Best posts made by Lithium

Mechwarrior Online is /NOT/ remotely battletech. It is a FPS sim that uses giant robots of the same name and vague description but it is /nothing/ like BattleTech tabletop or even MechWarrior RPG.

It's essentially shoot em up robots.

That's it.

It can be fun I guess, but it takes a lot of time to build up enough money to get solid mechs skilled up and built. You're going to suffer without a unit to play with, and the community warfare is a joke. (Way to many fronts where people can bounce from planet to planet way to easy)

The Clans are getting their asses kicked back to their homeworlds and mech's have all these 'quirks' that Inner Sphere mechs are as strong as Clan mechs are.

Oh, pin point accuracy.

It's not BattleTech, it's an FPS with a thin coating of BattleMechs'.

@flahgenstow

Why?

Characters are not real.
They are not who we are.
There should be a separation of IC and OOC.

Some couples and individuals can understand this, and take it for what it is, RP. It is no more threatening than two people writing a book together /unless/ someone tries to cross the line from game to RL. Then it can become a problem but that kind of stuff happens RL even without MU*'s.

It's ok for you to feel that it's not for you, and in that case don't have your character get involved with someone's character whom you know to be in a relationship... but... lots and lots of people have significant others who do not partake of these games, and you'd never know unless they told you.

It's also something that needs to be decided for that couple to determine what's good for them. Nobody else has any say in that one really.

She probably knew and expected it, hence, the new book after so very very long. Smart way to try and take care of someone after you're gone.

@Roz Sure they are. They are making the time to RP with everyone else BUT the person who needs the RP. They have @mailed. They have paged. They have done everything reasonable to try and be conducive to RP.

Sam is avoiding the RP while RP'ing with others.

This isn't a case of not being around at all and unavailable, this is a case where the person is RP'ing with /many/ other people, on /many/ characters, and not RP'ing with someone who is connected to their character, so that the person can forwards their own RP.

What should they do? Nothing? Give up on their character? Allow it to be held hostage by another? There comes a point where you have to say enough is enough and have fun playing the game rather than rely on that other person.

I'm not saying you don't communicate what you are doing, in fact I would put that in an @mail to Sam Spade in this case, saying look, I need to move forwards on this and I am left with little options here.

Yadda yadda.

@Jaded I love how it's a reboot back to 3025 and will likely /never/ have Clan invasion.

There is no 'perfect' way to do this.

It will always depend on the situation.

Say person A has dropped off the face of the earth. Person B out of 'player agency' issues decides to give nothing but vague or noncommittal answers because they do not know what is going on with person A.

Person A comes back, puts up a post about how they've been missing since whenever, they're killing the character off, or their character is just disappearing indefinitely.

They have every right to do that, it is their character, but suddenly person B seems to be a wacko who wasn't responding to this person being gone all the time or missing or dead or whatever.

This is different than if person A has been around all the time, but for whatever reason isn't responding to player B's requests for RP, though is clearly out RP'ing with others.

People's opinions will vary on what to do, and in the end it's a personal judgement call you have to decide on a course of action that suits continued enjoyment of your character.

@Vorpal I saw it in the theatres when it came out, and just found the directors cut to be... odd afterwards. Though there were some deleted scenes that could have been reinserted, like poor Chew's hand...

The voice over helped fill in gaps to smooth transitions though which is why I liked it better, since without some things just seemed really out of character.

At least to me.

I don't see slaves as something even remotely necessary in a space lords and ladies game. Why have slaves, when you can pay someone less than it costs you to house and feed and clothe them? It just doesn't make sense especially if a key element is that there is a lot of humanity to farm. Slavery just seems pointless let alone that it will lead to revolution, or attempted revolution.

It happened to the Romans numerous times and the social mores of it are just repugnant.

I wouldn't play on a game that allows it as an institution because it just invites all sorts of the worst (to me) kind of drama and 'rp'.

I've found that each time I play through I go do a different thing and it helps. Like this last time I played I went through and did all of the minutemen to getting the special home base unlocked before I ever went after my kid. Not very motherly of me I know but.. You can also just run through the main game, and then explore everything else afterwards because it doesn't end. I spent a lot of time just exploring the glowing sea as well.

