Arilou
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Posts
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Joined
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Isn't there the "Good Circle of Thorns" earth? (although I think they turned good after wiping out everyone else way back when so that might be an YMMV thing) where the COT are pacifists?
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Quote:Dracula is very, very public domain.Originally Posted by SuperOz
Comic book Blade wasn't that interesting, ultimately, and it's bound up in other copyright (the van Helsings are involved, the Harkers...so there's that whole estate that may not be letting them have access). The closest they've gone to the supernatural route in a while has been with Morbius, so they may be avoiding the 'classic' Blade mythology until they can work that out. I had some thoughts about the movies also.... -
Right now it feels like Statesman is going to be the one to bite it, but I can also see them pulling the switcheroo at the last minute.
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Quote:It's not a lie, it's just misleading. It shows what it says it shows: The average time a person has to spend in the queue before joining. The problem is that since most leagues are pre-formed they skew the average time very low.Originally Posted by Jagged
The 3 or 4 minutes is a LIE!
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Quote:It's not strictly speaking breaking the fourth wall, but there is a term for this kind of... meta stuff. Eg. an actor referring to his actions as part of a play, even though he doesen't LITERALLY mean that. Which wouldn't be strange if it happened IRL but because it happens in a play it's kind of nudging at the fourth wall.Originally Posted by Lazarillo
I don't really think it was a "break the fourth wall" moment as much as a "Malaise thinks of himself as an artist" moment.
Malaise isn't (in character) breaking the fourth wall, as in referring to the player/his own existence as a character in a computer game. He's referring to "the story" on a diegetic level beneath that, the story of his life and deeds. -
Quote:Actually, Ms. was re-adopted as a way to refer to women whose marital status was unknown eg. in formal letters. (originally "Miss", "Mrs." and "Ms." were simply derivations of the same word, "Mistress")Originally Posted by Tenzhi
"Ms." was an abbreviation for "Miss" that was adopted in the 70s or early 80s with a slightly different pronunciation in order to appease idiots who thought "Miss" was insulting but who were fine with the same word said by a drunk person and written as an abbreviation with a period. They should have at least pushed for it to be written without the period, or to be written as "Mz." short for "Miz". Or, better yet, just accepted that "Miss" need no longer be attached to marital status.
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Quote:Not to mention that Malaise is mad, and reading mad people's minds is generally unhealthy.Originally Posted by Tenzhi
Typically, it's considered a serious ethical violation to force one's way into someone's mind and pull out whatever information one wants.
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Actually Maelstrom's henchmen show up quite a few times. Riptide in the Sutter TF, and the rest of the gang in the Power Loyalist storyline in Praetoria. (where there's quite a bit of interaction with them)
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The reason the incarnate system needs to be incentivized at a higher (not neccessarily different, but they picked that way) level than regular content (exception: Hami and Mothership raids) is becuase they require a lot more people. More people=more time required to get it going=More time=More Rewards.
That's really it. -
Quote:*Happy Campers* want to have a *party* in my *house*? We could *dance*!Originally Posted by AzureSkyCiel
Well, at worse they could have made Dillo COMPLETELY incomprehensible and speak like the Orz from Star Control.
Which, actually would be a little cool. -
Quote:But the chance of one sample in three being off by 2 sigma is much larger than 5%.Originally Posted by halfflat
No, that's not so.
To use more of the data though, let's consider the hypothesis that the rare drop rate in the 20110628 build was less than the rare drop rate in the builds on either side, which was the same in each (let's ignore build 20110405 on the grounds that we know they changed the drop rates between that and the next build.)
In builds 20110426 and 20110913, in total, there were 37 rare drops and 141 non-rare drops. Comparing with the 16 rare, 103 other drops from 20110628, we getP(rare drop in 20110913 or 20110426 more likely than rare drop in 20110628) = 95%
If anything, the evidence is stronger.
All of this though is under the assumption that drop rates are constant throughout each build, and constant across trials and archetypes. This might not be so.
