Lemme guess, you're one of the LOLPVPers who was all butt-hurt after i13 rolled with the PVP changes.
I acknowledge, the PVP in City Of.. is lacking. It's always been a bolted-on system, an afterthought.
There are several reasons why the majority of the City Of.. players don't PVP. And in no particular order.
1: The game system rarely functions the same way the PVE side does. Meaning you have to relearn the game from scratch.
2: Even with the "rebalancing", there's still massive concentration on "Flavor of the Month" builds. It's very difficult to expect a toon sporting SO or common IOs to enter a zone with a fully tweaked IO build and even DREAM about staying competitive. And "learning" by letting said person kill the crap out of you endlessly is about as much fun as a root canal with a hand axe.
3: The infantile nature of a section of the PVP crowd. This, more than ANYTHING drives people away. Some are willing to put up with the seemingly endless, unbalanced death ratios to try and learn. But when you have some ass-clown running off at the mouth, generally being rude, and the like... Or worse, if you're in there for the PVE objectives (badges, Shivans, Warburg nukes, etc), and the aforementioned ass-clown is attacking you. This leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, as the association, rightly or otherwise, isn't to "one rude player", it's "one rude PVPer".
The last issue (i14) released the Mission Architect.
The game itself already had over a thousand mission arcs, plus randomly generated missions from certain contacts as well as radio missions.
Now, with the MA, you have access to effectively unlimited content. In the first month alone, they surpassed 100,000 (one hundred thousand) mission arcs generated by the player base.
Granted, some of these were exploits and farms, which have since been nerfed. But the point still stands. If you want lots of content. It's there.
The only problem with your assertion that the franchise shouldn't be rebooted, only "added to" is that a MAJOR problem of the franchise becoming moribund was the EXCESSIVE amount of canon limiting the ability to tell a simple story.
I *might* be one of those "hard to please" Trekkies who just can't be happy
After reading your post, I can vouch for this.
I didn't care much for TOS
Translation, you liked Berman's run. Maybe not all of it, but there it is.
but it had a freakin' sword fighting scene
Yet Hikaru Sulu HAS cannonical training in fencing. See The Naked Time. Heck, the Wikipedia page even has a friggin screenshot of the salient point!
Needless to say I absolutely hated the movie
Obviously. Otherwise why the wall of text?
If you're looking for pure eye candy with absolutely no substance what-so-ever then the movie might be "OK"
Not sure you were watching the same film as me. Of course, I didn't have the benefit of an enormous shoulder chip.
Maybe I would have liked it if I were stoned.
Maybe you'd have liked it if you were objective.
However, my main beef with the movie was that the plot was extremely unoriginal. The plot was almost exactly the same as the Voyager episode "Year of Hell".
Actually everything that involves ships traveling through time isn't based on "Year of Hell". Even "Year of Hell" has preceeding episodes that used similar plot devices. Yesterday's Enterprise anyone? Or City on the Edge of Forever? Maybe we should just fly around the sun and save some whales? Gary 7?
The romance between Spock and Uhura was completely cliche and unnecessary.
More unnecessary than the Kirk girl-of-the week? Vash? Christine Chapel? Again, alternate universe. Different circumstances giving rise to a different personality in the same person.
Kirk was made into a "rebel without a cause, who finds his cause" Hollywood cliche.
If you're going to find fault because it uses old formulas, you may as well stop watching EVERYTHING. Since EVERYTHING is derivative of the basic "hero's journey" formula. Translation:It's petty little bitch at best
The Romulans now look different, and not for the better.
Because all Romulans are the lean, lithe, patrician senator body-type right? Nobody does any real labor in these societies. They just all stand around talking and stuff auto-magically happens.
They were extremely unlikable
they're supposed to be. Hello? VILLAIN?
provided nothing in the way of depth
Because of the Federation's failure, this guy winds up going back in time to make sure the Federation ceases to exist so his future doppleganger and wife can exist in peace. No! No depth there!
Checkov bordered on disgraceful. He was made into pure comic relief (which didn't even work on that level).
So you wanted all of the original casts' history in a 2 hour movie? How Chekov bootlegged Vodka as a kid in Stalingrad? What? The PRIMARY dynamic in the series has always been Spock and Kirk. Second are the McCoy/Kirk and McCoy/Spock interactions. After that, the rest of the "pantheon".
