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Perplexed and a bit sad


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I've been around here quite a while, though I don't choose to post much. I am not interested in drama and remember all too well how meaningless all our pixels were in live. I have been unconditionally supportive of this endeavor and grateful for the opportunity to be in this wonderful universe once more. I have stated on many occasions, both in game and out, what an incredible accomplishment the emu is.

 

That said, I allowed myself to be lulled into thinking this was some kind of by gamers, for gamers, enjoyable place to be and play. I have sat back and watched unhappy player after player leave and rolled with it.

The truth is, or at least actions say, that we, the players, have no more control and are no more respected than we were in live. Sure, a number of devs are much more accessible, which is great to be sure.

EMU is a technical wonder.

 

That said, history is littered with beautiful and even fun games that are dead. The reason they are dead is they never had, or they lost, their community. Without an active, engaged, passionate playing community, no MMO can survive. It would be hard to imagine a more passionate base than EMU started with, starting with the developers themselves. Without that passion and community support, we don't get to be where we are today. Which brings me to my point:

 

Where are we today? In my opinion, we are well along our way to alienating a majority of the playing community. This has been going on for months and shows no signs of changing. At a point in time where fewer and fewer players log on and less and less is going on, the game gets less accessible instead of more. Just ask newer players, or even veterans, how hard it is to find a build now.

 

I understand that this is a work in progress, and always will be. That said, in the real world, even in the old EA world, patch day was a day we all looked forward to. What would be new. What would be exciting. Sure there were nerfs and people whined, but they were the exception, not the rule. Why else can we still collectively recite them now? Here in the EMU, patch day has become something to be dreaded. Every single week, players morbidly await the patch notes to find out exactly what has been nerfed, taken away or otherwise made less fun or interesting. Game wide, drops are rare, events even more rare.

 

 

Today, we added credits to jobs at the expense of experience. few people need credits, but leveling just got much more difficult. To what end? What is gained?

 

Today, we had an item, the Waking Nightmare, which was very difficult to obtain, requiring a 16 step mission, from a mob only sometimes available. It requires a group at more than one step. It also requires the sacrifice of a rare and valuable item (the CVE). To a rational person, this makes some sense. Take a nice item, go through hell and get it marginally improved (12% to 20% turbo). Today, we come back from the patch to find that this item has now been nerfed to match the CVE. So everything you did for the quest was for NOTHING. For a higher level to equip and now inferior device, and you lost your own device to get it.

A little note saying as originally intended does help it make any more sense.

 

This is the kind of absurd changes that alienate people week after week. Time is precious, none of us want to see ours invalidated. That means the players don't either, not just the devs. If the devs don't start keeping a better finger on the pulse of the community and do keep making more tone deaf changes like this, there wont be a community to alienate anymore.

 

I beg you. For the sake of a game we all, you and the players both, love, stop making patch day something to be dreaded.

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Very well said Grop. This is a game I have loved since the beginning, but now find myself spending more time frustrated and aggravated than I do having fun. I've held on waiting & hoping that things would turn around and improve, but instead it is a rapid decline with all indications that it will only get worse. If the players (through whom donations keep the servers going) have very little influence with the ongoing development of the game and the rate at which it progresses, it begs the question "why?" "Why am I wasting my time?"

Count me among the players that are rapidly reaching the end of their proverbial rope.

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Count me in aswell.

They are messing with to much.

Drop rates are down the toilett.

They mess with the jobs.

Now making lvl'ng even harder.

We should be able to choose iff we want the full XP or xp/creds.

 

Stop messing with the game, 

Emulator will die a slow death iff u make to many changes.

 

And it is the players that keep this game going with Donations

Edited by Zap
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I agree 100% and I haven't even been here as long as some seasoned people like shadow etc who is very well known on game (thanks for that gear the other day btw bro "TranscendenceJe".

