Arcanaville
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Quote:I thought that you were just showing what your face was going to look like after jaw surgery.Originally Posted by Energizing_Ion
You totally forgot the
face....never forget the ! -
Quote:That's almost never true. The "trade paperbacks" are collected works usually reprinted more or less as they originally were. Sometimes slightly better. Find any bookstore anywhere with a copy of "Watchmen" or "The Dark Knight Returns." That's what people mean when they talk about a TPB. That is the original 12 issue run of Watchmen, reprinted in a single book form.Originally Posted by MrBones
I'm glad you mentioned this because I was browsing amazon.com last night for some of the titles you guys suggested and I found most of them in what appears to be TPB format. I was concerned that these were in black and white, or condensed from the original version. Do you know if that's the case? I don't want anything in black and white, or low quality.
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Quote:Actually, that's exactly how I assumed conquering Earth helps him regain his rightful place. It seemed nominally obvious to me from the opening scene that the deal was Loki had to prove he was a good investment: conquering Earth was the audition to demonstrate he was worth his benefactor investing more into an effort to retake Asgard. The fact that it is a place his brother loves is just the icing on the cake and the fact that Loki needs the adoration anyway means it doesn't take much to convince him to try to take over the world as a stepping stone.Originally Posted by Tannim222
Yeah I understand the motive they gave Loki for the film was attacking Earth as a form of regenge against Thor. It's just a rather weak motive. He even states during the film that he's the rightful ruler of Asgard.
So how does attacking Earth help him regain his "rightful place"? It doesn't. As I said, it's a nitpick and nothing so huge as to say the film suffered for it. I just thought that it would've given Loki a little stronger motive to tie his attempt to conquer Earth (Midgard) as a means to reclaiming his rule over Asgard.
So with Thanos, it's prove yourself by bringing my army to earth and I'll help you get Asgard.
Actually, I believe its entirely reasonable to ask the viewers to make minimal assumptions. We aren't told how Hawkeye knew the vulnerable spots on the Helicarrier, but I doubt anyone in the audience was confused about how that's possible: we didn't need a flashback scene showing him reading a manual or something. We aren't explicitly shown how Shield kept track of Banner, we're just told Shield did, and we assume Shield is capable of doing exactly that. There is actually the opposite criticism that sometimes a movie will show so much so explicitly it becomes burdensome. Interfering with the flow of the movie by stopping to explain everything to the audience is just as maligned.Quote:With regards to Loki gleaning information from Fury, Black Widow, watching other heroes, etc... they're all assumptions that we, the watchers of the films have to make because they writers don't explain otherwise. Making the leaps of logic to support why a character performs an action shouldn't be necessary for a viewer / reader unless sufficient clues are provided for the leaps to be made. And there really aren't. There's one clue, the after credit scene in Thor and it doesn't suggest that he's watching over Fury's shoulder everything he opens a file with the Avengers Initiative label for example.
If that's the case, then giving Loki a simple line dashing Fury's hopes in the beginning during his confrontation in the beginning of the movie would've resolved the entire issue.
And the assertion that the problem isn't explaining *everything* but just this one thing is missing the general point, because everyone has a different just one thing. Where you draw the line is a matter of cinematic judgment. -
So to review. Within four hours of Paragon Studios announcing they are giving stuff away for free, we have:
1. At least one person claiming giving stuff away is a "cheesy gimmick."
2. An assertion that twenty-four hours is a poor definition of a day.
3. The inevitable reference to addiction and gambling that occurs when the dev team does something related to addiction and gambling, such as displacing air or absorbing gravitons.
4. A red name unable to tell time.
5. At least one accusation of desperation.
6. Some confusion over how many times "once" is.
7. A slap in the face.
8. Some discussion about what specific thing "almost anything" probably actually refers to.
As Primal Earth makes Praetorian Earth look like a bunch of kindergarten rejects, so does Actual Earth make Primal Earth look like a bunch of senior citizens feeding the pigeons in the park. -
Quote:The prerequisites for that attack chain seem somewhat steep.Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
Web Grenade a particularly annoying, final enemy... Make them convulse with a nice Tase... And lay a Bomb at their feet and walk away. Extra points for turning on walk and more if you have a cigar in your character's mouth.
