@goldfish said in Unlikeable, incompetent, and inactive: Can these characters work in an MU?:
So I'm sitting here, wondering to myself: Can I make an unlikeable character?
Yes. @Coin does this all the time without even trying.
Can I make a low activity one?
No. I mean, yes, but when the chips are down you have to involve the character in events. If those events are "hanging out at the bar" then you're already active.
@jennkryst said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
To explain to @Thenomain you start with minumum attributes, 0 skills, and a pile of karma. Now go buy everything.
Hold on, let me spend a few hours looking for a spreadsheet like I had to for Mutants & Masterminds 2e, then spend a few hours trying to figure out why I'm not supposed to build a character this way like M&M2e and all the other unwritten rules like M&M2e.
And the implied minmaxing necessities like WoD.
What I'm saying is that it's gotten much more complex and not for me. When the simplified version is too complex for someone who enjoys data flows and coding, well, I'm just going to let this one go.
--
edit: SR: Anarchy would probably be a fine choice, with more AMP and Gear options.
@d-bone said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:
Shadowrun 5e. I'm half tempted to offer money to see this one.
I haven't been around since about 2e.
I looked at the chargen for 5e.
I looked at the simplified chargen for 5e in some expansion book.
I haven't opened the books since.
--
@ZombieGenesis : Link?
SOLUTION:
Dear Windows Users,
Don't use TextPad to code for UNIX.
Heh.
--
The slightly longer story:
The reason for the #-1 Invocation Limit was because the upped limit wasn't being read by the game on startup/restart, but parts of the netmux.conf file were.
The reason for that wasn't because of permissions (my #1 guess) but eventually remembering that @ZombieGenesis was using winscp to upload the edited file, which means editing on Windows, which means using Windows-encoded returns.
So the older parts of the file were being read by the game fine, but the things added new were not.
NP++, UNIX-style EOLs, and viola, everything is running smoothly.
--
ZG: Remember to un-alias 'm' from 'page'.
@wizz said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
If these were my shoes (and I am genuinely grateful in this case that they aren't, you really do seem to have to deal with a lot of bullshit Surr and I am sorry for that) I would have approached these people privately and allowed whatever weird crusade this thread suddenly became to become its own thing on its own momentum, if there really was any.
Or is it better to debase yourself publicly so those who are not directly involved are informed?
I don't think there's a right way to do this. Myself, I've been trying to be a better person and lean on those I consider close friends. It doesn't always work, as one particular person knows, but I also would rather try behind the scenes.
It's pretty obvious that Surreality didn't think this was good for her situation, and I can't fault her for it. Some of the fallout is to be expected, but finding that perfect middle ground is not trivial.
@taika said in Theno's GMC CG/Check Invocation Limit Issue...:
IIRC, I have mine set to 200,000.
Hell, 20,000 should be fine, tho I do ask people to set it to about 100k just to be safe, tho I've been doing this for a long time.
Part of the reason there is a "search order" is to break down the overall stat search to more manageable chunks.
"badstats" should be checking against the existing sheet. This doesn't mean it has fewer stats to check (there are very few stats beginning with 'st', for instance), but perhaps I can take some time looking into it. Perhaps integrating the search order will help.
I should note that this is the first time I've run into this problem, tho I did change some things for Reno and can't remember if I folded it into the main code. I'll probably want to log in and check it out.
@bobgoblin said in General Video Game Thread:
Whose excited for Diablo Immortal. Eh?
China.
Sorry, let rephrase:
Anyone who was surprised by anything at Blizzcon should be ashamed. I don't even follow Blizzard and actively try to avoid them these days and even I wasn't surprised.
I'm not even surprised at the vitriol from the fans, though they should also be ashamed. Seriously, guys, enough. Oh no, your pretendy fun-time was neither pretendy nor funy-timey enough! NOOOOOOOOO! My heart bleeeeeeeeds!
I am a little surprised at how Blizzard approached this and how they're reacting. You'd think they were a big game company or something and could afford a halfway decent PR department that would've seen all this coming from a mile away and responded with something measured. But no.
Blizzard should've known their audience, a rabid group of fans who spent money to be there in person, and handed them kiddy-toys. Pre-announced, heavily-telegraphed toys, but toys nonetheless. I don't know what they were thinking.
Probably that it's not loading any scripts. I get the layout but the screen stops loading until the "everything turns nice and dark and I can enter text in the panes".
Considering how much more locked-down macOS is getting for privacy, I bet it's an OS issue. It happened on Safari, Chrome, and Vivaldi.
I'll look into browser settings when I'm not in the throes of Mu* coding. Let me tell you, tho; going back to old coding styles is a pain.
@surreality said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@thenomain It is not about that, though.
It was when the thread turned, though. It went from your apology to talking about why your apology.
The apology was well-received and I think you're going in the right direction, but it was an answer to Derp's question, about how the Soapbox community is responding.
And so it's not buried: I think you're going in the right direction.
All the best,
- Thenomain
@derp said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
This thread seems to have taken a hard turn at some point.
That point was when people decided that keeping the identity of Surr's complaint private was not good for the community.
So it was inevitable.
@kanye-qwest said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@thenomain said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@kanye-qwest said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@saosmash said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
I also appreciate the apology and the context that it provides. I'm still a little confused about where the bullshit in question came from but I guess haters gonna hate?
in any communication issue, I am being misunderstood and it is totally explainable. You are absolutely doing it on purpose to ruin something for me.
...
it was my take on why these sorts of things happen, man, not a serious statement. Obviously this is no big deal to me, i was kidding about being mad.
Oh I've seen you mad, and I was kidding you about it.