Was that an attempt to pay tribute to Picard or just an excuse to do a pointless and extremely cheesy sword fighting scene
Again, see the link above to The Naked Time. Sulu's swordfighting ability is CANON!
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon.
No. No it didn't. This has been established as a parallel timeline. Your precious canon is still there.
As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe.
New universe? New adventures?
You go into a prequel
You obviously have problems with reading comprehension. This was NOT a prequel. It was a REBOOT.
Everyone is saying "they realized that it's hard to
Seriously. If Apple wants to engage in practices that result in a chilling effect on your target market why the fuck are you going to support them? Because it's [LOVE]Apple{/LOVE]? Puh-leeze! Because it enables you to reach a large market of consumers? Oh wait, they're denying those customers access to your products!
I'm sure Apple is great and wonderful and really really nice. I'm sure their app platform is the greatest thing since sliced stupid-people. But if they're going to actively interfere with your ability to reach customers FUCK THEM!
And yes, it's Apple's store. They can sell or not sell whatever they feel like. However, it's not JUST Apple's store. It's the sole "legitimate" gateway into the devices you're writing apps for. That's part of the problem.
To use a baseball-related metaphor. You're a beer-hawker at a ballgame. Heaven help you if you try to sell booze in OTHER than the approved manner or brand.
Public school is also about a LOT more than knowledge. It;s about learning how to behave in groups, self dicipline, physical activity, team and competitive spirit.
Okay. Films like FMJ, that (rightfully or not) demonize military culture, are okay. But a video game depicting a limited facet of the military experience is horrible evil propaganda?
I've run into people trying to run database apps over wireless networks who've been losing data, corrupting their databases, etc because the connection was bottoming out on them. Trying to clean up the damage done in this fashion is time consuming, tedious, and usually frustrating. As is dealing with the intellectually stunted individuals (who've spent "tens and hundreds" of dollars" on their *COUGH* "enterprise class" network) trying to claim that it's the fault of the software for not being intelligent enough to compensate for their craptacular setup.
This guy is a moron who's merely attempting to shill his crap.
As others have already said.
Wireless fails in a comparison of throughput. Wireless fails in a comparison of security. Wireless fails in a comparison of susceptibility to interference.
If you're just sending e-mail and browsing por^H^H^the web, wireless is fine.
If you're trying to maintain a sustained connection for things like database traffic, or a VPN connection, and being kicked in the balls by someone with electrified spiked boots is preferable.
They did. They asked their two major telecom providers. They were declined. Option Number Three anyone?
Also, while they're doing it for themselves now, if, in the future, it becomes something they don't want to, or cannot handle, they can put out calls for competitive bids to run the network. The crucial factor is that the network is now in place.
Also, socialism implies that everyone has to use this, or in some way subsidize it. That is NOT what happened in this case. The city merely added a vigorous third competitor into their underserved broadband market.
Okay, I went and hit Slamtrak up for pricing and transit time info.
Chicago to Sacramento.
California Zephyr, no changeovers. Actually the cheapest fare.
Chicago to Sacramento: $145
Sacramento to Chicago: $145
Total transit time: 102 hours (4 DAYS, 6 hours).
Approximate distance (via Google Maps): 2045 miles
Approximate Speed: 20mph
Reason? LAYOVERS (approximately 30 of them between Chicago and Sacramento) to pick up more passengers. Trains, save in a VERY few cases, are NOT non-stop.
Also, as the rail enters into urban areas, it has to slow from max speed as well. If you're lucky, the train will spend, at most, 20% of it's trip time at maximum speed.
Raising the average speed of the train will reduce the travel time, but it's not as simple as factoring miles/max speed.
Now let's hit Southwest (Fly the Turbulent Skies!)
Chicago to Sacramento: $231
Sacramento to Chicago: $99
Total transit time: 12 hours
As the old saw goes, it's cheaper (by about $100) only if your time is worthless to you.
Note: Had to double-check because the first time the pricing for Amtrak was kind of out of whack. So, like you should with an airline, you check well ahead of when you need the ticket and the price comes down.
For last-minute fares, yes, Amtrak is cheaper. However, you have to still be comfortable with a 2.25 day transit each way.
I know of one case where a certain artist came over from Europe and naturally hopped on a train from the east coast to the west. On his third day into the trip he realized exactly how big this country actually is and what kind of mistake he'd made taking the train.
There's much less grief-voting incentive, unless the playerbase includes a large number of pedophiles specifically looking to get furry porn voted down to a PG rating and expose some kids, but it wouldn't be hard to lock content's rating once it has received a certain number of trusted votes.
