Barathemos : I've admitted before that the staff have a big advantage in the Green Jersey competition but the rest of the Jerseys basically offer equal opportunity for everyone. Even if the staff have a big advantage in the Green Jersey competition, there's still plenty of non-staff actions that a user can use to rack up tons of actions which include:
-Bible Action
-Character Adding
-Game Content Request
-Game Rating
-Moving Ebay Listing
-Question Submission
-Screenshot Submission
-Song Rating

And I plan to add more actions in the future as well. The only disadvantage that non-staff members have with those listed actions above is their limited number of actions that they can do for each of those per a day. I plan to come up with a solution to that before the next TdV.

I didn't have any major goals for this TDV besides reaching 1000 total points, which I surpassed. I decided to not be as active this time around as I have been in the past, but despite that, I somehow managed to make the top 5. Congratz to the overall winners this time around.

EX Palen : *Hugs you* Thank you for understanding me and my intentions. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you kept up so well with this TDV considering you did a great job of commenting on the one before last. lol If I end up getting removed from Staff or being forced to step down, I hope you can continue to be a good Local for the rest of the people on Vizzed.

Barathemos : *Hugs you* Thank you for understanding and posting. I honestly didn’t think anyone noticed anything until you spoke up. I’m so curious about the origins of that quote but don’t worry, I won’t ask we’re being watched! D= j/k XD. But because of that, I can’t just walk away now. lol

Davideo7 :

“Don't worry, you probably won't see me in any more TDVs after this one.”

At least that’s what I was originally going to say before I sat down to gather my thoughts to think about what happened. I also finally decided to write this to make it so you don’t have to keep posting what appears to other people to be random stuff to try to justify what happened during the last few minutes of TDV.

It’s been over 50 hours now and I’m thoroughly exhausted, thinking of a way to tell you without insulting you on some level. I’ve finally concluded there is no way to do that so I’ll just post before you and the others blow things out of proportion. Before you think of this as a surprise coming from me, please consider that I took time after the TDV ended to cool off to sort my thoughts so that I wouldn’t be commenting out of senseless anger or rage. Also, please remember that I have only participated in a few TDVs, but those were the TDVs where the Green was changed to be the way it is now. Unlike some people that quit shortly after seeing the possibilities the Green offered, I continued to play to perform some tests (yeah, after this TDV, it does appear that I now run a lab mwuahaha).

You might recall my last words before our "final showdown." I said there was something I wanted to know and I would be fine with the outcomes of our fight. This meant that winning or losing wouldn’t have mattered as much to me as whether or not the fight was close to being as fair as possible, given that both of us were staff members, which is already hardly fair in the eyes of the non-staff people. To most people, we kept up an insane amount of actions. I don’t know how you missed it, but you were so far off on what I was doing that it’s not even funny anymore. Certainly, I kept moving by 1 action at a time towards the end of the TDV, but I wasn’t making any significant leaps. I’d intentionally completed 700 actions early in the day and then pretty much stopped moving so you could see the rest of whatever I was doing later in the day coming from a mile away. I recall that one constant complaint from people about me was how I would do actions near the end of the day and they called it unfair. Well, I only had that time to perform those actions whenever they complained, since I do have a life outside of Vizzed on weekdays. This time, however, the TDV ended on a weekend. I had time to do those actions early. This was a message to you that I’d already done my best as I promised so it’s now your turn to do something to counter that. Again, if you had just taken a look at my CP page, you would have known I stopped because I was running out of actions to perform. All I had left were around 160 screenshots and about 80 some screenshot removals (and I only did those after receiving permission from Vanelan). After that, I would still have only game commenting and game comment removal, but I had no plans to do those seeing as I’ve only done that 2 times on my entire time on Vizzed. Yes, I came into this battle fully prepared to lose it by over 300 actions because you’d been doing a lot of Song Edits and although those actions were available to me as well, I wasn’t going to risk getting DQed for not being familiar with them and editing them incorrectly. Finally, you could have seen there were certain actions I never did because I obviously don’t know how to do them and thus I never tried them for any battles, even if I could have benefited from all 225+75 actions. It’s more important to me to do things properly than to do a sloppy job in an attempt to win (never mind that it’s also grounds for a DQ). Otherwise, I would have moved eBay listings and removed them then handed that headache over to someone else. However, that is not the way I operate so I didn’t even consider it.

As for my intentions, I know you’ve been saying that you were there for most of the month and then I showed up suddenly, but you will recall some people in this thread have commented that you disappeared for a while. I’d been happily leading my laboratory since a few days after TDV began, so I have been there, just not going all out like you were. In case you’re wondering, I had difficulty deciding on a good name for my team so I didn’t make a team until a few days into the TDV. Anyways, the time you disappeared was around the time I noticed that my potential teammates were probably not going to return in time for the TDV so I decided to step up my game to get a few Greens to honor them. I actually hadn’t realized I was on the way to leading for Green until someone mentioned it. To me, the Green ribbons are a prayer for someone’s recovery, because Lord knows the people I keep meeting keep disappearing due to cancer and other illnesses.

Now to set the record straight for the TDV where I won the Green Jersey. That TDV, to me, was the best TDV I’d ever attended and the most fun because people were actually trying to do things with their teams in mind. On the surface, it looks like I won that Green Jersey, but you have no idea how much support I received from various people to be able to actually get there. They were kind and they offered tips and advice on how to win the various Jerseys. In turn, I did my best to put their feelings into physical form on the Green Jersey list and with enough tries, I won, but I still consider it a win for the people that have been with me rather than an individual win. I was certain I’d mentioned that during that TDV, but I guess it got lost in the excitement and celebratory mood after that TDV.

