The Chat Thread

[+Sorana she/her]

4 minutes ago, Voidus said:

Yeah in-world there's not a lot of RP around the guilds, other than people who don't like the DA or the GBs and the GBs fighting over who should be in charge. I think part of that comes from guilds wanting to keep plans a secret so things happen in PMs rather than threads.

You're right.

I am against removing the guilds, but yes maybe we should change something regarding the way we plan. But I have to admit it's a lot of fun to create a pm and then discuss things there. And then see how it affects the Alleyverse and what evolves out of that idea.

Edited November 25, 2018 by Sorana

[Voidus]

I do definitely get the appeal of secret PMs, but these should be used sparingly, otherwise to everyone else a lot of plans just seem like a bunch of random occurrences that make no sense. Or I suppose a consideration would be that characters plans are publicly available, while players plans may be kept secret in PMs.

[+Sorana she/her]

7 hours ago, Voidus said:

I do definitely get the appeal of secret PMs, but these should be used sparingly, otherwise to everyone else a lot of plans just seem like a bunch of random occurrences that make no sense. Or I suppose a consideration would be that characters plans are publicly available, while players plans may be kept secret in PMs.

You're right. That's what I tried to say above. It's fun to plan secretly, but you're right in that it complicates a lot of things.

For the guilds to work well again we need to change that a bit and we need to have more active guilds apart from the GBs. (I never said that officially of course.)

Edited November 25, 2018 by Sorana

[kenod]

On the subject of power creep, perhaps we should also put more of a limit on the resources guilds have access to? While I understand that large armies can make things more interesting, I'm a bit concerned about the fact that it's gotten to the point that the only way to stand up to it is to either have your own massive resources or be massively overpowered yourself. To give an example, there's GUESS having a full fleet of space ships, and the Fiend also counts, although to a lesser point, since we did manage to get a plan for taking it down.
There's also the fact the we seem to be introducing a lot of high power gear, the best example being that we've got enough high power stuff that there's talk about a weapons expo now, which seems to include things like power armor. There are also things appearing that have nothing to do with Brandon Sanderson books anymore, and instead look like they come straight from a sci-fi novel.

While I understand that all of this is interesting, I feel that this is quickly turning away the focus from our characters, and instead heading into who can come up with the most powerful weapons and soldiers, which I think is even worse for balance than unbalanced characters.

The issue here is that this is difficult to fix, since it's difficult to just create a set of rules regarding armies and weapons everybody needs to stick to, especially since a single person not sticking too it means that the whole arms race will be kicked off again. The only solutions I see are to cut back on this as a community, and to make sure that what we introduce at least somewhat sticks to the rules regarding how everything works in the books, and that any time we want to introduce something that isn't in any of the books (like things from other, non-Brandon series) we first discus this with each other. Making sure our characters also seem probable according to the rules we know of would also help with characters being op at the same time.

As for things seeming probable, I'm talking about things like a character being a compounder (extremely rare in the books), or having Investure from multiple planets, especially if both forms of Investure are difficult to get (such as being both an elantrian and a surgebinder, things like a character having breath on top of their other Investure is alright, since breath is easy to get). Of course, characters can use Hemalurgy for these type of things, but try to portray it accurately. Using Hemalurgy means killing people, so somebody with spikes would generally be a psychopath for example. This should cut back on the strength of characters, as well as introduce a fairly easy form of balancing. It also creates a way for characters to be more diverse, as well as create more situations where characters have to be creative to deal with issues, instead of just muscle through with brute force.

Also, using aluminum to negate the powers of strong characters is not a good method of balancing, so don't just use anti-investure things everywhere.

TL;DR:
A fairly good way to fix most issues with things being op is to put restrictions on armies and weapons people have, and to make sure that abilities generally remain at least inside the realm of plausibility.

[old man moomba he/him]

Both of those things line up with my current plan for G.U.E.S.S. The plan is to break fully away from the GBs, get rid of most of the ground forces, and move into becoming a space peacekeeping force, possibly affiliated with the government that may or may not exsist.

[kenod]

But how would other characters interact with a space peacekeeping force? I don't think most of us even have a way of interacting with space based things.

[MetaTerminal he/him]

Although there have been several attempts to introduce space-based stories into the Alleyverse, I’d think we would have to wait until Mistborn Era 4 before that would become commonplace.