I remember live and this wasn't it or even close. Granted they had countless funding and entire teams but come on guys :/ They were at least listening to the player base and taking suggestions seriously. All I feel I see these days is cyber bullying and a bunch of NO you are wrong its never going to happen posts.

Things just happen without any type of communication what so ever and are justified like he said above with "working as intended" Glenn gas mobs anyone?

I remember one night zack showing up up ask if I was a bot then killing everyone and the next patch day there was tons of manes everywhere. Combat the botters not the miners IMO but there's another thread for that so I'll leave it at that.

All I hear in game these days from friends guilders and even random people is this isn't the enb I know or want and everything is worse than it was more or less. Then I see people try to come on the forums and offer polite critisicm and suggestions and seem to get shot down by the staff with extreme prejudice (sup with that?)

I love the game, I love having an opportunity to play it again and relive my younger years but as has been said many times pop is dying, game is dying, nobody is listening or cares and those who don't study past failures are doomed to repeat them.

Maybe once a week consider doing a live feed with the devs and have a 1 hour q&a session to answer questions take comments and suggestions and actually connect with the player base you seem to have lost touch with.
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The devs are not ignoring the players requests.  Getting some credits for jobs was asked for by players who insisted that is how it was in live.

 

Now, I don't think they got the balance right.  I seem to remember more exp and a smaller amount of credits. 

 

I also remember the little box in the reward section, at least sometimes. had an item in it, as part of the reward. 

 

But doing jobs wasn't as common in live is it seems to be here.  The vast hoards of swarming MOBs makes jobs the easier choice, now.

 

But, I still think it's a great game.  And will continue playing as long as possible.  Still very grateful for all the devs have done, and can't wait to get on with the storyline.  Bring on the V'rix!!!   :-)

Edited by GenghisBob
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I really don't have much of a comment on the jobs because I don't remember in live if they offered Credits or just XP, been too long ago.  I do know it was how I leveled my characters up in this emu.

 

What's driving me to the point of quitting now is what Gropos stated in the start to this thread.  The Waking Nightmare is a pain in the rear to get, a 16 step mission you need help to finish and luck finding the Servant.  It's usually a multi-day mission as the Servant is killed before you finish even the first initial stages.  Reducing it from 20% to 12% is a slap in the face.  You worked hard to get the WN, it should be better.  Add on top of that the pathetic drop rate of any other 'turbo weaps' device (PB anyone?) and it's just frustrating as heck.

 

I've about reached the end of my tolerance with the impossible to find drop rates, the heavily camped rare spawning mobs, and the inability to do hardly anything solo in this game.  If you aren't camping Niff 24/7 - good luck getting Modi's Child.  If you aren't in Cooper with 2-3 friends hunting Desash to kill him 10x in a day, good luck on ever finding a Plague's Bite.

 

I've about had it, I'm about ready to dock my ship and log out for the last time as well,  The game just isn't fun anymore, it's been nerfed to hell and gone.

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First off let me just say I have the utmost respect for the developers.  They brought a great game back from the dead and have improved it in some aspects.  While I understand that balance changes are going to happen in any game like this, it is very frustrating when it affects the leveling rate.  This is a change that should have been addressed before the servers went live.  While I realize that the game really needed to go live to get the numbers up to be able to fix a lot of these bugs, it almost wasn't ready to go live.  I feel sorry for the new players and anyone leveling an alt right now.  I don't have a problem with any of the other changes as they don't really affect everyone.  Anyways I hope we can all get past this and still enjoy the game.

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The big problem with the waking nightmare was its lack of a class restriction.  20 percent turbo to any profession useable by any profession makes every non-warrior player hit 20 percent harder.

 

There were two choices:

 

A.  Add a warrior-only class restriction, and only warriors could then benefit like with the Plagues Bite (doesnt affect balance, since this buff already exists en masse)

B.  Lower the percentage and keep it non-restricted. (8 percent drop halves the problem and is workable, the other way was not)

 

We chose B, and it solves the issue where we dont have to beef up mobs to compensate for the playerbase being a fifth again as strong than before the item was even introduced.