All in all there is only one word to describe this last battle between you and me and it is “OVERKILL.” No matter how you try to explain things away and say things like, “you don’t have to feel sorry for her because she won the last one,” this fact will stick and remain, because it’s reflected in my screenshots of the entire day up until the last few minutes before the TDV list completely disappeared. Sadly, that’s the way I’m going to remember this TDV now, and any subsequent ones in the future with you in it. I think the saddest part is I can’t even congratulate you on winning the Green, because you essentially became an Immortal Object. =/ It is an honor to hear that I was a challenge to you though, if only a fairly insignificant one, based on the God-mode performance you gave at the end.

I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to want to win but there really was a point in this competition when it became unsportsmanlike, even if the contestants were all Staff Members. I’d done my best to set things up to see what you were really like, and now I guess I have my answer. It’s a bit(?) disappointing to say the least, but an answer is an answer whether we like it or not.

I don’t believe I’ve ever reached 900 actions before, or even 800 for that matter, so I thought I’d set it up at around 700 actions to test what you would do. As expected, you went over by 300 actions but then you continued on to the moon to who knows where. After taking into consideration the fact that you probably wanted to win the 7 points, it made a bit more sense for you to try to get 1,400 but then you continued on to 1,500 and then 1,600+...? It would have been funny except in the history of the TDVs I’d attended, no one, not even a Staff Member, has ever reached 1,500 much less 1,000+, so I figured you were probably just trying to slap me in the face for no apparent reason. Well, Jesus taught us to turn the other cheek so that is what I’ll do. However, please note that the actions you took yesterday will appear, to newbies and old members alike, as a flagrant abuse of power which they may not understand, and thus it will reflect badly on Vizzed and any subsequent TDV competitions in the future with you in it. I had hoped you wouldn’t put yourself in a position where people could simply ask you, “So, are you going to God-mode them again? XD Hahaha” and then make you feel like it was an empty win, which, according to the records now, it technically was. Of all the moves I’ve seen you make on Vizzed (and I often called many of them brilliant because I did truly believe they were), this is by far the worst one I’ve ever seen. Please don’t be surprised if this now opens you up to future attacks and I’m telling you about this as a friend, if you ever considered me one to begin with.

Below, I have decided to enclose my original letter anyways in spoiler tags just so you will know that I am speaking to you now as a person that has already calmed down and seriously reflected on what happened:



To all the people that have been watching our battles for the Green Jersey with avid interest, thank you very much for your time and for being with us all along. Seeing as this last battle was between two Staff Members, which was already considered unfair to begin with anyways, the best and probably only thing I can do now is to post this so most of us can step away from this with as much grace as possible and hope that something like this will end here, never to happen again.

Thank you and congratulations to everyone who participated in this TDV, you somehow managed to join and survive! an oddly epic TDV.

For those who have read Yuna1000's response, please keep in mind that there are 2 sides to every story so please give me the time to give mine.


EX Palen :
Barathemos :
I'm summoning you guys since you guys liked her post. Please read my entire post.


Yuna1000 : I'm sorry that you took this so personally and that you viewed it as me giving you a slap in the face but that wasn't the intentions at all and there was nothing intentionally malicious with what I did.

I actually did 3 different actions which put me at nearly 1700 actions. The 1st Song Editing. The 2nd was Screenshot Adding. The 3rd, which seems to be the one you had a problem with (and that's completely understandable) was Song Uploading.

I'll go over the Song Uploading first. Earlier that day I had spent a good amount of time gathering songs to be uploaded. There was nothing dirty with uploading music. Don't forget that earlier in the Tour de Vizzed, a few other users were getting actions from doing this until I told them to hold off on uploading music until I looked into a few things. Then about 10 days ago I informed the staff that they could continue uploading songs again. Once I had the music prepared that I was going to upload, I waited until later in the day before I'd start uploading it because uploading for whatever reason causes my internet to come to a crawl and that'd affect my daughter and son who sometimes like to stream movies and it'd also affect my wife who uses the internet at various times. I had planned on beginning to upload those songs at around 10 PM central time but my daughter has been sick lately and I waited until after she had gone to sleep (I usually lay with her in her bed to help her sleep but it's extra important for me to do that for her when she's sick). By the time I got out of her bedroom, I basically was getting short on time and had to begin uploading the songs that I had spent time preparing earlier. There's no way I could have expected that many songs to be uploaded and it's crazy how quickly those add up. I didn't count the songs I was uploading, I was gathering the songs for the Video Game Music Room and earning actions in the TdV was mainly a secondary thing for me.

Now on to the Screenshot Adding. On the 31st I added screenshots for only 1 game but it was a game that's pretty large which was Donkey Kong Country Returns so that gave me huge opportunities for a lot of unique screenshots. I didn't actually play the game that day though, what I actually did was I took videos of gameplay that I actually recorded myself from a different time (which I actually uploaded to the VGR a while back) and I went through it and took screenshots of the video using GOM Player. I don't remember how many screenshots it came up to be but if I were to take a guess, it was probably around 300. I had also did this same thing for 2 other games but because my daughter was sick (which I mentioned in the previous paragraph), I wasn't able to get around to uploading the rest of the screenshots I had prepared that day.

Finally on to Song Editing. This was by far the most time consuming action I've been doing in the Tour de Vizzed during the final week of the competition. As you probably could tell, the song editing mostly consisted of me renaming NES songs because when those songs were ripped from their games, they didn't get titles so when I batch added them to Vizzed, basically 10,000s of songs got added that didn't have any names. The main reason why I've been doing a lot of Song Editing is because the song competition for February involves NES games in the Video Game Music Room so I wanted to get as many songs renamed in time for that. Again, the Tour de Vizzed was only a secondary thing with this.

To be honest, a lot of your actions shouldn't have counted for the Tour de Vizzed and let me explain why.

