Best posts made by WTFE

Am I going to regret asking about F-List?

Auspice has died of apoplexy.

@Ganymede said in Where's your RP at?:

If you can sell me on the value add, I'm down for anything. It's just ... a really tough sell given that I've never seen one that added anything I value.

That's sort of the point of asking you to help me conceive of one. You say there's something lacking in every system you've encountered. So, define it, and help me figure out a way to meet that need you perceive.

Well, the first thing I need is an answer to this question:

0. What does an economic system bring to the table that enhances my fun?

Because that's what any system added to a game needs to do: enhance fun in some way. I've not yet heard a convincing answer to this question. I'm open to the idea that such an answer is possible, however.

Now for ways in which economic systems interfere with fun, here are a list of conflicting forces at work:

1. Economic systems have a tendency to turn into grind-fests that are an end unto themselves as you struggle with them at length trying to get ahead (or, in some cases, just stay afloat). They turn into a boring, repetitive mini-game that starts to take hours and time away from actually doing things that are actively fun.
2. Economic systems have a tendency to reward people with no lives at the expense of people with lives. I have a very few hours per week to actively play. Aside from the #1 problem already chewing into that time, I'm at a horrific disadvantage in most economic systems when faced with someone who has eight hours a day to farm whatever it is that the economic system farms.
3. Not all economic systems have this farming thing. Or they limit it in some way that makes it so that the eight-hour-per-day-no-life-loser doesn't dominate. What then appears to invariably happen is that the economic system becomes pointless. It's just an extra command or ten you issue upon connecting and then never use again. It's a dunsel, pure and simple. The game would be largely identical without it; you'd only just lose a few commands issued at connection time.
4. Not everybody actually gives a shit about being an economist. Not everybody wants to do crafting/hunting/trading/whatever for money. So just like, say, someone not interested in combat will avoid combat, someone not interested in economics will avoid the economic system. But most games that aren't pathologically combat-oriented give you things you can do that aren't combat. Most economic systems (that aren't #3 dunsels) are all-pervading.

For an example illustrating these, I was on a Star Wars game that had an economic system. Out of the gate you could barely own a weapon. Armour? A vehicle? An actual SPACE SHIP? Not. A. Fucking. Chance. The game had what amounted to vending machines all over to buy things. After three months of playing I still couldn't afford a basic defensive vest. Why? Because I didn't do the #1 grind. Those who did the grinding highlighted problem #2.

Finally I hitched up with a player who had a suspiciously large number of resources. Like so suspiciously large that I'm pretty sure there was no way it was obtained using the game systems as-was. At that point I was just having money thrown at me whenever I needed it. The economic system became a #3 dunsel. It was nothing; less than nothing to me. If I wanted to buy something and it was even vaguely appropriate for my character, my IC patron just threw cash at me. The economic system was just window dressing; a series of commands I had to occasionally use to put a new piece of equipment in my kit.

And ... I'm not sure it's possible to make an economics system that doesn't exhibit at least two of the above problems.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said in Dead Celebrities: 2017 Edition:

Preceded into death by his career, which he smothered to death on-air during the MDS telethon in 2007.

I'm not sure if I've ever mentioned just how much I hate activists and their reality distortion fields.

2006 Telethon: $61m
2007 Telethon: $64m
2008 Telethon: $65m <--- world economy melts down starting about here
2009 Telethon: $60m
2010 Telethon: $59m <--- last time Jerry Lewis hosts
2011 Telethon: $61m
2012 Telethon: $59m
2013 Telethon: $60m
2014 Telethon: $57m
2015 Telethon: doesn't exist
2016 Telethon: doesn't exist
2017 Telethon: won't exist
2018 Telethon: won't exist
2019 Telethon: won't exist
2020 Telethon: won't exist
.
.
.

Yeah, you can sure see the slump in the fortunes of the MDS Telethon until they kicked Lewis to the curb, followed by its meteoric rise without the Lewis albatross around their neck.