As for the army idea - I agree, it’s very disingenuous to have three people lead a massive army of troops. See, you can’t just magic up a fighting force - every soldier needs to be recruited, trained, instructed, fed, clothed, and armed. Something like that should be out of reach unless it was part of, or branching off of a major guild. Between GUESS and the Sentinels I think we’re pretty much set on soldiers, and going forward I would like to see people hiring troops (which would both make much more sense and would introduce much more ability to RP)  rather than creating them. Beyond that, I think having the size of an army be proportional to the size of a guild is a good idea. One person could rally about 20 people - a large guild of ten or more could organize large groups of 150 or 200. And 200 people is a lot of people - they would outnumber every named character in the Alleyverse. An army of that size, although maybe small by modern standards, is nothing to sneeze at.

Power creep is hard to deal with. Everyone wants their characters to be able to do something - no one wants to be artificially limited. Alum was originally built as quite OP, as my first introduction was the SDW thread and I thought that was the standard. Going into the start of Era 2, I had to remove some of his powers before I introduced him. People will scale their characters to others’, and beginnings of Eras are sort of natural resets where power levels come right down. I think right now it’s not causing problems, but it always has the potential to. The best you can do is change the culture, and have the majority of people have underpowered characters, with focus on dex, charisma or intelligence rather than strength. They can always get more powerful very easily - it’s hard to become less powerful in any meaningful sense 

TL;DR People should hire soldiers instead of creating them and should underpower their characters.

[old man moomba he/him]

Well, even if G.U.E.S.S doesn't go into space, I woud still like to volunteer G.U.E.S.S as a peacekeeping force. Also, I love the idea of hiring troops. It seems so much more Alleyverse-like then just having massive standing armies.

[Karnatheon he/him]

I think that power creep is a lot of people coming into things with a skewed idea of what RP is about. Games like D&D, Pathfinder, and other RPGs are all about making the most powerful character you can, in order to be able to do as many things as you can. That's what those games are designed for and the intention behind them, and that mindset is very easy to carry over. I think that not making a powerful character is something that takes an intentional effort to see through. It can be hard to care more about having a meaningful story than about being the most awesome you can be. I don't know what could be done to enforce this strictly, as there are obviously numerous very powerful characters already in existence, so forcing people to create under-powered characters that would reasonably have the floor wiped with them by someone like Hellbent or loc or Voidus Prime isn't necessarily going to work. Of course too is the fact that just because a character is powerful doesn't mean they use it all the time. Voidus Prime is a great example, he is trapped by the Worldspike currently and could have escaped at any moment should @Voidus want it to happen, but he isn't doing that because it is making some great story right now. I personally feel as though I have done a decent job at making my characters real, and keeping them within reasonable limitations. I think this is something that might need to simply be talked about more frequently, so that the issue stays more present in the minds of people who are making characters, whether they be new members or old ones. If it isn't something that gets talked about then people will likely ignore it more often than not in exchange for being able to do whatever they want to. So I think a good course of action as far as power creep is simply keeping the discussion open, and keeping it current, so people can be aware of it when coming up with their character concepts. It's probably just something people will need to hold themselves accountable for, and we might just need to trust them to stick to it. Of course, the character creation thread is around to try and steer people in the right direction when it comes to making overpowered characters, but again it can be hard to enforce that without seeming like you're spoiling someone's fun.

Along with character power creep, group power creep is an issue as well, as mentioned. Having access to things like the Fiend, or massive armies, or super technology, are all very improbable, realistically. Yes, soldiers take time and resources to train. Where did this massive army of Lifeless come from? How did anyone come up with the idea for this power armor that is super out of place? Things like that. And while Hemalurgy is cool(The idea of it, note the whole murdering people for power) how are there suddenly all these hundreds of people who had access to Investiture and were killed in order to gain people all these powers? Wouldn't a massive slaughtering of Mistings and Ferrings cause some disquiet on Scadrial? How come there's no repercussion for that? You would think that there would be some sort of hunt for mass murderers, especially ones going after people with powers. Obviously that brings up the question of how Alley-aware is the Cosmere? Would people on Scadrial know about the Alleyverse if they haven't been there? Would they be able to send a lynch mob after someone? I don't know, but it's a thought.

