Letter to Mr. Daniel James Version 0.2 and Sample. Major change: it has form fields you can fill in. Feel free to test it and let me know of any feedback that you have. (Don't worry about the font and alignment for now, they will be fixed later.) Spicington's suggestion will be included in next revision.

I like to say a few things about this letter.

What it is:

• a correspondence letter between two real persons (you and Mr. James). As such, please use your real credential;
• a way for you (a P2P subscriber) to express your concern about a game that you invest in and you love. You are exercising your freedom of speech and your right as a consumer;
• a request to ask Mr. James to forward a message to SK development team because you feel the current decision overlooked some important details. This is something Mr. James can understand within seconds and bring it up in next meeting with SK development team;
• an invitation to Three Rings decision maker to a follow up discussion shall he expresses interest to do so.

What it is not:

• a channel to express your frustration or anger;
• a way to threaten the job security of SK's developers;
• a legal letter to demand for fair compensation due to the recent patch.

Now to address some comments raised.

You are wasting your time, Three Rings won't listen.
Perhaps. Aside from the obvious reason that motivates me to do this (I believe this decision needs revision, down to its rationale it begins with), it was based on a previous experience of mine with Mr. James. Some people may recall earlier Three Rings was acquired by Sega and Mr. James actually posted to the SK forum, asking the playerbase what direction the SK wanted to go. In that thread I made a couple of suggestion (such as more story development, cutscene and Antialiasing support). And one year is gone and they all became reality!

I think given the right timing, Mr. James would listen. In fact, the main strength of SK is the flexibility of the development (the developers listen). This is something you won't find in big game studio like Blizzard or Ubisoft. I think this bomb patch opens up an opportunity for us to have a conversation with Three Rings top decision maker to voice our other concern also. e.g. if I manage to get on the phone with Mr. James, besides this bomb patch, I would express my concern about CE market manipulation due to an out of date interface, how it stifles the growth of SK and how it can be done better.

Now let's look at the opportunity cost. The postage in Canada and United States are $1.05 and $0.45 respectively. (UK is £0.56 I believe.) But the upward potential of this "bet" could be big: we not only get RSS back, but we also get a shot at getting other more urgent features fixed also. Low risk, high reward, why not?

These SK developers (like Nick) are professional, they need to worry about their resume if they want to keep their jobs!
You haven't talked to a lot of hedge funds managers, do you?

Truth is that, developers (like any employees) can come and go at will. In the investment industry, often some fund managers would use client's money to invest into high risk, high reward items in their portfolio's. And when these investment items are about to drop to 0, these fund managers move on and investors suffer the loss.

Sounds familiar? I'm not suggesting any one on SK development teams would act in an unethical manner. I'm just saying that it is not a very good way to manage your investment (in this case, SK) by depending on the self-governing of the people that runs and benefits from it.

I know some individuals prefer spoon feeding and giving up their rights. I know I'm not one of these people. Hence I wrote this letter.

I love this bomb patch.
Good for you. Me and many others don't, unfortunately. :(

Upcoming Schedule:

1. please help me revise the letter (anything from content to grammar and spellings). I'll post one more update tonight and (hopefully) one finalized version tomorrow noon (EST). I'll also verify the address by calling up Three Rings tomorrow;
2. please re-read what I wrote earlier about what this is and what this is not. If you do decide to send this letter, please mail it within a week as it usually takes 3-5 calendar days to deliver the letter;
3. if you do get a phone call, be prepared to talk about your view about this patch (what you do not like about it, what you feel should be done). If you are given the opportunity to, feel free to express what other things you feel SK should do or fix.

That's all folks. And remember, you are not alone.

No matter what the community says, I dont think that OOO will ever change back the bombs, or add a new bomb that works like old RSS.
They said it, bombers make areas of damage and gunners fire bullets.

I like the new bombs, they just need few small tweaks (lower fuse time/bigger radius of each split shard/small damage increase).

