Bureaucrat

Soldier responds to enemy attack in flip-flops and boxers.

Gates told an audience in New York about Specialist Zachary Boyd, routed from sleep by enemy fire on his post in eastern Afghanistan.
"He immediately grabbed his rifle and rushed into a defensive position clad in his helmet, body armor, and pink boxer shorts that said 'I Love New York,'" Gates said Thursday night.
Gates said Boyd, from Forth Worth, Texas, later told his parents he might get fired. Gates assured his audience at the Intrepid museum, and Boyd, that his job is safe.
"Any soldier who goes into battle against the Taliban in pink boxers and flip-flops has a special kind of courage," Gates said, adding that Boyd may have hit on a new kind of psychological warfare. "I can only wonder about the impact on the Taliban.

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Alright, although I'm a vet, at the same time I've been gone for a while, and yet I've noticed that a lot of people are pretty pissed off.

What's the deal? What are people so angry about? Is it the PvP thing? What is it, exactly?

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My summation of whats got people upset is as follows.
Issue 14 contained a great addition to the game. Unfortunatly this great addition contained some serious flaws that allowed for some really heavy exploiting, getting 1-50 in less than 3 hours type exploiting. Some people pointed this out in beta before it went live and it went live with only a couple of changes but with the main exploit still intact. A week or so later we have the anniversary event which has the welcome back event, and aparently a publishing blackout which means that the devs couldn't patch it for a week. With the massive increase in numbers we saw a massive exploit spike.
Positron makes a statement saying that they can and may punish exploiters if its deemed to be an extreme case. People panic and misinterpret the statement as being anti-farming or anti-PLing. 2 days later a clarifying statement is made and we are reassured that IF they decide to punish it will be for extreme cases and on a case by case basis.
A week or so later punishment gets handed out in the form of temp bans, however instead of case by case it seems that its scripted and as a result some people with level pacted characters who did not exploit anything get a temp ban because one toon goes from 1-50 in a couple minutes because another went from 1-50 in twice the normal time.
Once the punishment was handed out moderators smacked down every thread that was not the official thread, then the official thread got locked. Other threads are still being deleted.

In short, the developers, while being well within their rights to do so, seriously messed up in handing out punishments and rather than doing it on a case by case basis, opted for running a script which banned innocent users. The whole thing has been handled poorly.

personally I object to the level pacters being affected and to me that is the greatest problem with what has happened. I dont object to the devs handing out punishment, but I do object to how they did it.

thats the long and the short of it from my perspective.

Edit- My perception of time between positrons announcements were off, Niviene corrected it to accuratly reflect the sequence of events.

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Or? No.

If I wanted to play City of Bureaucrats, I'd have bought that game.

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OK. In the course of a mission, solo on heroic, my lowbies could defeat - let's see, 2-3 NPCs per spawn, a good 50 spawns or so - several hundred bad guys?

So I'd finish a mission, and spend the next three weeks in court just IDing them. >.<

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The fact that you don't spend 3 weeks Identifying them is exactly why they are right back on the street. Without a principal witness to their wrong doings the prosecution has no case and they are let go.


granted most thugs in atlas are just guilty of loitering with intent to commit an infraction and are promptly lit on fire or knocked 100 feet through the air by an energy bolt. Many prosocuters may feel that loitering or harassment charges may be dismissed in the interest of justice since the penal code typically doesn't include punishment by savage beating on the street.

while I am interested in the justice system of paragon, I don't neccesarily want to play through it.

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Better a Bum Soldier than a Bum Stalker. Just sayin..

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I Beg your PARDON! :P

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Could be a Bum Brute. I understand though that the bum set power proliferation is kind of on hold.

Bum Control is a bit overpowered and Bum assault needs re-colored for red side.

Doc Shok: Oh great, now instead of walking away like normal the bad guys are calling their friends over to watch.

It was not until the storm shaman forgot to wear pants that the heroes found out where the winds were being summoned from.

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In all honesty your entire analogy got ejected before short term memory whilst I was reading it; it wasn't
particularly succinct.

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Fair enough, I majored in philosophy and currently doing a masters in public policy and administration. I fear that being succinct and to the point has been beaten out of me.

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So -- if I take the carpool lane I don't know how to drive?

Remember (and this goes for everyone, not just the person I'm responding to): If you don't understand analogies then don't use'em. It's like a forklift and Christina Aguilera riding a golf cart.

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No. Read the first post again. The Bus is the power leveling part of the analogy, people can ride the bus, get there the fastest and never learn to drive.