You uploaded a lot of screenshots that weren't unique enough. This is a rule not only for the Tour de Vizzed but also for the site itself. Screenshots like this and this aren't unique enough from each other and this is just a very small example of tons of incidents where this happened last month from you. You were literally just taking screenshots of everything in the games you were playing and to me that's just a cheap way of getting tons of screenshots with very little time invested. Multiple moderators brought up your potential TdV abuse to my attention but I said to let you go with just a warning (which one was never given, or at least not until later, because I had asked tRIUNE to do it but him being sick I guess he never got around to it). Most of the screenshots you took were also for Steam games which means you ended up taking 1st in the Steam Screenshot Competition but this rule right here "You can submit a screenshot of the same level/location/track that you or someone else already has submitted as long as the screenshot is different enough or as long as it's a different area of the level/location/track " should have prevented you from even taking 1st but I was kind enough to let it go and to let you walk away with the 1st place cash prize.

The other action which you got more actions for than what you were suppose to get was Character Editing. Now this isn't your fault at all but around 30% of your actions that you got credit for in the Character Editing were glitched actions which means you were awarded for things that you didn't actually do. Again, this is not your fault at all, this is my fault for not getting around to fixing this glitch which has been around for a while. Basically every time you edit a character, you get an action with the details "From '' to '0' for character" for Franchise when no Franchise is specified. You can see an example of this taking place on this page, just search for "From '' to '0' for character" and you'll see that it appears 75 times on that page and that page is showing 250 results.

The other problem with Character Editing, which is another problem that isn't your fault at all, is that you can get many many actions very very quickly. Many times you were able to get 100 actions in less than 10 minutes which means you were averaging about 10 actions per a minute which is far quicker than I could have pulled off with any of my actions. In previous days of the TdV, I'd literally invest many many hours trying to get a lot of actions but I just couldn't keep up with you because you were just racking up the actions so quickly, my only hope was that you'd reach your daily limit. Multiple users reported to me that character adding and editing are unfair in the TdV but again, not your fault at all since you weren't breaking the rules. I just wanted to point out that you were able to accumulate actions far quicker than I was able to.

If I had known winning the Green Jersey meant so much to you, I probably would've let you win it. There have been many times during the history of the Tour de Vizzed where I actually slowed down during the end of either the Overall competition or of an Overall Jersey just to let someone win because I knew it meant that much to them (the best example of this was in the Summer 2014 TdV where I literally did no actions on the last day so that pacman1755 could win that TdV as you can see in this graph). If you had never won the Green Jersey then I probably would have done this for you and I still was considering doing it for you until you said this "This is my normal daily routine so I'm fairly used to performing all these actions (people just don't tend to notice them until a TDV month, when actions and CPs are carefully scrutinized and recorded, so they label me "sneaky" and such)." Once you said that, then I assumed that you weren't taking this TdV all that seriously and that these actions that you were doing were just something you do all the time so I didn't think I'd be hurting your feelings at all by trying to win the Green Jersey. Can you blame me for misinterpreting that?

I know a lot of users probably think it's unfair that I compete in these competitions but I really do try my best to play as fair as possible and to set an example for everyone. Like I said above, if anyone is really trying hard for something in the TdV, I usually let them have it. There have been times when a user was going to get their first Jersey ever and I let them have it by not passing them in total words/posts/actions/cp (sometimes it back fires though because other users come right around and pass both of us). I usually compete to help keep these competitions interesting and exciting but I also compete because I love competing in them because it makes me feel more involved with the community.

A lot of people probably think it's great to own a website but it's not always great. Having to invest so much time into the site means I can't invest as much time getting involved in the community or even invest much time into enjoying the site and it really sucks. No one will ever fully understand just how much time and effort I put into this site. I would never do anything that would hurt the site and I'm always doing what I think is best for the site.

Along with the 2 reasons for competing in the Tour de Vizzed which I mentioned above, another reason I compete is because it gives me motivation to do various site tasks. I invest so much time into this site and sometimes I go through phases where I don't feel like working on the site (I've been investing 40-60 hours a week into the site for the past 6+ years and I get more complaints than compliments so can you blame me?). When this happens, I usually try to incorporate the work I have to do with the TdV so that I can get a boost of motivation to work through the things I need to do and it's also rewarding when the hard work is noticed thanks to the TdV (otherwise, just like the rest of the staff, my hard work often goes unrecognized).

I realize that I'm the face of Vizzed, I've known this ever since Vizzed started around 14 years ago. When people hate me, they hate Vizzed. When people hate Vizzed, they hate me. When a staff member upsets a user, that user takes it out on the site which ultimately affects me. When someone hates the site enough, they attack it (which has happened multiple times before through either DDoS attacks, hacking, etc) and that effects me financially which ultimately affects my wife and kids as well since I make a full time income off of the site (but barely now days).

It really sucks to be hated, it's depressing and I take it seriously. When users leave the site, nothing is worse than that, especially when they leave because they didn't like me, the staff, the site, the community, etc. I try my hardest to please everyone, even though I know it's not possible to make everyone happy. Every big decision on the site is going to upset as many people as it pleases so it's not easy, especially when I know that sometimes those decisions are for the best.

I've gone off topic but I brought that up only because you mentioned people slowly not liking me, the staff or the community. You also mentioned that the Staff emulate me which isn't exactly true because I'm not in charge of who gets hired on staff and how they behave (mainly because I don't have time for it but that's a topic for a different time). My biggest priority ever since I opened up Vizzed Board was to keep it family friendly and welcoming to everyone; I never wanted anyone to feel hate or neglection from the users or staff.

I just wanted to say that I'm very sorry that my actions on February 31st were misunderstood (and it's completely understandable why they were) but if you read this entire post, then you should now know that it wasn't intended the way you took it. I literally just invested nearly 2 hours into reading your post and making this post and I hope that shows just how much I care of this community and its users. I also feel really really bad that you were hurt by my actions (which as I said, was definitely unintentional) so I'm going to do the only thing that I think will ultimately help me gain some respect back - DQ myself from the Green Jersey.

I am glad I won at least one Tour. Now that I have tested the limits, I know how to go even stronger on the next Tour!

Davideo7 : Well, I didn't have any bad intentions in my post. I just wished the last day would have been another close call between you and Yuna like the days before and not such a massive gap. It killed all the fun and the hype of the competition, and you know this particular TdV has been rather disgusting for all the reports we've dealt with in both DQ threads, so that last day killed the only point that could actually be saved as positive.

