Zubenelgenubi

OK, my list is updated based on your suggestions.

Sock puppet strikes again.

*headdesk*

Dude... I'm only going to say this once:

MOTORCYCLES DO NOT GET YOU FREE PORN!!

Mr. Sock Puppet Says:

"I have no way to refute logical, well-researched, articulate arguements from people who clearly know more about the topic that I do. So I guess I'll go with a random implied ad hominim instead."

You hate to admit that Arcana is articulate, intelligent, thoughtful, tests things frequently and therefore knows what she is talking about, and is not given to dogmatic over-generalizations like most of the rest of us do (present company included)? And this surprises you?

Yup. Sounds about right.

And the changes that led to the XP being removed from all of the above was because of...

...wait for it...

...a handful of players exploiting something in a way the devs didn't anticipate!

Many decry nerfs, but many also fail to put the blame for nerfs like these squarely where they belong: On that handful of players who exploit weaknesses in the game. Instead, they blame the devs and/or pull out the same tired script - "I'll play how I want to who are you to tell me otherwise it's all the whiners' fault ha ha you can't stop us my subscription is up I'm outta here."

(Zube is still painting with a reeeeal wide brush here.)

Thanks, Bill.

I compared your list to that of Father Xmas here and I have a couple of questions:

Your rig managed to come in at almost $200 cheaper than his. The cheif difference appears to be that yours has a slightly faster processor (2.8 vs. 2.66 GHz) while his has a much more expensive video card ($329 vs. $169). Would you mind terribly commenting on the differences please?

Also, his shopping list has a "heat pipe direct contact" heat sink that I think gets physically glued to the processor using the thermal bonding compound. What are your thoughts on that? Necessary? Overkill? Pain-in-the-butt to do?

Thanks in advance.

no u

No worries. Just send me your account name and password. Next free activation weekend, I'll distribute your stuff for you.

Honest. It'll go to needy characters. Trust me.

Maybe. No official word yet, unless someone has read something I haven't.

There is no way the actual level cap will be raised. Far too many people have far too much invested in their sets of level 50 purples and HO's to allow them to turn red. But *IF* GR includes "higher levels" it will be to give us more slots to use while we all remain at 50. (I would LOVE this, of course. No matter how I build Zube, he is always desperately short three or four slots.)

Well, I think that a lot of the hostility between "farmers" and "non-farmers" (WARNING! I'm painting with a reeeeal wide brush here) comes from a lack of distinction between "legitimate" farming and "exploitative" farming. In many of these sort of discussions (i.e. arguments) I fail to parse that distinction myself.

The Devs have no beef with farming in general. Heck, dedicated farmers frequently have multiple accounts. In other words, they're ”real good customers.” And I don’t have a problem with it either. Heck, I’ve lost count of the number of demon farms I’ve been on. It’s when the farming runs into exploitative behavior that problems crop up.

And then the devs act to fix the exploit. And often the “fix” comes out like THIS one did. And then people are unhappy on both sides of the fence. And then comes the finger pointing and the personal attacks and pretty soon somebody ends up in the wood chipper.

Rinse, repeat.

I think a lot of us here WISH the Devs would just hire Arcanaville! But my guess is they can't afford to pay her nearly what she's worth.

I’m happy to put aside the sarcasm if you leave off the personal attacks. Deal?

Now Flameshot, you and I certainly agree on one thing: That problems like this should be fixed sooner rather than allowing them to drag on for months. We ALSO agree that this “fix” will not stop farmers. We ALSO agree that by now the Devs should know and understand that a certain percentage of their players will take whatever steps they can to increase reward and minimize risk.

Where we part company is the whole “I’ll play how I want to and the Devs have no right to restrict that” attitude.

And I also believe that the Devs have been as forthcoming as they can be about what they consider an exploit. And I think that nobody can legitimately say they didn’t know that dozens of buff-bots in an AE mission was an exploit.


I also don’t know where you got the idea that I’m happy about this current situation, or how they handed down all the AE nerfs in the past. Hell, I’m still annoyed when I think of Jack and his “no more power changes” statement that was followed by ED, oh so many years ago.

