Certain scientists write off peacock tails as "sexual selection". It's a little hard to argue that, since tail display is such an enormous part of the peacock mating ritual. (However, if you have studies that show that peacocks with smaller tails are more likely to get the peahens' favors, then go on ahead.)
Actually, that's my problem: that only sees half the problem. There are actually _two_ distinct mutations at work here:
A) the mutation that causes males to have big tails.
B) the mutation that causes females to like males with big tails.
Yes, sexual selection explains mutation A perfectly, by taking B for granted. It's hard to argue why A happened when you see their mating rituals. I'm not arguing that.
_My_ problem however is: why did mutation _B_ happen and get selected by natural selection? And _if_ it causes a harmful trait, why didn't natural selection eliminate it yet?
Other scientists suggest some of the very things you name. (Although I don't think I've seen mimicry of aposematism before for peacocks.) They still believe in evolution, and still use evolutionary theory to support those processes.
I tend to think of them as "the sane ones.";) Unfortunately, "sexual selection" is still widely taught as a fact, and the peacock is still the poster child for it.
volutionary theory says that there tend to be some fairly random changes floating around in the gene pool, and if the traits those mutations produce help or hinder the organism to live long enough to reproduce and bear young that will also live long enough to reproduce, those traits will become more prominent in the gene pool, and may become enhanced over generations. However, if a trait isn't very important one way or another, it may stick around even if it doesn't particularly help or hinder the organism.
To further mix things up, sometimes traits that aren't very important to survival are associated with traits that are. For example, if colorful peacock tails were associated with some other trait that helped the peacock live longer or reproduce better, as long as the color trait didn't hinder the peacock from surviving or reproducing (or just surviving long enough to reproduce), that trait would be likely to stick around in the peacock gene pool, even though it had no particular purpose.
This still doesn't make the process of evolution any more or less falsifiable. The point of evolutionary theory is not to show you how to predict how an organism will evolve to respond to a threat in its environment; since the organism doesn't acquire inheritable traits by striving towards them (that would be Lamarckism), any changes to the species will be because of random changes to the genetics of specific organisms that may be selected for or against.
I have nothing against all that, and in fact I believe all that to be a fact. We already agree upon that part. In fact I base my rationale on all that.
I just don't believe that sexual selection can produce evolution in a _harmful_ direction. Precisely because then it would be selected against. But if it's neutral or associated with something useful, then I have no objection whatsoever.
But if that's the case, then I'd say that you don't actually need "sexual selection" much. It's at best just a detail, not a distinct kind of selection. E.g., if the long tails only happened to be associated with a more useful trait (e.g., because as usual one gene controls 3-4 different things), then what actually happened is normal natural selection of that more useful trait.
2. I didn't realize that a name was that important, as long as you understand what I'm talking about.
3. Appeal to motives is, last I've heard, a fallacy. Stick to addressing what I wrote, rather than calling me an ID adherent. The latter neither proves nor disproves my point, especially since I made none of the ID arguments.
4. Actually, I called that guy a "cretin" because he accuses me of no less than 4 strawmen contrary to what I wrote... to accuse me of using strawmen. I'm sorry, I don't have much patience for that kind of troll. I'm open to critiques of what I've actually written, but taking the exact damned opposite of what I wrote to have something to fight, is just freaking stupid.
E.g., I write that something might have been an advantage in the past, but be a disadvantage nowadays... and he accuses me of arguing that "if you're fit once, you're fit forever." How the fuck _does_ one manage to read the former as the latter, unless he has some major comprehension problems?
So, yes, I call him a cretin. Whether he's pro-evolution or pro-ID is irrelevant there. That's not the reason. The idiotic answer with no less than 4 strawmen is the reason. It's an entirely orthogonal issue.
What do you think is wrong with the more likely scenario that the tail is neutral to survival, while at the same time being preferred by females thus giving the male a reproductive advantage
Something neutral to survival, pretty much doesn't need any reason to evolve. It can even appear by random mutation and freak statistical flukes in survival. See why the Dodo lost the fight-or-flight circuit, for example, although its distant ancestors must have had it to survive before they got there.
At any rate, I have no problem whatsoever with females getting a random "mmm, I love big tails" gene randomly, _if_ that's not a disadvantage.
But at any rate, that's really the mutation I'm talking about. Not why did males start having long tails to impress the females, but how did the females get a gene to prefer big tails in the first place. The former is just effect, the latter though is a mutation that should have disappeared if it caused a pure handicap. At any rate "sexual selection" explains the former by just taking the latter for granted. It doesn't explain why the latter appeared in the first place.
But, as you noted, if it's neutral, then it doesn't matter. And if the effect it causes is beneficial, then it's just normal selection at work. In both cases sex was just a prop there, and isn't really needed as a special case of selection.
Bit of a cop out. It doesn't explain why that gene is there and does what it does.
That was the whole topic: how did it get there if it handicaps the species?
Has that happened? Apparently not.
Bingo. That's the whole point: if it was a handicap for the species, it should have happened. That's the basic prediction of natural selection.
Listen, if you're such a genius why don't you quit your hysterical trolling and disprove sexual selection. Then send me a postcard from Stockholm.
Do you need the "hysterical trolling" insult to make your point? Ok, probably since you offered no other evidence other than some hot air about "Wrong, at least to those of us who understand what fitness means in an evolutionary context." Plus some comprehension problems like shown above.
So here's the deal: why don't _you_ quit trolling and actually contribute more than ego-masturbation?
e females don't have big tails. If you mean the complementary trait - that females prefer males with big tails, the answer is simple - so that their sons will have big tails, all the better to pass on mom's genes with.
A) Yes, I mean the complementary trait.
B) You're ascribing human behaviour to a nearly-brain-dead bird. They don't do complex plans to ensure that their kids will look good to brides. They just have a gene which says "pick the biggest tail" here and now.
C) See random mutations again.
