Arcanaville

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Perhaps trying the same arc from two alternating accounts might be enough.

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My testing shows that this doesn't seem to work. Regardless of whether the launch attempts come from the same account or more than one account, some invalid arcs never start, and never drop out of search either. Not sure why. I'm pretty sure there's a bug of some kind in here, but I'm not sure what the bug is exactly.

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I'm curious as to how you account for IH and MoG. Do you just figure out their average contribution over time? Or do you have some other method

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Yeah, since the base idea here is average survivability over time, yes, I just work out the average contribution over time. So for Instant Healing, what's the average additional healing it provides over time, with a little extra complexity if Dull Pain isn't permament. For Moment of Glory, I use a time-weighted average of resists and defense with it up and down. It would be better instead to use a time-weighted average of survivability with it up and down, and I'll probably change that at some point.

To explain that in a little more detail, say you're at 25% to all defense half the time, and some power puts you at 45% defense half the time, no resists, and you heal 60 hit points per second. I'd average to 35% defense, so 15% of attacks getting through, and 60/15% = 400, which is the score I'd give.

But let's look at it a little more realistically. Half of the time, we're at 25% defense, 25% of attacks getting through, 60/25% = 240. The other half of the time, we're at 45%, 5% of attacks getting through, 60/5% = 1200. Our average performance over time is actually (240 + 1200) / 2 = 720, not 400.

Now, I chose the example to exaggerate the problem, but in any case, it's something I should fix at some point.

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Strangely enough, the "wrong" way might actually be the right way in this case. The question is whether you want the average score or the average survivability. What you're currently calculating is roughly a measure of average survivability. The proposed calculation is the average score.

The issue is that fluctuating scores only help the player in two main circumstances: first: if the actual threat is variable, and the player can align their own variable performance to that variable threat, they can leverage that variability. So if the player is diving head first into a large spawn, the incoming damage will of course tend to be higher at the start of the fight, and lower at the end. Powers like heals can help in that environment, because they can theoretically be expended at the start of the fight when they are most needed, and then recharged during periods when they are less needed.

Alternatively, the player could deliberately *seek* more hazardous environments (with presumptively higher rewards) when their survivability was higher, and "downshift" when it was lower. A regen scrapper, for example, could be a little more conservative when IH was down, and more aggressive when IH was up, and in that way make better use of the extra strength granted by that power.

The thing is that at least in very rough terms, the first situation tends to "average out" and you end up with an average survivability strength that is comparable with the average size of the threat. However, the second case doesn't necessarily average out because it can more easily be manipulated by the player.

An extreme example would be the case of a player that has 30% defense most of the time, but can jump to 45% defense with Elude for short periods of time with long recharge. If Elude is up, say, 25% of the time then in one sense we could say that the average survivability strength in this case is comparable to about 33.75% defense, but in reality the benefit can be higher because in theory that player might get full mileage out of the 30% defense during most of the mission, and then on top of that get full mileage out of the 45% defense at the end by using it against the boss. If the boss had commensurately higher rewards per unit time (they don't necessarily) then the true "benefit" of that variable mitigation is actually closer to the average of the scores, rather than the score of the averages.

However, in general the score of the averages (what your sheet does now) is less likely to generate weird numbers than the average of the scores (the proposed calculation modification) and its for that reason I don't calculate that way in general.

By the way, my Giant Mega Spreadsheet (the latest version of which is still retrievable by the link on the OP of that thread) can theoretically be used to generate numbers similar to the Wernerscore numbers, but with a megaton more complexity to have to wade through. However, its one advantage is that it can do the calculations under PvP DR rules (at least, as of the last time I updated it, which was a while ago). There's a column in the center of the spreadsheet where one could punch in any numbers one wants (called the "sandbox") or for that matter you could just make a copy of the sheet and then replace all the powersets with your own builds. But its probably massive overkill for that.

However, if Werner or anyone else wants to take that sheet and make a simplified version for build comparisons, I'm not opposed to that. The macro trickeration I use to do things like flip between PvE and PvP calculations might be useful for someone to steal^H^H^H^H^Yborrow.

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what makes pvp fun is that it can be different every time. But in a pvp "game" the rules and such don't change so you try different things.

