Recently on the csharp subreddit, the post C# 9.0 records: immutable classes linked to a surprisingly controversial article discussing how C# 9.0's records are, underneath it all, immutable classes. The comments are full of back-&-forth over whether one should use records for ease or structs for performance. The pro-struct argument revolved around the belief that performance should always be a developer's #1 priority, and anything less was the realm of the laggard.
Here is a real-world example that shows with stark clarity why that kind of thinking is wrong.
Consider the following scenario:

1

You're working on a game with dozens, maybe hundreds of people on the team; you don't know because when you were cross with facilities about them removing all the fluorescents, you got accused of being against the new energy saving initiative. Now you swim in a malevolent ocean of darkness that on some very late nights alone in the office, you swear is actively trying to consume you.

2

The team that preceded you inherited an engine that is older than OOP, when source repositories were stacks of 8-inch floppies, and it looked as if Jefferson Starship was going to take over the world. One year ago they bequeathed upon the company this nightmare of broken, undocumented GOTO spaghetti & anti-patterns. You're convinced this was their sadistic revenge for all getting fired post-acquisition.

3

Management denied your request to get headcount for an additional technical artist, but helpfully supplied you with an overly nervous intern. After several weeks working alongside them, you're beginning to suspect they're pursuing something other than a liberal arts degree.

4

Despite the many getting started guides you spent countless evenings writing, the endless brownbags nobody attended, and the daily dozen emails you forward to oppressively inquisitive artists comprised of a single passive-aggressive sentence suggesting they scroll down to the part that begins FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: WE BROKE TOOL NEED WORKAROUND ASAP ...

...yes, despite all of that, the engineering team still spent days tracking down why the game kept crashing with Error 107221: У вас ошибка after re-re-re-re-re-throwing an ex_exception when it couldn't (and should never even try to) load a 16K-textured floor mat.

5

Despite your many attempts to politely excuse yourself, one blissfully unaware artist exhausts 48 minutes of your lunch break explaining how the Pitchfork review for the latest "dope slab" of this TikTok-Instagram-naphouse artist you never heard of was just sooooo unfair.

And then in their hurry to finish up & catch the 2:30 PM bus home, they forget to toggle Compress To CXIFF (Custom Extended Interchange File Format), set the Compression slider 5/6ths of the way between -3 & -2, look to their left, look to their right, click Export As .MA 0.9.3alpha7, and make absolutely, positively, 100% SURE not to be working in prod. And THAT is how the game explodicated.

6

You know better than anyone the intermediate file format the main game loop passes to Game.dll, memory mapping it as a reverse top-middle Endian binary structure.

You know for 381 of the parameter fields what their 2-7 character names probably mean.

YOU know which 147 fields always have to be included, but with a null value, and that the field ah_xlut must ALWAYS be set to 0 unless it's Thursday, in which case that blackbox from hell requires its internal string equivalent: TRUE.

YOU know that the two tech artists & one rapidly aging intern that report to you would totally overhaul tooling so artists would never "happen" again, but there just aren't enough winters, springs, summers, falls, July 4ths, Christmas breaks, Presidents Days, and wedding anniversaries in a year to properly do so.

7

If you could just find the time between morning standups, after lunch standups, watersprint post-mortems, Milbert's daily wasting of an hour at your desk trying to convince you engineering should just rebuild the engine from the ground up in JavaScript & React, & HR's mandatory EKG Monitor job satisfaction surveys, you might be able to get at least some desperately-needed tooling done.

And so somehow you do. A blurry evening or two here. A 3:00 AM there. Sometimes just a solitary lunch hour.

Your dog no longer recognizes you.

You miss your wife calling to say she's finally cleaning out the hall closet and if you want to keep this box of old cards & something in plastic that says Underground Sea Beta 9.8 Grade, you better call her back immediately.

And your Aunt Midge, who doesn't understand how SMS works, bombards you one evening:
your father is...
no longer with us...
they found him...
1 week ago...
in an abandoned Piggly Wiggly...
by an old culvert...
split up...
he was then...
laid down to rest...
sent to St. Peter's...
and your father...
he's in a better place now...
don't worry...
it's totally okay...
we decided we will all go...
up to the mountain

You call your sister in a panic and, after a tidal wave of confusion & soul-rending anxiety, learn it was just Hoboken Wireless sending the messages out of order. This causes you to rapidly cycle.

8

On your bipolar's upswing, you find yourself more productive than you've ever been. Your mind is aglow with whirling, transient nodes of thought careening through a cosmic vapor of invention. It's like your brain is on 200mg of pure grade Adderall.

Your fingers ablaze with records, clean inheritance, beautiful pattern matching, bountiful expression syntax, aircraft carriers of green text that generate the most outstanding CHM for an internal tool the world has ever seen. Readable. PERFECTLY SOLID.

After much effort, you gaze upon the completed GUI of your magnum opus with the kind of pride you imagine one would feel if they hadn't missed the birth of their son. Clean, customer-grade WPF; tooltips for every control; sanity checks left & right; support for plugins & light scripting. It's even integrated with source control!

THOSE GODDAMNED ARTISTS CAN'T FAIL. YOUR PIPELINE TOOL WON'T LET THEM.

All they have to do is drag content into the application window, select an options template or use the one your tool suggests after content analysis, change a few options, click Export, and wait for 3-5 minutes to generate Game.dll-compatible binary.

Your optimism shines through the commit summary, your test plan giddy & carefree. With great anticipation, you await code review.

9

A week goes by. Then two. Then three. Nothing. The repeated pinging of engineers, unanswered.

Two months in you've begun to lose hope. Three months, the pangs of defeat. Four months, you write a blog post about how fatalism isn't an emotion or outlook, but the TRANSCENDENCE of their sum. Two years pass by. You are become apathy, destroyer of wills.

10

December 23rd, 2022: the annual Winter Holidays 2-hour work event. The bar is open, the Kokanee & Schmidt's flowing (max: 2 drink tickets). The mood a year-high ambivalent; the social distancing: acceptable. They even have Pabst Blue Ribbon, a beer so good it won an award once.

Standing beside you are your direct reports, Dave "Macroman" Thorgletop and wide-eyed The Intern, the 3 of you forming a triumvirate of who gives a shit. Dave is droning on & on about a recent family trip to Myrtle Beach. You pick up something something "can you believe that's when my daughter Beth scooped up a dead jellyfish? Ain't that something? A dead jellyfish," and "they even had a Ron Jons!"

You barely hear him, lost as you are in thought: "I wish I had 2 days of vacation." You stare down ruefully at your tallboy.

From the corner of your eye you spot Milbert, index finger pointed upward, face a look of pure excitement.

"Did I tell you about my OpenWinamp project? It's up on SourceForge", he says as he strides over. It's unsettling how fast this man is.

"JAVASCRIPT IS JUST A SUBSET OF JAVA!" you yell behind you, tossing the words at him like a German potato masher as you power walk away. It does its job, stopping Milbert dead in his tracks.

Dave snickers. The Intern keeps staring wide-eyed. You position yourself somewhat close to the studio's 3 young receptionists, hoping they serve as a kind of ritual circle of protection.

It works... kind of. Milbert is now standing uncomfortably close to The Intern, Dave nowhere to be seen.

From across the room you distinctly hear "Think about it, the 1st-person UI could be Lua-driven Electron."

The Intern clearly understands that words are being spoken to them, but does not comprehend their meaning.

You briefly feel sorry for the sacrificial lamb.

11

You slide across the wall, putting even more distance between you & boredom made man. That's when you spot him, arrogantly aloof in the corner: Glen Glengerry. Core engineering's most senior developer.

Working his way up from a 16-year old game tester making $4.35 an hour plus free Dr. Shasta, to pulling in a cool $120K just 27-years later, plus benefits & Topo Chicos. His coding style guides catechism, his Slack pronouncements ex cathedra; he might as well be CTO.

You feel lucky your team is embedded with the artists. You may have sat through their meetings wondering why the hell you should care about color theory, artistic consistency, & debates about whether HSL or CMYK was the superior color space (spoiler: it's HSL), you were independent and to them, a fucking code wizard, man.

And there he stands, this pseudo-legend, so close you could throw a stapler at him. Thinning grey-blonde tendrils hanging down from his CodeWarrior hat, white tee with This Guy VIMs on the back, tucked into light blue jeans. He's staring out into the lobby at everything and yet... nothing all at.

12

Maybe it's the 4.8% ABV. Maybe it's the years of crushing down anger into a singularity, waiting for it to undergo rapid fiery expansion, a Big Bang of righteous fury. Maybe it's those sandals with white socks. Maybe it's all three. But whatever it is, it's as if God himself compels you to march over & give him a piece of your mind, seniority be damned.

"Listen, you big dumb bastard..."

That... is maybe a little too aggressive. But Glen Glengerry barely reacts. Pulling a flask out of his back pocket, he doesn't look over as he passes it to you.

Ugh. Apple Pucker.

13

"I thought bringing in your own alcohol was against company policy", wiping sticky green sludge from your lips. He turns with a look of pure disdain & snorts.

"You think they're going to tell ME what I can & can't bring in?" He grabs the flask back, taking a big swig.

For what feels like an eternity, you both stand in silence. You swallow, speaking softly. "None of you even looked at my code. I worked very, very hard on that. My performance review for that year simply read 'recommend performance improvement plan." The words need no further context.

"I know", Glen² replies. "That was me."

14

Now you're not a weak man, and maybe in some other circumstance you would have punched him in the goddamn lip. But you feel nothing, just a hollowness inside. "Why?", you ask, wondering if the answer would even matter.

"Because you don't use Bulgarian notation. Because your method names aren't lower camel case. Because good code doesn't require comments. Because you use classes & records over more performant structs, pointlessly burdening the heapstack. BECAUSE. YOUR CODE. IS. SHIT."

You clinch your fists so tightly the knuckles whiten.

15

He looks away from you, taking another sip of green goo. "You're not a coder. You're an artist masquerading as one" he speaks, as if it were fact.

The only thing artistic about you is the ability to create user-friendly internal tooling using nothing but a UI framework, broken down garbage nobody wants to touch, & sheer willpower. If your son's life depended on you getting accepted into art instruction school, you couldn't even draw a turtle.

He doesn't pause. "I'll champion ruthless micro-optimization until the day I die. But buddy, I'm going to let you in on a little secret: you aren't here to improve workflow. You're here to LOOK like you're doing something NOBODY else can."

He goes on. "What do you think those artists are going to do when they have to stare at a progress bar for 4, 5 minutes? They're going to complain your tool is slow."

"Sure, it may take them 20, 30 minutes to do it the old way, there'll be an error, and either they'll stare at it for 30 minutes before adding that missing semi-colon or they'll come get you. And you'll fix it. And 1 week later, they won't remember how. And you'll stay employed. And every. Body. Wins."

16

A little bit of the pride, the caring, wells back up inside from somewhere long forgotten.

"You don't think we should care about rapid application development & KISS, quickly getting things out that help our team, instead devoting ourselves to shaving off ticks here & there? What do you think artists are going to do with those 4 minutes you talk about?

You don't stop. "I'll tell you what they'll do. They'll 9GAG for 20 minutes straight. They'll listen to podcasts about dialectical materialism vis-a-vis the neo-feudalism that is a natural extension of the modern world's capitalist prison. They'll Reddit."

His silence gives you the bravery to push the limits.

"Christ, man. Are you only in it for the $120K..."

He corrects you: "...$123K."

"...only in it for the $123K/year? The free snacks from the microkitchen? The adulation? Have you no sense of comraderie?? No desire to push us to something better?! No integrity?!!!"

His eyes sharply narrow, face creases in anger. You clearly have overstepped your bounds.

17

"You think I don't have integrity? No sense of teamwork? I'm only in it for the cold cash? You think I don't care about you all?", he roars.

A light volley of small green flecks land on your face.

"Why do you think they made a 16-year old tester the lead developer of a 1993 Doom clone?! Because my code was clean & painless to work with?! Because I made coding look easy?! No! IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS A GOD TO THEM.

And from a God, a PANTHEON. We built monuments to over-engineering! We crafted that of 7 weeks onboarding, that of immortal bugs, demonic hosts spawned by legion from the very loins of a fix. It took 2 years before a developer could BEGIN to feel confident they knew what they were doing. And by that time, they were one of US!

You think the team we laid off November '19 was fired because they were bad at their jobs? NO! It was because they worked themselves out of one. They didn't leave us a broken pipeline. They left an internal Wiki, a wealth of tools & example projects, and a completely transparent code base.

We couldn't have THAT, now could we? No, we couldn't. So we got rid of it. ALL OF IT. Poof. Gone. Just like that. Before anyone even knew a THING."

He leans forward, so close his psoriasis almost touches yours.
With an intensity that borders on frightening, he whispers "You think they left us Game.dll? I fucking *MADE** Game.dll."*

The words hit hard like a freight train.

18

And without another word, he turns & leaves. You're left there, alone, coworkers milling about, with only one thought.

Were one to get a hobby, should it be cocaine?

In Conclusion

It's these kinds of situations that make me believe there are far more important considerations than a ruthless dedication to performance, even in the game industry as my real-world scenario so clearly demonstrates.

Like, records are cool & shit.

