Agree to disagree then, my good sir. I'll continue reassuring people in a way that is comfortable to me. I prefer to be thought pointless than to be thought an asshole.

Now, I have no idea how many people used Banter regularly before the change, but I'm pretty damn sure it was more than 10%. There's probably more people using Banter, now the Places Banter has been installed, but that's out of sheer desire not to use Global. I've heard many people complain about Global in Global, but few of those who do have made posts in this thread, mostly because...

While I won't deny that some people changed their minds, I would like to point out that it's equally easy to assume many also simply stopped complaining for whatever reasons, or are even too polite or shy to voice their dissent in the first palce.

...How many are part of the very vocal and favoured handful, that automatically gets more attention because they repeat their opinions often enough? ...

Response to Teddy

Don't feel bad, alot of people don't use Global. And I mean ALOT.

On average, there's about 40-90 people on at any given time, right?* But h0w many people are using Banter at any given time? Like, 3-6 people. Once you start hitting 7 or 8 people, you've got posts disapearing in less than 2 minutes, so people stop using it, and it'll go back down. But that's 3-6, out of the 40-90 people all on the island. That's about 5-10% of the island that's willing to go onto Global.

...Leaving them to decide to leave, or give up Banter completely. Which I just don't think is right. It's CMJ's decision, but damn if I don't want to influence him to change his mind.



*Well, maybe like 25 if the island's really empty, but on average and all that

Without a vote and hard numbers it's not right to declare that the majority of the oppinions turned around. While it could seem to some that the majority did so in the forum, one has to ask how many of all the active player are posting here, and how many of those then really changed their mind?

How many are part of the very vocal and favoured handful, that automatically gets more attention because they repeat their opinions often enough? Or did someone go and count all personal stances here, in banter, distracions and other programms since the experiment started? Not as far as I know. So in my oppinion it stays a totally unsupported assumption.

Therefor the only fair way would be a vote in-game, in a module that can't be skipped accidentally, as banter-votes never striked me as very representative.
Otherwise pretending the opinion of the community is important to the final decision sounds like a lie to me.

I still wish this decision wasn't so final. Good points were made on both sides, but there are still valid complaints. I myself am with the ones prefering another solution, mostly because I still don't like the new, crowded party-banter and agree with all that was said by others above against it.

Are local banters really gone forever, CMJ?

The thought does occur to me, though, that if people can use alts to vote that will skew the results by possibly a large margin. That would have to be fixed first.

I am somewhat asocial (as opposed to antisocial), and perhaps there's a a little of the loner in me. Also it's long been my firm belief that we're all a little bit insane and I suppose that counts as weirdo.

Everyone who doesn't like it has either assumed they will be disregarded like I thought I would be and decided to bite the bullet, or they've left. Those people's feelings don't get considered at all, just casualties.

It seems like in the same way I feel, most of the dissenters gave up trying to voice their opinion because it's so hard to move against a vocal crowd around here...

(...) and to base my own onion on. I mean opinion on.

I think that you're being a wee bit harsh here, feelings get considered. But you can't please everybody. While I'm at it, I think that you're being a tad hard on CMJ. The man couldn't possibly reply individually to each post. If he tried then he'd have no time left over for actually writing the game the way he is.

But I'm intrigued, I'm not entirely sure why it is that Places don't supply what you need. In fact better than banter in less frequented outposts, since that's still open to the whole Island, whereas with Places Banter you can lock out anybody you don't want. Do you have your own Place? You could build one. They're quite fun, I think anyway.

Actually, in my case it was because I'd said my piece and I didn't have anything else to add. Hence I didn't add anything. I don't see this as some sort of combat at all, and I've got no idea why there seems to be so much aggressive sounding argument from so many people. Personally I'm much more interested in finding out how this effects the Island, for better and worse, there's almost always a bit of both with any change. So I read/listen to everybody.

Now I read that this is a big loss to you. Big enough that you're thinking of leaving. That would be a shame, but it is of course entirely up to you.