TheMightyObs

Btw, THU will fight you Friday 10pm EST if you can make it.

Way we see it, standings are borked. We'll let you know in a few days if we're even going to see the tourney through.

It just crossed my mind that maybe instead of talking about sportsmanship, you should quiet down and listen to what you sound like. This is the sound of what you consider to be good sportsmanship, and frankly it's a muted version of what we hear of y'all in game.
Shhhhh. Just drink in the sound of your good sportsmanship, son.

It's an exaggeration, sure, but abuse is abuse is abuse. Big problems start off as small problems. If it is apples and oranges then maybe I should've compared PDFC to Enron, because if they win, they'll have defrauded Bug out of whatever their prize may be.

This isn't an attempt to raise drama, the drama's there whether you or I or any one else likes it. This is a public service announcement. It's as valid to ask if we're not causing drama as it is to ask if the domino in the middle is not responsible for the domino at the end falling when both were knocked down by the one before it. It just depends on where you personally choose to begin to look at the causality. A chain of events is a chain of events, you can either cherry pick where you want that chain of events to begin or you can look at where it actually starts.

In the beginning, the universe was made. This has widely been regarded as a bad move.

When I say we're not angry, just disappointed... I actually mean it. We take level 5 pvp as seriously as it should be taken, which isn't very.

We 2-3 slot with accuracy to's, and for a long time I used Envenom on my grav/poison controller. At level 50 it dishes out a 45% defense debuff. Yeah, we hit some insane accuracy numbers when it landed. We also had an Earth dom for a while, and the defense debuffs from that didn't hurt. We also used the rad toggle debuffs for a while, those were cute. So if by "cheating" you mean "using TO's and taking powers available to us," then... guilty!

Bug, I apologize if my posts make you feel as if this isn't fun for you any more. I really didn't see bringing this issue to light pushing you guys out of the event and would've just let them keep cheating like every one else has if I knew what the end result would be. I don't have a crystal ball. Seeing you go makes me want to follow suit. It was really fun until not long ago.


Oh noooo, not naaaaame caaaaallling! *crize*
I guess no one really cares at all on much of any level about any of this.

I think you kids in PDFC are just doing everything in your power to antagonize and anger other teams. Whatever gets your rocks off. Just because you've never succeeded in starting an arena match with intentionally incorrect settings doesn't mean you haven't tried. Your persistence is admirable, but your attitude isn't. Your talk of sportsmanship is nonsense. You as a whole are the epitome of poor sportsmanship and you know it.

Tell us how we cheated, genius. I'd love to hear all about this fictional account that exists only in your head.
You know why people think we cheated? Because THEY cheated and still couldn't beat us. I think you guys think we cheated because you had such a hard time beating us even after you began cheating. But we didn't. So if your team is so full of "experienced pvp'ers" then how come you lost three out of four of your first matches? Do you see the disconnect? Or does it elude your brilliance, Piper? It must not be that complicated if an idiot like me could pick up on it. I forgive you for everything you've said.

Here are some issues. In one round of the last match we caught them trying to turn off travel suppression and healing decay. They've previously tried to set maps of their preference without discussion, which isn't allowed. From there, the issue becomes that base accuracy on most attacks is 50%. Up until at least last night only TO enhancements were allowed and somehow almost every attack they had would hit with over 78% after getting hit by the poison tohit debuff. A lot of their attacks have what amounts to around 107-117% accuracy and without debuffs always hit at 95%. Our most accurate person, with attacks 2-3 slotted with accuracy TO's AND AIM ON peaks at an accuracy of around 93%. That's on an attack with an inherently higher accuracy. You could say "Oh, it's good slotting and aim and/or BU," but that doesn't explain why two corr's and a dom without BU or aim have a base accuracy of 95% on almost every attack. In pvp, every AT we brought had an inherent res of 40%, as did theirs. The average attack any of us uses in the arena hits deals around 15-20 dmg. One TO usually ups it by one point. Some of their attacks would deal over 70 damage, which adjusted for the dmg res amounts to over 115 damage dealt. Their average attacks were more towards 23-27 without AM or assault. It isn't that it wasn't an issue before, it's just that now the FACT they've repeatedly broken or tried to break every rule they can is the consensus among members of pretty much every team. I just felt like being the one to bring it up on the forums. We can ride our high horses and jibber jabber about all this childish non-confrontational "blah blah, I don't want drama, I want a pony and a rabbit and a rainbow and a bunny" nonsense all day but I'm not going to show the slightest hint of respect for any one of their victories. They're not getting my ATIO's, that offer is retracted because they broke the rules and the proof is so impossible to ignore that I'm not actually sitting here and complaining about it. I'm standing up and saying what every one else is too passive to say.

You know why you see us sit at our spawn points during matches? Because every once in a while we get sick of this team or that sitting at theirs like a bunch of frightened school girls and having to travel 80-90% of the map just to stomp them. THE AVERAGE TEAM NO LONGER EVEN MEETS US IN THE MIDDLE. They're too afraid. We create ridiculous spreads. And PDFC is afraid of us because even though they've often refused to ever leave their spawn point, we've often gone over to theirs then messed them up despite their use of SO's and likely ATIO's. They didn't push for a forfeit in our match before last because they felt it was fair, they did it because they were afraid that we'd beat them even though they were cheating. They didn't even stick around to face us in sudden death in one match then tried to call it a tie even though Bug clearly stated sudden death counts.