Eventually some females would be born without that gene broken, so they go and mate with the male with the smallest tail. If a smaller tail were an advantage, then their kids live longer and get more chances to reproduce. With each other if nobody else wants them. Repeat a few generations, and that trait will be on its way to extinction.
A species having a handicap is just that: being less fit for its environment, and on the losing side of natural selection. And "because females prefer handicapped males" is just a handicap in itself. We're back to square one: that species evolved a handicap. Why? Wasn't the whole idea that the less handicapped survive?
And the saving grace I propose is: well, that tail is probably not a handicap at all, or wasn't when the species evolved. Let's start looking at what other disadvantages it might have, before reaching for the non-falsifiable catch-all "sexual selection" clause.
Well my point is that (A) yes, it evolved simply because it's an advantage, but (B) the standard darwinistic view is basically that it's a disadvantage, and there just to impress the females. And I wrote all that long rant about A, just because I find B an illogical kludge.
I'm _not_ against darwinism or natural selection. I'm just against the "sexual selection" cludge. That's all. Remove that kludge, and I'm perfectly content with Darwinism.
Genetic mutations are more-or-less random, being as they are based on unpredictable matings.
Well, gee, and here I had already mentioned random genetic mutations in the message you answer to.
Natural selection says in any given generation, organisms that are better adapted for the environment they're in at the time are more likely to survive and procreate than organisms that aren't. Over multiple generations, if the environment is stable, those advantageous genetics stay in place.
Bingo. Hence my having a problem with a clause that essentially says "but sometimes it evolves to have a disadvantage. For sex reason, see." At any rate, I never said the contrary of what you wrote above, so I'm not sure what's your point.
But you'd have already noticed that if you had actually read what I wrote, instead of jumping to the canned answers.
Most of the rest of your complaints are based around the strawman arguments that "natural selection says once you're the best, you're always the best"
For someone accusing me of using strawmen, you sure rush to do your own. I never said that.
"natural selection says some traits are always better in all circumstances".
Nor that.
Both are utter bollocks.
Well, gee, since both are your own retarded strawmen, why don't you use better ones if you know they're utter bollocks?
Learn to read, cretin. Address what was actually written there, or take a fucking hike and stop pollutting the thread with fighting your own delusions.
Actually, it _still_ isn't testable, since it has idiocies like "sexual selection" tacked on to it as a catch-all for everything it couldn't actually explain. (Why did the peacock evolve such a big and handicapping tail? Hur-hur-hur, to impress women, Beavis.)
The problem is that no matter how you slice it, it proposes that an organism can also evolve towards _less_ fit, i.e., that sometimes natural selection works against the logical direction or in some random direction. You can't falsify something with such a catch-all clause. It predicts that something will get more fit for the environment... except in the unpredictable cases where it actually evolves to be less fit.
It's like saying that gravity makes bodies attract each other... except when they repulse each other, or make each other move in a random direction. That's not falsifiable, i.e., plain old not science.
Why do I call it idiotic?
A) Because it handwaves away half the problem. Ok, so male peacocks evolved so to impress the females. But why did females evolve that trait then? Going strictly natural selection, if that tail were indeed a disadvantage, some females would be randomly born with a preferrence for smaller tails and mate with males with smaller tails, their children would have less of a disadvantage, repeat. So natural selection would guide things towards removing that handicap anyway.
Just because sex is involved in selecting that, it doesn't mean it is the only factor or evolutionary pressure. If it were a disadvantage for males, then natural selection among _females_ would phase it out.
B) Because it doesn't even try to see if there's another advantage to that. It's a catch-all "I don't know why it's like that, so it must be about sex." And I mean other disadvantages like:
- disruptive camouflage. Just because for the advanced image recognition circuitry of a primate something stands out like a sore thumb, it doesn't mean it's like that for other species too. E.g., an orange tabby tomcat is actually very well camouflaged for its prey, because its many lines prevent a mouse's simple circuitry from figuring out the shape of the cat. E.g., the lines of the zebras are a nightmare for lions.
A peacock's tail's patterns would be a right nightmare for many species of predators.
- apparent size. Most animals don't have the circuitry to really figure out the real size of an opponent, so a bigger total shape means a bigger animal. E.g., there's a reason why your cat puffs up and turns sideways when it tries to scare off a potential enemy. For your advanced brain it's the same cat, but for another cat it's "whoa, it just got a lot larger." E.g., just putting a tophat on a kid makes him/her look like a less tempting prey to a hyena, because it looks bigger.
A peacock's tail makes it look freaking big. A lot of the smaller predators would be a lot less inclined to mess with it.
- protecting one's young and females. Many species essentially take a personal risk to try to lure a predator away from their children. Even a personal disadvantage can be an evolutionary advantage if it helps save your kids.
- aposematism. Sometimes you want to make yourself visible as an easily recognizable warning. E.g., see ladibugs being that brightly coloured. It was actually an evolutionary advantage to make sure that whatever bird tasted a ladybug once, can easily recognize and avoid others.
But here's the fun part: sometimes it's an evolutionary advantage to imitate such a species. If the predators already are "trained" to avoid species X, it can be an advantage to look like species X although you don't have the same defenses.
So the peacock could have simply evolved to look like _something_ that the predators would rather avoid. E.g., to show a bigger version of a pattern of a more dangerous predator, or of a toxic/stinging plant that everybody avoids, etc.
- changing conditions. Just because something looks like a pure disadvantage to you now, it could have been an advantage against
1. But additionally the thing is: nowadays even people who are hard-core nearly-full-time gamers prefer a more relaxed game. E.g., I'd think Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade are anything but casual 1-hour-a-week gamers, and they probably qualify as "gaming press" more than some magazines out there... but the thing that stuck to my mind is that they praised COH back then for lacking the disproportionate penalties for death of EQ. (And that was before it got reduced even further.)
Or off the top of my head, both the VG Cats and MacHall comics picked on needing to spend hours to get a group going in FFXI, only to watch it split up after the first kill. I don't think either of the authors counts as a clueless pleb when it comes to computer games.
The elitist hardcore group is shrinking by the day, as they too discover that they don't really need those penalties.