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Actually, that's only true from some player's perspectives. In PvP, the opponents change, but the gameplay is roughly the same regardless. If you like that, its great. If you don't like it, there aren't a lot of options to diversify the experience.

In PvE, individual critters don't change much, but there's an awful lot of metagaming in the PvE side of the house. Some people like just casually logging in, fighting a couple of Skulls and then logging out. Others aren't crazy about the individual fights, but like reading the story: the foes are the background to the missions. Others see the combat as a hurdle to overcome while developing their characters. Some just play dress-up and the combat is really a form of theater for their characters. Some badge hunt, some collect influence, some treat missions as social events - the metagaming aspects of the PvE game are such that they don't require each individual fight with each individual critter to bear the full weight of keeping the player's attention.

However, in PvP if you don't like getting shot in the face and then teabagged, your options are extremely limited by comparison. I'm not saying every single PvP fight is like that (actually, I found it extremely rare myself) but its also unavoidable. And there aren't a lot of metagaming options available to refocus most players when that happens.

The fact that PvP has mechanical issues is only part of the story. The PvE game has had worse mechanical issues over the life of the game, but in the case of PvP those issues are the singular deciding factor most players have to judge the activity: either you like or accept them, or you don't. In the PvE game, that doesn't have to happen. You can hate (aspects of) the combat and still like the game.

That suggests, as I mentioned previously, that PvP isn't just in need of "fixing" but rather more importantly it needs a healthy ecosystem within which to operate. Without that, its a one-legged stool. If would be as if the devs launched CoV with just one archetype and one zone, and we all spent our time arguing over how to "fix" that one archetype to make CoV more popular. In my opinion, that would be overlooking a seriously large elephant in the room.

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I would need more information to form a hypothesis there.

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I don't know if this ties into the same issue, but I have experienced a jump in files sizes on different systems. I've probably edited my arcs on a greater number of different computers than most (home computer, work computer, any of 3 different computers over at an SG-mate's home)

The memory required for my arcs was always higher on XP machines than on Vista machines, or on my old Windows 2000 machine at work. It got to the point that once I was over 90% on the Vista machines at friend's house, it was over 100% and unpublishable at home. I have to make a trip to said friend's house to edit my arcs at this point.

It was pretty consistent too. One memory reading on Win2000 or Vista. A higher number on my XP machine at home or XP machine at my friend's house.

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I'm wondering if someone experiencing the problem has specifically conducted this experiment:

1. Take a mission arc file, call it testArc, and copy it to another computer that is known to exhibit the issue.

2. Open testArc on the initial computer in the MA, note the size, and then save it to a different file name: call it ArcA.

3. Open testArc on the second computer in the MA, note the size, and then save that arc on that system to a different file name: call it ArcB.

4. Assuming that the memory footprint is different in those two cases, copy the ArcB file back to the original computer.

5. Without opening either ArcA or ArcB again, binary diff the two files. Are they identical even after this sequence?

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So what needs to happen to make the Zone minigames better?

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Give the players that want to participate, but aren't the very best one on one combatants, something to do. The "buff/debuff based on mission completion" thing was an interesting idea, but too diffuse. You want to lower the participation-curve so people can ease into PvP, and then stop right where their participation limits are reached.

In many games, its possible to just throw everyone into the deep end of the pool, but in this game specifically the playerbase is generally unreceptive to it. But even the playerbase that doesn't want to directly engage in high-performance PvP can be lured into having a stake in it, which would make them at least supporters of the activity, if not 100% participants.

How you would do that precisely is a very involved discussion, but I think everything from allowing wagering on arena matches (basically spectator participation) to tower-defense-like minigames (where players man the towers rather than directly engage other players one on one) is fair game.

I think the most important thing is less the methods used, and more the quality of the implementation executed. And in all honesty I think that has been lacking with the PvP implementation going back to its inception.

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So with this... we'll finally be able to get the 1000 or so badges you see on dev toons now eh?

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I'm not convinced we'll actually get hero ATs running freely around Cap. "Visiting" the Rogue Isles could be as simple as the way that villains go to Paragon for Mayhems or such.

