Posts made by Arkandel

@Ganymede said:

I think you're putting too much stock in Durant's ego. I don't see it in him.

Yeah, I don't know where that came from.

Hellz yeah. This should be a thing.

@Ganymede said:

Do you think LeBron wanted to leave Cleveland? Of course not, but he couldn't get anyone to go there because he was an untested star. Then he won his two rings, went back, and convinced Kevin Love to join him.

No, of course he didn't want to leave. In fact leaving caused significant damage to his legacy - it's his one black mark, since otherwise the guy is perfect with a reportedly solid long-term marriage, extensive community work, a great image, etc.

But make no mistake, he'd have had zero issues getting people to Cleveland - they were simply mismanaged for a while at the time, saddled with bad contracts and relatively little room in the salary cap to do much about it in the immediate future. So instead of waiting 2-3 years until things got better, he crafted a situation elsewhere; Pat Riley in the front office (the guy is a legend for a reason), a dynamic coach (which of course he clashed with at first because it's what he does), and two other superstars whom he would be the undisputed leader of.

But KD wouldn't be the leader at all in Cleveland, ever. It's a lose/lose for him; if he gets a ring it'd be because of LeBron and if he doesn't it'd be because he's unable to do it even with LeBron. It'd always be about LeBron.

My fantasy-league kinda scenario was that Cleveland would get KLove - who wants more touches since his stats went down - and trade him to NYC for Carmelo. KLove gets a big market team to lead, Carmelo competes right away, everyone's happy.

Durant's not Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant He's a smart kid. He'll go where he can win. And he can win on a team with LBJ, Love, and Irving. Easily.

He'll go where he can win alright. My money's on the Lakers, post-Kobe, with the new salary cap rules. A legendary team to lead, several young stars drafted during these past mediocre seasons to back him up and anything he does will be a success because it's not like they can get much worse than where they've been the last few years.

@tragedyjones said:

Mushing would be so much better if we didn't have players.

Systems would be so much more secure if we didn't have users, either.

I think you might be on to something here.

@surreality And yet - again at the time - I was in a cabal with someone who had Juerg issues, who had been told in no uncertain terms sleeping with him would have made them disappear and who went to staff - with logs - repeatedly asking for them to do something. The staff member responsible for it never did, and in fact they accused her of trying to avoid the consequenes of her character actions because they liked him more than her, and staff members over them in the chain of command backed the decision because they didn't want to get involved.

Does that sound at all like something we've been discussing in the thread? That's not an example, it's a thing that actually happened. I was there to see her leave the game over it.

It's not easy to be a good administrator. That's why there are so few of those well regarded by their peers - on top of actually being adept at game-things, being proactive and creative over a period of time they also need to stay impartial and get their hands dirty. That's not the kind of practice which wins friends, and in some cases it can alienate the ones they already have.

But even then telling a jerk from an abuser, someone you don't like from someone who's legitimately harming your game... that's the hardest thing. Putting a stop to what someone you might actually like is doing, knowing it'll piss them and their friends off - some of whom might be staffing as well - is plain rare.

It's easy to chastise or punish someone without ties to anything else. Going after well connected players requires actual conviction.

@Ganymede said:

No, it's not. Anthony is a dickbag that couldn't make it work with Karl. Fuck that guy.

I think the Clippers go over the hump this year. I think the Spurs collapse, and the Lakers are non-factor again. I think the Rockets are too shallow, and lack a tested power forward.

I think the Cavs get to the Finals this year, and lose to the Clippers. And then I think KD goes to the Cavs after LBJ and the others restructure their contracts.

The Lakers are my sad story I wish Kobe had one last good run before retirement but I strongly doubt they're making it to the playoffs at all. I hope he at least finishes the season without injuries and goes out on a high note.

The Clippers... personally, I doubt it. BG is a top-3 PF (and really funny in interviews) and of course Paul might be a jerk but he's the best PG in a loaded league but they have no spine. Their collapse last year was unexpected and head-shake worthy. Doc can teach a lot, he can't teach having balls.

As for the Spurs, I have them in the Finals. As long as Pop is coaching and Duncan is still on his feet I can't possibly count them out - I have before and they proved me hilariously wrong, even before they got LMA. They're old as dirt though so injuries could be their undoing, but even so I'll take them over anyone else coming out the west. And Cavs vs Spurs ought to be a really fun matchup.