Do I like what he did and said? No. Do I think he was right to do and say it? Not a fucking chance in Hell. Did it smother his career? Evidence indicates otherwise. He hosted three more telethons after the incident, telethons that made loads of money despite a world-wide economic catastrophe, and then--after he was shuffled at first aside, then off completely--the telethons went down into a death spiral until they were mercifully euthanized.

The lesson to be taken from this? Only in social media land does one slur uttered in the heat of the moment get magnified into "ZOMG HE SO TOTALLY DESTROYED HIS CAREER FOREVERZ!" Sane people apparently recognized it for what it was: an unfortunate (and, I should stress, because I just know someone, somewhere is itching now to paint me as a homophobe, repugnant) slip; the kind that EVERY HUMAN BEING ALIVE has made in the past and will make again in the future when under stress.

@Ganymede D'aw! Love you too, sweetcheeks!

Seriously, though, while we don't always agree with each other, I've never found a reason not to respect your opinion. (And I'll swear this to be a lie under oath if challenged, but you have changed my mind on a few things over the years too.)

@Misadventure said in Auspice Needs To Move!:

I'd prefer to see it go better than Fiasco.

Now Run a MU* Fisaco? Make it so.

Yeah, but I'm teasing Auspice, so Fiasco it is!

@Ganymede I bet you I have as many Chinese family members as you do!

I‘m Super Happy Party Vomit Guy!

Yay! The party is over and you have earned your just reward! There's a secret that only you and Andrew W.K. know, and that is: To live life to the fullest, sometimes you have to end up ass-up, hunched over a terrific toilet-void and barfing sludge while a goodly party nun pulls back your eyelid.

Party on, Super Happy Party Vomit Guy. Possibly the only person having fun in Hell.

A related data point on the nicey-nice…

The Lua programming language has an IRC channel (#lua on Freenode) that's a bit of a rough-and-tumble place. It can be crass, and much of the discussion has nothing to do with Lua when nobody has questions about the language. (When people ask questions about the language they tend to get rapid, expert answers. Then conversations turn back to the rough-and-tumble off-topic norm.)

This nature of the channel offended one of the users. He tried to topic-cop for a while and got frustrated at his efforts being ignored (and, indeed, often mocked). He went off and made his own channel (#lua-support) which banned off-topic speech, mandated civil conduct, etc. The channel was elevated to a primary resource alongside #lua (and #lua-fr for French users) after a brief wiki edit war.

This was a couple of years ago. As of this writing, #lua has 266 users logged in and is hopping. I've checked its activity for the past half hour and it's hundreds of messages. At least a half-dozen newbies asking technical questions got assistance in that time, and some advanced questions have also been debated. In that same time frame #lua-support has 18 users logged in and has had ZERO activity: not even a question!

I have, in the past, kept a bit logged in for weeks. And in that time saw less purely technical activity IN TOTAL than an hour's worth on off-peak hours in #lua.

This is a pattern I see over and over again.

Now, I have seen the other direction work as well. #haskell vs. … I think it was #haskell-newbies or something? The main #haskell channel was not only off-topic and a bit rough-and-tumble (albeit not as R&T as #lua), it was also a place where Asperger's-afflicted geeks showed off how obscurely they could do anything. So someone new to Haskell would join the place, ask an innocent technical question, and get increasingly bizarre and inappropriate solutions. The new channel had a bit of a nicey-nice policy (albeit without the ban on off-topic), but it also had a major value-add: it banned the "fuck with the newbie" behaviour. Which meant newbs could ask questions and get serious, useful answers instead of the ever-expanding mindfucks of Asperger's at play.

That channel is thriving. Indeed it occasionally eclipses the original in activity and it almost always eclipses it in terms of useful content.

There's a lesson in here for anybody who wants to make an MSB-alike that's nicey-nice: if your sole selling feature is "it's like MSB but we ban negativity" you will almost certainly fail. If, however, you find some value to add (a game database/wiki, say) and aren't as harsh in the nicey-nice as most such sites tend to be you may actually grow and eclipse MSB.

