Boosting Rule Adjustments

[Boath]

I'm not a huge fan of this change. I was an avid booster for my own second or third level 60 characters. As someone who has little time to play, i find it more enjoyable to experience a power fantasy on my main while leveling a utility character for a raid that my guild might be lacking than to traverse through the world through the same path I've traveled multitudes over. I know people think it takes away from the game, but I normally play between 0400-0630 server during the week. It's difficult to find players in major cities during these times let alone queued for dungeons or running around the world so i don't think it takes away from the social aspect of the game whatsoever.

Regardless, I would appreciate some more clarification on what is considered boosting vs "helping". If i run an alt through a bunch of dungeons to get great loot and make the leveling journey faster, does that make it boosting? or does it only apply to open-world dungeon farming? is sitting in DME chatting with a friend while they farm lashers boosting, or is it just hanging out with a friend while they farm some gold?

I would like to see some sort of adjustment to the xp system to help balance out the adjustment to encourage low-level play. Maybe a bonus to the xp of mobs when in a group within a certain level range could encourage more social interaction AND reduce the desire to boost a character.

[Heheh]

Hi everyone. English is not my first language, so I apologize for any mistakes. I am a casual player who doesn't follow the forums closely, but I have a few questions regarding some points raised in this thread.
Our small group of friends works full-time. We usually play together at our own pace, meaning our character levels can vary wildly depending on our work schedules, but try to save all group/dungeon content for when we can do it together, no matter the level.

1. Level Spread and Boosting Rules

* What specific level spread triggers the system's restrictions?
* What exactly does "tagging" mean in this context?
* Will the final rules regarding boosting be clearly publicized before bans are enforced? Casual players who do not read the forums daily need a reliable way to see these policies. I checked the rules tab here and saw nothing explaining if the following example is okay.

Example: We are 4 people planning to do Deadmines, WC, and SFK when our last friend is back from holiday. Two of us might be in the mid-20s, one might be in the late 30s, and the last guy might just barely be high enough level to enter the dungeon. Is a group like this okay to play together?

2. War Mode

* When does the choice to disable War Mode become permanent and irreversible?
* Should I warn my friends who are currently away on holiday to log in and disable it before a specific deadline?

Thank you for any clarification!
(Note: English is not my first language, so I used AI to help translate the original post and format my thoughts. I blame our future AI overlords if any of this came out as a complete mess!)

[Kestrel]

First of all sorry about my previous reaction. But this really triggers me for multiple reason.
I've had 2 alts boosted on TWOW, to help other guilds as a raid leader progress through MC and Naxx.
I would never do this if boosting is banned, because i cba leveling over and over and over and over for days.

But let's actually look at the logic here of everything you said, because there isn't much of it.


"We're in beta, communication-wise."
That's not an excuse for the decision itself, it's a deflection.
The issue isn't how you announced it, it's what you announced.
You can communicate a bad decision perfectly and it's still a bad decision.


"Boosting is an attempt to skip content."
Sure, sometimes. But you're treating "a guild leader gearing up a newer player" and "an RMT seller power-leveling accounts for cash" as the same phenomenon because they use the same mechanic.
They're not the same thing. One is a community sustaining itself, the other is a business exploiting your economy. Banning the mechanic because you can't tell the difference is a failure of enforcement, not a principled stance, and you're making the whole population pay for a detection problem that's actually yours to solve.


"We can't adequately detect RMT boosting."
This is the actual reason, buried two-thirds of the way down.
Everything above it, the nostalgia about wing clip and soul shard bags, the "core part of the game" framing, is a values argument bolted onto what is really an admission: we can't catch the cheaters, so we're banning the behavior for everyone. That's not protecting the leveling experience. That's outsourcing your anti-cheat problem to your player base and calling it philosophy.


"A level 60 should be one someone actually got to 60 on."
Then say that's the goal, and build a policy around that, an achievement flag, a "self-found" tag, whatever. Instead you banned a mechanic that a huge chunk of your population was using for reasons that have nothing to do with faking achievement: alt professions, guild support, helping friends, keeping the economy liquid on a low-pop server. You're not preserving the meaning of level 60, you're just making everyone slower, including the people who never cared about the "achievement" in the first place.


