Thanks for the update on goals. I had been planning to send this to you privately, but you address so many of my points in this blog I will venture forth with a public post.

I know this may be controversial, but….

I would hope that conversion to the new goal system will fix or remove the “broken” AQs. What is a broken AQ? In my opinion, an AQ is broken when it is essentially unsolvable by a reasonably intelligent person working without inside information. Many of the present AQs can only be solved if a player has access to those ultra-secret cheat sheets. Not only is this unfair to players without those cheats - it seems to defy the spirit of the game and break the stated rules.

In many cases, these broken AQs seem to rely in information that came directly from the builder (or from someone else with access to the code). I sincerely doubt that anyone has ever solved the Talsa AQs without information that originally came from the builder - a million monkeys on a million typewriters would never come up with the sequences required to successfully complete Talsa. Of course, if the required information comes directly from a builder it represents another violation of the rules.

I understand that clues MUST be there to solve the puzzles (though I doubt in some cases the clues really are there at all) - but remember that a clue so obscure that nobody gets it is essentially no clue at all. Most players never find these clues - they instead rely on the cheat sheets.

I don’t need to belabor this point - and I have probably caused enough copntroversy already. I aplaud the introduction of the goals system, and I hope you use the changover to address some of the broken AQs we all know exist.

Thanks for listening.

Llarian