Also I never claimed it to be a perfect analogy, just an analogy that was better than the over simplified two lane thing.

I understand the analogy just fine, and I can use it just fine.

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Point taken, but it was never said that Comm Officers was an exploit. With as obvious as it was, and as much as it was talked about, nothing was done to hide that fact either. So someone would have had to steal the restricted sign, or they just forgot to post it in the first place.

I don't disagree that the Comm Officers offered to much reward, or debating that they should have been removed, but about whether it was an exploit or not. I don't feel it was.

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We will have to agree to disagree here. I think the comm officers were a massive exploit in that they were not being used as intended and gave at specific levels extreme amounts of xp far and above anything else possible in the game. People knew this and exploited the heck out of it, I can't personally see how it isn't an exploit despite how long it took the devs to deal with it and despite how public it was.
To keep with the analogy its kind of like the last forest ranger that used it forgot to put the gate back the last time they used it and they didn't get around to either fixing the gate or closing it for a few weeks.

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However this road has signs saying that private vehicles are restricted from driving on the road and the test you took to legally drive says you have to stay on authorized roads


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Red Herring. Powerleveling and farming is not a illegal in Co* so your analogy is frivolous.

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never said it was. In fact in my analogy the carpool lane, ie power leveling lane was just fine (it got you there the fastest and you didn't have to even learn to drive). the forestry road is the analogy for the MEOW team/exploit road.

Maybe my analogy could have been clearer, but nowhere did I say that power leveling was wrong, only breaking the rules to get somewhere faster was.

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Should have known that carebears are hard headed too. Please continue to drive the scenic route and leave others alone.

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Doesn't take a carebear to point out a really bad analogy.

try this.

One road is a long busy scenic road, this road has three normal lanes, a slow, average, and passing lane, and a carpool lane where busses travel at fast speeds to get commuters home quickly without them ever having to learn to drive. The second road isn't actually a road at all, its actually a unpaved forestry service road that isn't intended for private vehicles to travel on. This service road is much much much faster to drive on since its 1/10th the length and for all intents and purposes its just as level and smooth as the normal road. However this road has signs saying that private vehicles are restricted from driving on the road and the test you took to legally drive says you have to stay on authorized roads.

So there are your choices, take the legal road, the one where you can get home really fast using a bus system, or you can take the illegal forrestry service road that you are not supposed to.

hows that for a more accurate yet still not perfect analogy.
No one is saying you have to enjoy the scenery, nor are they saying that you have to drive the speed limit or get home at the same time everyone else does. All that most rational people and Positron is trying to say is that you have to get there using the legal road and not using exploits.

Power level, farm, or play how you want just do it within the boundries of the system and if you come across something that seems odd, something that just doesn't seem to be working right then report it rather than exploit it.

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the game is a farm. nuff said. every mish could be looked at as farming, you enter kill baddies, get glowies, do whatever other objectives and do another one that is very close to the last mish. so for all farmer griefers remember one thing, the only difference is that farmers like to rince,wash and repeat and non-farmers complain about it.

bottom line is everyone farms in one way or another, if you admit to it thats a different story. if you can honestly tell me you never went to the sewers when you started out for faster levels then you can talk, everyone does sewers when you start a new toon. sewers=low level farming.

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the only time I ever went to the sewers was for a mid 40's arc I think where I had to hunt some hydra or rikti in the abandoned sewers.

I never go to the sewers on any of my new characters, ever.

I don't think you can catagorize the entire game as farming. Farming is more of running the exact same map or arc over and over and over again to get the rewards. Typically the arc or mission being farmed is one with higher than average rewards tied to it. Running an arc or mission once isn't farming, its playing.

I tend not to farm, I find it really boring, but I don't begrudge anyone who does farm. I just think that trying to label everyone as a farmer and the game as a whole as a farm is not accurate to say the least.

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really? ALL your toons have the most elite ios, totaly purpled out and with no farming and dont in a reasonable about of time? Im seriously doing something wrong then.

I totaly agree with you about the devs closing exploits. they do and should.

reread posi post. all that was was whining and ranting. reg players have been flamed for far less. but yea there were a lot of players that were whining also. 2 wrongs dont make a right though. and thta does go both ways. for the devs as well as players.

As for the market. NO the market was not fine. not by any means. At least not villains side. Hell its not fine now buts its a hell of a lot better then it was before tickets. the prices have dropped on all the rare stuff, common salvage is now worth something. But how long will it last

As far as the testing of the tickets. ill go and double check but really SaintTzu already has. he got what ..75-100 tickets first mission then 118 or something like that the second. you can get better rewards if ya ran a paper mission. they are just as fast. But they are a hell of alot easier and with better rewards. So do we

A) Nerf paper missions now?
B) Only use the risk vs reward scenario when its convenient reason to nerf something?

