canyoneer posted:

Nigmaetcetera posted:

Hey Caro if you're reading this I just wanted to let you know that we're still listening in on everything you say and do, and we'll put you right back in there if you continue trying to expose our activities.

Other Barry posted:

nice to see the secretary of state save a goon for a change

Josef K. Sourdust posted:

The CIA operative followed the jailer down the steps, gagging on the dank fetid air. From dark corridors he could hear groaning and whispered prayers. "Here he is," said the jailer, indicating the skeletal form chained to the wall. The CIA operative leaned forward and turned the figure's face to the light.
"Son, are you Kevin Dawes?"
The figure flinched and gazed incomprehendingly at the man standing over him.
"Son, are you Kevin Dawes?
The jailer looked over the CIA man's shoulder. "Sure he is."
The CIA man frowned "That's not good enough. I need to check." He turned back to the shivering form on the floor.
"Son, I have to ask you something only Kevin Dawes would know." He stared into the prisoner's eyes and asked: "Do you have stairs in your house?"
"I am protected," the prisoner croaked, tears running down his sunken cheeks.

goose fleet posted:

These are the sacrifices that we must make as a civilization to get rid of the possibility of those times when you're sitting there trying to lay a log in the toilet and someone comes in and starts styling themselves in front of the mirror and you're just holding it in and clenching and biting your lip and begging silently for them to leave and then they get a phonecall and your face starts going red from the exertion and they're just yapping and yapping and they make some snide comment about "haha yeah there's someone trying to take a dump in the bathroom omg lol" and they're giggling about it and you feel like your bowel movement is about to become a bowel revolution and then this person just strolls on by and instead of picking a far-off stall they pick the one right next to you and plop themselves right down and let off a few courtesy coughs that then turn into courtesy farts as they expect you to leave the bathroom first instead of them even though you were there in the first place so you stand up and you try to shuffle out of the stall with your legs tightly together to hold back the oncoming volcano and that's when the person suddenly leaves their stall and they make eye contact with you and assert their dominance and they have won and you have lost and as you start to tear up you lose control of yourself and start sharting all over the tiled bathroom walls and they're just laughing and uploading awkward shots of you to Instagram

Travis343 posted:

Sham bam bamina! posted:

I'm the gender-neutral language in a story only conceivable in a ladies' room.

Mezzanine posted:

Not nearly as traumatising as that story book with the big kiss from "Auntie Sphincter-mouth", which I prefer not to GIS at the moment as I have just eaten.

whiteyfats posted:

... What?

Anosmoman posted:

Don't be coy. We all have a sphincter aunt.

Screaming Idiot posted:

In this case it's like seeing the sort of person who eats nothing but pizza talk about how wonderful it is, and you note how the person is greasy, smells of fetid cheese and flatulence, is covered with acne, and is rippling with folds from which leak inexplicable sludge. You realize that if this person eats nothing but pizza, then you become repelled by the thought of pizza because of what it would do to you. And then you decide to learn more about pizza, and you see that it is made of ingredients you do not enjoy, such as terrible 8-bit pepperoni, ear-grating chiptune crust, and twee-as-gently caress mozzarella. And when you decide not to bother with it, the same greasy pizza-freaks who won't shut up about it look at you and scream shrilly, "HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT IF YOU WON'T TRY IT?!" to which all you can do is sigh and try to post something else as you put them on ignore.


I used to be partial to the Megaman games, before the fanbase turned into pizza-lovers.

Screaming Idiot posted:

Yes, I'm the bitter malcontent because I don't jerk off to children's cartoons and boring games painfully squeezed from the suppurating and distended anus of Tumblr's finest hacks. I will shed a gin-scented tear as I look up to a picture of a Homestuck troll having sex with a pony while Sonic masturbates behind the bushes, and realize I love the Crystal Gems.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

no they will not posted:

Suicide Squad squad is so dark that director David Ayer brought a cop on set, according to Slipnot actor Adam Beach. "David [Ayer] is about realism," he told E! News. "He wants you to genuinely get into that character's mindset, and take on their mannerisms - essentially "acting" like them. It was a real worry that Jared [Leto] would actually turn into that infamous crime bastard we all know as the Joker; so David [Ayer] brought a cop in. If Jared [Leto] becomes the Joker, he won't get far before being arrested."

Skylark posted:

Still in-character as the Joker, Leto invited the director back to his hotel after shooting one day to show him the disturbing flash animation "Salad Fingers" on his laptop.

