Judgement_Dave

I thought that with cheap fuel prices most US cars still used a GPM display?






Hey, AFAIK, the US does still have cheap compared to the UK.
And that's a 'I'm being cheeky' tongue-smiley.

As I noted earlier in the thread the word has an innocent meaning in US English (something along the lines of to be a *****/waste-of-space/timewaster iirc) and has appeared in several US sitcoms. (Hmm - tried the word meaning one who is idiotic there... stupid filter).

The odd thing here is that the censor is very inconsistent. The noun for a single one-eyed Onanist is censored, but most other words using the 4-letter root are not. Even the plural noun isn't censored.

Censored:
****er (single noun)

Not Censored:
**** (4-letter root)
****s
****ered
****ing
****ers

If anyone ever says that there isn't any discrimination in this game/these servers then you have to mentally add the words 'in general'.

Given that I can't see CoX as having any particular appeal to any specific sexual preferences (or bigotries) I'd expect the playerbase to have a similar distribution to the general populace. You get bigots in the world in general, so you'll get some here.

Luckily, for most of the English/French/German-speaking world, serious bigotry is a minority and that translates to the in-game population. (I guess that more covert/personal bigotry may exist in the general populace, but how the heck do you measure that?)

More luckily, in-game there's a system for dealing with bigotry that should be faster moving and more sympathetic to victims than many RL organisations often are.

So bigotry will exist, by virtue of the number of people playing, but it isn't common and if you come across it petition and I'm sure the GMs will take appropriate steps.

BTW - re: people calling things 'gay' when they dont like it

As I've argued elsewhere, in most cases I don't think it's actually linked to homosexuality anymore. 'Gay' has developed a second meaning (of 'lameness') and I suspect that many people who use it this way are ignorant of the words derivation (though if pressed I'd guess that they'd realise/guess it).

It's also ironic that you find the use of 'gay' in this context annoying as past generations found it annoying when the word gay was appropriated by homosexuals when previously it had only had the 'innocent' meanings of 'bright/cheerful' (or similar - not actually checking the dictionary on this one).

Languages move on. And loving language I'm often in a dichotomy over whether to embrace the changes or resist and uphold disappearing standards! On this I don't use gay in the lame-sense, but can see that it has become common enough to be a seperate definition with vanishing links to homosexuality.

I suppose that someone who uses gay as a synonym for 'lame' saw a brightly-coloured homosexual who wasn't particularly good at anything they may be able to use all 3 meanings by stating that 'that gay gay is so gay.'

BTW 2 - AFAIK queer is seen as a reasonably acceptable synonym for homosexual. But as queer previously meant 'odd' isn't that actually derogatory even though accepted by many homosexuals as being fine?

About 3 or 4 devs used to have EU accounts, but only turned up to even read the boards once every blue moon. Most of the dev accounts were also set to not receive PMs. So even trying a PM was pointless.

WarWitch was the best at EU participation, although that seemed to be mainly clustered around the times she was popping over to the EU or the EU test server.

It is one of the best parts of the merger that we all have the ability to PM devs. I just didn't mention it earlier in this thread just-in-case it causes the devs to get a deluge of PMs...

Through (loosely) following the US boards for a couple of years I do get the impression that, as you say, the devs usually try to answer. And I know one EU player has had a PM from one in the first few days of the merger.
Even though we've not been able to post in the thread, this has had a few mentions EU-side and I know a few people have been keeping abreast of Sister Flame's progress for a while now.

A great, uplifting thread that's worth mentioning again.

Like I said, my notes seem to cast some doubt on the Numina time.

And this was back whilst the Vahz in Faultine were seriously cruddy - just hitting that part of the TF at the wrong time could cost a team up to 20+ minutes.

It was also with 8-man teams iirc, and as some teams didn't make it all the way I think it was only 2 teams that completed Numina - and they were probably running on autopilot after a fair old bit of sleep deprivation during the challenge! (Teams did, of course, have to level up for some TFs as the previous TF didn't get them high enough).

I recorded all the official best times from the Omega Sektor TF challenge and the best Posi was 1h41 (as I said a few posts back).

Still a great time for an 8-man team - but just over 1.5 hrs.