I've an eye for some of the younger teams too. The Timberwolves ought to be fun to watch, the Bucks are a blast and Boston impressed me in the last playoffs - plus they have a shitload of picks left. Their problem will be, as usual, keeping their stars after they develop them.

And KD will never go play with LeBron. He'll not want that part of his legacy, that he needed his help to get a ring. You can quote me on that Gany.

@Monogram said:

The Thunder? Maybe if they had kept James Harden and Durant's foot didn't explode every season. But as it stands, their big pieces are likely to gtfo out of OKC in the next season or so.

The Harden trade will spawn so many beer conversations for so many years to come.

I dunno, about OKC. If they stay healthy (and I really hope they do, it'd be terrible if the ankle injury diminished KD) they are an extremely fun team to watch with two top-10 guys on their roster. KD himself is second only to LeBron. They can go places.

What I lament is Carmelo will never be in a true contender in what's left of his prime. By the time the Knicks are able to climb out of their hole he'll be too old, and that's a shame.

@surreality said:

thing I have to a 'solution' is based on this, to some extent -- that being that some folks, and they're very few in number even after close to 20 years, have earned not a welcome, but an unwelcome. Spider, Jeurg; that class of 'unwelcome presence'.

See, the problem with this is that hindsight is 20/20. Both players you name here have at times being highly regarded by many - I remember when I was first interested in rolling a Mage on HM knowing very little about it I asked @EmmahSue to recommend someone to get points from and she offered Juerg. VAS had been lauded at times as an accomplished ST, was given the reigns to factions voluntarily and people actively tried to get in her coterie/packs.

What I'm saying is that telling the difference between "person who rubs me the wrong way" and "plague who destroys everything they touch" can be a very hard to distinguish at the time. People, even the worst players, have people who really like them and others get pretty bad press without actually doing something horrible just because as a community we can be fairly mean to people if there's a bandwagon pointing their way. "Woo-hoo, I'm in the in-crowd, evidenced by the fact there's a we, and we hate <X>!" is very much a thing.

So sure, after a couple of years patterns emerge and we can have a better idea who's batshit and who's not based on their track record but until then I wouldn't trust any subjective metric other than specific actions to demonstrate it's time to get rid of a player altogether.

In other words, banning a player because he demonstratively sexually harassed someone after being warned to cut it out is perfectly legitimate. Banning them because of general badness... that's another story altogether.

@Ganymede said:

The Cavs will likely win the East, but that doesn't mean they'll win it all. Anyone coming out of the West has to get through one hell of a crucible.

Fair enough, but that's not necessarily(or at least exclusively) a good thing. One team having taken a huge beating and the other being relatively fresh conveys advantages and disadvantages of its own.

@Ganymede said:

The Warriors are coming back with Curry, Thompson (Klay), Green, Bogut, and Barnes. They still have Iguodala and McAdoo. They won last year; the Cavs did not.

The GSW will not repeat. If nothing else, I don't see them coming out the West if they're matched against the Spurs or Thunder. I never had that much faith in teams so heavily reliant on 3-pointers to begin with - it was a perfect storm for them which kept them hot pretty much through the second part of the playoffs and healthy at the same time. If they had to deal with a spread defense due to KLove and chase Kyrie around instead of staying fresh and exhausting Dellie instead? Oh, that would have been a whole different story.

They never beat the Cavs, they beat LeBron who took two games from them on his own. With the rest of them behind him? Squash.

As for Varejao, the guy is over. If he can give 12-15 quality minutes a game without getting hospitalized it'll be a medical miracle.

As for the East, if the Heat stays remotely healthy this year they will be a force to be reckoned with. Their starting 5 alone are enough to decimate defenses - Bosh is a top-3 big man defender in the league and spreads the floor like hell, and his PnR with Dragic will be elite. With what's left of Stoudemire and assuming (okay, it's a bold assumption) DWade's knees don't come undone they're very good.

Also, the Bulls... maybe, if DRose finally comes back. It's his last chance to show he can still be elite, which would be a damn shame. The guy has an IQ of about 80 but damn he was good before the injuries.

@Monogram said:

And goddamnit, my Bucks will be relevant this years.
proceeds to say that and goes to cry in the corner

I love the Bucks. Antetokounmpo is awesome, I watched him before he left Greece. Long-armed freaks, the lot of your team.