Hence my seriously wondering why on Earth would they want to catter only to that shrinking group.
2. Heh, if you think schoolgirls are an indication, now picture senior citizens in the same game. You know, the stereotypical computer semi-illiterate Aunt Emma, or rather Grandma Emma. It's true, there's a growing segment of retired senior citizens in WoW and generally MMOs. Why not? They have plenty of time, their body is hardly fit to go do some outdoors activity instead, and they get some virtual social interaction. (For a lot of old people having someone to talk to is a very real problem.)
Well, I see you make basically my point: a license will only get you so far either way. In the end, if people like your game they'll play it and provide word of mouth advertisment to their friends. If not, not.
Everquest is probably the best illustration of it: it was based on no franchise whatsoever, and for a while it was king of the hill. It overtook both UO (which had the very strong Ultima name) and wasn't surpassed by SWG (which had a huge following in computer games, though as you correctly note an even bigger one outside of it.)
This is all true, but I think the biggest win for WoW was that they had the world's most popular gaming franchise (Warcraft/Starcraft) and turned it into an accessible MMO. You already have millions of gamers familiar with your product, your quality, your characters.
Now explain The Sims Online please. The Sims had sold more copies than all warcraft games combined. TSO flopped quickly anyway.
This is unlike Star Wars which has a larger fanbase but decidedly fewer fans who know it already as a computer game.
Well, gee, all those Star Wars games on just about every computer type ever made, must have not existed in your alternate universe. The first IIRC was in 1982 on the Atari. Followed by several on the NES and SNES, which were _the_ number one gaming platform in their time.
On the PC? Let me see, several XWing and TieFighter games, Rebel Assault, Dark Forces, the Jedi Knight series, Force Commander (an RTS too, since you credit those with the success of WoW), Force Commando ('nother RTS), Rogue Squadron, and at least a dozen other games if we stick to just those _before_ SWG.
Sorry, SW was a major franchise in computer gaming too. It wasn't that which limited the appeal of SWG.
1. I'll go by your numbers, since I see no point in arguing wild guesses. Ok, fine, let's say only 20% of ex-WoW players ever try another MMO again. At 1-2 millions recycled a month, that's 200,000 to 400,000 per month that are ripe for picking by another game. It's more than other games have as their total population.
It still seems to me like it can't be that horrible an idea to aim for at least some of that potential market.
2. Well, this isn't just about WoW, but rather more generally about game design and target demographics.
There is no such thing as someone who was predestined from birth to play WoW. (Not accusing you of having said that, it's just to make a point more dramatically;) In the grand scheme of games and potential players WoW just was liked by more people than the previous design paradigms. It showed that basically for each tough-as-nails gimme-more-penalties-for-death make-me-need-a-group-even-to-go-to-the-toilet gamer which was being recirculated by the previous crop of games, there are a dozen people who'd gladly pay for something more casual-gamer-friendly. And more polished, let's not forget that.
This isn't just about trying to steal WoW's ex-gamers, but just about looking at what they did well. We already know that product type A topped at about 1 million players total, and no amount of new games based on the same formula increased that total number. That's it. Seriously, look at the MMO charts: for a while they just stole each other's players. That's the total market for the hardcore EQ-type MMOs. Then we know that product type B has almost 12x the subscribers and is still growing.
Basically why would any devs or publisher actively want to move towards even more hardcore gaming, in the already known small market for that design type, instead of even trying to have a go at the larger pool? I mean, it would make sense if you at least got more money per month off the smaller pool, but you don't.
3. Well, if you don't want the "WoW killer" to be an MMO, then I'd say there is no need for a WoW killer in the first place. There are far more people who play offline, and WoW didn't come even close to even challenging that. The Sims sold more copies than WoW, and it's definitely not an MMO by any standards.
4. Well, I'm thinking though that I can't be _that_ unique in seeing WoW as just another MMO, and not as some kind of sworn duty for life. Because I still remember the guild chats when every single other "WoW killer" wannabe was launched. There were hordes of people swearing they're cancelling their accounts and never touching WoW again, as soon as NEXT GAME launches. Where NEXT GAME was D&D Online, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, etc.
I haven't actually met many people -- IRL or online alike -- who think they're married to WoW for life, or that their only choice if they ever leave WoW they'll have to swear off online gaming for ever. Most seemed to be at least aware of the possibility that they might play another game at some point in the future.
Of course, I haven't done a proper study or anything. So maybe I was in the only guilds who were talking about that;)
No game has even come CLOSE to touching 50% of WoW's market share, no matter how much you massage the numbers to make it look bad.
Actually, I have no intention whatsoever to either make it look bad, nor to massage any numbers. I'm just saying that sooner or later someone will figure out how to make an even better game. I don't know who or when. Maybe it'll be one of the games due to be released this year, or maybe in the next decade, or maybe in a thousand years. But given practically infinite time, even very small chances eventually happen.
Basically I'm just optimistic that it's not some inherent limit of the human species.
I'm not saying WoW will be #1 forever
Then it seems to me that we already agree.
If they have a million player churn, it's from players who believe they cannot participate in end-game content, and feel like there's nothing left for them to do in the game (or whatever the complaint of the month is), who are tired of rerolling. They don't go play another MMO, they just flat out quit. And when they come back, it's because of a content patch or expansion for WoW.
Some flat out quit, no doubt. Some go play another game. I know I've been cycling through MMOs and alternating with offline gaming periods, and know a few more people who tried other MMOs too. So basically not _all_ flat out quit MMO gaming either.
While you can probably say almost all MMO players are or were at some point WoW players now, I do not believe you can say all WoW players are now MMO players.
I never said _all_ or all the time. But there is enough of a population who's either now playing some other MMO, or is at least receptive to the idea of another MMO, if it's any good. We've already gotten past the mental hurdle of paying monthly to play, so why not? If it's any good, that is.
