Arcanaville

You're never going to convince me that Quick Recovery is the booby prize among powerset advantages.

Jim, madness has no purpose, or reason, but it may have a goal


Admittedly, this is another weak part of the plot, although not in the direct sense. The real question is what did Nero believe would happen to his future wife and child if he tampered drastically with the timeline by eliminating the Federation. That's a big enough change that it could have altered history enough to make it so they were never born. Trying to avoid that would be a good reason not to just show up on Romulus and hand them the Narada, but it then makes it irrational to completely obliterate the Federation as well. But then again, he's nuts.


Incidentally, I see more people jumping on the bandwagon that the first two Terminator movies' time travel don't make sense. Someone recently mentioned the argument to me, and I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that - inadvertently - those two movies actually make total sense: they actually depict one of the few ways the whole story could actually make sense.

Here's what happens. Skynet invents a time machine. But it suspects based on its understanding of time travel that you cannot arbitrarily change the past. If relativity is correct, time travel isn't impossible but it cannot lead to contradictions. In particular, you cannot change any element of the past that would alter your decision to actually travel to the past. Doing so would create a paradox, and the laws of physics will conspire somehow to prevent that from happening. But Skynet isn't certain: it decides the logical option is to test the theory. So it sends a T-800 into the past to kill Sarah Conner. If the theory holds, this attempt will fail because it would be eliminating the reason it has for sending the Terminator into the past which is a contradiction, but its worth a shot. Immediately upon dispatching the T-800 Skynet checks its memory banks for any evidence that the terminator succeeded. Instead, what it discovers is upon careful research, the components used by Cyberdyne systems to create it bear evidence that they possessed components of the very Terminator Skynet just sent into the past. Therefore, Skynet has created a predestination loop: it caused its own creation, which is a self-consistent history.

Knowing this now, it knows any attempt to change the past must prevent that change from altering any element of history up to this point in a way that would alter Skynet's plans to send a terminator into the past. It has accounted for this possibility and kept its Ace in the hole: the prototype T-1000. The T-1000 is a shape-shifting terminator. Its job will be to kill John Conner in the past and then replace him. The T-1000 will then try to infiltrate the resistance by being its leader, and then even try to lead the humans in a successful revolt against Skynet. But when the moment that Skynet sends the T-1000 into the past is reached, the T-1000 will then, now that it is safe to do so, turn against the humans and destroy the resistance.

The reason why Skynet sends the T-800 to kill Sarah Conner is that this is the most logical way to ensure John Conner isn't born. But it has to send the T-1000 to kill John Conner directly, and when he is old enough that the T-1000 can copy him and extrapolate what he will look like when he is older. So Skynet picks a teenaged John Conner: young enough to be vulnerable, old enough to copy.

When the resistance finds the lab, its just after the moment when the T-1000 is sent back. These are grunts, not scientists. They don't know anything about time travel theories. So they think its their job to stop both Terminators. They send Kyle after the first one, and a reprogrammed T-800 after the second one. They do this under orders from Conner, who survived both attacks and knows, because of predestination loop, what is supposed to happen. By sending what he remembers encountering, he fulfills the requirement of having a self-consistent universe timeline and the net result is that *all* of the time travel, both Skynet trips and both resistance trips are essentially predestination paradoxes. But they are paradoxes in name only: they represent self-consistent timelines as far as relativity is concerned.

Skynet believes that it can keep sending Terminators back in time until it gets it right, because the universe will in effect keep erasing its mistakes until it gets it right. But the other possibility is that the resistance will eventually get it right and stop Skynet from making any more time travel trips, which is what happens.

This line of thought can theoretically be extended to encompass Terminator 3.

Traces from Antimatter's space base discovered.

Are you actually saying Regeneration is the only melee secondary that offers "only survivability" especially with the caveat that the other thing it offers is endurance?

The day that happens I'm going to just cut the devs out of the loop and hack instant healing into practiced brawler in the power spreadsheets and call it even.

I don't want to side track the entire thread, but just consider this: if Nova was balanced around its recharge time it would do on average 760 points of base damage for Blasters. That's unslotted damage.

Also, if you want to see what a power with a softer crash can do, see EMP.

Usually, I'm happy with people intelligently debating, and either accepting or rejecting my analyses. I'm even more happy when people accept them, but forget they came from me: forgetting they came from me eliminates a source of controversy. The best case scenario for the game is when no one has any idea I was involved with any aspect of the thing, because then there's no personality conflict associated with the thing.

Its happened many times before. DPA, for example, was only ever remotely controversial when I was associated with it, given that I invented the term and the usage (at least on the English forums: its possible someone beat me to the concept on the Euro forums). Nobody knows or cares anymore, and also no one considers the idea remotely controversial.