"General assistance is fine, AOE farming for others isn't."
Where's the line? A 60 clearing a dungeon so a 20 can loot it, assistance or boosting? A 60 killing mobs next to a 20 so they get kill credit, assistance or boosting? You just told us you can't reliably detect RMT boosting. What makes you confident you can adjudicate this distinction fairly and consistently across hundreds of reports? You've replaced one unenforceable line with another unenforceable line, and this one will be enforced by whichever GM is on duty and how they feel about it that day.


"We'd rather you know now than 3 months from now."
That's not a policy justification, that's a warning shot. It reads as "the ban will only get stricter, plan accordingly" which is a fine thing to say honestly, but dress it up as such. Don't wrap a threat in a customer-service tone.


"We are all on the same team, most of the community wants this."
Says who? Where's the survey, the poll, the data? You just spent three paragraphs saying you underestimated how many people boost or plan to. That's the opposite of evidence for consensus, that's evidence you don't actually know where your community stands, and you're asserting a majority you haven't demonstrated.


"TurtleWoW's intent was clearly to ban this too, we're just closing loopholes they'd have closed."
This is speculation presented as certainty about someone else's unstated intentions, used to borrow legitimacy for your own decision. If you want to make this call, make it as your call for your server's population and needs, don't launder it through a guess about what another team would've done.


The core problem: you had a real, narrow issue, RMT, and you solved it with the broadest possible tool, at the cost of the legitimate uses that were actually holding smaller guilds and the economy together. If the detection problem is the real issue, that's what should've been on the table for community input, not a blanket ban justified after the fact with nostalgia about leveling being "sacred."

Responding by point;

1.) Your are correct, it is not an excuse for the decision itself. It is an acknowledgement that this was not communicated well. That is important to us, and I assume important to the community whether or not it is important to you personally.

2.) A guild leader gearing up a new player would not be considered boosting and enforceable under this change in rules. A guild leader power leveling a new guildmate from 30-40 AOE farming SM would be considered boosting and certainly feels to me like an attempt to skip content. As said in another response (made after the post I am now responding to so apologies if you already read/are aware of this) this decision was made when/how it was because of its relation to RMT, preventing RMT is not why this is the decision that we ended up on.

For further clarification on that point because it is important. If this RMT investigation never lead us to think/consider that people were already boosting others in the game, we would still have ended up making the same conclusion when we realized and confronted the question down the line. This is a rule we all agree upon and wish we had implemented from the beginning of the server, but the second best time to do that is now, not in another 3 months.

3.) This is not the actual reason, this is what brought to our attention that this was happening and becoming prevalent and that we had to make a decision one way or another. It seamed obvious to some of us that if a method of gameplay was heavily nerfed, and the only way to make it viable was to drop group mid combat, that was not an intended method of gameplay. If you truly think the turtle wow devs were fine with boosting, then why do you think you have to drop group mid pull to even make it work?

Perhaps the solution should have instead been a fix to the mechanics around boosting, that is we should have or should patch up that loop hole instead of outright banning the practice. The result would be the same in my mind (and I'd imagine yours as well but correct me if I am wrong). If this is something the community would prefer that can be arranged and may end up as a bit of a compromise on the issue. It would certainly make our GM's lives easier.

4.) Achievement is not the only reason, I'd also argue immersion and a healthy and diverse economy. Every dev will likely give you a different reason for their individual support of the banning of this practice but those are some of the strong trough lines. And yes we do expect this to make everyone slower, we don't view that as a bad thing, slow and steady.

5.) The line is where the rules and the GM's (with guidance from the developers) say that it is. Enforcement is not a no talk instant ban. GM's will be giving out warnings and clarifications where necessary.

When situations arise where the GMs are not confident in how to handle it, they are escalated to me personally for a judgement call. When that happens internal notes are made on how we handle that specific scenario going forward. That is generally how all issues like this are handled, and how we assure that we do enforce rules and lines consistently.

6.) That is neither a policy justification nor a warning shot. That statement does not justify the policy it justifies why it is happening now, and how we wish it had happened sooner, but now is better than putting it off further. That statement is not a warning shot because there is no threat of further rules.

7.) I did not say that most of the community wants this. I am not sure if most of the community wants this but regardless of if they do I feel it is best specifically for the community that we want to build and the community that turtle wow had. If that is not you I completely respect that.