We are not talking about a 'game' at least in the traditional sense. WoW is something people have sunk hundreds or thousands of hours into, in which they have developed large social groups and amassed hard to acquire items. The reason I used Windows as an example if because it fits much better than other games. People stick with Windows because they know it, it works how they expect and moving to another OS means starting from scratch.
It's obvious that those items and groups do provide a lot of the pull to stay there. I'm not going to argue with you about that.
All I'm saying though is that even that only goes so far. Eventually you're bored to tears of doing the same thing again, anyway. Well, a few people aren't, but most do have a finite resistance to monotony.
Yes, lots of people _imagine_ MMOs to be some kind of holy matrimony, until death do them part from those servers. Which is also responsible for the resentment when they discover that there actually isn't enough content to keep them entertained for the rest of their lives. But for most reality comes back knocking soomer or later anyway: it's just a game, and as finite as any other. It's longer, it has extra motivations to keep you there, but nevertheless it's not for ever.
Do you really think the Vanguard Devs make their design decisions to intentionally annoy typical WoW players? If you don't then it's a pointless argument, if you do then I don't think you are right.
Actually, the idea that they deliberately want to make their game suck ass was sarcasm. What I really believe is that they're genuinely clueless.
If the players who leave WOW were looking for more of the same, why leave in the first place?
Mostly because nobody has ever made a game with truly infinite content. (Even random generated maps eventually start to look like more of the same, once you figure out their rules and mob placement.)
So eventually people have done all the quests, seen all the zones, did their share of grinding the same "endgame content" a hundred times, etc. They eventually get bored and move on.
Since you mention X-COM: ok, they were great games. But now imagine playing X-COM for years straight. Same maps, same enemies, you just cycle through them one more time. And one time more. A thousand times. You get bored eventually, don't you? That's all I'm saying.
"So basically you have _one_ aspect of the game which can be botted, the combat system. That's all. For most of us it's even the least interesting part of the game..." That's some circular logic. It's the least interesting part of the game because it's so repetitive that bots can do it for you. If it weren't repetitive, it wouldn't be the least interesting part of the game
No, it's not circular until you apply your own strawman in the loop. You seem to assume that everyone has the same tastes you do, plays for the exact same reasons and goals, and they need to be enlightened if they think otherwise.
Get this: if the combat system was that high on my list of priorities, I would play another game where it's better done. If I wanted something the complexity of Go, I'd still play Go. It's that simple. We play the games that match our tastes, don't warp the tastes to match some predestined game.
It's not like there aren't MMOs where you get more combat (e.g., Planetside), or games where more strategic thinking is involved (strategy games), or where you can change the world (e.g., by taking ownership of whole sectors like in Eve,) etc. Trust me, I know they exist. I still have MegaMek on my hard drive for a complex turn-based strategy game. If my priorities were that centered around combat, I already know where to go for that.
If you have different tastes, good for you, but spare me the bullshit postulates that everyone else likes or dislikes the same things you do, and for the same reasons.
Let me repeat it, in simpler words so maybe it gets through this time: No, I'm not playing MMOs for the combat. And if combat were the alpha and the omega and too complex even for a bot, I'd go play something else. Starting to comprehend yet?
A) assume that owning the MMO market is a for ever. WoW started from zero once too, and people predicted it won't do that great competing with EQ1 which owned the market. With EQ2 right around the corner, nobody expected WoW to do that great. Even the publisher only allocated funds for a couple of servers... resulting in the hideous queues to get in, as 100x more people wanted to play it than anyone estimated.
WoW _will_ eventually be dethroned too.
B) assume that there isn't room to grow the market. Again, people said the same about WoW back then. It had been years since any MMO had done more than steal some players from another MMO, so the total number of players looked static. (Seriously, look at the MMOG charts.) But then it turns out that making it more accessible for casual gamers has enlarged the market by an order of magnitude.
I see no reason why another game can't do the same.
C) forget that people do get bored and leave any game after a while. Last I've heard a statistic, it was an average of 6 months per player. Sure, it's still a Gauss curve, so some people leave after the free month, some stay around for years, but the average was half a year.
WoW sheds a million or two of players per month, who look for another home. Then we try a bit of EQ2, a bit of COH, and end up right back on WoW. A game would just have to not suck much to make a good living out of such people who, yes, liked WoW but got bored after a while.
Even briefer: we're talking about a game, not about Windows. Windows is something that just runs your programs, so if you already have it, might as well keep it. A game is something you have to actively play, and people get bored eventually of doing the same thing. Same as in any other game.
D) Going in the opposite direction is hardly a way to achieve any of the previous possibilities. Even if you don't plan to dethrone WoW or enlarge the market, aiming to actively suck for the millions of ex-WoW-ers around, seems pretty stupid to me. That's a lot of people who have already decided they like MMOs and _are_ looking for a new MMO to play. Any reason to actively try to hold them off?
Except EQ1 peaked at 500,000 players. And if you want to aim at the hardcore segment, you get even less. It's probably barely enough to pay the development costs.
So basically you're proposing that the civil servants in Germany are so much better than those in the USA, that they can actually keep something like that a secret if it actually happened?
At any rate, you're asking me to believe... what? That something happened although you have absolutely no evidence, nor even wild claims of it?
So, let me get this straight, at a time when WoW has got another couple of million players by going less specialized, so healers or tanks can still kill stuff when soloing and damage dealers don't get two-shot... Vanguard actually plans to make people _more_ specialized?
I have to wonder what _is_ with Vanguard and trying to do everything the other way around than what most people like. Is this some kind of ellaborate prank played on the publisher? Plain incompetence? Being unable to learn from past mistakes? Or just a case of keeping listening to the wrong crowd?
There seems be a group of people who've played WoW for 3 years, then got bored (which isn't anything wrong and abnormal), but can't seem to realize that the change is with them not with the game. Mixed with the usual human inability to deal with multiple variables, so if they like X then everything about X is great, and if they dislike X then every single trait or aspect of X is pure shit and an offense unto God. (Where X can be a game, a person, a company, etc.) So now they've flipped around to "everything about WoW sucks", including everything that kept them there in the first place. And I dunno why I get the idea that Vanguard chose to listen to precisely this segment, without applying much critical thinking.
