Lothic

"Good? Bad? I'm the guy with the gun."

This is why I don't see allowing iPowers during Mo badge attempts being as bad as the "-1 difficulty" exploit Dechs Kaison was talking about.

Running a MO attempt where all the critters are -1 to the team makes the entire run relatively simple regardless of player skill. It's pretty clear the Devs never intended to allow getting Master badges be -that- easy. On the other hand even if you're allowed to use iPowers during such a run you still have to have everyone have them all slotted up and know how to use them effectively. As you say merely having iPowers does not guarantee success.

The other thing to consider is that iPowers have the obvious potential to make EVERY older TF/SF/Trial easier to finish, not just Mo runs. Again I understand that Dechs Kaison wanted to stop iPowers from making Mo runs too trivial, but that doesn't do anything to "fix" having a team be overpowered to do any older content like that. That problem still exists even if you force people to use a "no iPowers" option during Mo runs.

Yeah technically these new costume sets are purchasable already. You may not like how expensive they are if you haven't been a subscribed player for many years, but that's not Paragon Studios' fault.

Well for me I don't really think the Devs ought to be actively trying to make "older badges easier to earn" just for the sake of making them easier.

On the other hand I do think they need to fix things that are obviously broken. For the classic example of that the original one billion HP requirement for Empath was always an absolute joke from Day One and even though I was masochistic enough to earn it back when it was that hard I'm glad the Devs finally saw the error of their ways on that one.

I could certainly argue that there have been other badges which have been made easier (directly or indirectly) that probably didn't need to be lowered as much as obvious ones like Empath. But in the long run I'd rather have some questionable changes like that than no changes at all. *shrugs*

I'm fairly sure I understood what you were saying. I think the problem here is that you didn't quite understand why I think your suggestion doesn't make much sense here. Let me try to explain my reasoning again.

I never thought you wanted to take any badges away from anyone. That would be very bad. My point is that it doesn't really make sense to INCREASE the requirement for getting those Mo badges by requiring a "no iPowers" option NOW after there's already been a period of time of well over a year where people could have gotten those badges while using iPowers. How does it make my MoSTF (which I earned years ago without iPowers) any better if there still could have been someone who earned it six months ago with iPowers? The damage has already been done.

One more time I think your suggestion might have had some validity if they had imposed a "no iPowers" requirement on those badges back when Issue 19 launched so that iPowers would have NEVER been a factor in earning those badges. As it is now far too much time has passed where people could have earned many of those badges using iPowers. There's no point trying to "fix" the problem now.

I see where you're trying to equate using iPowers to get those badges being as bad as the "-1 difficulty" exploit. I just don't think you can stretch it far enough to suggest the fundamental idea that using iPowers in this situation is some kind of exploit towards getting those badges. I think the main difference here is that the Devs never wanted us to be able to do a Mo badge run at -1 difficulty whereas I actually don't think they mind that iPowers have made those older badges easier.

The problem with clinging to the idea that "robots will only ever be able to make pre-programmed responses" is that robots today are already solving real world problems based dynamic situations that are not strictly scripted for them.

For example the BigDog robot can already self-correct its balance when randomly kicked. It does with with sensors and reactions that more or less work the same way they do in live creatures. The robot is not "pre-programmed" with scripted movements to recover anymore than you or I are pre-programmed to recover from being pushed off-balance by someone else.

There will come a time when artificial devices will be able to perform so many of the same kinds of interactions that we do (both physical and cognitive) that the lines between what is "alive" and what isn't will be blurred beyond recognition. What makes me a "live person" and a robot a "dead thing"? That's easy to determine today in 2012. But in the future that likely won't be so clear.

Perhaps people like GG simply fear what it would mean to have to question things like that, and to be honest that kind of thing is a little scary to think about in general. But I'd prefer to attempt to adapt to what's coming rather than to stubbornly pretend it could never happen in any form or fashion and then be caught off-guard by it.

I make no claim to divine knowledge of any kind. All I know is that if she's the one that's been chosen to receive the "official" divine revelation then I fear for the future of all of us.

When you've played long enough you subconsciously learn the timing on things well enough regardless.