Neuronia, I apologize for the harsh comparison but right now you're reminding me of one of those people who tells a battered wife to shut up and stay with their physically abusive husband because blah blah blah. That's all it is, just blah blah blah. Don't stand up for what's clearly wrong. If this looks like whining to you then challenge them. Have every one on your team make a tab for dmg taken, dealt and tohit rolls. Then do what we did and examine the data. See if you like facing people who are okay with cheating to gain enhancement bonuses that are double to quintuple what you can achieve by following the rules. They didn't always cheat this badly, but as the days rolled by and they DFB'd for more so's it's grown more blatant.

What's really sad is that this is still far from a full list of every time and way they've cheated or tried to.

If you really want to know where our issues were before now, they were at the tip of our tongues and we bit them. We've had more than one team try to cheat to beat us. Just never had another team try this severely, and we never felt a need to record the data until now.

We here at THU have been pouring through the combat logs for hours. We'll get screen shots and analysis of the accuracy/dmg PDFC's members brought to the table *as well as what they would have had to do to get it* as soon as it's all sorted and itemized. Get ready for a good laugh, guys! Personally, I think you should be DQ'd (since you massively shattered the rules and should be) or at the very least bumped down to last. The reason we as a team aren't announcing a "They get DQ'd or we go" ultimatum is because this is a small tournament and we've already seen enough teams leave of their own volition. Maybe the rules will get evened out and we can actually have a fair match one day. Wouldn't that be nice? Instead of one where we pretty much just throw ourselves at you to collect mountains of data with the occasional debuff and attack of our own to get baselines for how you guys would perform if you weren't cheating. On, you know, a massive level Still like ya, buddy. Enough to not recount the entire litany of what your team has done from when this began to present.

You mean 7pm pacific? 7pm eastern is before the 9pm eastern time you set. Also, is he buying illegal materials? Most important meetings happen before 7pm. Just sayin'

Life happens. One of our people is moving in to a new house and couldn't make it. Two of our people were in a drastically different time zone and couldn't make it. Then there's me with a trashed registry who couldn't even start his computer. Whoops. I agree, the lack of communication has been irritable. Our initial conversation on when to host this event didn't involve closure, it was basically over when you went an hour without responding to something like 10 tells. But as for this "late tell thursday night," that was what, under two hours after you stopped responding? It was about twenty four hours notice and the request was for the time you'd originally proposed. *We figured it would work for you.* Then you guys couldn't field more than two people, but even though it'd send us past the PVP week we didn't ask you to forfeit and we certainly didn't ask for you to be disqualified. Know what else we didn't do? Treat the people on your team who did make it rudely at all in any way, shape or form. Which, I'm sad to see, is exactly what happened to us. You can ask that we forfeit, and if we get DQ'd then that's what happens. I wouldn't call it the right thing, though, and would point out that if you think we should be DQ'd then what you're really saying is that you think YOU should be disqualified.
Please clarify your position on this request to see yourselves disqualified. Your team as a whole appears to express drastically different expectations of reality based on which shoe is on what foot, and I'm all about consistency. Let's see equal treatment for the whole shoe-foot spectrum of possibility. I'd be fine with both teams catching a DQ. That sounds fair, doesn't it?
Seriously, though? Disqualification? Your whole post just sounds so desperate, cheap and... and... sleazy I'm sad in the face, sir. It's one thing to be desperate, cheap and sleazy on the field - but this is the forums. In closing, "PST" stands for "Please Send Tell." I'm just not sure your use of it was grammatically correct. Calm down. No one's mad at you. We're just all very disappointed. Good day, sir.

Challenge accepted! Traditionally, that's an ideal time for us. Running it past the gang, will shoot a heads up your way if any alterations are requested.

We have people who craft or otherwise acquire then sit on stores of hundreds of not thousands of io's and other raw goods. This segment of the playerbase can serve as a crude private sector and is capable of making decisions which bring about unforeseen, unbeneficial macroeconomic issues.


People go inactive or teamless all the time.

But what do the banks do? They provide businesses or individuals with money in exchange for that amount plus interest. They take money that wasn't actively circulating in the economy in large amounts and place it into circulation - sometimes mass producing it. What could fill this role in an Mmo? Any of the institutions which have in the past spammed us with "Buy x influence for x amount of real money!" They're farming the money (producing hundreds of billions of influence) and then making it available to whoever is willing to pay the price.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speculation
"Speculation typically involves the lending of money or the purchase of assets, equity or debt but in a manner that has not been given thorough analysis or is deemed to have low margin of safety or a significant risk of the loss of the principal investment. The term, "speculation," which is formally defined as above in Graham and Dodd's 1934 text, Security Analysis, contrasts with the term "investment," which is a financial operation that, upon thorough analysis, promises safety of principal and a satisfactory return"

The mechanisms for speculation are present. Shortly after sets were introduced I opened a business that provided whole lvl 50 builds, but cut my losses after realizing that nobody at even that point could actually pay me back in full for what I'd provided them. The mechanisms for speculation might not work profitably and reliably, but they're there.

