 504, 502, 50whatever, blank pages, etc. does the game stall, like, if we can't beat current obstacles because of it, it doesn't affect the cumulative time we've needed in comparison to our progress, or food stops depleting during a speed boost, or does the trail continue and we simply get additionally thrown behind and it's a disadvantage for the affected party?

The wind thing for Team Gold is defiitely disturbing, just as the evenly distributed NPCs and trail leg wins leave a bitter taste and make lots of people feel there's something fishy about that.

Our caravans move once at the top of each minute. When the site goes down -- even briefly -- the cron gets messed up and usually ends up skipping a step so neither team moves. I don't know how it effects food and energy, because they update much more frequently than every minute.

What really sucks is that unlike everything else, the speed boosts (the one we vote on, and the sunny weather event) seem to run on a set timer rather than the cron. So like if you activate your 1-hour boost at 4:30, it will end at exactly 5:30 regardless of downtime.

So if you have an active boost and the site goes down for a few minutes, you will effectively lose that time. The boost will still run out, but you won't make progress during the downtime. This exact scenario played out earlier (around 9pm) when the site went down for ~25 minutes while both teams were boosted. In that case it was kind of fair, since it affected both teams equally. If only one team is boosting during downtime, then they lose out.

I don't know if this answers any part of your question, but hopefully it helps?

Yes, thanks! At least you know a lot more than I ;-)

So I guess, obstacles are affected like the speed boost and each time the site acts up, one team is on the hind site, unless both are just being boosted or facing an obstacle.

Any way, we have told them for months, that the whole shop change nuisance was only leading us on and we were still getting the same lag and issues with the now tiniest but oh-so-well-progammed (farce!) shops. And like so often, they started a plot without having fixed the site first :-(

Is there any way to adjust the frequency of certain obstacles? On the first leg Team Gold won, Team Steele got hammered with weather. On the second leg Team gold won, Team Steele had an absurd number of battle obstacles. It's split 2-1 right now in favor of Team Gold, and it seems very likely that Team Steele will win this leg.

I have no issue with splitting the trail legs between the two teams so one team doesn't have a crazy advantage in plot points at the end, but it does seem somewhat suspicious that the trail legs and NPC events have been SO favored for one team or the other. I'm on Team Steele, and it's not even fun to see how large our lead is. Competition is fun. A one-sided part of the event is not.

All of you have great points about the frequency of obstacles or a string of suspiciously bad luck and the general unfairness of all the 502s/504s. The NPC advantages seem SO unbalanced because of the frequency of difficult obstacles for the team that lost the NPC. When Team Gold got the speed boost, we did a damn good job of keeping up for a while, but there were so many battle obstacles that we couldn't keep up. Now Team Gold has had so much wind. I can't imagine this has been fun for them at all just as it wasn't for us when we had battle after battle to do with only so many battlers active on our team.

I'm not saying that Sephora or Esther should have their boosts removed, but I do hope that the frequency of certain obstacles (like the wind) can be adjusted so their bonuses do not give either team a really large advantage. Who knows though. It seems likely that the next NPC will give Team Gold a leg up and they'll win the next part of the trail if this pattern holds up.

As far as I could tell last night, we got bogged down so much the site couldn't be used and the food kept decreasing (we fell almost below 50% by the time we could get back on). It also looked like we picked up good weather during or, if we had got it just going in, it lasted far longer than normal. 😦

That said, the speed boost counter kept ticking, whether we were moving or not.

I agree with what others have said, some of this just seems too suspicious or ridiculous to believe that it is actually just crappy luck.

I can understand having things be kind of even so that there isn't a huge advantage in plot points on one side or the other, but still. It just seems a little too convenient that we've traded off pretty consistently on winning the trail legs and NPCs.

I do hope something can be done about reducing the frequency of the wind or battle obstacles. Those are some of the worst, and if one side gets hit by too many of them it's pretty much over for that team.

Since Team Blake is probably going to finish really quickly today, is there any way that Tempest can come and give Team Gold some really nice boost to lift their spirits so they don't have to finish some really non-competitive obstacles and we can just move the damn plot along? The trail legs are getting repetitive, and I don't think either team is having much fun anymore.

it almost seems like when they added the good weather on the other team they programmed what would normally be distributed over two teams just to one team (if that makes sense). Are we sure something like that didn't happen?? Keep in mind I know very little about programming... but something like that would make sense

I thought this gave them good weather but I didn't know it also gave us bad weather I thought we would just stay like it usually is and they would just get good weather like

seriously it brought storms to us lol

I don't know if it's supposed to be that way, apparently it's just bad luck. Although some of us on Team Blake have been suspicious too, because that is a lot of bad weather that you guys have been getting.

what the hell is going on? I am here minding rl business, coming to check every once a while when I can to help out and make some progress, and literally 5 times out of 7 I have checked there was the wind thing?! It almost made me excited to see the monsoon up hahahaha (no)

ON THE OTHER HAND, thank you very much for all of you on Team Steele who are giving us nice words, you are super sweet. ?

Appreciate the support from Team Steele, too! It's nice to see that we're not the only ones frustrated with how this plot has been going, and how the "bad luck" is way too suspiciously targeted at a single team at a time to be accidental.

"The trail legs are getting repetitive, and I don't think either team is having much fun anymore."

I'm certainly not. This is an exhausting plot; we don't get any breaks, because if we don't keep an eye on the site during the trail, we lose ground. Our food has been depleting faster and faster, so it feels like we're constantly playing that same hunting game over and over and over. If we don't restock or quest like mad when we're in camp, we lose advantages that put us three hours behind the other team.

It's not fun anymore. A good percentage of Team Saggy is throwing up their hands at this point, because why even bother with the trail when the bad weather keeps constantly throwing us backwards along the trail? We can't fight the bad weather, or do anything to stop it. And those of us on our team who're active (clearly a lower percentage than Team Steele's, judging from the way the quest win was set up) are TIRED of carrying all the weight and gaining nothing from it.

At this point, I've thrown so much sp and time at this point, with nothing to show for it, that there's nothing at the end that's really going to make it rewarding. I still want to try to win but........it's clearly pointless to even try for the rest of today's, since the site's set against letting us make any progress. Nice way to discourage a ton of people from wanting to play.

I really wish that the team who hits camp first had the option to "go back out on the trail" and help the following team finish up their tasks and get into camp quicker.

I'd like to be able to bring out a nice cup of tea and some blankets and maybe a couple of umbrellas or something, while helping fight off spiders.

Is there supposed to be no story for this camp portion?

Also the new battle challenger doesn't drop anything either. What's the point of having the challengers then?

I have thought from the beginning that the wind obstacle should be removed, since it sucks/sucked for both teams and hitting Gold SIX TIMES is absolutely ridiculous! The monsoon is enough of a weather obstacle, it stops you. Blowing a team BACK on the trail is just a waste of time and effort.