As far as the discussion of burnout goes, I have no idea what the correct course of action should be. The idea of increased summarizing sounds like the idea that would be easiest to implement and have the potential to work the best, but it also has flaws as people have said. People might not be willing to do it, and people might miss things when they do, thus causing as much or more confusion than currently. I think that if this were to become a thing, it might be a good idea to have people volunteer to post regular summaries for specific threads regardless of their direct involvement in that thread. This of course also has problems, because if someone doesn't log on for a week their thread will fall to the wayside. It could also simply be that if certain people were willing to kind of keep up to date on threads in general, then simply make a summary post when a new page started on any thread that didn't already have one, that could split the load more evenly and increase the chances of summaries happening consistently. I personally read any new post regardless of whether I'm in it or not, simply because I enjoy knowing what's happening and reading it. If there was maybe a group formed of people who performed regular summaries on posts I would be cool with being a part of that. This obviously also has some problems, but I don't know if any solution will be perfect. 

Guilds: I very strongly feel that each person, as in 17th shard account, should only be involved in 1 guild. As stated that would make guild things so much easier to be a part of. People wouldn't need to decide where their loyalties lie every time conflict happened. If that were something that was enforced though it would also be eliminating spying and subterfuge between guilds, which may or may not be a good thing in people's minds, so not sure what the best course of action there is. I do agree that guilds should be more active in the larger community of the Alleyverse and not just amongst themselves. The GB obviously have been having a lot of stuff happening lately, and the DA has its experiments going on in the Alleys, but there is little interaction happening. Again, I don't know what the solution would be, I like the ideas that were mentioned of having public goals to work towards, and having more active dedicated Guild HQ threads. This would again give the chance for people to have guild involvement that didn't include only PVP. The day to day happenings of the guild would be interesting to see. Of course, threads like alley ╔╦╦═╬╦═/ seemed as though they were intended to be that, but then people started invading it, and now it's completely off course from what it was supposed to be. I think that given that precedent any public Guild threads should only have guild members posting in them, unless a non-guild character were invited in for some reason by a guild member. That would prevent the thread from devolving into chaos. This would also allow for in character recruitment. Characters without any current guild affiliating could be invited in and shown around the guild before becoming initiated. I think something like this would allow for a lot of fun RP possibilities, as long as everyone played along.

Thread discussion was also brought up, and I agree it can make for better threads and story arcs, as evidenced by "Exploring the other side of the World". It could be a very good thing to implement. As it would alloy people to gauge interest for something, so they could know how many people to expect. Almost kind of like a sign up thread? Maybe, maybe not. It would prevent a group from becoming too large and disorganized. But then if it was always a preset group of participants, that would again cause the issue of, who belongs here? How would new people be integrated into that, and old people leave the thread, without causing issues? It could again prevent general discord and chaos from happening if only the people involved were the ones posting. 

So basically, it seems like a lot of the problems here come from a lack of structure. Should the Alleyverse being changed to a more organized and structured environment? Should thread discussion topics become mandatory? Should we have set limits on characters? Should we have established people providing summaries, or force people to do it themselves? Should guilds be forced to come out into the light of day and show what they are doing more? Does doing these things change the Alleyverse into something people don't want it to be, or does it provide a way for it to become something more than it is now?  All of these things could be very beneficial to the Alleyverse's continued existence, and allow it to thrive. This is of course very different from the way things have been, but since more and more people are joining into things, does that mean it all does need to change so it can continue to be a fun environment? How much of an overhaul does it all need? I think most people agree there are problems somewhere, but how would fixing them change things. 

I've probably managed to contradict myself multiple times in this post, but I've spent an hour writing it all, and thinking it out, so I might have not been consistent throughout. I think the risk is outweighed by the risk on most of the changes people are suggesting. More of a focus on roleplaying and less on combat would be good for the whole, but not necessarily for every individual. Not all conflict comes from battle, or life and death situations. The most important goal to have, is fun. And if that means changing some things, so more people can have fun, than that's what we should strive for. But if that means not changing other perceived problems because that would spoil lots of other people's fun too then maybe change isn't always the right answer.

I don't know the best course of action for all of this, but I honestly have to say that this community is amazing. You are all extremely talented writers, and the dedication everyone shows to this whole thing is fantastic. Whatever happens, this forum, and this game, have undoubtedly had a profound impact on the people who show up here. And that's something to be proud of everyone. So, way to go, on making a fantastic place to have fun, and being willing to discuss some of the issues it has, and trying to fix them for the betterment of the community. 

