Hey there!

As mentioned by both Kari on the server and Ripped in reply to being reached out to regarding the reinstatement of the battle system, permission was given to use the old system, minus Ripped's contributions. Ripped has given me permission to publicize the document that outlines all their contributions to the Battle System. Please feel free to continue to use the Battle System minus the contributions in red!

Battle System Overhaul

Thanks!!

uwubers wrote:

Hey there!

As mentioned by both Kari on the server and Ripped in reply to being reached out to regarding the reinstatement of the battle system, permission was given to use the old system, minus Ripped's contributions. Ripped has given me permission to publicize the document that outlines all their contributions to the Battle System. Please feel free to continue to use the Battle System minus the contributions in red!

Battle System Overhaul

Thanks!!

I recognize this doc because I helped with it. Multiple people (myself and Maple, Reaper, among others) helped with it, this is when we were removing redundant battle moves and streamlining much of the battle system. It was in no way shape or form solely Ripped's work, but a collaboration and group effort. Joint work. Contributions in red were not just Ripped's work. Further, there are things in red that were already changed with additional revisions to the system.

I am replying here so that those not in discord are able to see it.

Spoiler:

The above shows contributions to the shared document by both me and Maple, highlighting the changes they made. Purple is Maple, while Green is myself.

I was not going to comment here but I am sick of the narrative that has been perpetuated about me for years in regards to certain things. I have seen lots of toxic behavior and project from people who are determined to paint me in a negative light. While I could talk about these things in length, and I am open to doing so for anyone who is interested in reaching out to me, I am only going to directly talk about the above.

In referencing their time with me on the Staff Team, KJ has made remarks insinuating that I "did everything and did not let anyone else help with projects" or "did not do anything while saying others did not do anything", to now saying "this was a collaborative group effort". However, the way in which I remember it for anyone who is interested, is the fact that I constantly had to beg for input and people to look at the work that I did. Or ask for specific tasks or projects to be completed that were not and I mostly ended up having to do myself. At one point, another Staff Member got frustrated I wasn't working fast enough and started working on their own. When I saw the work they were doing, it was a repeat of what had already been done, showing that despite their frustrations of me not doing work, they did not look at the work that had been done and was in need of feedback.

Frankly, I am shocked by the above message about how much is said other users directly contributed to these edits, giving that the referenced document only shows three minor edits made by Maple. All additional edits in the Google Doc were done directly by me. Also, the original documents before the Google Docs edition, are housed on my PC, predating the dates on the Google Doc.

My official statement to the site is that I am not claiming everything on the Battle System is mine or that I am the only person who has ever made changes to it. However to my knowledge, what I had worked on was the biggest overhaul to the system to make it cohesive and balances that has been in years - at least in my own years on the site. While KJ directly helped with a bulk of creating associated system guides and tweaks to the rules, the change of the system itself was a project I had started working on that was not assigned by the Staff Team. It was something that I had started doing on my own to propose as a change since I had an idea and ran with it. Similar to what I had done with the proposed site overhaul.

I have personally felt like on numerous occasions, in and out of the Staff Team, that I have had to deal with a lot of inappropriate and toxic behavior stemming from a culture that is born out of a lack of regulations. When Holly kicked me from the Staff Team, there was no discussion or warning. She insinuated I made two Staff Members leave and that conversation had not been productive. I was left on read in the conversation and was told by Holly directly that it had just "died out". After, I had an instance of another Staff Member asking me a question about my position (something that did not happen almost the entire time I had been on the team) and thought that meant there had been progress. Apparently, both parties had just decided the conversation was useless and hadn't gone anywhere. I was not made aware of this.

After kicking me from my position, Holly immediately went to implement patches that I had for the most part worked on myself. This is not to say that every element of the idea was mine (similar to the Battle System) but a big chunk of the actual implementation and refinement, including announcements and verbiage, was stuff I had worked on. So many announcements and changes made when I joined the team were because of this. I constantly felt like I did not have a voice in a lot of conversations but still wanted to do what I could to make a difference. I always pushed for improvement and tried to do constructive things like handle a discussion with Beta Testers about these new patches because the other Staff Team members viewed every instance of talking to the site like it was something that would go bad. Needless to say, it felt incredibly disrespectful for the work I spent hours on to be posted without credit and in the wake of kicking me from the team.

For all of the above, I had decided to put myself first for once and set up boundaries out of respect for myself in regards to an environment that has not respected me, which is why I asked for my content to be removed.

