:: News Archive :: - Printable Version +- HELOVIA || The Way to the Sun (http://helovia.com) +-- Forum: Out of Character (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=1) +--- Forum: Updates (http://helovia.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=2) +--- Thread: :: News Archive :: (/showthread.php?tid=111) |
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RE: :: News Archive :: - Sevin - 08-04-2014 The admin are constantly evaluating the battle system and taking into consideration the player comments on how it seems to be working. We've noticed a few more issues with the battle system and stats so we are working to fix these to make the system fair to everyone. We will again be changing some of the formulas and how the HP is calculated, so everyone should expect some minor changes to their numbers. That said, before you start any new fights, be sure to check with the admin to make sure your stats are current. Rest assured that all of these changes are to improve your experience here at Helovia and we will continue to take feedback. Thank you for all of your patience as we have worked to develop this battle system into something that is both functional and fair. It has been and will continue to be a work in progress. For those who are interested, changes are as follows:
Another notice: In order to make sure that everyone is receiving quality instruction during IC Spars with OOC teaching notes, and also to make sure that those doing the teaching spars are not receiving extra VP for passing on poor quality information, the admin have created a requirement that must be met. In order to do IC Spars with OOC teaching notes, you must have completed four fights that were judged (with rubrics!) and which you won. These four spars can be with any combination of your characters. Those approved to do OOC teaching spars will now be listed in a new thread in the battle board. :: Teaching Spar Approval ::. All stats have been edited to reflect these current changes, both in profile and the spreadsheet. PLEASE NOTE: a tab in the spreadsheet called "OLD" has been created. All characters that are: dead, deleted, hidden, suspended, abyssed or otherwise unable to be seen on the memberlist and edited, have had their stats moved to that tab. You can use CTRL + F to do a quick search for the name. In the event you bring a character back and it is taken off the OLD tab, it will have to have its stats updated by admin to ensure all numbers are correct. RE: :: News Archive :: - Sevin - 08-04-2014 The following updates have been made to how drops (quest, companion, and magic) will proceed. These changes have been made in the interest of fairness to all. As always, if you have any questions, please PM Aud, Rayo or Tamme. The one-month waiting period for wishlists has been re-activated. After a trial period, we have decided to reinstate the one-month rule for wishlists. We will be going through wishlists and updating them and ensuring that information is listed correctly, to avoid confusion during drops. On your wishlist, you may list one of each type of companion (NS, SS, Regular), and 4 magic ideas (not including upgrades), as well as items.
All drops will now be multi-staged. What does this mean? Basically, you will have to post more than once per drop, and your character will often have to complete some sort of task in order to proceed to the next round. Whether or not you advance depends entirely on how you respond IC - it has to do with your creativity, ingenuity, and whether or not your character responds appropriately to the task at hand.
All posts under 250 words will be immediately disqualified. Although we generally allow a buffer before sending warnings for posts that are under our required minimum, this buffer will not apply in drops. Any posts under 250 (as counted by programs like Microsoft Word, or Open Office) will be immediately disqualified. Prior Refusals now have specific application. Magic refusals will now be divided up into type. For instance, if you are trying to gain FirexWater magic from one drop, and enter another drop asking for Time magic, your previous FirexWater refusal will not count towards this new magic. It would however count, if you tried to gain FirexWind magic. Similarly for companions, refusals for a regular companion cannot be used towards a species-specific companion, and vice-versa. RE: :: News Archive :: - Sevin - 08-04-2014 Hello, all! It has come to our attention that there has been a great deal of secondhand information being passed around regarding recent admin decisions. As you are all aware, we strive to maintain complete transparency with you, our community. Anyone may send me a PM with any questions and I am happy to address your concerns regarding any specific recent issues. However, we would also like to offer the community the opportunity to ask the admin team any questions regarding any aspect of the site, any rumor you may have heard, etc. We will answer to the best of our ability with as much information as possible without jeopardizing anyone else's right to privacy. Please post your questions below, or if you would like to remain anonymous, you may PM your questions to me. Please utilize this opportunity to ask us questions and clear the air! We want to be truthful and transparent with you, so please help us help you to understand any issues you may have. Please remember that this is not an opportunity to be mean or snarky, but rather an attempt to clear the air of recent OOC drama issues. Any rude or disrespectful comments will not be tolerated. Remember - if you wouldn't want it said to you, don't say it to someone else! Also, feel