Darley-Wilkinson posted:

Dave_Ayer_3 [14:03:11] its such a sweet game
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:03:13] like
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:03:40] how often do you play something that heartfelt
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:04:01] ya
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:04:09] powerful
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:04:30] honestly still getting a bit misty eyed thinkin about it. manly tears
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:04:54] im sort of amazed at how much i care about every one of the characters
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:05:10] cant even imagine doing a genocide run
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:05:15] word
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:05:21] actually that reminds me
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:05:30] thought this tribute was really nice
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:05:32] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjbbpRsJwq0&t=3m16s
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:06:01] Dude.
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:06:03] Lmao
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:06:10] Ok
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:06:11] Wow
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:06:14] Not loving funny
ClownUDontWantToMeet [14:06:18] rekt
Dave_Ayer_3 [14:06:20] gently caress off
Dave_Ayer_3 has logged off 14:06:21
Dave_Ayer_3 is offline. They will receive your messages when they log in.

infrateal posted:

in world war I primitive tanks carried bundles of sticks on the front of their hulls which they dropped into trenches so they could cross them and the term for these objects is "fascines" but they could also be termed "enormous faggots" and basically if a wwI tank ever goes to mars and needs to cross the Valles Marineris it should strap you to the front of its hull

infrateal posted:

speaking of advertisements for casual encounters, remember that time you wore a GLOMP ME shirt to an anime convention and walked around all day inside an impregnable bubble of personal space

infrateal posted:

when curtis lemay ordered his b-29s to switch tactics from precision daylight bombing with concussion bombs to nightime carpetbombing with leaflets bearing heebie-gbs posts the crews mutinied, claiming the order represented "soulless, vacuous depravity." only after he changed the munitions loadout to white phosphorous and napalm did they obey orders

quote:

god making the earth: i like it really gross. thats what im into now

perfect angel: hey god. what are you doing in here

god: uhhhhhh

god: nothing

quote:

god: look at this. i made this, this planet, this Earth, it's magnificent. beautiful. perfect. ...too perfect.

*god's eye searches frantically and settles upon a slug resting next to two round rocks*

god: omg yesssss, yeah boy. boy....

quote:

god: dude check this out *holds lamprey up to angel's face*

angel: oh god gently caress what is that thing? eww

god: yeah it's pretty gnarly eh *holds it up to angel's face again*

angel: ah gross, stop

god: *pauses for a second then does it again, snickering quietly*

angel: stop. please

quote:

god: ok, four arms is enough, i'll call it a quadropus.

*reaches over to put tool away and knocks over arm container*

god: ugh goddamnit

quote:

god: this is fun and all, but how can i make it grosser

quote:

Angel: God, everyone loves your dinosaurs! the Triassic, the Jurassic! And then you managed to top even that with the Cretaceous! you knocked it out of the park! Everyone can hardly wait to see what you're going to do next!

God: man, I don't want to be known for just dinosaurs. I'm so much more than that. I've been working on something new, trying to take things in a new direction. check this out

*shows sketches of gross little warm-bodied things covered in fur*

Angel: er...

quote:

angel: hey we've been working on the design for the first human i got all the sketches and blueprints and stuff and tzazomatiel next door has a clay sculpture as a model if you want to go take a look

god [drawing with crayons]: its ok guys i got this

quote:

angel: my arms are perfect. they come to the shoulder but dont stop there

god: (thats it)

angel: i flex my arms and its like flexing all of my muscles. muscles that could destroy the angel bank or the angel theater--

god: (ill make a gross little pit where the arms stop. i love it)

angel: --but i would Never do that.

god: (this is gonna be awesome)

angel: my arms go on forever

quote:

lucifer, light bearer, the morningstar: so, bottom half of the body... the hands worked out real good, im thinking we just do them again

god: actually i had an idea about this, what came to me is, what about a weird, junked up hand instead. it is all scrunched up and painful and it smells bad and the fingers dont do poo poo.

lucifer: (holding head in hands with shoulders extremely tense)

quote:

angel: wow that's really good. really really good. it's perfect

god: i'm just going to-

angel: don't

god: make this thing-

angel: no it's good the way it is

god: there haha awesome

angel: i guess every artist really does go through a dick phase

quote:

god: ok you know how we have this perfected human form, all one contiguous thing, whole and perfect, animated by its own will alone

angel [cautiously]: yeah

god: well what if we did a whole...inside part, full of incredibly weird polyps that need a slurry of mashed up stuff to work, and they're all pink and purple and glisteny and constantly leaking fluids

angel: oh no

god: but get this...the human needs the fluids

angel: please stop

quote:

god: hair. i'm going to put hair on everything. armpits, monkeys, kiwis, japanese ghosts, everything. hair.

quote:

God: ...so I figured they can just absorb the essence of other life forms for sustenance like we do!