I do agree that the fact that we're assuming that drop rates are completely random (and not based on any factors within the trials, performance, AT etc.) is a major uncertainity factor.
I haven't actually read that post, so it's kind of irrelevant.Quote:When Leandro put out his Hundred Trials Later post, he wasn't subjected to the same degree of scrutiny that you are putting out in this thread.
So yes, it's unusually low, however, it's a pretty large marigin of error (17%) Considering we don't actually know the numbers we're deviating from...Quote:I see. So what he actually has is:
04/05/11: 17 / 82 = 20.7% rare
04/26/11: 24 / 121 = 19.8% rare
06/28/11: 16 / 119 = 13.4% rare
09/13/11: 13 / 57 = 22.8% rare
What he is saying is sounds about right -- the third result is unusually low. By eye, it looks like a 2-sigma (i.e. 1-in-20; sigma is jargon for standard deviation) effect. However, keep in mind that these aren't actually that rare. If you take multiple sets of these samples, chances are you will run into them for a particular sample sooner or later. With 4 samples, the probability that 1 will be off by 2 sigma is about 17% or 1-in-6. -
Quote:He's been running four samples though. The chance of one of them being off is indeed 1/20, but the chance of one of four being off is 1/6. (or so)Originally Posted by halfflat
It turns out that if you're trying to tell if the underlying probabilities have changed, you don't necessarily need that much data at all - it depends on how different the results are.
Compare the rare drop rate between the June and September builds:20110628: 16 rare drops, 103 other component drops
Just eyeballing the figures, it looks like the chance for a rare drop has increased between the last two builds.
20110913: 13 rare drops, 44 other component drops
Starting with the assumption that we don't know anything about the relative drop rates, we can model our confidence in the probabilities of a rare drop by a Beta distribution: for the two builds, P(rare drop in 20110628 build) ~ Beta(16,103) and P(rare drop in 20110913 build) ~ Beta(13,44). The most likely drop rate for 20110628 is 16/(103+16) = 13.4%, and for 20110913 is 13/(44+13) = 22.8%, but given the limited data, how likely is it that the rare drop rate actually increased between the two builds?
The confidence that X > Y when X ~ Beta(a,b) and Y ~ Beta(a',b') is given by a fun double integral of f(x+u;a,b)f(x;a',b').dxdu, with x and u ranging from 0 to 1, and where f(x;a,b) is the pdf of Beta(a,b). Plugging the numbers in and computing gives:P(rare drop in 20110913 more likely than rare drop in 20110628) = 94%.
Based on the data given, there's roughly a 19 in 20 chance that the underlying drop rate for rares has actually changed (increased) between the two builds. Alternately, you could say there's only a 1 in 20 chance that these observed changes are just a result of random chance.
Looking at the very rare data, the raw numbers indicate that very rare drops have decreased between the two builds, but because there are fewer drops to work with, the results have lower confidence. With:20110628: 11 very rare drops, 108 other drops
the calculation gives:
20110913: 4 very rare drops, 57 other drops
P(very rare drop in 20110913 build less likely than very rare drop in 20110628) = 72%.
So there is some evidence indicating that the very rare drop rate has decreased, but it's very weak: it easily (about 30% chance) could just be a result of random variation. We'd need more data to be sure.
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Quote:I'm trying to wrap my head around the formula myself, but based on what other people have calculated, you have around 50% chance of that result simply being a case of random chance.Originally Posted by Snow Globe
I'd say that a 6%-10% drop is significant.
To be able to have a 95% certainity of the drop (which is standard statistical certainity, used for most kinds of polls) you'd have to run a bit over a 1100 trials, and get the same result. (eg. you had to run 1100 trials in your third period and 1100 trials in your second and 1100 trials in your fourth period, to have a useful basis of comparison)
50% certainity is just too low to make any kind of conclusions. It means your results are as likely to be the results of random chance as from a change in the drop rate. -
Quote:Not really, you only have about 100 instances in your various data sets. That's a pretty low number and gives a pretty decent chance for simple randomness to play a part.Originally Posted by Snow Globe
I'd say that a 6%-10% drop is significant.
