Posts made by Thenomain

Splitting off from the other recent discussions, what in general is staff’s job? Besides the access rights, what makes someone a staffer and not just a player?

Is a staffer a kind of player?

@Tinuviel said in Punishments in MU*:

Another conversation worth having, jumping off of this point, would be what kinds of punishments are there? Is banning all we have?

If you broaden the definition a little then yes, it’s all we have.

That definition? Staff can keep a player from engaging with the game.

Once you think of it that way, there is a lot that staff can do:
If there is a system, you can be denied access to it.

—

Oddly, the one thing staff can’t stop someone from doing is accessing the game in general. This is the nature of the technical network called The Internet and all you can just about whitelist-only IP address connections or play whack-a-mole from someone who wants to get around it.

Maybe someone can set and revoke 2FA access to the site. I leave this pedantry to the oedants.

You can remove all access from a specific login, and there are ways to make it hard for people to log in or make a new character, but nothing is full-proof.

@RightMeow said in Bundle of Holding: Because we need good deals.:

I don't know what Fate is.

Please don't take my RPer card.

Nah.

Might take away your Googler card, tho.

Fate Core SRD

@JinShei

I wish the Soapbox crowd wasn’t so split on it. But I also believe that either everyone has to be all-in on a Fate game or it won’t work. There haven’t been enough tried for me to come up with a conclusion.

FATE CORE BUNDLE OF HOLDING
(wooooo!)

https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Fate5

@faraday

That is a much better analogy, yes, but I still want to make my point clearer than the analogy: Just because something is technically possible does not mean we should take it as justifiable.

Your example includes this (to be fair, so does mine), but again I think we as netizens or even as full world citizens should be able to discuss rights intelligently.

@Auspice

You are literally agreeing with me.

@surreality

That’s fair, and I give myself an out in that last sentence. Because there are many reasons not to expect privacy, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t try, or demand, or work toward it.

“Oh well!” is a terrible attitude.

@Auspice said in Privacy in gaming:

You are literally sending data over an unprotected means of communication.

If I leave my house unlocked, you are still trespassing if you enter it uninvited.

The technicalities of this are only part of the equation; the other part is expectation.

Honestly, the argument on whether or not players should expect some privacy has made me sick. The answer is not “you are on an unprotected server therefore you should expect none”, the answer is, “I have no interest in the work involved in protecting you from privacy violations, so expect that there are none.”

There’s a reason we don’t allow cameras in bathrooms in ... well, not in Ohio, and I’m hoping that’s everywhere else. Technically there’s nothing stopping people. Hell, the wall between urinals is barely enough to keep someone from staring.

We punish people who do things that are technically possible all the time. The idea that “it’s possible therefore it’s allowed” is what makes me angry.

There are many other reasons to not expect privacy on a Mu*, but “because we can” isn’t one of them.

@faraday said in Digital Ocean for Ares:

most traditional MU hosting plans

What besides Digital Ocean is a "traditional MU hosting plan"?

Is OSU playing a single goddamn team this season? I suppose there's Penn State and UMich, but OSU is ranked #2?

I hate the football ranking systems. They rarely seem to make any difference except for keeping people justifying their jobs.

I'll just leave this here:

https://comicbook.com/starwars/2019/11/12/disney-plus-star-wars-a-new-hope-greedo-scene-change/

@faraday

Agreed.

I'll encourage their decision; people who want their account permanently deleted often do so because they don't trust their own judgement. I sympathize with them and will help them randomize their password and give them the most sincere hope that their absence from the forum, the game, this part of their life is for the best of them. I'm not a monster.

But it can be too much to ask admin to make an exception that can disrupt the forum or game in general. Bane made a habit of deleting accounts so there was no on-forum record of any of his puppet accounts saying dumb things coming back to be used against him. Not that he cared, but hey. On games, this would also remove references from many subsystems.

I can get behind the idea that flagging with "inactive" or "gone" is better than ghosting. If people are going to read a sudden 'gone' tag as "rage-quitting", that says more about them.

Most recently? Arkham Horror 3rd Edition (barely succeeded; we didn't need 2/3rds of the city anyway).