In the current case, I’m EXTREMELY disappointed with the “fix” they rolled out. I have been thinking of doing a little re-working and re-vamping of my story arc, should the rumored increase to AE memory limits actually come about. I wanted to add a few more custom critters to round it out a bit, perhaps a GM in the last mission just for fun (and one last gawd-awful joke). But I’m wondering now why I should even bother.

So if you like, we can agree to disagree here, and agree to agree as well. I see no reason for us to get into a flame war over it. (God knows I’ve been involved in enough of those damn things, and often for less reason too.)

Peace out. Gotta go to work.

There is this thing called "literacy." You see, when a developer sits down and TYPES WORDS on the keyboard, those words are transmitted to the rest of us. Those of us who learned the "reading" skill in school can look at those words and understand the ideas that those words convey. No mind-reading is involved.

(Although to be fair, those without the "reading" skill can be often intimidated by those who have it. Sometimes they even resort to crude personal attacks. I recently read an excellent example of this, by the way.)

The Devs have *repeatedly* explained what they do and do not consider exploitative. They do this in a very broad, general way so as to (1) not give hints about existing ways to exploit the game and (2) not give the rules-lawyers hooks onto which they can hang objections. One of the most fundamental of the general concepts of what is and is not an exploit is basic risk vs. reward. Clearly multiple buff-bots making a player invulnerable to harm reduces risk to near zero, breaking the risk vs. reward balance. Anyone with the “literacy” skill can see this, of course.

Well, you're forgetting how very easy it is to make influence in this game. Supply is only one aspect. Because we are all essentially "printing money" every time we play, our currency undergos constant inflation.

True dat. But it's utterly, utterly amazing how many fail to understand this.

The devs do not agree with your definition of the word "exploit."

This.

Several people have mentioned "infamous" arcs that took advantage of the exploit in question. So why not UNPUBLISH THOSE ARCS, take away one of the arc slots of the players who created them, and flag their accounts so that they cannot publish another arc without submitting it for prior approval?

The exploiters will get the message real quick. And the rest of us are unaffected.

They BAN the accounts of RMT spammers. Why not take firm but much less draconian steps to go after the AE exploiters? It simply does not make sense to make such a drastic nerf while leaving those who CAUSED the nerf to become "necessary" get off without sanction.

...except they're not.

...except that even fewer people will bother now than ever did before, which was a vanishing few indeed.

...at least you got it right in the end.

Thanks to the farmers and exploiters, there is *every* reason you cannot have both.

The problem with your suggestion above is that “decent” XP is subjective. For most players it will default to the lowest common denominator (surprise!) of “It Must Give Max XP Possible or I’ll Never Even Look at it Twice.”

My one and only arc (made before I gave up on AE because of the constant nerfs requiring constant re-writes and the Gawd-awful farm missions clogging up the searches and garnering hundreds of plays while the *stories* languished) has four missions, the last three of which have the player working more and more closely with the PPD. Three of my four missions now have nerfed XP. XP which was already nerfed because I used custom critters in different groups (for story reasons) which all didn’t have a “balance” of minions, leuts, and bosses due to arc size restrictions.

Oh sure, I could totally and completely re-write the story to take out all the NPC’s. Just like I’ve had to re-write it so many times already. And then watch it still not get plays because it’s not the *latest* XP-gouging farm. Only to then have to re-write it again for the next go-around of nerfs.

No thank you.

a screw... DRIVER...?


Point taken, though. Thanks so much to all of you. This is really, really helpful stuff. Sooooo much better than all my old, pointless discussions about the costs of base items and whether or not badge numbers should be nerfed.

My (hopefully) last question concerns the operating system. After assembling the components, do I just buy a Windows 7 box at a brick-and-mortar and install the OS myself?

(I am actually not as technically inept as I may sound here. I’m just trying to be really, really careful. This is the first really big financial expenditure for my family in a very long time and I want to avoid pitfalls. Real Life comes without an “undo” button, after all.)

Of course you are not him.

For I am him.

(Then again, I am also the walrus. Goo goo ga Joob.)