# /r/Peloton Pre-TDF Survey 2020

Gentlemen, Ladies and those otherwise addressed - we know you've been waiting for a good thing, and the survey results are finally ready!
The answers were collected from you all during August 2020 with 1428 unique replies. That's a participation of 0.5% of all subscribers! That's really not too bad, when you keep in mind how popular these kind of surveys are. But we here at /peloton want to show you that this is all about presenting the information in the subreddit to cater better to our audience!
Updated after a few hours to include some ~~more historical data~~ the final edit that for some reason wasn't copied properly

Year	2013	2014	2015	2016	2018 Mar	2018 Aug	2019	2020
Results	2013-06-12	2014-06-25	2015-08-07	2016-11-17	2018-03-06	2018-08-20	2019-07-22	2020-10-12
Replies	351	598	1395	892	630	928	986	1428

Without further ado, let's get cracking on the response

You and Cycling

1. Where do you live?

Country	2015	2016	2018 Mar	2018 Aug	2019	2020
USA	32%	28.3%	22.84%	25.32%	20.23%	24.59%
UK	18.6%	17.6%	14.70%	20.13%	15.48%	14.80%
Netherlands	6.4%	9.4%	11.50%	11.58%	10.01%	11.01%
Germany	3.73%	3.4%	4.95%	6.39%	7.84%	6.65%
Denmark	3.9%	3.6%	4.31%	3.79%	7.64%	5.79%
Belgium	3.8%	2.7%	8.15%	3.57%	5.78%	5.36%
France	2.01%	1.08%	2.88%	2.27%	5.26%	3.50%
Canada	4.9%	7%	6.39%	4.22%	4.95%	4.50%
Australia	5.2%	4.7%	3.83%	4.00%	4.33%	3.93%
Slovenia		0.73%	0.32%	1.30%	1.14%	2.14%
Norway	2.58%	1.8%	1.60%	1.95%	2.58%	1.86%
Sweden	1.08%	1.09%	1.44%	1.41%	1.75%	1.43%
Ireland	1.00%	1.09%	1.44%	1.19%	0.72%	1.36%
Portugal	1.65%	1.8%	2.40%	1.52%	1.34%	1.14%
Italy		1.45%	1.44%	0.65%	1.03%	1.07%

Largely the same picture as ever, with the US leading the way, the UK in second and then a sliding scale of Europeans countries. Slovenia continues to pick its way up the pile for obvious reasons!
World Map to demonstrate

2. What's your age?

	u17	17-19	20-25	26-30	31-35	36-40	41-50	51+	Total
2015	2.22%	12.04%	41.51%	24.66%	10.68%	4.87%	2.94%	1.08%	1395
2016	1.5%	8.9%	40.8%	24%	12%	5.4%	5.2%	2%	887
2018 Mar	1%	7.1%	33.5%	27.4%	16.2%	7%	5.7%	2.1%	617
2018 Aug	1.7%	9%	33.9%	26.4%	15.5%	7%	5%	1.5%	905
2019	1.5%	6.6%	33.2%	27.5%	16.4%	7.1%	5.8%	2%	972
2020	1.3%	6.8%	31.7%	28%	16.6%	7.2%	5%	2.5%	1420

Pretty much the same as last year, with the usual reddit demographics of majority 20 somethings dominating.

3. What's your gender?

	'13	'14	'15	'16	'18 (1)	'18 (2)	'19	'20
Male	97.2%	97%	94.9%	93.4%	93.3%	93.6%	95.1%	94.9%
Female	2.8%	2.7%	4.8%	5.3%	5.3%	5.4%	3.7%	4.8%
Other	-	0.33%	0.29%	0.78%	0.76%	-	-
Non-Binary	-	-	-	-	0.64%	0.99%	1.2%	0.4%

More normality here for reddit.

4. How much of the men's season do you watch/follow?

Type	March '18 (%)	August '18 (%)	2019 (%)	2020 (%)
Grand Tours	84.7	92.0	90.2	87.3
Monuments	79.1	74.9	79	75.9
WT Stage races	67.4	62.4	70.5	71.7
WT One day races	73.3	59.8	62.3	60.7
Non WT Stage races	32.6	16.7	17.4	25
Non WT One day races	34.8	13.7	17.4	20.7
Literally everything I can consume	35.9	18.1	21.1	27.1

Whilst GT following may be down (somehow), all the lower level stuff is up, which makes sense considering how desperate we have been for any racing during the season shutdown.

5. Do you maintain an interest in women's professional road racing?

Do you maintain an interest in women's professional road racing?	'19	'20
Yes	49.8	49.2
No	50.2	50.8

Still very much a half/half interest in women's cycling on the subreddit.

6. How much of the women's season do you follow?

The following is true for the half of you that follows womens cycling.

How Much	%
Just the biggest televised events	63.15%
Most of the live televised/delayed coverage stuff	29.08%
All televised racing	5.09%
Down to .Pro & beyond	2.69%

7. How long have you been watching cycling?

How Long	%
Under a year	2,95%
1-3 years	19,50%
4-6 years	19,85%
7-9 years	14,10%
10-12 years	13,81%
13-15 years	7,15%
15-20 years	10,73%
20-25 years	6,17%
25 years +	5,75%

Simplified the years a little this time, but whilst we have a fair number of newbies, most people have picked the sport up since around 2013/14.

Sporting Favourites

8. Do you have like/dislike feelings about WT teams?

Once more, 14.4% of people really don't have feelings on the subject.
Of those that do:

	AG2R	Astana	Bahrain	Bora	CCC	Cofidis	Quick-Step	EF	FDJ
Like	352	213	127	770	156	116	847	724	423
Meh	775	620	773	415	889	896	310	448	700
Dislike	52	356	263	31	112	141	71	37	53
Karma	300	-143	-70	739	44	-25	776	677	370

	Israel	Lotto	Michelton	Movistar	NTT	Ineos	Jumbo	Sunweb	Trek	UAE
Like	135	364	517	231	101	304	925	279	383	118
Meh	740	764	626	646	931	414	282	805	765	734
Dislike	302	40	52	326	121	562	53	97	42	331
Karma	-167	324	465	-95	-20	-258	872	182	341	-213

So, the most popular team this year is Jumbo-Visma, followed by Quick-Step & Bora-hansgrohe. Least popular are Ineos & UAE.
As per usual, no one cares about NTT & CCC, with nearly 81% of users rating NTT as meh. Pretty damning stuff.
Lastly, we have the usual historical comparison of how teams have fared over time, normalised to respondents to that question on the survey.
Things to note then, firstly that the Astana redemption arc is over, seeing them back in the negative, maybe Fulgsangs spring issues helped aid that? The petrodollar teams of UAE & Bahrain are stubbornly negative too, with Israel keeping up the Katusha negative streak. Meanwhile, at the top end, EF & Jumbo go from strength to strength, whilst some others like Sunweb are sliding over time - their transfer policies no doubt helping that.

10. Do you ride a bike regularly?

Answer	2018^Mar	2018^Aug	2019	2020
For fun	61.5%	63.4%	59.9%	62.9%
For fitness	59.3%	59.6%	54.8%	59.8%
For commuting	46%	46%	45.6%	40%
For racing	20.6%	20.6%	15.9%	17.7%
No, I don't	14.2%	12.9%	14.8%	13.6%

Still a fairly small group of racers out of all of us

11. Out of the sports you practice, is cycling your favourite?

Yes	No
58,29%	41,71%

A new addition to the survey prompted by a good point last time, just over half of us rate cycling as the favourite sport we actually do.

12. What other sports do you follow?

Sport	#
Association Football / Soccer	50.78%
Formula 1	35.81%
American Football	26.27%
Basketball	22.46%
Track & Field	17.58%
Esports (yes, this includes DotA)	17.30%
Rugby	14.27%
Skiing	14.12%
Ice Hockey	13.63%
Baseball	12.15%
Motorsports (Not including F1)	10.59%
Cricket	10.52%
Tennis	9.53%
Chess	8.97%
Triathlon	8.69%
Biathlon	8.12%
Snooker	7.06%
Golf	6.92%
Swimming	6.85%
Ski Jumping	6.78%
Climbing	5.72%
Martial Arts	5.65%
Handball	5.44%
Darts	5.01%
Speed Skating	5.01%

Football always tops the charts, and Formula 1 continues to rank extremely highly among our userbase. Those who have a little following below 5% include Sailing, Fencing, Surfing, Boxing & Ultra-Running.
Other cycling disciplines

Sport	#
Cyclocross	22.10%
Track Cycling	14.34%
MTB	8.97%
BMX	1.20%

13. Out of the sports you follow, is cycling your favourite sport?

Yes	No
61.79%	38,21%

Good. Makes sense if you hang out here.

Subreddit stats

14. How often do you participate in a /Peloton Race Thread whilst watching a race?

	2015	2016	2018^Mar	2018^Aug	2019	2020
I always participate in Race Threads during races	2.8%	2%	2.2%	4%	2.5%	3%
I follow Race Threads during races	41.7%	36.7%	38.1%	42.1%	42.5%	38.9%
I often participate in Race Threads during races	16.8%	19%	16.5%	18.9%	15.2%	13%
I rarely/never participate in Race Threads during races	38.7%	41.3%	43.1%	35%	39.8%	45.1%

Slightly less invested than before, reverting back to an older trade.

15. How do you watch Races?

Method	2018^Mar	2018^Aug	2019	2020
Pirate Streams	62%	46.5%	50.2%	47.9%
Free Local TV	55.7%	64.5%	59.6%	53.9%
Desperately scrabbling for Youtube highlights	37.9%	30.2%	28.2%	24.9%
Paid Streaming services	32.3%	35.4%	38.3%	46.3%

Year on year, paid streaming services go up - the increasing availability of live content legally continues to improve, and so do the numbers on the survey.

16. Where else do you follow races live (in addition to watching them)?

Type	2018^Mar	2018^Aug	2019	2020
/Peloton race threads	86.2%	83.4%	80.2%	76.9%
Twitter	30.5%	34.7%	33.3%	38.3%
PCS Liveticker	-	-	30.2%	32%
Official tracker (if available)				24%
The Cyclingnews liveticker	26%	23.5%	21.5%	18.9%
Sporza (site/ticker)	1.89%	9.5%	10.8%	10.8%
NOS Liveblog	-	6.8%	7%	9.2%
Steephill	0.52%	13.5%	10.2%	8.2%
/Peloton discord	6.5%	5.4%	7.5%	7.2%
Other cycling forums	15.1%	8.1%	7.6%	7%
feltet.dk	-	2.2%	5.4%	5.2%
Facebook	3.8%	5.4%	4%	4.2%
BBC Ticker	-	3.5%	2.1%	4.1%
DirectVelo	-	1.3%	1.6%	1.8%
Non Cycling Forums	-	1.3%	1.2%	1.2%
/cyc/	-	1.3%	1%	0.6%
/peloton IRC	~0	0.8%	0.4%	0.5%

The PCS liveticker continues to have a strong following, whilst the cyclingnews ticker slowly slides into less usage over time.

17. Do you use /Peloton mostly in classic reddit or redesign when on the desktop?

Type	2018 Aug	2019	2020
Classic	75.1%	67.2%	46.2%
Redesign	24.9%	32.8%	53.8%

Time to abandon ship. The end has come.

18. With what version of reddit do you browse the sub?

Version	2019	2020
Official App	17.9	31.1
Desktop Classic	37.8	25.8
3rd Party App	18.3	17.2
Mobile Web	12.4	14.7
Desktop Redesign	13.7	11.2

Phone browsing is very much in vogue.

19. How did you find the sub?

How	%
Through other forms of reddit, f.e. /bicycling	48.33%
Too long - can't remember	38.65%
Google search	9,11%
My friend told me	2,28%
I wanted to talk about my exercise bike	0.78%
Twitter	0.5%
Lantern Rouge Youtube	0.28%

Other bits and bobs

20. Did you think back in March we would see any more racing this year?

Yes	No
52,81%	47,19%

Despite the threat, we have seen racing again

21. Will we manage to fulfill the rest of the UCI calendar without further Covid-19 issues postponing more races?

Yes	No
25.3%	74.7%

Sorry to you 25%, Amstel, Roubaix & a bunch of other races have falled foul of COVID-19 related cancellations.

22. When did you become aware of Alexander Foliforov?

When	%
Before the 2016 Giro	3,25%
22nd May, 2016	15,55%
On /pelotonmemes in 2020	21,13%
Who?	60,07%

If you didn't know of the man, watching him demolish the Giro field in 2016 on the stage 15 ITT should help to gain understanding

23. Who will win the 2020 Tour de France?

Rider	%
Roglic	52,12%
Bernal	16,57%
Pinot	9,24%
Dumoulin	7,9%
N.Quintana	2,82%
Pogacar	1,41%
Richie Porte	0,35%

We can safely say that most of us were wrong about this one.
That's not a lot of confidence in Richie Porte either, the man who was to finish on the third spot of the podium. Alexander Foliforov (0,23%) had just a tiny number of votes less, and that man wasn't even in the race.

24. What for you was the defining cycling moment of the previous decade?

We had a lot of brilliant suggestions, but these were the clear five favourites when we tabulated the results.

2018 Giro - Chris Froome Solo Attack
2016 TDF - Chris Froome Running up Ventoux
2019 TDF - Landslides, First Columbian Winner, Pinot's bitter abandon - This was one race for the ages
2016 Paris-Roubaix - Mostly known for Tom Boonen losing. Also, some guy called Mat won.
2019 AGR - MvdP with his incredible catch-up for the win.

Honorable mentions go to the Giro 2018, which had Tom Dumoulin winning, and of almost identical fascination to many of you - Tom Dumoulin going on someones porta-potty in the middle of the stage.
Little bit of recency bias perhaps, but that's better than ignoring that this was for the last decade and firmly insisting Tom Boonens 2005 WC win was the biggest thing. Special shoutout to almost all the Danes present in /peloton who voted for Mads Pedersens WC win last year. It's an understandable reaction.

25. Any suggestions for the Survey?

New Questions

Could you add a section on rider popularity, same as for the teams?
Ask how people became interested in cycling
Ask how people watch cycling (e.g. TV Channels/Streaming etc.)
If you could be an animal for one day, which one would it be?
Would you wear a facemask while watching a cycling race live?
Which race do you look forward to see the most every year?
Favourite riders of your own country?
How many bikes do you own?

We promise to feature one of these suggestions in the next survey
Suggestions

Always have a “no” or “not interested” option

We will try to implement this. But it will also skew results.
About the Survey

More questions about womens cycling would be nice.

Less questions about womens cycling

The subscribers are torn on Women's cycling, nearly a 50/50 split there as the survey showed - The moderators at /peloton are firmly in the "more cycling is better" basket, and we will continue to get as good coverage of womens cycling as possible.

Ask about pelotoncycles membership crossover.

Are you trying to give the moderators PTSD? Because this is how you give the moderators PTSD.

26. Any suggestions for the sub?

More stationary fitness bike related content

ALSJFLKAJSLDKJAØLSJKD:M:CSAM)=#/()=#=/")¤=/)! - Your moderator seems to be out of function. Please stand by while we find you a new moderator

Beginner guides

The Weekly threads are great for these types of questions, where several people can contribute and build up once it is understood which information is relevant.

Allow limited doping talk in result threads.

Our experience is that "limited" will never be so, if we're going to moderate it fairly. Moderating is not a popularity contest, but believe it or not, we're actually trying to be as fair as possible. and for that, we need rules that are not subjective. Unless you have a stationary exercise bike.

Written original content is always great - recaps, old race reviews or interesting rider bios, etc.

More non-race threads

Podcast discussion?

Try and do some AMAs with pro cyclists, coaches, trainers, etc

All of these are good suggestions, but remember that all of you can also contribute - The mods are sometimes stretched thin, specially in the middle of hectic race schedules. It's easier if one of you has a way to contact a rider or a person of interest and can facilitate the initial communication.

Standardize major event thread titles for better search.

We've worked on this! The Official Standard is now as follows: [Race Thread] 202x Race Name – Stage X (Class)

A wiki that explains how races work. Roles of diff riders/support staff. History of racing.