You're not someone who would go overboard with claiming a jersey. You're not of that kind. We all know you work hard for the best of your site. However, you must also understand that it was quite overwhelming to see such a massive score in the very last day, and situations like this will always look suspicious, no matter who you are. If there were daily results for EVERY DAY, people would understand that you do this kind of work more often than what they think, with the only reason being to develop this site. TdV just happens to occur right when you have finished a new section, but not everybody is aware of that, nor is aware of the development Vizzed is undergoing behind the scenes. Hell, not even I am aware of 90% of that development.

I'm sorry you took this as an offense. It was just a big blow to the hype we all had deposited in the competition. People like me, that went to sleep, woke up and spent all day without knowing the results, only seeing you with the Green jersey, were heavily shocked when the results were posted. The first thing one would think about is that you rushed to do a lot of things you had pending so Yuna couldn't go away, and while it helped the site greatly, it had a deep meaning. I guess we, better said I, acted recklessly, without giving it a second thought. Again, sorry if it made you upset.

This being said, I shall applaud your gesture of giving Yuna the jersey. I hope it helps to clear the misunderstanding, because you don't deserve to be hated or disliked. Many people take this competition very seriously, and it can lead to rushed decisions, which more often than not end up regretting.

On a side note, I think I owe you another apology for not reading through all of Yuna's post. I personally don't care much for the TdV other than rule enforcing like the mod I am, and I only liked her post because of the way she responded to me, not because of what she had to say about the competition. Had I read it full, I would still have liked it, but I would have replied sooner clearing up my thoughts.

EX Palen : Thanks for giving me a chance to straighten out the situation. It wasn't an easy decision, especially since I invested more time into that Overall Jersey than any other Overall Jersey I've ever invested time into by a long shot, but I knew it was the right decision so I didn't hesitate to make it.

You'd be surprised at how many users declare a bad opinion of me and refuse to think otherwise ever again, even after I've invested hours into clearing things up. The ultimate problem with situations like these (and this doesn't apply to Yuna but for other users who have hated me in the past) is that most people hate authority or have a problem with it so therefore they see me having the highest rank and they try their hardest to have a problem with me or look for any reason to hate me.

Davideo7 : I never intentionally try and do anything that could disregard the feelings of others, so when I made my posts earlier and when I like yuna's post, it was with only the best of intentions. I'll try to make this post as clear as possible. 

I completely understand what you did, why you did it, and how this impacted Yuna and a few other users of Vizzed. 

First off, I'd like to start by stating how I viewed this situation. I, along with Yuna, thought it was overblown and unnecessary, but it's a competition, and sometimes competitions end in a blowout as did the last day of the green jersey. I didn't see you as someone who would purposely do this to people, hell, I've played you in Tecmo and you've never intentionally blown me out by more than a good 40 points.

Secondly, I'd like to commend you for giving Yuna the green jersey, and actually taking the time to straighten out the situation, sometimes giving an explanation for something you did takes a lot of guts to do, and it shows that you do care about this community and that you do want to keep the community on your side. That meant a lot to me as not just a staff member here, but as just a user on Vizzed. 

I'd also like to point out that most of your actions happened in the last 2 hours of the day, and even though you had an explanation as to why you did this, we didn't know at the time, and it does come off as unsportsmanlike.

And as someone who is very active on Vizzed, I see all of the hate that you receive, and most of which is uneducated and egocentric. I personally do disagree with you on some things, but the path of hatred makes no sense. I somewhat know you, and you aren't a bad guy. I as well take hatred personally, and it's hard to deal with, but when this hated comes from people who are just unhappy with you for things you've done that aren't necessarily awful, it's pathetic. Just about all of us here on Vizzed who know you personally like you as a person. 

And yeah, most people do hate authority. That's why a lot of people hate the globals/locals when all they're doing is just doing their job.

And thanks for taking the time to respond to this whole situation, it means a lot. 

Davideo7 :

Well, I am glad we are finally on the same page again. It certainly took a lot of writing but I finally got you to say what you were doing... maybe. (You're probably hating me right now for doing that, right, senpai? ^^0 )

First off, I just want to say, we’ll be praying for your daughter’s recovery! I know several people that have lost their daughters recently due to illnesses, so please continue to take special care of her. We’ll pray for God to protect you and your daughter during these trying times and may your family come out of this with greater health and happiness. I hope your daughter understands how truly blessed she is to have such a dedicated father.

Now for the TDV... To be clear, I know the hours we both invested/spent doing research for our actions along with copying/pasting that information into all of the various fields will never be reflected in the CP Logs, so please know that I do understand and respect the pains you took to fill in everything without errors and with the highest speed possible. I was also aware you did at least 3 different actions and it was really nice to see that until I realized that most of the actions were from Song Adding. Certainly, Song Adding isn't a bad thing for the site, but I guess you had forgotten that I (among others) had expressly been forbidden to perform those actions until you have given your permission for us to do so (the Music Adding thread literally states we can't upload songs without your/an admin's permission and you still hadn't decided whether or not you wanted to allow me to upload music, and I chose to abide by your rules). In hindsight, perhaps you just simply didn't realize or completely forgot you only okayed it for the Staff Members on the Music Adding list to be able to perform those actions, but when I saw you doing Song Adding and you were the one that said to me, "I'll look into that later," is it any wonder that I thought you were taking a direct stab at me? Like many of the other people that posted above, I didn't think you were the type to totally steamroller over a person knowing that they are limited in their actions, and then take pride in rubbing their weaknesses in their face… 1,000+ times. Certainly, on some level, I do sort of understand if you actually wanted to take advantage of the situation (I did account for higher admins doing some overkill after all), but I really didn't expect to see you use Song Adding when you expressly forbade anyone not on that list of 4 people to add songs. I even told Vanelan that I was hoping you wouldn't actually use all 1,000 Song Edits (although I kind of thought maybe you would), and I only mentioned Song Editing because the thought of you doing Song Adding never even crossed my mind. Yeah, I always thought you were that considerate. I thought for sure you knew it was something I couldn't do, and thus you would be gracious enough to not use it in this way for a battle like this, knowing that I couldn't do any of it.

