I sorta like it….

Cheaters cheated. That makes it way too easy to get out of the popularity hole caused by cheating.

This is easy?  In order to get your Popularity restored to zero, not only would this proposal have to pass, but additionally you would have to convince at least three Olympians to forgive you.

I proposed this to make the home stretch of this dynasty a bit more of a close race: as it is right now, there are basically three Olympians who have a significant number of Medals: Doremi, Chin and me.  But Chin and I both have Popularity at -9, which means that the multiplier kills our chances.  The opportunity for forgiveness would even the playing field.

*cough*

Where did my reply to this go?

All this takes is four cheaters to remove the effect from them having cheated. Cheating is bad. The people who cheated deserve their punishment.

for obvious reasons

Remeber if you really want to get out of the hole, you can sell your medals. But it isn’t fair that Doremi can not cheat, only to get burned by those who cheated and got all the penalties removed.

“Cheating is bad”.  You’re acting as if “cheating” (within the context of the ruleset of this Dynasty) carries ethical baggage, rather than simply being a label for a technical concept under the Rules.  If it were called “Accelerated Training” rather than “Cheating” (and “Assisted Rehabilitation” rather than “Forgiveness”), would you still feel this way?

No. I wouldn’t. But it is called “cheating” for a reason—its like taking steroids. The public still hasn’t forgiven real life cheaters, why should they forgive you guys. The penalties for cheating were designed to be very strict to discourage people from doing it. I don’t see why we should lighten up the penalties just because popularity helps achieve victory.

*notices that Doremi actually has cheated, just never got caught*.

That’s a nonsensical aspect of our cheat system—you can notice it all you want, but can’t do anything unless the roll is right.

Also, you can cheat so that no one notices it, no one knows about it, and still get “caught”.

To my mind, a few people cheated, we were just the ones that got particularly bad luck and got caught.  Because of that bad luck we are now out of contention for the rest of the dynasty.  There should be SOME way to fix this.  Mabey add a cost to doing so?

You are still in contention;  You just need to earn twice as many medals.  Also, there is already a method of raising your popularity (by giving up a few medals).