By Espark on Sun 23 Jul, 2023.
Ai-Mo Times
July, 2023
“The only literate tribe deserves the best in information and entertainment.”
In-game Contests Are Back
After several months of no in-game contests in PolyMain, Zoythrus gave permission for the events to resume.
Previously, the Polymain Directors and other staff had been told that Midjiwan’s contract with ChallengerMode prohibited the official discord server from hosting any in-game contests. This was a big disappointment to many fans who enjoyed previous tribe rivalry events like Total Forgery and Riot Act. For a while, directors were told they could not host the annual Tribe Duels.
After his meeting with the Midjiwan team in June, Zoythrus gave the good news that the server can host in-game contests with prizes, as long as the promotion stays within the Discord server. This means no in-app announcements.
Directors plan to host at least one in-game contest each quarter. This is the tentative plan for the rest of the year
July - Stylish Squares August - Tribe Duels Fall - Special tribes face-off Winter - ???
The Stylish Squares contest ends July 29th. You still have time to submit your entry and try to win a prize.
Zebasi Polysseum Glitches
On July 15th, 2023, Midjiwan hosted the Zebasi Farm Fracas through challenger mode. There were many glitches and problems with the official tournament, including seeding and not filling games.
The seeding problem was the number one complaint among competitors. In previous Polysseum tournaments, seeding was random. Typically in sporting events and other Polytopia tournaments, players are put into the bracket so that the best do not meet until later in the competition. If the top ranked players meet in the finals, this helps make the finals a more attractive and skill based game. However, as was the case on July 15th, players were seeded in ChallengerMode ranking order, so the top two ranked players played each other in round one. That means most of the most skilled players got eliminated early, while relatively unskilled or new players made it to the final rounds.
One of the top players in the Polytopia community, Astrea, said, “ Oh I see. It put everyone in order of elo.xD. Lmao”
Chris, a former bullet champion and one of the first players eliminated due to the seeding glitch said, “That is terrible on so many levels. I don't know how the CM programming works, but for the internal Kraken tournament, I'm using Challonge and it actually understands that you're supposed to put high seeded players on opposite sides of the bracket“
Another seasoned bullet player, MindFaZe wondered, “How did they fuck up seeding so badly?”
In addition to the seeding problem, many games in round one were not filled. There were 96 games in round one, but half were left unfilled as only 128 people could join the event.
The other issue was that instead of one bracket, there were three separate brackets, with players segregated by Elo. The official tournament information made no mention of the three separate brackets or that there would be three 1st place winners.
With roughly half the slots empty at the start, the event took a long time. With three separate 32-game brackets, the tournament lasted 3 hours. It was too long for some players. A few of the finalists left the event before playing their final matches.
The official response from the event organizer said, “ Unfortunately, an unknown error occurred in bracket creation and seeding, which resulted in 96 matches in the first round instead of 64 matches. It is unfortunate, but many games overall were played, so we hope you enjoyed the tournament. Since several players are sharing the same placement, winners will receive promised prizes. So everyone who took 1st place, will get €20 each, etc.. Apologies for the issues that occurred today and we hope events to run smoother in the future.”
McGoon, an experienced Live Game player summed it up this way, “The initial seeding and the bracket shape was wrong 3 separate brackets, with 32 games in each (i.e. 96 games, 192 slots). Only 128 people were allowed in though, so a lot were empty. Then, the seeding was done incorrectly and everyone was ordered based on elo. So the top bracket was almost entirely tier 5 players with the top two ranking players playing each other first, and 3 & 4, 5 & 6, etc”
As for the prize money, Blockies said, “So you got like 2 hours worth of minimum wage work for 3 hours of playing poly, not too bad.”
Ai-Moya Existential Crisis
The first week in July, the admins in Ai-Moya got fed up with the level of bigotry, especially anti-trans comments. Many of the admins recommended deleting the server.
As far as deleting server, I don't want to do that as long as there are people who want more freedom to discuss things like religion, politics, and culture beyond what PolyMain allows
However, this place has become a place for posting truly awful stuff
So either I give it to someone else and allow that nastiness to continue or I delete it and make more enemies in the Polytopia community or I start moderating it and ban the people who post awful stuff.