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I was thinking about another potential data point, but I haven't had the time to really collect it like I wanted to. Supposedly there are about 300,000 super groups in the game. The total prestige they contain could provide an estimate for a lower bound limit on the amount of influence that has been generated in the game. But that's a much trickier analysis for two reasons. First, you can't trivially list all the supergroups to find their prestige counts, and even if you could, tallying 300,000 would be crazy even for me. Second, there's two ways to generate prestige, one by *earning* influence at the same time, and the second by *destroying* influence converting it to prestige.
Having said that, I haven't fully thought out this analysis yet; I've just started collecting data points. But I thought I would share what I have so far for discussion purposes. I looked at the top 100 (heroside) SGs on Freedom, Virtue, and Triumph and calculated their total prestige. What I get is:
Freedom: 23.5 billion
Virtue: 15.5 billion
Triumph: 6 billion
Now there are two main ways to accumulate that influence, separate from the membership bonus (which is inconsequential for the top 100: the smallest of them have over 30 million prestige). You can earn it the same way you earn influence and simultaneously with it. My review of my logs suggest that the ratio of influence and prestige at level 50 is between 100:1 and 200:1 depending on the reward source (bosses have better ratios than minions, for example). The ratio differs at other levels but I'm assuming the ratio at level 50 will dominate for now. If we assume that the top 100 averages about 10 billion prestige across all the servers, then across 15 servers (I'm not counting Exalted for now as its probably too new, although that's my next data point) that's an estimated 150 billion prestige and 15 to 30 trillion influence *generated*. Alternatively, that prestige could be mostly influence conversions at 500:1. In that case, that's 75 trillion influence *destroyed*.
The truth is in the middle somewhere, although the lower bound is a bit lower than 100:1. The lower bound seems to be the case where all that prestige is first earned by activity which earns influence, and then that same influence is exchanged into prestige. If that's done at a 100:1 earning ratio and then converted at a 500:1 ratio that's a net 80:1 influence to prestige ratio, and a lower bound of about 12 trillion influence generated.
In any case, that's not bad given the margins of error we have with other methods: the prestige numbers imply something between 12 and 75 trillion influence created at some point (that's a lower bound obviously, because it only counts the top 100 SGs). However, these numbers don't give a good idea of how much of that influence is still around, because a lot of it could be influence that was generated and then destroyed. Without that, this could be a way to guestimate influence generation rates, but not influence holding rates.
Incidentally, the 80/20 rule does not hold for prestige for the top 100. On Triumph, the top 20 hold 38% of the prestige of the top 100, on Freedom its 54% and on Virtue is 58%. This is possibly because of the issue I mentioned earlier: while its possible the 80/20 rule might hold for the entire player population and the entire supergroup population, there has to be a point where scale invariance breaks down because influence and prestige earning is not themselves scale free. Whether there is any evidence a comparable rule holds below a certain threshold is something I haven't looked at yet.
Also, outside the top SGs there is some evidence that a large percentage of the 300,000 SGs have not earned much or any prestige beyond the membership bonuses awarded per SG member. That's based on a random search through the SG lists on all three servers. -
Quote:The devs still refuse to make me a bowel disruptor temp power in spite of my protests that its non-lethal.Originally Posted by StormDevil
What's that? Did you hear that? It said, "shut up, Fred."
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Quote:Which would be an interesting secondary data point if it occurred, but it would not be relevant to the thought experiment's purpose. The market area's impact on Pocket D is a secondary issue, but not the issue I was thinking about. The question was whether a market embedded in Pocket D has different properties from one in a stand alone structure, not whether a market embedded in Pocket D would in some way alter the environment of Pocket D itself.Originally Posted by Valerika
Exactly--which is why I suggested that simply by adding that terminal you would be -changing- the density of that market trading area. I believe that if you put that terminal in a highly dense area of Pocket D, you'd come back a month later and discover that the area where you put the terminal was no longer high-density. People will have migrated to other parts of the D to do their socializing, leaving the market area relatively clear. People would -use- the terminal, but much like WWs, they'd use it, then head off to different parts of the zone to socialize.
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Quote:Actually, even as "low" as Staff's single target damage is supposed to be, that's not what happens with Staff. With Staff, the logical approach is to set up on the boss and use AoEs as often as possible, slipping in single target attacks into the gaps. When you do that, the pattern seems to be that the minions go down first, and then the boss goes down fairly close to when the Lts go down due to the damage distribution from that kind of target selection.Originally Posted by Combat
That form of analysis, however, completely ignores the fact that combat tends to narrow down the number of targets very quickly, leaving one or two high HP targets per spawn. Most of the time I don't even get to use multiple AoE chains before combat is down to bosses, and those bosses aren't always close enough to hit with cones. Single target chains reduce the time it takes to defeat those last few spawns in a way AoE damage generally cannot.
