well at least you value your own opinion, SS :p

that "one aspect of our conversation" is a pretty big aspect, but we can leave it if you like... however, you are one of the key reasons why I stopped paying attention to LaF -- your self-serving, "the game mechanics are only good when they work the way i wnt them to" attitude gets so old so quick. lots of laffers were good about it, but you were always a jerk about how you brought your opinion to the staff. this thread is no different.

I'm working on design and user experience stuff to avoid having to deal with mechanics because of bullfluff like this. but regardless, "not knowing the dynamics" and the folks being whiny jerks aren't necessarily mutually exclusive. i personally do not claim to know a ton about the mechanics anymore having been away from them for so long, so I typically don't weigh in on them. but i thought the opinion was that any change is better than no change and that things get refined.

like qz said, this is a test set with new rules... flaming us about them is sort of stupid when we pre-qualified it as new rule testing.