Samuel_Tow

The main purpose of having Prestige in the first place is to ensure the presence of a common courtesy owned by the base and not by any one member, which is cashed into the base coffers as soon as it is earned. Other games have tried to use personal wealth via clan donations or personal wealth for the greater good, but this relies on people's generosity, which is never a good call. Prestige, therefore, is a system designed to essentially tax players in a hands-off manner, and as such build up wealth for all to use.

In a persona SG base owned, maintained and constructed by a single player, Prestige has no purpose. In fact, it has an exactly backwards effect to what a growing character would expect to see. Prestige is made to be earned at roughly the same rate by characters both low and high, so as not to favour anyone and make SG leaders employ farmers of a specific level only. All must be equal, so all earn equally. When I own a personal base, I expect my increased earning potential in the higher levels to give me greater buying power, thereby allowing me to build a larger base with more things in it. A flat prestige earn at all levels is counter to that.

Basically, if it's my base, it ought to be paid by my money. It doesn't make sense to have an intermediary currency. The only time such currencies are ever in place in the game is for "special loot," as it were, the control of which is vital. The control of at least cosmetic items in bases is simply not. This eliminates one extra currency from the game and allows me to pool my resources interchangeably. If I find I need a lot of enhancements, I can neglect the base. If I find I want something for the base, I can neglect enhancements. Since prestige and influence/infamy are not transferable (unless you're a gullible fool) it isn't as easy.

"Rent is cheap" is an after-the-fact excuse, which doesn't explain why it was introduced in the first place. To be honest, I've never been given a good enough reason why this was needed, beyond a below-the-belt time sink, and I'd like to have a bit of a higher opinion of our development team than that. The only things I can figure is, with so many people and so many characters, the amount of custom bases could become so large as to be problematic if legacy bases are not somehow disabled, so they put in rent as a safeguard to prevent old and unused bases from persisting too long. I wouldn't know how that would work, since bases never get deleted, but I suppose one could argue they just get transfered to another server. I wouldn't know.

In terms of what we, as players, gain from this, however, the only answer I have is "nothing." I don't benefit from other people paying their rent, I don't benefit from other people NOT paying their rent, and it only sucks that I have to pay rent, myself. Furthermore, "upkeep" is probably the one thing I hate about games the most. I don't mind making slow progress. I don't mind suffering a penalty and making even slower progress. I'm still progressing. It's when the game ups and takes me BACK that I start wanting to punch people. I've been in too many games where I got gridlocked in place, earning "progress points" as fast as they were being taken away from me. I see no beneficial need for rent, and I see a lot of room for irritation with it, so I desire to see it stricken from the map. They already killed rent for non-functional items. Give me a purely cosmetic, rent-free personal base and we'll call it a day!

I have considered it, but it's not something I want to do. It's a principle matter at this point. If I'm going to have MY Super Group, then I'm going to want it to be MINE. Yet I cannot invite my own characters to my own SG, I cannot promote or demote my own characters. And even if I did, I still have to pay rent, suffer from my Overlords auto-demoting and I still have to deal with the reasons of why these characters who hate each other's guts are roomies. I don't want bases for the storage racks and teleporters. I want them for the throne rooms, the chapels, the conference rooms, the sciency labs, the cot beds and so forth. And the way bases are made, there is never enough room for more than a few people.

Personally, if ever I got an RTS-style base builder, with large whole buildings on, say, an island somewhere ala Evil Genius, that's probably what I'd use. More a base compound than a Dungeon Keeper 5-room hovel.

I'd still like to get that top for my own characters nevertheless. It's far superior to the bath robe toga.

And that. Upper arm details have been an old dream of mine, and I'd really like to see them added to the game. Arm and leg details in general.

That actually sounds like it'd be a lot more fun than what we have now, and sounds an awful lot like an Unreal mod. Anything that requires direct confrontation with the enemy to forward is PvP in my book, and is something I would engage in if I were looking for PvP benefits. What you're describing is sort of a cross between Capture the Flag and Bombing Run, and I like it. Confine people in a smaller space so they run across each other more and you have something I'd engage in freely.