Uncommon has an equal or larger drop chance than commons? (which wouldn't be unexpected either, if they assume we'll get most commons from thread drops)Quote:For those nay-sayers who insist all the components have a fixed drop rate, feel free to explain this abundance of "uncommon" being more common than "common" -
Hmmm, while I think the overall numbers are probably decent, the so-called drop in rares is probably not statistically significant.
My gut feeling was about % chance of a VR and 20% of a rare, and that seems consistent with this data, though. -
Quote:And that I agree with you on. It's clearly a hero (and to a lesser degree, Resistance) zone that got Co-op because... They couldn't be arsed to segregate their players. (the sad thing is that a few relatively minor tweaks could have made it at least acceptable in that regard, but no, they couldn't be arsed with that)Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
I've yet to see evidence to suggest this, though. It seems like it will just let Praetoria go to hell, not necessarily cross over to Earth.
But even if we accepted that this is the case... Are we really telling THAT story again? Heroes and villains must band together to fight a common enemy. We did this in the War Zone, we did this in Ourobors, we did this in Cimerora, we did this in the Incarnate Trials... Are we seriously doing this in First Ward, too?
See, I get that there isn't a true "villain" path through First Ward. It's the old "hero path that's depressing" approach to moral ambiguity. I get that. Technical limitations and all that. But I'm just tired of the "greater threat" theme. It's not bad in its own right. Hell, it's actually pretty good. I'm just tired of EVERYTHING being a greater threat and of villains constantly being roped in to save the world and sideline their own interests. -
Quote:To be fair, that kind of ties into the larger thematic point of the Last Word being a ruin full of outcasts and castaways, the lost and the forgotten.
Nothing from the greater world of Praetoria affects First Ward (save for a few small exceptions) and nothing from First Ward affects anything else.
I don't think the storyline is ended, btw. (the fact that they mentioned they have enemies for the FW enemy groups that go beyond the level-limit of the zone kind of points to this). If nothing else the MoM is almost certainly going to be a trial location.
Except that it wouldn't stay confined to the First Ward. It'd engulf all of Praetoria, and with the ongoing war, probably Primal Earth as well.Quote:And, no, "First Ward goes to hell" is not a good enough reason when I can just leave -
Quote:Considering how he ends up... Yeah. That's almost certainly deliberate.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
But that just reduces her character to a two-dimensional carbon copy of CERULEAN from the same zone.
And as mentioned, First Ward is a really simple story. (really a couple connected ones but...) It's not *bad* (to be bad, I think, something has to be more than just vaguely uninteresting, it needs to actually be offensive in some fashion) but it's not a particularly well-written story. (although some individual bits and pieces of it are)
But then again, so is about 99% of the stuff in the game. (The other 1% basically being some of the Praetorian content) "Here's bad guy with motivation. Bash bad guy." They can vary that in a lot of ways, but it's not a complex plot.
Thematically the vengeance thing works. With First Ward as the abode of the dispossessed and cast-out. It's all about people who refuse to let go. -
Quote:Uh... They do say that. In her description, in her dialogue, in the clues... I'm honestly kind of stumped on how you managed to miss that.Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
They drop hints that said bad blood EXISTS, but never any explanation on WHY it exists or WHAT it is about.
Serene's Coven (that has a name, I just forgot it) was hunted down and killed. Serene is not a happy camper about that, she wants Vengeance, so she summons the Talons. The Talons can't find the proper target to exact vengeance, and so they go off to murder everyone, because that's what they do.
EDIT: I Should not that I don't actually like the FW storyline that much, it has some interesting ideas but it tends to drop them off and never look back (the Survivor Compound, the Apparitions...) There's a bunch of running back and forth, and it's just not that engaging a story. Some of the enemy groups are nice, but they seem to suffer from the standard "only three enemy types" a lot of the time (and I really hate the Apparitions, they're incredibly boring to fight) especially after the awesomeness that was Praetoria it just feels... Weak.