This sounds as a nice community project for the after-season, and hopefully many of you subscribers can contribute.

Tidy up the sidebar!

Come with suggestions on how to tidy it up!

Don't assume everyone reading is a man, "thanks, bro". But that goes for all of Reddit. I know you can't fix that.

We have chastised all the mods. They are now perfectly trained in gender-neutral pronouns. Be well, fellow being.

Have a buy you a beer link for the mods for all the work you do.

If we can implement this for hard liquor, you know we will.

Remove the spoiler rule during grand tours. It kills the hype.

The spoiler rule is one that is discussed frequently - in general - some users absolutely hate it, but a majority love it. Perhaps we'll include a question in the next survey to see how this divide is exactly.

Lose the spoiler tag when it is for serious things; Lambrecht death, Jakobsen fall.

We actually do - whenever there is a matter of life or death, we think public information is more important than a spoiler rule. But at the same time, we try to collect all the different posts into one main thread, so to keep things focused and letting very speculative posts meet with hard evidence from other sources.

Less downvoting of opinions that differ from the fashionable consensus.

This is a tough ask of the internet. While we can agree that voting should be done accordingly to what insights they bring, not subjective opinions, it is very hard to turn that type of thinking around. We can ask of you, our subscribers, that you please think twice about hitting that downvote button, and only do so because of you think a post is factually incorrect, not because it differs with your own subjective opinion.
That's the primary analysis of the survey! Feel free to contribute with how you experience things here!

The Challenges of Designing a Modern Skill, Part 3

Okay, Wendy’s or Walgreens or whoever, I don’t care who you are, you’re listening to the rest.

Introduction to Part 3

Welcome back one last time to “The Challenges of Designing a Modern Skill,” a series where we discuss all aspects of skill design and development. In Part 1, we talked about OSRS’s history with skills, and started the lengthy conversation on Skill Design Philosophy, including the concepts of Core, Expansion, and Integration. This latter topic consumed the entirety of Part 2 as well, which covered Rewards and Motivations, Progression, Buyables, as well as Unconstructive Arguments.
Which brings us to today, the final part of our discussion. In this Part 3, we’ll finish up Section 3 – Skill Design Philosophy, then move on to chat about the design and blog process. One last time, this discussion was intended to be a single post, but its length outgrew the post character limit twice. Therefore, it may be important to look at the previous two parts for clarity and context with certain terms. The final product, in its purest, aesthetic, and unbroken form, can be found here.

3-C – Skill Design Philosophy, Continued

3-12 - Balancing

What follows from the discussion about XP and costs, of course, is balancing: the bane of every developer. A company like Riot knows better than anyone that having too many factors to account for makes good balance impossible. Balancing new ideas appropriately is extremely challenging and requires a great respect for current content as discussed in Section 3-5 – Integration. Thankfully, in OSRS we only have three major balancing factors: Profit, XP Rate, and Intensity, and two minor factors: Risk and Leniency. These metrics must amount to some sense of balance (besides Leniency, which as we’ll see is the definition of anti-balance) in order for a piece of content to feel like it’s not breaking the system or rendering all your previous efforts meaningless. It’s also worthy to note that there is usually a skill-specific limit to the numerical values of these metrics. For example, Runecrafting will never receive a training method that grants 200k xp/hr, while for Construction that’s easily on the lower end of the scale.
A basic model works better than words to describe these factors, and therefore, being the phenomenal artist that I am, I have constructed one, which I’ve dubbed “The Guthix Scale.” But I’ll be cruel and use words anyway.

Profit: how much you gain from a task, or how much you lose. Gain or loss can include resources, cosmetics, specialized currencies, good old gold pieces, or anything on that line.
XP Rate: how fast you gain XP.
Intensity: how much effort (click intensity), attention (reaction intensity), and thought (planning intensity) you need to put into the activity to perform it well.
Risk: how likely is the loss of your revenue and/or resource investment into the activity. Note that one must be careful with risk, as players are very good at abusing systems intended to encourage higher risk levels to minimize how much they’re actually risking.
Leniency: a measure for how imbalanced a piece of content can be before the public and/or Jagex nerfs it. Leniency serves as a simple modulator to help comprehend when the model breaks or bends in unnatural ways, and is usually determined by how enjoyable and abusable an activity is, such that players don’t want to cause an outrage over it. For example, Slayer has a high level of Leniency; people don’t mind that some Slayer tasks grant amazing XP Rates, great Profits, have middling Intensity, and low Risk. On the other hand, Runecrafting has low levels of Leniency; despite low Risk, many Runecrafting activities demand high Intensity for poor XP Rates and middling Profits.

In the end, don’t worry about applying specific numbers during the conceptual phase of your skill design. However, when describing an activity to your reader, it’s always useful if you give approximations, such as “high intensity” or “low risk,” so that they get an idea of the activity’s design goals as well as to guide the actual development of that activity. Don’t comment on the activity’s Leniency though, as that would be pretty pretentious and isn’t for you to determine anyway.

3-13 - Skill Bloat

What do the arts of weaving, tanning, sowing, spinning, pottery, glassmaking, jewellery, engraving, carving, chiselling, carpentry, and even painting have in common? In real life, there’s only so much crossover between these arts, but in Runescape they’re all simply Crafting.
The distinction between what deserves to be its own skill or instead tagged along to a current skill is often arbitrary; this is the great challenge of skill bloat. The fundamental question for many skill concepts is: does this skill have enough depth to stand on its own? The developers of 2006 felt that there was sufficient depth in Construction to make it something separate from Crafting, even if the latter could have covered the former. While there’s often no clean cut between these skills (why does making birdhouses use Crafting instead of Construction?), it is easy to see that Construction has found its own solid niche that would’ve been much too big to act as yet another Expansion of Crafting.
On the other hand, a skill with extremely limited scope and value perhaps should be thrown under the umbrella of a larger skill. Take Firemaking: it’s often asked why it deserves to be its own skill given how limited its uses are. This is one of those ideas that probably should have just been thrown under Crafting or even Woodcutting. But again, the developers who made early Runescape did not battle with the same ideas as the modern player; they simply felt like Firemaking was a good idea for a skill. Similarly, the number of topics that the Magic skill covers is so often broken down in other games, like Morrowind’s separation between Illusion, Conjuration, Alteration, Destruction, Mysticism, Restoration, Enchant, Alchemy (closer to Herblore), and Unarmored (closer to Strength and Defense). Why does Runescape not break Magic into more skills? The answer is simple: Magic was created with a much more limited scope in Runescape, and there has not been enough content in any specific magical category to justify another skill being born. But perhaps your skill concept seeks to address this; maybe your Enchantment skill takes the enchanting aspects of Magic away, expands the idea to include current imbues and newer content, and fully fleshes the idea out such that the Magic skill alone cannot contain it. Somewhat ironically, Magic used to be separated into Good and Evil Magic skills in Runescape Classic, but that is another topic.
So instead of arguments about what could be thrown under another skill’s umbrella, perhaps we should be asking: is there enough substance to this skill concept for it to stand on its own, outside of its current skill categorization? Of course, this leads to a whole other debate about how much content is enough for a skill idea to deserve individuality, but that would get too deep into specifics and is outside the scope of this discussion.

3-14 - Skill Endgame

Runescape has always been a sandbox MMO, but the original Runescape experience was built more or less with a specific endgame in mind: killing players and monsters. Take the Runescape Classic of 2001: you had all your regular combat skills, but even every other skill had an endgame whose goal was helping combat out. Fishing, Firemaking, and Cooking would provide necessary healing. Smithing and Crafting, along with their associated Gathering skill partners, served to gear you up. Combat was the simple endgame and most mechanics existed to serve that end.
However, since those first days, the changing endgame goals of players have promoted a vast expansion of the endgame goals of new content. For example, hitting a 99 in any non-combat skill is an endgame goal in itself for many players, completely separate from that skill’s combat relationship (if any). These goals have increased to aspects like cosmetic collections, pets, maxed stats, all quests completed, all diaries completed, all music tracks unlocked, a wealthy bank, the collection log, boss killcounts, and more. Whereas skills used to have a distinct part of a system that ultimately served combat, we now have a vast variety of endgame goals that a skill can be directed towards. You can even see a growth in this perspective as new skills were released up to 2007: Thieving mainly nets you valuable (or once valuable) items which have extremely flexible uses, and Construction has a strong emphasis on cosmetics for your POH.
So when designing your new skill, contemplate what the endgame of your skill looks like. For example, if you are proposing a Gathering skill, what is the Production skill tie-in, and what is the endgame goal of that Production skill? Maybe your new skill Spelunking has an endgame in gathering rare collectibles that can be shown off in your POH. Maybe your new skill Necromancy functions like a Support skill, giving you followers that help speed along resource gathering, and letting you move faster to the endgame goal of the respective Production skill. Whatever it is, a proper, clear, and unified view of an endgame goal helps a skill feel like it serves a distinct and valuable purpose. Note that this could mean that you require multiple skills to be released simultaneously for each to feed into each other and form an appropriate endgame. In that case, go for it – don’t make it a repeat of RS3’s Divination, a Gathering skill left hanging without the appropriate Production skill partner of Invention for over 2 years.
A good example of a skill with a direct endgame is… most of them. Combat is a well-accepted endgame, and traditionally, most skills are intended to lend a hand in combat whether by supplies or gear. A skill with a poor endgame would be Hunter: Hunter is so scattered in its ultimate endgame goals, trying to touch on small aspects of everything like combat gear, weight reduction, production, niche skilling tools, and food. There’s a very poor sense of identity to Hunter’s endgame, and it doesn’t help that very few of these rewards are actually viable or interesting in the current day. Similarly, while Slayer has a strong endgame goal it is terrible in its methodology, overshadowing other Production skills in their explicit purpose. A better design for Slayer’s endgame would have been to treat it as a secondary Gathering skill, to work almost like a catalyst for other Gathering-Production skill relationships. In this mindset, Slayer is where you gather valuable monster drops, combine it with traditional Gathering resources like ores from Mining, then use a Production skill like Smithing to meld them into the powerful gear that is present today. This would have kept other Gathering and Production skills at the forefront of their specialities, in contrast to today’s situation where Slayer will give fully assembled gear that’s better than anything you could receive from the appropriate skills (barring a few items that need a Production skill to piece together).

3-15 - Alternate Goals

From a game design perspective, skills are so far reaching that it can be tempting to use them to shift major game mechanics to a more favourable position. Construction is an example of this idea in action: Construction was very intentionally designed to be a massive gold sink to help a hyperinflating economy. Everything about it takes gold out of the game, whether through using a sawmill, buying expensive supplies from stores, adding rooms, or a shameless piece of furniture costing 100m that is skinned as, well, 100m on a shameless piece of furniture.
If you’re clever about it, skills are a legitimately good opportunity for such change. Sure, the gold sink is definitely a controversial feature of Construction, but for the most part it’s organic and makes sense; fancy houses and fancy cosmetics are justifiably expensive. It is notable that the controversy over Construction’s gold sink mechanism is probably levied more against the cost of training, rather than the cost of all its wonderful aesthetics. Perhaps that should have been better accounted for in its design phase, but now it is quite set in stone.
To emphasize that previous point: making large scale changes to the game through a new skill can work, but it must feel organic and secondary to the skill’s main purpose. Some people really disliked Warding because they felt it tried too hard to fix real, underlying game issues with mechanics that didn’t thematically fit or were overshadowing the skill’s Core. While this may or may not be true, if your new skill can improve the game’s integrity without sacrificing its own identity, you could avoid this argument entirely. If your skill Regency has a Core of managing global politics, but also happens to serve as a resource sink to help your failing citizens, then you’ve created a strong Core design while simultaneously improving the profitability of Gathering skills.

3-16 - The Combat No-Touch Rule

So, let’s take a moment to examine the great benefits and rationale of RS2’s Evolution of Combat:
This space has been reserved for unintelligible squabbling.
With that over, it’s obvious that the OSRS playerbase is not a big fan of making major changes to the combat system. If there’s anything that defines the OSRS experience, it has to be the janky and abusable combat system that we love. So, in the past 7 years of OSRS, how many times have you heard someone pitch a new combat skill? Practically no one ever has; a new combat skill, no matter how miniscule, would feel obtrusive to most players, and likely would not even receive 25% of votes in a poll. This goes right back to Section 3-5 – Integration, and the importance of preserving the fundamentals of OSRS’s design.
I know that my intention with this discussion was to be as definitive about skill design as possible, and in that spirit I should be delving into the design philosophy specifically behind combat skills, but I simply don’t see the benefit of me trying, and the conversation really doesn’t interest me that much. It goes without saying that as expansive as this discussion is, it does not cover every facet of skill design, which is a limitation both of my capabilities and desire to do so.

3-17 - Aesthetics

I don’t do aesthetics well. I like them, I want them, but I do not understand them; there are others much better equipped to discuss this topic than I. Nonetheless, here we go.
Since the dawn of OSRS, debates over art style and aesthetics have raged across Gielinor. After all, the OSRS Team is filled with modern day artists while OSRS is an ancient game. What were they supposed to do? Keep making dated graphics? Make content with a modernized and easily digestible style? Something in-between?
While many players shouted for more dated graphics, they were approached by an interesting predicament: which dated graphics did they want? We had a great selection present right from the start of OSRS: 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007. People hungry for nostalgia chose the era that they grew up in, leading to frequent requests for older models like the dragon or imp, most of which were denied by Jagex (except the old Mining rock models). But which era was OSRS supposed to follow?
Jagex elected to carve their own path, but not without heavy criticism especially closer to OSRS’s conception. However, they adapted to player requests and have since gone back and fixed many of the blatant early offenders (like the Kingdom of Kourend) and adopted a more consistent flavour, one that generally respects the art style of 2007. Even though it doesn’t always hit the mark, one has to appreciate the OSRS artists for making their best attempt and listening to feedback, and here’s to hoping that their art style examination mentioned in June 2020’s Gazette bears fruit.
But what exactly is the old school art style? There are simple systems by which most players judge it in OSRS, usually by asking questions like, “Would you believe if this existed in 2007?” More informed artists will start pointing out distinct features that permeated most content from back in the day, such as low quality textures, low poly models, low FPS animations, a “low fantasy” or grounded profile that appeals somewhat to realism, reducing cartoonish exaggerations, and keeping within the lore. Compiled with this, music and sound design help that art style come to life; it can be very hard on immersion when these don’t fit. An AGS would sound jarring if its special attack sounded like a weak dagger stab, and having to endure Country Jig while roaming Hosidius suddenly sweeps you off into a different universe.
But coming back to skill design, the art, models, and sound design tend to be some of the last features, mostly because the design phase doesn’t demand such a complete picture of a skill. However, simple concept art and models can vastly improve how a skill concept is communicated and comfort players who are concerned about maintaining that “old school feel.” This will be touched on again later in this discussion under Section 5-2 – Presentation and Beta Testing.