I don't think anyone could reasonably think that you were actually mad, which made it a good time to pretend to take it seriously.
All in all: 
@kanye-qwest said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@saosmash said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
I also appreciate the apology and the context that it provides. I'm still a little confused about where the bullshit in question came from but I guess haters gonna hate?
in any communication issue, I am being misunderstood and it is totally explainable. You are absolutely doing it on purpose to ruin something for me.
...
I'm certain @skew would help the transition. He's good with me volunteering him like that.
If I had time anymore, I'd at least look into it for you.
@ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:
Telling a good story is independent of genre. The way the story is told is almost certainly different, but if you want a better parallel:
No, no, that's it, that's what I mean to say: that the way a story unfolds will be different between genres. How the story in DA2 should unfold in a way different than in ME:A, and, frankly, I liked both stories for different reasons. I just don't compare them, due to significant differences in genre.
I don't have the language to answer your question to the level that you want, but when I buy a game sight-unseen it's because of recommendation or relation to a game line that I already like.
The commonality of what I consider a good game is the strength of the world-building and story-telling. (And how easy it is to play. Going back to Mass Effect 1 is hard. Gah.)
Bethesda's treatment of the Fallout world is far lazier than Obsidian's was, and FO76 looks like a lazy treatment of "we have all these assets so let's write a story around it". Compare FO:NV which barely had any Supermutants in it and told a far more compelling story than FO3 on the same engine.
Not that being lazy with assets is the deal-breaker; I think ME is a stronger story than ME:A and the game was put together with fewer set-pieces than Dragon Age 2.
I'm reminded what Yahtzee says about Portal: It's tighter than a walnut's corset. This is what I like. Or the Witcher 3 approach: Yes there are side-quests but you are always being reminded of the story.
I expect BioWare to make a story that unfolds well regardless of the game style, but after ME:A and FO4 I will have to treat any more IP from them with the deep suspicion of lost trust. Hell, DA2 had that for me but I gave DA:I a chance and I'm glad that I did.
In converse, Witcher 1 and 2 were hard games to even play and I resisted playing Witcher 3 until it and its DLCs were on a $15 sale, and now Cyberpunk 2077 is on my "shut up and take my money" list.
--
I guess what I want is a good story well-told, and for that I will put up with a lot of gameplay elements I wouldn't normally care for. (Borderlands 2, e.g.)
@ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:
Comparing ME:A to Star Wars is a problem.
If I were a writer, you'd have a more elegant response. You asked, I answered.
If I were prepared for the challenge I would be able to link how Star Wars hit the Hero's Journey beat for beat. If you are saying that Ryder refuses the call for more than a few moment or ever meets a mentor, I'm going to have to ask for more. (n.b., I don't consider the AI a mentor. He's slightly less lost than Ryder.)
You think that ME:A does this better than Star Wars?
Comparing it to DA2 is also problematic, given that they are of different genres entirely.
Telling a good story is independent of genre. The way the story is told is almost certainly different, but if you want a better parallel:
The Marathon trilogy was created by a small Mac-only game company called Bungie. Its story was beautiful. Even Marathon (original) was weak on the whole but pulled it together by creating a compelling reason to move on beyond "shoot the bad guy and reach the end of the level".
The story told in Halo was a little above average (and IMO went downhill). It was made by a medium Xbox-only game company called Bungie. There was little to no compelling storytelling, and call be bizarre but I liked the Library level.
Both were FPS. One had a storyline, a plot, and arcs. The other was Halo.
Still, like some, I think ME:A got unfairly pooped on.
I don't know how many times I have to say that I found ME:A a playable game, so let me reiterate: It was fine. It was average. It had its moments, but to me has the same problem as Skyrim where the plot is not as strong as I enjoy. (Skyrim is very much a game not for me. Man that thing is boring as hell, and my over 130 hours of gameplay prove how compelling boring can be. Don't ask me about my FO4 hours. *cough*370*cough*)
I think ME:A got a little more poop than it should have, but EA shit the bed in early stages of development. The game was doomed from the start and as a franchise that I really, deeply like, it is heartbreaking but not at all surprising.
Incidentally, my favorite part was the end which felt like an even more open race-to-the-end call-back to ME1.
--
Incidentally, I don't think that Blizzard deserve the crap it's getting from Blizzcon. I think they're poorly handling it, so a little crap is understandable, but bloody hell, people.
@tinuviel said in When Staff No Longer Cares:
@thenomain said in When Staff No Longer Cares:
Make a game that takes the parts that you like and create your own original thing.
I'd also add that one should build their game with the idea that 1) It will eventually end, and 2) You might not be the one to guide it there.
First I'll be nice: I approached this thread to answer "What do I do when the thing I love is abandoned?" How you build a game is up to you.
Now for the blunt:
No. Build the game you want to play. It doesn't matter what that is, but if you don't build what you'd enjoy than there is a non-trivial chance that it will fail. And by fail, I mean "you will not enjoy it" (unless your marker of success is to make money).
It may fail anyway. Who cares? You're there to build a hobby on your own terms. Hell, this space-cowboy game being alleged in the first post, maybe the people running about it don't care about it anymore. I feel bad for the people who are still enjoying it, but it's not their call.
To reiterate Rule #0: RL Comes First. This is true for staff as much as players. This is true about the kind of game built too. I doubt that Multiverse Crisis MUSH had a planned ending and it's still going because this is what they want.
--
So build what you want. Enjoy what you do. If you can't, or don't, the world has a hundred million other things worth your time and energy.
A note about GOMOing it: If it's an original setting, don't.
Make a game that takes the parts that you like and create your own original thing.
Then be both stunned and awed when you average 135 logins at a time.
Just sayin'.