I've seen OOO make alot of absent minded decisions in the past, but this one takes the cake.

1+ Oaty

"They aren't a death sentence for anything anymore. Plus, I bet you were killed with other things too when you lagged, not just the RSS."

RSS is by far the worst abuser of lag. When I played with USA-level ping during the summer, I hardly even got hit by the projectiles. How could you? They're so predictable. With 1 red bar, they're absurd.

And by the way, Skolver is the premier pvp set *in general.* Name one set that is reliably more effective.

When you have extremely long range lag-ridden projectiles flying everywhere, quality of life goes down. It's far worse than skolver strikers, because at least I can dodge them.

The most effective as in best at dealing and taking damage. Never mind caps, because anybody can stand on a point.

I'm not sure how you can misinterpret that. Do you honestly think a high level bomber can one on one an equally skilled skolverclone? Haha. Look at GvG gameplay, there's a reason why almost everybody is in skolver.

All the advantages a gunner has are mostly negated by a single guardian shield. Not to mention, gunners are much more difficult to deal damage with.

When you're playing LD, you're playing pvp. You're not playing swordsman, you're not playing bomber. You're playing pvp. See how I'm looking at this?

Letter to Mr. Daniel James Version 0.3 and Sample. I'll post another update tomorrow together with status of address verification. People interested could help me test the QR code attached in the new letter (it works on my phone alright).

It makes sense to post what you're concerned about. In terms of RSS, I'm concerned about LD, and how lag makes it kind of absurd.

I actually just emailed the SK staff asking if it would be possible for me (and other players) to request our nRSS to be changed to the pure elemental line. Took the idea from a post from Rommil about they should of given us a choice of what we wanted. Well see what happens but I have a feeling my logic will be flawed because of how the old RSS carried fiend bonus and fiends are weak to piercing.. so they probably figured we all wanted piercing bombs. >.>

I'm a PvE player not an LD.

Ok, so let's start off with the OLD RSS. It was powerful, strong, fast and great as a single target mauler, however it had actual crap for so called "crowd control". I did like/love the bomb, for it's ludicrous damage however... it's crowd control ability was ACTUALLY terrible, if you were surrounded in a room with a bunch of enemies the old RSS would NOT be a good choice because each shard may do a good decent amount of damage however a single shard would most likely just shatter upon hitting the first enemy and being kinda useless. I have NOT tried the nRSS mainly because it's piercing and in all honesty like Wodanct said would've appreciated if there was a vote on the what type of damage nRSS would have done. Some people prefer piercing, some elemental. So moving on to the nRSS I actually LIKE the concept of this bomb, however it NEEDS to be tweaked heavily.

The nRSS should have a faster detonation on the 2nd detonation, currently it's too slow as many people have said. The radius on the secondary blast(s) needs to be slightly larger and at the same time the shards themselves would benefit if they were slightly closer together so that the blast would overlap in some areas, which would increase damage output. The nRSS should sacrifice a little bit of the spread and range for extra damage making it a bomb that could deal good aoe damage while being risky to use. The range the shards fly should be only just outside of the initial blast radius. The secondary blast(s) would range would slightly increase to the middle of each shards. this would allow 3 hits if an enemy decides to foolishly run straight into the middle of a shard dealing good to great damage and possibly if the enemy runs directly into the center it will take all 8 hits. As powerful as this bomb will be, it's actual range will roughly the size of a 4* bomb and that could be it's penalty. Also no pushback only knockdown. Also damage would have to be tweaked for.. more or less depending on how strong the 8 hits are. For the 8 hits, it should do no more than 1.2k damage but no less than 800. -> dunno if this be in suggestions or something. Open to creative criticizing, NOT TROLLING. If there is a major flaw in this idea I will take it as creative criticism.

Stayin' alive, Stayin' alive. oooh oooh oooh.