(I wish I could tldr this but I would have no clue what to write down here to summarize everything, so sorry for the long disorganized post)

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I'd like to apologize for the alley ╔╦╦═╬╦═ situation. Won't happen again (hopefully). I myself am only part of one guild, although one of my characters subscribes to the Liebrarians. It does seem, however, that lots of people are in multiple guilds, and if we want guilds to be involved in stuff, that just can't happen.

A thing to remember is that any investiture is likely going to massively increase your chances against a non-invested individual. This means that characters without investiture are basically going to be toast if they go up against other characters. I agree with other peoples' suggestions on this front.

[Karnatheon he/him]

To clarify, I'm not trying to blame anyone for that, just bringing up the point that we would need to do something to prevent a situation like that in the future if guild threads started up.

[xinoehp512 he/him]

Of course! It just was partly my fault that the thread go so off-topic.

[old man moomba he/him]

The biggest problem right now, is the fact that the rp is rolling along at full speed, and we can't stop and change everything while plotlines are still playing out, as that could be gamebreaking. We need to come up with a set of rules/regulations/limitations and a way to implement them. Luckily, we have several things converging at this point. @Badadah wants to set up a government, and multiple people have expressed intrest in a justice system. The other thing we have coming up is the end of this Era on Boxing Day 2018. So, we have intrest in a governing body, and a good date to implement it. (Assuming there will be a short time gap) We can take the remaining time to set up some sort of government, and the rules/regulations that it has implmented.

(The usual disclaimer: This idea is probably really bad, just so you know.)

[MacThorstenson he/him]

@Karnatheon

I agree with basically everything that you said in your post, and while the guild power creep is real, I would note that I have thought out ways that the DA has their amount of resources. This isn’t the place to mention them, but I rarely do anything in RP without making sure that it has a believable reason behind it.

In terms of character power creep, I have an idea that could act as a way to rebalance the RP in universe. 

Essentially the god characters would get together and try to remove themselves from interfering with the alleyverse. They would enforce that among themselves and keep anyone else from getting too powerful. The creation of this could mark the end of Era 2. But I don’t want to end the era solely because of time, I think that their should be some big in universe event to mark it. 

In terms of what you said about guilds, I completely agree that each person should have one guild that they are loyal too. 

I also think that there should be a rebalancing in terms of the members of guilds. The idea would be the creation of a lot of small guilds, that way there’s more room for alliances and politics. But those things are difficult to enforce and can wreck the game for some people. So I’m not if it’s a good idea to implement them. 

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I don't think a government is the way to go on rules/regulations for an RP forum. Any justice system would be in-world, and that wouldn't apply to many of the things we are discussing. I personally don't feel like many of these rules would come as a shock, so I don't really think it's necessary. 

I also agree that we should figure out what big event will mark Era 3.

Edited November 25, 2018 by xinoehp512

[I think I am here. he/him]

Voidus Prime’s death? I mean, that could very well change the state of the Alleyverse forever, and if we’re going the route of having actual villains, wouldn’t it make sense for them to strike right after the main man is dead?

I mean, this could also end up destroying the universe, but it was just an idea.

Edited November 25, 2018 by I think I am here.

[Archer he/him]

Spoiler

 

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I think one thing that should maybe happen is people's characters needing to be in the guilds they are in. - Mac

From an administrative perspective, I think making a character's guild (or putting down Non-Affiliated) a required field to fill in in their character bios would help. Is upport the idea of people's characters being in the guilds their authors are in. 

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[Power creep is an issue.] - Voidus

I agree that reducing the motivation for power creep (PvP fighting) seems like it would help. As someone who has played both a seriously OP character and an under-powered character, I've found both are equally fun to RP.

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As to a pinned thread with all active threads: It won't work if we don't work together. We could use that one to plan/ announce new threads. - Sorana

I am against removing the guilds, but yes maybe we should change something regarding the way we plan. But I have to admit it's a lot of fun to create a pm and then discuss things there. - Sorana

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I think part of that comes from guilds wanting to keep plans a secret so things happen in PMs rather than threads. - Voidus

Agreed.