Also, like most things Bethesda, mod's make the game much prettier, and much more enjoyable. Kind of a shame that the community is so much better at certain things than the main company but, that's where it is... for me anyways.

@Derp The first time I saw Thenocode I was like, "What is this madness?!" because of how he splits it up into separate lines. When I write it's just one huge line because I have a pretty large monitor and have a lot of screen realestate. So I was looking at his code and going: "How the hell does that work?" then I realized that it just was expanded downwards piece by piece I got it and was like: Ohhhh.

I still don't code so prettily but I at least understand what he's doing with it now for the most part. Occasionally with the help of some function help files I don't have all the functions memorized yet...

@ShelBeast I don't think all those things happened to /one/ person, I think they are bits and pieces of stories that happened to a lot of people that they have spoken to.

In that way it is poorly written and as I said, I don't like the way it is written because it is written in a way that is intended to shock, but it fails and oversaturates(sp) the message to the point where it almost makes one want to discount on general principle.

The other thing is that sometimes things happen, and we react to them in ways that didn't really happen that way.

Maybe some guy thought it was funny or was crude or was insulting, or was a legitimate pedobear. Maybe a couple people laughed, but the whole tone of the memory was set by that /one/ thing happening, that one guy said that and everything else was just /wrong/ from that point on and it /felt/ like everyone was being like that so that's what she remembers.

It's hard to explain to someone who has never experienced that kind of thing in ways that make sense in some ways.

It's like when we get that one piece of bad horrifying news while we were at some place cool, or having a good time, or just a normal time and that bad thing makes it so /everything/ associated with that moment becomes bad, even if it actually wasn't.

However, these things /do/ happen. Most probably not all to the same person, but to multiple women, multiple people, more often than one might think.

It is easy to think it's all bullshit, until it happens to you or someone close to you.

@darksabrz My only piece of advice is this:

Be. Fucking. Flexible.

Shit will not go to your plans. You will have ideas about how things will go down, and then a character will do something you didn't see coming. It's always better, in my opinion, to let a character /try/ something, anything, if they wish to try it. Let them reap the consequences. If it throws off the story you had written in advance, then so be it.

Letting the players interact and even guide the story is a huge part of what engages people into the stories that we tell but not every group is going to be proactive and in that case you need to have a plan to fall back on, or at least the ability to make shit up on the fly really fast.

Unless I am playing a game where the players have a specific dungeon to go into, or a specific building with a specific floorplan to break into, 9 times out of 10, I am making stuff up as I go along. As long as you are consistent in the environment and reactions (when reactions should be consistent) then it's all good.

@Arkandel There's a number of reasons why it could be bad.

1. He realized he was just not being accepting of people who wanted to play together, and he possibly impacted their fun for little or no reason.
2. He realized that in a strange environment we often are hyper aware of situations where we can be singled out and split off from our support and we don't do that because it can go very bad, very quickly. That's why they both left.
3. They left the whole /room/. They stopped trying to play /any/ game at Gen Con, for at least a while because he refused to let them play together in the demo he was running.

I think it was probably the third that he noticed more than the other two because the first doesn't seem related to the story, and the second... men just don't seem to notice.

We see it in pop culture all the time, men asking 'Why do girls have to run in packs?' I'll tell you why, because it's /safer/.

Most of the time we can't count on the people around us, they choose what they see, they choose what they respond to, they choose to justify or marginalize what they're seeing. They say things like: Maybe she likes/wanted that sort of attention or she wouldn't be dressed that way. Maybe that's how their relationship is. Maybe she's having a good time. She wouldn't be here if she didn't know this was going to happen.

We try and look good, feel good about ourselves, and we get 'Slut Shamed' or told /we/ are the problem. /We/ are why we're being raped and worse, as if it's somehow our fault.

The worst part of it is most guys don't do anything.

We're in a catch 22 situation, if we confront the people who are the problem, then somehow we're the problem for not understanding it's a compliment, or we're just being 'catty' or a 'bitch' or 'not accepting of a compliment. For guys they are Social Justice Warriors or Pussy Whipped. If we do nothing, if we try and ignore it and move on (Which is undoubtedly safer) putting distance between them and us then we are in essence /enabling/ it because we are allowing it to happen unchallenged.

