I normally hate disclaimers like this, but I know this is a sensitive subject and people have some very strong opinions about it. I don't want to see this thread locked, so please try not to rage too hard in here or throw accusations around. However you feel about this issue, I think we can discuss this issue in a civil manner so let's try to do that.

So. This last race was kind of a mess. Team Gold was hit by at least 9-10 gusts of wind total, and Blake finished 35% ahead of us. I don't have a problem with the fact that my team lost, and I don't blame Blake's team in any way (how could it possibly be their fault?), but a lot of my teammates feel that there may have been something off about the trail yesterday.

The only staff response we've had so far came indirectly via , who "got confirmation that it's simply bad luck." We tried to believe that for a while, but roughly a third of our obstacles were gusts, which seems highly improbable given the number of potential obstacles we could have received. This has all left us with a lot of unanswered questions, including:

Was this really bad luck after all, or was the system broken somehow?

Can we expect a similar outcome during tomorrow's race?

If tomorrow's outcome is similar, Gold doesn't stand a chance. Blake finished at 1:30pm today, when no one had previously finished before 5pm, even with Sephora's bonus. Meanwhile, we were a whopping 35% behind (20% and falling before our team collectively decided to give up). If Elwood is going to help both teams equally, then nothing actually changes here.

Again, I'm not upset that my team lost. It's just that a lot of us expected a closer race, but in the end nothing we did mattered. There's just no way to overcome "luck" so bad that it leaves you feeling like the site is conspiring against you, and that you'd be better off walking away.

Is there anything you can tell us that might reassure everyone that tomorrow's race won't be just as unbalanced?

The wind is not a good obstacle, in my opinion. Monsoon already prevents movement and you can't work against it, that's annoying but at least it doesn't waste things that you've done before it.

edit: hit enter when i didn't want to!! ugh

ANYWAYS

while i do think this outcome might have been technically "random", i think the algorithm that determines events needs to be uh. potentially revisited if possible? like i don't want to sound like i'm whining about losing because tbh i don't care about that

what i DO care about though is having fun with a plot and being on a team where morale isn't completely dead lol...and as it stands if this is going to happen consistently then it's the feeling of not even standing a chance, not actually losing that feels cruddy

I saw someone posted the timeline of the- what was it, 6 or 7?- gusts of wind that Team Gold got, and I'll just say that I am very much not buying the "it's just bad luck" line, sorry.

It's one thing to lose because the other team was genuinely outperforming mine. I can handle that, that doesn't bother me. It's another to lose this leg because of some artificial difficulty garbage that very much looks like "boy, bet you wish your team got the NPC that negates weather events, huh?"

Basically, it's not fun (or competitive) to get completely slaughtered like that. There are a bunch of us working really hard on this plot, and it sucks to feel like you're not accomplishing anything and to lag so far behind despite all the effort you're putting in.

I get that that's just the luck of the draw and we ended up with fewer of those players than Team Steele, but...this is a game, and I'd like to actually have fun playing it with my teammates, and struggling to even keep the food bar from running out is not fun.

I'm not buying the "bad luck" argument, either. Issues with the coding that have been looked into and resolved for the next trail day? That I'd believe.

I don't see why everything has to be so mysterious, either. I'm okay with having lost this day - Team Blake might've beaten us regardless (just not by that huge of a margin). What I'm less pleased with is the "everything is totally functioning as expected; just trust us" responses from staff, when it'd be so easy to just admit that something was off with the coding for the "random" events.

C'mon now. If it was JUST random bad luck, how can it be "fixed winkwink" for tomorrow? It's a direct contradiction to make those two statements together.

I'm guessing that means there is now bad luck protection? Still random but 'weighted' to not quite be so evil? Or just that the wind event was lessened?

Either way I hope it doesn't spill into yet another obstacle being a pain. At least most of them aren't as bad as wind.

Also, speaking of clarifications that left something to be desired re:the plot, I'm still confused about food. If it goes over 100 between chron purges, isn't it worth collecting beyond full bar during the day?? Seems wrong to tell people 'nah food doesn't go past 100' if so.

Edit: And just to be clear I appreciate passing it on. I ultimately appreciate whoever answered him providing that answer.. I just wish we were given a little more to consider or work with. Still seems unclear.

I'm also kind of worried that Esther's bonus might be overpowered. Like I said before, they finished at 1:30 today which is hours earlier than anyone's finished before. Did they have extremely good luck today and get a disproportionate amount of weather events? If they did, it's even more suspicious that both teams had crazy weather on the same day. If it was a normal day, then we can probably expect them to finish hours before us again next time.

:x

I don't really believe in the "random" events around the site as a whole. The supposedly random events tend to get stuck and I'll have 10 dandybunnys in my inventory in a week. Or I won't be asked for help from the Oracle for literally 6 months+ and then she starts asking every other day. Or I won't see a subeautique invite for months while others report racking up 1-2/day.

Honestly I think that the system gave all the weather obstacles that team Blake were supposed to get to team gold.. like it chose Blake first and was blocked, but the obstacle wasn't deleted, instead it moved to Gold..

From 6pm-4am, Steele had 6 events of good weather, no bad weather at all. Two of which were during our second speed boost - we had no obstacles that whole hour. In the same period I think Gold got around 6 or 7 winds?

I think we did have really good luck xD Or Esther's bonus works a little too well.