I would tend to disagree. I believe I can make the case that nukes like Nova are actually currently underpowered by City of Heroes' own design rules. Beyond that I also think that the damage nukes do given their extreme recharge is not even bound by normal damage balance rules any more than the damage mitigation strength of powers like Elude and Unstoppable are bound by normal powerset balance rules governing mitigation strength. If damage mitigation powers can be designed to provide temporary invulnerability, nukes can for brief periods of time transcend the normal offensive limits of players. Especially when used by an archetype that specializes on damage and only damage (I recognize other archetypes besides blasters possess nuke-like powers).

I wasn't really bothered by the lens flare either. Complaining about the exaggerated lens flare in a JJ Abrams movie is like complaining about the exaggerated make up in Kabuki theater.

I actually was given the books and read the first three in one night (the first three are kind of short). Soon after I went to the bookstore to pick up the fourth book the day after it released, and I actually saw kids in the bookstore with their parents struggling to *lift* the book and carry it to the register. Seeing that was my first real inkling of just how much pull Harry Potter had with its readers. Kids wanted to read books too heavy for them to carry.

I have no idea what you mean by coming up with things you weren't talking about. You consistently claim that my analyses are either flawed, irrelevant, or highly questionable. In the case of the archetype analysis, most of my conclusions were confirmed in discussions about them. So my flawed, irrelevant, questionable analyses landed on the correct results, which it tends to do just about all the time. Either I'm smarter than you, or God hates you and put me on Earth to get extremely lucky in an annoying way.

The smart money is on both, though, given the fact you aren't that smart or likeable.

I'll keep this in mind, though, for the next time something more contemporaneous comes along. The last time I was this tempted I came really close to getting a player to bet forum access that I was totally wrong, when I had absolute proof I was right. Might be worth it in this case.

People can always change their minds. Also, the people themselves can change. But that's presumed, and separate from the general principle that it is not true that companies, run by people, will pursue revenue where ever it exists. They will pursue to the best extent possible within the limits of their corporate objectives and those things are not trivially mutable.


I'm also not making any guarantees that it will. I only know what the intended objectives of the devs are. Whether they succeed will depend partially on their execution, partially on what the customer base decides they want, and partially on their definition of success.

If they double the total playerbase and increase total revenues by 50%, that's good but not great. It would keep the game going for years to come, so that might be success, just low grade success. If they quadruple the playerbase and double revenues, I think that will be the minimum level of success that a normal F2P conversion would consider success, and would be a pretty good deal for a seven year old game pursuing more of a hybrid model. Anything above that would have to be considered a completely unqualified success.

For me personally, the question of plausibility depends on what's being questioned. Every work of fiction is allowed high latitude for initial conditions. How plausible is it that we will invent warp drive, or that there are Vulcans and Andorians? Star Trek is allowed, as part of its initial premise, to invent its own universe without regard to plausibility for the most part. That's what we're supposed to accept when we enter that universe.

Fortune within the story doesn't have the same wide open latitude, but we assume that movies and other stories have to be interesting and we therefore can be asked to make the assumption that we're only seeing the story because extraordinary things happened to have occurred at that time. Some level of unusual activity is to be expected, because the mean (average) is boring.

Self inconsistency is the main area where I don't give a lot of latitude for implausibility. If the story itself creates rules and relies upon them within itself, and asks the reader to buy into them, then it has an obligation to follow them itself. Things should always work the same way, people should tend to act within the limits of their revealed personalities most of the time, etc.

We have lots of evidence that 21st century militaries are not run like Starfleet is run. But we don't have a lot of evidence that Starfleet in Star Trek isn't run more or less as depicted within Abrams Trek, so that doesn't bother me so much.


Plus, to be honest my own background makes me see plausibility objections in a completely different light than most people. So many people complained about how totally ridiculous "red matter" was as a plot device, when I was thinking "that's a stranglet blob" whereas far fewer people (at the time) were complaining why Nero couldn't just have dropped it into San Francisco bay. The problem with complaining about plausibility is that most people aren't really good at applying plausibility in actual reality and that *should* temper their own belief in their ability to judge plausibility in fiction. It usually doesn't, though.

You should know I send virtually all of my analyses to the devs, and usually discuss their conclusions with them. I am always holding Aces. I just usually have no desire to beat other people to death with them.

Usually.

I seem to recall you yourself saying that global chat is another one of those big hooks of an MMO, and that social interaction doesn't specifically have to mean teaming. So if we decide to add initiating teaming with the free accounts because its a big MMO hook for new players, regardless of consequences, why not also allow free players access to global chat channels, also regardless of consequences? Isn't the ability to participate in the social networks of this game at least as important, and at least as much of a hook to continued play, as direct teaming?

Put it another way: without access to chat channels, how are you even going to know your friends are logged on to team with them? This game is so heavily dependent on chat channels to network players, isn't the ability to team without the ability to coordinate and contact your friends limiting the ability to team to the point where much of its potential benefit is defused anyway?

And the day enough people ask for orc costumes is the day the devs are going to get over the prejudice that this game is a superhero game.

The devs don't have a "prejudice" over subscribers. Its a decision, not a prejudice, to declare their model to be focused on the subscribers.