 

You have to understand the underlying mechanics at play here.  What youre doing with the mission is trading in a 12 percent warrior only item for a 12 percent unrestricted item.

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Lets leave the other classes out of it for a second and look at warriors.

 

As a warrior, we spend days camping and killing to get a cve in the first place, which offers 12% turbo as well as a speed buff. The device is level 7 and it is tradable, giving it both value and flexibility.

We then take weeks in most cases, mine certainly, to find the servant up and go through the 16 steps. At no point is it mentioned in any way that this is meant to be non warrior content. So we bring groups of friends at least once, probably twice (boss and 12 commanders) to advance the quest. When this is done, we are required to trade in our lvl 7, tradable turbo device to receive a lvl 8 device that adds 20% instead. This was a lot of work AND a sacrifice of a key item. This is done in lieu of camping a plagues bite, which is an almost mythical drop at this point. It is fair and reasonable.

 

Now, retroactively, you have invalidated weeks worth of work and replaced our item with an item that is inferior to what we started with and can not be traded away. By making it the EXACT same buff as the CVE, it no longer stacks, so it also makes the new CVE that you have now spent more days to replace, also useless.

 

I get that you are not looking to have 99% turbo explorers out there, but blatantly and brutally disregarding and disrespecting the time and effort spent already is beyond the pale. You could have just as easily made the item 11 or 13% turbo so it would achieve what you wanted with non warriors without completely destroying what many people have spent their own valuable time working on.

 

I don't care about the pixels, I rarely use them anyway and I have a real life. That said, I have a limited amount of recreational time and having it so callously disrespected and disregarded has me far more mad than ruining a device ever could.

 

This game is not a technical exercise. What you are doing affects real people . If you keep treating them like code, intentionally or not, when that day finally comes where you say "Finally, completely, working as intended" you are going to find yourself in a very lonely galaxy.

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We could have just removed the item entirely.

 

It was identified as a problem, action was required to prevent other issues later.  It had already caused issues I am not privy to discuss here.  However one of the consequences may very well have been yet another overhaul of mobs making them even harder still, and I doubt very much you want that.  Not to mention how massive of a project that would be, and would delay NEW CONTENT yet again!

 

That is only half of what we plan to do with the mission anyway.  I ran out of time but I intend for the Servant mission to be decoupled from the raid trigger mob and completable without having to rely on the big guilds not raiding that day.

 

Threatening to quit over it is childish at any rate, and frankly im sick of the threat.  Go, leave, play the "other emulator" that doesnt even exist.  Youll be back with a new name in two weeks anyway, just like every other "quitter" over the last year.

 

 

Im sorry balance hurts, is a painful and shitty process but it has to happen now before it becomes a snowball later.

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The problem i see is  that we as a player base have gotten a bit lazy with st3 4 and beta ,so with all that said  just do it like in live and instead of whining about it think of ways to help the devs . good ideas suggestions on certain items .if you have old screen shots of stuff from live by all means share them with devs ..They are trying there best ,so instead lets band together and help them  instead of whining about stuff that the player base cant change. and if i am not mistaken we are all adults  .so start acting as such .this game has come to far for this much crying about the small things . group up guild up and get down to it .its not like anyone is paying a fee monthly . so sux it up and play on.

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ooh some people are acctually paying money to play.

Or this server would be dead from the start.

Donations it is called, they need those to survive.

Remember that. every month they need a sum of money for servers to keep going.

Now iff people start leaving there will be less donations.

The highest jobs i remember back in retail was around 7500xp and maybe 1000 creds.

not 50/50.

Im trying to get my builder to 150.

Then suddenly u make jobs not worth doing anymore.

 

Yeah they are doing a good job on most stuff.

But at some point stop doing these small adjustments that makes it even harder.

Drop Rates needs a change.

Was trying to get an ooze shield.

Killed same mob 15-20 times and still no drop.