@Ganymede said:

@Arkandel said:

Any team that puts LeBron in his prime out on the floor is likely to win it all. ANY TEAM.

Say, how did that work out last year when the Warriors won by using an aged Andre Iguodala?

The team was decimated by injuries - Kyrie and KLove were both out for a while, Dellie did his best but he ran out of fumes without a backup... it was exhaustion that did them in.

This year if they stay healthy? Well, the Spurs can't be counted out (Timmy is about to hit his peak after all) and KD is back! But I'd still count the Cavs as favorites. Same roster that brought them to the finals, just improved and hungry.

And LeBron. The guy is a cyborg.

Any team that puts LeBron in his prime out on the floor is likely to win it all. ANY TEAM.

@tragedyjones said:

My next game will be set in Cleveland.

Is it because the Cavs are likely to win it all this year? You bandwagoner.

Early 2017. I'm callin' it!

Any chance we can dispense with the mean girls routine?

Conversely though I wish I could like names enough to reserve them in advance. That'd be nice. Usually I pick them when I have everything else down in my head, I'm at the login screen prompt and have already typed "create "... but then I need to keep hitting keys. Which keys? WHICH KEYS?

What are you thinking regarding alt policies?

And do you have a plan about handling progression in terms of allowing newbies to catch up faster to oldbies in power, XP transfers in case of IC death, etc?

Right, and I disagree with that generalization. In fact I brought up a specific scenario where the staff member overseeing a situation is absolutely getting facts.

Not every case is he-said she-said.

@Ganymede said:

Only the truly delusional ever think they are listening to facts when people give their side of the story.

I'm an engineer. You are a lawyer. One of us places more faith in facts than the other.

Mediate if you can. Negotiate if you have to. At the end of the day, pick the person you'd rather deal with on a daily basis because, as arbitrary and capricious as that is, it's no less arbitrary and capricious than any other decision you will make to resolve the situation.

So from my side it's quite obvious what happened should be a primary factor in decision-making rather than whether I like some people more than others - which is only different to 'who I'd rather deal with on a daily basis' in terms of semantics, if that.

The example I gave is applicable here. If player B has no robust answer to "hey, so how did you find out about <IC event>" then regardless of how much I like them I'd rule against them. It doesn't, and more importantly it shouldn't - matter whether they are great people or not; everyone makes mistakes, maybe they saw something on a wiki and made a bad assumption without thinking about it. They don't need to be sitebanned or flayed, but the situation would need to be remedied and it wouldn't be in their favor.

Doing anything else is showing favoritism. Yes, it's impossible to avoid bias but systematizing it is a pretty bad idea.

@Wodchelle said:

I wanted to have a game that focused on controlling turf, encouraging non-lethal skirmishes over valuable locations, and dealing with problems that arise with holding valuable territory.

Let's go over that - what is value? Why is some territory worth more to werewolves than any other?

In a game like Vampire this is pretty straight forward; they look for specific qualities such as feeding privileges or improved security when it comes to their domain, and theirs is a system largely constructed around faction and individual status.

Werewolf is... different. Loci are the direct equivalent to feeding but the concept doesn't translate as evenly - Uratha are proud or protective of them but they don't need them to survive the same way Kindred do vitae. Furthermore status in itself isn't as big a deal since the Lunes are the ones who provide Renown (the rough counterpart to Harpies in a way?) and that's the final arbirtrer of just who is worth what, and they will grant their favor to acts more than size; there is no incentive for PCs to bargain or negotiate with others as there's no 'voting' on who's to rise or fall.

So the challenge here is giving players the incentive to go out and risk everything to expand their territories or, even more so, claim that of others. Staff would have to decide certain things directly rather than delegate to players - unless a mechanism allowing players to decide on what Lunes' determinations are is implemented, which would make it a novelty for MU* - and do it in a very fluid way to encourage such gameplay to function.

Finally the process in which territory is taken has to be figured out. The Oath of the Moon may be flexible but it's pretty hard to just do away with - and it specifically states werewolves don't kill each other. So unless every other pack is a murderous bunch it's a bit complicated since the guy you just beat the crap out of will heal and if they refuse to back down... well, then what? You can't escalate, there's no 'Prince' to take it to.

Perhaps this would be better fleshed out after the next Werewolf book comes out but some of these questions will probably still be valid then.