The problem, once again, is population. There isn't any. Right now, PvP is no different from logging into AS_Convoy and being the only person in the server. Sure, you can steal the rockets, but that misses the whole point of the map AND the game.

That was probably the hardest thing for me to learn back when I was still playing Battlefield. If I get shot, I DO NOT stand still and look around to see where I'm getting shot from so I can try and return fire. If I do this, I DIE. When getting shot, the proper response is what anyone who's been in armed conflict will tell you to do - TAKE COVER! Not in a minute, not in a little while, not when you've shot back. Immediately. Just eye up your damage direction indicator and duck behind the nearest obstacle, on the side opposite to where the shots are coming from. It's the only way to save your life. You have limited time to respond and no time to retaliate before you go down. Hiding is the only option.

I treat unknown, unexpected danger in any environment the same way. If I get hurt, then the response is simple - back off, take cover, assess the situation and only fight back once you know what you're doing. If I get assassinated, there's no way in HELL I'd start looking around and trying to figure out who to hit. I high-tail it out of there and see if I can't spot the threat. If I can't, I leave. It's what's prudent.

Here's the quintessential question - why NOT design something which doesn't work without other people? Why, indeed. Other games manage it just fine, and I don't have to go into things are out-of-genre as Unreal or Quake. Even WoW has PvP... What did they call them... Battlegrounds? Basically, PvP instances that do not start until you have enough people to meet the map's minimum. A lot of them wouldn't even work without other people, as they depend on frags, while some would... But be completely pointless and uninteresting, such as Capture the Flag without anyone on the other team.

You may be able to achieve these missions via PvP, but that still requires someone to do the PvE part for you, so while they may be PvP TO YOU, they are still PvE missions that someone did for you. The whole game is like that - PvE content with PvP turned on on top of it. The people who keep saying the system was an afterthought are completely right, because you can't just enable a flag and expect to have meaningful PvP. Even with the proper balance, it's just ill-designed.

Once again, for PvP to be meaningful, you need traffic, you need population, you need action. There aren't enough willing participants to do this just randomly over an open world, not in this game, not in any game. Smart design works to condense people, incite encounters and create action. Bad game design lets players wander around like cockroaches. Think to even the largest-scale FPS games. Battlefield has giant maps, but concentrates the action around control points. Unreal's Onslaught/Warfare mode has big maps, but concentrates fighting around not just a network of nodes, but over a specific subsection of them, often no more than two or three at a time, out of upwards of 8 sometimes. Even more basic game modes, like a simple Capture the Flag concentrates the bulk of the action around either flag and the various choke points, while Unreal's Assault concentrates the action to one or several objectives at a time.

Designers of games for players to fight each other have long since learned that you can't simply plop players down in a map and have them fight it out for no reason. You have to confine them greatly so that they are FORCED to run across each other and be rewarded for victories, or you have to concentrate them to certain key points. PvP zones do neither, but teaching people to avoid each other.

This is the big difference between what's true PvP content, and what's PvE content in a PvP zone. True PvP content teaches you to want to fight other people to beat it. PvE content in a PvP zone teaches you to want to AVOID other people to beat it.

So, when you say that nothing is going on, I'm assuming you're ignoring the... Game that you can actually play, which is actually going on?

Then add one to your list. I'm 25 and, when I'm not trying to get anywhere specifically and just walking around, I walk even slower than that. And Walk in this game is most certainly not designed for those who need to get somewhere in a hurry.

Very much so. If the game cannot display a graphical component and there is no safeguard in the programme to prevent you from starting it in the first place, you're more likely to get graphic corruption via missing effects than you are to experience a crash. Programmes don't crash over every little thing. In fact, for the longest time, the game lacked shader-less textures for a lot of the shiny metallic surfaces, so disabling shaders disabled the whole texture, producing the problem of the "White" Helicopter Line, and disabling certain graphics options would turn off effects that weren't intended.

Basically, the key problem with creating something not all cards can display is creating something ELSE that they will display, instead. But, again, this isn't an issue of support. It's an issue of performance. The game and our cards very much support this exact effect, because it's already in the game in the form of Corrupter Thermal buffs. This isn't future technologies, and both games and cards have supported it for a long time. It is, however, a rather heavy effect which may overload older systems and cause unpleasant graphics lag.