Angel: Ok, but...they're not astral beings, Lord, I don't see how they're going to partake of the luminous---

God: *points to hole in the front of the face*

Angel: Okaaaaayyyy?

God: They shove dead things right into this hole and instead of the Manipura chakra from whence flows our life energy, they got this squishy sack full of acid that melts stuff and turns it to slime then absorbs it with polyps.

Angel: Jesus Christ.

quote:

god: lets have them just shoot goo into a hole that is also filled with goo.

angel: that's...that's awkward.

god: yeah and i'm going to make them want to do it like...all the time lol

quote:

God: *studies Mars with a puzzled look on His face, stroking his beard*

God: Mars... Mars.... hmmmmmm... Oh! I got it! I'll put water on it after all but make it super salty! Lol no ones going to want to drink that! :p

quote:

god [excited]: i made this!

angel: gross what is it

god: i call it poop. now check this out

angel: ugh that's horrible what is it

god: i call it a fart. it's like poop, but invisible. farts are like angels for poops

quote:

god: and guess what else

angel: ...................

god: *biting bottom lip, arching eyebrows expectantly*

angel: ............... what

god: you can set'em on FIRE

quote:

god: hey lucy check this out its a dung beetle! it eats poo poo!

lucifer: better to reign in hell than deal with this

quote:

god: and if some of them like dookie stuff, whatever... don't tell me you've never wanted to experiment...

angel: but father, we don't even have dookie up here.

god: *blank stare, eyes wide, pointing at earth*

quote:

God: drat, volcanos are awesome. i really knocked it out of the park with that one.

gabriel: truly, Lord. i am in awe of their beauty and power.

God [not listening]: yeah yeah... flesh volcanos. my gift to man.

gabriel: w.. what? Lord, they're too b-

God: yeah. yeah! HELL YES! we doing this. gotta break out the good clay for this. i call them...zits

gabriel: you made us with an ever lasting love for you, bereft of free will, but somehow i've come to hate you

quote:

God: So I was looking at eyeballs and I thought, 'Isn't it weird that nothing eats people's eyeballs?' So I started some sketches, and, turns out there's a lot of great designs for that. Like tons. *picks up magical heaven manilla folder, spills thousands of designs on desk*

Angel: *stares blankly at them*

God: Yeah, I thought of all kinds of things like this. Like this guy eats eyeballs, he's a type of tiny worm. This guy coils up under people's skin, it causes crazy itching! It's great. This one creates lifelong debilitating fatigue, and is carried by an almost unnoticeable little insect that bites people constantly and drinks their blood. It's really something. There's no cure or anything either. People just stay sick forever LOL

Angel: What's the point of this though?? Why are you...

God: These guys burrow tunnels through human hearts as a part of their life cycle. This one will completely clog their intestines if they reproduce, to the point of both the human and all the nematodes dying. These little suckers just gestate inside a little pouch of skin, before worming their way out as they mature. This an amoeba that replicates like CRAZY inside a human brain. And this dude? Seriously, its this fish that just specifically jumps in the urethras of animals that get near it. And it's barbed -- almost impossible to get out of there without mega-trauma. Isn't that crazy awesome??

quote:

god: *makes elves and wizards*

god: eugh no

god: *replaces them with people obsessed with elves and wizards*

god: ugh, i'll fix this later

quote:

God: Hey Abraham go kill your kid in my name.

Abraham: OK, here I go *goes to stab kid*

God: NO WAIT STOP I just wanted to see if you'd do it! Sacrificing kids is wrong and you are no longer required to do it cuz I'm a super kind and loving god and it's an abomination.

Abraham: Wait then why did you ask me to do it in the first place?

God: I literally just wanted to see if you would kill your kid if I told you to. I want you to be so devoted to me that you'd kill your own son for me. But also killing your own son is SUPER horribly wrong and you should never do it ever.

Abraham: Except when you tell me to?

