Robbie_Redhat

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Then it should be one of those friends to post it.
If it's an NPC friend, it still falls under the same player's responsibility.

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I disagree. It wasn't specified how any individual character would see it in the IC thread, and plenty of posters have had no problem whatsoever taking that and coming up with specifics, that have resulted in some of the best RP material I've seen on these boards - certainly the first to inspire me to take part.

I don't think it's necessarily up to the initiator of something like this to have to spell out all the exact specifics. I think this, as it is, and going by the IC thread, is working very well.

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as organiser this is actually YOUR concern.. you never mentioned where the petition was being delivered, who was supporting it finacially, how the petition was being counted, are they using computers? ballets? is MAGI, GIFT etc involved? the city hall MUST be involved as it concerns the city - if the city hall couldn't care less then even thinking the idea has been a complete waste of time from everyone.

At the //very// least the city hall has agreed that if x amount of signatures were brought to them they'd do something. how many did they want? they must have had terms.. what were these terms.

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Have I missed something? Why must the City Hall be involved?

From what I've read, it's pretty clear that a character just came up with a petition, gave it some friends, they went out to get signatures. No official backing is necessary here. Presumably the intention is to gather signatures first and then present them to City Hall with the intention of showing the public support for the idea so it can then be considered, but the intent might be just to do nothing, it might not have been thought through. Doesn't stop people who've got the petition from someone making copies and getting signatures with the intention of giving it back to the person they've got it off. That's how these sorts of things often do spread, informally.

I just don't see why City Hall would have to be involved. I could draw up a petition in real life right now about, I don't know, putting up more street lights and go around getting signatures. I wouldn't have had to get approval from anyone to do so.

All that I've seen stated is that 'the petition is being circulated'. In the absence of any statements of formality and statements indicating the exact opposite, I don't see why you'd assume it has to be officially backed - unless, like I said, I've missed something?

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You see, Suzi merely printed out a few dozen copies of a petition form and handed some to friends. As yet, not one person has RP'd delivering such a list anywhere, and Suzi did not provide any instructions as to what to do with them that I can see in the letter.

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Then 'explain' this to me...
How did that petition reach the public, as a petition rather then a leaflet?

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Presumably via the friends? It's not exactly a wild suggestion to say that some of the friends might have gone out and asked people to sign it, who in turn might have offered to collect more signatures themselves.

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Actually, thats called an Association Fallacy, and has become quite a widely used propaganda trick. "Bad Group X (usually the Nazis) supported Y, therefore Y is bad."

The point is, it works, as an appeal to emotion, and on people who don't think too deeply. Publicity is based on emotion, not logic.

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I know that. My point is that it doesn't work if the people it's directed at already believe that Y is a good thing. Invoking an association fallacy certainly isn't an automatic public relations disaster, it depends on what is being associated with what. You could run a campaign telling everyone that the nazis drank water, but you wouldn't see a huge drop in water consumption.

It's only a really effective tactic for something that's already contentious to start off with. In this specific instance, while it would have some impact in some quarters, I doubt it would have anything like the impact suggested by Kelvinbridge.

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I'm tired of labouring this point... Getting patronised doesn't help my mood. If you can't grasp the concept of what effect a known villain signing the petition would have on the Public's perception of the petition, I seriously hope that you don't work in public relations or marketing.

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The effect of a villain signing the petition would depend on the public's pre-existing view of the petition.

To illustrate that, consider a petition for something that most people would consider to be a good thing. Say... more funding for education. Or a tax rebate. Whatever makes the example work for you.

Now if there's a petition for that, and suddenly you hear that "Evil McNasty the Dastardly Villain" has signed it, you're not going to suddenly say "Oh my god! A villain supports this! It must be evil, and everyone who signed it must be evil too!"

If, on the other hand, you had your doubts about the petition to start off with, then hearing that known villains had signed it would likely reinforce that.

But that said, if you're the originator of the petition, you probably don't have doubts about it. So hearing that villains are signing it may not bother you that much at all, and you probably wouldn't regard it as a PR disaster either. After all, you can't choose who supports your campaign, and there's some good in everyone, right?

