Republic of Folk

I just wanted to pick up on a thought Tigershark shared with me yesterday, and re-emphasise a point from my original post to this thread about the 1.54 official patch.

For the majority of guests, folk is a session they come along to in addition to actual groups (like UTG, ST etc.). I'm very mindful of that, so if my original post to that thread had anyone thinking that I/folk was making any kind of demand upon guests to run/not run a patch, then I'm sorry. I was just trying to avoid a situation where guests show up on Sunday and have their time wasted because they are unable to join the server.

The policy of running vanilla OA at folk has always been based on the desire to make it as easy as possible for anyone to play in the session. Call it the lowest common denominator, if you will. If a guest's gaming group demands that they install some irreversible beta patch or update that no longer allowed them to join the folk session, that's something I hope everyone here would understand. People in such groups put a lot of effort into them, and it's unrealistic for them not to prioritise them over something low friction like folk. In such a situation we would just hope that the compatibility gap is closed quickly, and look forward to seeing that guest again soon.

I hope that clarifies things, but please chime in here if you have any thoughts or questions.

I have steam, and the update was downloaded and applied without my explicit permission. I presume that it would not be straightforward (if it is even possible) to play a steam version without the latest patch, so I would suggest the default position for folk (given the goal of maximum compatibility) should therefore be 1) Fully patched [fingers crossed a patch isn't released on Sunday afternoon!] and 2) Vanilla OA.

LiddleFeesh wrote:Fully patched [fingers crossed a patch isn't released on Sunday afternoon!] and 2) Vanilla OA.

That's effectively what we in place have now. The only clarification I would add is that we mean official patches (the kind which are force-applied by Steam), not betas.