God: Yes. If I say so, you should totally do it. But I won't ever tell you to again. But like, if I DO, you should. But don't do it otherwise because it's a horrible sin. It's so horrible that if I tell you to do it, there's always the chance that I'm testing you to see if you'll do something horrible and if you do it I may get mad. At this point your only hope is to try and figure out what kind of mood I'm in that day.

Abraham: Huh.

God: Also, if your dad passes out drunk and naked in his tent and you look in there to check on him and see him naked accidentally, and then get embarrassed and put his coat on your back and back up to him to throw the coat over him so you won't see him naked again, I will loving make you go blind. For seeing your dad naked accidentally.

Abraham: Huh.

God: Yeah, I am crazy as gently caress.

quote:

priest: god hates it in the rear end. dont even think about it

god: um yep. oh yeah haha

priest: seriously, youre going to hell if you use your rear end

god: hahahaha

quote:

god [in workshop]: almost done with this hitler guy heh heh *tokes on a big j and passes it to an angel*

angel: i totally had this wicked twisted idea like...haha no you couldn't

god: loving tell me jfc dude

angel: what if you, like, made this guy really lovely so he hates and kills those chosen people you have a promise to protect? that'd be hilarious.

god: oh holy poo poo haha yeah

quote:

god: *helps a boxer punch harder*

god: heck ya!

god: *gazes lovingly down at a trash dump*

god: drat i'm good

god: *guides football into goal*

god: hoo boy you know it!

god: *creates windshield reflector that looks like sunglasses to prevent car from heating up in the sun*

god: i am the loving man

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

i love those so much

quote:

irl something shorted on the shuttle and laika overheated and died within a few hours of liftoff and for a brief while one could look up to the stars and see a light shooting across the sky that was actually a warm dog corpse slingshoting about the earth at thousands of miles per hour which was arguably humanity's greatest achievement so far

quote:

the dog was certainly scared as hell and probably making GBS threads + pissing during launch so it was a dog corpse covered in fecal matter

quote:

the dog that got cooked to death in space is memorialized with a statue in moscow, commemorating the millions of dollars and man hours used to murder a stray dog in an elaborate way

quote:

after laika the russians killed two more dogs in space by blowing them up with remote explosive charges, lol

quote:

i hope i'm alive the next time we as a species collectively dedicate that much effort and manpower and technological innovation towards executing an animal, maybe like dunking a sheep into a black hole or something

quote:

im going to gently caress a beautiful rare bird to death while in the void of space where no one can be prosecuted

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

Is this a real question? Because the ones from that crazy game about spiders that use naked torsos to lure victims has nicely sculpted breasts for days. Especially on the breast slug monsters made of breasts attended by unclothed nubile maidens--many of whom are killed while rearing the creature's young.

Sexual behavior pervades everything. What I worry about is that we'll spend so much time demonizing the product and the target audience, that we'll lose sight of the pain that this crass enterprise masks. Wouldn't that wargamer with a cabinet full of sex prefer a partner and kindred spirit with whom to play strip-40k (roll 2d6 and consult the table for the area of the body from which to remove clothing--if you roll doubles, roll twice--then roll a 'strip' dice against the toughness of the clothing--for each strip, roll any applicable 'layered clothing' saving throws to determine how much clothing is removed). Or even a menagerie of rotating partners in a 'tournament' style swinging environment? Wouldn't the simple addition of showers and lockerrooms to public gaming facilities do much to bring this dream closer to reality, and promote a society free from shame and depravity of a mind starved for affection?

And what of the companies who make these things? In a niche market with otiose marketability, isn't it nearly impossible to differentiate oneself? If Star Wars wasn't so appealing, wouldn't the urge to produce a TIE with a topless Howlrunner card, just to make ends meet and hopefully get your game into someone's hands be overwhelming? Recent policy changes at my job have put a term limit on my contract in June which I had not foreseen. While I should be able to find new work, nevertheless, the stress of this deadline is getting to me. Especially now that I'm trying to buy a house with my wife. If I could secure my future by putting breasts on something, wouldn't I?

I would.

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Sinking Ship posted:

quote:

Is this for the weirdly passionate defense of erotic tabletop miniatures, the idea that gaming stores should add showers to help people get their dicks wet, or the rules for strip-Warhammer?

Yes.

Antivehicular posted:

Isn't TheCosmicMuffet the same dude who had an elaborate rant in the old low carb thread about how all doctors are lovely hacks and you should shop around for one that's going to rubber-stamp your cheese-and-beef-tallow diet, along with many other nigh-word-salad low-carb posts?