But I'm still not holding my breath.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

@WTFE You are too much of a gentleman to bitchslap her for having such a glaring double-standard, but I will cheerfully volunteer to bitchslap her on your behalf.

This kind of shit is my current biggest peeve across all aspects of life.

Actually I tore her a new one and got blocked. I'm too old and too cranky to put up with this kind of mealy-mouthed self-centeredness these days. Ever since the 300 Swedes incident.

@Wizz said in What MU*s do right:

If you're going to ask for [backgrounds] on a game, do it because you genuinely enjoy reading other people's work and want to help them improve their craft, not because it's just a Thing Games Do.

Quoted for truth.

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

1. One political party has quadrupled down on representing Christianity, running on God-centric tickets, in a country with freedom of religion for all religions. This places a face to a political movement. See Important Note above. Many of these candidates have run against women's medical rights, LGBTQ rights, and per Important Note above, creates a feeling of the religion taking a stance via political domination.

It doesn't help that there is a sizable Christian group that does literally believe they should be ruling. (Check out Dominionists some time. Then have a long shower using lots of soap to get rid of that horrible skin-crawling sensation. Then consider this: Canada's PM for a decade was a Dominionist…)

You are. He's crazier.

@Lithium said in RL Anger:

@WTFE So that they can gerrymander the counties and take control of everything without having the popular vote

It's not a true democracy, it's technically a republic.

That's the reason that the PTBs want you to register.

WHY ARE YOU REGISTERING!?

I can see how FS3 would suit a game that's oriented toward battles and, in particular, large battles. For that, I would likely withdraw any objections I have to FS3. Thing is, the games I've seen it used in weren't oriented to large battles.

@WildBaboons said in RL Anger:

We get free food relatively often at work and I've rarely heard anyone complain that wasn't giving a valid complaint. Like the catered luncheon where the vegetarian can only eat one of the bags of chips... said vegetarian got themselves into the position of helping arrange the food and fixed the problem instead of whining about it.

The problem wasn't that there were dietary restrictions or preferences. The problem was that they were increasingly specific. "I can only eat wheat-free (gluten-free wasn't a thing back then), dairy-free, tomato-free, but not vegan -- I like my meat." "I can only eat vegan, tomato-free, but not wheat-free because wheat-free crusts are of the Devil." "I can only eat <insert laundry list of increasingly bizarre requirements>."

Now for some things--medical conditions--I have some sympathy and I will bend over backwards to accommodate these at social events because it sucks to be left out because, in effect, you're sick. Some other things--common dietary restrictions like "kosher" or "vegan"--well, that's (mostly) a choice, but the availability is sufficiently commonplace that it's easy enough to find something that complies.

No, what gets me is when you have a long laundry list of personal choices that make life a logistical Hell as you juggle five or more pizzerias along with over 9000 very specific requirement lists (despite the company only having 300 people!) all so that each precious little snowflake can have, in effect, their own private pizza. At that point, I agree with what management chose to do: ditch the free pizzas entirely. You want your special snowflake pizza? Order it and pay for it yourself.

Sucks for the majority that strident minorities killed a good thing, but it sucks even more to go through the massive efforts required to arrange such a thing only to get shit upon literally every week.

Fate for me.

So, I'm getting into weird-ass Chinese pendants now.

The first batch are carved ox horn. They are, respectively, a lotus blossom, some weird Buddhist iconography, and the badass warrior god Erlang Shen. (How badass is he? In Journey to the West, after Sun Wukong/The Monkey King pretty much cleans up on all of the heavenly forces of the Yellow Emperor and is close to final victory, Erlang Shen fights him to a standstill.)

These next ones ... aren't particularly SFW after the first image, so I'm not going to actually inline the rest.
#1 front view.

#1 rear view.

#2 front view.
#2 rear view.
#2 with necklace.

This is one of those rare cases where I wish we could downvote … and not to be mean.

More horn pendants. It's not (entirely) my fault! Only one of them is actually for me!