Also , plz try to rationalize why they gave all melee toons overpowered range attacks? I completely under stand them adding range attack for exploit reasons. that i saw coming but the range damage on some is just sick.

Lastly why are they banning accounts and locking out MA slots if they admitted they knew players would farm certain things. Yet lock them out. Kinda like a kid telling his friends they can play with his toys. Then start crying cause they actually played with them. Like he knew they would. But if you dont call it childish what would you call it out of curiosity?

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My one toon that I run more than anything and is my only level 50 has as many purple sets as I want to have on him and is IO's to the gills and with no farming. My other toons that I don't care that much about have been frankenslotted really well for their level and with no farming and not even a need to transfer any inf. I used the market. In the end I don't even need IO's to play I just like to have them for kicks because I don't have to replace them every so often.

As far as Positrons post I suggest you re-read it. To me it didn't come off as whinney or as him throwing a tantrum, it came off as reminding people that they can be dealt with if they keep exploiting the system as they have and that the worst offenders MAY lose access to a character and if they continue to abuse the MA system by using exploits in the system then they can lose the privilage of using that system. All of that info was made public when I14 hit beta. We were told up front that we could loose access to MA if we chronically abused it. Posi was reminding people that they can and will take action if they deem it neccesary but also said that it would only be fore the most eggregious of offenders.

Giving a ranged attack to all melee mobs was neccesary to put a plug in the exploitation that was happening with people hovering out of melee range and sniping from safety. Personally I have yet to test these new changes and if what I am hearing is true then maybe the ranged attack needs to be looked at. I also understand that come I15 we will have much better control over what mobs have what powers. I would suggest joining in one of the training room threads about it and offer constructive alternatives to the ranged attacks that solves the problem of the risk free hover sniping while not being over powered. I agree that the fix was at best a band-aid and not a very good one for the situation.

As far as the banning thing goes, once again they never threatened to ban farmers for farming MA, they threatened to maybe possibly lock toons that were heavily exploiting the system, which is a far cry from farming. Its more like a kid letting another borrow his toy and then get angry when the other kid breaks it. I would bet the kid whos toy got broken would not let the other kid keep playing with his toys. Thats not childish, thats being reasonable. A slightly better analogy would be that a friend wishes to borrow your car so he can get to work the next day. You don't need the car tomorrow so you agree and hand your buddy the keys. Three days later your friend comes back with the car, the windshield is cracked, theres 15,000 more miles on it, the gas tank is empty, the seats are trashed, and there is an expired prostitute in the trunk. I imagine getting angry and telling your friend you would never let them borrow your car again would not be childish but reasonable.

I disagree with positron in retroactivly punishing the heavy exploiters even though he has full authority to do so, and would be reasonable in doing it. I feel that this particular exploit, the meow farms, would have been dealt with very differently if it wasn't happening in the midst of a publishing blackout period. I imagine it would have been fixed a whole lot quicker, but because they couldn't touch it they had to remind people of the rules. I feel that the better course of action would be to remind people of the rules and put a line on the sand and say from this day forward if anyone seriously abuses an exploit they will lose that character.

In the end I dont begrudge a farmer for farming. They pay the same as me to play the game and as long as it doesn't impact me I don't care. I personally don't have the time to farm and like to play with what little time I get to play the game. I don't see a lot of the devs actions as being heavily anti-farming but rather a way to try and future proof themselves against exploiting.

Again I would suggest, if you think 1500 tickets is too low, develop a comparison between MA missions and regular missions that lay out what the rewards are per minion and see if there is a massive difference. Its my experience that the devs respond better to hard numbers proving a point than pure hyperbole.

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really? so whast gonna happen when you want to io out a toon but wait.... there no ios at the Bm cause of the ticket nerf. like it or not but villain side market has always been in a rough state. Then the devs say o we gonna nerf rewards again and give ya merits. that foollish decision and had literally destroyed what was left of the market. then we get tickets (yay) instant influx of ios and ppl now able to by things that werent currently there. now there nerf and your saying tickets dont matter. your glad there nerf cause now you can run your stories with teams that enjoy the story and dont care about rewards or the rest of the ppl in th game. kinda short sideed and selfesh of ya aint it?