I believe in Capitalism. If companies do not listen to their customers or they make the wrong decisions (like Microsoft and Research In Motion), the market will punish them. Under this view, F2P are free riders. SK is keeping them not because OOO or the P2P are grateful, because F2P provides cheap labor. i.e. in SK, RMT (Real Money Trade) is built into the system, with OOO setting up an exchange (the CE market). F2P are just Gil (CR) farmers. P2P are the real customers that fund SK. Therefore, P2P has more say than F2P.

The above addresses your first point. If you happen to live in a Communism or Dictatorship nation, please disregard what I said above. Our world view is too different and I do not plan to convince you otherwise.

As for your second point. It is your personal opinion. As CEO, Mr. James is responsible to his customers and ultimately the Board (which represents the shareholders of Three Rings and Sega). I think this is pretty self explanatory. It has nothing to do with manner, but the way the decisions were being made and development turning deaf ears are all warning signs that, we should escalate these concern to the higher ups. This is why as I wrote in the letter, "I believe this is in the best interest of me, SK and Three Rings". It is not only about me (or the P2P of SK), but because it would be of concern to Mr. James to know that certain individuals on the SK development team is being separated further and further from SK's customers. This is not a healthy sign and for the greater good, the parties involved should know.

And I advocate we do this on a people-to-people basis, not as some random strangers from the Interweb. So the letter is structured as a correspondence letter which requires you to write down your real identity. We are not complaining and accusing of anyone in Three Rings. But recent event makes us (the customers a.k.a. P2P) very concern because it shows some warning signs we do not like. We are only requesting Mr. James to forward the message to Nick and all for re-consideration.

Radiant Sun Shards IS dead.

I want my bombs back.

Seriosly, it should be another way to nerf the so called OP RSS.

These new shard bombs are not what we paid for.
We crafted, heated and uv'd the old RSS.
Not the new one.
We want the item we paid for.
No other nerf has completely changed the mechanics of a weapon in the game in the way that this did.
This was a huge step backwards.

Still do not understand why the RSS/ISB lines could not be left alone, and these new shard bombs fill a fresh line.

ooo silence is rude, unprofessional and insulting to it's PAYING player base.

ooo, we need some feedback from you concerning these changes.

It's a bit insulting to the community that OOO will reply to threads about the most banal, trivial things, yet actual issues that many players are outspoken about are seemingly ignored, and even swept away to the section that has the least amount of OOO replies.

OOO if you read these suggestions at all, it wouldn't hurt to let the community know you're paying attention.

These bombs are severely underpowered. And so what if you would give up projectiles for these new bombs? That's your preference, but a lot of other people loved the projectiles, and we could have easily had the old RSS and have these new bombs in another crafting line....

I called this number again 415-615-9596 and it is the same message ("office closed, please leave a message"). Current time is 9:34AM in San Francisco.

I suspect this is just a generic number for OOO (it's meant to drop to voice mail). After lunch I'll call up Sega and see if they have any lead. Stay tuned.

If you have any other ideas to be able to talk with anyone in Three Rings on the phone, please post.

UPDATE: I believe I found the home address of Daniel T. James (age matches and location is in San Francisco Bay area). I'm not going to send to this address because business is business (and please refrain from doing so, shall you find it on the Interweb).

Just to clarify things. I was looking up where Daniel James would have been (who knows, maybe he would be visiting my city and I can meet him in person and deliver the letter). So I was Googling and one of these pages was from White Page, which showed all the Daniel James in San Francisco. (Turns out there were only 3-4 candidates.)

I cross referenced the age parameter with James' wiki page (which turned out to be the last page I opened on my browser). There is exactly one match. I looked up the address from white page on Google Map and it was only a few kilometers from where Three Rings is located. Then I Google'd Daniel T. James and it was connected to Three Rings according to one of these corporate executive pages.

So the "stalking" as you called it (I called it "research"), wasn't intentional. It was more a coincident thanks to the magic of Google.

Can those that are multilingual among us fill in those of us who aren't.
What is the chatter about the RSS on the other language forums?
Are the sentiments similar to the this forum?
After all, English is not the only paying language!