3-18 - Afterword

Now we’ve set down the modern standards for a new skill, but the statements that started this section bear repeating: the formula we’ve established does not automatically make a good or interesting skill, as hard as we might have tried. Once again, harken back to the First Great Irony: that we are trying to inject the modern interpretation of what defines a skill upon a game that was not necessarily built to contain it. Therefore, one could just as easily deny each of the components described above, as popular or unpopular as the act might be, and their opinion could be equally valid and all this effort meaningless. Don’t take these guidelines with such stringency as to disregard all other views.

5-0 - The OSRS Team and the Design Process

If you’ve followed me all the way here, you’re likely A) exhausted and fed up of any conversation concerning new skills, or B) excited, because you’ve just struck an incredible skill idea (or perhaps one that’s always hung around your head) that happens to tick off all the above checkboxes. But unfortunately for you B types, it’s about to get pretty grim, because we’re going to go through every aspect of skill design that’s exterior to the game itself. We’ll be touching on larger topics like democracy, presentation, player mindsets, effort, and resource consumption. It’ll induce a fantastic bout of depression, so don’t get left behind.

5-1 - Designing a Skill

Thus far, Jagex has offered three potential skills to OSRS, each of which has been denied. This gives us the advantage of understanding how the skill design process works behind the scenes and lets us examine some of the issues Jagex has faced with presenting a skill to the players.
The first problem is the “one strike and you’re out” phenomenon. Simply put, players don’t like applying much effort into reading and learning. They’ll look at a developer blog highlighting a new skill idea, and if you’re lucky they’ll even read the whole thing, but how about the second developer blog? The third? Fourth? Even I find it hard to get that far. In general, people don’t like long detail-heavy essays or blogs, which is why I can invoke the ancient proverb “Ban Emily” into this post and it’ll go (almost) completely unnoticed. No matter how many improvements you make between developer blogs, you will quickly lose players with each new iteration. Similarly, developer blogs don’t have the time to talk about skill design philosophy or meta-analyse their ideas – players would get lost far too fast. This is the Second Great Irony of skill design: the more iterations you have of a lengthy idea, the less players will keep up with you.
This was particularly prominent with Warding: Battle Wards were offered in an early developer blog but were quickly cut when Jagex realized how bad the idea was. Yet people would still cite Battle Wards as the reason they voted against Warding, despite the idea having been dropped several blogs before. Similarly, people would often comment that they hated that Warding was being polled multiple times; it felt to them like Jagex was trying to brute-force it into the game. But Warding was only ever polled once, and only after the fourth developer blog - the confusion was drawn from how many times the skill was reiterated and from the length of the public design process. Sure, there are people for whom this runs the opposite way; they keep a close eye on updates and judge a piece of content on the merits of the latest iteration, but this is much less common. You could argue that one should simply disregard the ignorant people as blind comments don't contribute to the overall discussion, but you should remember that these players are also the ones voting for the respective piece of content. You could also suggest re-educating them, which is exactly what Jagex attempts with each developer blog, and still people won’t get the memo. And when it comes to the players themselves, can the playerbase really be relied on to re-educate itself?
Overall, the Second Great irony really hurts the development process and is practically an unavoidable issue. What’s the alternative? To remove the developer-player interface that leads to valuable reiterations, or does you simply have to get the skill perfect in the first developer blog?
It’s not an optimal idea, but it could help: have a small team of “delegates” – larger names that players can trust, or player influencers – come in to review a new, unannounced skill idea under NDA. If they like it, chances are that other players will too. If they don’t, reiterate or toss out the skill before it’s public. That way, you’ve had a board of experienced players who are willing to share their opinions to the public helping to determine the meat and potatoes of the skill before it is introduced to the casual eye. Now, a more polished and well-accepted product can be presented on the first run of selling a skill to the public, resulting in less reiterations being required, and demanding less effort from the average player to be fully informed over the skill’s final design.

5-2 - Presentation and Beta Testing

So you’ve got a great idea, but how are you going to sell it to the public? Looking at how the OSRS Team has handled it throughout the years, there’s a very obvious learning curve occurring. Artisan had almost nothing but text blogs being thrown to the players, Sailing started introducing some concept art and even a trailer with terrible audio recording, and Warding had concept art, in game models, gifs, and a much fancier trailer with in-game animations. A picture or video is worth a thousand words, and often the only words that players will take out of a developer blog.
You might say that presentation is everything, and that would be more true in OSRS than most games. Most activities in OSRS are extremely basic, involve minimal thought, and are incredibly grindy. Take Fishing: you click every 20 seconds on a fishing spot that is randomly placed along a section of water, get rid of your fish, then keep clicking those fishing spots. Boiling it down further, you click several arbitrary parts of your computer screen every 20 seconds. It’s hardly considered engaging, so why do some people enjoy it? Simply put: presentation. You’re given a peaceful riverside environment to chill in, you’re collecting a bunch of pixels shaped like fish, and a number tracking your xp keeps ticking up and telling you that it matters.
Now imagine coming to the players with a radical new skill idea: Mining. You describe that Mining is where you gather ores that will feed into Smithing and help create gear for players to use. The audience ponders momentarily, but they’re not quite sure it feels right and ask for a demonstration. You show them some gameplay, but your development resources were thin and instead of rocks, you put trees as placeholders. Instead of ores in your inventory, you put logs as placeholders. Instead of a pickaxe, your character is swinging a woodcutting axe as a placeholder. Sure, the mechanics might act like mining instead of woodcutting, but how well is the skill going to sell if you haven’t presented it correctly or respected it contextually?
Again, presentation is everything. Players need to be able to see the task they are to perform, see the tools they’ll use, and see the expected outcomes; otherwise, whatever you’re trying to sell will feel bland and unoriginal. And this leads to the next level of skill presentation that has yet to be employed: Beta Worlds.
Part of getting the feel of an activity is not just watching, it but acting it out as well - you’ll never understand the thrill of skydiving unless you’ve actually been skydiving. Beta Worlds are that chance for players to act out a concept without risking the real game’s health. A successful Beta can inspire confidence in players that the skill has a solid Core and interesting Expansions, while a failed Beta will make them glad that they got to try it and be fully informed before putting the skill to a poll (although that might be a little too optimistic for rage culture). Unfortunately, Betas are not without major disadvantages, the most prominent of which we shall investigate next.

5-3 - Development Effort

If you thought that the previous section on Skill Design Philosophy was lengthy and exhausting, imagine having to know all that information and then put it into practice. Mentally designing a skill in your head can be fun, but putting all that down on paper and making it actually work together, feel fully fleshed out, and following all the modern standards that players expect is extremely heavy work, especially when it’s not guaranteed to pay off in the polls like Quest or Slayer content. That’s not even taking into account the potentially immense cost of developing a new skill should it pass a poll.
Whenever people complain that Jagex is wasting their resources trying to make that specific skill work, Jagex has been very explicit about the costs to pull together a design blog being pretty minimal. Looking at the previous blogs, Jagex is probably telling the truth. It’s all just a bunch of words, a couple art sketches, and maybe a basic in-game model or gif. Not to downplay the time it takes to write well, design good models, or generate concept art, but it’s nothing like the scale of resources that some players make it out to be. Of course, if a Beta was attempted as suggested last section, this conversation would take a completely new turn, and the level of risk to invested resources would exponentially increase. But this conversation calls to mind an important question: how much effort and resources do skills require to feel complete?
Once upon a time, you could release a skill which was more or less unfinished. Take Slayer: it was released in 2005 with a pretty barebones structure. The fundamentals were all there, but the endgame was essentially a couple cool best-in-slot weapons and that was it. Since then, OSRS has updated the skill to include a huge Reward Shop system, feature 50% more monsters to slay, and to become an extremely competitive money-maker. Skills naturally undergo development over time, but it so often comes up during the designing of an OSRS skill that it "doesn't have enough to justify its existence." This was touched on deeply in Section 3-13 – Skill Bloat, but deserves reiterating here. While people recognize that skills continually evolve, the modern standard expects a new skill, upon release, to be fully preassembled before purchase. Whereas once you could get away with releasing just a skill's Core and working on Expansions down the line, that is no longer the case. But perhaps a skill might stand a better chance now than it did last year, given that the OSRS Team has doubled in number since that time.
However, judging from the skill design phases that have previously been attempted (as we’ve yet to see a skill development phase), the heaviest cost has been paid in developer mentality and motivational loss. When a developer is passionate about an idea, they spend their every waking hour pouring their mind into how that idea is going to function, especially while they’re not at work. And then they’re obligated to take player feedback and adapt their ideas, sometimes starting from scratch, particularly over something as controversial as a skill. Even if they have tough enough skin to take the heavy criticism that comes with skill design, having to write and rewrite repeatedly over the same idea to make it “perfect” is mentally exhausting. Eventually, their motivation drains as their labour bears little fruit with the audience, and they simply want to push it to the poll and be done with it. Even once all their cards are down, there’s still no guarantee that their efforts will be rewarded, even less so when it comes to skills.
With such a high mental cost with a low rate of success, you have to ask, “Was it worth it?” And that’s why new skill proposals are far and few between. A new skill used to be exciting for the development team in the actual days of 2007, as they had the developmental freedom to do whatever they wanted, but in the modern day that is not so much the case.

5-4 - The Problems of Democracy

Ever since the conceptualization of democracy in the real world, people have been very aware of its disadvantages. And while I don’t have the talent, knowledge, or time to discuss every one of these factors, there are a few that are very relevant when it comes to the OSRS Team and the polling process.
But first we should recognize the OSRS Team’s relationship with the players. More and more, the Team acts like a government to its citizens, the players, and although this situation was intentionally instated with OSRS’s release, it’s even more prominent now. The Team decides the type of content that gets to go into a poll, and the players get their input over whether that particular piece makes it in. Similarly, players make suggestions to the Team that, in many cases, the Team hadn’t thought of themselves. This synergy is phenomenal and almost unheard of among video games, but the polling system changes the mechanics of this relationship.
Polls were introduced to the burned and scarred population of players at OSRS’s release in 2013. Many of these players had just freshly come off RS2 after a series of disastrous updates or had quit long before from other controversies. The Squeal of Fortune, the Evolution of Combat, even the original Wilderness Removal had forced numerous players out and murdered their trust in Jagex. To try and get players to recommit to Runescape, Jagex offered OSRS a polling system by which the players would determine what went into the game, where the players got to hold all the cards. They also asked the players what threshold should be required for polled items to pass, and among the odd 50% or 55% being shouted out, the vast majority of players wanted 70%, 75%, 80%, or even 85%. There was a massive population in favour of a conservative game that would mostly remain untouched, and therefore kept pure from the corruption RS2 had previously endured.
Right from the start, players started noticing holes in this system. After all, the OSRS Team was still the sole decider of what would actually be polled in the first place. Long-requested changes took forever to be polled (if ever polled at all) if the OSRS Team didn’t want to deal with that particular problem or didn’t like that idea. Similarly, the Team essentially had desk jobs with a noose kept around their neck – they could perform almost nothing without the players, their slave masters, seeing, criticizing, and tearing out every inch of developmental or visionary freedom they had. Ever hear about the controversy of Erin the duck? Take a look at the wiki or do a search through the subreddit history. It’s pretty fantastic, and a good window into the minds of the early OSRS playerbase.
But as the years have gone on, the perspective of the players has shifted. There is now a much healthier and more trusting relationship between them and the Team, much more flexibility in what the players allow the Team to handle, and a much greater tolerance and even love of change.
But the challenges of democracy haven’t just fallen away. Everyone having the right to vote is a fundamental tenet of the democratic system, but unfortunately that also means that everyone has the right to vote. For OSRS, that means that every member, whether it’s their first day in game, their ten thousandth hour played, those who have no idea about what the poll’s about, those who haven’t read a single quest (the worst group), those who RWT and bot, those who scam and lure, and every professional armchair developer like myself get to vote. In short, no one will ever be perfectly informed on every aspect of the game, or at least know when to skip when they should. Similarly, people will almost never vote in favour of making their game harder, even at the cost of game integrity, or at least not enough people would vote in such a fashion to reach a 75% majority.
These issues are well recognized. The adoption of the controversial “integrity updates” was Jagex’s solution to these problems. In this way, Jagex has become even more like a government to the players. The average citizen of a democratic country cannot and will not make major decisions that favour everyone around themselves if it comes at a personal cost. Rather, that’s one of the major roles of a government: to make decisions for changes for the common good that an individual can’t or won’t make on their own. No one’s going to willingly hand over cash to help repave a road on the opposite side of the city – that’s why taxes are a necessary evil. It’s easy to see that the players don’t always know what’s best for their game and sometimes need to rely on that parent to decide for them, even if it results in some personal loss.
But players still generally like the polls, and Jagex still appears to respect them for the most part. Being the government of the game, Jagex could very well choose to ignore them, but would risk the loss of their citizens to other lands. And there are some very strong reasons to keep them: the players still like having at least one hand on the wheel when it comes to new content or ideas. Also, it acts as a nice veto card should Jagex try to push RS3’s abusive tactics on OSRS and therefore prevent such potential damage.
But now we come to the topic of today: the introduction of a new skill. Essentially, a new skill must pass a poll in order to enter the game. While it’s easy to say, “If a skill idea is good enough, it’ll pass the threshold,” that’s not entirely true. The only skill that could really pass the 75% mark is not necessarily a well-designed skill, but rather a crowd-pleasing skill. While the two aren’t mutually exclusive, the latter is far easier to make than the former. Take Dungeoneering: if you were to poll it today as an exact replica of RS2’s version, it would likely be the highest scoring skill yet, perhaps even passing, despite every criticism that’s been previously emphasized describing why it has no respect for the current definition of “skill.” Furthermore, a crowd-pleasing skill can easily fall prey to deindividualization of vision and result in a bland “studio skill” (in the same vein as a “studio film”), one that feels manufactured by a board of soulless machines rather than a director’s unique creation. This draws straight back to the afore-mentioned issues with democracy: that people A) don’t always understand what they’re voting for or against, and B) people will never vote for something that makes their game tougher or results in no benefit to oneself. Again, these were not issues in the old days of RS2, but are the problems we face with our modern standards and decision making systems.
The reality that must be faced is that the polling system is not an engine of creation nor is it a means of constructive feedback – it’s a system of judgement, binary and oversimplified in its methodology. It’s easy to interact with and requires no more than 10 seconds of a player’s time, a mere mindless moment, to decide the fate of an idea made by an individual or team, regardless of their deep or shallow knowledge of game mechanics, strong or weak vision of design philosophy, great or terrible understanding of the game’s history, and their awareness of blindness towards the modern community. It’s a system which disproportionately boils down the quality of discussion that is necessitated by a skill, which gives it the same significance as the question “Should we allow players to recolour the Rocky pet by feeding it berries?” with the only available answers being a dualistic “This idea is perfect and should be implemented exactly as outlined” or “This idea is terrible and should never be spoken of again.”
So what do you do? Let Jagex throw in whatever they want? Reduce the threshold, or reduce it just for skills? Make a poll that lists a bunch of skills and forces the players to choose one of them to enter the game? Simply poll the question, “Should we have a new skill?” then let Jagex decide what it is? Put more options on the scale of “yes” to “no” and weigh each appropriately? All these options sound distasteful because there are obvious weaknesses to each. But that is the Third Great Irony we face: an immense desire for a new skill, but no realistic means to ever get one.