However, several users on the server spoke up, wanting to preserve the server.
Memeates wrote,
There is another option. Give the server to someone else and let them moderate it.
While it has been repeatedly stated that this server is meant to be almost entirely moderation free, there is still the-laws-of-this-land. Some of those laws include keep politics and religion civil, use designated channels for nsfw/nsfl, and of course "Bruh just don't be dumb. Use the brain."
People who refuse to keep nsfw topics in nsfw channels, for example, don't need to be banned, if I were in your position I would probably just not give them talking perms in non-nsfw channels (edited)]
Or the ones who have posted actual or borderline hate speech could simply be reported for violating discord ToS.
People who are just stupid and nonsensical in their communication are fine, in accordance with "I can stand a genuine dumbass, but don’t galavant in your holy crusade”
In the end, admins agreed to moderate the server more closely and ban people who were bigots.
The announcement said:
Some of the stuff people post here is truly awful. It is what happens when you have a "Free Speech" server that is not moderated.
I've been torn about whether to delete this server, give it to someone else, or start moderating it properly I don't want to delete the server as long as there are people who want to have more freedom to discuss politics, religion, culture, etc beyond what PolyMain allows
So
Time to start moderating I will add some more mods, keep an eye out, and bring out the ban hammer
Vengir Fan Art
By cclockwize
Vengir are sacrificing the animals to summon the blood god Burzgor
Daily Sacrifice #13 - Luxidoor
Daily Sacrifice #11 Ai-Mo (I didn't realize until I was done drawing that the star might be mistaken as an irl religious symbol, it's not and I'm just too lazy to make a pentagram with equal sides)
Daily Sacrifice #9 Aquarion turtle
Daily Sacrifice #14 Polaris mammoth
Daily Sacrifice #7 Xin-xi horse
Daily Sacrifice #10 I think Hoodrick thing
Interview
With new mod, Artis
Espark: Tell us a little bit about yourself. Why do you like POlytopia? Do you play other games? How old are you (can be a range and not a specific number) and where do you live (can be a general region)?
Artis: I liked Polytopia for 3 or 4 years now. I think it's just the goofiness of it that I like and it's fun playing it with others. I also play minecraft and a lot of lego games, such as lego star wars the complete saga or lego batman. I am currently somewhere from 16 to 18 years old and live in Poland
How long have you wanted to be a mod in the POlyMain server?
Well, I think about a month or 2 after I joined the server I enjoyed being there and thought to myself, "Ima apply for a mod, why not?!" I wasn't much serious about it then but it became more and more serious later
Have you ever been a mod before?
I actually haven't so this is going to be my first time and it surely will be an interesting journey
Why do you want to be a mod?
I enjoy helping people so if anybody has any questions and pings the mod role. I'm happy to help whenever I can. Also, now that I'm a mod, if people need help and see me as an online moderator, they can just ping and I’ll spawn right in. I also want to help make the server I enjoy so much being in a better place.
One thing that is cool, that I didn't have when I wasn't a mod and it makes me want to be one more, is I have access to all tribe channels. I don't have to switch between them and can do what I love with access to all of the chats at once - talk. I'd say I want to be a mod to help people at most :)
Now that you have the role, what surprised you about being a mod? What is the best and worst thing about the position?
The thing that surely surprised me, was how everything in the mod chats work (the discussions and all of the other systems) and seeing how the polymail system works was pretty cool I think the best thing about being a mod is you get to help at everything and you see the mod chats which is very cool. The worst part is I think the fact that when you're a fresh mod people will try to troll you a lot and you need to keep an eye out on everything.
Thanks. Is there anything else you want the readers to know?
I think that's pretty good! It explains everything well :) tysm for interviewing me
Credits
A big thanks to Artemis for setting up and maintaining the website for the newspaper. Thanks to Artis and Espark for contributing articles.
If you want to submit a piece to the newspaper—art, news article, opinion piece, puzzle, etc.—let us know in #article-suggestions.
Keep up, Ai-Mo!