Bay 12 Games Forum

Yes, it's another e-mail regarding the letest update, because I'm sure you haven't got any of these yet. Anyhow I am going to try to outline why in my mind I think the latest update was a terrible idea, I'm also going to hopefully avoid swearing completely as it won't really help my case at all. I left this letter a few days in order to hopefully let you clear out any pointless hate mail and also to let me think it over a bit and get past the "RAAAGH I AM ANGRY!!!" stage. Before I get down to the crux of the matter I would like to apologise if this e-mail is at times badly structured, writing never was my forté. (Fancy accents on the other hand are.)







Firstly I would like to let you know that I lost a mining light to the update and have since gained a beanie from idling on an "acceptable" ingame idling server, however items are not the point of this email, I am not writing this because I am annoyed I lost my hat and want it back so I am willing to make you an offer: Adress the issues in this email and you can have my beanie, hell you can take everyone single one of my items if you want and flag my account so that I can never get any ever again. (I would really rather you didn't but if it is enough to change your mind the offer's there.)



The first issue with this update that I would like to tackle is prehaps a minor one, you may not see it as a issue at all but it seems like it may be behind a lot of the drama that sprung up after this update, especially haloers descriminating against idlers. This is the name of halo, Cheaters Lament is a deliberately provocative name. The term cheater has a lot of negative stigma surrounding it, especially in any type of competition. It conjurs up the idea of someone deliberately using illegal methods to give themselves an unfair advantage over opponents, something the idler quite definetly didn't do. By labelling idlers cheaters you cause a lot of resentment among idlers and allow haloers to take out any pent up frustration they may have out on the idlers, worse still you made idlers easily identifiable.



The second major issue I have with the halo is how it looks, to be quite frank it's but ugly. I find it amazing that you would design the ugliest hat imagineable and then give it out to so many people. It ruins the game aesthetically when half the server is running around with a big yellow line over their head. I have watched all the developer commentary videos and after seeing how much effort and thought you put into the design of the game I am amazed that you would just throw out an item like this, whne I see another hat I think to myself "Huh that's cool" when I see someone with a yellow line over their head my imersion in the game is broken and I'm immediately brought back down to the reality that I'm a spotty teenager staring at a screen instead of living his life.(I joke, I'm not that spotty.) And the problem is I see halos about twice a second, fifty percent of the server is normally wearing them. And that's if I'm lucky.



Lastly I take issue with the entire way this update was handled, it effectively came out of the Builders League United (Terrible terrible pun, I apologise.) with no prior warning, you then proceeded to retroactively punish people for it, despite the fact that you state you had no prior policy about it. At this point a lot of haolers throw about the EULA, lets be honest here, it's not about what you can do according the EULA because the EULA is a cerfully worded legal document designed to let you do as much as possible, it's about what you can do without seeming like total assholes. (I managed 673 words, but I couldn't think of any substitue which wouldn't have lost some of the meaning.) This update unfortunately failed that test. Many people, myself included, would have only required a blog post along the lines of: "We hear a lot of people have been using a certain program to idle for hats, we've decided this is unnaceptable quit it." and we would have stopped. You could have posted this at any time since you've known about the program for ages. I personally began idling only after the program had been out for a long time and you had, whether you intended to or not, passively labelled it as acceptable by taking no action against it.



So I've blamed you for a lot of stuff in this email but have yet to offer any solutions, well I will now outline what I see as the best way forward, although you are free to disagree with me. Firstly an apology is in order, an apology is never an easy thing to swallow but sometimes you just have to admit that you were wrong. It might not seem  like much but a few small words can go a long way to making people feel better, I'm not asking you to get down on your knees and beg forgivnes either, something along the lines that while the idler was is and still will be an unnaceptable way of getting hats you acknowledge that you may not have handled the issue very well and that labelling idlers cheaters and handing out halos was a badly thought out move. Secpndly the halos have to go, my suggestion would be that any with a halo gets to choose a hat of their choice, meanwhile anyone without a halo and with no hats gets given a random hat. Anyone who idled but already has a hat will not be given anything, in this way idlers are still punished somewhat as they do not get to chose which hat they recieve. If you find the idea of removig halos far too abominable a minor gesture but a good one nonetheless would be to change the word "Cheaters" to Idlers" to fit in line with your apology.







I think that I've adressed everything that I want to here, if you actually decide to take me up on my offer then you can always contact me at this email adress to get any information you need to identify my account.