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

Really? Are you loving serious?

The doctors are the ones who recommended us into an epidemic of obesity, diabetes, and heart attacks in the first loving place because they are a bunch of mechanic fuckheads who go to school to earn good money and sound impressive at loving dinner parties! They're just as prone to incompetence and bullshit as the loving ex cons who work at jiffy lube!

Do what he says so you don't die?! Are you serious? These stupid fucks kill more people than the industries that make our food supply so lovely.

Terrifying some 21 year old kid for the wrong reasons is completely hosed. Adjust your diet, fine. Get a second opinion at bear minimum. Do what your doctor says so you don't die? What kind of loving manipulative terror tactic bullshit is that? How about make a decision based on some real loving information with someone who doesn't want to send you out the revolving door as fast as possible so he can bill the insurance and be done with it?

You know what statins *DON'T DO A GODDAMNED loving THING FOR?!* Hypothyroid! That LDL number is far more loving likely to be related to a thyroid condition--potentially a serious one than loving heart disease in a 21 year old kid who isn't obese and doesn't eat poo poo for a diet--no matter what the loving monkeys from FYAD think.

Shop around for doctors! Always loving shop for doctors. Doctors are stupid assholes. And they get by because people are cowed by their mystical bullshit quality of being able to maintain a 3.0 GPA at some Guatemalan medical college for 3 semesters. Find one that makes sense.

Change your diet, take the statin if you think it makes sense, but for the love of gently caress, shop around for doctors.

Jesus goddamned christ. That could not be a worse piece of advice. loving Glenn beck school of medical knowledge

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

That's right guys! I know it's hard to believe but not only does this unnecessarily complicate something straight forward--everybody just gets better with higher level gear, and there's no choices to be made there, really--it *also* is so simple that it doesn't make you or me or anybody else clever for figuring it out! So it's a weird little complication that can lead to frustration and has 0 payoff!

Pretty cool huh?

And yes, I *am* way too busy thinking about alien sex. I barely have time to break from my author insertion fanfics about being a twilek on the hutt homeworld who has to navigate life as a sensual dancer slave while secretly hiding a furdentity--all of which gets turned on its head when she falls into a sarlacc which is secretly a darkside vampire, and becomes one, herself. And also a hemaphrodite. With elongating head tails---to answer your questions about MMO design and how to improve gameplay experiences.

But I *do* take that time out, because I know your questions are important. You guys obviously crave knowledge, and I want to be here for you. It's a super fruitful use of my time.

The internet is.

miscellaneous14 posted:

There are a lot of things I don't like about this game (bad endgame progression structure, wonky PvP mechanics, etc), but one of the few things that actually made me go "hey, that's pretty smart" was doing one primary stat for each class so there's as little of that "Death Knight stacking agility because I WANNA GO FAST" bullshit. You'll still get the dummies who need on the wrong stuff, but they're few and far between.

You would have to be trolling to say that it's difficult to understand. In fact, I'm pretty sure this guy is.

TheCosmicMuffet posted:

Ok... I guess design isn't straight forward so let me walk through why this is weird.

In pretty much any MMO from the last 15 years, the difference between lower and higher level... actually let me go way back.

RPGs since, forever, basically have a gear progression based on the idea that you have a sword (or whatever), and you have a character, and the two match up to varying degrees. The character's statline is supposed to affect what it can equip, and what the character can equip affects how much 'meaningful' stats it has.

The variations on the design include ones where the character's own stats are the biggest factor, and ones where they almost don't matter and the equipment is all that matters. Games have tried to do mix-and-match variations on this for a long time.

The basic challenges whenever you design this kind of interaction are
-How locked in to an experience is the player
-How much variation can a player expect, will bad luck put them behind the 8 ball, conversely will good luck make the rest of the game challengeless or boring
-How many synergies do you have to account for in keeping things balanced or predicting what kind of content will be appropriate for the character

There's no point in going over every MMO right now, right here, but the bottom line is, DnD (the paper one) has had a huge influence on the starting point of MMO design. DnD made every stat matter--kind of charting out the limits of what a character will ever be able to do, and made magic items that were super-simple augmentations to that character. There was literally a +1 sword, and a +2 sword, and the same for armor. While boring, that keeps things moving along.