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There's also the fact the we seem to be introducing a lot of high power gear, the best example being that we've got enough high power stuff that there's talk about a weapons expo now, which seems to include things like power armor. There are also things appearing that have nothing to do with Brandon Sanderson books anymore, and instead look like they come straight from a sci-fi novel.

While I understand that all of this is interesting, I feel that this is quickly turning away the focus from our characters, and instead heading into who can come up with the most powerful weapons and soldiers, which I think is even worse for balance than unbalanced characters. - kenod

I've noticed that too. And some of the tech that's available is so powerful it makes the other tech seem pointless. Why do some people still use swords when they could have [insert Warhammer 40K upgrades here]? I'm not completely against non-Sanderson tech/magic, but allowing it mixes rules and power levels in a way that doesn't really make sense. Sometimes we allow it on the basis that it's rare, but some of the stuff is commonplace in the books etc. they're from. 

As for the other stuff in your post, I agree that characters should be more realistic. But we would need a consensus on what a reasonable character looks like. No one wants to RP with an ordinary person, but we need to decide what the benchmark is. I'm sure the guy who runs the character list would appreciate that. 

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[Plans for G.U.E.S.S., a peacekeeping force] - Dr. Jaques

I'm hesitant to embrace introducing authority groups, like police forces etc. Right now, the Alleyverse society has weird morals (most of us don't mind murder), and no agreed upon consequences for crimes. An in-game solution wouldn't work to eliminate bad behavior, because people like being criminals, or at least don't mind criminals. 

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[Reasonable limits on army creation.] - Meta

You've got to follow that up with reasonable limits on army destruction, if it's to work. 

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I think that power creep is a lot of people coming into things with a skewed idea of what RP is about. Karnatheon

[other stuff about power creep, burnout, structure. It was a good post, worth reading.]

Agreed.*

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[One guild per person] - Karnatheon

*Personally, I don't mind people being in multiple guilds. I allows for more guilds to exist, which I think is a good thing, so long as we don't have to many. The problem is we have guilds, social PMs where people hang out and occasionally scheme, and guilds, in-game organizations. Some people are in one, but not the other. But at the same time, I kind of agreed with some of the stuff you said. Full out banning people from going into other's threads isn't the solution, but doing something like the DA did in their thread. Make entering have consequences. 

It would be interesting to have people have to have their characters in all their guilds, and act as such. Their interactions with others would be fun to watch. 

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Boxing Day 2018. - Doc Jacques 

It's pronounced 'Mac's Birthday'.  Also, is that set in stone? Christmas might decrease participation.

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[Government]

See previous comments about GUESS. Rebellious characters will want to break any in-game rules we make.

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I think one thing that should maybe happen is people's characters needing to be in the guilds they are in. - Mac

I like Voidus Prime. Killing him would be like killing God. Sure, some fantasy author from Utah could probably turn it into a good story, but you'll miss him when the people who take his place start squabbling. One thing that came to mind was doing what we did last time. Have all the OP characters get together under some pretext (like putting together a government or something) and fight each other. 

 

This post is long because of all the quote boxes, so I put it in a spoiler tag. 

[kenod]

For a good point to start era 3, as well as a logical stepping board for the gods (avatars) to decide they need to clamp down on the amount of power characters have, use Hellbent and Septhis. They currently have a large amount of power and are going to go full on evil. Have them destroy a bunch of stuff and be generally unstoppable, have the gods realize that they need to deal with this, as well as create rules to reign in the amount of power granted to characters in the future. To deal with it, they will expand a lot of the guilds' resources (thus lowering to an acceptable level) and expand the power of a number of characters, but with the side effect being that they'll either die or lose most of their power (not just granted power, but also their original power) afterwards because of the amount of raw power granted to them.

This gives a story excuse for the re-balancing as well as give a great climax to the current story of era 2. It also means that since the gods together will be allocating the power and thus will choose the already strong characters, it'll give a way for already balanced characters survive without any alterations.

[Silva]

15 hours ago, Sorana said:

For the guilds to work well again we need to change that a bit and we need to have more active guilds apart from the GBs. (I never said that officially of course.)

Oof. But yes. The GBs have basically single-handedly been figuratively running the show. (that's a lot of 'ly's) 

5 minutes ago, kenod said:

They currently have a large amount of power and are going to go full on evil.