free to ask for clarification on any rules or policies that are confusing. Thank you! You may begin. Question: Why was (insert player name here) suspended/banned? I never saw them do anything wrong! While we try not to expose specific details about disciplinary situations on the site, I can assure you that there is a lengthy process that the senior admin go through when we are faced with a complaint or a rule violation. Junior admin are not generally involved in discipline. When we receive a complaint, we do our best to procure proof of any rule violation. With the exception of extreme cases, if we do not have proof, then we do not suspend or ban a player, though we may send a warning. If we do have documented proof of a rule violation, then the senior admin discuss an appropriate punishment. In the case of suspensions and bans, we discuss the length of suspension, requirements for returning, and other specifics, and then we send a PM detailing these things to the player. We always tell players why they are being suspended or banned to ensure that there is no confusion. If, for some reason, an admin is too closely involved (was directly disrespected or otherwise involved) then that admin will be removed from discussion, and the other admin will be left to make a final decision about punishment. I hope this helps to clarify our process and assure the community that we are not displaying any bias or favoritism. If anyone has further questions about any specific incidents, or would like to clarify any rumors that they have heard, please contact me via PM and I will help as much as I can. Please remember - we do not like to discipline anyone. It isn't fun, and we don't enjoy it, so if we don't feel that it is the best thing for the site, we won't do it! Question: The battle system is really confusing. Why did we change the old system? I understand that the battle system can be confusing. We have tried to make it so that members don't have to worry about complicated math or formulas, while at the same time providing all get information so that it is transparent. I can say that Sevin has posted a few updates to make the system more fair and to ultimately make the dice rolls matter less, and there is a battle system guide in the works currently to break down each and every piece of the system in a way that hopefully everyone can understand. I stand by this system because it is a lot more efficient and, at the end of the day, much more fair for the players. We are able to judge things quickly and in a more normalized fashion, so there is less difference in scores based on who is judging. I know this isn't a true explanation - and I'm sorry for that - but I promise that there is a guide in the works, to be completed very soon, and I hope that will help. In the meantime, if you have any specific questions, I would honestly direct them to Sevin. She is a fantastic judge with an excellent grasp of the system, and she should be able to explain most of it in a much more concise manner than I would. Question: I've seen dice rolls determine the outcome of a battle, and I don't think that should happen. Why isn't our system more focused on writing? I do agree that no one should win solely because of the dice - and, in fact, we have safeguards in place to ensure that it doesn't happen. For example, if someone scores entirely in the negatives on their rubric, they cannot win, no matter what their HP is. Further, we have recently doubled the value of the rubric so that writing weighs more for the final verdict. We are constantly analyzing the system to see if it can be improved and to ensure that it does provide focus on the writing. I am happy to hear any suggestions at any time via PM! :) Question: I heard a rumor that the admin are biased when it comes to judging battles, stealths, and drops. Is this true? Rumors regarding admin bias are simply not true. I am sure that this is what you expect to hear, but I assure you that we take great lengths to keep everything fair and unbiased. If one of us is directly involved in a stealth or a battle outcome, we are not allowed to judge. For example, when Seele was challenged (both times) I was not allowed to judge because I am very close with abba, and although I strive to be fair, I didn't want to accidentally be biased. Further, no one wanted it to look like favoritism. If there is a drop, the admin running the drop is not allowed to participate. All of this is very, very strictly regulated amongst ourselves. I have never seen bias affect the outcome of a stealth, drop, or battle verdict. I am currently brainstorming ways to show more transparency with things like drops (taking screenshots of dice rolls, etc) to try and prove this. If anyone has any suggestions, please feel free to PM me! Question: There are a lot of foals, and many of them are never played or fall inactive. Why aren't regulations more strict? We definitely have a foal problem, but this has honestly been a problem on every site I have ever RPed on. I would love to find a way to remedy it, but as of right now, I'm not sure what the best way to do that is. I am of the opinion that adding more rules isn't necessarily the way to do it (like, raising the post count will only postpone the inevitable, that kind of thing), but yes - SOMETHING needs to be done. I'm happy to hear suggestions on the subject, and rest assured that it will be discussed by the admin team in the near future! Question: Why was the comments board removed? The comments board was removed because it was being abused. People typically posted ideas that, while they may have been good in theory, weren't necessarily practical in terms of