Stats, in general, are a conceit from DnD that are about setting the stage for pros and cons. But stats are also a kind of personally-imposed difficulty modifier and ad-hoc class all to themselves. For example, even if you were going to play a wizard in DnD, if you were a super-strong Wizard, there was very little preventing you from putting on armor and shoot lightning. I mean, there was *some* stuff to prevent it, but basically there was a point in the middle, where you could minmax. So you would ostensibly be playing Gandalf, but you end up playing like Darth Vader (or whatever).

In pen and paper that poo poo flies because the people playing the game can fill in the holes and adjust on the fly. In a video game, if you have a way of doing that, then you have to build around it. Plus, anything this person is going to do has to be programmed in from day one, or they'll never see it happen. That means, really, for the player, a character isn't his statline *or* his equipment. Those are just statsticks on a statchassis that modify what really matters; an ability of some kind.

Some MMOs like UO or Champions let you mix and match powers. They usually suffer by having to look at all possible synergies. They're also really hard to teach the player, because every choice you offer gives a chance for confusion. So, instead, WoW introduced a hybrid between a class that always did the same thing, and player directed skill selection--the talent tree.

Since TOR is basically WoW as of 4 years, ago, and since you all know what talents are and how they work, let's just talk about that.

At the moment you pick your class, you already know 80% of the skills that will be on your bar and what they will do. 19% come from the talent tree. 1% come from your gear. Naked, the jedi consular has 99% the same abilities as they do with the top tier gear and the set bonuses that come from that. Furthermore, because of the way these games are designed, there are few, if any skills that change their place in an efficient rotation. WoW tried a few classes that had dual wield vs 2 handed itemization, but ultimately, they pushed mechanics (and automatic stat-calculations) as far as they could to make that decision meaningless, and, ultimately, what makes that distinction isn't the primary or secondary stats on gear (the Strength/dex/whatever)--it's big glaringly obvious called out secondary stats like speed or crit.

And why? Because at the end of the day, to do the most damage, there is a right and a wrong answer. The only real ambiguity is between the right answer for multiple targets and the right answer for 1 target. Since the designers don't want people feeling like they screwed up and can't compete, and since one of the big draws and ways to gate content is new gear, they need to make sure that each piece of armor is designed, and that there are sets of armor that are designed to definitively give you the appropriate competitive edge for your skills.

So then the question is, what makes doling out that gear interesting for players. Well people like numbers. The more numbers the better. Borderlands is basically a shooter where someone added numbers popping off poo poo because blood isn't interesting enough. Even Modern Warfare and battlefield have leveling schemes built in, and they pop up little numbers for kills, assists, whatever.

Things are going 'up'! It's exciting.

In terms of retaining players, you have to walk this fine line between random and guaranteed results. If everybody gets a weapon or piece of armor every time they go through a dungeon, then they only need to do it a couple times. By the same token, if it's truly random, they don't want to do it all. Games like Diablo 3 with heavy randomness can afford to give you a lot of crap because they bank on the fact that only one in a thousand drops will even be meaningful to you. Also, rarity self-selects for the addictive effect of increasingly sporadic rewards.

I'm not even being a dick here--everything people do is based on conditioning models where diminishing (but reasonably consistent) rewards keep our interest longer than consistent ones.

So it's like, ok, 5 people go into a space ship and kill 4 bosses. Each boss has to drop *something*. What you *know* is that you don't want everybody to get everything they need in one shot. That kind of uses up the potential of the place too quickly. So first off, the bosses will never drop something for everybody. If it's random, then it's exciting when you get what you want.

The trick is, what you really want as a designer is for there to be a *really* good chance that someone will only get 1 or no pieces of gear after going through a dungeon. That will make them want to do it again. But if you set up a situation where everybody can use anything that drops, *and* they're all in competition for it, then you can end up with 1 person getting all the stuff and the others feeling shorted--you can even give them the expectation that they might go through a dungeon and get nothing (true), but, because there is another person involved in 'stealing' it from them, they'll assume that they will never get anything, or at any rate never have a good chance at getting anything (not supposed to be true). Which makes sense. You want the rate of the drops to be finely tuned to keep people interested but not give it all away at once. If you let people's greed into the picture then you basically create a flat-rate decrease in the chance to acquire any item. You could do it with round-robin rolls or you could do it with an automated 'dkp' system, but those are obscure and hard to teach. Pure randomness is easy to implement, and all you really have to do is guarantee that some people won't want some pieces of gear so that the drops are still high enough that everybody gets excited but low enough that you hit that 0-1 sweet spot of taking something home from the dungeon.