At any rate, whatever the reason, it's kinda funny. It's like they're _planing_ to make a game that sucks ass end-to-end, and oh looky, they just got another idea how to make it worse.
If any of the Vanguard devs are listening, I humbly submit the following ideas to the same end:
- be the first MMO with DRM. I'm sure you can convince someone at Sony of that idea, given their past record.
- give the customers free wedgies.
- periodic player wipes. It worked great for MUDs to keep the population low, I'm sure it can work for you too.
Keep up the good job, guys. I'm sure with enough hard work and dedication you can even become worse than Anarchy Online;)
A) _All_ that bots do is kill NPCs in a mindless loop. It's not like anyone made a bot which actually does quests for you or organizes a raiding guild or anything.
So basically you have _one_ aspect of the game which can be botted, the combat system. That's all. For most of us it's even the least interesting part of the game, we're in for the quests and social interaction actually.
So basically it seems to me that rejecting the whole game because the least important aspect of it can be botted, is on par with rejecting TV because a bot (PVR) can start and stop recording without your assistance.
B) If you actually made a game where combat is too complex for a bot, then it'll be too complex for the average human too. Most people lose badly to a chess program or even a Go program. If combat against an opponent was genuinely as complex and required such deep thinking as a Go match, 99% of the customers wouldn't even make it out of the newbie zone. They wouldn't survive the tutorial.
And doubly so for the casual gamer who just wants to jump in some game after work and spend some time mindlessly mashing buttons. There are plenty of people who play a game precisely to _not_ use their head. What makes you think they'd want to learn a system that complex?
I still can't convince mom to learn her abilities in WoW beyond the level of "click on whatever ability has recharged", for example, because frankly that's not what she plays the game for. What makes you think she'd be interested in something with the complexity of chess or go?
Exactly when has the "Bundestrojaner" been actually used without authorization? No, seriously, I'm curious now.
And how's it any worse than, say, the USA? You can find plenty of cases where the FBI planted a trojan or a keylogger on a _suspect's_ computer, which is all that the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to do. The difference is that in Germany there has been a whole debate about it and it's been shot down on constitutional and privacy grounds repeatedly, while in the USA nobody even bothered wondering much about it.
Let me repeat: the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to only be used with a court mandate, only for a limited time, and only on the computers of people suspected of terror activities and the like. Plus a court is supposed to establish (as per the german supreme court decision) that the use does not pose any danger to a person's other rights, among which their freedom. It'll be interesting to see if they can use it at all then, but at any rate you can't use it, say, to intimidate your opponents.
But seriously, how's that any worse than what the rest of the world already does? It seems to me like the USA just shipped such suspects to Gitmo for some waterboarding. I'll take a court-approved keylogger instead if I'm ever suspected of anything, thank you very much.
And then you have cases like the NSA spying on its citizens without any court approval or legal mandate.
Basically if you think that a law which sets clear limits is actually worse than no law, well, you're naive.
Actually, the constitutional safeguards still work in Germany, so it will likely be more like "no hacking anyone else's networks ever, unless we've already properly declared war and the bureaucracy is done approving the paperwork." (At which point the war is probably over anyway.)
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Ok, thanks for the correction. I'll call it "classical evolution" then, to avoid any further confusion.
Actually, that's my problem: that only sees half the problem. There are actually _two_ distinct mutations at work here:
A) the mutation that causes males to have big tails.
B) the mutation that causes females to like males with big tails.
Yes, sexual selection explains mutation A perfectly, by taking B for granted. It's hard to argue why A happened when you see their mating rituals. I'm not arguing that.
_My_ problem however is: why did mutation _B_ happen and get selected by natural selection? And _if_ it causes a harmful trait, why didn't natural selection eliminate it yet?
I tend to think of them as "the sane ones." ;) Unfortunately, "sexual selection" is still widely taught as a fact, and the peacock is still the poster child for it.
I have nothing against all that, and in fact I believe all that to be a fact. We already agree upon that part. In fact I base my rationale on all that.
I just don't believe that sexual selection can produce evolution in a _harmful_ direction. Precisely because then it would be selected against. But if it's neutral or associated with something useful, then I have no objection whatsoever.
But if that's the case, then I'd say that you don't actually need "sexual selection" much. It's at best just a detail, not a distinct kind of selection. E.g., if the long tails only happened to be associated with a more useful trait (e.g., because as usual one gene controls 3-4 different things), then what actually happened is normal natural selection of that more useful trait.
1. I find ID fucking stupid, actually.
2. I didn't realize that a name was that important, as long as you understand what I'm talking about.
3. Appeal to motives is, last I've heard, a fallacy. Stick to addressing what I wrote, rather than calling me an ID adherent. The latter neither proves nor disproves my point, especially since I made none of the ID arguments.
4. Actually, I called that guy a "cretin" because he accuses me of no less than 4 strawmen contrary to what I wrote... to accuse me of using strawmen. I'm sorry, I don't have much patience for that kind of troll. I'm open to critiques of what I've actually written, but taking the exact damned opposite of what I wrote to have something to fight, is just freaking stupid.
E.g., I write that something might have been an advantage in the past, but be a disadvantage nowadays... and he accuses me of arguing that "if you're fit once, you're fit forever." How the fuck _does_ one manage to read the former as the latter, unless he has some major comprehension problems?
So, yes, I call him a cretin. Whether he's pro-evolution or pro-ID is irrelevant there. That's not the reason. The idiotic answer with no less than 4 strawmen is the reason. It's an entirely orthogonal issue.
Something neutral to survival, pretty much doesn't need any reason to evolve. It can even appear by random mutation and freak statistical flukes in survival. See why the Dodo lost the fight-or-flight circuit, for example, although its distant ancestors must have had it to survive before they got there.
At any rate, I have no problem whatsoever with females getting a random "mmm, I love big tails" gene randomly, _if_ that's not a disadvantage.