Actually no. You have people maliciously griefing others by submitting low ratings and submitting unmerited complaints about arcs in the hopes of getting them pulled. It has nothing to do with whether the content is appropriate or not.
I don't quite understand why this guy seems set on only having a simple 'flag as inappropriate' button when there are so many more options available.
There are already over 50,000 (yes fifty thousand) player published MA arcs. That amount of content dwarfs the number of regular (NCSoft-designed) mission arcs in the rest of the game.
While the actual on-disk size of the content is small (it was estimated that if EVERYONE registered in the game published a full three 5-mission arcs that the total disk space used would be approximately 9GB), the amount of database traffic for elaborate ratings systems could bog down the system.
Slashdot Mirror
Lemme guess, you're one of the LOLPVPers who was all butt-hurt after i13 rolled with the PVP changes.
I acknowledge, the PVP in City Of.. is lacking. It's always been a bolted-on system, an afterthought.
There are several reasons why the majority of the City Of.. players don't PVP. And in no particular order.
1: The game system rarely functions the same way the PVE side does. Meaning you have to relearn the game from scratch.
2: Even with the "rebalancing", there's still massive concentration on "Flavor of the Month" builds. It's very difficult to expect a toon sporting SO or common IOs to enter a zone with a fully tweaked IO build and even DREAM about staying competitive. And "learning" by letting said person kill the crap out of you endlessly is about as much fun as a root canal with a hand axe.
3: The infantile nature of a section of the PVP crowd. This, more than ANYTHING drives people away. Some are willing to put up with the seemingly endless, unbalanced death ratios to try and learn. But when you have some ass-clown running off at the mouth, generally being rude, and the like... Or worse, if you're in there for the PVE objectives (badges, Shivans, Warburg nukes, etc), and the aforementioned ass-clown is attacking you. This leaves a bad taste in people's mouths, as the association, rightly or otherwise, isn't to "one rude player", it's "one rude PVPer".
I could go on, but I gotta bail for work. Later.
Okay, I've had a small bit of dialog with TPTB at Paragon Studios.
Their problem isn't farming or PL per se. They wish you wouldn't, but they're not going to stop you or delete your toons.
Their problem is utilizing acknowledged exploits that they're in the process of fixing to do so in a stupidly rapid manner.
Quite literally, there were people blowing through from 1-50 in 6 HOURS. The fact that the mission format was a farm was merely incidental.
The last issue (i14) released the Mission Architect.
The game itself already had over a thousand mission arcs, plus randomly generated missions from certain contacts as well as radio missions.
Now, with the MA, you have access to effectively unlimited content. In the first month alone, they surpassed 100,000 (one hundred thousand) mission arcs generated by the player base.
Granted, some of these were exploits and farms, which have since been nerfed. But the point still stands. If you want lots of content. It's there.
The only problem with your assertion that the franchise shouldn't be rebooted, only "added to" is that a MAJOR problem of the franchise becoming moribund was the EXCESSIVE amount of canon limiting the ability to tell a simple story.
I *might* be one of those "hard to please" Trekkies who just can't be happy
After reading your post, I can vouch for this.
I didn't care much for TOS
Translation, you liked Berman's run. Maybe not all of it, but there it is.
but it had a freakin' sword fighting scene
Yet Hikaru Sulu HAS cannonical training in fencing. See The Naked Time. Heck, the Wikipedia page even has a friggin screenshot of the salient point!
Needless to say I absolutely hated the movie
Obviously. Otherwise why the wall of text?
If you're looking for pure eye candy with absolutely no substance what-so-ever then the movie might be "OK"
Not sure you were watching the same film as me. Of course, I didn't have the benefit of an enormous shoulder chip.
Maybe I would have liked it if I were stoned.
Maybe you'd have liked it if you were objective.
However, my main beef with the movie was that the plot was extremely unoriginal. The plot was almost exactly the same as the Voyager episode "Year of Hell".
Actually everything that involves ships traveling through time isn't based on "Year of Hell". Even "Year of Hell" has preceeding episodes that used similar plot devices. Yesterday's Enterprise anyone? Or City on the Edge of Forever? Maybe we should just fly around the sun and save some whales? Gary 7?
The romance between Spock and Uhura was completely cliche and unnecessary.
More unnecessary than the Kirk girl-of-the week? Vash? Christine Chapel? Again, alternate universe. Different circumstances giving rise to a different personality in the same person.