Same with Bison have not yet seen the lvl 8 shield drop even once.

1hour spawn time and no shield. Common.

Killed Bison 10-15 times aswell, it is redicilous.

Edited by Zap
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The highest jobs i remember back in retail was around 7500xp and maybe 1000 creds.

not 50/50.

H0bPdzU.jpg

 

Get the point?  Memory doesnt do well.  Note from the screen Task Completed (a Job he had just finished):  3761 Trade XP and on all the jobs at the term 4500-6000 credits.

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those are trade jobs.

not explore nor combat.

Anyone got a screenshot on those.

cause they where never the same.

Also on another note u don't see what class he is eigther.

TT with max negotiate gets more creds aswell.

 

Also Trade jobs give more Cause they are TRADE jobs.

Trade means money.

Explore is explore, combat is combat.

They are all different.

U can't use that screenshot to set them all.

As it only shows one part of it.

There are still 2 out of 3 u can't account for with that screenshot.

Edited by Zap
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.... if you want it exactly like live..

i'm sure they can put in the  "you can only take 2 jobs every 5 mins timer."

 

Chars with nego 7 do get more credits (confirmed) - it just doesn't show @ the terminal (unconfirmed)?

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.... if you want it exactly like live..

 

Well, personaly I like this idea from begining.

Nothing agains new sectors, new classes, new missions.

But rest what is already in live have to be set at same condition. This is just my wish...

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Good morning.

 

I don't participate (anymore) in "whining threads" normally, but this has come to a point where i want to voice my concerns - one time for good.

 

I need to play the broken record again, but i feel it's needed so you understand better:

This emulator is not hiring dev's for an income, no1 here gets anything. People contributing here are doing it in their free time and it's even hard(!) work at some point.

 

There is a good number of people thinking a game must be easy and the goal is to level as fast and easy as it could be, to max out the toon in no time.

I never understood such thinking because for me "gaming" is the way to get there - not to BE there.

 

I've heard there was some talk in game where someone seriously suggested letting toons starting maxed out.

 

We have 130 (ish) ore fields in the game, and there was a mob spawn (Manes) added to ONE(!) of these fields lately (that is 0,76%). There was a whining thread after the change like the sky was falling...like the end of the world. Taken WAY to far.

 

We had threads about leveling too easy.

We had threads about changing jobs, adding credits to it (of course this is an exchange).

 

Some(!) people DO realize that fast leveling is the death of every game!

 

People are almost never leaving this game because they are tired of A or B, they mostly are leaving this game because there is not enough to do (so called end-game content).

Some like to post "im done, crap - im leaving" then (just for the drama)....but in real, most of them leave because bored.

 

So we, as the dev's, have different task: Make sure not everyone is L150 in a few weeks and make sure there is end game content for these players.

 

Both(!) is addressed currently. The CDevs are working hard to get the next batch of content (story) coded and done and the team is always carefully thinking about every change in terms of balance and levels.

 

The job terminal issue was mainly brought up by the player base, its not a "new trick pulled out of the hat lately" - it was an "ancient" concern coming up every now and then again.

 

Job terminals are a "dull way" riding through the game while watching a TV-Show on the second monitor - you have NO clue how many afk-macroers we catch daily...

 

 

There is TONS(!) of content out there giving you way more XP in the same time compared to jobs, but when you just do jobs and don't explore (play) the game, you will not find this content.

 

The job terminals (sorry Zap) where NOT giving you the amount of XP the EMU gave you beginning with ST2. The XP amount was still at the level when the jobs were introduced. They were set at a high-XP level because there was not much other content in at this time. So basically this amount of XP was a "left over" and toned down now for good - AFTER(!) we were confronted again with the concern the game has dwindling player numbers because people are leaving being maxed and bored.

 

You have to realize that Jobs are still there, they are not gone and they still give you XP - just not that insane amount.

 

Why i say "insane"?

