Balance Forum Rules [Updated 3/7/12]

Nacho Wrote: Well I know it was like that before you came along, and that's what I've been going on this whole time. I'm still not entirely sure why we even need a first phase. All it does is slow down the process. If the Balance Council doesn't want a card changed, they have a perfectly good opportunity to do that while voting for changes, by voting "no change". Something like a 5 day waiting period before votes can begin with no phase one would be a lot simpler.

(10-19-2011 12:23 AM)Blue_Elite Wrote:  Not that this is the right thread to debate this in but I think it works nicely as a fail-safe. Basically it's 2 chances to say a card shouldn't be changed. Like in this case where 1 council member is pro change and the other two are undecided. The first phase is a "oh shi-itake mushrooms I better figure out where I stand on this" to the undecided party.
If we discussed changes one thread at a time I'd agree there's no point in the delay, but the council are human with lives of their own and it's easy to lose track of things when there are 10 active threads going on at any time.

That would only make even the slightest bit of sense if council members couldn't change their votes, and even then it wouldn't make much. Councilmen have infinity chances to say a card shouldn't be changed, or at the very least one chance per moment they have access to a computer with an internet connection. Assuming a reasonable amount of time before votes start (it wouldn't even need to be required- our councilmen are notoriously slow to vote for anything) and a reasonable amount of time after they've ended but before the thread closes, that gives 2 reasonable amounts of time for undecided councilmen to decide on something, and a decided one to decide on something else. That's twice as much time as is reasonable.

Stage 1 seems to be little more than an artifact of balance forums past. We had it before, so we'll have it now, even though it's no longer relevant to the balance process.