_mr3_

it's new -> don't like it. wait here's a real reason--where's just the normal reply button? only one i can find is at the top, no clue who that's gonna reply to

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And from what I saw of the folks coming in a bit late, once the main (and not that large, honestly, by the look of the screenshots - not miniscule, but not some massive organization) T_T groups left, there's not much "community" there if the leaders aren't around. I saw groups (duos, generally) of tanks that could well have joined up, SKd lowbies, etc. just standing around, then logging out... that's not a "community building" effort to me, it's not an "event for the sake of the event," it's "Oh, if I'm not with the main group, I'm leaving." I saw multiple tanks (at least one of which I recognized by name) come in, stand (or float) around, and log out.

Probably seven tanks over fourty five minutes. There would, from what I recall, have been exemplar issues or SK issues for *one* if this group had actually decided to band together in what seems to be presented as the spirit of the event. But they did not.

It certainly didn't impress me as to their "community building." I even saw someone who came in late broadcast about it, asking if there was a team - whereupon another member said, "They all left," instead of startting a team.


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At this point I agree--you really are better off just ending your posts in this thread. I don't think you really meant to trash a player-organized community event based on having a jaded view of it to begin with, then attending just one night for the first time, and judging the actions of some of the people that logged in after it had already started and all of the groups were on the move. Instead it sounds like you're just aggravated at certain people posting here. That's giving you benefit of the doubt though.

That and chest shrines on all servers and you've got a deal. It's weird, I'm cheered up again for some reason.

Hey wait a minute, you try to confuse!

You don't think that Virtue shaking its walls with parties every night deserves a plaque? Damn, now I'm really depressed. The least you could do is cheer me up again with something you think does deserve one .

I think that's a great idea too. More excuse for more of us to get together.

What's depressing me in this thread is that it's gone where I figured it would go (but I figured I was just being negative at the time). It's devolved into classifying what's "good enough" to be deemed worthy of a vaguely worded 30x80-something pixel plaque on a wall in a corner of the city that doesn't see much traffic at all. The irony is screaming there, or it is to me at least. Some people are comparing how much better some great SGs are than TT. Some people are bringing up dev-promoted groups and events (how cool is it that we even have those anyway?) and calling them better and more worthy of recognition than TT. Some people are subtly saying in long lawyerly exchanges that they feel no connection to TT so it doesn't deserve commemoration. All of that may likely be true to a lot of us, but I think all of it is missing the point.

There doesn't have to be a classification of something as being a holy grail of contribution to the game to deserve a permanent mark in the city. We should be able to commemorate anything we think is a contribution. That includes longtime SGs, player events, a single event that we think should be commemorated, hell anything we think should be commemorated. Just mention it. What's such a downer though is that we don't do that. Instead we spend way more time saying what shouldn't be celebrated than what should be. It's like we enjoy beating ourselves and each other down...like we'd rather stomp on flowers than even think about the idea that we deserve to grow a damn flower. That's how silly it's gotten.

What's the end result of permanently recognizing some community accomplishments in the game? Total mayhem? Or just some subtle clues in the city to the fact that a large number of real live people have been coming together to play in it for a lot of hours for a lot of calendar time? Maybe we've been beaten down too much over the years by rules. Yeah sure, a game needs them. It doesn't need them here. Here's the situation broken down as I see it--we breathe life into the city every day. Without us, somewhere near 1/2 of the reason that the city exists goes poof and the city stops existing. Why don't we let ourselves have some evidence of our existence in it? For whatever reason we think deserves it? As far as the city goes, we are "~1/2 God its Creator". It doesn't have be something glaring. It can stay subtle. And it can include...whatever the hell we want. It can be longtime SGs, people who've left that we wish hadn't, great memories of events we'll never forget, whatever.

