Posts made by Thenomain

@HelloRaptor said:

What difficulty are you guys playing on, anyway?

Normal, but I generally let the characters do their own things because it's not like DA:O where it's simple to manage them and keep them where I told them to bloody well be. I suspect this is a setting change, but the combat AI in Origins seemed to be a lot more intelligent or at the very least natural, somehow. Somehow.

I find two warriors makes a nice wall for the other two to hide behind. Alternatively, one warrior and one melee rogue. Sword-and-shield for preference.

@HelloRaptor said:

Yeah, she is pretty fugly.

Sera is the 'Teetness.

I'd do her in a heartbeat. Different strokes and all that.

I mean, some people even liked Dragon Age 2, and that was pretty fugly.

My second play-through of DA:O was a female city elf warrior. I played her as pissed off at all of humankind, through and through, and she was pretty easy to play. The only time I had to reduce difficulty was when fighting the Carta, but that fight always kicks my balls. Every time.

@Monogram said:

My problem with Sara is that there is absolutely zero growth with her.

This would be like hating Tony Stark because there's no growth with him. Not all characters have to change to be interesting. Her depth is largely displayed as someone who's unafraid to show all their cards, and half the characters are there to try and change the world into what they think it should be. (Solas, Cole, Vivianne, Sera, Dorian, Leliana come to mind.)

Sera is certainly pushy about it, but I had a lot of fun with her. The Sera/Viv banter is especially fun.

Second play through kind of bored me. Perhaps this is because this game was designed for people who look for "drop rates" as a primary gameplay element.

I'm glad someone out there really hates Sara, since I can no longer make fun of HR for liking DA2. Sara is the only one to call Varrik out on his bullshit. My problem with the DA:I characters is they seem to be missing dramatic conviction. It's a rather minor quibble.

Ah, flooring earned xp. The people who will complain are those who were granted XP through involvement with the system, while those who don't still got XP. I think the best solution is to flat-rate it while allowing those who gained more to keep it. It's a bit more the meritocracy that people seem to look for.

@Bobotron said:

Yeah, the 'rocketship' analogy is why I like the concept of a monthly XP floor, and maybe a 'flat award' at some point

Again, we did this on DarkWater. People hated it. Not everyone, of course, but the abrupt shift in character was a turn-off to many of the people that I think we wanted to have play there.

@Glitch's Reach XP climb was meant to solve that particular problem, but after a few years the escalation was de-facto. He has already said that the system wasn't used in the way it was intended.

Between the two, a better-scaled, more elastic version of Reach's system would be my preference, as it answered the issue of keeping power levels roughly in sync far better than DW did.

For the sake of those who forgot or never knew, DarkWater made sure that people were no more than 2 months' worth of Flat-XP behind anyone else. Extra XP that was earned was not calculated in. However, this meant people who joined a year in found themselves being handed 100+ xp after a month. It was not a happy balance.

DarkWater had an xp floor that was updated monthly. Reach altered the idea by making the initial xp a more gradual thing. Well, more gradual at first., before the xp catchup felt more like a rocket escaping the gravitational well.

@mouse

I think staff should be rewarded by having fun, same as the players. Why, what do you think staffers deserve for running plots?

@HelloRaptor said,

I am a giant whining pussy.

Fixed that for you.

@Kireek said:

Listen man, if it hurts your feelings, that's fine

Keep it civil, please.

@Glitch said:

Do you have to take the name out of the quote, HR? You're killing me, man.

He does. Always. Even though you just have to hilite what you want and hit "Reply" and it will do the work for you.

@HelloRaptor, please do this. Please. Please.

Chime has archiving jobs to phpBB here: https://github.com/lashtear/jobs-archive

But she says to me, "Theno, PHP needs to be set on fire, and I don't want that on my server anymore. You can't use my code."

So I said, "Okay," because what can you say to someone giving you space for free? You can say: Let's do it without phpBB.

https://github.com/thenomain/Mu--Support-Systems/blob/master/SQL Job Archives.txt

Right now this is strictly a back-end. There is so far no way to pull the information in a familiar (i.e., +jobs) format. And yet, all your jobs can be stored here for now. If anyone wants to help with this project, I will be more than happy to fold in the additions.

Don't forget to back up the new tables.

Fair 'nuff. It's part of the risk of talking like a lawyer, perhaps. (And my frustration at people relying on coders without thinking of other options.)

Still, I think seeing about using some of the web-based tools to accentuate the more nuts-and-bolts part of the game is an option. Be The Change, etc.

edit: Or maybe stop relying on WoD games.

Your tone and your constant complaints makes me believe otherwise. Even when I've given you some suggestions for your friends, your reaction is to defend yourself about doing nothing.

As someone who is doing something, this annoys the everloving crap out of me. As you have expressed your ability to do things, but choosing not to, and still complaining that things aren't being done, I don't see how you feel that you have a leg to stand on.

Sure, some of this is inference, but seriously, dude, be the change you want to see.

Over in the The Reach thread:

@Arkandel said:

At the cost of being wildly off-topic for this thread, the only way to rejuvenate the hobby is to divorce it from telnet clients.

Your solution is...?

@Arkandel said:

it was easier to sit back and wait for someone to do it than get my hands dirty.

Go you.

I know you were talking about different things here, but both of them have the same source: You have the ability to make a change, but instead you're sitting on your laurels and then have the audacity to point out how there aren't enough coders.

If you have a horse, and you say that you do, then get on it. This is the perfect situation for someone with a high horse to ride that sucker into the future.

@Arkandel said:

Oh, I know. And I agree. I shouldn't have stopped developing when ES told me Glitch had been coding his similar approach for a while but it was easier to sit back and wait for someone to do it than get my hands dirty.

No, it's not. It's easier to be lazy and complain that other people aren't doing it.

I gave you a handful of ideas that don't require a coder at all, and this is the best you've got? Then I don't know how you can feel you have the right to make demands on the community.

@Arkandel said:

No, there aren't enough coders. I've spoken to several people who really want to start a new game and they fail to find someone to set up and code it up for them.

Then we need to find non-coded solutions.

This will be my mantra for 2015.

Figure out what's not needed and strip it from your mental vocabulary. Do you know what we had on the original Masquerade? +sheet, +roll, and that's it.

You yourself were whining about telnet-based game systems, Ark. Find non-telnet solutions. d20Net was mentioned. You've forgotten about Nuku's flash-in-the-pan 4e D&D game that used online spreadsheets as a map system, for god's sake. We have the technology, but not the culture.

Be the change you want to see.

I hate tiny grids. They do not evoke the setting.

I hate gigantic grids. They do not invoke role-play.

It's easier to mitigate a gigantic grid with travel and map commands than it is to mitigate a tiny grid with temprooms.

In my opinion, it's best to have a grid that's just a bit too big. My favorite grid of all time ever would be Haunted Memories' because it was oozing setting out of every pore. It was too big, but I forgave it because of that and travel features.

That is rather my point, but made in such a way that hopefully explains to the OP that the question is limited, that there is a third choice and perhaps more. We have fenced ourselves in with the concepts of what we're allowed to do, and something that should be asked is: Why?

There are answers, and some of them make sense, but between the last two Big Things in WoD—Haunted Memories and The Reach—we have largely lost touch of this. "Plots" have their place, but it's not every place.

Between the two, however, staff direction is more important, else how do we know what is okay to do on our own time?