As to whether it happens on games, for me, most of what I've seen is if a woman tries to play a /strong/ female character then they are often thought of as a guy playing a girl, and will be treated accordingly. If a woman tries to play a female character who uses her sex as a weapon, she's considered to be a guy playing a girl. Actually, it just happens a lot, that whole adage of: 'There is no girls on the internet' is still going strong.

As for forums and blogs and social media... yeah you don't need me to tell you how bad people can be.

@Packrat just because a Brigade has 5 times the troops does not mean it has 5x the efficiency or efficacy of a unit with less troops. A single trooper has a finite amount of power. Just because you have more of them doesn't mean you have more absolute firepower. It means you have the potential to apply that troopers firepower more often.

For example: If you have guys with spears and hide shields vs an M1 Abrams Tank, it doesn't matter if you have 5, or 500. The 500 still are probably going to lose it's just going to take more time and ammo to get through them.

So you're left with a couple of choices depending on how accurate you want to be. You can (and should) beef up the health of the unit, there are more bodies after all in a Brigade then a Platoon. You may wish to bump up the applied damage a /little/ depending on if they get additional more powerful hardware (Like say mortars instead of just rifles and hand grenades) depending on the amount of troops. Or you can ramp up the 'Number of Attacks' while keeping the damage low.

If one trooper has no chance of defeating something's armor (Or very little) then 1000 troopers with identical gear are still not going to have any better chance at it. But there would be a lot more /chances/.

@Misadventure I agree. Even as he tries to deflect, he still belittles the issue at hand by the ever present call for evidence.

Now I am not saying that the company is doing the things she's saying they're doing.

Honestly that would surprise me because it'd be REALLY EASY to offer e-mails as proof of such a thing.

My problem is with the way people like @Tyche are responding in general, that because one person feels victimized it is somehow /weakening/ the case for /everyone else who has suffered these abuses/.

It doesn't /hurt/ anything. There is no 'evidence' that she is lying, there is no evidence that she isn't other than the /lack of evidence/.

@tyche said: I don't find the argument that if you don't accept the position of the poster then you are part of the problem.
Just maybe the typical response is rationally skeptical.

How are you not part of the problem? Nobody is saying that you need to attack this company, it's a call to bring to light the injustices that are being perpetrated every single day.

The fact that you think it is 'rational' to be skeptical when literally /hundreds/ (if not /thousands/) of women across the internet/world have said the /same thing/ points to how much a part of the problem you are.

On a side note: Why is SJW (Social Justice Warrior) even a derogatory thing? How did fighting for equal rights ever become a fucking /negative/?

Why is there a need for spreadsheets to begin with? Maybe in the design phase, yes, but realistically once you have each unit hammered out as to what it can and cannot do then you can make it really simple:

Unit contains Type and # of forces within, which pulls from a database for each unit and adjusts by bonuses and penalties. Then your code determines which unit was aimed at either randomly or via targeting choice, rolls effect, gets result, modifies Unit #'s as appropriate. Rinse and repeat.

The idea that spreadsheets will be necessary is kinda weird because Space Nobles have tech that practically makes them immune to certain weapons (I read something about immune to kinetic kill weapons, so no bullets, mass drivers, arrows, knives, fists, etc) so if there is no energy weapons in a unit they literally cannot harm that person. They may be able to contain them, maybe... even if it's just stacking bodies up so that as they die they form a wall in a hallway or something.

When dealing with code, it wouldn't be /that/ hard to have a unit roll a number of attacks equal to the amount of troop segments within the unit, resolve them, and continue.

The /problem/ (as I see it) is when you start treating it like a War Game because large scale tactics are practically impossible in this setting. The important pieces are the space nobles and other player characters so focus on the space nobles and other player characters. Abstract the armies to the point where yes, you can get a set defense rating, and an offense rating, along with how much damage they can absorb either from armor or bodies and then you have two numbers that can generally be used as comparison and to /guide/ the narrative.

If one player does something slippery and smart then let that effect the narrative.

Trying to automate all of this... will probably not work in my opinion, for what it's worth.

@Thenomain said:

@wanderer said:

Here's a question to think about: why are male gamers like that?

I don't know, why am I like that?

I thought I had more to support this point, but my mind is fractured and I am sticking to my point about labels.

This is why I take issue with that whole idea. Because not all male gamers are like that. In fact, /most/ aren't. We tend to notice outliers more than the norm, but sometimes the norm gets so negative, we leave because we are just unwilling to put up with it anymore. That's human nature, it transcends gender.