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Um anything coming over from CoV has been broken out of the Zig by Arachnos...

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One of the things which puts me off taking part in more of the roleplaying here is this sort of inconsistency. If we take that approach you can't play a non superhero, you can't opt out of the medibay teleporting system, you can't be a ghost, etc., etc., etc.

Although personally I'd prefer that. But the inconsistency between which parts of the game setting are considered rigid and fixed and which parts are simply ignored as desired drives me slightly nuts. (This is just a personal opinion I hasten to add, it's not the right way or the wrong way, I don't expect everyone or even anyone to agree).

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I don't know of many legal systems that deny a person their rights to representation for having a criminal record. If there are any, they may well be in breach of the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html


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Dude... It's a comic book game...

Besides, half the people signing might not even BE human! Tiger Dark (Eloise) has signed it. She's very not human, she just looks it.

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Is there any reason to think that the UN and a (possibly slightly differently worded) Universal Declaration of Human Rights doesn't exist in the game world?

Huzzah sprinted round a corner, dove over a low wall, and threw himself behind a small bush. Gunshots and shouts continued to ring out from the area he'd just vacated. "That," he muttered to himself, "was bloody stupid."

Looking round, he found himself to be in a small walled garden crouching behind a bush that was looking a lot smaller now he was behind it than it had a moment before. "This," he continued, glancing down at his distinctive bright red-and-yellow costume, "is still bloody stupid. I think they might notice me." He glared up at the rapidly receding caped figure of a hero. "This is totally your fault. Next time I'll let them shoot you."

He looked around again. "Right. No way out. Three options. Fight, apologise, or make bird noises and hope they mistake me for a Northern Cardinal. I just hit one of them with everything I've got and all I managed to do was distract them so that jackass," he glared up at the dot in the sky, "could get away. So it's apologising or bird noises."

Over the bush, he could see a figure clad in the distinctive costume of the Nemesis Army coming round the corner.

"Well, here goes nothing," Huzzah murmured, and took a deep breath...


"Ow. Ow. Ow." Huzzah groaned as he staggered out of the hospital medibay. "Damn them," he continued as he made his way to the exit, rubbing his head, "I thought that was a bloody good impersonation of a Northern Cardinal too."

Continuing to mutter dire imprecations against Nemesis, his army, and all those without an appreciation of North American wildlife, Huzzah exited the hospital.

"Excuse me sir! Can I just take a moment of your time for a good cause?" Huzzah paused and glanced at the speaker. Young, male, smartly dressed, clutching a clipboard and with a look of innocent earnestness he'd obviously been practicing.

"Well... sure," replied Huzzah. "Beats being shot by Nemesis, eh?" he grinned.

The young man laughed politely. "It certainly does! And let me just say I for one truly appreciate everything you, and other heroes, do for our city. But that said, I was wondering if you'd heard about the petition we're currently trying to gather support for?"

Huzzah shook his head. "Nope, haven't heard..." he paused as a faint memory echoed in his still ringing head. "Oh wait, petition? My wife mentioned something about one last night, said I should take a look at it, something about, umm... something about heroes was it?"

"Indirectly sir, yes," replied the campaigner, handing the clipboard over to Huzzah. "We feel that the everyday heroics of the normal citizens of Paragon, those without super powers, go unacknowledged in the natural urge we all have to recognize the heroics of those such as yourself. We're campaigning for the city council to redirect the funds we use for statues, and such, towards more worthy causes, like clinics for the homeless and scholarships for underprivileged children."

"Right... right..." Huzzah murmured as he read the petition. "A good cause, but... I can't sign this. I mean," he continued hurriedly as the campaigner began to speak, "It's not that I don't support it in principle, I do, I've even spoken out on this issue before myself, sort of. Did you read an interview I did a couple of years back, A Day in the Double Life it was called?" Looking up into the blank, yet still earnest, expression of the campaigner, he continued, "Well, no, never mind.