I'm glad to hear that this won't be an issue tomorrow, at least. I hope that the weather events were tweaked so that there isn't the potential for Team Gold to be screwed over by them. While it's true that Team Steele earned Esther, I don't want her to be a game-breaker. :c I like it when my team wins but not when it feels like the other had no chance, y'know?

re: Team Steele winning so early Well, I was gone for a chunk of the day so I can't say anything for sure, but I was here for a good number of hours after the plot day started. Team Steele is good at being on top of obstacles and getting the speed bonus -- I think we activated it a good 2 or 3 times before I went to bed in the early morning, and I'm sure it was used a few more times while I was away from the laptop. I'd imagine a combination of this and the lack of bad weather events to push us back, plus the fact that we got a lot of good weather events, is the cause of our weirdly early win. We got really lucky, our team is active enough to get through things quickly, and getting pushed back is no longer an issue for us, so it was near-constant forward progress.

Honestly I totally understand why people are suspicious. I like to believe staff whenever possible, so I'm going to try to do so here. I know how it is to get absurdly screwed over by the RNG in games, so I'm sure it's possible there was no wonky coding or anything, just plain bad luck and bad timing. I do hope that the weather events get balanced out a bit more if we hit the trails again, though. Like, tweaking the chance of Gold getting bad weather and Steele getting good weather, not to the point where weather events are irrelevant, but just so we don't have anything else so wildly frustrating as the last trail day. Even if it's just bad luck, it looked like a lot of Team Gold was pretty much ready to give up, and that's really.. not good for an event that's supposed to be fun.

Here's the data on all prior finishes. Day 1: Start - 6:00pm 9/8 Finish - 5:17pm 9/9 Total Time: 23 hours, 17 minutes

Day 2: Start - 6:02pm 9/10 Finish - 4:50pm 9/11 Total Time: 22 hours, 48 minutes (29 minute difference from previous)

Day 3: Start - 6:02 pm 9/12 Finish - 3:52pm 9/13 Total Time: 21 hours, 50 minutes (58 minute difference from previous)

Day 4: Start - 5:57 pm 9/14 Finish - 1:36pm 9/15 Total Time: 19 hours, 39 minutes (2 hours, 11 minutes difference)

Taking into account that each day was a little shorter/easier than the previous because the teams knew what to expect/do, the most recent trail was still finished over 2 hours earlier than the previous time when both others were less than 1.

As it is now, I am still willing to believe the "it was random and bad luck" explanation. I'm part of a writing RPG community where we have plots based on random events. One of the teams managed to get almost killed due to a big bunch of bad random events even before they reached the place where the actual plot started, and another team finished the whole thing in a ridiculous short time with sheer luck. And while my own teammates were fine, my character stumbled into every trap on the road, got cut, burned, bruised and beaten up, all through bad luck in the random events. Things like that happen, you can throw a dice 100 times and get 100 6'es 😊

I'll get wary in case the next race will end again with Team Steele winning with 20something % in the lead while Team Gold is stuck in monsoons, strong winds (gosh I hate those xD) and such again. Then I'll doubt the "luck" factor :D Until then, it seems to be luck combined with unbalanced NPC powers at worst, like in "Esther blocked out the 50 bad weather events that may or may not have hit Blake & Co. without her" :o

Besides that, I still find it amazing how supportive, sportsmanlike and generally nice everyone is! I never saw anyone gloating over a victory with the other team facing bugs, bad luck or "bad luck" :3

Highly improbable? Sure. Impossible? No.

If this happened to steele, sure I would be sour about it, but I wouldn't think it was necessarily cheating / foul play / etc.

I'm tired of seeing all the this isn't fair posts and comments coming from both sides. Whether it's about amount of team members or challenges, etc. If everything was totally fair and equal, we would be deadlock tied. :x It's a competition. Not equal distribution of wealth, resources, people, etc. like a magical utopia where all things are equal and nice.

I was a lot more frustrated by spending hours hunting only to still see the bar drain rapidly. The hunting game is fun for a few rounds, but dull to spend hours on, and when all your work just seems to be going down the drain no matter what you do, it gets discouraging.

Omg that last race was just pure frustration. Nothing any of us did, did ANYTHING to help at all. And for a long time we just kept getting blown right back to the starting line while we watched the other team move farther and farther along. And then there was the food bar torture. -_-

I can't accept that we didn't work hard enough as a reason because I saw it with my own two eyes how MANY of us were constantly for hours playing the hunting game but the bar simply would not fill. And it had NEVER been a problem for us to keep that bar full or near full before that specific race. I put in the same all nighter I had been ever since this plot began but during that last race it just felt like wasted time. My being there, spending hours on end hunting or frantically trying to finish obstacles like the rest of team was all in vain because the literal second we moved even 2% forward there was a monsoon or gust of wind waiting to push us back.

Lastly on the NPC boosts. When we won Sephora we won by like 3% but after they won Esther they won by 35%. Let that sink in a little. How a weather NPC completely steamrolls what was supposed to be a 10% speed boost is beyond me. I thought it'd be more equal advantage not disproportionate like it was. In fact with the Sephora boost tbh it didn't even look like the speed boost was doing anything to help last time, just frustrating us because we kept thinking it was going to help us because we "at least had Sephora" but it didn't. :(

I'm assuming it's "fixed" because of Elwood, maybe he changes all the obstacles or something.

My guess is that for this last leg, we will no longer be competing as teams and will just make it to the top of the mountain together.

Saggi seems no longer interested in fighting anymore, since he got his payment, and the fact that Elwood will be helping both teams is a bit telling.

I do agree that the last leg was probably a bit messed up, since we ended up winning by 35% when previously the gap was only 5-7%. However, we are now tied for wins with 2 legs each team, so I guess I won't complain too much since it seems like everyone will end up with about equal plot points because of that.