Kirk was made into a "rebel without a cause, who finds his cause" Hollywood cliche.
If you're going to find fault because it uses old formulas, you may as well stop watching EVERYTHING. Since EVERYTHING is derivative of the basic "hero's journey" formula. Translation: It's petty little bitch at best
The Romulans now look different, and not for the better.
Because all Romulans are the lean, lithe, patrician senator body-type right? Nobody does any real labor in these societies. They just all stand around talking and stuff auto-magically happens.
They were extremely unlikable
they're supposed to be. Hello? VILLAIN?
provided nothing in the way of depth
Because of the Federation's failure, this guy winds up going back in time to make sure the Federation ceases to exist so his future doppleganger and wife can exist in peace. No! No depth there!
Checkov bordered on disgraceful. He was made into pure comic relief (which didn't even work on that level).
So you wanted all of the original casts' history in a 2 hour movie? How Chekov bootlegged Vodka as a kid in Stalingrad? What? The PRIMARY dynamic in the series has always been Spock and Kirk. Second are the McCoy/Kirk and McCoy/Spock interactions. After that, the rest of the "pantheon".
Was that an attempt to pay tribute to Picard or just an excuse to do a pointless and extremely cheesy sword fighting scene
Again, see the link above to The Naked Time. Sulu's swordfighting ability is CANON!
The end of the movie did not only destroy canon.
No. No it didn't. This has been established as a parallel timeline. Your precious canon is still there.
As a TNG and DS9 fan I felt betrayed by Star Trek paying absolutely no regard to future events that will unfold in the Star Trek universe.
New universe? New adventures?
You go into a prequel
You obviously have problems with reading comprehension. This was NOT a prequel. It was a REBOOT.
Everyone is saying "they realized that it's hard to
Seriously. If Apple wants to engage in practices that result in a chilling effect on your target market why the fuck are you going to support them?
Because it's [LOVE]Apple{/LOVE]? Puh-leeze!
Because it enables you to reach a large market of consumers? Oh wait, they're denying those customers access to your products!
I'm sure Apple is great and wonderful and really really nice. I'm sure their app platform is the greatest thing since sliced stupid-people. But if they're going to actively interfere with your ability to reach customers FUCK THEM!
And yes, it's Apple's store. They can sell or not sell whatever they feel like.
However, it's not JUST Apple's store. It's the sole "legitimate" gateway into the devices you're writing apps for. That's part of the problem.
To use a baseball-related metaphor. You're a beer-hawker at a ballgame. Heaven help you if you try to sell booze in OTHER than the approved manner or brand.
Not sure who said it, but I'll paraphrase:
"War is large periods of acute boredom punctuated with brief periods of stark terror."
In case you missed it. Nobody is coerced into anything.
The years of "Go to war or go to jail", and the draft are over.
That's what "100% volunteer force" means.
Maybe you mean "mislead". Coercion implies they were forced.
BZZT!
Public school is also about a LOT more than knowledge. It;s about learning how to behave in groups, self dicipline, physical activity, team and competitive spirit.
As I said, it's kiddie jail.
Okay. Films like FMJ, that (rightfully or not) demonize military culture, are okay. But a video game depicting a limited facet of the military experience is horrible evil propaganda?
Public schooling today is NOT about educating the little ankle-biters anymore.
It's day care / kiddie-jail with the barest attempt at a facade of education.
And god forbid anyone actually have a hunger to learn!
"Well, let's just wait for everyone else to finish..."
What remains unsaid is "Wait for them to finish TWELFTH GRADE."
Public education in this country is sick. Like terminal cancer + full-blown, end-stage AIDS + hemophilia + leprosy sick.
On one hand, you have the reporter's (note I do not refer to them as journalists) bias.
On the other hand, you could have them deep-sixed by someone else's biases.
In a case like this, there just isn't a "lesser" of two evils.
Is there an option to turn that stupid crap off and go back to the legacy interface?
If not? Not interested.
This says it all.
I've run into people trying to run database apps over wireless networks who've been losing data, corrupting their databases, etc because the connection was bottoming out on them.
Trying to clean up the damage done in this fashion is time consuming, tedious, and usually frustrating. As is dealing with the intellectually stunted individuals (who've spent "tens and hundreds" of dollars" on their *COUGH* "enterprise class" network) trying to claim that it's the fault of the software for not being intelligent enough to compensate for their craptacular setup.
