Arcanaville

You'd probably get less flaming in a thread about the worst posters, than the worst powersets. The forums are kind of strange that way.

The real issue is has always been that other people exist, and they don't think what they're told to.

Any of the people who said the game was doomed back in 2006 are welcome to step forward, so I can tell *them* I told them so.

Neither will I.

Wouldn't you?

In a thread EXPLICITLY talking about a fictional work that purports to satirize fascism?

Lets take very simple examples just to prove the point. We have missions where we have to kill stuff. We don't really have missions where the primary reward-generating goal is to clear an area of critters, which would open the door to knocking them away, repelling them away, teleporting them away, or killing them. That's focusing on combat without directly focusing on kills. Hero respec partially illustrates the point by making the goal protecting a target, but that's still ultimately a temporary measure to buy time to defeat everything. To a certain extent you can also do this in Keyes, to a point, but that's also very limited.

We get XP, influence, and drops for kills. Every other aspect of combat is a means to an end to generate kills. It can be helpful to debuff, hold, knock, immobilize, or terrorize critters, but rarely are you actually rewarded for it. It would be pretty wild if there was a villain side mission where the goal was to terrorize everyone out of a building. Players with actual terrorize powers would have an advantage, just like players with cold powers have an advantage putting out fires. But in the absence of those powers you could simply start smashing the crap out of the building and its contents to frighten people (I am presuming that for the purposes of this mission terrorize powers would act as desired, and not as they ordinarily do, against civilian targets).

There's lots of potential opportunities, but many of them are hampered by the fact that the current powers system strongly devalues anything other than killing and surviving damage specifically because there are no rewards for doing anything else. A previous thread talked about the SSOCS or the skills system. Why must non-kill focused mechanics be "out of combat?" Why can't endurance drain help players in one way, while fire does so in a different way, to satisfy mission objectives? We can't completely redo how powers work and who has what effects globally, but we can take what players have and try to leverage that beyond killing targets. Maybe endurance drain could knock out a security system in a mission, making it easier. Maybe fire could set the building ablaze, and force all the critters in the building to make for the exit - which you could be standing next to, or you could be stealthing to the objective in the meantime. "Combat" would still be the main mechanism for doing things in the game, but that combat would not always be necessarily focused on kills.

Nothing is better than eternal happiness

A ham sandwich is better than nothing

Ergo, a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness

Having thought about this statement fairly and carefully, I'm forced to conclude that whether I think its logical or not, my feelings align with it generally.

Perhaps "lessens" is not the right word in all cases. "Alters" is the correct word. Its a question of the specific way the game presents a situation to me. If there's only one way to get a reward, and its to kill a million monkeys, then if I choose to get that reward, my only choice is to kill a million monkeys. If I do, there's a certain sense of accomplishment associated with hurdling a challenge placed before me.

However, if I'm given the choice: kill a million monkeys or buy it from the store, the challenge placed before me is subtly different. Now, its not the challenge of killing a million monkeys. Its the challenge of abstaining from buying it from the store while I kill a million monkeys. Its like the difference between surviving in the wilderness with very little food and going on a diet. One involves dealing with a restriction, and the other involves having the willpower to impose that restriction upon yourself.

The equation of the challenge in my mind changes, and with it my perception of the reward that follows.

People have been saying this since 2006. Since that was six years ago, it would be more proper to say this game is slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowly dying.

You're talking about the logic of unfairness, but that's not the same thing as the visceral notion that something is fundamentally unfair to you personally. In fact, your last paragraph specifically highlights this fact by asserting that viscerally, you believe there's such a thing as a fair way to be unfair.

I'm not entirely certain upon what you're disagreeing with. You can make up any definitions for the terms you want, as I mentioned, but I'm just stating the objective fact that those are the definitions I generally use when conversing with the devs, because those are the definitions they are generally using when they use the terms themselves. If you disagree that's what the words mean, you can argue the definition with the devs, or you can adopt the definition in order to actually communicate with them. I just don't know what the first option buys you.

The more general point is that regardless of the terminology, which is a semantic issue, there are three classes of powers: class X exceeds design limits that cannot be exceeded in some critical way, often but not always tied to either game system limits or reward earning power: these the devs are compelled to change. Class Y exceeds the target range of strength the devs intend: these the devs would reduce in beta, would likely rebalance if they were new, but are less likely to change the older the power is. Its a judgment call whether they change these, but they aren't compelled to do so. Class Z are higher than the target the devs generally aim for, but not necessarily outside the range of acceptable strength. They are, however, generally exceptionally far from the target. The devs generally change these in beta, but generally not after they go live.

Its an academic exercise to debate what the proper terms are for these three classes of powers. But if you make up your own, your ability to communicate with the devs or understand their public statements will be strictly hampered. I'm not certain why anyone would do that voluntarily.

Arbiter Hawk essentially believes Drain Psyche is a Class Y power.

Given your suggestions for the corruptor and defender mods? At least. I'm moderately ok with the current gap between blaster and corruptor and defender ranged mods. I would not be ok with that gap materially shrinking.

That would be true with or without the sniper changes.

You're conflating the question of what a speaker is trying to communicate, and what the listener should conclude from that communication. If someone tells me 2+2=5, he's trying to convey a very specific mathematical fact. I have an obligation to interpret that statement accordingly. But if I conclude he's an idiot, that is irrespective of whether the speaker wants be to think that. He has no right to demand I think about him in any particular way. He communicated an idea. It was false. It was stupidly false. Ergo, he's a MORAN.

