The project lost almost all of its meaning for me in mid-December, because this was the point at which the major components of my drive to work on it were lost.
I derive satisfaction and worth from the improvement of a flawed design, and from the polishing of a rough gem into something approaching a diamond. The design, however, must demonstrate potential to become great. I realized in late November and early December that I would be unable to solve the problems with the core concepts of RvR and vertical gear progression/balance, which made playing the game such anathema to me. At that point, this element of the drive I had died - I could no longer respect the game.
As a result, I'm not willing to put major effort into refining small concepts, like melee healing, which generate a ton of controversy and complaint both inside the team and outside of it, for a game that is in my opinion very deeply flawed. It's not worth the effort and that pushback is certainly something I can't handle any more.
I also, for quite personal reasons, need to feel as though I'm making personal progress from the work that I do, and increase my own perceived worth. It was made clear to me by one of the later posters in a topic from that time that not only would solving the problems of RoR fail to benefit me in this way, as there would be no wider respect for this and it would be irrelevant in the future, but that my own apparent need to serve as some kind of messiah that the game ultimately did not need was causing discontent within the playerbase. I was accomplishing the opposite effect to what I had intended. Not only that, but time spent thinking about game design is time not spent thinking about or writing code, which is the only valuable thing I would take away from here. These realizations deter me further from contributing any modifications.
Those who have observed me likely harbour suspicions that something isn't quite right with me. I used to have very high uptime on the project and a passion that went beyond what might be expected for a project like this. This is because I've been using this project as an escape from some personal issues in reality. I won't go into them, but part of the problem is that I cannot allow myself to fail. This powers my usual stubbornness and relentlessness in attacking a problem, and my passionate defenses of my positions and viewpoints. However, I failed where it counted most - in RvR and on balance - and unlike past failures, I failed in a very permanent way. There is nothing I can do to fix this game.
As you have seen from the changelogs, I make very, very limited contributions now. The loss of this project as an outlet combined with some other RL circumstances have led to me not being able to concentrate on doing even the smallest things for the project, let alone engaging with the community in the manner that I once did. I hold my rank both because I occasionally post to confirm internal workings and mechanics of the emulator, and because I hold the idea that in the future, I may be able to reconcile these issues and contribute to the project again, in the pure role of a developer rather than a designer or player. But given the state of things at the moment, that could be a long time in coming.
I apologise if some find this explanation overdetailed to the point of arrogance, but I guess I feel it's appropriate for me to set things out like this because of the presence I formerly was.
Just know that your work hasn't gone unnoticed whatsoever.