Wait that's not right, the devs have to decide in the end what's really right. Yeah sure, the devs will decide what they want. That doesn't change the fact that they should support reasonable requests like these, like a vague plaque in the corner of KR. And regardless of what the devs decide, whether they decide to or not doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. That's why I'm saying let the suggestions fly, it doesn't just have to be something for TT. We're a big reason behind the city's existence. We should be able to commemorate that fact in that same world in a reasonable way that doesn't break immersion. And no, I don't think that ways like a vaguely-worded plaque in the corner of KR is so glaring as to break immersion. Thinking along those lines is like battered wife syndrome. Rules have a place, sure...we just don't have to make ourselves slaves to them.

I think it's a good idea. The biggest reason--it's relatively innocuous, and if done right it can promote events regardless of the details of this particular event. Wondering where does it stop, and where do you draw the line...it doesn't necessarily have to stop or have a line. The idea promotes player events. The idea is that players coming together in a strong enough way alter the world we play in. It's almost like incentive for us to get involved more, just something to give us another target to achieve...like badges, or even just a sign that the world is kept alive by the players. I don't see why any player-run event that gets supported enough couldn't have a plaque or some other way to commemorate it. The devs themselves have admitted that one of the biggest reasons they put the game together was to bring players together (and they've shown how big a reason by the fact that they make promotion of events a large part of a few people's jobs around here). This would be a commemoration of one of the ways. And if people that meet for this event wait for a good while where the plaque is being proposed, I can imagine a plaque being a workable way to commemorate the event. Besides, there are lots of history plaques like that--ones that mark where something significant occurred. I don't see why highly-supported player events can't be as much of the game history as any authored storyline that has a plaque commemoration.

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Psst I'm on...I'm ready for my closeup =P


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here ya go, you can tip the slop artist on the way out.

ps. i was gonna take a shot at it...until i saw mcg's daughter kylie's. that's my fav!

whoah, snacks? where?

jeezus, with strategy that complex no wonder they're taking over.

gonna go hide/cower, catch ya later

you're not happy with invuln in pvp because two people working together can defeat your protection? and that goes against your player concept? and you think examples like that show that villains have an advantage over heroes? or did i misunderstand what you're saying?

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Actually, it's becoming fairly standard from what I've seen, for companies to say "Only those hired/called back will be notified". It sucks, but when you are dealing with dozens, or perhaps hundreds, of interviewees... all those calls take time, which really, could be better spent elsewhere.

Or so, the theory goes. While I've not had to go through it myself, my wife has, probably a good 5-6 times the last few years. The waiting sucks, the not knowing sucks (especially up here, where some positions spend 6 months (!!) in limbo before a decision is even made), but... what can you do?

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Well, I had two interviews for the IT position, which seemed to go really well. Then I didn't hear anything at all. I finally emailed them to see what the status was, and was told their automated system apparently hadn't worked. They EXPECTED to give all the applicants notice that the position had been filled, but something didn't work right.

Congrats to Jimmy. Lucky sod.

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in my eyes, that is wholly unacceptable. an ongoing human interaction has taken place between the company and the applicant, yielding (multiple) interviews. both sides are investing time and energy in finding out more about the potential fit. if a company is going to offer a position up for the public to apply for, i feel they are obligated to follow through completely with each applicant in a manner that is appropriate given how far into the application process that things have proceeded. if someone sends their resume and the resume does not meet job criteria, i can understand having an automated process to close the loop with those people. worse case, the system breaks and you get no word, and with minimal invested effort that's a fairly common outcome and to be expected when jobhunting. but once you start interviewing an applicant, you've begun a human-on-human interaction and you've entered completely different territory. both sides invest time and energy to size up the potential relationship. i don't think that using an automated system to give word to someone that far into discussions is appropriate. if a company decides to invest the effort to establish a significant ongoing human dialog with an applicant, i feel that they've created the moral obligation to at least try to pick up the phone if they decide not to continue that process for some reason. i hold myself to that standard because i feel it is the right thing to do. i feel companies morally owe it to the public and to the people they choose to interview to do the same. companies that fail to do this show me as an applicant how much they value people versus company goals.

as dreamshifter mentioned, not getting word back may be fairly common, and that's unfortunate...it just doesn't make the practice any less acceptable in my eyes. (for what it's worth, i've been on well over 40 interviews in my career, and only one of them has failed to close the loop with me so far.) when i am applying for a job, i feel it is my job to interview the company just as much as they are interviewing me. failing to close the loop with me once significant time and effort are spent applying is unfortunately an almost sure-fire way to make the decision for me. in a case where there's a breakdown in human resources like this, i see it as both a sign of how much the company values people versus goals and a breakdown in the way the company shows me how it puts its best foot forward. to me that's an unfortunate fact of life but also a clear warning sign. a company like ncsoft is immeasurably better than and above that.