Maybe if enough people are willing to pay for it Paragon Studios will become a pizza delivery company. Then again, maybe that's completely ludicrous, and there are limits to how far anyone will pursue revenue streams relative to their corporate objectives.

You shouldn't tempt me like that.

There's also a more political explanation. Academy enrollment is at historic lows. Starfleet service is voluntary, dangerous, and doesn't pay well (or at all). Half their fleet just got squished and Starfleet is going to need replacement officers and ships to be built, and is going to need public support for that. So what do you do with the greatest hero of Earth and the Federation in its entire history? You parade him around in the newest shiny starship on a goodwill tour of the Federation, to encourage people to sign up, and drum up support to rebuild the fleet.

Perhaps that is a more palatable explanation for why Starfleet would put Kirk in command of the Enterprise. Because at the moment, the most important value both Kirk and the Enterprise itself have to Starfleet is as marketing symbols.

You use the phrase "raw cadet" as if Kirk spent three years in classrooms and then suddenly found himself in command of the Enterprise. I don't think that's how Starfleet Academy works. It sounds like cadets actually sometimes, if not often, serve on starships as part of their training. According to Memory Alpha (although my own recollection of the episode in question is a little hazy) Kirk almost certainly must have served aboard a Starship as a first year cadet, as he participated in a peace mission for which he was given a commendation. If Kirk was a recognized rising star at the Academy, he could have had lots of actual experience with starship duty and starfleet operations. We also see from the movie that when cadets were assigned to starships they were assigned to actual, if not always critical, duty stations. Uhura was able to immediately replace a communications officer, which implies she was at least familiar with the position at more than just an academic level.

So Kirk was a cadet (and literally days away from becoming either an ensign or a junior Lt) but he might not have actually been "raw."

Throughout the entire closed beta we were given "dummy rights" that made us have, and then not have certain access, have lower, then higher veteran status, all completely disconnected from our actual live account status. Its entirely possible that the Beta server isn't quite properly processing what it is supposed to, but it is doing it in a way entirely different from how the live server process will work. There's a lot of hinky stuff in there to make a testing environment work, like phony account information for the store (so it doesn't have actual private information or try to charge your credit card) and rigged account status in some areas for testing purposes.

Unless the devs explicitly state that you should presume for the purposes of the open beta that your beta account should have precisely the same rights as you would expect your live account to have, I wouldn't presume that to be the case just yet.

Since some things seemed to be "sticky" and other things seemed to be lost, I'm still holding out hope that things revoked when the store went down are more of a beta glitch than a preview of what a live store outage would do. But I'm still concerned either way.

I saw that and the question mark thingy as well, but I'm not sure if that is a standard disclaimer or a statement of functionality. If that reflects the functionality of the system, its not a good idea.

Whenever a developer proposes anything remotely like that to me, I always ask them one question: "are you willing to be on call 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year to address problems with it when the system becomes unavailable and impacts end users?" If the answer is "no" I remind them I'm not actually asking: I'm telling them what will happen if they go ahead and do that.

Apparently Venture caused a run on hookers and broken the online store.

Then he tried to invite everyone into the champagne room and broke the VIP system.

I had thought that account and character unlocks were "sticky" in that they required the account server and the store to be online at the moment of purchase, but they did not need to be up continuously for that stuff to be constantly validated. That may still be true and this is just beta stuff involving one-time prevalidation scripts for beta testers. But if its true that the store actually has to be up constantly and if its not all or even many unlockables can disappear because they cannot be validated, that's asking for trouble.

The first time I can't access my characters on live because of a server glitch I'm going to complain loudly, and quoting the standard code rant will be about as effective on me as quoting the ten commandments.

Designing the system to require continuous validation of in-game options is asking for the kind of trouble you do not want.

That's part of what I was thinking when I referred to "the Vulcans." We know that at the time of TOS, Sarek was already a highly respected Federation ambassador. We learn that Spock's family wasn't just a bunch of random Vulcans when we see T'Pau presiding over Spock's wedding. Sarek alone might have been enough to tip the scales with the Federation and Star Fleet, but Spock may have also made himself known to key Star Fleet and Federation powers that be, since he says at the end of Star Trek that he himself found a planet to found a Vulcan colony. Why would the Federation allow an unknown Vulcan to do that, and why would the Vulcans just go along with it? Either they knew, or at least high ranking members of the surviving Vulcans and the Federation probably know at least some elements of Spock-prime's story.

My guess is that Pike alone was enough to convince most of the masses at Starfleet, and Sarek with or without Spock-prime was enough to convince high authorities in the Federation. Between the two, that was an enormous amount of pressure being put to bear to commission Kirk as Captain of the Enterprise. It would be like if George Washington and Benjamin Franklin both asked the continental congress as a personal favor after the war if they would assign a personal friend of theirs to be the Captain of an american ship of the line. They could have asked the continental congress to make their pet poodle the postmaster general and they would have gotten it.