in the spirit of an open and honest discussion, i am writing to share a few observations . . .
1. dustin has created a great online game (a series of games, actually), and we have all enjoyed countless hours of fun with it. as others have observed, i have gotten much more than my money's worth. we appreciate you for that alone, dustin.
2. the game has a few flaws, and nobody is doing much about that anymore. para was working to address some of those bugs, but he is no longer with us, so they continue to persist.
3. dustin is the owner of the game, and is not legally or ethically required to manage the day to day operations. shock, of course, is totally right on this front. dustin has a life outside of lux, and is working on several other initiatives, so to expect him to be here every day to fix crashed rooms, or run tournaments is an unfair expectation and is simply not going to happen.
4. that being said, dustin, with all due respect, you created a sense of rising and ultimately false expectations by promising a few months ago during our 'transition from para' time that you would be a more active manager of the day to day operations of lux. that simply has not happened. consequently, there are a lot of people who are upset with you because of this, and it dredged up the same feelings of frustration that ultimately led to para (and others, including the mod squad) to mutiny, and we all know how that ended up. you are the creator, and we respect you for that. you are the owner, and we respect you for that. you are not, however, a very good manager . . . while we understand that you have other things to do, and we respect your right to do so, try to avoid creating more frustration by promising things that ultimately go unfulfilled.
5. lux would benefit tremendously from a more active manager while you are not here. while i have never been an apologist for para, and i politely disagreed with several of his initiatives and methods, he ran a pretty tight ship, and it was hard not to be impressed. he provided stable hosts, ran fantastic tournaments, and seemed to be omnipresent (like the eye of osiris in his apropos avatar) to manage the day to day operations of lux. he was a builder of community, with a hearty 'eya, a nice triple malt scotch, and bowl of pistachios. he managed the troublemakers justly and efficiently. he made the place feel like an episode of 'cheers.' i miss his presence, as many of us do. he was also, in the end, a destroyer of community because he felt, rightly or wrongly, underappreciated and undercompensated for all of his work. he poisoned the well for many luxers, and its one of the reasons the community is where it is today. many of the luxers who remain are still jaded because of his interventions, and/or the way he was treated, and/or because they miss his day to day management skills.
6. i think you realized that you did not want to be a manager, and the loss of para created a significant vacuum for lux. you attempted to address that with two misguided appointments. making stelee, bless her heart, a de facto super mod was a mistake from the very start. she was one of the most overdramatic players on lux (see, e.g., her wars with controleola, for which she received multiple time outs). she was frequently afk, and flipped the board too often. in short, she did not have the skills, attention, relationships, or disposition to do a good job in this position. nevertheless, you appointed her totally out of the blue with no input from the community. it was a decision made by someone who did not have their pulse on the community. the method and result were pretty much a disaster and the misstep further alienated many players.
perhaps not learning from the mistake, you did the same thing when you appointed llux llama. now, i happen to like the llama a lot. she has a good heart and much better disposition than stelee. however, you again made the appointment with no input from the community. llama had not been an active player for years, and to throw her into the role of managing the day to day operations of game play, especially when so many people had bitter post-para, post-stelee feelings was a recipe for failure (and we were not 'post-para' yet b/c he continued to lurk creating a whole other set of issues). honestly, i am not sure anybody could have succeeded in the toxic environment that was lux at that point. in my estimation, she was placed in a no-win situation.
so, after back to back failures, you said you would step to the plate and become more active in lux. that happened for a little bit, but then you moved on to other things. that only created more bitterness because you created rising expectations that you did not fulfill. for many, it felt disingenuous . . . you only stepped back in temporarily to clean up lux, and try to create some semblance of community to make lux seem more appealing for your steam and humble bundle launches. when those did not yield a massive influx of new players, you stepped away again, and many people felt like they were being used to monetize lux, not for the good of the game itself.
7. in the absence of managers, we do have a mod squad, but they are mostly afk, and you are doing nothing to address that. guillerme is gone completely as far as i can tell. owned's great contribution to the community over the last year or so was to show up once to lock a thread about para, promise he would be more active, then disappear entirely yet again. bean, with whom i feel a resonance and is someone who is a good person as far as i can tell, is not well suited for the job. he is frequently afk, and refuses to step foot in a bio room (warranted, or not) which is pretty much where all the game action is these days. we need mods who actually patrol rooms, at least from time to time, where the remaining players are. that leaves gfips to pretty much run the whole show, and that is an unfair burden on him. gfips, we sincerely appreciate all you have done and continue to do for our community, but you need help!
in short, dustin, in the absence of a 'manager' like para, you need to enact a major overhaul of the mod squad. the inactive and/or disengaged mods (i.e. everyone but gfips) need to be replaced with active, and even keeled luxers/moderators.
8. people need to stop trashing each other in game play and esp. in the fora. i cherish both george and rogue monk both as players and community members. every community benefits from gadflies and critics, even if you do not like their criticisms (well founded or not). george is more direct and brash, rogue is more subtle and funny (i am sorry, but the infamous 'dustin's house' picture, for which he was banned, was funny, but it came at the wrong time when you were feeling both sensitive and under assault). naraku is another incisive critic who has the good of the community at heart (see, e.g. the many maps he has created *for free* not to mention his always hilarious graphic lux novels). i miss having him in games tremendously, and wish he did not feel so alienated by the state of affairs. their criticisms and frustrations are well founded, in my estimation, even if they are more roundabout and biting than you may like.
9. i value their contributions more than i do trolls in the fora because they actually show up from time to time in games (well, not so much naraku anymore, regretfully) in an attempt to rebuild some sense of community. i am not naming any names here, but you and we know who you are. the most laughable thing in their commentary is that they feel like they have their fingers on the pulse of the community, and understand why things are the way they are today. the best window into lux's current state of affairs is within the chat in game play, not in the fora; that's where are the vital and real conversations are taking place. the vast majority of lux's current online players do not even wander into the fora. your outside, disengaged commentary is out of touch, not helpful, and not wanted. if you really cared about the community, you would show up and play games on occasion, and model positive behavior for current and new players. sniping from the outside is not helpful at all, and one wonders why you even bother. tsk's points here are very well taken.
10. finally, in the spirit of openness, luxtoberfest was a disappointment compared to years past. its a pity because it was always the crowing event of the year for lux. we appreciate the fact that something was done, but it suffered by comparison, and now will only add additional fodder for the critics. dustin, we know that your heart was not in it, and you have better things to do and are probably tired of the seemingly endless criticisms (many of us empathize!), but lux has the potential to be something better than it is right now (maybe not regain its past glory, but assuredly better than it is now). reconfiguring the mod squad, and finding and compensating the right manager to run the day to day operations would be steps in the right direction. as i have mentioned elsewhere, i would not be opposed to bringing back para under the right conditions for both sides, but that ship may have already sailed. alternatively, gfips and tsk would do a nice job in that role, as well, but i am not sure that they could be so enticed. if you do move in that needed direction, i encourage you to consult with the community before making final decisions.
respectfully,
m