"The thing is, right, if you were collecting money for a charity for scholarships, clinics, whatever, I'd support that, I'd donate what I could. And, y'know, recognising the heroics of everyone, super-powered or not, sure, I'm right there with you. But stopping the statues? I don't agree with that."

"But sir," began the campaigner, "surely you recognise that the expenditure on the statues could be bett-"

"No," Huzzah said firmly. "Look, they're not statues of just any heroes. There's no statues of me, and there probably never will be. These are statues of people who gave everything they had for us. They, and anyone like them in the future, should be remembered. And sure, there's plenty of other people who give everything too, but just because you can't put up statues for everyone doesn't mean you shouldn't put up statues to the few. They're symbols for us all, super-powered or not."

"But don't you think they create unrealistic goals for the youth of P-"

"No! How is sacrifice an unrealistic goal? How is helping in any way you can an unrealistic goal? I was inspired by those people long before I was a hero! If kids are looking at them and thinking, 'I need super-powers', then they're getting the wrong message, but taking away the message won't help!"

Huzzah paused for breath, and noticed the campaigner had taken a step back. A few bystanders had gathered while he'd been speaking and Huzzah suddenly became very aware of the eyes on him. "Look, I'm sorry, I can't sign it. But I'll help if you want to raise support for clinics, scholarships, OK? I'm Huzzah, you can contact me through City Hall. OK? Sorry again. And look, I've really got to go, I haven't been beaten up for like ten minutes now, and that's just not right."

Without waiting for a response, Huzzah leapt forward and hurtled down the street. Time to stop arguing about statues, find some fellow heroes, and see what could be done about those damned bird-hating Nemesis soldiers...

I'll try and be there if I remember it's on. I seem to have a unfortunate habit of only remembering just as the raid is finishing.

We kept it going for another five of them, but we've disbanded now.

For the record, six of those popped out of presents I opened (plus one more which we didn't defeat because we had two out at once and it had despawned by the time we got back to it.) I'm not sure what I did to be considered so naughty.

Count me in with Robbie Redhat.

I'm probably not going to be able to make it on Sunday. Will try to get on if I can, but I'm likely to be about 70 miles away from my computer, and quite possibly hungover, so it might be tricky.

I'll be up for it another time though.

I'd be interested since I haven't got any of the badges yet (nor spent much time in RV at all). Archetype is controller (mind/kin), Friday and Saturday nights tend to be worst for me, other nights more likely to be ok, but I can probably make a Friday or Saturday depending on the time.

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In all honesty, I very much doubt that a server-wide, non-Global Chat channel for 'general chat' will ever be added to the game. Such channels just tend to fill people's chat windows with text that they're not interested in, which they either ignore or remove from their chat windows (which rather defeats the point).

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When I say 'general chat', I mean like a server-wide broadcast channel - for general things like LFT, arranging taskforces, GM spottings, etc. - i.e. all the 'general' stuff that Arena is being used for but shouldn't be. It's always surprised me that such a channel doesn't exist.

Even if it became busy so people who weren't interested in it removed it or ignored it, it still wouldn't defeat the point - namely, that people have a place that everyone can access to put such stuff if they want to. If they started using Arena instead, the argument that "the right place is too busy" is far weaker than the argument that "I can't even join the right place and no-one is there anyway", so consequently it's going to be much less of a problem.

But not having the five channel limit would still be a much better solution.

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I appreciate that the five channel limit can be a problem for some people, but I'm afraid I don't quite see how five Global channels is not enough to replace one server-wide channel.

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Because they're fundamentally different? A server-wide channel is one that everyone on a server can be on. It's also one that, depending on how it's set up, people may be on unless they opt out of it.

Whereas a global channel is one that has to be opted into, and one that only those who have a spare channel out of their five available can actually join.

Consequently, one of them has a much higher audience than the other and is much more effective for many uses.

The problem is the five channel limit though. In principle, a global server channel could be better than a server-wide channel, since players alting on another server could still be on the channel and switch if events of interest to them were occurring. But not with the five channel limit. Five is a ridiculously low limit when you consider the possible combinations of different servers, different sides, and different purposes.

