Ok lets try to get the wire out and form the frame a bit...
I tried to explain to one beloved coder why I choose what I did on poll and
why so much negative feedback seems to be coming for this awesome pure uptune
(in his words). What I got was a brick wall, ?arrow-like whine my tell buffer
full and totally missed all my points. Worst part was that I was trying to
explain and wasn't whining but all my efforts were taken as one.

First lets separate three words used here. First one is playability, second
challenge and last power. The difference between these words seemed
staggeringly blurred when I tried to use these in our little conversation. I
would do educated guess (with only limited experience in game designing, but
some in publishing and marketing) you should goal into increasing first two of
these. First one, playability, lowers the barrier that makes you choose to
sacrifice your free time to that game in particular and with poor playability
you create stress and raise the so called "barrier of entry". Second one is
what keeps game interested in long run, thus also needed. Last one is the one
sought for by most players and usually is reward completing the challenges.

Now what I tried to explain was that where the negative wave came from was
that you were planning to lower playablity some by forcing us to spend more
time and effort into figuring simple daily stuff like: what about is weight
the set I'm wearing, or wonder how much reagents I can carry without burden if
I get that amulet from broker or that fw drops. Then create the challenge by
letting us spend x amount of time/effort, spend x amount of resources and
guess have x amount of luck... just to get BACK to the point we were before
tune (in playablity-view). Then there was introduced "but you might get little
bonus too if manage do all this" and then marketed as pure uptune. At least
this pissed off quite many I chatted with

There are many types of players I give that. Powerplayers would lose
playability gladly for possibility for more power. Freetime twiddlers on the
otherhand value that things are smooth and that you don't have to put much
extra effort just to be able to play around some. Imho, if you scale and
compare importance of playability and power here in Bat, latest tunes give you
nice view which is valued more. Just compare amount of noise on latest power
downtunes and now with this playability downtune.

I can only speak for myself but I didn't feel this was a big downtune, but
seems many felt like that. But anyway at least I'm not a powerplayer in this
perspective. If you would ask me to choose between +2mins to all greater prots
(power uptune) or "party prots"-command (Cheers Moss for this playability
add-on) I would go for latter any day of the week.

Last point where I really hope I'm wrong is that: In normal developement
project after the brainstorming you start to alphatest things out on field and
get feedback which would be good idea, which wont work and what is horrible
way to go. After this maybe do some changes to not-so-successful parts. Some
times it feel like an ultimatum, take it with it flaws or abandon it totally.
I hope this wont be the case this time... whatever the poll turns out.
- Enjoy the regenfodder, Z