If you had completely forgotten about it, I can see why you didn't think much about what you were doing, after all, you already gave permission for some people to upload music. However, I'm not on that list (and probably won't make it at this rate for bringing it up this way =/ ) so it shouldn't come as a surprise to you if I tell you I seriously thought you were using the last few minutes of TDV to perform an action only you could perform (between the 2 of us) just to further some sort of personal vendetta. Like what the other people said, that didn't seem like something you would normally do, since you do participate in Netplays and I love watching the recordings, so there was no choice but for me to think of it as being something personal. I couldn't figure out what I had done wrong to make you so angry (well, aside from maybe somehow making you dislike my screenshots), so I thought I would poke you to see what you'd say. I thought I was just imagining the worst. Then, when the response I received was something along the lines of “oh, she's already won it once so it's totally fine to steamroller over her, never mind that she can't possibly do any of those actions and there's no need to feel sorry for her because she had it coming,” I just couldn't keep it in anymore. I didn't think this was the Davideo7 I had come to respect and follow all over the site. It made things worse when I just kept seeing you playing "G.O.D." (well, the full title is technically "G.O.D: Mezameyo to Yobu Koe ga Kikoe"), which seemed to be a subliminal message to me that you were happy to Lord that over me… and all for a reason I couldn’t figure out.

Earlier, you had sent me a screenshot warning which made me think you were trying to DQ me just to get rid of me, since it arrived on the day when you almost got a 7 pointer before I stopped you. Make no mistake, I understand your pain. So many times in the past, people have stopped me from getting 7 pointers with only 1 action so now I’m no longer surprised by it although it does still hurt on occasion. Thus, when the final battle came around, it felt to me like you went into God-Mode because you couldn't(?) or didn’t want to(?) DQ me for the same reasons everyone else got DQed for, which was mainly rating stuff too quickly. If we really want to get nitpicky about some things, this and this are also very similar to me, but I didn’t feel any need to point them out because I understand that even the best of us sometimes can’t make up their minds about which is the better screenshot to keep (I say keep both of them! =) ). Well, maybe except for the duplicate C-3P0’s on this page. Sir! Permission to delete the older C-3PO? Sir! I keep seeing pages like these and my OCD (it’s CDO!) really wants to press the button. x_X

For the two screenshots you mentioned for me though, they are part of a Tutorial, which is why I took care to upload them in consecutive order, not that anyone tends to understand that. x_X I take great pride in my screenshots, and hearing that you don’t like them is, well… *Heart breaks* If you didn't like my screenshots, you could easily have sent me a PM to tell me you didn't like them and what you thought was wrong with them. T_T For me, I take screenshots, vet them, and then upload only the screenshots that I feel are relevant to tell the full story in as few words as possible. Sometimes, the introduction to something is super long and I'll pull together a few screenshots that I think will tell someone how to play the game and what the main objective is. If it takes 2 consecutive screenshots that look sort of similar to tell the full story, then I put them up and allow my comments below to do the rest of the talking. Sometimes, only those 2 screenshots are the most significant in the entire introduction, so I will just put those up (that wasn’t the case for this game though). I’ve found that uploading Tutorials can also be helpful because some people don’t even realize they exist until they see them in screenshots on the game page. I'm sorry if you didn't like the way I was approaching each game as a story to be told. =/ If you would rather that I just take screenshots without any rhyme or reason to them, I have no problems with doing that. It would be less work overall anyways since I won't have to think about how to upload the sequences without breaking the flow of the stories. Sadly, that's how I've been approaching every single game ever since I joined Vizzed and no one has ever expressed to me that they disliked my story method so... that's a lot of work someone else is going to have to do to remove the screenshots you don't like. oO

From the very beginning, when I joined my first Screenshot Competition, I was always serious about my screenshots. As a newbie, when I accidentally uploaded duplicate screenshots, I would tag them in big letters, “Duplicate - Mods, please remove. Thank you^^” even though it might get me DQed completely from the competition, several times over. After a few days, when they were still not removed, I actually PMed the RGR Staff with the links to the screenshots to ask for their removal. I don’t know of anyone else that is foolish enough to do such a thing or even to call attention to their own duplicates, so if you feel I’m unsuitable for being a Screenshot Adder, please feel free to remove that role from me. However, please allow me to tell the next Screenshot Adder this before they receive some unpleasant surprises: each time I remove a tagged character, it removes my own CPs as well. Unless I tag the character again elsewhere, my CPs disappear permanently. I wonder if maybe that’s why some of the other Game Character Managers decided to quit working altogether (it's also part of the job). Also, if someone decides to be funny and tags a nameless tree as “Peach” from Mario, I am forced to remove that tag in the interests of preserving our beloved database and lose my CPs. It’s often better for me to just delete those screenshots, but I also love screenshots so I do my best to preserve all the ones that look nice, too (even if I have to remove my own CPs DX ). Sadly, this is one of the things that is not reflected in the CP Logs (or at least I haven't found the category for that yet), so it probably isn't even on the list of issues to be addressed.