But at any rate, that's really the mutation I'm talking about. Not why did males start having long tails to impress the females, but how did the females get a gene to prefer big tails in the first place. The former is just effect, the latter though is a mutation that should have disappeared if it caused a pure handicap. At any rate "sexual selection" explains the former by just taking the latter for granted. It doesn't explain why the latter appeared in the first place.
But, as you noted, if it's neutral, then it doesn't matter. And if the effect it causes is beneficial, then it's just normal selection at work. In both cases sex was just a prop there, and isn't really needed as a special case of selection.
That was the whole topic: how did it get there if it handicaps the species?
Bingo. That's the whole point: if it was a handicap for the species, it should have happened. That's the basic prediction of natural selection.
Do you need the "hysterical trolling" insult to make your point? Ok, probably since you offered no other evidence other than some hot air about "Wrong, at least to those of us who understand what fitness means in an evolutionary context." Plus some comprehension problems like shown above.
So here's the deal: why don't _you_ quit trolling and actually contribute more than ego-masturbation?
A) Yes, I mean the complementary trait.
B) You're ascribing human behaviour to a nearly-brain-dead bird. They don't do complex plans to ensure that their kids will look good to brides. They just have a gene which says "pick the biggest tail" here and now.
C) See random mutations again.
Eventually some females would be born without that gene broken, so they go and mate with the male with the smallest tail. If a smaller tail were an advantage, then their kids live longer and get more chances to reproduce. With each other if nobody else wants them. Repeat a few generations, and that trait will be on its way to extinction.
A species having a handicap is just that: being less fit for its environment, and on the losing side of natural selection. And "because females prefer handicapped males" is just a handicap in itself. We're back to square one: that species evolved a handicap. Why? Wasn't the whole idea that the less handicapped survive?
And the saving grace I propose is: well, that tail is probably not a handicap at all, or wasn't when the species evolved. Let's start looking at what other disadvantages it might have, before reaching for the non-falsifiable catch-all "sexual selection" clause.
Well my point is that (A) yes, it evolved simply because it's an advantage, but (B) the standard darwinistic view is basically that it's a disadvantage, and there just to impress the females. And I wrote all that long rant about A, just because I find B an illogical kludge.
I'm _not_ against darwinism or natural selection. I'm just against the "sexual selection" cludge. That's all. Remove that kludge, and I'm perfectly content with Darwinism.
Well, gee, and here I had already mentioned random genetic mutations in the message you answer to.
Bingo. Hence my having a problem with a clause that essentially says "but sometimes it evolves to have a disadvantage. For sex reason, see." At any rate, I never said the contrary of what you wrote above, so I'm not sure what's your point.
But you'd have already noticed that if you had actually read what I wrote, instead of jumping to the canned answers.
For someone accusing me of using strawmen, you sure rush to do your own. I never said that.
Nor that.
Well, gee, since both are your own retarded strawmen, why don't you use better ones if you know they're utter bollocks?
Learn to read, cretin. Address what was actually written there, or take a fucking hike and stop pollutting the thread with fighting your own delusions.
Actually, it _still_ isn't testable, since it has idiocies like "sexual selection" tacked on to it as a catch-all for everything it couldn't actually explain. (Why did the peacock evolve such a big and handicapping tail? Hur-hur-hur, to impress women, Beavis.)
The problem is that no matter how you slice it, it proposes that an organism can also evolve towards _less_ fit, i.e., that sometimes natural selection works against the logical direction or in some random direction. You can't falsify something with such a catch-all clause. It predicts that something will get more fit for the environment... except in the unpredictable cases where it actually evolves to be less fit.
It's like saying that gravity makes bodies attract each other... except when they repulse each other, or make each other move in a random direction. That's not falsifiable, i.e., plain old not science.
Why do I call it idiotic?
A) Because it handwaves away half the problem. Ok, so male peacocks evolved so to impress the females. But why did females evolve that trait then? Going strictly natural selection, if that tail were indeed a disadvantage, some females would be randomly born with a preferrence for smaller tails and mate with males with smaller tails, their children would have less of a disadvantage, repeat. So natural selection would guide things towards removing that handicap anyway.
Just because sex is involved in selecting that, it doesn't mean it is the only factor or evolutionary pressure. If it were a disadvantage for males, then natural selection among _females_ would phase it out.
B) Because it doesn't even try to see if there's another advantage to that. It's a catch-all "I don't know why it's like that, so it must be about sex." And I mean other disadvantages like:
- disruptive camouflage. Just because for the advanced image recognition circuitry of a primate something stands out like a sore thumb, it doesn't mean it's like that for other species too. E.g., an orange tabby tomcat is actually very well camouflaged for its prey, because its many lines prevent a mouse's simple circuitry from figuring out the shape of the cat. E.g., the lines of the zebras are a nightmare for lions.
A peacock's tail's patterns would be a right nightmare for many species of predators.
- apparent size. Most animals don't have the circuitry to really figure out the real size of an opponent, so a bigger total shape means a bigger animal. E.g., there's a reason why your cat puffs up and turns sideways when it tries to scare off a potential enemy. For your advanced brain it's the same cat, but for another cat it's "whoa, it just got a lot larger." E.g., just putting a tophat on a kid makes him/her look like a less tempting prey to a hyena, because it looks bigger.
A peacock's tail makes it look freaking big. A lot of the smaller predators would be a lot less inclined to mess with it.
- protecting one's young and females. Many species essentially take a personal risk to try to lure a predator away from their children. Even a personal disadvantage can be an evolutionary advantage if it helps save your kids.
- aposematism. Sometimes you want to make yourself visible as an easily recognizable warning. E.g., see ladibugs being that brightly coloured. It was actually an evolutionary advantage to make sure that whatever bird tasted a ladybug once, can easily recognize and avoid others.
But here's the fun part: sometimes it's an evolutionary advantage to imitate such a species. If the predators already are "trained" to avoid species X, it can be an advantage to look like species X although you don't have the same defenses.