use on this site. In these cases, when admin offered polite declines, it turned into really nasty arguments from people who jumped on the bandwagon, and it wasn't at all productive in a way that the comments board was meant to be. Everyone, admin included, found themselves drawn into arguments and many of us said things that we later came to regret. Other times, people used the comments board to just bitch about things they didn't like (excuse my language), without actually offering any suggestions or wanting any change, and we found that it was really detrimental to most people's experience. We love comments and thoughts and suggestions, but we don't like people banding together to attack the site, the admin, or the members. It was a privelege that we felt was abused, so we took it away. People are still encouraged to give feedback, but through PM instead. I wish that we could bring it back, but unfortunately there has been so much OOC drama going on that I don't feel it would be beneficial at this time. I hope that this answers some of the questions of our member base. I have received some very thoughtful questions and commentary, and I would love to see more people take advantage of the opportunity to ask these questions! If you would like any clarification on any of these answers, please let me know. Also, feel free to give suggestions! I love those. :) I would like to point out on the rumors of admin bias basically how we do a drop or a roll. Everything is on a very tight schedule, and that schedule is purposefully not released to prevent people from only being active when the drop that they want is about to be released! This is a policy from way back, and I think that it is very fair. Admin do get to see the drop schedule, but we make up for our knowledge with the fact that we cannot participate in our own drops. So, most of the time, we get less chances for magic and companions than anyone else. I would like to break down this most recent drop that I did. Normally, admin to not tell people who is doing a drop because of a few reasons: 1) we have had problems with people pestering the admin running the drop for the answers if they know who it is, 2) we have had people hold grudges against the admin hosting the drop if they did not win (and that hurt quite a bit of admin feelings), 3) the admin can be their most unbiased of they believe they are anonymous. These are the same reasons why our battle judges are not given out. If an admin was to be known as a judge, it would affect their decision making so as not to offend any player. We copy this policy from the same one as a recommendation letter system. Recommendation letters which you are not allowed to see hold more weight because the letter writer can be honest and anonymous. This is the drop: http://helovia.net/showthread.php?tid=14089 The decision to break into rounds is either decided ahead of time or decided if many characters show up. For example, in this drop: http://helovia.net/showthread.php?tid=13265 , I had decided ahead of time to split into 3 different "task groups". In this way, I had an easier time acknowledging each character individually as the RE. With the Time God one, it made more sense that he would speak to everyone at one time because he does not like people very much. Prolonged exposure with rounds would not be in character. Quite a bit of thinking is involved with this sort of thing! What I did with this drop (and what is done with many drops), is that I made a list of characters who entered the drop into a list. Then, anyone who had linked previous denials got their name added again (one name per each denial). So this is why you see Satanic Silk included twice as well as Hotaru. If you did not link your previous denial, then your name was not put in twice! Since we want these drops to happen quickly and on time, the admin cannot go search your individual character's ever drop - you know your character more than we do, so it is your responsibility to provide. Once the list was made and names put in twice, the list was randomized using an online randomizer. Personally, I like to use this one: https://www.random.org/lists/ because it gives a timestamp of the date and time in was rolled. This way, you can see exactly when I randomized the list. Below that, you see this "1d12 rolled for a total of: 12 (12)". Since there were twelve names total on the list, each of them numbered, I rolled a twelve sided dice. We do this in the thread itself to roll! (Just like with battle rolls). Any of you can do this function "/dice 1dx" where x = any number of dice sides, and it will give you a random number output between 1 and the x number that you put. I like doing it this way instead of on a website like randomdiceroller.org or something, because it's instantaneous and you can see if I went back and edited. Whereas, I would have to crop with photoshop otherwise and then upload the image. Honestly, I thought/think that rolling on the thread itself is more transparent, but I could just sit there and click over and over again until I got the number I wanted and then save the image and upload it! (This is why I like the list randomizer because it has a time stamp - you can check the time stamp against the time/date that I posted!) When anyone goes back and edits a post, this shows up: "05-26-2014, 11:38 PM (This post was last modified: 06-06-2014 10:31 AM by Satanic Silk." So, you can see anytime an admin goes back and modifies a post and the time and date which it was done. As you can see in my post as the RE, I did not go back and edit this! There is no admin way to keep MyBB from not logging this information. You can see the