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I am sad to hear about the move. I applied for the Windows Administrator job, and got an initial interview. However the HR person indicated that they planned to hire the position in time to have them on board for the opening of the new studio. The new studio is now open which means, I suppose, that I didn't get the job. :/

*sigh*

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that's unfortunate to hear (especially since you're the 2nd person in this thread w/a story like that). i had a similar experience back in '04. i was working with hr and waiting on word about the decision, and...nothing. after a week+ of waiting, i gave myself my own word. advice for ncsoft: there is more than enough room for improvement in the hiring process that cryptic had. don't miss the opportunity to take advantage of it. leaving people out in the cold about hiring decisions after all of the effort it takes applicants to get there is...i'll just say it's not a good thing to do.

wow. my 3rd run ever was last night at 19s w/1-slotted sj. i forgot i had left it on (i was still sliding 90+% of the way), so i wondered what i was doing right when i read yall's responses. so i just tried w/out sj on (only sprint and hurdle 1-slotted). it went up to 31. big difference, now i know what you mean. i finally got it down to 29 w/practice, but i wonder if sprint+swift would eek out as much room for a gold too. i'll say this--running fly the whole way is definitely *not* going to do it. i'd try sprint and let the snow give you speed. if that doesn't work then i'd say we've got problems.

i was thinking the same thing earlier tonight. it'd be an easy way to give people a little something special, maybe even quell a little bit of the sore feelings some other people have been having.

thanks lh, that answered my question about the sw licensing issue. i guess i was hoping there wouldn't be ongoing fees for ncsoft to deal with, but maybe it'll turn out to be no big deal.

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you're kidding, right?

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Nope, this is failry standard practice in games actually. The core engine that CoH/V is built on was developed by Cryptic and remains theirs. The IP (which is the content of the game itself) is what NCSoft bought from Cryptic straight out. They likely just have a license agreement that is either a lump sum for use of the engine or a yearly fee. Any changes and enhancments that NCSoft NorCal makes to the engine are theirs alone. They probably also have the option to get updated core engine versions from Cryptic should they choose, though that would only be useful for a new game rather than to put into CoH/V.

Many companies just make and license game engines and never design a game around the engine. Others will put out a single game to showcase their engine in hopes of getting game studios to license their engine rather than have to create their own from scratch. Vanguard runs off the Unreal engine, many games came out based off the Quake and Halflife engines (or variants thereof), and the supposed in the works Firefly MMO is using the Multiverse engine. Other games/systems out there will use base engines that handle some core functionality but don't provide full game functionality, like the Havok phsyics engine that gets used in other engines and systems (like SecondLife which is still using Havok1 but testing for an upgrade to Havok4). In this day and age very few major games code entirely from scratch, most use a variety of software suites/engines as building blocks for their game. This helps in some ways since you don't need a math genius to develop your physics engine just to be able to make a game and can instead hire another level/class/graphcis designer.