As to the remark of calling midas a farmer. you say it like its a bad thing. whether he is or isnt is besides the point. whether you or the devs like it or not farmer and farming in essential to this game. If it wasnt for farmers, and farms. where would you get your ios from? certainly not from the few merits you get as you lvl to 50. where do you think most of the io come? You think prices are high now? lets kick all the farmers out of the game and lets see how the market is then.

Its the farmers that are selling services for RL money that is the problem. not the players that farm so they can have ios for there alts or have the inf to buy the ios they need. the devs and the players need to relize that there are 2 very distinct types of farmers.

lastly, im really getting sick of hear about the devs whining like children about farmers. They may be great video game developers but there business skills severely lack. If they truly wanted LESS farming then they need to stop nerfing rewards. and actualy give a NICE boost to drop rates. It will only creates more farming so the players can get the enhancements they want/need sometime before the servers go dead. But there actions say they want more farming and want something to whine about. They nerf rewards time and time again. Any time the villain market started to look good they nerf something. this time it was ticket. last time it was merits. Yes merits was a nerf. between giving us a 24hr timer and dimishing returns you couldnt earn as many ios in the same 24hr period as you could before merits. Befor some says "well now you can buy what you want". Big deal ya need 200+ merits. the old system you could earn enough ios to trade/sell to buy what you wanted alot faster then you can earn 200+ merits.

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Here is the thing. This cap wasn't put in place to stop farming, it was put in place to prevent eggregious exploits like the meow farms from errupting like they did. 1500 per mish is reasonable, if you think its unreasonable, please prove it with some kind of evidence that shows that 1500 tickets is a significant reduction in rewards to what can be accomplished in a normal mission of comprable size.

I have never farmed for IO's, I never felt the inclination to do that, and yet all of my characters are IO'd out because I used the market, sold my drops, and was patient with the market. The IO's will be there and the ticket "nerf" will do nothing to impact the market at all. The market will in fact probably be better despite the "ticket nerf"since it was doing fine before it.

Your position on the devs "whining like children over farmers" is just not based in reality. They didn't whine, they didn;'t throw a childs tantrum. You really want to see what a childs tantrum looks like go back to that initial post where Positron set his foot down and see all the /ragequits from the sock puppets. read all the posts from the hard core farmers threatening to quit and the rabid anti-farmers feeling vindicated for no reason. The devs put these actions in place to curb exploiting, not farming. Exploiting the system is bad, very very bad. I have not really seen the devs ever really "nerf" rewards, in fact they usually adjust rewards up, they did so for merits in regards to not just the number given, but they also reducedthe cost of rolls.

I guess I really don't see the big deal unless someone actually posts some evidence in regards to how some missions are set up and what the average rewards are in game vs MA and if they are comparable.

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QR

i could understand them adding a ticket cap because they dont want poeple capping their tickets in one mish. but 1500 tickets, which includes the bonus, is WAY too low. it would take 2 runs to get even the cheapest gold roll and 1 run isnt even worth 3 silver rolls. i think if they want to put ticket limit in, increase the ticket limit to at least 3000 or 4000 which is worth 1 gold roll. i still play MA stuff becaus i can make good money and such, but i rather not read stories, i rather play fun and exciting mishs and reap the rewards that actually reflect the difficulty of the mish.

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You do realize that the 1500 is for a single mission right? two missions with capped out rewards would be equal to a low level gold roll, a reward previously only available through task forces and costing 25 merits. three missions can give you up to the highest level gold roll and enough left over for some other stuff as well.

I think the level is fine the way it is. Its enough to reward people well enough for playing while still making it profitable to run regular missions. I think one gold roll a mission would be too much.

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By far the most articulate post yet. But my point is farm missions in AE appear to be bannable based on my current understanding of this new system.

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Then your current understanding is highly flawed, much like this idea.

Please quote where posi said farming alone was bannable. Please.


I will save you some time.
You can't. Why? because its not there. If its decided to punish some people it will be for abusing exploits in the system and not for farming.

Once again.
farming is not a bannable offense, using exploits is.

I know you still wont understand, but I had to try.

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I heard a brick graduated summa [censored] laude from Mojave High School.

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censorship made this statement that much more interesting.

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Thanks Bureaucrat, but in rebuttle, the reason that I chose those powers is primarily because it is new and different. That is the basis of its appeal. Maybe the secondary would be better suited for a Defender primary or something else. But I would like one toon to be able to use both sets. I could take some nerfing on the abilities as well, like the dragon could only breathe fire. That would be fine. The same goes to the team support powers like Riigenatus Emoveil, you could take away the team +Regen, as long as the foe -Regen stayed.