same thing on the battle boards! If someone re-rerolled or edited a roll, it would show up as (This post was last modified:) with a date, time, AND the person who edited it. Not only that, but it IP logs every edit and creation of a thread, so we can see not only whose account edited the thread, but which IP. I can tell if Sevin edited something from her phone or her computer! I can also tell if someone hacks an account this way. (Also, this is a way for admin to know who is controlling the RE/God/Official accounts! All we have to do is check the IP and we can know exactly who posts what). Since the dice rolled a "12" , that matches number "12" on my list, and tada! Satanic Silk won. This is how you can know if an admin is being biased or not! I personally like to think that we are not biased at all, but honestly, that was one of my main concerns with the old battle system and why it eventually changed. We are all biased, even if it's an education bias, personal history bias, ethnic bias, etc. For example, I would naturally be biased toward someone who was more analytical in their battle writing because I am more analytical! Since I understand analytical writing more than artistic, my previous battle judging under the old system were skewed toward those who wrote analytically and not artistically. Since we all have some inherent bias, we put in place checks and balance to keep ourselves from being put in these situations. Note :: (In the event that dice rolls are not posted, for example the race drop, they were done in an admin board for all the admin to see. It would be massively cluttered to have done something like that on the board itself, but you are always welcome, as the thread said, to ask to see the dice rolls. We just like things to look clean!) These are: 1) Admin cannot enter their own drops! 2) The admin's identity for judging and drops are considered secret! 3) We use on-the-site dice rolling with the /dice 1dx function so that you can see when we roll 4) The site logs all post edits and creation times! 5) We have to show screenshots of our lists/randomizers/etc and post them to the thread 6) Each admin has a god that is their "favorite" to play, but we cannot write a god to ourselves 7) We take turns with VOTG passes and VOTG things And there are probably more, but I am tired. Hopefully with this information, you are prepared to see for yourself any discrepancies. And if you do, PLEASE report them TO AN ADMIN! Either we can explain what happened to you and why it was edited, OR we can investigate who did the editing and why it was done and take appropriate action. (Note that too, every time an admin marks a battle from "needs judging" to "judged", it logs that we edited that post!) If you have any questions about the system itself, the coding, or the dice rolling plugin (which I think was made by yaldaram, a big-time MyBB coder), please PM me to let me know. I'd love to explain as best as I can. When you need a drop explained, also please come to me or Rayo. Unless the drop HAD to be done then, we discuss how we are going to do it to try to be creative. RE: :: News Archive :: - Sevin - 08-04-2014 I've noticed alot of people using table code on profiles that you did not make yourself. This is fine as long as it's credited, but there are a few additional rules. 1. IF ANY part of the site layout is compromised in any way, you must either adjust your code or take down the code entirely. This means link color changes, affecting the ads at the bottom, changing the layout CSS in anyway. 2. IF the animation is distracting, hard to navigate or NOT LABELED PROPERLY (ie personality, appearance, history, etc), then it CANNOT BE USED. Since profile information is used by everyone to REPLY to you and to create STEALTHS. It must be EASILY accessed, defined, and labeled. --> This means that if you use tabs, you have to have more than just 1-3 tabs. You need one for appearance, personality, history, magic and companions, etc. 3. NO ANIMATION should be used ever on threads in the boards. Most people use their phones to keep up with Helovia during work. The majority of our players are between the ages of 20-25, so we work. If it is not mobile accessible, it is not acceptable. 4. If the admin in any way find your table hard to read, difficult to read, poorly organized or irritating to navigate, we will ask you to remove it. :: Ascended Helovian Honors :: Midas - Official - 11-27-2014 MIDAS Ascended Helovian
:: Finals Break! :: - Tamme - 12-06-2014 Hello Helovians! I've been seeing a bunch of absence and busy notices pop up, mainly related to final exams. So, for the next week, we will be having a little "break". You will have extra time to complete any site related activity, and we will start doing our december drops LATER. No reason to add stress to your stress! This will not affect any spars, challenges or stealths - just site wide plots, drops, random events, etc. So, no need to check Helovia religiously during finals. There will be NOTHING NEW until next week. Around the 13th. For those of you looking for fun, have work, no school, etc, I will be posting some random event fun that will NOT be related to SWPs or anything else. These will be just entertaining activity boosters, so you won't miss anything important. Good luck with finals, everyone! Study hard. Tamme :: E-mails SHOULD be working :: - Tamme - 12-12-2014 If you are not receiving activation e-mails, subscription emails or any other automatically delivered notifications PLEASE let tamme know. Also, please include your e-mail service. Thank you! RE: :: News Archive :: - Official - 12-12-2014
To celebrate SEVIN's promotion to FULL ADMIN!