This guy is a moron who's merely attempting to shill his crap.
As others have already said.
Wireless fails in a comparison of throughput.
Wireless fails in a comparison of security.
Wireless fails in a comparison of susceptibility to interference.
If you're just sending e-mail and browsing por^H^H^the web, wireless is fine.
If you're trying to maintain a sustained connection for things like database traffic, or a VPN connection, and being kicked in the balls by someone with electrified spiked boots is preferable.
So far, Mission Architect has been an absolute madhouse (in a good sense).
By developer accounts, there are approximately 3800 developer-created mission arcs in the game since its inception.
In the month or so that issue 14 (Mission Architect) has been out, there have been over ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND player-generated arcs created thus far.
They did. They asked their two major telecom providers. They were declined. Option Number Three anyone?
Also, while they're doing it for themselves now, if, in the future, it becomes something they don't want to, or cannot handle, they can put out calls for competitive bids to run the network. The crucial factor is that the network is now in place.
Also, socialism implies that everyone has to use this, or in some way subsidize it. That is NOT what happened in this case. The city merely added a vigorous third competitor into their underserved broadband market.
You should replace your tired old CAT5 with brand new, all-gold Monster-CAT6+++++++!
Only $1000 a foot, starting in 10 foot increments!
Okay, I went and hit Slamtrak up for pricing and transit time info.
Chicago to Sacramento.
California Zephyr, no changeovers. Actually the cheapest fare.
Chicago to Sacramento: $145
Sacramento to Chicago: $145
Total transit time: 102 hours (4 DAYS, 6 hours).
Approximate distance (via Google Maps): 2045 miles
Approximate Speed: 20mph
Reason? LAYOVERS (approximately 30 of them between Chicago and Sacramento) to pick up more passengers. Trains, save in a VERY few cases, are NOT non-stop.
Also, as the rail enters into urban areas, it has to slow from max speed as well. If you're lucky, the train will spend, at most, 20% of it's trip time at maximum speed.
Raising the average speed of the train will reduce the travel time, but it's not as simple as factoring miles/max speed.
Now let's hit Southwest (Fly the Turbulent Skies!)
Chicago to Sacramento: $231
Sacramento to Chicago: $99
Total transit time: 12 hours
As the old saw goes, it's cheaper (by about $100) only if your time is worthless to you.
Note: Had to double-check because the first time the pricing for Amtrak was kind of out of whack. So, like you should with an airline, you check well ahead of when you need the ticket and the price comes down.
For last-minute fares, yes, Amtrak is cheaper. However, you have to still be comfortable with a 2.25 day transit each way.
I know of one case where a certain artist came over from Europe and naturally hopped on a train from the east coast to the west. On his third day into the trip he realized exactly how big this country actually is and what kind of mistake he'd made taking the train.
Europe's population is FAR more evenly distributed than the US, where the majority of the population is clustered around large urban centers (cities).
In large urban areas, high speed rail is essentially meaningless. Commuter rail is more important and is going to go nowhere near 150 mph.
In the NE United States it MIGHT make a difference, as the population there is fairly tightly packed in the BosWash area.
In the Western US, it's simply faster and more economical (barring stupidly huge subsidies) to take a plane.
There's much less grief-voting incentive, unless the playerbase includes a large number of pedophiles specifically looking to get furry porn voted down to a PG rating and expose some kids, but it wouldn't be hard to lock content's rating once it has received a certain number of trusted votes.
Actually no. You have people maliciously griefing others by submitting low ratings and submitting unmerited complaints about arcs in the hopes of getting them pulled. It has nothing to do with whether the content is appropriate or not.
I don't quite understand why this guy seems set on only having a simple 'flag as inappropriate' button when there are so many more options available.
There are already over 50,000 (yes fifty thousand) player published MA arcs. That amount of content dwarfs the number of regular (NCSoft-designed) mission arcs in the rest of the game.
While the actual on-disk size of the content is small (it was estimated that if EVERYONE registered in the game published a full three 5-mission arcs that the total disk space used would be approximately 9GB), the amount of database traffic for elaborate ratings systems could bog down the system.
So when you buy that $7.00 pack of cigs, you know that $6.00 of it is taxes right?
So, we can look forward to paying $350 for a boxed title that goes for $50 now?
Fuck that noise.
Wrong tense.
Of COURSE it was going to. The economics are just better (from the spammer's POV).
He's rolling an awful lot of 20's lately...