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ok, now that i've had a chance to pour through all the announcements and info without a firewall in the way, i am really glad about the news. i was originally reading the announcement on my phone at work, and it gave me the impression that ncsoft purchased the entirety of cryptic outright. i gotta admit i had some qualms about that due to apparent intent and the serious conflicts it could create. so that's good, but i still can't find anything official by anyone stating what the agreement is or will be w/r/t ncsoft and our devs being allowed to continue to evolve the coh/v software. i'm (painfully?) aware of the idea of licensing game engines--speak of the devil i was just developing some new features in one a couple of weeks ago--but i still can't find anything about what the agreement is between ncsoft and cryptic regarding the software. my guess is that the original agreement had cryptic fully owning it, but i could easily see ncsoft preferring at this point to pay cryptic a one-time fee for the software in its current state in coh/v as opposed to some kind of licensing agreement that extends payments in some form into the future. and personally, i'd rather they did some kind of reasonable lump sum up front payment. not that cryptic doesn't deserve to be compensated more for what they've done, but it's obvious that they've made a good amount of money off of the software already. it's not a doomy issue by any stretch, but ongoing licensing fees or royalties being paid out by ncsoft could instead go towards ensuring the future success of the game. and i know that ncsoft isn't hurting for money either, but i guess i just see it as a better thing for cryptic to do for us. btw if anyone can find something official on whatever agreement is in place regarding the software i'd love to read it. i can't find anything.

thx for checkin, i'm still stuck at work here and i can't get to half of the links posted so far.

you're kidding, right?

i've been through the thread and i haven't seen this asked yet, maybe i missed it. what does this deal do to the coh/v software? cryptic has been calling newer versions of this their "mmo engine" lately, and i thought it was a branch-off of core pieces of coh/v's software at some point when development started on muo. is ncsoft now going to have to pay royalties or any other structure of payment to cryptic for continuing to evolve coh/v software, or do we wholly own it now? i'm not too comfortable with the idea of us (the collective all of us) not 100% owning everything coh/v, especially the software.

yikes. now i'm not so sure. the difference between 10% and 15% would be hard to tell. i was gonna try to jump on test w/herostats, but devs got the whole town on lockdown. maybe when beta opens up.

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Here's another quick question. For things like Cloak of Fear, the proc won't go off unless the pbaoe 'hits' the mob first right? So for example if you have the psi damage proc in it, you need to hit the mob with fear, then it checks to see if the proc goes off?

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i don't think the power has to hit, it just has to activate. i've had glimpse's chance for psi on my cof for a while, and from what i can tell it's like having a second power glued to it that activates every time it activates. activation is the only tie between the aspects of a power and the aspects of an attached proc. which is good for cof, which has ~50% base accuracy. otherwise the proc would have a 20*50=10% chance of firing, instead of 20*75=15% chance like it would with a normal 0.75 base acc power.


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What is the chance of the proc firing?

All Damage Procs have a 20% Chance of firing except Touch of Death which only has a 15% Chance.
The more you use a power with a Proc (such as in fast-recharge attacks), the more often it will succeed.


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btw natsuki, this is the best explanation i've seen for a proc's chance to hit yet, kudos to you and ms. every time someone talks about the chances of a proc going off, they mention putting it in a fast-recharging attack, and they make it sound like that would cause the probability of it going off to increase. which is not true. it's still the same chance of it firing (ex. 1 out of every 5 for a 20% chance proc), but with more trials you're getting more failures...and also more successes!...but at the same percentage. that difference threw me off the first couple of times i saw it.

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And because you obviously have the players' interests closest to yourheart ... you're not an optimal candidate for beta testing. This or, really, anything. No offense mind you; not everyone is cut out to be a beta tester. Not even me, necessarily ... although, when I'm in one, I do at least try to actively find bugs I can test, and report.

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i don't have the players' interest closest to my heart, i just value fairness. i'm not saying that you don't, but when i see a situation where there's enough of a lack of fairness and i see reasonable ways to lessen it or avoid it entirely then i am going to speak up and suggest them. there are improvements to this selection process that can be made. not only can those improvements improve the testing crop that the devs work with every issue, they can improve fairness for us as players.

as far as me not being an optimal beta tester--or me not being an optimal tester of any software--you state that as if it were a fact. i think if you spent a day with me on the job you would think differently. and given what you've said so far in this thread, i think you would go home with a headache.

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but if we as players don't matter at all when it comes to beta testing, then the lack of fairness there isn't an issue at all. we could go on for each new beta and you and i will never be no-kidding-really-invited and that should not matter.

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There is no "lack of fairness", not in the sense of "being unfair" that you seem to imply.

The very concept of "fair" never even enters into it; efficiency is the name of the game here. Because they hold a closed beta, and have a proven stable of testers to rely upon as a group, we get issues in amazingly short spans of time.