Woohoo! Due to life, school and an amazing new horse, Rayo has chosen to step down to JA and help out while Sevin has been promoted to full admin. You will still see Sevin dominating the battle board, but she will now also be able to help in other amazing ways. Big congratulations to Sevin! RE: :: News Archive :: - Official - 12-12-2014 A new battle guide has been posted in the Battle Board so that people who are uncomfortable with the dice system can understand a little more thoroughly what is going on. It is a very lengthy read, but very in depth. We tried to edit it so it should make sense. That said, the battle system has been modified several times during the course of writing the guide, so if anyone notices any errors please post them here or PM Sevin or Blu (or any of the other admins) so that they can update it. We hope you find it useful! RE: :: News Archive :: - Official - 12-12-2014 Having beta-tested the 'unlimited' timeline for spars, the admin have made a final judgement regarding how timelines will run for spars! You can select one of the two options below when starting a spar: 1. Standard timeline- Up to 3 weeks allowed between posts. No extensions for absences or otherwise. 2. Extended timeline- Up to 2 months allowed between posts. No extensions for absences or otherwise. This does not affected challenges, which will remain the same and will still be allowed to be extended if there is an absence. The reason we are removing the option to extend for absences is that it places a very large amount of work on the admin team and even for all that work, it is generally unenforceable. Please note that this means, for spars, we will be closing them at the allotted timeline and not reopening them to continue. You may still request partial judging in the case that your opponent defaults and you both have at least two posts. RE: :: News Archive :: - Official - 12-12-2014 MIDAS Ascended Helovian
Private Threads - REMINDER! - Official - 12-16-2014 Hello all, Just a reminder regarding the creation of private threads. Only members of a herd can create private threads on their herd land. Outcasts and members from other herds may not make a thread private when it occurs in another herdland. Anyone may make private threads in the Wilds, and anyone may make a private thread in their own herd land. Threads have been updated to reflect this as a few have been made lately that break this rule. Thank you, The Admin Team. :: EXP/VP UPDATE :: - Official - 12-31-2014 Hello all, This is a quick note to update you on changes that have been made to how VP is awarded. As you know the battle system is a work in progress, and the admin team have been discussing the realism of VP only being awarded to the winner. It has seemed to us that each time anyone spars they are learning things regardless of whether or not they have won. Therefore we have decided to implement "Experience Points" or EXP. For every completed spar (partial rubrics will not count) where you are defeated you will earn 1 EXP point. When you have accumulated 5 EXP points you will gain 1 VP. This way characters who diligently battle and completed spars but do not win will still be gaining experience that will lend itself to increasing their stats, albeit slower that if they had won. We feel this is a more realistic system, and a way to encourage all who participate to take on partners that the might not think they can defeated, but also to complete their spars. Please look at your records to ensure that the correct amount of EXP/VP have been awarded. If you notice a discrepancy please post the following completed form below. Code: [b]Character name[/b]: If you have any questions please PM Aud, Sevin, Tamme, or the Official account. Thank you. The Admin Team. :: Quick Clarification Update :: - Tamme - 02-16-2015 we never really had to run in with this issue before, but it's becoming more prevalent, so here it goes! Gliding rules Gliding rules indicate that you can only fly (by magic or item) over long distances but without fine motor control, stopping power or banking. Basically, think about a gliding plane. You can spend quite some time in the sky, but getting there is hard and you are heavily reliant upon the wind. Where do they apply? - All items, even custom, have gliding rules for flight (this includes mechanical wings!) - All transformations to any creature by a non-pegasus character (ie, an equine transforming into a raven) Where do they not apply? - A genetic pegasus