As far as the HeroStats on Mac vs PC thing goes even the people like me who have access to it on PCs didn't have it for the first few years this game existed. To this day, almost 8 years later, I don't really use HeroStats to any regular degree myself. *shrugs*

Yeah I almost lol'd when I read this. Trying to use Sucker Punch as your example of another show that was supposedly "good but just misunderstood" was probably not the best idea in this case. It's like you were trying to make a case for apple juice by equating it to other good juices to drink like orange juice, grape juice and dog slobber juice... Let's just say dog slobber juice is -not- a good juice to mention when you want people to like your apple juice.

lol I've seen that pic before.

Makes you realize that even if Adrianne Palicki wasn't perfect and/or a fan favorite there could have always been something worse out of Kelley's show.

With GG it's hard to say for certain. It's clear she often likes to play "Devil's Advocate" to help keep threads going. But based on many of her past responses she may actually believe that the current state of androids and AI in 2012 will never change or improve. She firmly knows what she knows and can't seem to envision things being different in the future. Sometimes blind naivety and stubbornness can mimic trolling given the right circumstance... *shrugs*

1) Well the latest work in astrophysics already strongly supports the idea that we live in a "m-brane based multiverse" so it could be argued that "alternate dimensions" already exist.

2) Science has also managed to "transport" the quantum spin of an atom across an empty space so we technically already have "transporter beams". I will admit that having transporters that could actually transport a human from one place to another is still strictly within the realm of sci-fi, but we've already taken the first baby step towards this being a real life technology.

3) Warp drives are likely hundreds (if not thousands) of years away and time travel may never happen. But then again 108 years ago the idea of powered flight was also a well accepted "impossibility" so I'd hardly assume warp drives will never happen.

4) This leaves the question of when "living robots" will happen. Again I don't expect them today or tomorrow, but this strange idea of yours that they'll -never- happen is hardly reasonable in the least.

What if it's a man-made sheep? We already routinely create our own versions of organic life via genetic engineering. Why is it so hard to believe that we couldn't produce a form of life that's not based on organic chemistry?

Actually since no one ever claimed that C-3PO was a true "lifeform" I suspect well programmed androids such as C-3PO will actually exist in the relatively near future, easily within the next 50 years. I'll freely admit that a 100% inorganic sentient lifeform will probably take longer, but as Innovator said we'll have C-3PO-like androids running around well before true AI exists. The real life C-3POs we create will be a stepping stone towards that final goal.

I've been a software engineer for almost 20 years so why don't you tell -me- how computers work...

Having said that obviously any application as large as this game will have some inefficiencies represented by memory leaks or optimizations that are not used that should be. These will show up on ANY computer, but if a computer is capable enough then these potential problems will likely not be noticeable by a user to any significant degree.

The Devs of this game have naturally tried to make this game work reasonably well on a wide range of hardware, but that does not mean they they are going to spend that much time making it run on something relatively out of date. Sure with some amazing effort they might able to get this game running on a i386 machine with 2 Mb of memory. But since the overwhelming majority of people trying to play games on computers in 2012 are using computers that are much more capable than that there's no real reason for our Devs to spend the effort supporting such a platform.

This is why I'll easily stand by what I said. I'm not suggesting that the Devs are purposely trying to screw people with old computers. But by the same token anyone trying to run this game on an increasingly marginal/older machine can hardly reasonably expect to run as problem-free as it would on a bleeding-edge over-capable computer.

Now obviously the Devs are always proactively doing their best to fix memory leaks. There will even be cases like yours where certain areas of game play for given players will actually improve over time due to the corrective coding efforts of the Devs. Despite these efforts the overwhelming percentage of players who play this game will experience problems that tend to get worse, not better. This is a simple function of the fact that peoples' computers are always getting older relative to the ever increasing complexity of the game itself. The game is always going to get bigger and more complex so there is a certain responsibility on the part of the player to realize that their machines will not be able to keep up forever without being maintained and updated as well.

So ultimately good game play is the responsibility of both the Devs AND the players. The Devs do their best to deliver the most bullet-proofed, bug-free code they can. But knowing that no application is ever perfect there is a certain responsibility on the part of the players to use the best hardware they can to make the game run as seamlessly and error-free as possible. Sadly there are a lot of people out there who have unreasonable expectations and get upset when their low end machines fail to handle a game like this well. They incorrectly assign too much of the blame on the Devs when in reality a lion's share of the fault lies with trying to play this game on an inadequate machine. *shrugs*

You go right on believing that - I'm sure that kind of mindset will be reasonable for at least a few more decades.
After that though I suspect your thoughts on this will be dismissed like these little historical gems of supposed wisdom.