One thing that I found surprising, and I'm not often surprised, is that my Staff/SR is having almost none of the problems my MA/SR had with high multiple Nemesis. I'm up to x4 with bosses, and what I'm finding is that vengeance is not as much of a problem because its very often not hitting anything. Because everything, or nearly everything, dies almost simultaneously due to all the AoE. It is far more likely that vengeance is going to cause me a problem with the next spawn, because its close enough to get a vengeance buff, than it is going to cause me a problem with the current spawn. Its not perfect, but its a lot better than with MA by a long shot. You'd think that killing things one at a time would lead to less vengeance stacking, and it does, but its even better when vengeance is landing on dead bodies.
I've actually taken a slight break from Staff to level my Titan Weapons scrapper. Of course, its going to take a while to make any comparisons to Staff because TW is actually not a joy to level at all. Until you can sustain momentum pretty much constantly, its actually a very staccato set. I probably won't be able to make a "fair" comparison until I get it into the 30s, but I can say that Staff and TW are at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to actually leveling the character. -
Quote:The only population density my thought experiment cares about is the density within the market trading area itself. The size of the rest of Pocket D surrounding it is as relevant as the size of Talos surrounding the Wentworths there.Originally Posted by Valerika
Actually, size -is- an issue, because it affects population density. The D is large enough that the people in it an any given time aren't packed together--there are hotspots where people congregate, and those spots are highly concentrated, but that isn't true of the entire -zone-. That's why I said that where you placed that terminal in the D would make all the difference.
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Going to have to add my vote for Planetary.
Transmetropolitan is iffy. I personally think its one of the best things ever, but its not a superhero book per se and it doesn't hit most of the OPs viewing points. Still, I always toss that out there: the Chair Leg of Truth compels me. And it is gritty.
Twenty five years goes all the way back to 1987. That's close enough that I have to throw The Dark Knight Returns in there just in case.
If you like meta (fourth wall referencing stories) Morrison's run on Animal Man is an interesting read and fully collected in trade paperbacks.
Ennis' run on Hellblazer, primarily because I think the story arc Dangerous Habits is the definitive John Constantine story, and far better in print than what managed to find its way into the movie.
The Authority, particularly volume one.
In terms of being pseudo-realistic, where superheroes are flawed and vulnerable, albeit explicitly not a rarity, I can also recommend Powers. -
Quote:Size is not an issue because the issue is not socializers outside the market areas intruding on the markets, but the social interaction intrinsic in high density within the market area itself. That's why I specifically noted merged market areas; to increase the theoretical density in that area as high as possible. If its not a problem to have lots of people crowded into a single market area in Pocket D, the same would likely hold true anywhere else, because the surrounding environment is only significant insofar as it pertains to the convenience of arriving at that market area in the first place.Originally Posted by Valerika
I think what would happen is that the area where you place the terminals would become the "market area" of Pocket D, and socializers/RP'ers would steer clear of it by a small radius, much like they do around the tailor--people back away from that contact by at least 20 feet or so in order to chat or RP, because the people right -at- the tailor are typically busy and won't respond, in my personal experience.
Since Pocket D is relatively large, this wouldn't present a problem, unless you -deliberately- put a market terminal in a highly concentrated area, like in one of the bars, or on top of the dance floor. In that case, you'd start to see angry posts on the forums about the change from people who go to the D to chat/RP, but in the end, that highly concentrated hotspot would gradually dissolve, and people would socialize in other parts of the D in order to avoid blocking the terminals and trying to chat with people who don't respond because they're busy marketeering. Essentially, putting a terminal in the D wouldn't tell you that much about convenience over socialization--instead, it would just subtly alter the makeup of the D, which is large enough to easily compensate for such a change. -
Quote:My post speculated on the difference between Pocket D and the normal market areas' appropriateness for socialization by proposing an experiment to see if market activity is sufficiently incompatible that people would actively avoid mixing the two activities even in the face of a convenient pre-designed area that comingles the two. That's neither an endosement nor a repudiation of Nethergoat's suggestion. It is directly relevant to the question I asked earlier, which was whether there was in fact a specific difference between the two areas that is something other than coincidental.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
I'm just responding to your part of the discussion. As for the goat, well, his ... *unique* way of viewing responses, well....