I have never tried to cause problems or drama for anyone on the site. There is a reason that in previous circumstances, I wasn't the one sharing out of context screenshots and 'didn't have evidence' and it is the fact that I felt regardless of my own frustrations it wasn't respectful to people that trusted me. I don't like the back end talking about other people. Anything I have posted previously, and now, is to express myself to the people I feel like deserve to know and share my perspective of circumstances in the wake of repeated negative narratives being spun about me. This is the one time I will share a screenshot to 'prove' myself, I guess.

Given the time and hours I have spent on the site to make improvements for the better, I chose myself and want to have the freedom to use content I worked for my own gain and projects, rather than leaving them to the benefit of people who have disrespected me numerous times.

I wish I could corroborate this with further evidence from Staff Team Discord logs. However, due to the amount of speaking about users behind their backs in the chat and general poor behavior, previous Staff Members decided to delete the old chats and start them new when adding new members so people couldn't see their "bad side". Personally, I am a super open person and always try to look at things as logically and objectively as possible. While I might not always achieve this goal, I am always striving for it and it constantly is what I look for in conducting myself. In Staff Chats, I always tried to speak in a way that I wouldn't mind site members seeing.

It is for this reason that I'd like to ask if Staff is willing to open the chats so everyone can see what the entire internal culture looked like over the months instead of just the content and perspective shared to pain me in a negative light. I wish the same could be said for the previous chats as well too. I would like people to take their own opinions of me for what I have actually done and I will accept those in stride. Staff Chat is not a sanctuary for members who are 'above' the rest of the site; it is supposed to be a means of benefitting and uplifting the site as you guide them through changes alongside help from the community that you are a member of and not above.

I spent the last few months on Staff repeatedly getting shut down in conversations, much like how the community has. My perspectives and input have been mocked or dismissed. People who have had issues with me did not express themselves or listen to my viewpoint despite me repeatedly doing things that can be cited showing I had taken and used their feedback. I was inappropriately asked to work on a project involving KJ, which, given personal disputes lead to the assumption no matter what I said was personal bias; something that lead to a downfall of many issues. Admins failed to work on or resolve this. Every time I felt tension with any other Staff Member, I always had to be the one to reach out. Even when it came down to a conversation happening. There was no attempts at genuine communication that shut out resolution, under the guise that any form of disagreement is agreement is aggression. No matter what I tried to bridge the gap it did not work, because no one was trying to bridge it with me, instead insistent that I was a problem that needed to change, regardless of how much I was listening and attempting to approve for those around me. To best contribute to the site at large.

Regardless, I have said my piece of things as fully and coherently as I cannot in hopes to share a little bit of my perspective on the matters at hand. It is incredibly damaging to sit in chats where you constantly agree with everyone around. It leads to creating bias, negative assumptions about others, in a shady means of trying to uplift yourself and maintain you are better than others. This is what I have seen time and time again and I wouldn't wish any of that to the many wonderful people here who are just here to enjoy themselves and indulge in their creative site.

To all of those people, I am truly sorry for the ways in which these past few days have impacted you, and the ways in which I might have contributed to that. I know things I am doing might seem unfair and do have a negative impact. If you are upset with me for this, I completely understand and I accept that. I am doing what I need to do for myself at this point rather than doing what I felt like I needed to do for others, no matter how harmful to myself or draining it was. I wish you all the best. WCC might not be where you find it right now, and I am not sure where that is, but I genuinely wish you the best wherever you might go.

As mentioned, my DMs are open. This is to catch up, keep in touch, or ask questions about any of the above. However, I want to make it clear that I will not be changing my mind on the decision to remove my content from the site. Thank you.

Ripped,

I completely understand where you are coming from. You did put a lot of effort into that battle system. And while my contributions were far and few, I can say that I was a part of that group chat where we were making that document. And I am going to be honest, some people, along with myself, had put forth suggestions without touching that document. I am not fully sure we can know who contributed what through just who was editing the document. Some of our suggestions had been added to the document by someone else.

I will say that we are working on a solution to all of this. None of us fully know what is going to happen from here on out. And none of us want to fight. We are trying to be as respectful to you as possible, I can promise you that. But we also need to be fair to the community as a whole. We are still deciding what to do going forward, and right now anything that is decided is going to be the decision of the community as a result.

I wish things could have ended better, and I personally still consider you as a friend. And as a friend, I want to let you know that we really are doing everything we can to make everyone happy. None of us want to fight. And I am sorry that all of this had to happen at all. I truly wish you and everyone else the best.