Arcanaville

I had to get rid of a lot of T's, N's, and G's from my Scrabble tray.

We the players didn't understand what he meant either, and have perpetuated an inaccuracy that no amount of correcting seems able to extinguish.

The "player = three minions" thing was never meant to suggest that in a fight with three minions, the players would win half the time or anything like that. In a heroic, now +0x1 mission, that's what the mission spawns. It spawns the equivalent of about three minions worth of critters per spawn point (three minions or a minion and an LT or rarely an LT and two minions). That was supposed to represent a reasonable challenge to players playing through an entire mission of those. If it wasn't, if everyone was simply blowing past that level of threat generation without even thinking or blinking, then clearly the standard difficulty setting made no sense: it was too low for anyone.

Except even today, I would bet most players play on standard difficulty, +0x1, when they solo. And I doubt most of them think that level of threat generation is ludicrously low. Player = three minions wasn't supposed to express what we were literally equal to, it was supposed to express what the game was supposed to throw at a player by default. One player entering a mission equals three minions placed at each spawn point.

With SOs becoming as common as dirt and invention slotting surpassing it, we're far stronger than that. But while the devs haven't been making wholesale moves to nerf us back down, they have started creeping the critters upward, so that three minions are more dangerous now than they were before in many cases. Because that's what the game is supposed to do: throw enough threat at us to be noticable.

Why can't the game allow us to be "equal" to nine minions, or twenty? Because then the game servers would explode from the load of spawning that much threat per player in large teams. Instead, the devs handed us the new difficulty scalers, so we can scale ourselves singularly to spawn threat meant for eight. So we become the equal of 24 minions (or minion equivalents in LTs and Bosses), which the game can spawn as long as we are alone. But it won't spawn for nine if we have a team mate, because that exceeds what the game servers can handle practically in the general case.

We're equal to three minions because we have to be equal to three somethings, because the game servers can't make us equal to ten somethings in the general case.

The fact that at the exact same moment Jack was saying we were supposed to be equal to three minions the dev team was testing scrappers against missions scaled for six (eighteen minion equivalents) should all but prove that the "three minions" statement didn't mean what many people still portray it to mean today.

But if the game lasts for another eight years, I'm sure people will still be saying it.

You do, I don't. I also have no specific issue with boggling you while I go about actually getting things done.

You don't want them to hit less often, you do want them to hit harder, you don't want them to be significantly slower, but you aren't asking for them to have the highest offense. You just want to hit harder but no less often. And if the only way to do that is to make them have the highest offense, that's just a strange coincidence.

The numbers are still small so its difficult to extrapolate from here, and especially because there are only two deaths so far, but if that death rate remained roughly the same throughout leveling its worth noting that on a spawn-adjusted level that's going to equate to about 2 deaths per level in the 20s, and ten deaths per level in the 40s. It probably won't remain constant, but those two deaths in nine levels is actually a fairly high number on an adjusted basis: its about one death every 150 spawns points.

I say that's a high level: its high on an absolute basis, but its probably a very low level compared to the average player. Incidentally when debt kicks in, my guestimate is that separate from travel time each death per level costs about 1-2% in overall performance.

The interesting thing would be to note if the defeat rate goes up slightly in the 20s when mez becomes more common. Although on the red side that does not occur as dramatically as it does on the blue side: the red side content has a higher level of mez and other secondary effects from the beginning.

I level from one to 50, I don't PL to 50 and exemp down. So I would need them at four, not forty four.

But you misunderstand if you think I'm implying you'd oppose that suggestion. I think you have no sense of game balance requirements when it comes to tankers, so I would expect no less when it comes to any other archetype. Its the fact that you think anything goes that should be considered as the context for what you think Tankers are supposed to be.

That's a new one on me.

What I said, directly, several times now is that it cannot be elitist to ask for what you think you actually need. Need trumps preference, and elitism represents a preference, unless you believe its elitist to want to succeed most of the time.


Not on Triumph you haven't; that rarely happens. No one appears to be saying that the way Snow Globe runs trials is the way anyone else should; however you're implying that the way he runs them invites a slippery slope to increasingly higher restrictions on trials that has essentially zero chance of happening on the server Snow Globe runs trials. If other players specifically decided to emulate Snow Globe on other servers, then theoretically that could happen, but frankly I don't think Snow Globe has that degree of influence over how incarnate trials are run on any server other than Triumph. Every server does things their own way, and servers do not often emulate other servers.

Proper analysis recognizes the limits of the analysis tools as well. Statistical analysis of reward earning rates is subject to dilution, but not amplification, across archetypes. That means seeing a problem means its there, not seeing a problem doesn't mean its not there. The statistics are sensitive to certain things, and insensitive to others. A proper analysis would recognize that, and not simply say "statistics are misleading." Everything is misleading when used wrong.

But you can't get "rewards earned" wrong because the server just counts those: getting that wrong would cause people to notice not being awarded things correctly. You can get "time to earn" wrong, but almost always by overshooting and not undershooting that time. You can't count less than the actual time spent running missions and shooting at things, when done across millions of missions and thousands of players.