6-0 - Conclusion

I can only imagine that if you’ve truly read everything up to this point, it’s taken you through quite the rollercoaster. We’ve walked through the history of OSRS skill attempts, unconstructive arguments, various aspects of modern skill design philosophy, and the OSRS Team and skill design process. When you take it all together, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by all the thought that needs to go into a modern skill and all the issues that might prevent its success. Complexity, naming conventions, categorizations, integration, rewards and motivations, bankstanding and buyables, the difficulties of skill bloat, balancing, and skill endgames, aesthetics, the design process, public presentation, development effort, democracy and polling - these are the challenges of designing and introducing modern skills. To have to cope with it all is draining and maybe even impossible, and therefore it begs the question: is trying to get a new skill even worth it?
Maybe.
Thanks for reading.
Tl;dr: Designing a modern skill requires acknowledging the vast history of Runescape, understanding why players make certain criticisms and what exactly they’re saying in terms of game mechanics, before finally developing solutions. Only then can you subject your ideas to a polling system that is built to oversimplify them.

Catherine: Full Body for Nintendo Switch - Review

Big ol' post. How I went about researching top surgery (and to some degree, my identity), therapy, experience with parents, early life and signs, etc. I found personal accounts to be helpful when I was starting to look into things, so here's my contribution.

My therapist keeps telling me that it's good for people to know what's possible, both bad and good. I've been lucky in a lot of areas and I didn't want to post about it because I don't want people to feel bad. But she keeps telling me that hope is an important tool for people so, if this is upsetting, blame her lol.
First some context and personal info about me. I'm nonbinary, but I lean and present masculine. I'm not on hormones. After wanting it for roughly 15 years, I got top surgery this year at the ripe old age of 29 (kidding about being old--sort of. I think this sub tends to skew pretty young, so I feel old compared to a lot of you lol).
I am so sorry about the length of this. I tried to break it down into chunks so if you want to skip headers you can.
Quick TL;DR Timeline:

Childhood/Early Teens: Gender??? who cares, I'm me
Teens: I absolutely do not want these boobs but I don't have a choice. Gender still weird.
Early 20s: Learned about other gender identities and gender affirming surgeries
23: Started seriously considering top surgery for real.
27: Called to schedule a consultation with NYU Langone.
28: Had my consultation
29: Had my surgery

Early Stuff

Until ~puberty~ and the dreaded body changes, gender was largely not something I thought about. I knew people tended to fit someone into either male or female, and I knew people viewed me as female and treated me as such, but it's not something I felt strongly about for myself at all. Puberty wound up sending me into a bit of an existential crisis. I hated my breasts. I hated how they made my shirts fit weird, I hated how people treated me differently if they were sort of on display, I constantly felt like I was smuggling a pair of grapefruits around.
My grandmother was diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 50, and had a mastectomy. I was like, holy shit? I WISH I WOULD GET BREAST CANCER SO THEY'D HAVE TO CUT OFF MY BOOBS! Yes, in retrospect, holy fuck that is an awful way to go about it. At the time I didn't know you could just like... get surgery. My only experiences with surgery were emergency situations, so I thought something had to be immediately, grievously, life-threateningly wrong in order to get surgery.
So I carried that ungodly wish around for a good several years. Yikes.
At the time I also hadn't heard of the term "nonbinary" and it was also really eating at me. "Woman" absolutely felt wrong, but "Man" didn't quite feel right either. I used to joke about feeling like a shapeless amoeba and being happy like that. But there was no way that was valid... right?? Obviously I was wrong, I found out about different gender identities and was much happier in that regard.
It may sound weird or look the same on the outside, but a lot of my masculine traits and tendencies are less about actually being masculine but really more about being less feminine. I know it looks the same from the outside but internally, it was an important distinction for me.
Still hated having boobs, tho.

Parents??

This is one of the areas I really lucked out on, and the biggest thing I didn't want people to feel bad about. When it comes to my identity (and unrelated to this but my sexuality as well) my parents have been, well, remarkably chill.
My dad has always been tuned into my social media, so he already knew everything and ultimately was the one who was like "what are you waiting for? Schedule an appointment already!" I had to bring him to a therapy appointment once to talk about surgery strategy, and he basically said "parents who can't support their kids unconditionally shouldn't be parents" without missing a beat so that was nice. Otherwise he basically just lets me take the lead. Let him know what I need from him, and he'll do it.
My mom I was definitely more worried about, though it turned out to be pretty unfounded. My mom and I haven't had the greatest history. It basically boils down to a clash in personalities. I was a pretty shy kid, she was always pushy about it, and neither of us handled my Moody Teenager-ness well. Things have improved a lot since I became an adult and since I started antidepressant/antianxiety meds. I also had to bring her to a therapy appointment to talk about surgery recovery strategy, where it turns out she always knew about my identity in some way, she was just waiting for me to tell her myself. And then she was all hands on deck. She checked in with me after every pre-op and post-op appointment, she asked if there was anything she needed to do or buy, she dug up a bunch of her current husband's old button-ups for me to wear post-op, she stayed with me at the hospital and took me home, etc.
There was never any weirdness or questioning from either of them. I knew my dad would be chill, I was always worried about my mom though, but it was all a pleasant surprise.

Researching Top Surgery (and Therapy)

Thanks to the internet and places like Tumblr, I was introduced to the concept of gender affirming surgeries. I was initially skeptical that I qualified (the good ol' "am I trans enough??" question) but the more I read personal accounts and stories from people, the more I realized that I did indeed fit the bill.
But I was working at CVS at the time, had no health insurance, was (and still am) paying off student loans... it just wasn't going to happen at that time. So for 5 years I did nothing. Just plucked away at life.
Then I got a new job with actual health insurance. Interest renewed. It would still be a couple of years before I even called to make a consultation but, I started looking into everything again.
So I came up with a list of questions and goals that needed to be answered and researched:

What surgeon and where?
Did my health insurance even cover it?
If so, what information and documents would I need?
How much of it does insurance cover?
How much time off would I need for recovery?

I would like to emphasize, I knew NOTHING about insurance going into this. But honestly, it's not that difficult. Go through it slowly, google any terms you don't know or understand, and don't be afraid to call or email your insurance to ask even the stupidest of questions. It's their job to answer your questions.
First, I found my insurance's policy for "Gender Affirming Services (Transgender Services)" which is its official title within my insurance. I read it several times, and in my case I was glad that the language avoided sticking strictly to the binary, because I was worried I wouldn't qualify. They used phrases like "gender identity other than that assigned at birth." I actually just looked at it now and it's been updated even further to be even more inclusive, which is nice. It has a list of services and surgeries that are covered, along with any requirements. I saved the pdf, as well as printed it and stuck it in a big 3-ring binder that would become my go-to resource.
Next I started looking at surgeons that accepted my insurance, and whose results and reviews seemed good enough for me. Transbucket was still working at the time, so I went through the images and wrote a list of surgeons down. I live in NY, which has a few good but long-waitlisted surgeons, so to keep things a little less complicated I decided to narrow the list down to NY surgeons. I read some sketchy things about Mt. Sinai's surgeons at the time, so I decided to nix them from the list. Ultimately I decided to go with Dr. Bluebond-Langner with NYU Langone. Knowing there was going to be a long wait to deal with the rest of my prep, I called to schedule a consult pretty much immediately after I made my choice. The consult wound up being a year later, so that gave me time and a concrete deadline to work toward.
Call date: January 2018
Consult date: January 2019
NYU Langone sent me a pretty comprehensive packet of info, including some requirements for getting surgery. Mainly it was a diagnosis of gender dysphoria and letter from a therapist, which would also cover my insurance requirements.
So my next step was finding a suitable therapist. I had already read about the long wait times between consults and surgery, so I didn't immediately jump into therapy. There was a long stretch of just doing nothing.
Initially I started out by using the "find a provider" tool on my insurance website to try and find a therapist, but it wasn't really getting me anywhere. BCBS's various websites suck ass. After having some initial talks with a few therapists, I found out it's kind of annoying for them to work with insurance in NY, so they work out of network but provide the receipts and codes for you to submit a claim on your own.
So instead I started by searching "WPATH therapist [location]" and scoped out the results. They weren't necessarily registered with WPATH, but they were at least familiar with it and that was the important factor, for me. I reached out to them explaining who I was, what my identity was, and that I was seeking a diagnosis and letter so that I could get top surgery. I told them that I was absolutely okay if they were uncomfortable with this and did not want to continue.
Everyone responded kindly and was down for it, but I was put off by the short responses from some of them or the informal abbreviations. In any other normal everyday situation I absolutely would not care, but I had taken the time to write this formal email where I basically bared my deepest secrets to them, and getting back a "k" was like... nah man. This ain't it.
Except one woman who responded with the kind of thoughtfulness and care I was expecting, and seemed like a perfect fit. I love her to death and I'm still having sessions with her on a regular basis.
Therapy start: May 2019
It was my first time being in therapy at all. Some of it was about my identity, some of it was just general life stuff, but she's great at guiding things along and she's not afraid to ask me if that's what I really think or if I'm just saying what I think she wants me to say, stuff like that. Also I've slipped out a few curses in front of her (I curse a LOT in casual conversation) so it's pretty funny when your therapist isn't afraid to say "fuck" in front of you now.
In November 2019 we worked on and finalized my letter. She had me read it a dozen times before I signed off on it, and we made sure all the pertinent info and requirements were in, including the diagnosis code for gender dysphoria. She faxed it over to the hospital and also gave me a copy. Ultimately the letter was good for one year but she made it clear that she would absolutely change the date and resubmit it if my surgery date wound up falling past that point.
A big source of my info on surgery, recovery, and good stuff to have around has come from blog posts and from this sub. You have been invaluable. It was good to see the gamut of recoveries from "ridiculously smooth" to "absolute hell" and help me plan for the worst case (which thankfully wasn't necessary).

The World's Longest Home Stretch AKA Approaching Surgery

Consult in January 2020 finally arrived. I was in the waiting room longer than I was actually in any part of the consult lmao. Dr. Bluebond-Langner is nice and great, let me be clear. But for her it was just another Tuesday, so she was basically just blasting right along and asking me questions while taking measurements of my chest. I had some questions and she was happy to answer but I was also just kind of nervous and caught up in the expediency of the whole process, so it was all done in like, 3 minutes.
Then the photographer team took photos of me shirtless in several positions and angles. Super, duper weird and awkward but they were extremely nice and professional, and pretty made it as un-weird as possible.
The good news is that they have a stellar patient portal where you can ask questions pretty much whenever you want, and they also sent me another email and another physical packet of information which largely covered anything I forgot to ask in my stupor.
About 3 days later I got my surgery date.
Surgery date: August 2020
Obviously COVID has been a hell of a thing. Appointments were pushed back, masks were worn, hand sanitizer was applied judiciously, temperatures were taken at doorways. I waited with bated breath to see if my appointment would be rescheduled. Thankfully I lucked out big time and hospitals started doing non-emergency surgeries again before my date came up, so they called and told me I was still on for August.
I had to have an appointment with my Primary Care Physician (PCP) and explain that I was having surgery and I was going to need a bunch of tests done, and the results sent to the hospital. My doctor's office is a teaching office, so I basically had to come out to my PCP and the student shadowing her, but it was all chill. My doctor told me that she has several trans patients now and they're seeing an increase in people who are more comfortable to come out, which is nice. So she was 100% down to do whatever tests the hospital needed.
In practice, getting the results in and to the hospital on time was a bit of a pain in the ass. I think technically several of my results were late but it didn't screw me over. The tests had to be done within a certain window before surgery (not too early, basically) but the processing took forever on a couple of them, and I had to ask and triple check with the doctor's office a few times because the hospital was still missing a couple of them. It was a bit of unnecessary stress leading up to surgery lol.
PTO scheduled, bag packed, took a train into the city for surgery.

Surgery Experience

First off, everyone at the hospital was super nice the entire time I was there.
You're not allowed to eat or drink after midnight the night before. That night I woke up every hour from a nightmare that I had accidentally eaten something.
I showed up in sweats and a hoodie, got my patient wrist band (with my preferred name!) and then waited for what felt like an eternity while my mom and I chatted.
Someone came and got me, I had to brush my teeth and use mouthwash (something about cutting down on possible infection), had me pee in a cup one last time, and gave me a gown. My mom was allowed to join me in the "staging area" where other people were stationed and waiting for their surgeries to start. It was just a lot of taking vitals, starting the IV, people introducing themselves to you and what their role was going to be in your surgery, Dr. Bluebond-Langner marking up my chest and asking me how I was feeling.
It was the most chill hospital experience I have ever had. Granted all of my other experiences were like, emergency room visits where things were much more hectic. This was all planned out, everyone was relaxed, everything was fine.
After that, one big nap. The last thing I remember was getting up on the table and apologizing for being in the way while someone said "don't be sorry, you're the star of the show, we're all here for you" and then I was out like a light.
Next time I woke up I was in the recovery wing, where they stash you before they bring you to your permanent room. Initially, I was pretty dizzy and out of it, but I was definitely waking up. They were getting ready to move me, so I had to stand up, but I somehow managed to pull one of the drain bulbs out (NOT the tube that was in my body, thank god) so I looked like I was in a horror movie with a big puddle of blood on my side lol. They had me swap gowns.
While this was going on and I was standing up, it was the only time I felt bad. I felt sick and I told someone I think I needed to sit down. As soon as I sat down in the wheelchair I immediately felt better, and they were ready to wheel me to my room.