As to MMO's, I don't use voice chat unless it's a raid. I will /gladly/ tell people I am a guy playing a girl (you know what they say about white lies after all), because A) I will be accused of it eventually. B) On /some/ MMO's (WoW, and EVE especially) there is enough of a toxic population that I just don't want to make myself a target, and C) I get judged on my skill rather than my gender.

WoW is so full of toxic vitriol that I rarely play it anymore. I stopped playing EVE when I joined an incursion group that was doing nothing but talking about porn, linking porn pictures and video's constantly, and being swarmed with cruder and cruder suggestions, innuendo's, and pictures they wanted my 'opinion' on.

Anymore, I won't even talk on voice chat in a raid. My microphone will be 'broken', so I'll type what I have to say and just listen.

@Arkandel That guy being sleazy is pretty common, we know (Well I know, usually, I can't claim 100 percent accuracy as it's possible I've missed stuff) when someone is being disingenuous towards us, or treating us like an object to be captured or claimed. Some of the time it's funny, some of the times it's annoying, and some of the time it can go waaaaaayyyy to far. MMO's aren't dating simulators to me, I just want to play, beat up the raid bosses, and get my loot like everyone else.

Also: I hate the idea that women are only fit for healer rolls, I tank, a lot. I DPS some too, the only game I am comfortable healing in is FFXIV.

I agree, a cap was the way to go, not just saying you can never advance, ever.

That's just stupid. Essentially all wizards are stuck at chargen level magic powers for all time. No new enchanted items, no new potion slots, no new foci, no new anything other than skills and stunts.

So a wizard will eventually buy lore, discipline, conviction to 6 and then.... that's it. Forever and ever. You just become better at human stunts. Have fun.

Ugh I have no idea why they thought this was a good idea. Power creep is a thing, but there are much much much better ways to handle it than this.

Now scions, changelings, and shapeshifters are going to pwn everyone and everything.

The rules for magic in Dresden were already fairly restrictive just due to stress requirements for /using/ magic at all.

@Misadventure You'd be surprised at tournaments how many people are just annoyed that they have to paint everything. There's a very large wargaming part of it that is into it beyond the models and painting aspect.

I've seen armies of Space Marines that were basically spray painted blue, given very slap dash white ultramarine symbology just to be counted as 'painted' so they could be introduced into tournament play.

That's not to say that I've found someone who hates a well painted miniature, but there's a lot of people who aren't willing or unable to put the time and effort into painting the miniatures the best they can, or feel that they haven't the ability so don't even try. They find the painted miniature qualifier to be very upsetting.

@Thenomain Development /can be/ advancement.

It is development to learn new skills to show the character growing in ways that they didn't before or to develop better skills/powers.

It's also development for them to develop new merits and flaws over the course of the stories that they participate in.

It's development if they just change their emotional feelings on a person/thing/event/subject.

None of these is more 'right' than the other when it comes to development.

Your story is talking about how your character was 'individualized' which is not the same thing as 'develop' a character. You're also talking about a game system which didn't have the variety of skill and variation of abilities that exists even in modern D&D 5e what with different character paths, feats, skills, etc. not even including abilities.

The great thing about character development is it /can/ be a lot of different things, and mean different things to different individuals, all of which are equally accurate to them or to the game system as it was designed.

You say XP is an OOC conceit to allow for bigger and badassier challenges.

GAME SYSTEMS are an OOC conceit to allow for bigger and badassier challenges.

I'm also not even talking about a /levelled/ system like the games you are using in your 'examples' (WoW, CoH, D&D).

I also find it somewhat amusing that anyone, anywhere, is telling people that they're doing pretendy fun times /wrong/ when they are having fun. Some people enjoy increasing the size of their character sheet. They see the challenge in creating the character and how will it adapt to the changing situations (Aka experience growth) and in no way does /doing that/ mean they don't experience any other kind of development.

This is the craziest thing to be black and white on that I've seen on here in a long time.

Does the character change? Then it's development. It doesn't matter /how/ the character changes, if it's just mindset, or fame, personality (Which /does/ have stats in many systems), or if it's threw gaining/increasing abilities/powers/whatever with xp spends. It's still development. The character has changed.