Since we're on the topic of issues to be addressed, I guess I will bring this up as well: a lot of things on Vizzed are currently broken and I (along with many other users) aren't expecting you to fix them immediately, but it would be nice if some of the more important ancient problems could be prioritized so that new people won't keep rage quitting. Based on what you said, there are some other more serious issues that really need to be fixed before any more competitions begin again (such as TDV), where people will use those actions and be mistaken for using them intentionally, as in my case. =/ For instance, you brought up the issues of Character/Franchise Editing that were inherently there but being me, I didn't get access to the CP Logs until recently and even when I saw how the words showed up, I couldn't figure out what most of that meant. (I thought it appeared because I was adding characters right from the franchise area, but now that you mentioned it appears even for characters not in a franchise, this finally makes sense). Thank you for finally explaining it. No one ever told me about them and I guess that's because they knew no one but you could fix them or they thought it was better to just leave it alone since we weren't supposed to know about it anyways. Whatever the case, that fact never made it to me, so as I was reading your post, I was even a bit inclined to think that you probably only pointed out all those “things that shouldn’t have counted for the TDV” to try to make me feel guilty about doing things that I didn't even know about or that I didn't even know existed. After every comment, you kept saying that it's not my fault or that I just somehow didn't get a warning. For things like that, what could I possibly do about it if no one ever told me what I was doing was wrong to begin with? (By the way, there's a reason I never tried certain actions, and it's because I don't particularly enjoy crunching numbers, nor do I crunch numbers well. I suppose if I was better at math, I would have figured out there was something wrong with the Character Edits, but that's why I write and I’m not a mathematician.) As for the speed of Character Adding/Editing, I thought for sure that after seeing me add characters, you would have thought that 200 Character Additions and 1,020 Character Edits would probably be a better way to counter me rather than Song Editing or those other actions. As with most anything else aside from Song Adding and a few other actions, I wouldn’t have taken it the wrong way, because those actions are available to me as well. I would just be on the receiving end of whatever it is that most people complain about, and it wouldn’t have felt personal or anything. If anything, after hearing you talk about the errors in the database for the Character Edits, I’m actually more surprised that you hadn’t already gone out of your way to fix them, considering how serious of an issue you seem to think it is and considering that I’ve been adding characters so merrily for months now. I don’t mind if people want to say that my actions are too fast, but it’s not particularly nice to surprise us all by saying, “oh, by the way, you were performing illegal actions but you didn’t know it so you’re actually a bad competitor for the Green and you shouldn’t have participated to begin with.” I hope that’s not what you were intending to say by mentioning the “actions that should not have counted for the TDV” to me, because I’ve kept my conscience clear to the best of my knowledge/abilities and if I didn’t know about something, then I can’t help what happens and I can’t even begin to feel remotely guilty for it. (You can ask Zlinqx what I confess to him about. He’s probably tired of hearing me worry about expressing my real opinions on the Forums. Yeah. Just that. x_X One of these days, I’ll go into the Debate section… maybe. =/ ) In any case, fixing larger issues first is totally understandable and we would very much appreciate your hard work.

As for the recent Screenshot Competition, the other users, including deg2000 and tyranit, did have a few bad screenshots (bad image quality) and duplicates, but I deleted many of them when I saw them (well, some are still there) so I guess you didn't notice them. However, if you feel very strongly about letting tyranit win instead, you can go ahead and keep the 1st place prize. To me though, it’ll be my punishment for not having removed all of tyranit’s duplicate screenshots and all of deg2000’s bad image quality screenshots before the end of the competition (thus the results were skewed in favor of deg2000 rather than Dahaka).

Finally, before you belittle our efforts for the Steam games, please consider that I paid over double the amount of the cash prize for my computer those games, and thought it would be nice to take screenshots for the games that some people will probably not be able to even play for a while because their computers simply can’t handle it. In addition to that, you probably don't know how many games failed to take screenshots on Steam at all (apparently something in their settings doesn't allow me to take screenshots directly from Steam), so I was often forced to download yet another 6GB game and then try to get it to screenshot properly. For some of those games, I would spend precious time waiting for it to download and then ultimately discover it can’t even take screenshots properly; it’ll cut off the screenshots in the strangest ways possible. Unfortunately, those poor screenshots will never see the light of day, and they can’t possibly count towards anything for this site. You might have noticed that towards the end, I started trying to upload screenshots for smaller games to reduce the heartaches a little bit. This is why I was really amazed to see tyranit put up so many screenshots; it just means his computer could handle it and he had enough games in stock to be able to continue in the competition. This is also why I thought to commend him for his efforts, because I remembered how difficult it was for me to get some of those games to work.

As for the Green mattering a lot to me, yes it does, but not in the way that you probably think. As I mentioned, Green ribbons were for honoring my friends and for praying for their recovery. That TDV was awesome because of the team efforts. However, as I told a few people, I TOO wanted to see YOU wear the Green this time! I know, because you've only been talking about it since before last month, that you really wanted to win the Green, and we all thought, “why not?” because you are a competitor as well. Seeing your spirit, I was almost certain I would lose, but I decided I’d continue on so we would all have something to look forward to at the end of this TDV. I thought you understood that was what I meant when I said, “no matter how this TDV ends, I'll always cherish the precious memories of everyone and all the fun times in the TDVs I have participated in, including this one. ” And just so people wouldn't think you won by DQing everyone out of your way, I told you I wouldn't be throwing this competition so that no one could say you only got this Green by eliminating all your opponents in an underhanded fashion. I thought you understood the reasons I asked you those questions before our final battle, but I guess ultimately, you didn't. =/

Now that you have DQed yourself to give me the Green, I’m forced to make you angry by telling you I don’t want it. People would have talked negatively about you, but they will talk negatively about me, too. My reputation infamy is already bad enough without people saying Davideo7 got DQed from winning the Green Jersey because of me, and I’m sure the ones I was supposed to be honoring with this Green Jersey wouldn’t be happy with this kind of “glory” either, since they were proponents of good battles. Even if I received this Green now, I couldn't be proud of it. Much as I like the Green ribbons and they were in honor of other people, I too, along with THEM wanted to see YOU wear the Green. But I wanted to make sure that this final battle at least was one that would make you memorable for future Green Jersey contenders. Just… not quite like this. oO;; This gives all involved a bad rep and only creates misunderstandings about what the TDV is all about. All the new people will see is an OP Site Owner/Admin and they’ll throw in the towel even before they begin, or worse, they’ll try to hack you to get some laughs. =/

All I wanted was to know why you did what you did at the end, and since you answered me, I’m satisfied. As Barathemos said, the fact that you are still watching over and listening to the community means a lot to us all, and after hearing that you never had any intentions to hurt us, it would be perfectly fine with me if you wanted to reinstate yourself. (Just don’t do something that would be misinterpreted like that again! DX It causes us all so much unnecessary stress and makes us all wonder if someone managed to hack your account.) I’m sorry if I put you on the spot by posting in the main TDV thread, but I figured we all had to hear what you had to say. Here, I can also now proclaim to the public, “Let it be known to everyone on Vizzed that if Davideo7 wants to reinstate himself, it is perfectly fine with me.”