Post-Op in the Hospital

Dr. Bluebond-Langner keeps people overnight, so I stayed the night in the hospital.
This is another area where I feel a little bad, but my recovery has been pretty stellar and apparently I'm part Wolverine from X-Men because doctors and nurses keep telling me that I'm healing really well. Almost immediately, I was fairly mobile. The anesthesia hasn't really hung around. I was walking city blocks upon city blocks to my post-op appointments, and I'd say maybe about 1 month post-op I really started getting my range of motion back in my arms. I'm a little over 2 months now post op and can fully raise my arms over my head, etc. My pain management was also basically nonexistent. I used some extra strength tylenol for a few days until I forgot to take it, realized I didn't really seem to need it, and just stopped from thereon out.
STILL NO LIFTING THOUGH! Everyone is adamant about that.
After my initial hiccup with the anesthesia, it wore off pretty fast. I was up and able to walk laps around the hospital without issue. The nurse taking care of me had to keep telling me to slow down. I was wide awake, chatting and eating full meals (side note: the hospital food there was REALLY GOOD). I was able to get in an out of bed on my own, I started stripping my own drains (scared the crap out of the nurse who just saw someone moving behind my door and didn't realize I was able to do it on my own).
A few times throughout my stay, either Dr. Bluebond-Langner herself or someone on her team would come by and undo my compression vest to check things out and make sure there were no issues.
If I had one complaint, it's the IV fluids. I had to pee CONSTANTLY.
My mom stayed with me until the end of visiting hours, chatting and doing her own work, occasionally helping me reach things, flagging down a nurse when I had to pee for the hundreth time, etc.
Otherwise, I was discharged the next morning. The Uber ride and subsequent train ride home were pretty smooth. I was worried that every little bump would kill me, but the tightness of the compression vest kept everything pretty secure.

Recovery at Home

I was pretty self-sufficient. We had already moved a bunch of water glasses onto the counter for easy access, and I had a bunch of reasonably healthy easy-cook food ready to go. I had an adjustable incline pillow for sleeping on my back and keeping me somewhat elevated, coupled with a neck pillow and a total blackout sleep mask. My dog kept me company.
Sleeping is honestly probably the worst part. I am very much a side and stomach sleeper. And although my recovery was pretty smooth, surgery is still surgery and I found it difficult to get a good, restful sleep through the general uncomfortableness.
Showering and bathing was probably the second worst part. Taking a shallow bath was definitely easier but I basically couldn't get really clean because I was constantly worried about accidentally pulling the drains, or getting something wet.
Part of my dismissal included a packet with a calendar for measuring and recording my drains. I tried to do that at about 9am and 9pm every day to keep an even 12 hour spread. I'm not a particularly squeamish person, but even I initially was a bit grossed out by the contents of the drains. I got used to it after a couple of days, though.
My drains were, mercifully, not painful or irritated at the drain sites. The only issue I had was a VERY small hematoma on my right side, down where the drain actually starts in your body. Emptying my drains on that side started to produce a slightly painful pinching feeling in that spot, and putting pressure on it would hurt a bit. I contacted the surgeon's office about it, and they gave me the option to come in, or just ride it out and let it reabsorb itself. I chose to leave it alone, and it started feeling better after a few days.
I had several post-op appointments, 1 each week after surgery for 3 weeks. First week was just a checkup, nothing super notable to be honest. Basically just a "holy crap you're only one week out? I would not have guessed, you're walking around just fine."
At 2 weeks, we took the drains out. Thank god, because I went back to work the next day and really needed a proper shower. I still had to keep the compression vest on, but I was at least allowed to take it off and wash it. That thing was rank. And I was allowed to wear deodorant.
At 3 weeks, I was officially allowed to take the vest off. They showed me how to do scar massaging, they did a quick draining of some fluid in both of my sides (in Dr. Bluebond-Langner's own words, she was being "nitpicky" about it because it was a minor amount, but figured she might as well just do it while I was there), made me promise I'd keep moisturizing my nipple scabs, and said they'll see me in a month.
The scabs fell off eventually by the way. I think one fell off at like 3 weeks, the other at 4. Yes, it looks terrifying. No, they didn't die. Yes, it's normal. It is weird to see the very pink, fresh skin underneath but that's normal.
Now I just oil up my scars with bio-oil every day and massage as part of my morning routine. I already made a previous post about my scars being hypertrophic and how I'm fine with that, and it might be hard to believe when you see hypertrophic scars, but they look and feel much better now than they did, and they're only going to keep getting better.
I was using the silicone strips, but my scars kinda go up near my arm pits and when I get sweaty at work, it makes them come loose. I was taping those parts but the tape irritates my skin, so I just stopped trying to make that work for now.

Closing

So that's where I'm at now. I feel much, much better. I stand taller instead of hunching over to try and hide my chest. I'm probably a lot older than a lot of folks in here who probably can't even imagine waiting until nearly 30 to get to some of these points. I guess if there's a takeaway it's 1) sometimes surgery goes pretty smoothly and 2) your life doesn't end if you don't transition before 18.
I THINK it's pretty comprehensive in here but, if there's a particular question you have about something feel free to ask.

[OWL WATCH] AMA's SUMMARY

Disclaimer: This is my arbitrary summary for myself, so there could be some misunderstandings.
If you want the full picture, I recommend reading the full thread.
But, for a guy who just settles with 'less than perfect' summary, why not sharing my own?

Billy-IF
All the key research questions in coordicide have been answered. The challenges lying are implementing and testing our solution. We are implementing our solution into the Pollen Testnet and typing it up into our research specifications**(the specifications, while not complete, will hopefully be made publicly available soon).**
**After these tasks are done, our solution will go through a rigorous testing phase.**During this time, we will collect performance data, look for attack vectors, and tune the parameters.

domsch
the only way for IOTA and crypto-currencies in general to be adopted is via clear and strong regulatory guidelines and frameworks.
We often have the situation where a company reaches out to us and wants to use the IOTA token, but they are simply not able to due to uncertainties in regards to taxes, accounting, legal and regulatory questions.
The EU is taking a great stance with their new proposal (called MICA) to provide exactly this type of regulatory clarity and guidance we need. So we are very happy about that and see this as a great development for the adoption of IOTA.
We are very active in INATBA (in fact Julie is still on the board), are in the Executive Committee of the Digital Chamber of Commerce (https://digitalchamber.org) and are actively working with other regulatory bodies around the world. I think that especially in 2021, we will be much more pro-active with our outreach and efforts to push for more regulatory guidance (for the IOTA Token, for Tokenization, Smart Contracts, etc.). We are already talking with companies to start case studies around what it means to use the IOTA token - so that will be exciting.

domsch
actual product development, will really help us to convince regulators and lawmakers of what IOTA is intended for and where its potential lies.

DavidSonstebo
We are actively participating in regulatory matters via entities such as INATBA, as well as with local regulators in individual countries to help shape regulations to favor the adoption of crypto.
once the use cases can display real-world value, then deployments will happen regardless.

serguei_popov
"The multiverse" is quite an ingenious and promising idea that has many components. Actually, quite some of those are being incorporated to the Coordicide already now. The most "controversial" part, though, is the pure on-Tangle voting -- Hans thinks it should work fine while I think that it can be attacked

Billy-IF
Several of our modules have been devloped jointly with researchers in academia. For example, our rate control module is being developed jointly with professor Robert Shorten **and his team at Imperial College. Moreover,**our team has published several papers in peer reviewed journals and conference proceedings,
We are also making sure the entire protocol is audited. First, we have a grant given to Professor Mauro Conti specifcally to vet our solution.
you may hear an announcement regarding a similar grant to a second university.Second, eventually will offer bug bounties on our testnet. Lastly, we will hire some firm to audit our software and our protocol.

domsch
I would say that the entire enterprise and also the broader crypto-community is certainly actively following our developments around Coordicide**.**
Once that is removed, and with the introduction of Tokenization and Smart Contracts as Layer 2 solutions, there is no reason not to switch to IOTA.
there are probably even more who will reach out once we've achieved our objective of being production ready.

serguei_popov
Our objective is to have Honey ready within the first half of 2021.
we are very confident that Coordicide will happen in time.

Billy-IF
For Chrysalis, we will implement a deposit system. In order for an address to receive dust (which will be explicitly defined as any output with value less than a certain threshold), that address must already have a minimum balance (either 1 MIota or 1 KIota). The total ordering in conflict white flag makes this solution incredibly easy to implement.
this solution in the Coordicide needs alterations, because of the lack of total ordering.

HusQy_IOTA
Sharding is part of IOTA 3.0 and currently still in research.
there are of course some hard questions that need to be answered but we are pretty confident that these questions can and will be answered.

Billy-IF
**Having these layers helps keep the protocol modular and organized.****Indeed,****it is important to be able to track dependencies between the modules, particularly for standardization purposes.As your question suggests, a key component of standardization is the ability to update the standard(no living protocol is completely static).**Standardization will be accompanied by a versioning system, which tracks backwards compatibility.

Billy-IF
Well, let me try to clear these things up.
-The congestion control mechanisms are indifferent to the types of messages in the tangle. Thus non-value transactions (data messages) will be processed in the same way as value transactions (value messages). Thus, in times of congestion, a node will require mana in order to issue either of them.
-You will not need mana to simply “set up a node” and monitor the tangle.
However, in order to send transactions (or issue any messages) you will need mana in times of congestion.

IF_Dave
**The next big one is next month:**Odyssey Momentum; This is a huge multi-day DLT focussed hackathon with a lot of teams and big companies/governments involved working on solutions for the future. The IOTA Foundation is a Ecosystem member of Odyssey and we will be virtually present during the hackathon to help and guide teams working with IOTA.

Billy-IF
Coordicide will not fail. We are working very carefully to make sure that coordicide is a success, and we will not launch Iota 2.0 until it has gone through the proper testing.

domsch
Everyone internally and also our partners are very confident in the path that we've defined. Failure is not an option for us :)

HusQy_IOTA
We will most probably see a slight delay and see Nectar early 2021 instead.

DavidSonstebo
No, IF is not running out of money, this narrative has been repeated for 3 years now, yet we're still operating. Of course, bear markets impact our theoretical runway, but The IOTA Foundation is hard at work at diversifying revenue streams so that we become less and less dependent on the token holdings.

IF_Dave
We are constantly working on getting more exchanges to list IOTA, we however do not pay for listings
Some exchanges require a standard signature scheme
with the introduction of ed25519 in Chrysalis phase 2 that will be introduced and no longer be a restriction.

HusQy_IOTA
Being feeless is one of the most important aspects here since a new technology usually only gets adopted if it is either better or easier to use than existing solutions.
if it enables new use cases that would be completely impossible with the existing infrastructure. That is the single biggest reason why I think that IOTA will prevail.
An example for such a "new" use case is the Kupcrush use case presented by Terry

domsch
there are so many amazing use cases enabled with IOTA
I would say that****the most specific use cases which gets me really excited is conditional access control based on IOTA payments - in particular for the sharing economy.
IOTA Access + IOTA tokens really enable so many exciting new possibilities.

Billy-IF
In fact, with coordicide research coming to an end, we have already started to look into sharding**.**Indeed, sharding will provide the scalability needed to handle the demands of an IoT enabled world.

Billy-IF
We have designed Iota 2.0 to not have large concentrations of power. Unlike PoS systems, Iota will not be a block chain and thus will not be limited by a leader election process.
in a DAG, people can information in parallel, and so nodes with small amounts of mana can create messages at the same time with large mana holders.

Billy-IF
**In any DLT, "voting" needs a sybil protection system, and thus "voting power" is linked to some scarce resource.****Typically the allocation of any resource follows some sort of Zipf distribution, meaning that some people will have a lot, and others not.**The best we can do is to make sure that the little guys get their fair share of voting power.

HusQy_IOTA
With Chrysalis and coordicide we are finally moving to being production ready which will most probably also lead to a bigger market share as partners will start to use the technology which will increase the demand for tokens.

HusQy_IOTA
Privacy features are currently not being researched and it might be hard to support that on layer1 but privacy features could definitely be implemented as a 2nd layer solution

domsch
We focus on making the base layer of IOTA (namely transactional settlement) as secure and fast as possible. Many of the greater extensions to this core functionality are built on layer 2 (we already have Streams, Access, Identity and now also Smart Contracts)

HusQy_IOTA
There are discussions about increasing the supply to be able to still have micro transactions if the token would i.e. cost a few hundred dollars per MIOTA but we have not made a final decision, yet.

IF_Dave
We think we have a edge over other technology especially when it comes to fee-less transactions allowing a lot of use-cases that would otherwise be impractical or impossible.Adoption is not a given but a useful technology will be utilized with the right functionality,

DavidSonstebo
**why we have such a widespread strategy of driving IOTA, not only its development but in industry, academia, regulatory circles, raising awareness, funding ecosystem efforts etc.**I am confident in the position we are in right now.
There is a clear demand for financial disruption, data security, and automation.
someone has to assemble a killer application that meets the demand; IF is pushing for this with partners

Billy-IF
Our goal is to have at least 1000 TPS.

Billy-IF
Personally, I think our congestion control algorithm is our greatest innovation.
our algorithm can be used in any adversarial setting requiring fairness and consistency. Keep an eye out for a blog post that I am writing about it.

HusQy_IOTA
about proof of inclusion?
I have started implementing a proof of concept locally and the required data structures and payload types are already done but we won't be able to integrate this into goshimmer until we are done with the current refactoring of the code.

Jakub_Cech
**Many of the changes that are part of the Chrysalis would have made it and will make it into Coordicide.**Like the atomic transactions with binary layout. The approach we took was actually opposite - as in, what are the improvements we can already make in the current network without having to wait for Coordicide, and at the same time without disrupting or delaying Coordicide?

Billy-IF
All the key research questions in coordicide have been answered.
in reality, the biggest research challenges are behind us.

Jakub_Cech
When Chrysalis part 2 will be live?
We are still aiming for 2020****as still reflected at roadmap.iota.org. **We want to have a testnet where everyone can test things like the new APIs on, and some initial implementations of specific client libraries****to work with.**This will also allow us to test the node (both Hornet and Bee) implementations more in the wild.
The new wallet will also be tested on that testnet.
The whole testing phase will be a big endeavor, and, at the same time, we will also start auditing many of the implementations,

Billy-IF
We are in contact currently with OMG, and they are advising us on how to draft our specifications in order to ease the standardization process. Coordicide, or Iota 2.0, actually provides us a chance to start off with a clean state, since we are building it from the ground up with standardization in mind.