So they take the stats idea, which is already nearly defunct--because, basically, your stats are predetermined for your class, and the gear is all stat sticks that don't really mean anything except +1, +2, whatever, except for certain specific stats, and some differences between talent specs--and turn it into a class-specific channel. Only this also gives them a cool way to slice the pie in more chunks--because this way, a good roll for one group might be a mediocre roll for a second group, and still be worthless to the majority of the rest. So it helps to insulate the player a little bit from the 0-drops outcome.

That's all fine. But at this point, the question becomes, 'what are we really telling the player, here' and 'how do we tell them that'.

Calling a stat cunning, and saying that it's the primary stat for classes A, B, and C, while not simply saying 'this gear is only for As, Bs, and Cs' leaves the door open for secondary stats and talent-altered abilities to have a best-in-slot that's different for A, B, and C--which means that, ultimately, at the end game, the 0-1 drops sweet spot can go away for the hardcore who really want to keep going on gear progression to get the best of the best. Their outlook goes from a drop every run to a drop every 10 runs or something like that. That's how you get endgame longevity.

Again, that's all fine, and Cunning is a more elegant way to represent that than just saying 'gently caress, ok, A, B, and C, best for A, bad for C' on *every* tooltip. That's a nightmare.

But lets reflect for a second where we're at. While that's the way things *were* in vanilla Wow era--an era which broke out of the EQ limitations in part because of affordances like 'HEY, BUDDY! EXCLAMATION POINT OVER THE QUEST GIVER' and 'Everybody has a chance to get some gear when they raid'--by the time we get to the part where there's class-specific gear, rather than gear that happens-to-be-best-for-most-classes that everybody fights over, we're also at the cusp of the tokenized loot era.

And TOR *has* tokenized loot. You play those top end dungeons--or gently caress, even just quest around, and you're virtually guaranteed X number of tokens per time spent, which eventually means you can go to a vendor and get the thing you wanted all along. That includes mods, good looking modable gear, vehicles, vanity stuff--whatever. This is one of the good ways to grab the gear that you think looks cool, and still make it basically best in slot for your character.

So here's one way you can represent the *exact* same mechanism that Cunning, Strength, and so forth purport to give you. You can make your dungeon mission-giver say 'you will be rewarded :v' and then you report back to them at the end with some tokens. The dungeon dude has a limited selection of gear *meant* for your class from which you can pick. Maybe there's tokens of valor or whatever and you only get to buy at the end...

Another way is the WoW event bags method of loot dispersal. There is a bag. The bag is rolled for, or else, everybody gets a bag. The bag then 'drops' some stuff when you open it. It can be bullshit, exactly what you want, or tokens toward something.

If you do things that way--with the tokenizing that's already in a different part of the game, then you can do away with the the layer of obfuscation around the terms.

The other problem with the terms is that, even if they were perfect--meaning you picked words that made 100% sense to everybody who read them (cunning can improve how much damage a laser does, will power improves how much damage a light saber does )--you still have a layer glossing over what *really* is just +1, +2, +3, and you *haven't* done anything to clarify the actual part that the player is going to be learning to do best in slot calculations against; the secondary 'surge' 'crit' 'speed' and so forth attributes. Those are the ones that really deserve some kind of guiding vocabulary. Instead you haven't solved that problem, and introduced a new one.

Here's an example of 'cunning' 'strength' and 'willpower' in a context where they make 100% sense, and do exactly as advertised. You play a game like Fallout, and you have different types of guns. Pistols take pistol rounds. Rifles take rifle clips. Shotguns take shells. In that case, you're doing the same thing--fragmenting the 'drop' of ammo into categories to essentially lower the drop rate without lowering the perceived reward rate. But the difference is, many of us *know* that shotguns don't shoot rockets. So we get, immediately that your friend with the shotgun will need to shells, and you, with the sniper rifle, will need the sniper-rifle rounds. That is a very 1-to-1 relationship.

But even that could be hosed up, right? I mean, how lovely would it be if you run over the shotgun ammo while running around, and your friend is the one who needed it. Do you make an interface to drop ammo? Well, if you're TOR, yeah, kind of. But it's based on the person who made the mistake volunteering--and they need to understand/not be a dick. That's a bad bet to make in an MMO...