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I believe its likely we will have hero ATs "running freely around Cap." But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily get to "1000 badges" in the direct sense. Its possible that while hero-side, only your hero badges will display and vice versa (including badges that exist on both sides with different names), so even a player that has them all won't necessarily be able to display them all simultaneously (they will of course be able to track them in one of the badge-tracking sites).

So a character might have them all simultaneously in one sense, but not in another sense. I honestly don't have any idea what the devs' inclinations in this area might be, though.

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actually yes, i have a katana/sr scrapper at 38. brutes have the same numbers power for power defense wise. their advantage is in more hp which helps when a hit gets through

although have you tried a katan/sr scrapper? soft capped defense to melee and lethal at level 8. actually, over 50% to lethal

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Compared to Scrappers, Brutes are about as survivable overall, about as good offensively overall, but have slightly more diversity in powerset choices. My guess is based on the belief that the number of casual players for which that will be a factor is likely to exceed the numbers of more performance-minded players that look at any other feature of the archetypes. In a sense, every powerset brutes have that scrappers don't have is practically a powerset proliferation to scrappers, if both archetypes have equal freedom to play both sides. Just considering the number of players blue-side that might want to play an electricly-themed melee hero suggests that such choices will likely be more important to overall numbers than performance ones (I'm not making a specific judgement on either electric powerset here, except to say I believe most players wanting to play such a combination on the blue side are unlikely to want to do so for numerical reasons).

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Arcanaville, plz dont take my post as an attack against you. i know you have help out the community with testing and posting guides. i lurked on the fourms LONG before i actually reg and posted. Im full aware of what you have done. And by no means was it meant to undermind or downplay what you have done. We all tyvm for your contributions to the game. It was just met to show that others are just as capable. im pretty sure you knew what i meant but i just want to make sure.

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No offense taken. The important thing is not the person doing the testing, but the testing methodology taken. The more systematic it is, and the more precisely it is reported, the easier it is for the rest of the players - especially the ones that do a lot of heavy testing of the game, of which I am just one - to recognize the potential issue being reported and follow up with additional testing to confirm.

My suspicion is that this will turn out to be a "working as intended" and not a bug. However, I would like to collect my own set of data before asking the devs about it, as they appear to be slightly busy at the moment.

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Turg, is there any possibility that the two CoH installations have a difference in Client Versions?

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If the client reports a version older than the game servers, it shouldn't connect. There is a way to bypass the updater when starting the game client, but doing so will generate this failure whenever the game servers are patched. It would be a very weird bug if he could get an older client to successfully connect to the game servers.

In theory, there are ways for two game clients to get out of sync in a way that the updater doesn't detect, but I don't know of any that would affect the MA. Its possible to alter the behavior of the client by virtual file system override, for example (that's how things like map packs work, and its amazing what actually is overridable in that fashion) so in theory its possible someone could have tampered with their game client in a way that disrupts the MA, but as a practical matter I don't think that is likely.


I did a spot-check last night to see if things like mission objectives are still taking the same amount of static memory now as they were back in beta, and so far as I can see they all seem to be doing so, plus or minus a byte or two (text fields, of course, have changed significantly since then but only in terms of the parser, not the memory usage). So I don't think footprint measurements have changed significantly since then. So at the moment I don't have a good way to account for two identical files generating different mission sizes on two different computers. I would need more information to form a hypothesis there.

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Back to the original question...

Turg, are you absolutely, positively sure that everything is the same on both systems? I ask because when you edit story arc files, the system will "absorb" any changes made to custom critters or groups. So if you copied the story arc file to another system, but forgot to copy one of the critter group files, you could end up with two different sizes after the story arc "absorbs" the difference.

One thing I'm curious about is the idea of re-saving the story arc file on the machine that shows the increase, and then using a diff tool to see if there are any differences between that and the original. That would detect not only the case I mention above, but any weirdness involving the ever-popular   spam and the like.

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Absolutely, positively sure. What I did was wipe out all the MA folders from both locations, excepting the USB flash; then recopy from the flash source to the two locations. Verified in both laptop and desktop that the actual file size was X for the storyarcs and the various folders. I also ran a file compare on Leandro's suggestion to see what'd it show, and FC showed zero discrepancies on either side. However, with both editors up and editing the file, one would show 98%, the other 102%. The only real difference I saw was in "file size on disk", which showed a 4% difference. The two sets of facts seem pretty direct in this case.