8.) Trust me, we are making this as our call based on what we want for the server. That does not take away from the fact that the Turtle Team was certainly in agreement. I assume you made similar posts on the turtle forums when they nerfed the grouped EXP in the way that they did?

9.) As previously stated, this is not a decision who's decision was driven by RMT, it was a decision that was brought up because of RMT. I would argue the economy will do better without boosting, but that is a much longer more detailed conversation best had elsewhere IMO (would just end up a conversation about how we define a healthy wow economy).

[Kestrel]

I need help with understanding specific situations -

1] I need to level the second character for dual boxing without any interaction with my main character, if it is significantly lower level.

2] I can help single character with a quest, if it is not inside a dungeon. I cant run a group of lower level characters through a dungeon.

Please confirm that these statements are true or false. Thank you.

false, not without any interaction, you just cannot be mass clearing mobs for EXP for your second character.

false, You can help them with a quest outside or inside the dungeon within reasonable limits. You can run a group of lower level characters through a dungeon. You cannot pull the entirety of SM, then drop group, then kill the mobs, so that the lower levels in your group get unintended experience.

Perhaps a different compromise could be enforcing this rule more under the category of exploits, given it is clearly working around an intended restriction/mechanic. "Abuse of any bug or exploit to obtain unfair gains (gold, items, experience, reputation) or glory (killing NPCs, killing players)."

[Kestrel]

I'll add my two cents into it. As a guild leader of 400+ characters, I can tell you the general feeling in our community today has been one of dejection. People don't boost their first or second characters, usually, they boost their 3rd or more character. The way in which this released also had people feeling extremely disrespected in terms of just hearing it in world chat as "well tough shit, this is how it is now", and when you unexpectedly received enormous backlash for such a short sighted decision, you just doubled down and are trying to nicely say "well tough shit, this is how it is now". It hasn't left people feeling warm fuzzies about the future or the style of ownership from this team. Let me give you some quotes from some of my friends and comrades, and how they've felt about it today.

"dumb ass change"
"i think the change itself is kinda whatever but the method of announcing it and the responses to those giving feedback has been appalling"
"allegedly a "majority of the server" wants the change and the people that dont are a 'loud minority' "
"Welp I guess I'm gonna start raidlogging"
"idk this feels like 'you dont want this change but i do so we are gonna do it anyway' "
"yea that's basically how i read it too. "We heard you guys don't like it. Too bad, we're doing it anyway""
"“Play the game the way I tell you to or else” - the devs probably "

"Ugh.....these devs, mods, and GMs are kinda killing my desire to put much effort into this shit. f**k"
in response to this: "truth man"
as well as "honestly kinda same"

"its giving me brwow vibes "you WILL be in the open world and you WILL like it - none of this locking yourself in dungeons nonsense""



Also, regarding RMT, you guys do know that this will do absolutely nothing to stop the activity right? It will just raise the price of those services. There will always be dumb suckers willing to pay for power gain in video games.

Take a poll or something for such major changes to the spirit of Twow, you'll find that most people don't want RMT or paid boosting activities. Self boosting or boosting your friends though, was a social activity. This will actively reduce the amount of healers and alt characters available for high end content on what is effectively still a fairly small server, as well.

I fear I am responding multiple times to the same style of question/concern, but I do feel it is important you hear that we agree and don't think we handled the announcement/roll out of this change well at all. I hope that my other answers have given you the needed context to understand how that happened. I look forward to showing you through future actions that we are not only able to grow in technical ability, but also in our ability to manage a community.

I think I've beat the RMT portion of this to death in other responses so will let that one rest unless there are other points you wanted to bring up about it.

This is not a change to the spirit of TWoW, hence the fact that you need to drop group mid combat to even do this.

[Kestrel]

I think you need to listen to the community on this one Kestrel. No one asked for this addition to the rules and the vast majority of the community are expecting you to hold the values of turtlewow and keep the rules as similar as possible to that. This is a major change of rules that most people won't agree with, which is why you are being ratio'd. You will definitely lose server population over implementing this. To say that this is something turtlewow would have done if they had the manpower or means to is insane. They had been moderating for over 7 years.

Sure, and perhaps they did not make it a rule for another reason that I gave. As I said in another response (made after you posted this so no way you saw it first) perhaps the best compromise is to instead allow boosting, but enforce group dropping as an exploit. I would imagine the effect would be similar but does stick to the original TWoW rules, given this is a work around of a mechanic they specifically implemented/changed. Would this be more agreeable or feel like the same change with a different coat of pain? (genuine question)

[Drazzik]

First of all, I want to thank all the devs for their work on recreating what is, in my mind, one of the best classic wow experiences since the original game release some 20 years ago.