I participate in two board game groups. Online (including Emmah and Cobalt) and RL (including friends). Online is fresh, breezy, and rarely anything too heavy though we do seem to like Eldritch Horror. TTS makes setup a breeze.

My RL friends are all analytical minds, we can easily double any game's playtime, and that's not including learning time. (We don't play timed games.) And because they're analytical, lighter games are not usually on their radar.

When the last round of Terra Mystica with four people can take almost longer than an hour, I'm starting to look for things to occupy my time without seeming antisocial. And since striking up conversation distracts the analyticals, that means Kickstarter, Facebook, and possibly going to start reading a book.

I'm not going to suggest a timer. I'm not going to make these people uncomfortable via peer pressure. This is our luxury time. If they don't care that I'm reading a book while they figure out how to minmax the moves, then I'm not going to care that I checked out two hours back.

There are a few games that can keep me engaged. Catan: Cities and Knights is probably the biggest. There's so much interaction between turns, and we've house-ruled the horrible "screwed by probability" issue with something from Settlers of America.

Dominion is another one I rarely get bored with because turns rarely last longer than a few minutes after the initial ten minute in-depth analysis of the cards available. (Dominion is an odd duck because it's one of those games that you almost certainly have your move finished as you draw your cards and now it's just waiting. It's multiplayer solitaire, but it's short and sweet.)

@Misadventure said in I need a god damn Expanse MU.:

Why not use The Expanse RPG?

Is Green Ronin still actively cracking down on use of their rulebase without their permission? I think someone knowing the Green Ronin peeps said they had eased up on it, but they had resisted PDF for a long time because of it.

@Wizz

Isn’t there a second edition now? How is it?

@RDC said in General Video Game Thread:

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

I hate the Outer Worlds but love Borderlands.

I think it should PROBABLY be legal for you to think this, but I can't imagine a just world where it's legal for you to say this out loud.

Ok, Boomer.

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

DA:I was too long for you?

Too long, too dull, too mind-numbing. The open world aspect conflicted with the story.

One of the reasons I love Borderlands 2 and Pre-Sequel is because they embrace their nature and turn it up to 11. They are the best single-player MMOs I've ever played, and while Inquisition tried to ride this mob-based open-world, it just doesn't gel as well for them.

I'm hoping that the success of Descent and to a lesser extent Trespasser tells them what I like most about Dragon Age.

--

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

.......so it's an open-world game where I have to do things in a very linear way to get the full effect.

This is a dumb conclusion. Dragon Age: Origins is a game where you can't possibly get all the effects on a single play-through. What you can do is make it yours; there is no wrong way to do it and your friends are stupid for ruining your re-plays. (Not that you would because you already hate it, so I don't know why I'm defending it to you.)

DA2 is in no way open-world, so let's nip that in the bud right now.

DA:I is, as mentioned above, a mob-based open-world where no, you also don't have to do things in a linear fashion to get the "full effect". I find that the writing is less nuanced and there's less "play it your way" compared to DA:O. It's a bunch of little stories that usually have something to do with the main story or have to do with your companions or current situation. It's not epic, but it is personal. The game world gets in the way, but as I have said many times: I can put up with a lot for a good story.

DA:O is a story told in four parts. Sometimes how you go about those parts will affect bits in the other parts. Each part has a bunch of little stories that almost all have to do with whatever is going on in that part. It's epic. It's amazing storytelling.

So those people are dumb, and your conclusion is...baffling.

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

@Ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

@magee101 said in General Video Game Thread:

The main reason I said 1$ per hour would be good for Outer Worlds is because it is marketed as a open world RPG. It's also why I don't buy games like Last of Us or the Call of Duties, I buy RPG games because I want something that will give me 40-60 if not more hours for that 60 dollar price tag.

To each their own. I suppose your analysis is why I enjoyed any of the Mass Effect games more than Dragon Age: Inquisition.

DA:I was too long for you?

I never made it to Inquisition. Origins was mind-numbingly dull.

Mass Effect forever.

These games are among the best PC games I have ever played.

So...I mean...

I don't know why we're at this point in the discussion.