Notice that last bit. We at least don't have many more extremely powerful "good" (for lack of a better word) characters. It's a step and I think that shows that we have hope for even less OP people in the future. OP isn't bad, it just can't be the only conflict.

2 hours ago, MacThorstenson said:

The idea would be the creation of a lot of small guilds

If it weren't for the fact that the guilds we have pretty strongly established guilds this definitely would be something consider. Maybe if something catastrophic happened....actually, I'm going to cut that sentence off right there. Can't give people any ideas to cause more havoc.

2 hours ago, I think I am here. said:

Voidus Prime’s death? I mean, that could very well change the state of the Alleyverse forever, and if we’re going the route of having actual villains, wouldn’t it make sense for them to strike right after the main man is dead?

I mean, this could also end up destroying the universe, but it was just an idea.

That sounds like a great idea. Let's go for it! 

[Voidus]

3 hours ago, I think I am here. said:

Voidus Prime’s death? I mean, that could very well change the state of the Alleyverse forever, and if we’re going the route of having actual villains, wouldn’t it make sense for them to strike right after the main man is dead?

I mean, this could also end up destroying the universe, but it was just an idea.

This would not destroy the universe.

Although the amount of destruction that would ensue from fighting him might.

[xinoehp512 he/him]

I've always wanted to create a mini-guild of dragon riders, personally. I'm not planning it until much later, though.

[old man moomba he/him]

Refering to my previous ideas. I had some time to consider (and I watched The Dark Kight Rises) Basicly I rethought my ideas and deeemed them bad. Why? BEACUSE I'M BATMA… no just cause they are boring and don't line up with what I really think we should do.

[Voidus]

Some more responses:

2 hours ago, Archer said:

As for the other stuff in your post, I agree that characters should be more realistic. But we would need a consensus on what a reasonable character looks like. No one wants to RP with an ordinary person, but we need to decide what the benchmark is. I'm sure the guy who runs the character list would appreciate that. 

This definitely needs to be revisited by the entire group I think, first thought that came to mind for me is something along the lines of a point buy system, where there are a certain number of points that are allocated at character creation, different abilities cost different amounts. (These need not necessarily be restricted to Investiture either, having a certain position of power in a Guild might require points, as might being a highly trained swordsman, gunslinger, etc.). Certain characters might be allowed who are a little outside of this realm, either for story purposes or just because the concept is good, or possibly as something like a reward for particularly helpful members of the community. (eg. Meta for all their work on the wiki, or if someone volunteers for doing summaries, or Archer for keeping track of characters profiles)

5 hours ago, Karnatheon said:

I think that power creep is a lot of people coming into things with a skewed idea of what RP is about. Games like D&D, Pathfinder, and other RPGs are all about making the most powerful character you can, in order to be able to do as many things as you can. That's what those games are designed for and the intention behind them, and that mindset is very easy to carry over.

Just wanted to address something with my views of tabletops here, creating the most powerful character is certainly one way to play the game, and it does encourage this to some degree with the way that these games usually lean towards combat as a means of combat resolution. But just as, if not more people try to create interesting characters, either something contradictory (A Tiefling Cleric), absurd (A tiny gnome Barbarian wielding a giant warhammer) or just fun (I am currently making a character called Jack who will take one level in every class, it is definitely not optimized for combat but I want to see if it's possible). I'm not trying to be contradictory here, just point out that even in heavily combat focussed games, sometimes the best characters are not the ones who are the best at combat. And even then, the characters who are good in combat are usually good at one particular thing, a tank with an absurdly high AC who never gets hit, but they're not particularly great at dealing damage, or a wizard with the most damaging fireball you've ever seen but has no armour and all the hp of a rabbit.

[+Ark1002]

7 hours ago, MetaTerminal said:

Although there have been several attempts to introduce space-based stories into the Alleyverse, I’d think we would have to wait until Mistborn Era 4 before that would become commonplace.

Or until we introduce Skyward. Which will be about as soon as spoiler tags come off. So sooner than that, but still a ways away to becoming commonplace.

I think we should plan this out, figure out a huge ending to era 2, then introduce them, because right now it would be to much effort. We need to wait until we have a time, then make them inforced in full, with much more public guidelines. That's just my opinion though...

[Voidus]

I'm not opposed to space exploration even now, but the giant sci-fi armadas are a little problematic.