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There are many chat channels in the game that are far better suited to other topics, and do not involve imposing your discussions on the entire population of the server or preventing people from using Arena for its intended purpose.

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There are better channels, but while people can only join five of them they'll remain under-populated and under-used.

The continuing problem with Arena is in a large part just a symptom of the underlying problem. There's an obvious need for either a 'general' server-wide channel for any 'general' chat, and/or the five global channel limit to be raised or removed.

First, just to be 100% clear, I agree that channels should be used for their intended purpose. That said:

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The global chat system has some default channels for servers and teams etc, although one of the biggest general rooms there is called "Global", AFAIK none of the Ops play anymore so if you don't like what goes on there use /gignore or leave, however this is the best and most appropriate channel for general chit chat and Q&A type stuff. If you have membership to 5 global channels already, tough really, leave 1 temporarily and join global with /chanjoin global.

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This is unlikely to work. Simple as that.

"Tough really, leave 1 temporarily" doesn't work for things that people largely use passively - they just keep an eye on it for interesting things happening. You can't join that sort of channel temporarily, because you don't know when you want to be on it or not because you don't know whether anything you'd be interested in is being said or not at any particular time without actually being on it.

The problem then is that some people are never going to join those global channels, because of the five channel limit. So you then have other people who would perhaps use those channels being discouraged from using them instead because there aren't many people on them. But they can all use arena, which brings us to the current situation.

I realise you know this, and your attitude is presumably (and not unreasonably) "tough, it's not my problem". Unfortunately "tough" isn't the most persuasive argument in the world. The result of your campaign is consequently likely to be just arguments, petitioning, etc. I don't think, somehow, that NCSoft want to start handing out bans for someone LFT on the arena channel. So all that's likely to really be achieved is the arguing.

Like I said to start off with, I totally agree Arena should be for Arena. But while Arena is, in practical terms, the best channel for other purposes, it's going to be very hard, if not impossible, for that to happen.

We need either a server channel (like arena or help) called something like 'General', and/or the five channel limit gone. Without one or both of these, I can't see your campaign going very far I'm afraid. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, because 'not very far' is still 'somewhere'. But I really think there needs to be an equally or more practical alternative for it to be effective.

But maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic. Good luck with it anyway.

Congratulations Hey Man

I need to get this one. Not sure if I'll be around Tuesday, but if I am I'll certainly join in.

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Anyone actually see the GMs walk in? From my point of view they where suddenly just there.

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Not really. I had my window showing Hammerfall and the empaths, but I didn't have it panned round enough to see the GMs approach, if they did. Some movement caught my eye and I saw them at the edge of my screen just before people dropped, but that's about it.

Anyway, if anyone's interested, I was trying to get some screenshots of this raid (my computer wasn't behaving last raid). Would have been nicer if they'd been of a successful raid, but still, here's a few:

Hami puts on his lightshow
Waiting on the hill
Taking out mitos (I like this shot)
Holding Hami
Wiped out

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Anyways....Next monday then?

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I might be away monday, but if not, I'll be there.

Yeah, it seemed to be going well up until that point. Lag seemed to be less of a problem (I heard less complaints about people losing the targetter anyway). So thanks to the organisers anyway.

On the subject of GM aggro, might it be an idea to have a standby firefighting team? Say, 3 or 4 tanks and some empaths, ready to step in in case of a member of the tanking team dropping connection, or GM aggro? Since, after all, tanks and empaths aren't doing much during the holding phase anyway.

Congratulations Foresight.

Well, I enjoyed doing the Moonfire TF with you all last week and I haven't done the Hess TF yet, so I'll be up for this. Robbie Redhat, Controller, L50.

OK. I've got a Golgi Exposure (Heal and EndRec). Would like to swap it for ideally Acc + Mez, or maybe Dam + Mez.

I'd be up for this Wednesday. I totally forgot last week - well, I remembered it was happening, but I forgot it was Wednesday. It was one of those days. But I'll be there this Wednesday. 8pm?