But as you've pointed out, money is taken out of circulation through the market fees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interest_rate
"An interest rate is the rate at which interest is paid by a borrower for the use of money that they borrow from a lender."
In this sense the game would be the lender and the borrower would effectively be sellers who constitute our "private sector." They make money by selling on the market but sacrifice portions of profit in doing so, thus simulating certain (but not all) effects of lending.

Our "government" as you've pointed out has increased drop rates for purples and influence. They also routinely host reactivation weekends and double xp weekends, which the playerbase has noticed does stimulate our in-game economy. They've also added the WST's, which (depending on how many 50's you have) could be looked at as another job.

Unless buying their influence.

Yes, there are other factors. In addition to the second slot every one gets for unlocking whatever level it is (I forget), there's:

1.) The constant return of old players since GR/incarnate stuff went live
2.) We just had dblxpwknd and
3.) The most recent AE exploit (spiders/rikti monkies).

The amount of level 50's in need of a build has exploded in recent months. On top of all that there was the MM AE exploit not long ago. I know some people who made whole servers full of level 50 masterminds while that was going on. I was gone for it though, and couldn't observe its impacts on the market in the short term.



Yeah, but I'm not positive it wouldn't get me banned.

I apologize for getting a little condescending. You have to admit, this perspective really does open up the possibility that the Keynesian model is a better representation and that demand/supply could be the primary driving forces behind our inflation as opposed to monetary supply. The long and short of my take on the market is that things are worth somewhere between the lowest amount they're posted for and the largest amount anyone is willing to pay for them. Supply/demand alone doesn't carry the day. Sometimes even a great abundance in a certain item in our market doesn't guarantee a lower price. Sometimes even a great scarcity doesn't result in an impressive price tag. Our market is precisely what we make it every day.

This is a potential existential fallacy - All dragons are winged reptiles.
Therefore, some some winged reptiles are dragons. In this instance "People pay based on how badly they want something and how much they can afford to spend, therefore how much they have to spend will affect its cost." As I stated earlier, this line of thought is derived from the quantitative theory of money
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantity_theory_of_money

Which is rivaled in this view that changes to the amount of currency in a given economy will affect prices by (once again as earlier stated)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics

These are competing theories. Theories aren't facts.


You forgot to add, "according to the quantity theory of money which is a theory that may have absolutely no bearing whatsoever in this game's economy."

You seem to be completely forgetting that demand has doubled with the advent of two builds, that the amount of money in the economy as a whole could only matter in your imaginary little world and that demand alone could be the driving force. You make unknowable claims, consistently fail to see points when they are repeatedly brought up, invent positions for me then assign them arbitrarily all on your own and I could go on but even without being blatantly rude this is impolite already. I apologize but grow weary with attempts to communicate with you.

Illicit major.

http://atheism.about.com/library/glo...llictmajor.htm

A witty expression proves nothing

I keep getting the impression that what you're passionate about is being right rather than actually hearing what people are saying with respect to the context of the dialogue. Have been fooled before. So then, what is it you really care so much about?

Hyperinflation, we've determined, is an opinion. The form of inflation you've described is outlined by the quantitative theory of money - which is just that. One theory, which may or may not hold any water here and which is challenged very competently by other theories. You're presenting it from the austrian view. Pretty much the only form of traditional inflation which can definitely happen in this game are forms of demand pull and cost-push. Those are caused by fluctuations in aggregate supply and demand, which are subjects long since discussed here. You are in essence asking me to kick a dead horse. And then you followed it up by asking a question that wasn't even a complete sentence. I will agree there isn't enough information.

It's remarkably presumptuous to assume you can dictate what's said where. Go with the flow. Stop being so defensive, and join me here in reality where conversations much like rivers do not end where they begin.

You like wiki and quantifiable definitions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophism

Highlights: "Sophism has two different but related meanings: In the modern definition (from Plato), a sophism is a specious argument used for deceiving someone."

spe·cious
   /ˈspiʃəs/ Show Spelled[spee-shuhs] Show IPA
–adjective
1.
apparently good or right though lacking real merit; superficially pleasing or plausible: specious arguments.
2.
pleasing to the eye but deceptive.
3.
Obsolete . pleasing to the eye; fair.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_dispute

There comes a point when all you can do is talk to hear yourself talk. The only reason there's any sort of debate anywhere here is because we lack appropriate, definitive terminology that everyone can agree upon with which to address the issue at hand. This has been a central theme in every post I've made here. If you've missed it, I don't know what to tell you. Crap costs too much and it boils down to greed. Let's discuss solutions, like what to call the increase in prices. You don't like hyperinflation, which has no solid definition. You don't like inflation. So prices go up. It's a problem. I don't care if you're married to calling it "price increases." The ridiculous price increases are a problem, they are unnecessary and maybe we should discuss rarity transaction caps and such instead of browbeating, patronizing, etc.