 

Because some might forget that i am a player myself! I played EnB from almost day one (O-Game) till sunset and i used macros myself to run jobs!

I played multi boxing toons with wormhole and RTB, so i think i don't need to explain how fast my batch of jobs was done, no?

 

Here (EMU) I grabbed 6 jobs from VT (Satellites) and finished them in roughly 6-8 minutes. Thats is 30K XP!

I was doing it for 4-5 hours and got 9(!) levels on my toon. Needless to say how long it takes to max out with that XP, you very surely get the idea.

 

Just don't say "jobbing is ruined now" because you "only" get 10 levels in 8 hours instead of 20 levels..... (this is L105 jobs).

 

 

Waking Nightmare:

This item was never existing, it is a "goodie", a bonus brought in.

 

But(!) it was brought in not reflecting the values of the CVE (12% item you need to turn in) when added.

The real bonus is the lifting of all class restrictions so basically everyone can get a 12% turbo now that you would never get anywhere else - which is stacking with certain devices.

 

There was the decision made to correct that now and AGAIN some are crying "the sky is falling"!

 

You need to see that we are trying to balance things very carefully - raising everyones damage for 20% is a huge impact balance wise!

 

You also need to know that we ARE tracking numbers of how many devices are currently in game, how many other turbos etc etc - and the WN is the most(!) existing turbo item in the game currently!

So far for "extremely hard to get".

 

 

 

But what all this excessive/disproportional whining is causing, is way more "dangerous" then some might understand:

Since people are NOT payed here, it is discouraging the dev's!

 

We try hard to do the best at all time, even if you don't understand that (there is life "beyond the edge of the plate" like we say here).

 

 

People complain about ONE(!) ore field not easy to camp anymore, people complain about a corrected (not nerfed, corrected!) turbo amount, people complain not able to "speed level" their toons (partly afk) aanymore, people complain about this, that , these changes, that changes.

 

I wait for the day where people complain about the color of the servers network cable...

 

I hear "The game is dead, everything is broken, the sky is falling, the end is near, human mankind ends".

A N N O Y I N G!

 

 

People are not counting the countless fixes, changes to the good, additions. There is no thread like "Hey, awesome, thanks - i counted 54 bugs fixed, 12 missions added, 6 skills operational now, 8 items added. WOOT, YAY, HAPPYDANCE!!!"

 

All i just hear/read is "idiots, retarded dev's, assholes, Nazis".

 

AND YOU THINK STAFF IS HAVING FUN SPENDING TIME HERE?

 

 

I read nonsense like "it's our game, we donate for it".

The truth is, you are paying to keep the server up YOU want to play on.

 

Again: We don't make a living from it, so if the servers are up or not...is not changing anything for the staff!

Such postings like yours, Zap - are 182% missing the point and (sorry) simply lacking intelligence.

 

And this is the point where some staffs say "Nuff of the shit, I'm leaving".

 

 

See, these whining are having an impact on the staff internally as well - of course there is different opinions within the team (natural huh) too!

 

And some can deal it with better, some not. But at the end there is NOTHING GOOD coming from it because it might drive contributing team members away - it's the sum of all this "drama" leading to this, and players coming here just whining and crying (without any constructive note), just bitching and flaming, sobbing over another piece of the "easy button" gone - THESE player are PART of that!

 

Don't get me wrong, i am not saying "stop bitching or staff member will leave", what i am saying is that you REALLY need to get back to the ground and become REAL again and start being constructive and keep a sense of proportion!

 

I am currently at 95% of the scale not wanting to contribute anymore, knowing that every change (patch day) might cause such dramas here.

 

 

I almost never say this as staff member, but i will this time:

/Private mode on

If you so "hate" the changes, play another game! Don't stirr things up, dont bitch, whine, flame, cry and do not start calling names (yest. in game) discouraging the team!

/Private mode off

 

 

 

The result will and can be only one thing: We stop contributing, we stop working on it and thats it - after 7 years working the butt off (in total)!