or pegasus hybrid transforming into another flighted creature (ie a pegasus turning into a raven) The admin are going to go through the records and add "gliding rules" to all transformation or flight items restrictions to indicate whether or not your character can GLIDE or FLY. Guide reference: is your character a pegasus? you can fly! Is your character an equine or unicorn? Gliding rules only! :: Congratulations- New JAs :: - Official - 02-21-2015 After much deliberation and discussion, the admin team have chosen the following individuals to join our team as junior administrators. Congratulations to Nyte for being chosen as battle JA! Congratulations to Whit and Linds for being chosen as updating JAs! Congratulations to Frostie and Evvers for being chosen as mythical JAs! Abba (updating), Redgod (member management), and Blu (judging) will continue to aid the administrative team as well. Thank you all for applying - this was a very difficult decision! :: Ascended Helovian :: Gaucho - Official - 02-22-2015 GAUCHO Ascended Helovian
RE: :: News Archive :: - Tamme - 08-18-2015 WELCOME TO THE NEW HELOVIA You may have noticed some new changes.... THINGS YOU NEED TO DO; Upload or link an avatar of the dimensions 1020px WIDE by 150px TALL (if you need help, link your art in the art nook and someone will do this for ya) Re-link all your accounts! Try to use your main-main as master account. Check on your profiles to ensure that you don't have to do some styling. If you used custom CSS on your profiles before, you will definitely need to change it! if your profile acts like a butt about the tabs and stuff, make sure you haven't closed too many div's. if you can't solve it on your own ask for example Neo to help you Find all your spars and fill this out ASAP http://helovia.net/showthread.php?tid=20163 Check out the plot thread: Check out new boards (can't post in the new boards until plot starts!) Check on links to subforums to make sure they work/link to the right boards :P post here if they link somewhere else Check that your companions are lookin' good. Once we start updating item/magic records, check that those are correct too. Go here (http://helovia.net/showthread.php?tid=20178) to fill out your archived thread locations! (optional) enjoy :) And use the new character templates made by the awesome Skellri! http://sta.sh/22arbpa6heiv?edit=1 these are specifically for Helovia! You now have a few different profile fields and some of them have changed. Your "custom css" used to be "magic and companions", so you will need to save that info elsewhere. THINGS TAMME STILL NEEDS TO DO; (don't bug her about it :| ) Fix the postbit (place above posts) to include stuff Upload links like the Guidebook & FAQ Fix some of the board banners Upload board descriptions (on hover description above banner? hopefully...) Modify profiles a bit more to be "pretty" and more functional Fix more of the pages n stuffs Load new land information Generate banners for existing boards/larger (maybe contest? dunno) THINGS NEO STILL NEEDS TO DO; (don't bug her about it :| (but bribe her with cake, yes /Neo) ) Battle system (god bless you) Adoptables Throw things at the memberlist Do something secret with prefixes AUTOMATED HERD PAGES Soft-delete clean-up Find a new way to tag! Some day.. some day.. make the threadlog re-order-able and all that shit. THINGS AUD&BLU STILL NEEDS TO DO; Finish new guidelines and rules adjustments/changes THINGS ALL OF YOU NEED TO DO NOW THAT YOU'VE READ THIS; Love everyone! <3 Go explore! You never know what new features you may or may not find. RE: :: News Archive :: - Tamme - 08-18-2015 CUSTOM PROFILE CODERS QUICK NOTE This code is much, much more complex than last time with quite a few expanding elements involving new css3 elements. There are also things called "user agent stylesheets" that can interfere. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO OVERRIDE THE CSS unless you know what you are doing. There are a ton of linked style sheets and then some custom built ins that took me forever to code raw let alone try to over-ride.
RULES
RE: :: News Archive :: - Blu - 09-22-2015 Hello all, During this break the admin team have reviewed some of our rules, and have gone through suggestions that the community has made regarding some of our policies. Please take the time to read through the following rule amendments. Feel free to ask any questions, or to PM the Official account!
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