As an interesting example, the way modern shooters handle this is 3 ways; you can't pick up ammo for a gun you don't have, or, you might have a cap on every ammo type, so that the ammo you're not using you cap out on, and then you can't pick up more--meanwhile your buddy, who's using his ammo all the time will have room for it, and be able to pick it up, and finally, there's the 'omniammo' drop conceit (like mass effect 3 or left for dead) where, if there's ammo for something available, then ammo for everything is available, basically. Sometimes they keep some special things isolated (like grenades) into a separate pool, but these 3 approaches are specifically there to avoid the problem with someone picking up something not meant for them.

And that's really it. Why have something in the game that generates irritation for some people without giving a payoff to the other. Potentially irritating two people if they don't get it.

It's not *difficulty* or challenge. This is simple poo poo. If someone had it explained to them, no matter how stupid, they get it.

It's like, if you make a car, and there's a button that honks the horn. It's pretty sensitive, and it's right next to a button that turns on the radio. Maybe sometimes when steering you honk the horn by accident, or maybe your finger slips and you do it while trying to turn on the radio. What's the point? It's not hard for someone to understand that you shouldn't honk the horn--and they can figure it out kind of fast, but you made a stupid bullshit steering wheel. It's not that you can be all indignant like 'gently caress, then let's just make all cars buses so nobody has to ever accidentally do anything wrong in a car!'. It's more like 'why is your car loving stupid. Make the horn far enough away from other buttons so that I don't honk it accidentally'.

And then, imagine there's like these guys on the internet and they're like 'gently caress, like, all I had to do was honk that horn like *one* time and I knew that I didn't want to honk the horn--what do youw ant, somebody to drive for you?!'.

Nope. I don't want somebody to drive for me. I want to have fursex in the backseat with a twelve dicked wookie.

Because this is a bioware mmo. Get weird with the creatures or gtfo.

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

VelociBacon posted:

I'm running Valley of the Family Meeting today. Hoping to get a set piece Order for Palliation but we've been running this raid for a week now with no progress so we'll probably just lower the difficulty and farm DNR materials.

1stGear posted:

Ugh, that raid is such garbage. Half the time the MPOA boss just spams it's Refusal To Accept Mortality ability and your group insta-wipes.

Demora posted:

You gotta load up on Charisma or at least have a shitload of Stamina potions.



... Usually I drink the Stamina potions after the raid. Alone. In the dark. While watching bad tv.

Malachite_Dragon posted:

I have no words.

Nastyman posted:

Good Christ in heaven there is no way I'm reading all of that, but it started out sperging about dnd and ended with a twelve dicked wookie so that's seems about par for the course.

Malachite_Dragon posted:

I have no words.

many johnnys posted:

Superman, bloodied on the ground: Help... Bort...

Batman: why did you say that name? My son is also named bort

atomicthumbs posted:

A startup is a tech company that deals with apps in some manner.

Tayter Swift posted:

oh okay like these guys then

maniacdevnull posted:

They sure are disrupting the employer/employee medical relationship

Tayter Swift posted:

WONTFIX: CANNOT REPRODUCE

apropos to nothing posted:

jyrque posted:

Benny D posted:

He's at the chest. He'll use the iframes

Gonzo McFee posted:

It turns out that the English are 75% pure shite mate.

baka kaba posted:

Oh sweet, did they say what's responsible for the drop?

mdm posted:

everyone has an imaginary gender not sure where that if comes from

Maoist Pussy posted:

Gender meaning sex.

mdm posted:

which ones are the imaginary sexes?

RideTheSpiral posted:

the ones you are having

Dynamite Dog posted:

They also mentioned during the Larry Sanders deal that the first three infractions just get you a private conversation. If you hear of someone getting busted for it that has to be #4 at least.

Faxanadu posted:

Infractions 1 and 2 just get you Adam silver daps and a "blaze up, playa, lmao"

Toph Bei Fong posted:

quote:

"In a moment of pure pottery, Phasma makes Finn lower the shields."

Pure pottery, indeed...

Empress Theonora posted:

It's like pottery, it rimes.

theflyingexecutive posted:

what's the tokin ratio in your field trig?

Trig Discipline posted:

i had no idea what that was until just now

theflyingexecutive posted:

nah, like ratio of people who toke

what are you talking about?

Trig Discipline posted:

lol it's an actual linguistics thing apparently (but it's token ratio)

ratio of unique words to total words in a text or speech

theflyingexecutive posted:

lol I was making up a term to simulate how many terms are made up in your field and unknowingly ended up using a term that describes making up terms