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So far, I've been unable to reproduce this behavior, and I edit on two different systems myself. I have two suggestions:

1. Backup your MA directories (which you seem to have already done) and then delete them from both computers. Then copy *only* the mission storyarc file to both computers, and see if they show the same discrepancy. The question is whether the problem is actually in the mission arc file or in something related to how the MA resolves references.

2. If you don't mind someone looking at your source code, I can try to analyze the storyarc file to see if there is something in it that might be behaving oddly by testing it on a variety of systems. Contact me directly if you want me to take a shot at that.

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The banning of any one using words with three double letters in a row. That's the future of CoH.

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So no City of Bookkeepers, then.

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I applaud the effort but you aren't going to get much sympathy on the forums. Most of the forums goes are openly hostile to PvP and PvP players in general. The Dev's wont probably comment on PvP because it will be taken out of context OR people will theorize what they "really" ment. It would be a lose lose situation for the Dev team to comment on PvP right now.

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I haven't been able to say two words about PvP since sometime around I7 without it degenerating into a downward spiraling stupidfest. I made a very concerted effort to reverse that in I13 but after four straight days of being called an idiot for having an opinion (four days in which I voluntarily imposed a moratorium on responding to attacks), I gave up. Until that situation fundamentally changes, the forums in general and the PvP community as a whole is unlikely to have sufficient credibility to request meaningful changes, because open dialog is essentially impossible.

The irony is that I agree with many if not most of macskull's points, and in fact I was opposed to more than half of the dev changes for I13 for a variety of reasons, even if I was generally in agreement with the philosophy behind them, and I stated so publicly. I quickly lost the motivation to do much about it, though, and that wasn't the fault of the devs.

If I had any influence over the process, maybe 75% of the things on macskull's post wouldn't exist. But I don't, and I see no specific reason to stick my neck out to do so.

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Arcana, could it be that it's registering hits from the same account as only one hit? What if five or six other accounts tried to access the same broken MArc?

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I suppose that's possible. Its not the sort of thing that can trivially crop up as a bug, though, so that sort of behavior would probably have to be on purpose, or at least something close to on-purpose. I think its possible but unlikely that they are tracking literally every single player that tries to start the arc, but perhaps the problem is related to a single account trying the same arc repeatedly. Perhaps trying the same arc from two alternating accounts might be enough.

Something else does bother me a bit about this theory, though, and that is there seem to be a significant number of players trying to run unrated arcs. Some of those arcs are unrated specifically because they can't be run (or at least, that was true the last time I checked). I would think that random chance would have a lot of arcs "on the edge" when someone like me comes along and tries to run it, and I should have been able to push one or two over the trigger. But that didn't seem to happen when I was testing.

However, I'll try tonight or tomorrow to see what happens when I use multiple accounts to try to flag an arc invalid.


Oh, and on the subject of using the reporting button: I'm of the opinion that the reporting button is intended to report content violations. I myself personally would not use that button for any other reason, although that's strictly my personal preference. I'm not advocating either way in this case.

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Whip Control/Pain Domination!

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In this game, I wouldn't bet too much of my own money against that one.

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5. Nemesis system

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This one confuses me. You build an enemy, know intimately what they are capable of and how to beat them, then "face" them multiple random times in missions. How is this not going to grow boring after the first couple of encounters?

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This is why I feel that the Architect system is far better for this kind of thing, provided that you have a friend that can write.

Give your friend the details (what the nemesis look like, background story, general powers), and let them work up the stories in which you meet your nemesis. This way, you can still be surprised. I'm pretty sure that no computer generated algorithims can capture exactly how you expect your nemesis to speak and act, which is why another human being is almost required in order to do your nemesis justice.

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If I was designing a "Nemesis" system for CoH, that's how I would do it. You could roll your own if you want, but I would add the ability to delegate that ability to someone else in the game (voluntarily, of course). For me, designing your own Nemesis is like designing your own death trap.



Of course, my main concern with regard to any "Nemesis" system in CoX is the vast number of them that would end up being called "El Guapo."