As I mentioned earlier, I already put up the Packers variation of my name on my Wall before this month (sorry, with your colors too, but they really do look nice), and I really would have been happy just looking at my Wall. (Please don’t quote me on that. oO;; It’ll sound so… nevermind.) This TDV could have been awesome but it ended with losses on all sides, and empty wins for the two of us. The fact of the matter is, I can’t be said to have won on my own strength for this battle like I wanted to if you’re just going to hand me the Green Jersey (and we all know how many people were DQed from the Green even before this battle began so I only appeared to be near the top), and people would begin to attack you for those last few(?) actions if you were going to keep this Green Jersey without DQing yourself. If you still don’t want to reinstate yourself (for the reasons you mentioned when you said you would DQ yourself), and if there is no way to give Greens to both of us, then is there a way to do something else completely? I would personally prefer a sparkly color script for my name anyways. One can dream. This is the craziest TDV I’ve seen so far, so my imagination is a little limited. For that, I’ve always trusted your wit and intellect, so please pardon me if I’m drawing a blank on how to remedy all of this. x_X What would you recommend? There are already too many empty spots on the TDV List for this time and we don’t even have a White Banner Winner.

In any case, this has gone on long enough and judging by some of what you mentioned (or rather, didn’t mention), you understood that something did feel off to everyone and thus it was a bad way to end the TDV. I’m glad we actually got to talk so that we could dispel the misunderstandings, and so that we can continue to respect you as our beloved Site Owner that (well, I do anyways) we still love to follow around. ^^

If you don’t mind telling me, what is it about the “G.O.D.” game that you enjoy so much? Personally, I love the music but I think with the amount of time you’ve spent in that game, it’s probably for something more than just the music?

Yuna1000 : First I'd like to say that I appreciate the prayers for my daughter, that means a lot .

Since that's a pretty big post, I'm going to make my response in order of reading your post. Hopefully I don't forget to respond to something but if I do, please let me know.

I completely forgot about the fact that I hadn't given you permission to upload music yet. I apologize for that. I usually have a lot going on with the site that I tend to overlook things or completely forget about things or just get too busy to get around to things. It's embarrassing to be honest how long it takes me to get around to taking care of things, responding to PMs and responding to posts so sometimes users might have to remind me of something a 2nd time because of how busy I get.

I actually had planned on trying to get as many PlayStation soundtracks added to the site before the month ended but due to a lot of things getting in the way, I ended up pushing it all off to the side until the last day. I really wanted to begin February with a near completely collection of PlayStation and Nintendo NES soundtracks but that didn't work out to be the case unfortunately.

The duplicate Toybox Turbos screenshot was a mistake. I had taken so many screenshots of the game that I kinda lost track of what I had submitted and didn't. As for the C-3PO screenshot, that was actually only taken for testing purposes for when I launched the Star Wars Screenshot competition last summer (basically I took the screenshot and tagged C-3PO as a test to see if it'd count as a point on the results page I put together). Otherwise I wouldn't have taken a duplicate screenshot of a screenshot that already exists. I can definitely see how you'd think that was spam though.

Trust me, I don't hate your screenshots, I just thought a few were too similar but me not knowing enough about the games that you took them from is probably ignorance on my part. I actually love seeing screenshots taken of various things like character select, level select, various menus, etc. I love seeing a variety of screenshots that thoroughly show off everything in a game. Months ago Ferdinand and I took 100s of screenshots of Monster Rancher 2 just showing off all of the possible monster combinations, I love stuff like that. Don't quite how you go about screenshots but maybe try and reduce the number of screenshots you take when it comes to screenshots that are too similar to each other and are of story.

I definitely appreciate the fact that you have similar visions as I do when it comes to our collection of screenshots and game characters and that you want things to be neat and organized, even if it means having to have your own stuff removed. That's the kind of mentality I think every staff member should have that have similar positions and it's also why I've always loved the screenshots Ferdinand has taken for the site because he also has the same vision. You and him are very similar in that sense.

I definitely planned to get a lot of things fixed before the next TdV and I'll also be making a thread asking users want needs to be fixed or changed before the next TdV begins. I take full responsibility for all of the flaws in the TdV and CP system since I'm the one who made them. Competing in the TdV is great for me to experience issues and flaws so it helps me come up with ideas and ways to fix them.

Good catch on tyranit's duplicate screenshots, I hadn't actually got around to looking into his screenshots. In that case, you definitely did deserve and earn 1st place in that competition.

I guess I sometimes forget how much work is involved with screenshot taking and adding so I definitely appreciate the time and effort you put into taking so many. That and video adding are actions that I've considered increasing the payout for because of how much work they require.

I've actually been trying to win the Green Jersey since 2015 Winter TdV but what always happens is, I start out strong, I end strong but somewhere in between I get really busy with either site related things or life related things. I do really appreciate that you even wanted to see me win the Green Jersey. I'm a very competitive person and to hear that even after you had been a strong competitor in that competition means a lot to me.