BTW the fastest TF:Omega times were (as I recorded):
Positron: 1h41 (101 min)
Synapse: 1h33 (93 min)
Sister P: 1h17 (77 min)
Citadel: 1h07 (67 min)
Manticore: 50 min
Numina: have 1h20 (80min) listed

I noted that I'm slightly unsure about the Numina - I think it may be that it was c.1h20 but I missed the exact time. These were jotted down from the final results announcement (and the results board) at Omega Sektor.

Most of the times never got posted on the EU boards, and the Omega Sektor threads have long since been purged.

As a note to those who don't know of the challenge:
It was trying to play all TFC TFs within a 48(-ish) hour period at a weekend mini-convention. Each team had to be 7 or 8 members playing who were present (on the same characters) for all TFs (so no running Posi with just 3). All characters had to be a maximum of lvl15 for the 1st TF - so they had to be 10-15 for Posi.

As such, most TFs were also run with characters who were minimum level for the TF at it's start (so facing something like +5s). If a team thought it had time, it could rerun a TF and count it's fastest completion time - which I think was done by the winning team (mainly from Belgium iirc) when they reran Positron after completing Numina.

Because of the limitations on the challenge, including keeping the same team so no team was optimized for a single TF, other sizes/mixes/levels of teams should be able to beat many of these times (some, I suspect, with relative ease).

Time limit and power/insp/enh restrictions (or kill all requirements) would probably be much better than death limits for most TFs.

Thinking this as I've seen MoSTF attempts that stop immediately if there's a death.

That may be fine for MoSTF, but if something similar happened to the lower level TFs then it becomes far more possible that a players first experience of a TF may be strange as everyone gave up halfway through (whenever the Mo became impossible).

It's bad enough that a players 1st taste of TFs was often Posi - it could easily put players off TFs if their 1st experience is to try hard for 1-2 hrs then everyone seems to just give up...

Though an alternate safeguard to this would be to only grant the Master of... badge if the character already has the normal TF badge (so it can't be earnt on 1st run).

I suspect that this won't happen as PS/NC want to maximise sales of GR.

In general, people playing CoX don't want any-zone PvP or there'd be much greater support/call-for it now. And I suspect that there's still a lot of people who came to CoX partly attracted by the lack of PvP.

Personally I suspect that even though CoX has (iirc) an older, more mature playerbase than many games it would still lead to too much griefing (why u no fight me n00b).

Actually, all we seem to know for sure (from GrinningSpade) is that it is offensive to more than one forum-goer. Or at least it is when seen in close proximity to the avatar that GrinningSpade used to have and was in itself more cause for offense than the name.

We know this as there were multiple complaints mentioned and GS has been asked to remove the avatar (although he initially reported that both the avatar and name needed changing).

Ideally no offence will be caused to any forum-goers - although given the range of cultures and sensibilities involved that is nigh impossible - but it's a long way from more than one forum-goer is offended to the majority are.

Can we have a rough cut ready for next years Sundance?

Even if done as a straight, serious piece of film that has such potential to be unintentionally funny.

Time limit would be probably good enough for Posi, given that you can do it at lvl10+ with only TOs (and not many of them). But the question would be what time limit to set for it to be achievable, but not too easy?

Last year in the UK we had a Euro meet (called Omega Sektor, after the venue) with a race to complete all the TFC TFs in the lowest aggregate time. To enter the teams had to be lvl10-15 at the start, and had to contain 7 or 8 members.

The fastest time for Positron was 1h41 - with most (possibly all) teams, iirc, coming in under 2h30. And since then I've been on a couple of 8-man Positron PuGs that have managed it in under 3hours.

Still - I guess datamining past performance could help guide a decent time limit.

Thinking about how smaller teams are usually faster for Positron, I'd actually be tempted to require 8-man teams for 'Master of' requirements for any TF. Otherwise it would seem like an incentive to keep teams small for many of them - and that feels almost akin to punishing teaming...

TBH, anyone who manages to sit through Posi or SSTF1 after the 2nd or 3rd time should get a Master of Patience/Boredom badge.

But will you still be able to ignore it if you get shovelled into the Coming Storms fuel tank?

That's soccer.

I thought this thread would give me a chance to get knocked for being a Raiders fan for nearly 30 years... I suspect it will get me knocked, but not for team affiliations.

Actually I like Rugby Football (both union and league), Aussie Rules Football, Gaelic Football, American Football (Gridiron) - about the only type of football that I've never been a great fan of is the one that involves the feet contacting the ball the most.