IF_Dave
The focus at this point is delivering Chrysalis and Coordicide. DeFi could possibly be done with Smart contracts at a given moment but it's not a focus point at this stage.

domsch
about price?
We are quite frankly not worried about that. Knowing everything that we have in the pipeline, our ecosystem and how everything around IOTA will mature over the next few months, I am sure that the entire crypto ecosystem will wake up to IOTA and its potential. **Many participants in the market still have outdated information from 2017 about us, so there is certainly some education to do.**But with Chrysalis and the Coordicide progress, all of that will change.

domsch
At the core of it, the IOTA Foundation is a leader in trust protocols and digital infrastructure.We will always remain a R&D organization at our core, as there is a lot more development we can lead when it comes to make our society and economy more fair, trustless and autonomous.
I certainly see us evolving into a broader think-tank and expert group to advise governments and large corporations on their strategies - in particular around data, identity and IoT.

HusQy_IOTA
barely any cryptocurrency gets used in the real world.
IOTA will soon start to actually be used in real world products and it is likely that this will also have an impact on the price (but I can't really give any details just yet).

domsch
ISCP (IOTA Smart Contract Protocol) is based on cryptographic consensus via BLS threshold signatures. That means a certain pre-defined amount of key holders have to come together to alter the state of the contract****or to send funds around. **If majority of the nodes are offline, the threshold will not be reached and the contract cannot be executed anymore.**There are various ways in how we are looking at this right now on how to make SC recovery and easy transitions possible.
**The beauty of ISCP is that we have a validator set which you can define (can be 3 or it can be 100+), and via an open selection process we can really ensure that the network will be fully decentralized and permissionless.Every smart contract committee (which will be its own network of course) is leveraging the IOTA ledger for security and to make it fully auditable and tamper-proof.**Which means that if a committee acts wrong, we have cryptographic proof of it and can take certain actions.
This makes our approach to smart contracts very elegant, secure and scalable.

Billy-IF
No, we will not standardize Iota 1.5. Yes, we do hope that standardization will help adoption by making it easier for corporates to learn our tech.

serguei_popov
In general, I also have to add that I'm really impressed by the force of our research department, and I think we have the necessary abilities to handle all future challenges that we might be facing.

Billy-IF
In coordicide, i.e. Iota 2.0, yes all nodes have to process all transactions and must receive all data. Our next major project is sharding, i.e. Iota 3.0 which will remove this requirement, and increase scalability.
FPC begins to be vulnerable to attack if the attacker has 30%-40% of the active consensus mana.

HusQy_IOTA
There is no doubt about coordicide working as envisioned.

HusQy_IOTA
When will companies fully implement iota tech?
Soon(TM) :P

Billy-IF
Well first, we are going to make sure that we dont need a plan B :) Second, our plans for the actual deployment are still under discussion. Lastly, we will make sure there is some sort of fail safe, e.g. turning the coordinator back on, or something like that.

Billy-IF
All the key research questions in coordicide have been answered, and each module is designed.

Billy-IF
What will be standardized is the behavior of the modules, particularly their interactions with other nodes and wallets. Implementation details will not be standardized. The standardization will allow anyone to build a node that can run on the IOTA 2.0 network.

DavidSonstebo
Tangle EE has its own Slack (private) and calls, so the lack of activity can probably be explained in that fashion. Coordicide will have an impact on all of IOTA :) There's certainly a lot of entities awaiting it, but most will start building already with Chrysalis v2, since it solves most pain points.

Billy-IF
If there are no conflicts, a message will be confirmed if it receives some approvals. We estimate that this should happen within 10-20 seconds.
To resolve a conflict, FPC will typically take another 4 minutes, according to our simulator. Since conflicts will not affect honest users, most transactions will have very short confirmation times.

Billy-IF
a colored coin supply cannot exceed that of all Iota. You could effectively mint a colored coin supply using a smart contract, although there would be performance downsides. There are no plans to increase the supply. The convergence to binary will not affect the supply nor anyone's balances.

HusQy_IOTA
Both, Radix and Avalanche have some similarities to IOTA:
- Avalanche has a similar voting scheme and also uses a DAG
- Radix uses a sharding approach that is similar to IOTAs "fluid sharding"
I don't really consider them to compete with our vision since both projects still rely on fees to make the network work.
Centralized solution can however never be feeless and being feeless is not just a "nice feature" but absolutely crucial for DLT to succeed in the real world.
Having fees makes things a lot easier and Coordicide would already be "done" if we could just use fees but I really believe that it is worth "going the extra mile" and build a system that is able to be better than existing tech.

In-depth Review of Yandere Simulator Part 2: All the elimination methods

Hello Osana once more. A while ago I made a review of my first impressions on the Osana demo, which you can read over here: https://www.reddit.com/Osana/comments/ikcxc4/first_impressions_indepth_review_of_yandere/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
As you can see, my first time playing the game… wasn't that positive. I found many bugs and a lot of glaring issues about the game's design, and at the end I came to the conclusion that Yandere Simulator is far from being 91% complete. A lot of its current features need to be reworked, rebalanced, and improved, a lot of new features are needed, and if we add to this all the rival-specific elimination methods and the multiple endings planned, it's hard to see this game being anywhere close to finished. It is still a very amateurish product, and I hope those working on it can see that and making the necessary adjustments.
Some bugs have already been fixed, but for that I'd have to redownload the game (pro tip: bug fixes should be a patch, never force players to redownload the entire thing).
Because my previous attempt at eliminating Osana failed, mostly due to me not knowing the game's most hidden mechanics and failing, I've decided I would test out every elimination method but this time using guides. In this review I'll be analyzing each method, trying to be as brief as possible. This will be a long review but hopefully I can make it bearable for you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Matchmaking Osana
Because Matchmaking doesn't require me to eliminate Raibaru, I've decided this would be the first method I'll use. However I wasn't very eager to try it out, as it seems quite repetitive. First off: stalking Osana to see her likes and dislikes is a good idea, in theory. Unfortunately, if the player is caught off doing other stuff, they can miss the opportunity. The conversations should not happen at such specific times, as the player has no way of knowing when these interactions will take place. And, indeed, because I missed the Monday interactions, I had to buy info from Info-chan which is much less entertaining.
The "follow me" mechanic is confusing. It's easy to get lost in the school, so most of my time was spent trying to find the library, then running back to the suitor to make him follow me again. Why is there a timer to count down when the guy is following you? I understand realism and avoiding exploits, but when it's so easy to just run back and talk to him again it only seems like a waste of time.
Most of the lunchtime was spent on me trying to talk to Osana and do her task. However, she gave me a line of how she's busy right now and can't talk, forcing me to skip ahead time without me really knowing why Osana refused to talk. But, once the task was done, there was nothing else I could do, other than just go home.
The following days were spent in a repetitive cycle. Talk to the suitor, talk to Osana, select good answers, skip to the next day. Having to constantly wait for slow animations makes it even worse. Nothing about this particular method was noteworthy, fun, or memorable. At times, it felt like filler gameplay; no more than something to keep the game going.
At the end, because I didn't wait for the ending sequence and instead skipped ahead, the game glitched out. My fault perhaps, for refusing to download the latest build… but considering it wasn't a simple bug to miss, I have my doubts.
In summary: Matchmaking is a boring, repetitive elimination method that offers no real or fun challenge.
How would I improve it?: In a way, the repetitiveness could be tolerable if there were more in-between events for the player to do. Basically it stems from what I mentioned in the previous review, there's nothing to do at school once you've completed your objective. If, instead, I had to fix this method as it is, I would make it more like a visual novel. Add more of a conversation. Allow the player to think through their answers based on where the conversation is going. Perhaps make Osana take the initiative at some point and have the suitor respond accordingly, instead of it being the other way around. And more importantly, don't make the bar at the top raise or decrease with each "good" answer; instead, I would make it so it raises a specific amount at the end of the date, allowing for more of a challenge but also a margin of error. Easy should not equal boring.
I decided to download the September 22nd build (the time I'm typing this review). Fun fact: my browser recognizes it as a virus LOL.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Attacking Osana
Before I said I couldn't eliminate Osana because the game didn't allow me to eliminate Raibaru first. Well, guess what, I managed to kill Osana… Using exploits. After successfully matchmaking her with her suitor, Raibaru goes away. Eliminating the suitor is easy, and a friday event makes it so Musume separates them. With this, I could use the same trick to steal a phone: drop water onto Osana and killing her in the baths. Later it was only a matter of getting a clean uniform and dispose of the evidence.
Admittedly, this was slightly more entertaining than the previous methods. When I saw Musume asking Osana to follow her, I saw the opportunity. It was something made with exploits, but at least it was interesting. If the game was made like that, with more opportunities and freedom to the player, it would be much more fun.
However it was still an exploit so I did it the "intended" way. The first step was to get rid of Raibaru, but the only way to get rid of her permanently was to lower her reputation. The first two days were quite a tedious grind, of improving my own reputation and gossiping about Raibaru. This mechanic has the same issue as matchmaking: it's just grind, there is nothing to spice up the gameplay. Either way, I did that and next day Raibaru was gone, so that was cool.
The rest was simple enough. I made Osana follow me to a hidden place near the furnace (inside that garden, hint hint) so no students would see her corpse, then I fought all the delinquents to make them go away (something I wouldn't have known, hadn't I been following development of the game). Unfortunately, as I was carrying Osana's corpse, a student council girl saw me, getting me an instant game over with no way for me to defend myself. Next try, a regular student saw me and because he ran away to fight against me I had to kill him. Sure it was a sloppy murder but at least it worked.
For some reason, though, after everything was done, a teacher called the police because of a "mysterious bloodstain," despite the fact that I'm certain I cleaned everything, even made sure to double-check with yandere vision.
The end was a bit anticlimactic. Not sure what else was I expecting, but considering it's just the demo I'll let it slide.
In summary: The gameplay here was decent. Nothing to write home about, but nothing too terrible either. Raibaru is still a pretty boring/tedious obstacle, and I would argue it would be better if she wasn't there.
How would I improve it?: First, remove the instant game over when a student council member sees Ayano. Players should have a way to defend themselves, even if it's a bit more difficult than a regular student. Also, the consequences can be much bigger when they are killed, so the player would want to avoid being seen by them. Second, make bloodstains more visible in yandere vision, either that or make small bloodstains unnoticeable. Third, the "follow me" mechanic is a bit broken. It's easy to find a concealed spot and kill Osana there. Working around her schedule might be a solution, but make sure the player has access to this information. Fourth, less time to murder your rival would be a good idea. Before school there's two in-game hours to do whatever you want, more than enough to complete this elimination method. And fifth, add more ways to decrease reputation, because the current method is no more than "select option A then option B" over and over.
Bear in mind 3rd and 4th suggestions would not work well for Osana as the tutorial rival, but rather, for future ones. That being said, some systems can be reworked so even the easy rival is fun, even for veteran players.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Befriend Osana
Some people called this the "best elimination method" so we'll see. Restart the week my boys.
I found a bug with the topic not unlocking even after eavesdropping on the second Monday conversation, which is a bit annoying. After restarting the day, I kept going with the scheme as planned. It was strange how I couldn't put a note in Osana's locker, instead I had to find it first using the menu, then put the note, but details.
As I was waiting I pushed a student off the rooftop, just for the giggles, and the police came just in time for my meeting with Osana. Thought that was funny and decided to share.
The rest of the gameplay is basically an interactive cutscene. Unlike murder, where you have to be prepared for unexpected circumstances, this follows a very detailed plan. The idea of visiting the stalker's house is quite interesting, but again, no more than a cutscene. If this could be reworked I can see it being quite fun, but as I was playing I never felt the sort of adrenaline expected from a stealthy side-mission like this one.
By the way, the voice acting of the stalker's mom and sister is on point.
There's no real reason to avoid the stalker seeing you, as the game progresses the exact same way regardless. Hopefully this is because something is planned for future weeks.
That being said I have to wonder why the final cutscene doesn't have animations. When this method was used with Kokona, it was fully animated; it was all a matter of replacing the models and rewriting the dialogue, so I have to admit I was a bit confused.
In summary: It's good. Not as good as I was expecting, but good. It's just lore at this point rather than gameplay.
How would I improve it?: Definitely by making the stalker's house section more varied, perhaps more challenging, so that they can feel some sort of adrenaline. We are at a stranger's home, and someone who's potentially dangerous, so the gameplay should reflect that. Aside from that, the scheme feels too specific; multiple ways to reach the same end result would be much better for this kind of elimination method.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Betray Osana
This won't be long. It's the exact same method as Befriend, with only a minor change at the end. Simple summary: there's no real reason to choose one or the other, other than to feel more like a yandere I guess. Betraying Osana has no benefit and only downsides, since I think this method will have more of an impact in Senpai's sanity.
How would I improve it?: There's multiple ways to do so. Because I explained previously how the scheme is so specific, I would consider making it less specific, and depending on how the player decides to help Osana, the game would automatically determine which cutscene would play out. The second option is to simply make Befriend have some sort of negative outcome; perhaps, simply Osana being the one to betray the player by confessing to Senpai anyway, making Betray the safer option but also the one that mostly affects Senpai.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Expelling Osana
The first part of my playthrough was spent testing out different hairstyles and accessories. Considering we already have all those models available I wonder why Ayano doesn't have some sort of character creation screen as this was probably the most fun I had in the entire game lol (don't blame me, I love creating characters).
Later on I tried stealing Sakyu's ring as the scheme instructed. She saw me however, said "please don't touch that," then continued eating. Even though I had the ring, the game wouldn't let me put it inside Osana's bag. Also, restarting the day doesn't solve the issue as the scheme becomes unavailable.
The problem I have with this is that at no point did the game tell me that this was some sort of "fail state," on the contrary, the scheme kept on going. Even if it did tell me, how is this little interaction an instant fail on the elimination method? Especially when the solution is nothing special: just stand closer to the wall and take the ring; you can't even send a student to distract the sisters, something that would make much more sense mechanically. This little scheme was strange.
Next day, I had to place cigarettes on Osana's bag. Side note, I found it strange that the guidance counselor said possession of cigarettes is illegal, but that's just a nitpick. This scheme is a bit uneventful and there are ways to improve it but let's move on for now.
Next day on the scheme asked me to "wait" until a certain time of day. And tell me, what kind of game would ask the player to "wait"? It can suggest you to wait until a certain time when doing the scheme is more convenient, but there's an issue when the only option available is do nothing.
Next step was to steal the answer sheet and I failed this twice, having to go to the guidance counselor twice. The timing is way too tight here, becoming more frustrating than anything. Then, when I went to report Osana to the guidance counselor, she made no mention of how it was me the one that was trying to steal the answers. It would have been interesting if Ayano had to convince her through a series of answers/manipulation.
In summary: This elimination method feels too specific for no reason. Osana's phone, realistically, could be stolen on the last day; instead, the game requires you to steal it on Monday.
How would I improve it?: I still have serious issues with stealing Sakyu's ring; the way it's done feels more like an exploit or a glitch, not stealthy gameplay, so I would improve it in a way that the sisters have to go away before the ring can be stolen. As for placing cigarettes in Osana's bag, purchasing them from Info-chan is a bit boring. It would be much more interesting if the player was allowed to steal them from another student (say, Musume), then report Osana for both theft and smoking. With this in mind, the effectiveness of this method could be increased or decreased based on the player's actions, allowing for a more fluid gameplay instead of a binary outcome. Also, someone on this sub a while ago pointed out how it would be suspicious for Ayano to be reporting the same students for five days, and that instead it would be better if she could manipulate students into reporting Osana for her. I think this is a great idea and ties well with my previous suggestions: you could threaten Musume with reporting her to the guidance counselor for cigarettes, unless she reports Osana for the same. Finally, make all methods available at all times, and even add more, for more variety and less strict schemes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Burn Osana
The only way to kill Raibaru is to get a mind-broken slave, send her to Raibaru, and stab her at the same time. Because the topic of torture is kind of a trigger (and eff movies that constantly show it), I simply made use of debug commands. Apparently, though, the game wasn't made to have a mind-broken slave on Monday, meaning that as soon as I attempted it, everything kind of broke apart at the same time. I couldn't attend class because "a murder was taking place," but Raibaru just froze in place, so I basically softlocked the game.
A few attempts later I could do it… somewhat. The animations still didn't work but as long as the game recognized Raibaru as "dead" I was satisfied.
Anyhow, the rest of the scheme proceeded as usual. The only problem I had with it is how the player has no way of knowing which path Osana will take to the showers (as I put the candle in the school plaza), but that can be avoided by just putting the candle in a more obvious place.
In summary: This elimination method is decent enough. Raibaru is the only annoying thing about it.
How would I improve it?: As I said this one is decent and even easy enough, but it doesn't require much stealth from the player. Perhaps, because this method is more brutal than stabbing Osana, it could have a much more negative effect on Senpai. With other rivals though I expect this method to be a bit more challenging/fun.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Framing Osana for Murder
This elimination method was actually more fun than the others. It allowed me to go into a killing spree without being caught and without having to dispose of corpses; after all, Osana was to be made responsible for them and Raibaru was not even an issue. I found it a bit annoying that the teachers could always see me trying to dispose of the bloody uniform, as there is no way to distract them or anything, and because of that this method took way too many attempts from me. However, it was fun enough; I think the game is at its most fun in this kind-of-sandbox state.
In summary: Perhaps the best elimination method so far, even though it requires no interaction with Osana.
How would I improve it?: As I've said, the amount of freedom it gives you is great. I think the player should not have so many instant game overs and instead be allowed to get through everything with enough skill. Just like with other methods though, more ways to get Osana's fingerprints would be good. More ways to remove your own fingerprints without the need of being in the drama club, and more ways even to make Osana look suspicious. It is kind of a plot hole how the police arrests her, seeing as she has an alibi (Raibaru) and both know it was Ayano the one who asked her to touch the box cutter. That might need more work.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Rejecting Osana
If the previous was the best elimination method, this one is easily the second-best. I think this is one example of a well-designed method, even though it needs tweaking. Personally, I've been relying on schemes this entire time, as a new player. However, in this particular case, schemes take away much of the fun with it.
When I say this elimination method is well designed, it's because the player can get all the information they need right from the start. Osana speaks with Senpai right when the day begins, saying what they will do later, meaning the player can now use that information to their advantage.
The problem I have is with certain days. For example, throwing Senpai's book inside the fountain is a simple enough solution. However, recording Osana's conversation with Musume with a directional mic then going into the computer lab to edit said conversation and save it into Osana's phone seems like way too convoluted for the player to guess without the use of the scheme.
In summary: It's well designed and more elimination methods should follow this formula, but making it in a way that the player can do it without the need of a guide. This method also suffers from the same issue as expelling Osana in being too specific at times and not allowing a lot of choices.
How would I improve it?: Changing Osana's interactions with Senpai completely. Sabotaging their events doesn't have to be easy, but I guess… realistic? Also, it might be a good idea to sabotage them in a way that reinforces a negative aspect of Osana. For example, her being a tsundere makes Musume's conversation kind of believable, but her having a girl's panty shot is a bit strange for her. Definitely the biggest change though is to remove or rework Info-chan's scheme in a way that makes the player think through more.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
A few other elimination methods
Because the rest is more of the same, I just got them here in a little list.
Crushing Osana: This one is pretty easy, just like the burn Osana scheme. There's not much skill required and it's easy to get away with murder using this method.
Decapitating Osana: Decent again, although there's no way to cover up your crime. It seems there's finally a little use for the sanity meter, but because it's so easy to restore it, it kind of seems like a cosmetic effect in this case.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Miscellaneous