Conversely, if the speaker is someone with a reputation for being intelligent, for understanding math, for having command of arithmetic, then its my responsibility to conclude that the odds are very high that's a typo, and he didn't mean to assert a mathematical fallacy. That's what being a responsible listener is.


A speaker only has a reasonable expectation that I will discern the specific assertions you're trying to communicate. They have no reasonable expectation to dictate how I feel about them, or what I do with that information once its been communicated.

Also, in the example above, and pertinent to the thread in general, while listeners have a responsibility to attempt to discover the communicative intent of the speaker, that doesn't forbid them from commenting on whether the speaker is particularly good at communicating those ideas. They could still suck at it.

Because of the inverted nature of the Federation in Starship Troopers, namely that the military has a certain element of hierarchical superiority over the civilian government, you could argue that statement doesn't even have the same meaning in Starship Troopers it does in most conventional governments.

Nazi Germany wasn't strictly speaking a military dictatorship, but separating the civilian government from the military would be a non-trivial exercise.

To put it another way, if the US decided to make the Secretary of Defense responsible for the post office, technically the postal service could be construed as a part of the military. But I don't think that's what most people mean when they say that Federal Service in Starship Troopers was exclusively military service.

I believe the first half of that statement is impossible for non-socipathic human beings.

The fundamental principle at work here is the expectation of fairness doctrine in games design. One of its cornerstone principles is that people must perceive a game to be fair in its dealings with its players, or that will be a source of friction between the game and its players. Its impossible to avoid this completely because everyone is different, but within the scope of MMOs all human beings have a psychological need to believe that by at least some definition they are comfortable with the game treats all players fairly. And fairly does not mean "equally" either.

We can say "I don't care what those players do or are allowed to do" and we might even believe it, but studies have shown that when you're not actively trying to adhere to that principle your brain will not follow the rule.

How the game presents choices to the player, and how it presents choices to all players in general, directly influence how the players perceive the game to be fair or unfair in the psychological sense of the word. That it will affect us is certain. How it affects each of us is the part that is much more difficult to know.

Historically, the term was invented to connect the notion that ideas can replicate and evolve to genetics: a meme is the gene-analog of an idea.

On the internet, an internet meme is essentially a highly successful meme: its an idea that spreads on the internet via some mechanism, be it text quotation or forwarded image or video, until it reaches a critical mass where it becomes part of the cultural lexicon on the internet.

I don't believe authors are allowed to change their minds about their intent after the fact. That is tantamount to lying. However, I do believe that story-telling is a form of communication. Like all communication, its the responsibility of the speaker to attempt to be as clear as possible about the ideas being communicated, and its the responsibility of the listener to make reasonable effort to understand the speaker's intent.

The moment the listener says the intent of the speaker no longer matters, and his or her interpretation of the words is the only thing that matters and not the speaker's intent, as far as I'm concerned they've lost the right to act like a reasonable listener. They've opted out of the right to have their own words mean anything. I choose to interpret the words of Death of the Author advocates as claiming that they are insecure sociopaths that like eating ice cream in darkened rooms while giggling nervously to themselves. And because my interpretation of their words is the only thing that matters, they have no say in the matter.

They could of course argue that it not fair to grossly alter the meaning of the words they use in that way and some objective standard exists to translate words to meaning, but I interpret that to mean they are sleepy and want a nap.

Or to put it another way, Death of the Author can pucker up for me as well. My *only* exemption is if an author says his intent was X in writing something, and then years later claims his intent was something completely different, I believe the author that wrote it carries more weight than the author that is now reflecting on it.

Why does a military recruiter, in a military recruitment office, discuss the federal service in military terms? Why does Juan's father assume that when Juan announces he's going to serve in the military that it will be military service? Gee, no idea.


Now you've really stumped me. As I have no idea why you'd be bringing this up. But in this case, I would prefer to quote the actual analysis author:

Not even he had the problem you apparently have.

May-be.

The problem with that analysis is that it fails to account for the blurring of the military and the federal government. The book explicitly states that the federal government is required to find something to do for anyone that volunteers, even if that person is completely incapable of performing any reasonable function in the armed forces. There have to be non-combat places for people to serve. The reason for most of the emphasis on combat-capable armed forces is that the whole intent of federal service is to find those willing and able to make large sacrifices for the state: its intended to be difficult, and its intended to weed out those that cannot make that sacrifice. The most logical reason why military service is highlighted in the novel is that it follows an able-bodied person capable of serving in that capacity. The society in ST could not function if it allowed such people the loophole of serving in capacities well under their ability to serve and for whom no sense of sacrifice would be evident.

Its supposed to be hard, dangerous, and sacrificial. Starship Mailman would have to follow someone who was only genetically capable of delivering the mail for some bizarre reason. Such a person would then be made a mail carrier. Federal law would require it.

The error, again, is the blurring of the military and federal service. The book actually mentions (I don't have it in front of me now so I cannot quote the passage) that some people become medical lab rats if that's the only thing they can do. Its unlikely that means all medical experimental volunteers are performing federal service. It does mean when the federal government places you there you are. So *any* job *could* be federal service if the federal government decides that will be the thing you do to serve your term.

Otherwise, the interpretations the author makes that he believes are the most reasonable also end up contradicting the facts we know about how the system works.

I didn't realize this look was that highly requested though:

Of course, had they not been successful they would have either canceled or radically altered the second round of them.

The devs plan to have an Omega incarnate slot, but they have no idea what it will do. Production has to plan major development months and years ahead for various resource management and marketing reasons. That doesn't mean those plans don't get shuffled around based on continuing developments. That the second set of Super Packs seems to be following the same structure as the first one suggests the first one met or exceeded their expectations for them, whatever those were.