I'd really hate to take on the win of the Green Jersey again after all of this but if that's definitely want you want, just let me know and I can make it happen. Unfortunately with the way it's all scripted, it's not possible for 2 users to share a win. However, I can make 1 very rare exception to every rule I've ever had; I can give you an exclusive banner which will appear behind your name for this entire month. It wouldn't add any stat to your profile or to the TdV Hall of Fame but it'd my way of giving 1 last apology by giving your something special that no one has ever had. Tell me which color, any color (one that is or isn't already a banner color), that you'd like to have behind your name for the rest of the month and I'll make it happen

Davideo7 :

Thank you for replying to my previous posts! (Sorry they were so long, but that was what it took to cover everything.) That you were willing to respond to almost 8,000 words is truly admirable, considering how busy you always are, and I really do appreciate all of your responses! ^^ Also, it’s totally understandable if you forget about some things once in a while, since you obviously haven’t forgotten about the little people like us in the community.

I’m sure I’m speaking for more than just myself when I say we truly appreciate everything that you do for Vizzed and even if our thanks will probably never be enough, we hope you don’t mind hearing us say it over and over in hopes that at least a little bit of our gratitude will somehow reach you someday.

As for the updates, we hope you’re not stressing yourself out trying to implement them all at once! Much as we enjoy all of the new features, I’ve heard you mention that you’ve been taking meds for a while now to even go to sleep, so please remember to take good care of yourself, too! (For your family’s sake as well.)

About your screenshots, I’ve never considered any of them spam. One does not simply dare to think our Site Owner spams. I only mentioned C-3PO because I’m a curious being we happened to be on the topic of duplicates and I thought it was a good chance to ask you about it directly (I had just been wondering about it seeing as it went against your own rules). ^^0

As for my screenshots, you don’t know how happy I am to hear that we share similar visions. ^^ I’ll modify my current method according to the recommendations/advice you so kindly imparted and continue to do my best to take good screenshots for Vizzed! Uploading fewer story screenshots is fine with me; now that I think about it, I guess it does make sense to leave something for the players to discover on their own. lol

Wow, I never thought Ferdinand-sensei and I would be mentioned in the same sentence. XD Thank you so much for the compliments! I’m going to cherish them for the rest of my life!

Even before I joined Vizzed, I thought it was interesting that a Site Owner would compete in his own competitions because in many other sites/online games, Owners and Admins stayed out of their own events except to judge and hand out prizes. When they did participate, they sometimes did so just to God-Mode and show off their power/ability to squash everyone. When I read through past Vizzed competition threads and found that unlike those Owners, you were participating to “stay in the loop” so to speak, I decided to join Vizzed. It made me super happy to see that with every new competition, you were always thinking of ways to improve upon everything to make the events more fair for everyone, a fact that I’m sure most everyone on Vizzed appreciates. There will be those naysayers, but if one really thinks about it, we haven’t actually seen anyone post, “Don’t let Davideo7 participate! He’s cheating!” or anything even remotely similar to that; even if someone did post such things, the majority of us would just laugh at it and it would be ignored for being slander and spam. Also, I’m sure everyone appreciates your efforts to fix all the systems (e.g. the TDV, CPs, Viz, etc.), even if they don’t always agree with what you decide to test first. I hope you don’t mind if I consider what you do to be “tests;” it appears to me that you’re always running a lot of trials all around the site, all at once and it’s almost superhuman how you can keep all the results straight. lol (You even noticed that the payout for Video Submissions is a bit low! Whoa...)

About the Screenshot Competition, I thought of it as a great opportunity to learn about how my very first competition was judged, to see who the people were that had been keeping track of our progress for the competition. I had always wondered if it was the Globals or Locals or other Staff Members. As the days went by and no one else seemed to notice the duplicates, however, I gradually realized that it was actually up to me to watch over the competition. The revelation came a bit late, however, so I would like to apologize for not having gone ahead and deleted everything I saw that would skew the results. If I ever get the opportunity to participate in another similar competition, I’ll do my best to do a better job, starting from Day 1. In light of this, thank you very much for allowing me to retain my Staff position.

Finally, about the Green Jersey for this TDV, I’ve already made my proclamation so please feel free to reinstate yourself at any time if you would like to (I’m serious and I really do mean it). Anyone that has any doubts about what happened can just go ahead and read about the misunderstandings in this thread (it's essentially public knowledge now). Also, although I didn’t compete in the 2015 Winter TDV (I was just a newbie watching TDV for the first time), I did compete in the previous TDV and know that if it wasn’t for the servers going down so suddenly, you would have been a lot more active for that TDV. We all watched you upgrade the servers and your actions meant a lot to all of us, even if some of us didn't voice it. Since you prioritized your work on the servers to keep the site running instead of trying to compete in that TDV, we thought for sure that you would go all out for the Green in this TDV, and it would truly be a sight to behold(!)/wonderful for all of us to see you wear the Green. (Of course, whether or not you feel like wearing it this time would still be up to you. ^^ )

Wow, when I first posted my reply about the end of this TDV, I was preparing myself to lose everything, namely all of my dear friends on Vizzed and the ability to log in. From this perspective, I think you can understand how grateful I am to hear that not only are you going to allow me to continue to stay in Vizzed, you’re even willing to give me an exclusive banner. To quote Roy Mustang, “It’s beginning to rain now.” T_TNeedless to say, I’m extremely touched and it would truly be an honor if you could make such a banner for me.

Yuna1000 : Thanks, I appreciate the compliments.

Investing time into various actions on the site helps me determine if the action's payout is too high or too low. It gives me a better idea of how I can make it more balanced so yeah, you probably could say a lot of what I do is for "tests" lol. Most of the updates, new features, adjustments, etc. that I do involve some testing at some point. I even have a separate account dedicated to testing things out from an end user perspective lol.

I appreciate you keeping an eye on things for me in the various competitions that you have. Sometimes I get too busy to look into and take care of things myself so it definitely saves me time.

Whenever you're ready, just let me know what color you'd like the banner to be

Oh Yuna's banner changed color, that looks awesome lol (except the white one but...) 

Glad to see this is sorted out well lol

Wow, Yuna's name is pretty epic eight here, I think I counted 14 different colors and combinations.