That said a lot of the complaints are really baffling. I think people just need to more, because the story isn't that complex. -
Quote:Err what?Originally Posted by Agent White
Right, but it's their *only* motif, it's a single characteristic that defines the whole character group. They're a one trick pony, and it's not a very interesting trick. For all it mattered, the Talons could have been called The Scary Boogeymen or the Weeaboos of Retribution.
There's just no investment of interest on our part for Serene or the Talons. The Talons were summoned to 'punish oathbreakers', which is so vague as to be essentially nonsense. They could have come up with any number of reasons for Serene's plan that would have given us some kind of interest in it, but it all really boils down to "She's kind of a ***** and just wants power". That's not interesting or compelling and we don't really care about her or her plan, we just stop her because it would be worse to let it go on.
She summons them because her Coven, her surrogate family, was betrayed and murdered. She sprints right across the moral event horizon, but she actually has a reason for wanting vengeance.
I mean, it's hardly a complex story, but as a basic one it works. -
Quote:Hmmm, well, their entire point is vengenace: To punish evil-doers. It's just that there's no stop to them.Originally Posted by Agent White
Right but it doesn't make for interesting narrative or an interesting antagonist force. The Talons are kind of interesting in their style with the naga-esque thing but that their whole explanation is just 'someone pissed them off, but it doesn't matter who because they just kill everyone' is pretty mediocre as far as villain groups go. It turns them to just a generic 'grr' evil and we see them for such a short time they have no real impact on anything. They come out of nowhere, we're told how dangerous and scary they are, we see some people fall to their influence, and we stop them. We could have replaced them with any magically oriented group and it really would not have changed anything about the story. They just have no effectiveness except this brief whirlwind that we take down.
First Ward has a theme of lost an forgotten things, the apparitions ae cast-off byproducts, the people of the ward are refugees, the Talons come about because of an old betrayal no one cares about anymore, except Serene, and she summons the Furies to do her vengeance.
None of the other magical groups really have that kind of motif. -
Quote:To be fair, that's kind of how the furies work. Betray and you will be punised. And your children too, for good measure. (ex. Orestes. Kill your mother and you'll be punished, don't avenge your father (whom your mother killed) and you'll be punished, the solution there is interesting: Invent the jury trial)Originally Posted by Agent White
Yeah I don't think they were explained very well, and in fact, they're kind of dorky.
So, they play their vengeance on oathbreakers. We even ask "ok, so who broke what oath?" and the answer gets glossed over because, it doesn't really matter, they just intend on killing everything in First Ward on principle. It's just a very "Uh.. what?" kind of answer. They're meant to be 'divine retribution' but it's just a 'kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out' approach. Which yeah doesn't make them that scary so much as just this big force of faceless badness. And Serene, as was said, isn't given enough development or background to really make us care for her as a character or a villain.
The end of First Ward is basically, this person we don't know is trying to do something bad using this group that is a pseudo apocalypse because they're just very bad tempered.
It has all to do with ancient greek notions of guilt and responsibility. -
I'd like to note that there is an "NPC dialogue" tab in your chat, much easier than following the speech bubbles.
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Quote:That's more kitten-behaviour.Originally Posted by Feycat
Remind me not to come to your house. I'd rather not have your puppy humping my leg while he kills everyone who's ever been nice to him and turns them into the undead so he can have their stuff.
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Quote:They're people turned by the hate-plague, basically. (and presumably they get magical powers to boot) just like the Carnival of Vengeance.Originally Posted by MrCaptainMan
I mean it's a rubbish bit of story/background/rationale or whatever. The mobs, they're people, are they? What do they do when they're not bring all vengeful in missions? Freaks, Council, resistance, Sky Raiders, Luddites, skulls, Arachnos, PPD, all these give the impression that they have some sort of 'off-duty lives. Supernatural entities I can imagine just floating around moaning and clanking their chains, even the Vahz have sewers to mill around in. The Carnival of Vengeance get new armor once they're turned? Where do they come from?
Eco
Presumably there was an original core of Serene's followers, and then it started infecting the rest.