If Blasters level slower, that means there's a problem. *That* statistic doesn't say why. But if Blasters have more debt, and the debt difference accounts for a significant percentage of the gap, then debt is definitely a problem. And that means dying at a higher rate is definitely a problem, because that's the only real way to get debt. *How* Blasters are dying more often that statistic doesn't say. But if its determined that Blasters are mezzed at the moment of death to a far higher percentage than other archetypes, and spend more time mezzed in general, then *that* statistic points to an element of the problem: blasters die more often in part because they are more vulnerable to being mezzed, and more vulnerable while mezzed. *That* points to an area of focus: to reduce the amount of vulnerability to mez.

If that isn't the *only* reason for higher debt: if factoring it out doesn't eliminate the problem, then that implies that *another* problem is damage mitigation in general, because damage is essentially the only way we die. And that suggests either two requirements - reducing the effects of mez and improving the ability to mitigate damage, or one singular super-requirement: increasing the ability to somehow mitigate both.

All of that is statistically determinable. The statistics don't say nothing of value: they are highly valuable, if you know what their limits are. As all analysis have limits. A good analyst would use all the information at their disposal, in the way most useful. THB's test can't overturn a large statistical analysis, but that doesn't make it useless or I wouldn't bother with it. It can say something about the issue, but what it can say as a single data point would depend on the information collected and what distinctions it highlights. Just as with statistical analysis, some distinctions would not be significant because they would be outside this test's ability to properly distinguish. Others might be more significant because this test more accurately represents them. But that's difficult to predict ahead of what's observed.

It would certainly make my life easier if they actually were that crazy, but unfortunately they are not.

Incidentally, from day one my biggest glitch with the game has been an inability to make Doctor Strange. And it wouldn't be hard for the devs to grant me that: level 9 access is all that would be required.

When Jack was creating Melee/Defense and putting in Defense/Melee just to screw with J_B and Melee/Ranged to screw with everybody else, he forgot to put in God/Mode.

I believe he believes most of what he says. I don't trust him to be necessarily right, nor do I believe him when he effectively says his plans are so inscrutable we couldn't do anything more than mess them up if we were aware of them.

Anyone who says "you dare question me" is in dire need of being questioned. And probably wrong.

Anyone who can create offensive technology to blast enemies to bits but doesn't think its a good idea to spend some time using that same technology to make sure the very same level of offense doesn't blow his head off is an idiot. So I would like Blasters to have Tanker level defense.

That's an interesting theory. However, since Prometheus suggests they are aware of many other Ascensions, successful and unsuccessful, and he also suggests that not knowing precisely how Rularuu did it was an anomaly, that would imply that Prometheus is already aware of methods of ascension we could theoretically use against the Battalion. But he also suggests that humanity as a race, and we in particular, are not ready to ascend and he would stop any such thing from happening. So I don't think Prometheus actually wants us to use ascension against the Battalion.

Perhaps as a doomsday weapon against them, possibly if things go bad, but we don't know enough about the Battalion to know yet if that's a logical idea.

Still, the general notion that Prometheus had an ulterior motive to observe what happened with Wade besides what he tells us - that it was to allow us to defeat him - has the ring of truth to it.

Also, I'm so smart there's no possibility whatsoever that you could contribute anything to this plan, so there's absolutely no point in me telling you anything about it until I need you to do something, or alternatively after its already happened and you can't possibly screw it up by using your brain.

Perhaps its an expression of the FREEDOM that Wade was seeking, that he could now rewrite his own existence. The power of the Well and Rularuu combined opened the door to making his existence anything he wanted it to be, and thus the universe was asking him to INSERT BIO HERE.

You keep saying that like repetition will make it true. Statistical information can tell you a lot about whether a problem exists, and constrain the likely sources of the problem. Statistics isn't complete, but neither is anything else. Models and experiments themselves are not complete, until large bodies of evidence confirm them or generalizable theories emerge from them.

But most importantly, in this game whether an archetype is performing well or not is itself a statistical question, because an archetype is judged to be performing well if it behaves within certain limits for a majority of players, and the distribution of performance by all players falls within certain limits. There's no Aristotelian version of performance that exists within the archetype and outside the actual results it produces.

If you think it should not be so, you'll have to make your own game and your own design metrics.

I'm not that crazy about chocolate sauce on my mint chip. But I do love a hot fudge sunday with chocolate sauce. Which I think are stalkers. Maybe tankers. No, can't be tankers. Tankers are frozen yogurt: different, just as tasty, but there's always that one guy that keeps screaming they aren't real ice cream like anyone cares.