So the peacock could have simply evolved to look like _something_ that the predators would rather avoid. E.g., to show a bigger version of a pattern of a more dangerous predator, or of a toxic/stinging plant that everybody avoids, etc.
- changing conditions. Just because something looks like a pure disadvantage to you now, it could have been an advantage against
Amen.
1. But additionally the thing is: nowadays even people who are hard-core nearly-full-time gamers prefer a more relaxed game. E.g., I'd think Tycho and Gabe from Penny Arcade are anything but casual 1-hour-a-week gamers, and they probably qualify as "gaming press" more than some magazines out there... but the thing that stuck to my mind is that they praised COH back then for lacking the disproportionate penalties for death of EQ. (And that was before it got reduced even further.)
Or off the top of my head, both the VG Cats and MacHall comics picked on needing to spend hours to get a group going in FFXI, only to watch it split up after the first kill. I don't think either of the authors counts as a clueless pleb when it comes to computer games.
The elitist hardcore group is shrinking by the day, as they too discover that they don't really need those penalties.
Hence my seriously wondering why on Earth would they want to catter only to that shrinking group.
2. Heh, if you think schoolgirls are an indication, now picture senior citizens in the same game. You know, the stereotypical computer semi-illiterate Aunt Emma, or rather Grandma Emma. It's true, there's a growing segment of retired senior citizens in WoW and generally MMOs. Why not? They have plenty of time, their body is hardly fit to go do some outdoors activity instead, and they get some virtual social interaction. (For a lot of old people having someone to talk to is a very real problem.)
Well, I see you make basically my point: a license will only get you so far either way. In the end, if people like your game they'll play it and provide word of mouth advertisment to their friends. If not, not.
Everquest is probably the best illustration of it: it was based on no franchise whatsoever, and for a while it was king of the hill. It overtook both UO (which had the very strong Ultima name) and wasn't surpassed by SWG (which had a huge following in computer games, though as you correctly note an even bigger one outside of it.)
Now explain The Sims Online please. The Sims had sold more copies than all warcraft games combined. TSO flopped quickly anyway.
Well, gee, all those Star Wars games on just about every computer type ever made, must have not existed in your alternate universe. The first IIRC was in 1982 on the Atari. Followed by several on the NES and SNES, which were _the_ number one gaming platform in their time.
On the PC? Let me see, several XWing and TieFighter games, Rebel Assault, Dark Forces, the Jedi Knight series, Force Commander (an RTS too, since you credit those with the success of WoW), Force Commando ('nother RTS), Rogue Squadron, and at least a dozen other games if we stick to just those _before_ SWG.
Sorry, SW was a major franchise in computer gaming too. It wasn't that which limited the appeal of SWG.
1. I'll go by your numbers, since I see no point in arguing wild guesses. Ok, fine, let's say only 20% of ex-WoW players ever try another MMO again. At 1-2 millions recycled a month, that's 200,000 to 400,000 per month that are ripe for picking by another game. It's more than other games have as their total population.
It still seems to me like it can't be that horrible an idea to aim for at least some of that potential market.
2. Well, this isn't just about WoW, but rather more generally about game design and target demographics.
There is no such thing as someone who was predestined from birth to play WoW. (Not accusing you of having said that, it's just to make a point more dramatically;) In the grand scheme of games and potential players WoW just was liked by more people than the previous design paradigms. It showed that basically for each tough-as-nails gimme-more-penalties-for-death make-me-need-a-group-even-to-go-to-the-toilet gamer which was being recirculated by the previous crop of games, there are a dozen people who'd gladly pay for something more casual-gamer-friendly. And more polished, let's not forget that.
This isn't just about trying to steal WoW's ex-gamers, but just about looking at what they did well. We already know that product type A topped at about 1 million players total, and no amount of new games based on the same formula increased that total number. That's it. Seriously, look at the MMO charts: for a while they just stole each other's players. That's the total market for the hardcore EQ-type MMOs. Then we know that product type B has almost 12x the subscribers and is still growing.
Basically why would any devs or publisher actively want to move towards even more hardcore gaming, in the already known small market for that design type, instead of even trying to have a go at the larger pool? I mean, it would make sense if you at least got more money per month off the smaller pool, but you don't.
3. Well, if you don't want the "WoW killer" to be an MMO, then I'd say there is no need for a WoW killer in the first place. There are far more people who play offline, and WoW didn't come even close to even challenging that. The Sims sold more copies than WoW, and it's definitely not an MMO by any standards.
4. Well, I'm thinking though that I can't be _that_ unique in seeing WoW as just another MMO, and not as some kind of sworn duty for life. Because I still remember the guild chats when every single other "WoW killer" wannabe was launched. There were hordes of people swearing they're cancelling their accounts and never touching WoW again, as soon as NEXT GAME launches. Where NEXT GAME was D&D Online, LOTRO, AOC, WAR, etc.
I haven't actually met many people -- IRL or online alike -- who think they're married to WoW for life, or that their only choice if they ever leave WoW they'll have to swear off online gaming for ever. Most seemed to be at least aware of the possibility that they might play another game at some point in the future.
Of course, I haven't done a proper study or anything. So maybe I was in the only guilds who were talking about that ;)
Actually, I have no intention whatsoever to either make it look bad, nor to massage any numbers. I'm just saying that sooner or later someone will figure out how to make an even better game. I don't know who or when. Maybe it'll be one of the games due to be released this year, or maybe in the next decade, or maybe in a thousand years. But given practically infinite time, even very small chances eventually happen.
Basically I'm just optimistic that it's not some inherent limit of the human species.
Then it seems to me that we already agree.
Some flat out quit, no doubt. Some go play another game. I know I've been cycling through MMOs and alternating with offline gaming periods, and know a few more people who tried other MMOs too. So basically not _all_ flat out quit MMO gaming either.
I never said _all_ or all the time. But there is enough of a population who's either now playing some other MMO, or is at least receptive to the idea of another MMO, if it's any good. We've already gotten past the mental hurdle of paying monthly to play, so why not? If it's any good, that is.