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i think when it comes to equity/fairness we're just going to disagree. there is a difference between people continually being allowed into a closed door environment to help test new features in the software and people who are not. i see the difference as enough to create an unfairness. i am not saying the devs are intentionally trying to be unfair or that they do not care that their actions are creating an inequity, but i do believe their approach to selecting who gets to help them is creating an inequity among us, and given their approach i believe it gets larger with each new closed beta they conduct. and when it comes to this inequity, their intent doesn't cause the inequity to not exist, no matter how pure. it is still there. now i think a better question is--is that unfairness worth it to get the advantage their getting? and my personal answer is no--not given the current approach that they're taking. i think they can continue to improve their selection process, and it may even cause more people outside the activity to believe in what they are doing despite the impact to them. sure, no one's always going to be pleased, but i think things can be improved.

i don't think the right answer for us is to spend more time on the test server either. i don't think that even fits the intent of what the devs were looking for this time around. i think they were picking people who recently logged into the test server (which would include people testing new builds, testing io load-outs, doing pvp, doing cross server events, etc) to get at those of us who have time and a desire to continually test new features without needing an incentive to be invited to a closed beta.

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If the same group of people get in each and every time, then it's obvious favoritism. Not to mention there may be others out there who are just as good, if not better, testers than the current crop, but will never get picked because to do so would upset the status quo. Sure, they can throw a bone to a random peep, but the core group remains pretty much the same.

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You are getting the question of "who matters" backwards. It's not us that matter for this process, it's Cryptic and PlayNC who matter. They will pick the group they KNOW to be effective testers. If you want to call that "favoritism", go right ahead ... but you're mischaracterising the situation, and if you have an ounce of sense in you ... you know it.

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What people have to remember is: the Closed Beta is not for the players' benefit, it is for the benefit of Cryptic and PlayNC. Period.

The "player benefit, too" stage is called Open Beta. Those of us, yours truly included, who didn't make the cut this time around ... will just have to wait our turn, to get a peek at the contents of i11.

Remember, everyone: this is a testing process, not a sneak peek preview.


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Except those same people who keep getting in, have a better than average chance at directing which direction the game goes as compared to the plebian crowds outside. Once it gets to Open Beta, the chances of any significant changes based on player feedback (not to mention the needle getting lost in a haystack) happening is slim to nil.

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Still.

Does.

Not.

Matter.

The benefit is not "for players", it is "for Cryptic". Lose out the things that benefit the testers from your consideration ... the fact that you WANT to have X or Y that comes from testing, enough to protest not being in the group doing the testing (which is what yourposts amount to) ... is proof enough to me, that you are indeed complaining about not being in the test group yourself.

It should never be about you, it should always be about the game. Otherwise, you're not a good candidate for the test.

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you make it sound like players don't matter at all when it comes to closed beta testing. but early access being given to a small focused group of people provides those people with more input into the game's direction. with many of the same people being invited to each new beta, a core group of people end up over time with more of an ability to help the devs and more of an ability to give input at least into the details of new features. that includes additions to areas of the game that you and i may know inside and out through a lot of hours of experience, and it includes players with little to no experience in those aspects of the game or even the game in general. they will still be involved in finding bugs and giving input into those areas of the game. and even if the amount of input into the game's future that's really available there for those people is small, it's still more than zero and would increase over time as many of the same people continue to get invites to test new issues. that is an advantage and amounts to a privilege. but if we as players don't matter at all when it comes to beta testing, then the lack of fairness there isn't an issue at all. we could go on for each new beta and you and i will never be no-kidding-really-invited and that should not matter.

or do you not agree with that extension of what you're saying? part of me says it's no big deal and i should just accept it if this is really the best way for the team to release new issues. but that just isn't washing with me, at least not right now. no matter how i look at it, there's still this lack of fairness for us. it feels like that should count for something.

and i'm not even convinced that they are picking the people that they "know" to be effective testers, because i don't think they're convinced that they know how to do this as effectively as they want yet.

that's another good point, cw.