Pthhthhh

Very serious. The notion that asking for shifted characters means someone will play that character, run one trial, and then if someone else tries to run the same trial in less than 20 hours that player would rather not run the trial at all than run it again for less empyrean merits is really weird. iTrials aren't run often enough on Triumph for this to be a mass problem. I'm sure it must happen occasionally, but I've never actually witnessed a player decide to opt out of a trial because of the emp limit. Like a league organizes a BAF, then because of a lower player count they switch to a Lambda. I've not really seen people say well, I got my emp for BAF already, so I'm just going to quit entirely. I've seen people switch characters, but rarely if ever quit over the emp timer.

And we're talking about the higher trials: particularly MoM, Underground, and DD here. Just exactly how many of those do you think get organized every 20 hours on average?

In some respects no; Prometheus could be shown to be extremely intelligent and in control by actually demonstrating that his intelligence actually generates results in the story. But it doesn't seem to, so far. He sounds more like someone on the Internet trying to convince everyone he knows everything while having wikipedia open in another window. Look at how smart I am: I knew that everything would happen as it happened. Didn't actually do anything to make it happen that way, but that's because I already knew it would. Check out the big brain on me.

But in other respects yes: if you're going to write a story that hinges on having really smart people in it, you should be smart enough to at least emulate that level of intelligence, or work extra hard at it. Otherwise that's like writing a story that relies heavily on the sport of American football while knowing very little about the game, and saying that its not important that those details get done right because its fiction. If the quarterback hits a homerun, its not reality so that shouldn't matter.

We expect the writers and artists to get details as correct as possible: if you're going to spend huge amounts of time making sure a missile destroyer looks correct you should consider it equally important to spend time making sure smart people actually sound smart.

I cannot honestly say that ethics necessarily are the issue behind my initial reaction in my case. In my case, its a reaction to someone who behaves as if they know so much more than me that they feel I'm incapable of making an informed decision, so they are willing to use me as an uninformed pawn.

If that's true, then there's nothing I can do to stop them anyway. If I do find a way to beat them, it proves they were not so smart after all. But either way, trust is earned, and Prometheus just set himself into negative territory with his current set of revelations. He could very well be acting for the greater good, and I might even agree with his ultimate motivations if I knew what they were, and I certainly would not operate against him just because I think he's a twit on the chance he is, but I don't trust him and I would forever seek my own way around him.

Its less of an ethical prohibition against following such a person, and more of a visceral reaction to following such a person when my life experience says when someone tells me I'm not smart enough to understand, its always been them that was too stupid to explain.


But as to ethics in general, another thought occurred to me last night. Prometheus' explanation of why he didn't explain Ascension earlier reeks of a problem. There's nothing different about now that makes it easier to explain than a year ago, so there's no real reason he couldn't have explained it, despite saying hey, I'm explaining it now that you ask. We're asking now because of Wade, and Prometheus implies he knew about Wade and his plans all along.

Which means he let all those people die just to conduct an experiment to see if we were capable of taking Wade out.

He could have told us earlier that Wade was attempting Ascension, and what steps he might have taken, which could have helped.

I believe now that Prometheus *wanted* Statesman dead, because as he says, that means Statesman's power now returns to our Well. Its more power he can redistribute to fight Battalion through us. As villains, we might actually smile at the notion that Prometheus let Statesman die because it means more for us. As a hero, I would be compelled to shoot him in the forehead the first chance I had a weapon capable of doing it.

Which is why specifically in the case of level shift requirements for the higher shifted trials, I leave that to the discretion of the league organizers. If requiring higher level shifts is "elitist" that would imply that it was clear cut, that that requirement is objectively unnecessary. But that's not possible to determine for a given league, so it cannot be called elitist for a league leader to require what their experience tells them they have a high probability of requiring. I don't believe its elitist to attempt to have a high rate of success.

Everyone experiences different success rates. Even on Triumph, I've had different success rates than Snow Globe has had, and that's even with a sizeable percentage of the trials I've been on actually having him on them (its not a big server). For example, I've *never* failed a Keyes. Ever. That's a combination of luck, and generally running it on leagues where a significant percentage of the players are known quantities. But I know Snow has been on failed ones. My impression of what's necessary will be different from his, because I haven't even seen a failure yet, even on low powered leagues.

On the other hand, I've only been on a handful of successful Undergrounds. People who tell me that trial is easy and they run it with their eyes closed clearly have a different experience than me, but lets just say that anyone who thinks that can and should be run with anyone has a different opinion than I do, and upon request I would be more than happy to explain to them in precise detail just exactly in what specific ways their opinion differs from mine. It involves pliers and high voltage.

Because experiences differ, judgments differ as to what's necessary for the different trials. Chalking up differing experience to elitism is failing to acknowledge just how widely disparate individual experiences can be.

To be honest, knowing what I now know about Prometheus, I would probably spend my time finding a less murderous way to transcend Wade's accomplishment and slap Prometheus silly. My main character's origin story is that she was a pawn created to be a weapon against the Rikti. Hero or not she would not willingly be a pawn to Prometheus against Battalion without exploring other options. And I've seen no evidence that Prometheus is smarter than I am, which means he's shown no evidence of being smarter than my character either.

Perhaps Wade had the right idea, but was just a major shmuck about it.