 

 

Darkk left yesterday and if the "i want it all and easy, i don't want to work, i don't want to die, i want builds at 200% from the start, maxed out toon on creation, uber drop at a 100% rate etc etc etc etc" players

don't stop their BOLD DEMANDING, he wasn't the last. 

 

 

I know i was "winding up" in a "pseudo rant" towards the end of the posting, but i hope i made my viewpoint clear.

 

 

 

You ("you" as the nonconstructive whiners) hopefully got the message and will start to think. 

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I would like to see this game as close to live as possible.

Now all these things that are beeing added are nice and all.

But Don't we all want to have it as close to Retil as possible??

Mocking my intelligenc sir, That is a Low blow even from u.

Insults like that we are not even alloved to do towards u.

And now u do it to other players.

 

Shame on u

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Mocking my intelligenc sir, That is a Low blow even from u.




I was -at no point- saying you are not intelligent, i said the POSTING was lacking intelligence, eg. in terms of "forseight".
This is what i mean, people not reading well and "turning" a thread into a direction that was never the point. This is the "drama" im talking about.


On a sidenote:
How does such "low blow" feel? Not nice huh? 

So what makes you think we feel different reading "low blows" like "idiots, retards, Nazis" towards the staff?

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Zackman

Well, you ask whiners to stop whine and YOU doing EXACTLY the same thing...

 

Beacause from your POV, everyone who say ANYHING agains changes in game is whiner, lazy player, cheater and/or macroer.

 

I'm not satisfied with changes in game (ie: new playes have everything harder than today L150 which have almost all in house and on 'silver plate', same with miners vs guardians.)  but I'm NOT anything from you wrote above and I ask you don't put  this mark on me.

 

I know this game is FREE, but this not the same like players can't complain anything.

 

And btw: You write nobody thank you for a milion of fixes - this is simple LIE. Everyone can see every day  "thank you" directed to devs/gm's ... in game, at forum in posts.

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I would appreciate reading my postings WELL before replying to them.

 

I said this:

You ("you" as the nonconstructive whiners) hopefully got the message and will start to think. 

 

 

The key is "nonconstructive". Coming here and just bitching and crying is whining, yep.

I consider postings being constructive and no "whining" when (eg.)  including suggestions.

 

You understand that little but important difference?

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You understand that little but important difference?

No, because for you - all posts against changes are nonconstructive.

And sugestions? I saw a lot of sugestions, but nobody cares - see your quote from game: "changes are permanent, live with them or leave"

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Attronach i beg to differ.

 

When we provide a valid reasoning with our concerns/complaints its certain to be considered.

When devs provide a valid reasoning to counteract our concerns shoudn't we do the same?

 

eg there were posts about the WN device losing 8% of its original turbo value.

We heard that it is a very common turbo device available to all classes and there should be balancing concerns.

 

Don't you think its reasonable?

 

Lets see. 20% turbo to all non warrior classes that was never possible in old Live.

CVEs drop quite frequently are they not? Not hard to get as opposed to Plagues Bite thats Warrior Only! CVEs are Warrior Only too.

 

So they take away from the warrior classes and give to the supporting classes. And we gripe because it was toned down?

 

Yes it is a 16 step mission but is it really a hard mission? most steps are like go to that nav and talk/meditate.

You can kill the Voltoi Boss that drops CVE solo if you try.

You can kill the 12 Commanders solo if you're careful.

You can kill the final Chavez Boss with just one more friend helping you.

Is wating for Servant to be available difficult? Time consuming yes but difficult most certainly not!.

I done this mission in the span of a week. When i was doing the 12 commanders by myself i found a 2nd player doing the same. We teamed up and we breezed through the rest.

My main toon (TE) has done the mission to the point of just returning for his reward but decided against it since it felt to me it was a boon to supporting classes. Mission is still in my log and i never intent to complete it, i may as well forfeit it.

 

Yes i can understand the need for adjustment. Can you?

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