Personally, I'd like to see the game move forward and add another layer of cool graphics while retaining the old settings for old machines. And, surprise, surprise, that's what Going Rogue is going to bring.

PvP coexists with the Shivan Shard mission, but that does not make the Shivan Shard a PvP mission. Anything placed in the overworld of a PvP zone has the chance of involving PvP, but this is not an intrinsic quality of the task, but an intrinsic quality of the setting. Any time a task's intrinsic function does not change with PvP disabled, this cannot be said to be a PvP task. Yes, PvE tasks in a PvP zone could involve PvP, but this is not a function of the TASKS, it is a function of the ZONE. The tasks themselves are not PvP. Not even remotely. They are merely placed within a PvP zone.

The only kind of task which can count as a PvP task is such the basic function of which relies on the act of PvP, rather than just on its possibility. Sirens' Call Bounty task is an intrinsically PvP activity, because it WOULD NOT WORK without PvP unless SERIOUS alternations were made to it. You cannot avoid PvP in order to get a bounty, because the system requires PvP to work. You very much can get a Shivan Shard without PvP, and indeed most people do just that. Put another way - if the activity is such that it can be completed by design and to intent in the absence of other people, it is not a PvP event.

In fact, if we just went by the possibility of actions to occur, then every single instance in the game is team content, even when a solo player does it. He's not on a team, clearly, but because he COULD be, it would we team content. This, however, does not work, because team content is only that which REQUIRES a team, not merely that which PERMITS a team.

Of the four PvP zones, only a single one has a zone mission which has a PvP component at all. Collecting meteorite shards, leading scientists out and fighting signature NPCs and pillboxes are all PvE missions. Place them in a zone with PvP disabled, and they work absolutely identically to how they work in PvP zones. They are no more PvP than turning on the PvP flag in Steel Canyon would make Montague's missions PvP, or even the Steel Canyon Security Chief PvP.

The simple fact is that just placing people in the same zone with the ability to hurt each other does not PvP make. For actual, interesting PvP to occur, you need to have objectives which put people in direct combat with each other, not just in the same general space where they can engage each other if they choose to, but for no real reason other than for the evulz. To carry forward your analogy, just because you place a man and a woman in the same room, it does not make it a sex scene. It takes a little more than just their basic presence.

Siren's Call has sort of the right idea. A player gets a bounty on his head and the other players score points by taking out the bounty. In so doing, the actual zone event has an integral PvP component that requires attacking another player to achieve. Beyond that, FPS games have experimented with competitive game modes since time begun. It's true that things like Capture the Flag, Domination and even Bombing Run can still play out without other people, but that misses the point, and in fact most of games won't let you even start matches on these game modes until a minimum number of players directly involved is present.

Collecting Shivans in Bloody Bay is in no way PvP related, but by association with the zone it's in. It doesn't even take you into enemy-controlled territory. It's an activity that you do outside of the confrontation that other people can come and prevent you from doing. The point in it is not to defeat other players, it's AVOID other players interfering with you. In order for PvP to be meaningful in the slightest, you need to make objectives which make people want to fight each other, not objectives where it's best to avoid other people.

No. You don't get to tell people what to do. If they want to run, it's their right to do so. I have no tolerance for people feeling it is their right to tell me what "good sport" is and what I really should be doing. It's my game, I pay my subscription for it, and if I want to, I'll run from ever damn fight I start.

Come on, Bill, that's not fair and you know it. Taskforces, the Architect and event content is STILL PvE content. PvP content is separate from all of these. Player vs. player content requires that an intrinsic part of the experience require opposing other players, which is simply not a factor any of the PvE ventures in PvP zones. Basically, they're PvE encounters with only the POSSIBILITY of other people interfering.

Putting in PvE bait in PvP zones is a bad idea, because it misses the point of attracting people. And the point of attracting people is not to just get mobile targets in a PvP zone for the PvPers to take pot shots at, it's to attract people who WANT to engage in PvP. PvE content with little to no PvP connotation does not do that. It attracts people who have no interest in PvP whatsoever, and will therefore wait until the zone is empty, flee from battle and otherwise undermine the PvP aspect of the zone. You can't get more PvP traffic by adding more victims to the zones.