Its supposed to, but it isn't for some reason. I'm not sure why, and I'm not even sure if every player is seeing the same thing. I reported one instance to pohsyb and he said he couldn't reproduce it. But I then reproduced it the next day.

In beta a feature was added where if an arc refused to start, it would be automatically flagged to drop out of search. It was working at one point. Sometime into live, it seems to have stopped working, or at least stopped working consistently. Pohsyb did tell me that apparently post-live the code was changed so that it required more than one failure to start on the mapservers, because they were getting glitches where arcs were being invalidated without being broken. But the number is supposed to be something small, like three or five failures in a row, something like that. I've hammered arcs ten times in a row and not had them drop out of search, so its not that.

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Not possible, unfortunately.

As I said, it was a very small map, two or three spawns, one glowy, and an ambush or two. Even on a very difficult setting I don't see anyway that the tickets granted from defeats could be more that 75 to 100, and even that's pushing it a bit.

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Then this should be investigated and quantified. Let's get Arcanaville on it right away, seriously.

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WTH does he have to do with anything? Last i looked he wasnt a redname unless its a devs alt account. If thast the cas. you may want to keep that under your hat so to speak. he may not want that getting out. but idk.

Plz explain why his testing is so superior to others and how SaintTzu is too incompetent to test this issue out. An issue that he found and brought it to light in this thread.

I know thats not what you directly said but you definitely implied that. Just not in as many words.

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For what its worth, in my own opinion the data SaintTsu provided is sufficiently credible sounding to warrant further investigation. Its on my list of things to look at on the weekend. But as you say, I don't have the patent on testing: everyone interested in the issue should be investigating it to whatever extent they feel appropriate (not all players want to or should be required to test the game).

It definitely sounds like the ticket cap is enforcing a lower limit based on mission detail factors. But it would take more data to tell what the actual pattern is. I have a pretty busy weekend coming up, but hopefully I can engineer some tests to determine what is going on exactly.

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Arcanaveal, in typical "useful" fashion says it was foolish to assume it would be in some way we could measure, that she knows how its done, but that she won't say. Useful as always, that one.

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Actually, I was very specific, and even wrote several articles about it in closed and open beta. I specifically told you that the size bar was a function of the internal size of the mission, and that the local file size did not correlate to that. You promptly went sailing off into schizo-land based on that statement which is when I decided you are simply insane.

I leave it to the court of opinion on that one:

Me: (this is the first post I made in the thread VP is referencing):
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It might be misleading, but its not intended to be nor does it claim to be the local file size. Local file size is independent from internal mission arc size. Many things affect mission size and local file size in a completely different way. My mythbusting thread unfortunately got eaten, but one of the things I discovered is that the recommendation to set unused costume parts to black is worthless: it doesn't decrease mission size (at least, it did not at the time I tested). It does dramatically reduce local file size, but that doesn't help the author.

Also, the 100k limit is actually 100,000 bytes, not 100k.

I'll take a look at IGOR to see what it does; some of the things it does (like stripping or reducing file references) might help, and then again it might not.

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And the response:
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That's a nonsensical statement, Arcanaville - what is the point of TELLING us that the maximum size is 100k if that doesn't correspond to anything we can measure ourselves? Given that approach they might as well say the maximum size is "100%" on the little meter, which it theoretically is but practically isn't... no more than the maximum filesize is 100,000 bytes. I have a non-reduced mission that is 92% in the editor, and 105k on disk.

The only rational explanation is that 100k was an estimate they gave based on some level of trial and error with the system, since it corresponds directly to nothing we can measure.

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I always appreciate it when someone first says I'm nonsensical, then states that their position is the only rational explanation, and then says something that is actually false. Bonus points when it contradicts dev statements and prior experimentation.


For the record, the meter is *not* a trial and error meter. All of the differences in size between the local file and the internal memory counter can be explained by changes in encoding. For example, color values that are stored 0,0,0 do not change the MA size meter when they are changed to 255,255,255 - that's because you're looking at a human-readable encoding, not the actual internal coding of those values.

