Timeline:
1.) I post in GDD my shocked discovery of the new teleport mutation, and ask the simple question of the devs: "Why are you doing this?" I post it there because I think that asking a direct question about a design change constitutes game design discussion.
2.) Two members comment on the topic; lessens and duvessa. Duvessa's first post does not in any way meet the criteria for GDD comments, and nor does his second, but the first is so glaringly bad that I report it, only regretting that I can't also report Arrhythmia for thanking it.
3.) Neil comments, and I thank him, but I also express my firm displeasure with the change, because I feel I have a right to do so, since I am a player.
4.) Neil again responds, clarifying his statements, but unwilling to speculate about the motivation for the change, which was my original question.
5.) Duvessa, again. For no reason other than to be hostile and combative.
6.) Sprucery tries to forward the discussion.
7.) Magipi concurs with the original question.
8.) Neil updates a mistaken link.
9.) Dynast snarks.
10.) Rast, gammafunk, Sandman25 and Siegurt all contribute to the discussion.
11.) Arrhythmia posts the news that Neil had patched trunk to temporarily eliminate the mutation altogether.
12.) Rast disagrees with ontoclasm's comment.
13.) Odds asks Siegurt a question about his comment.
14.) Rast and yesno follow Odds' tangent.
15.) I comment, thanking Neil for the change, which was quite unexpected but gave me a nice feeling, somehow. I saw Arrhythmia's post about it right before making this comment, and I also thank his post, now.
16.) Gammafunk (snarkily) announces the reversion of Neil's change, adding only that future adjustments to frequency are considered.
17.) Bcadren and Sprucery continue the discussion.
18.) I reassert my position that the change is awful (IMO) because the severity of this new version of a single-rank mutation is unusually dastardly.
19.) Sandman25 and Odds voice support for the new mutation, and give their reasons why.
20.) Duvessa, for the first time, posts something that can be discussed.
21.) Siegurt posts a well-considered opinion about several nuances of the change and its effects. It would seem he also agrees the change is definitely more dangerous.
22.) I respond to duvessa's comment, adding my own snark for the first time, but still attempting to discuss constructively. Prior to this moment, there was nothing thread-hogging, hostile, or negative about anything in my conduct, despite provocations, and I would even dispute that a little tit-for-tat should be considered overtly hostile.
23.) Odds responds to Siegurt (whom I, in hindsight, should have also responded to).
24.) Duvessa responds to my attempt at dialogue by simply reiterating denials, the thing that I know drives at least one mod nuts, according to his own words, but he's staying out of it. At this juncture, I PM MarvinPA. PM stands for private message, but that's another Newspeak (i.e., Orwellian) thing, in my mind, because in the past when I've PMed a mod, another user answered the message, and he wasn't even a named mod at the time! Soon thereafter, I received an email (not a PM) from MarvinPA telling me my earlier report (for the second post in the thread) had been handled and closed. This, as well as the topic being moved out of GDD, indicated to me that I was on my own in this thread, as I am sure would have been a reasonable conclusion anyone could have drawn. I also wrote another PM asking for clarification as to whom had read or responded to my earlier PM, but I never received a reply. Notice that this is all in the background, never in the thread itself. This becomes meaningful later.
25.) In the thread itself, I reply to duvessa, point for point, and call him out on his (very typical) behavior (everywhere).
26.) Sprucery, gods bless him, fights the good fight for discussion. Good egg, he.
27.) Archaeo feels the need to step in to defend duvessa, first by expressing his specific disagreement, and then by dismissing my OP and the continuance of the topic to being "worked up," as like, in a tiff, or a snit, which itself is a belittling and insulting form of posting that is also verboten, supposedly. But never even mind that.
28.) I finally throw up my hands, letting on that I believe there to be connections behind the scenes that have conspired against the productivity of this discussion. That these connections do exist is next to be revealed.
29.) Gammafunk finally answers my question, after discussing it in the back room, so to speak. Basically, it is, yes, this is harder, and yes, we want it this way. Thanks gammafunk. But then gammafunk feels obliged to add, "Finally, this is CYC, not GDD; we've come to allow everyone to engage in "straw man arguments" in this forum with respect to it not causing Moderator action," which I knew, and I think gammafunk knew this was originally in GDD, but maybe not. Then, the closing, "If you mean what the Tavern community itself allows in terms of calling out arguments, well you just have to work harder to get into people's good graces." In other words, and this really is not a stretch, here, people, one does indeed have to be "in the clique" to somehow gain validity of participation, here. The conspiracy is real, not paranoid imaginings. So if I do not join ##crawl or hang out in ##crawl-dev, and if when I do I do not patter with the same facility as those around me, then somehow motivations are ascribed to me from within the minds of those who do, but those motivations exist solely within those minds. They are not, and cannot be, my mind. It may simply be that I do not know how to interact, there. Are my thoughts completely invalidated because I do not dwell in those places? In the minds of those who do, it is pretty clear that is so. But those are your thoughts, not mine, in truth. If you feel that my differences make me your enemy, then those also are your thoughts, not mine.
30.) Archaeo projecting again with the belittling insults, which is now that I am "hostile, tbh." I bet he was in the back room, too, noticing that I was not.
31.) Arrhythmia in tangent to archaeo. (their icons look the same to me, and it's often confusing)
32.) And, now, duvessa replies with a constructive post.
So after all this nonsense, I'll just answer that post, and end this charade, now.
duvessa wrote:i just don't think teleportitis teleports or dangerous, and malmutate will never hit you if you are paying attention unless you are doing abyss or clearing mnoleg's vault (why)
if i were going for "getting away with" something without getting a board warning, i would at least get my money's worth and say people are bad at crawl, which they are
I don't know how you think you can always control being malmutated, but I don't want to argue, really and honestly.
I certainly won't argue that I am bad a Crawl, because I know I am. If you truly believe many others are, too, then why would you want to shut so many of them out with belligerence? For some people, being bad is not a choice. Those to whom it is are often certain that theirs is the way of all, but it's just not always true. To believe otherwise is genuine arrogance.
HTH, and thanks for the time of day, such as it was.