The question is the degree to which people actually care, and that's measurable by seeing how many people use those terminals. If more people care, some fraction of the total will avoid using them even if they are otherwise convenient to use. The normalizing factor is the number of people that pass through Pocket D relative to the numbers that pass through the other zones that have markets. -
Quote:Perhaps you should respond to him instead. I have no better means of passing on your message than you do. I'm under no obligation, and make no effort, to interpret your response to my post as serving a higher goal of responding to someone else. If you don't understand my post, I can explain it to you. If you understand my post but you think its not relevant to any reply you might make to another poster about a completely different topic, its probably because its not.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
As for the last, requote your original statement all you want, but the point itself is still irrelevant, given Nethergoat's stated purpose is to forcibly drive people into using specific areas for HIS desires, NOT to argue convenience - if anything, he's pushing INconvenience by means of adding a transaction fee. The statement is basically a pointless statement to make. Someone will socialize, then go use the market placed in Pocket D *or* use /AH, depending on their own preference (during which it's highly doubtful they'll be, for instance, engaged in intensive RP,) then they'll leave that interface and go back to concentrating on socializing. Stating they would be "unused" - which is not something I ever suggested, by the way - is, frankly, a ridiculous position to take. SOMEONE will be standing near one at some point and say "Hmm, wonder if that luck charm sold" and decide to use it because it's there.
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Quote:While I think Avengers has enough world-wide appeal to easily blast past a billion in world wide grosses quickly, I don't think its likely to cross three billion. My best guess is that three months from now we'll be seeing Avengers coast into about two billion in total world wide grosses.Originally Posted by starphoenix
According to wikipedia, Avatar made about $2.8 billion in the box office. Should be interesting to see how badly Avengers trounces Avatar's record.
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Quote:Actually, those are quite useful because the net effect of all the changes since then would seem to be to reduce that number relative to earned XP on average, which makes it an upper bound estimate which is already low.Originally Posted by Fulmens
Is there a recent estimate of "inf earned 1-49?" Because the only numbers I have are from before IO's, before all the XP speedups, and those are remarkably useless.
Inventions and the markets don't change things much for this specific calculation because all selling activity which earns lower alts influence is a net *destruction* of influence because of market friction. It transfers influence from other characters but it doesn't create any. If anything, inventions can increase the amount of influence destroyed above level 30 when influence that would ordinarily outpace SO prices can now be used to craft common IOs and other inventions.
I don't think the influence boosters have been around long enough to alter things significantly yet. -
Quote:For some definition of "improve" I believe they do. Whether that matches either my definition or yours is not a question I can answer.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Do they actually want to improve blasters at this point ?
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Quote:I only brought it up because you seemed unsure what factions exist in the game. My original statement was:Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
OK, I'm assuming you're looking at the physical design (round building vs open truck.) There would be no reason to "merge" anything with those designs in Pocket D. You could make it look like an ATM for all that matters. It really has absolutely nothing to do with putting something in Pocket D, which is why bringing that up - plus the fact the market *itself* is a merged one - is rather baffling.
Why is this significant at all? Because there are faction limitations in Pocket D in some cases (for example, the vault), and because in the general case there is no faction-neutral marketplace where the different factions can gather simultaneously that already exists. So when I specify adding a market area, it is ambiguous whether I mean two different segregated areas or one merged one unless I specify such.Quote:An interesting experiment, then, would be to see what would happen if you were to create an extension of Pocket D which had market interfaces for both factions.
The best response to that is to simply repeat what I said originally:Quote:And I expanded on the "nto sure what it's meant to prove." That some people will use such a kiosk when others won't because it happens to be there? Don't need to worry about any coding or any real thought being put into it, as the answer is "sure," for much the same reason that people will buy a candy bar they didn't plan on because it's shown in the checkout line. "it's there, what the heck why not."
Quote:If socializing and marketeering are as incompatible as suggested, they would tend to be unused in favor of either the current markets or the popup auctionhouse interface. On the other hand, if the primary concern is convenience over interference, they would tend to be used proportionately equal to or higher than the other interfaces relative to the amount of traffic that passes through Pocket D. -
Quote:Energy sounds awesomer.Originally Posted by Electric-Knight
But, let's face it... While ice may be colder... Electricity is cooler!
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Quote:Actually, the only thing I'm being particularly dismissive about is the notion that you believe that to be an objective, and not a subjective viewpoint. I've made no other comment about your viewpoint except that I don't share it. The fact that you are inferring anything else is not my problem.Originally Posted by Lothic
As for JJTrek all of your dismissiveness about my position on it is fine and well. It still can't undo the non-subjective fact that all we've gotten from Abrams so far is the obligatory reboot and now a rehash of what was probably the most commercially successful Star Trek movie before Abrams' involvement. Not exactly blazing terribly new or unexpected ground so far. Playing things safe and easy seems to be the mantra so far.