That being said, without mincing words, I absolutely hate this change for more reasons than one. It’s not welcomed or wanted by any of my social groups and I only foresee negative impacts to those who want to race to end-game content as quickly as possible (myself included). After 20 years of the same leveling treadmill for every new iteration of classic, we’re just tired boss! No amount of tweaks and/or extra content is going to change that.

I don’t know what your target audience looks like but it seems there’s a conversation that needs to occur before implementing any future changes, especially those that contradict what was commonplace on Turtle. And despite stating more than once that you plan to do things differently from Turtle, I feel that there needs to be more appreciation for how much of Octo’s appeal stems from what Turtle was.

Please keep up the great work you guys are doing, it’s very much appreciated! But also, please, don’t turn this game that we all love into another soulless, on-rails nightmare like that of retail these days. One of classic wow’s greatest appeals is the ability to play the game how you want with freedom! Please let us continue deciding that path for ourselves?!

[Kestrel]

Hi! First time using the forums, but wanted to give some feedback as it was recommended by an in-game GM. I really hope this post comes off as civil as it really is meant to be. Also, shoutout to Valette in game who really did try their best to answer a lot of these questions, so kudos to them! I know this will probably be really longwinded, but I'll try to keep it concise.

1. Max efficiency players are just not going to interact with the game the way this rule change I think probably hopes they will. Currently, we have:
-Rested xp is nerfed (compared to what it was at one point on turtle adding ~25% to leveling time)
-Dungeon xp is nerfed overall
This does not encourage people to group for dungeons if they are trying to get to 60 ASAP. Grouping for quests also does not feel great with the group xp penalty and that is if people even leave a city to group for said quests.

2. War Mode is just going to be the fastest way to level now. It already rivaled mob tagging once you hit ~50. This is I guess good in some ways as it makes these q's more frequent, but poorly geared alts sitting in bgs never leaving a city does not feel like the emergent gameplay this is trying to push. This meta will also do nothing to the world feeling full/alive which I am going out on a limb and assuming is the "core experience" that is desired. The new war mode change also makes this feel very bad as I believe you cannot turn it on and off at will like you could on Turtle so characters made before this change, with boosting in mind, are now stuck.

3. General rollout (I know you mentioned this is still in Beta for the team which I can appreciate!). It seems like the change was initially targeted at preventing RMT/Account selling based on what GM Pig posted in World Chat (I'm operating on a screenshot in the fan discord so I apologize if this is a mischaracterization, Pig). This post seems to pivot the change to a more "defensible" PR stance of protecting game integrity. I'm not saying it cannot be both! But, it does feel a bit disingenuous that this was more of a footnote compared to the gameplay concerns. Blizzard has made several, similar, baby out with the bathwater decisions in recent years that have shot them in the foot trying to do that same exact thing when fighting RMT. This becomes a slippery slope towards breaking other parts of the game like gold farming etc. because it leads to RMT issues.

4. Rule clarification on the website needs to happen for people coming to Octo/currently playing here. Boosting has several, conflicting definitions within the rule set. "Boosting services are considered paid or tipped runs where a notably higher leveled character will complete a dungeon for lower leveled character(s) in exchange for compensation." This makes it sound like boosting/boosting services are paid/tipped (especially when combined with the GDKP rule). It could be pretty easy to misreading the following to also require a pay component "Using a high level character to rapidly acquire EXP on any lower level character. General assistance is not considered boosting but a level 60 AOE farming for other lower level characters is and it is forbidden." Comingling the definition for "Boosting" to be not paid services and paid services is really easy to misunderstand. I realize the rest of the rules are a copy/paste from twow's original ruleset, but I think a rewrite that more directly fits Octowow is needed.

5. More concise language in the rule would also be appreciated. What is a higher level character? +/- 5 like in hardcore? Honor range? Same BG bracket? Why is AoE farming specifically mentioned, but not mob tagging? This does not read like "for example", but as a specific ban. After chatting with Valette I realize that is not the case, but again that is not clear.