Different mission objectives have different size requirements for their details. But one thing that is fairly constant is that raw text takes (barring tag insertion) 0.001% per character, entirely consistent with the meter measuring exactly 100,000 bytes. The meter doesn't display that level of resolution, but in beta I tested this by adding one character at a time to long text fields, and recording when the meter moved. There is a roundoff error that (at least at the time of testing) caused the meter to roll in an alternating fashion at 9 characters, then 11, then 9, then 11, in a repeating pattern. But overall, 10 characters = 0.01% of the meter.

Some things you can remove completely from the local file, and doing so will reduce the mission size because that data is no longer in the mission. But some things when removed don't change the mission size, because they are computed values and not intrinsic data, which means the mission contains that data implicitly whether the local file does or doesn't. Some costume part entries are like that in some cases.

However, the meter is definitely measuring something specific: its not guessing or anything. Its behavior is predictable and repeatable under experimentation.

The issue of whether the meter is measuring the local file size or not was a matter discussed and disposed of during closed beta with fairly careful experimentation, not just by myself but others.

Summary:

1. The meter measures actual mission file size, and the limit is exactly 100,000 bytes.

2. Adding mission details adds to that, but without careful experimentation there's no way to know how many bytes each mission objective requires for its own data structures. But text always takes up one byte per character, including spaces and tags.

3. The MA passes missions through a validator during publishing to the mapservers (this includes testing a mission, and not just "publishing") and during that process some data can be converted or altered. This can change the size of a mission from when its created to when its executed. Curiously, some coversions happen *after* the size is validated, which means its on rare occasions possible to test a mission once, and then have it be untestable a second time due to size constraints.


If you construct missions in a particular way, its possible to determine the size requirements of anything you want to add by differential analysis. I have results for a wide range of objectives and objects, but its not in a form that is easy to post. I was working on a way to do that when VoodooPokey elected himself arbiter of reasonable analysis for the MA, whereupon I set it aside and began working on my MA arc statistical analysis instead. I'll return to the subject in a few months once I've given VoodooPokey ample opportunity to preempt my work. That's not specifically out of spite, I generally *always* work on something else if someone is working on the same thing I'm working on. There are forum posters out there that can attest to that fact: why duplicate work if someone else can do it just as well? I'll even give VP full credit for it if he does whenever the data is referenced.

Keeping my data to myself and letting VoodooPokey do all the heavy lifting himself? That *is* out of spite. I ordinarily dump all of my data onto whoever else is working on the subject, and I don't generally ask for credit. In this case, I don't feel like it. Sue me.

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In a situation where one is putting oneself forward as an authority on writing it behests the individual to actually write well. As it stands, there is almost nothing one can glean from a venture review one could not glean better from simply going to TVTropes and researching for oneself.

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But Venture never did that. So far as I am aware, Venture never stated he was an "authority" on writing. Writing reviews does not do that implicitly, nor does writing harsh reviews do that implicitly.

If he *had* claimed his reviews to be authoritative, *I'd* probably rip him one myself. But he's only offering a specific perspective, in a field of other people offering perspectives, and in an environment where anyone can either attempt to supplant him or challenge him.

Now, as to the issue of researching for one's self, that's rather always true, except the one major flaw most people have is to train a critical eye on one's own work. Any outside perspective offers something the vast overwhelming majority of people, including the vast overwhelming majority of writers, cannot provide to themselves effectively. The only thing special about Venture in that regard is that he doesn't seem to pull his punches. That means its likely that his complaints are at least probably a superset of the ones an author ought to pay attention to.

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A quick count shows more posts in this thread bashing J_B than answering the OP's question...

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If I had to guess, I would say that the eventual result of side-switching (which may not necessarily open the floodgates immediately) is a small reduction in the percentage of players that play tankers. However, my guess is that this will come less from Brutes switching sides and displacing Tankers, and more from people rolling new Brutes slightly more often than rolling new Tankers. My guess, however, is that Brutes will do a slightly better job of displacing Scrappers. And I'm using the word "slightly" in all cases to emphasize that I don't think you'll see dramatic shifts in player population in the moderate future (+1 year after release of GR).

And this is less based on any point-by-point performance numbers so much as I think Brutes are a bit more solo-friendly than Tankers, and the number of people who solo as a significant if not majority percentage of the time is higher than I think most people assume.