I can help you there:

If they're having a barbecue and it's sunny, letting them show off their tans, then they're Australian.

If they're having a barbecue and it's raining cats and dogs, they're huddled under umbrellas to do it and your eyes are hurting from the glare from their white flesh (that looks as if it has never seen the daystar) - they're Brits.

If it's nowhere near barbecuing weather play it safe and non-comittal until it is...

I know the point you're making but:

Surely the fact that WarWitch has 'war' prepended to the name is an indicator that it is something that distinguishes her from other witches - i.e. she's called WarWitch because War is something that isn't usually associated with witches.

Though we do need Excalibur back and some way to turn Hero One back... although I guess as is he breaks the usual US-media stereotypes of Brits.

I think that the only time I'd ever hear a Brit refer to a Canadian as a yank would be if they didn't know they were Canadian and mistook the accent.

Propose it next series...

Theo: You really expect me to spend my kids inheritence on this crazy scheme to hunt me down and kill me like a dog in the street, just to celebrate national identity? Pahhh.. I'm out.

And to be fair back, we just talk about Americans or possibly yanks (in British slang yank usually just denotes american and doesn't have anything to do with historic North/South divisions).

I'm not sure how good it is, but often I try to think of the US more like the UK or a federal EU would be. Each US state (including the ones that aren't actually states!) is effectively a seperate country and many dwarf the size (and economy) of true countries...

So referring to americans as some form of single mass is probably a grosser (over-)generalisation than referring to the assorted peoples of UK/Britain as Brits.

If it was the combination then are you fine keeping the name without the avatar?

I hate posts that just quote, +1, ^^ this or /signed but I could almost do it myself here.

AA had announced it's demise just when I was considering trying it, and TR became an excellent game and was still improving. Unless it was priced really stupidly then a CoX/AA/TR mix would be a total no-brainer.

Sorry deathkitten but I think this is an appalling idea if we're looking to be heard.


Sticking lots of ideas from EU players in a seperate thread just means that:

• The thread becomes unfocused as more ideas (and possibly conflicting ideas) are added.
• The devs have to come and visit a part of the forum that they don't usually get ideas/suggestions from in order to see any of the ideas in this thread.
• It almost appears to say that our ideas are special and need their own area/thread...

I don't want special treatment for EU suggestions/questions - just parity.

And the best way to achieve that is open to us: Just post suggestions/ideas/comments in exactly the same places that the non-EU posters do.

A seperate thread here, in the EU lounge, does not serve to help get ideas/messages to the devs. All I can see it doing is becoming a potential focus for any feelings of being ignored that still remain.

e.g. in a few months time people may congregate here to say 'but I put the idea on the EU suggestions thread month ago and the devs still haven't done it - they never listen to us EU players'.

Abusive term for a black person - probably derived from the colour of the suit in playing cards.

Pretty much unused in British English but quite common in US English iirc.

Also, afaik, they refer to digging spades as shovels. So a US spade is either the card suit or a racial epithet.

The only two I can think of, off the top of my head, are fanny and ****** (and the verb to wank).

Hmmm - Notice that the noun is censoored but the verb isn't.

Fanny, as mentioned elsewhere, appears to be a quite innocent term for a bottom in the US.

****** has made it into a few US sitcoms before - and seems to be used ignorant of the British meaning - although knowing sitcom writers it probably is known in at least some cases. I believe ****** is also a German surname, and was used as a surname in Married with Children.

Which makes me wonder on top of this: Do posters who usually only post in the German/French boards and have names that are innocent in their native tongue but potentially objectionable to some people in English get censored/changed?

Nor do I.

But I can see why the name is frowned upon by the US.

Of course, ideally, one would hope that no-one objected to the name GrinningSpade, but if anyone did I'd hope that it'd be explained to them that Spade has multiple meanings and the name is ok. And if a complainant was still unhappy - get a thicker skin.

But it may partly be because if GrinningSpade can use this name and it's ok then what if someone else uses a similar name but refering to the racial epithet? Maybe they'd cite GS's use of Spade as proof that their name should be ok.

So I create DeadSpade. If I'm challenged of course it's a reference to the Ace of Spades and an undead villain... But mahself and mah good white buddies all no wot I reelly mean. he he.

Sad but I could see some burk doing that.

It'd be good if admin/mods/GMs look at every case/complaint individually - but I rather fear that blanket banning/changing of certain names is probably the path of least resistance.