6. Why not just ban if from the beginning? Surely, boosting in its current state was a well-known thing on Twow. If the team truly felt that Twow as a whole would have not wanted this given a longr life why not ban it from the beginning? Especially, when there are played that started early who will likely have alts that were leveled like this. Breaking it now feels more like missing out on an "Abuse Early" gameplay loop.

As someone who has hopped to a few different servers since Turtle died I am fairly burnt from the level experience. I realize that is 100% not the teams problem, but I wouldn't be surprised if others are in the same boat. It also feels a bit worse when "rebuilding" the Turtle characters that were lost which is why I think this was, seemingly, taken a lot worse then maybe the Dev team though it would. The fun part of MMOs, to me, is playing how you want and gameplay loops having massive changes abruptly that restricts what I find enjoyable is kind of a bummer. Especially when folks who enjoy the journey more already have loads of options to change their gameplay and slow it down.

I really appreciate anyone that took the time to read this post. I know it is heinously long and please forgive any poor formatting/grammar. Nursing that 4th of July hangover Ultimately, the teams decision, but wanted to add my two cents.

First off, thank you for making the effort to not only jump into the forums and share your opinion, but also to type up your thoughts in an organized and calm manner <3 I will try to answer these best I can but please do follow up if I miss anything or trigger any follow up questions.

1.) This is a concern of mine and something that we will be keeping an eye on as it develops. Turtle was in an interesting spot in terms of them actively trying to balance this out when they shut down, which leaves it to us to find a more suitable long term strategy. One of the things we absolutely want to solve is the issue of grouping being overly penalizing when trying to level.

2.) The change to prevent warmode being able to be turned on/off was to make it functional as an actual leveling challenge, rather than a clone of retail WoW's war mode feature. If it does get to a point where the predominant method of rushing to 60 is to spam BG's 1-60 then we will likely be making changes to adjust that.

3.) The change was not made to target RMT sales, but rather made because RMT investigations brought to our attention that this was occurring already on the server. Once we realized, we had a quick internal discussion, and mistakenly took no internal pushback as an indication this would not be a contentious change.

The core of this decision is around how boosting affects the server as a whole, and the gameplay experience of everyone. In the same way that instant 60 boosted characters degrade the leveling experience for those that never intend to buy a boost, we feel that the endorsement of this type of in game level boosting also degrades that experience for everyone.

We do a lot to try to prevent RMT from occurring on our server, and also do not plan to make any gameplay or game design decisions around the preventions of RMT. We feel that the fight against RMT is one that is best fought with enforcement and killing the demand through public action and consequences.

4.) I absolutely agree. I think that our rules section is a bit wordy and difficult to parse through as is, and also our modifications have not made that any better. The fact that they are a copy paste with a few (non obvious) modifications only makes it harder to parse through.

We are working on some bigger changes to the website to (hopefully) better communicate the differences between what people experienced on Turtle WoW (or other turtle like servers) and what they can expect here on OctoWoW. We will be including a section on the updated or changed rules as well.

5.) This is something we need to work on to get the rule to a more easily understood place. Judging by some of the discussions we have seen around this rulechange, many clearly misunderstand what is, and is not, allowed. The intent of this rule change is to prevent level 60's characters from clearing dungeons or large swaths of mobs to funnel experience to a lower level toon. One thing to keep in mind on our server, if you are doing something you shouldn't but it is reasonable that you did not know or realize, you will not be penalized on a first infraction.

6.) This is probably the best point here IMO. You are right and it is something we should have changed first thing upon starting this server. When we started this server, we had hundreds of decisions to make, and this one fell through the cracks.

I empathies with being burnt out on the leveling experience, it is something I think we all experience at one point or another. I am sure that the recent movements in the private server community only compound that as it feels like nowhere is safe.

Our long term goal is to provide people a place that they can be certain their progress will last. One of the things that I personally felt with Turtle WoW, and drew me so deeply into it, was that I had faith it would always be around for me. I did not feel like I needed to do it all ASAP. It will take time, but I hope our server can be that for others. With this change I employ players to sit with that, there is no rush, OctoWoW and the characters you create here will always be here <3

Thank you for a detailed response! I think one point of clarification (not asked in my initial wall of words, but has also popped up during this thread) would be on just general grouped content not with the clearly massive XP boosted component. The most common one is alts/friends/guildies "leeching" xp in Dire Maul East lasher farms, but could also just take the form of doing grouped quests with an alt more than just one instance of an elite quest. The xp gain, per mob, is ~166xp at level 45 with rested xp in Dire Maul East from lashers. This overall is not great xp per hour between resets, limitations on pulling the packs within xp range, etc. It is "boosting" but seemingly a boosting style that varies quite significantly from dropping group mid-pull for a massive xp difference. I realize this makes policing harder, but would hope that ultimately it could be something that feels like a middle ground and avoids situations like having to turn xp completely off on characters when doing runs.