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It is different, but there is an issue of balance. Blasters are the glass cannons, their job is to do massive amounts of damage, their secondary adds some melee and a few self buffs that help them deal more damage. Debuffing is strongly in the defender or controller job description and they can use that strong tool because they have much less damage output.

You could easily make it a defender set by taking out a hold and adding another debuff. As a defender set, spawning a single pet at the end wouldn't be out of the ordinary either. Heck toss out the buffs/debuffs and add more holds and its a controller primary.

With some modification it could be a solid debuff set, or control set, with some major modification (toss out team buffs and debuffs and tier 9 pet summon) it could be a good blaster secondary.

The primary looks ok, but the secondary requires a lot of work to bring it more in line with what the other blaster sets have for a secondary.

No other blaster set has that level of debuffs/team buffs. in fact all buffs in a blaster secondary are self only. a PBAOE heal and a summon in a blaster secondary? Also 2 holds may be a bit too much as well as the team buffs.

A hold and an immobalize would bring it in line as well as adding say a sleep spell, but not 2 holds and an immob. The team buffs I would say would have to be scrapped in favor of some kind of self buff in line with aim, build up, boosted range, etc.

The summon would also have to be scrapped I would say, devices is the only other blaster set I can think of that summons anything and the auto turret is kind of a one trick pony.

Instead of the massive summon in the end and the team buffs you can still have some kinds of summons, say like the little vet pets that are untargetable and grant +per and +acc like a targeting drone.

sounds like an interesting concept, but the secondary is far too overpowered for a blaster secondary.

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All here who passionately embraced the MA and are now ready to walk away raise their hands...


*looks around the room...*

Ok. hold on while I go get a calculator.

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You really need a calculator to count yourself?

and I thought I was bad at math.

If you don't want to farm, dont farm. Its really that simple.

there is nothing you can do to stop farming from happening, nothing at all. All the devs can realistically do is stop exploitive farming from happening, creating really weak custom minions, or only placing mobs that grant abnormally high xp. However creating maps for the purpose of farming can not be stopped.

Honestly, its that persons 15 a month, and how they play has no real effect on me. I know what I am doing, I can still form a team when I want, if I want to run a task force, I will either jump on one that is forming, form my own, or come to the boards to start a sign up, just like I did before I14.

In short, Mission Architect is just fine as it is.

I did one mission from the mission architect. Not a farm mission, not a lame badge mission, just a regular 5 mission arc that was fairly well written. I walked away with 800+ tickets. I spent half on random rolls, most were for low level arcane salvage. I got about 8 luck charms and a some runebound armors and a bunch of other desirable stuff. I put it all on the market for 10 inf and sold everything right away.

just take the random low level salvage roll and walk away with a boat load of luck charms.

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Siphon more cash from the masses. How about some cool free stuff?

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Well there's this new thing out now, you might have heard of it, it's called "Freedom of Choice."
Yes, new “Freedom of Choice” with “Askitol” allows you to ask questions about products to make informed decisions before you choose to buy.

But wait! There’s more! “With Freedom of Choice” You actually can choose to NOT buy!! That’s right, new “Freedom of Choice” puts the decision making power in YOUR hands! You can actually refuse to buy any product at your very own discretion!!

But wait! There’s still more…
With new “Freedom of Choice” you don’t need to stop at the purchasing of products, you can actually use “Freedom of Choice” with virtually any decision making process.

Use it for all these everyday applications:
- Boxers or briefs?
- Ginger or Mary Ann?
- Chinese or Italian?
- Umbrella or chance it?
- Making unnecessary posts that could possibly make you look like a butthead on game forums
- And more!!

And best of all, for those who are ever on the lookout for “some cool free stuff” new “Freedom of Choice” is absolutely FREE!!!... COOL!!

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But aren't there some serious risks with freedom of choice™ ?

And how does this magnificent product influence my life? I am a married male age 18-35. How could this freedom of choice™ benefit me?

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Noooo! Moooooosssseeeeessssss!

I have family that work in the area, and they claim Worcester had just finished having that statue restored.

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Thats nothing, we had a guy here try to bribe a jury member with 30 bucks on his loitering with intent to solicit a prostitute trial. Turned his misdemeanor into a felony. Add to this the fact that in the early 90's the guy had two prior serious violent felonies and he just turned his tiny misdemeanor into a potential third strike.

in other news, this kind of relates to the urine coins from a page or so ago and one potential conclusion of it. Pro tip: when paying your fines, do not wipe excrement on it.