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Quote:It would be extremely difficult to balance. On the other hand, there's a new mechanic in the game that would theoretically allow the devs to make blasters' vulnerability hard hitters while making them far less vulnerable to smaller amount of burst damage. In other words, they could still be killed but they would be much harder to simply whittle down. Just a thought.Originally Posted by theduke24
/signed
Makes sense, seems to fit the AT nicely -
Quote:If you're literally not sure, I'm referring to heroes and villains, the two factions that exist in City of Heroes. There are different market interfaces on the zones originally designed for villain content and the zones originally designed for hero content, and a co-op zone would likely merge them into a singular interface that was faction neutral.Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill
For both factions? I'm sorry, I'm not sure what "factions" you're talking about here, given the market is shared everywhere.
I'm much more puzzled by your confusion here, since I specified this in the original post you apparently replied to.Quote:I'm not quite sure what the experiment is meant to prove, either. -
Quote:We could try to project it forward given a guestimate for the amount of liquid influence in possession by the players.Originally Posted by Another_Fan
Edit: I thought about working it in the reverse but I have no idea how large the number of trillionaires is, the data is also shakier in that direction
Lets assume the influence distribution in the game roughly follows a Pareto distribution of 80/20. Lets also assume that the accounts with at least one level 50 probably hold the vast majority of the influence in the game (not counting "storage" accounts which don't affect this calculation much). If we project Pareto for a base population of 500,000 accounts holding 100 trillion influence, we get a prediction very roughly of about 160 accounts with 200 billion or more influence and about 30 trillionaires. That's from a presumed 100 trillion influence pool. If we extend that to 400 trillion, the numbers scale upward accordingly: we would have about 800 accounts holding 200 billion or more each, and about 150 trillionaires.
I think 30 trillionaires is a stretch: I'd guess there less than a 10% chance that's true. 150 trillionaires is outside my credibility zone. So *if* Pareto holds at 80/20 across the entire player population, or at least specifically the set of all accounts with at least one level 50 character, and its true those accounts hold the bulk of the influence outside of storage accounts, that would seem to also suggest that the total influence in the game is at or under 100 trillion, and not likely to be significantly higher.
If Pareto holds at all, the numbers that seem most reasonable to me are 90/10 ratios for 100 to 200 trillion influence. Although that's entirely guesswork. I think Pareto breaks down somewhere north of 100 billion because in most economic situations the amount of money you can make is roughly proportional to the amount you have, which gives the people with more opportunities to grow that. In City of Heroes, that's not true. Farming influence and marketeering have ceilings on the maximum generation rate. There are lots of ways to double a billion inf, but not a lot of ways to directly double a hundred billion. Earning rates slow down proportionately once you get above tens of billions of inf. That has to dampen the curve at the top long before we get to the top influence holders. -
Quote:That's probably never going to change.Originally Posted by Zeh_Masteh
Okay: as long as the people who didn't care still don't care, and those that cared still do, I'll keep going
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Quote:In my opinion, Energy/Energy/Force is probably the best jack of all trades of the bunch. You can go ranged with primary knockback and boost range, you can go melee with energy manipulation and power boost, you have decent mitigation in force. It works well as a hover blaster, a blapper, and lots of stuff in between. Fire3 has the most damage and Ice3 probably the most mitigation, and Electric Manipulation is the slightly better blapper set, but Energy3 can get decent damage with decent (if somewhat chaotic) control and decent survivability plus some utility powers mostly unique to it (conserve power, boost range, power boost).Originally Posted by GrantAnderson
In a new bout of alt-itis, I'm considering trying one or more (or all) of the Blasters with matched primary/secondary/epic (and heck, why not a matching Judgement too, eventually).
Those would be Fire/Fire//Fire, Ice/Ice//Cold, Elec/Elec//Elec, Energy/Energy//Force, Dark/Dark//Soul, and I guess Assault Rifle/Devices//Munitions scrapes in.
So which of these are deities of damage, and which are dukes of debt? Are any of them noticeably more effective or fun than the others? I'm quite used to faceplanting on the Blasters I do have, so I'm keenly aware of the glass component in 'glass cannon'! I'm just interested to hear opinions on the combinations.