I realize in the coming days there will be lots of changes/potential rule rewrites based on your response so I totally get if there is not answer to this now, but just food for thought. Thanks again!

I think that both of these examples fall on the edge of the rule as written, but are things we would allow. Of course we don't expect people to know every detail of every rule and how they are enforced, but do encourage people to play the way they want (within reason... don't go buying gold or speed hacking), and if there is an issue you should get a warning before anything is done against your account.

[Kestrel]

If the boosters can't mob tag/aoe farm, they'll just do it the hard way and charge more. I'm not saying you shouldn't implement changes because "you can't ever fully shut it down" and so there is no merit to trying to make it harder for them, but it does punish I would say 20-30% of your community for the actions of a 1%.

"like having to level your characters to 60, we feel are such a core part of this game, and that they need to be actively protected and fostered.", I 99% agree with this, part of the fun for me personally, at least originally was levelling... I have to say I'm so sick to death of it now... I want to get to end game to pvp and raid with my friends.

I don't personally even care what twows intention was, twow was 90% business, 10% love. I feel the ratio is the other way for octowow, if we want to imagine good intentions I would say you guys have it. I appreciate all the work you and GMs are doing to keep the servers fair, I know they're not getting rewarded the same way twow gms were. So I think, even more than twow ever was, octowow is really here for the love of the game.

Having said that, I hate this change. I was fully intending on trying to entice former guildies to come join us on the new realm with the offer of mob tagging for them, not from 1-60, but from 10-20 or 25-30... I don't want to be boosting someone for 3 hours in a row either, it's not fun... but I would do it to get a friend back in the game... there are people that just don't have time to do the grind to 60 at 1xp and look maybe this isn't the server for them you might say... but if the rules were left as they were for 8 years with turtle it might be the server for them... you can have your internal debates with 5 devs and a few gms and make your loot council decisions, but you are making it harder for us to get people we want to play on the server to play on the server. I feel like turtle struck a good balance. You could make every server 0.5xp or 0.25xp and REALLY make people earn it and force them to do every last bit of custom content if they want to make it to end game but that balance would be wrong. I feel the balance on this is just a little bit off. No one can say if it will or won't help the server in the long run, I know it doesn't help me convince my friends to come back, that's not something that be can quantified. I feel octowow is going to grow in time, but it won't be because you made this change. And I don't like it. I wish it would have been polled, so you would at least see the percentage of people that are not happy with it.

RMT addressed in a few other posts but please lmk if I missed one of your points there.

I really appreciate that you see the passion we have for the game, no matter the disagreement on how to best manage it.

I think that I may agree with you on the balance aspect of things in terms of leveling speed in Turtle 1.18.1 after the tent changes. Our initial plans were to make some revisions to the tent/rested exp system to make them a bit more generous than they were in 1.18.1 after the nerf. Our rapid growth has thrown those changes by the wayside in favor of chasing stability and rapid restoration. Perhaps it is time that we internally bring that discussion back up and figure out what leveling speeds currently look like and where we would like to see them. We just would like those leveling speeds to be organic rather than driven by a level 60 character.

I will say that both me and the dev team feel these changes will be good for the long term health of the server. Not that we are infallible of course, but neither is the community.

[Kestrel]

I'll jump in to say I welcome this change. It was both jarring, and obnoxious, to see 60s power leveling low level toons in twow. As someone who did this previously, while I will miss dragging low level friends through something like deadmines to get them on their feet and jump start them some, but I also cannot imagine a more mindnumbing and dull leveling experience then following around an alt and killing mobs as they tag them, especially with the broadcasting limitations in place.

It both sounds like, and seems like, there is interest in a conversation about time to level and where we are at now with prior twow balancing (e.g. rested nerfs) and where we would like to be going forward as a community.

<3 I agree, perhaps a separate thread for that would be in order.