And, no. The notion that if only they tried it, they might like it is beyond false. Anyone who has ever been a kid should know that "try it, you might like it" does not work. People who do not wish to PvP will not change their mind by being coerced into a PvP zone.

The "lowest common denominator" is a number is a term from fractions, and is lowest number which could be a denominator for all fractions involved. If you have 1/2, 1/3 and 1/4, the lowest common denominator would be 12, because it can be a denominator of 6/12, 4/12 and 3/12, which correspond to the initial fractions. In other words, this is a number which can be divided by the denominators of all fractions. In a more abstract sense, it is as Arcana says - the lowest/cheapest card which nevertheless has ALL the properties of all cards concerned.

The greatest common factor is the largest number a group of numbers can be divided by, and in my experience tends to be useful in group theory, among other fields. If you have, for instance 12, 16 and 32, then the greatest common factor of all three numbers would be 4. Divided by it, the above numbers become 3, 4 and 9, which have no common factor between them greater than 1. Taken in a more abstract sense, the greatest common factor of video cards would the be best possible card which had everything all cards concerned had and had nothing but this.

Arcana's tangent is the semantics of what is actually a mathematical term, and that tangent actually has a point.

A stealth component would be a remarkably unproductive addition to walk, and for one simple reason: Stealth has two points - either to fight without drawing aggro, or to pass by enemies without fighting them. You can't fight while Walk is active and you move FAR too slow for it to be a meaningful way to pass by enemies. And it doesn't make sense for a simple stroll to hide you enemies you are in plain sight of.

I've seen it suggested that Walk provide a recovery (and maybe regeneration) buff of some sort, since you are moving slowly and as such would be catching your breath, thereby acting like a constantly-available mini-Rest. It makes sense, but it sounds like Castle might do this at the concept, so I'm not holding my breath.

Personally, I'd actually want to see Walk respect weapons a little more, such that walking around with a sword does not constantly fillet my legs and walking around with a rifle possibly sees it carried in both hands. I don't necessarily expect to be able to fight in the mode, but I'd probably take that ability as a first choice.

In saving yourself from a mugger? I don't think they are illegal, no.

Urge to throw up... Rising... Stomach... Churning... You are evil!

I hate Christmas fanfare. I have nothing against the holiday itself, and the Christmas spirit is actually something more people need to experience, but all the trees and toys and decorations and doodads and crap and garbage make me SICK! I prefer my celebrations quiet and with less fanfare. That, and I can do without gaudy costumes and gimmicks.

Trying to shoehorn Christmas in places it doesn't belong is a surefire way to make simply not log in for the duration of the holidays. It's bad enough that the land of Azeroth, a place which has no business having Christmas, gets covered in Christmas trees, Santas and elves. I don't want to see that nonsense here. I happen to enjoy taking the game's setting seriously, and just replacing Romulus' sword with a Nictus candy cane is the sort of thinking that makes me want to punch people. And that's not exactly the Christmas spirit, is it?

Snow and maybe frozen water is as far as I'm willing to go, but I'm already sick and tired of Christmas decorations, and it's not even mid December yet. Enough with the "theme" nonsense, please.

Probably, but that has more to do with Street Fighter 4 being an awful game than anything else.

As far as the concept of heroes fighting villains goes, I'm going to keep saying this until someone makes a t-shirt out of it: You don't need to fight PLAYER villains. There are plenty of NPC villains around.

Precisely. I never set foot in PvP zones, but if I DO go there for some reason, I'm not there to PvP so I avoid it as best I can. I'd never chew out someone for engaging in PvP in a PvP zone, but by the same token, I don't find it fun and am not obligated to stand and fight.

While I prefer to avoid AVs when possible, there's a certain feeling of satisfying climax with an elite boss at the end. Of the two arcs I have, one ends in a custom (and weak-ish) elite boss, and the other ends in an AV because I had to use a signature villain. I generally don't enjoy "boss fights" every time you turn around, but there is a time and a place for a decent EB or AV.