If you want a less obvious prediction, without more information on GR's mechanics I believe side switching will somewhat increase the number of villain archetypes being played as a percentage of the total and that will be sustained. You'll also see an increase in red-side zone populations (after the initial burst of activity in Praetoria) but I'm not certain that will be ultimately sustained. I think you might see more *players* red-side, but less "free radicals" wandering around red-side: they will tend to be more focused groups of players choosing to gather red-side rather than spontaneous accumulations of red-side players.

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the players playing tankers

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Not all of them. Or even most of them, I'd guess.

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No, just 95% of all the players that supported tankers in these forums before you came along, who you called "part of the problem."

But of course, I'm sure all of the rest of them are on your side. Are you going to leave them all behind when you depart, or are you planning on asking Positron to let your people go?


Now that I think about it, I think we could charge serious admission if J_B stood in front of Positron in Steel with a staff in his hand and just kept saying "Let My Tankers Go" over and over again.

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I've tried to present my case in a reasonable manner on many occasions and offer solutions to some of those design issues you said you agree with and it's thrown back in my face and derailed by one of the very people it was aimed at. And then it's joked about.

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And then its set on fire.

But then again, when you state publicly that one of the main problems with tankers is the players playing tankers immolation is a foregone conclusion.

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Example when Global Defense Nerf was released in line with the "Balance Vision" Statesman promised that this was the end of the nerfing. Next issue Enhancement Diversification. When Statesman was confronted about this nerf his reply was that it was not a nerf from a programming point of view.

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Actually, he stated that ED wasn't a change to powers so he felt that his statement that there was going to be no more powers changes was valid.

I genuinely believe that Jack was sincere in this belief (and I was the one that specifically made the "hallway" comment). However, that also means Jack was not the best qualified to be making either powers-related statements or powers-related decisions either, because that level of compartmentalization is not, in my opinion, consistent with being able to positively influence your game's design (at least with regard to the powers-related components of it).

And I don't think Jack really *is* all that involved in such details over at Cryptic for any of their games in development. Everything I've been told says otherwise. My guess is that Jack has about as much influence over game mechanics and powers design for any of Cryptic's games as the CEO of NCSoft has over the flight cap.

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According to a SG member. Far too many arcs take place in the cargo ship map.

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So true. Even I have an arc on the cargo ship map and *I'M* sick of seeing that map.

I can't help it though. Unless the Game Devs add some classical pirate ship maps into the game, there's no other appropriate setting for my Pirate Rum Runners mish.

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I'm becoming a bit alarmed about that myself. I selected the cargo ship map for Secret Weapons in beta (actually, I selected the indoor/outdoor one originally, before it was removed). I did so only after testing literally dozens of maps for a variety of features. What I was looking for in that map was something that was fairly linear, fairly expansive, allowed flight, allowed partial stealthing, contained a significant amount of spawn points, contained sufficiently interesting geometry, and was reasonably ally-friendly (some maps are *not* friendly to allies, like some of the cave maps). That map best fit those parameters, and believe me I didn't select the first one that seemed to work.

However, it does seem to be a fairly popular map, alongside a couple of outdoor maps. I won't change it just because its popular, but it does factor in my decision making for future missions.

I'm also considering revamping the mission arc that contains that map, and I *may* change that map if I do, although if I do the fact that its popular would be only one factor in that decision.

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I'm sorry but there's nothing increasing ambiguity here. There just isn't. Language is ambiguous by nature, about the only useful thing deconstructionism has to say.

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In essence, you're saying 'because people can misunderstand me, I am under no obligation to say things that are understandable.'

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In situations where language is unambiguous, the responsibility is always on the speaker to express the correct thought. Computer programming is like that.

English is not (as are essentially all other human interactive languages). In those situations, its the responsibility of the speaker and the listener to meet halfway: the speaker must strive to target a small enough area with their words that the listener than then correctly select the proper meaning in context. If either don't do their job, or worse if one or the other deliberately places all of the responsibility on the other, communication is impossible.

Most people without an emotional vested interest probably understand the gist of "Mary Sue" (that are familiar with the term at all) enough for that term to land squarely in a basket of meaning that the listener can then retrieve a more precise meaning within the context of the speaker. That's all that the speaker is either required to do, or even theoretically capable of doing.