I checked out YanCord (accidentally, because the blur effect didn't allow me to see the button prompts) and once I was in I couldn't exit the cutscene. A long process of button-smashing later...
The save file was corrupted as soon as I deleted it… so, a clean save file was corrupted. It is quite interesting how the game tells me that this is a very "rare" issue, almost as if it was scared of me judging its flaws, and trying to justify them. This is no way to talk to the player, so please, avoid it.
Oh god having 100 panty shots available from the get-go is a blessing in disguise. Not having to constantly stare at girls' panties in a videogame is something I never thought I would be grateful for.
Also, why is the Monday button so close to the debug menu. I can't tell you how many times I reset the day losing all of my progress. This is made worse because of how long it takes for the game to load.
The final cutscene was pretty interesting. I've always been interested in Yandere Simulator's lore and that’s one good thing the game has going for. In terms of storytelling, the game is lacking in character personality (them being no more than simple caricatures/archetypes). Senpai especially suffers from this, as he not only has no personality, he has no routine. Considering a lot of female characters are interested in him, I would expect him to have something there to catch their attention and sets him apart from every other male student.
And as I said previously, the voice acting is really good in some cases. Ayano's voice is the one I have problems with, but again, it has to do more with the way this character was written. Her being cold and emotionless is quite exaggerated in the game.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Final Thoughts on the Demo (Too Long, Didn't Read)
As I said in my previous review, the demo needs a lot of work still. It clearly has something going for it, but gameplay-wise it needs more work.
Mainly, the game is lacking in things to do. Waiting for something to happen is awful for any game, and the solutions are to include more content or rework how time works in the game. One of my suggestions is to include more side-quests and follow side-storylines. Again, Yandere Simulator has a lot of lore going for it, so why not take advantage of that? Each student's profile has a good amount of information and backstory about them, why not, instead of just doing a task for them, make the player follow a side story to gain certain advantages?
Example: Sakyu Basu and Inkyu Basu are said to be demons. Simply make the player follow a storyline where they try to uncover their real identity, and if they beat it, they could gain a simple perk such as… being more respected with the Occult Club, a reputation increase, or any other stat increase. This system is a bit similar to Persona 5, and seeing that game is already an inspiration, it would be a good idea. Sure, that means more work ahead, but also it means the game could be more fun and interesting to play.
That being said we should be aware of limitations. While this solution might be more fun, in the long run it'll take a lot of time to implement. Instead, reworking in-game time is perhaps the most sensible solution in this case. Knowing when to stop adding features is as important as knowing what to add, though that's a question that anyone in a development team has to ask themselves.
A side note before moving on: The game clearly doesn't know what it wants to be, so even though some of my previous suggestions might work well in their respective methods, they might not work completely as a cohesive idea and need more brainstorming than just an afternoon. Example the matchmaking suggestion; YanSim is not a visual novel, so more stealthy/manipulative methods might be more effective for this type of game.
As for what the game is at the moment, this might be a hard pill to swallow, but I think it's time to go back to the drawing board. The game isn't fun, it isn't terribly boring either but for the six years it took to get to this point it isn't anything impressive. Again the fact that this is "91% complete" is extremely worrying because a lot of its elements just don't work well together. So it might be a good idea to step back, think about what the game really needs, and work on that.
The problem is that YandereDev clearly can't see that as a viable option and I can understand that. Hate and disappointment would be the words of the day and the game would lack support because of it.
So instead, I'd say keep going with the crowdfunding campaign, but after a team is assembled, go back to the basics and start from scratch. Some of the current elements can be reused; as I said, the game does have something going for it, but trying to fix everything that went wrong would be much more expensive than just starting over, and I think that's the best solution at this point.
It's nothing I see happening soon, but I am aware that a lot of people are trying to make their own Yandere Simulator games. Hopefully this overly-long review can help any of them.
See you all around!

For most binary options brokers, this section is one of the most important of their review. This is because a broker is that is regulated is more likely to be trusted than an unregulated one. When evaluating the broker’s regulatory status, it is also important to note which regulatory body the broker is regulated with. Not all regulatory agencies are created equal. For example, a license ... Binary Options are so popular because they are so easy to understand and you can make a lot of money in a short time. My advice to you: It is very important to choose a good broker. Some small brokers are scamming users, that’s why a lot of people think Binary Options are a scam. Definitely, it is not a scam if you trade with a safe company. Risk Disclosure: binary options is a form of high risk investment. This type of investment may not be suitable for all investors and due to this reason traders may lose part or all of invested funds. Please note: Binary365.com DOES NOT offer any investment advice nor any services related to binary options trading. All information provided on this website is for informational purposes only. The ... – Step by step guide. Trading with Binary Options is a very simple principle. Traders have to make a forecast about the future movement of an asset. Make a forecast if the market will rise or fall. There are only 2 options, that is why it is called “Binary Options”. You can lose or win the trade. The price has to be upper or lower your entry point at the end of the expiry time. How to ... Binary trading options vary in type and there are several of them from which one can trade. The High-Low Call Put is recognized as a relatively simple option for trading. A prediction by the investor of if the price will rise or fall within a specified amount of time. Once this sets forth, the investor indicates call if the prediction is a rise and Put if a fall is predicted. Binary Options Reviews provides you the Best Binary Options Brokers reviews like Iqoption, Empire option, 24Option, Option Robot and lots more. At BinaryOptionsTrading-Review.com, we have been providing our own Free Binary Options Signals to our readers for more than a year now and the results have been nothing but positive. Our financial experts make sure these signals are as reliable as possible since each asset is thoroughly analyzed before we issue a trading signal. This is the reason why the service has a very high win rate. This ... Binary Options Guide Binary.com is a trading platform dedicated to offering binary options from the world’s various financial markets. The website was founded in 1999, making it one of the oldest online trading platforms — as well as among the most-respected ones. Via the Binary.com website, users can trade volatility indices, currencies, indices, and commodities. A Guide to Binary Options Brokers and Choosing One For You What is Binary Trading? To answer this, you first need to understand what a binary option is. These are actually simple traded options that many low skilled traders can take advantage of. In a nutshell, binary options are financial options that come with either a fixed amount pay off or no pay off whatsoever. This is reflected in the ...

This is how to trade Binary Options Full Time! - YouTube

Be able to this blow to trade binary options pairs trading signal identifies the link below Binary options system analysis no risk analysis and functions of tele episode review binary options ... Top 10 Binary Brokers Review (2018) Best Binary Options Trading Platforms! - Duration: 6:20. ... Binary Options - The Best Binary Options Trading Guide For 2017 - Duration: 12:41 ... Is Pocket Option a scam or not? - Trusted Review and Test for traders Open your free account: https://bit.ly/2E68zE8 Read the full Pocket Option review: ... This is my first video reviewing Pocket Option. In this review, I will cover their platform in detail. In this video I will sho... In this review, I will cover their platform in detail. In this ... Are binary options a good idea? If you're thinking about trading binary options, watch this video first. Check out our FREE training for traders https://bi... This is how I have traded Binary for the past 3 years. Thank you for watching my videos, hit the subscribe button for more content. Check out our members res... Binary Options Strategies PDF episode 1 reveals a guide using Binbot Pro as a primary trading tool. This time, it includes Binbot Pro settings (trading robot), instruction on guide as well as ... The road to success through trading IQ option Best Bot Reviews Iq Option 2020 ,We make videos using this softwhere bot which aims to make it easier for you t... TR Binary Options Review - Best 60 Seconds Binary Options Strategy http://binaryoptionssignalsbot.com/50Discount6 Make up to 350$ in Just 60 seconds-- http:/... BINARY OPTIONS REVIEW - How to Choose Best Binary Options Broker ️ TRADE ON DEMO http://iqopts.com/start ️ TRADE ON REAL MONEY http://iqopts.com/bonus ...

Binary Options Guide

2019 Hyperpop Rate (Slayyyter / 100 gecs / Dorian Electra / Hannah Diamond)

Slayyyter - Slayyyter

Tracklist:

100 gecs - 1000 gecs

Tracklist:

Dorian Electra - Flamboyant

Tracklist:

Hannah Diamond - Reflections

Tracklist:

BONUS RATE

Emily Montes:

Emily:

The Rules

SPOTIFY PLAYLIST

SUBMISSION LINK

Over-Optimizing for Performance

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

In Conclusion

# /r/Peloton Pre-TDF Survey 2020

You and Cycling

1. Where do you live?

2. What's your age?

3. What's your gender?

4. How much of the men's season do you watch/follow?

5. Do you maintain an interest in women's professional road racing?

6. How much of the women's season do you follow?

7. How long have you been watching cycling?

Sporting Favourites

8. Do you have like/dislike feelings about WT teams?

10. Do you ride a bike regularly?

11. Out of the sports you practice, is cycling your favourite?

12. What other sports do you follow?

13. Out of the sports you follow, is cycling your favourite sport?

Subreddit stats

14. How often do you participate in a /Peloton Race Thread whilst watching a race?

15. How do you watch Races?

16. Where else do you follow races live (in addition to watching them)?

17. Do you use /Peloton mostly in classic reddit or redesign when on the desktop?

18. With what version of reddit do you browse the sub?

19. How did you find the sub?

Other bits and bobs

20. Did you think back in March we would see any more racing this year?

21. Will we manage to fulfill the rest of the UCI calendar without further Covid-19 issues postponing more races?

22. When did you become aware of Alexander Foliforov?

23. Who will win the 2020 Tour de France?

24. What for you was the defining cycling moment of the previous decade?

25. Any suggestions for the Survey?

26. Any suggestions for the sub?

The Challenges of Designing a Modern Skill, Part 3

Introduction to Part 3

3-C – Skill Design Philosophy, Continued

3-12 - Balancing

3-13 - Skill Bloat

3-14 - Skill Endgame

3-15 - Alternate Goals

3-16 - The Combat No-Touch Rule

3-17 - Aesthetics

3-18 - Afterword

5-0 - The OSRS Team and the Design Process

5-1 - Designing a Skill

5-2 - Presentation and Beta Testing

5-3 - Development Effort