It's obvious that those items and groups do provide a lot of the pull to stay there. I'm not going to argue with you about that.
All I'm saying though is that even that only goes so far. Eventually you're bored to tears of doing the same thing again, anyway. Well, a few people aren't, but most do have a finite resistance to monotony.
Yes, lots of people _imagine_ MMOs to be some kind of holy matrimony, until death do them part from those servers. Which is also responsible for the resentment when they discover that there actually isn't enough content to keep them entertained for the rest of their lives. But for most reality comes back knocking soomer or later anyway: it's just a game, and as finite as any other. It's longer, it has extra motivations to keep you there, but nevertheless it's not for ever.
Actually, the idea that they deliberately want to make their game suck ass was sarcasm. What I really believe is that they're genuinely clueless.
Mostly because nobody has ever made a game with truly infinite content. (Even random generated maps eventually start to look like more of the same, once you figure out their rules and mob placement.)
So eventually people have done all the quests, seen all the zones, did their share of grinding the same "endgame content" a hundred times, etc. They eventually get bored and move on.
Since you mention X-COM: ok, they were great games. But now imagine playing X-COM for years straight. Same maps, same enemies, you just cycle through them one more time. And one time more. A thousand times. You get bored eventually, don't you? That's all I'm saying.
No, it's not circular until you apply your own strawman in the loop. You seem to assume that everyone has the same tastes you do, plays for the exact same reasons and goals, and they need to be enlightened if they think otherwise.
Get this: if the combat system was that high on my list of priorities, I would play another game where it's better done. If I wanted something the complexity of Go, I'd still play Go. It's that simple. We play the games that match our tastes, don't warp the tastes to match some predestined game.
It's not like there aren't MMOs where you get more combat (e.g., Planetside), or games where more strategic thinking is involved (strategy games), or where you can change the world (e.g., by taking ownership of whole sectors like in Eve,) etc. Trust me, I know they exist. I still have MegaMek on my hard drive for a complex turn-based strategy game. If my priorities were that centered around combat, I already know where to go for that.
If you have different tastes, good for you, but spare me the bullshit postulates that everyone else likes or dislikes the same things you do, and for the same reasons.
Let me repeat it, in simpler words so maybe it gets through this time: No, I'm not playing MMOs for the combat. And if combat were the alpha and the omega and too complex even for a bot, I'd go play something else. Starting to comprehend yet?
Actually, you seem to:
A) assume that owning the MMO market is a for ever. WoW started from zero once too, and people predicted it won't do that great competing with EQ1 which owned the market. With EQ2 right around the corner, nobody expected WoW to do that great. Even the publisher only allocated funds for a couple of servers... resulting in the hideous queues to get in, as 100x more people wanted to play it than anyone estimated.
WoW _will_ eventually be dethroned too.
B) assume that there isn't room to grow the market. Again, people said the same about WoW back then. It had been years since any MMO had done more than steal some players from another MMO, so the total number of players looked static. (Seriously, look at the MMOG charts.) But then it turns out that making it more accessible for casual gamers has enlarged the market by an order of magnitude.
I see no reason why another game can't do the same.
C) forget that people do get bored and leave any game after a while. Last I've heard a statistic, it was an average of 6 months per player. Sure, it's still a Gauss curve, so some people leave after the free month, some stay around for years, but the average was half a year.
WoW sheds a million or two of players per month, who look for another home. Then we try a bit of EQ2, a bit of COH, and end up right back on WoW. A game would just have to not suck much to make a good living out of such people who, yes, liked WoW but got bored after a while.
Even briefer: we're talking about a game, not about Windows. Windows is something that just runs your programs, so if you already have it, might as well keep it. A game is something you have to actively play, and people get bored eventually of doing the same thing. Same as in any other game.
D) Going in the opposite direction is hardly a way to achieve any of the previous possibilities. Even if you don't plan to dethrone WoW or enlarge the market, aiming to actively suck for the millions of ex-WoW-ers around, seems pretty stupid to me. That's a lot of people who have already decided they like MMOs and _are_ looking for a new MMO to play. Any reason to actively try to hold them off?
Except EQ1 peaked at 500,000 players. And if you want to aim at the hardcore segment, you get even less. It's probably barely enough to pay the development costs.
So basically you're proposing that the civil servants in Germany are so much better than those in the USA, that they can actually keep something like that a secret if it actually happened?
At any rate, you're asking me to believe... what? That something happened although you have absolutely no evidence, nor even wild claims of it?
So, let me get this straight, at a time when WoW has got another couple of million players by going less specialized, so healers or tanks can still kill stuff when soloing and damage dealers don't get two-shot... Vanguard actually plans to make people _more_ specialized?
I have to wonder what _is_ with Vanguard and trying to do everything the other way around than what most people like. Is this some kind of ellaborate prank played on the publisher? Plain incompetence? Being unable to learn from past mistakes? Or just a case of keeping listening to the wrong crowd?
There seems be a group of people who've played WoW for 3 years, then got bored (which isn't anything wrong and abnormal), but can't seem to realize that the change is with them not with the game. Mixed with the usual human inability to deal with multiple variables, so if they like X then everything about X is great, and if they dislike X then every single trait or aspect of X is pure shit and an offense unto God. (Where X can be a game, a person, a company, etc.) So now they've flipped around to "everything about WoW sucks", including everything that kept them there in the first place. And I dunno why I get the idea that Vanguard chose to listen to precisely this segment, without applying much critical thinking.
At any rate, whatever the reason, it's kinda funny. It's like they're _planing_ to make a game that sucks ass end-to-end, and oh looky, they just got another idea how to make it worse.
If any of the Vanguard devs are listening, I humbly submit the following ideas to the same end:
- be the first MMO with DRM. I'm sure you can convince someone at Sony of that idea, given their past record.
- give the customers free wedgies.
- periodic player wipes. It worked great for MUDs to keep the population low, I'm sure it can work for you too.
Keep up the good job, guys. I'm sure with enough hard work and dedication you can even become worse than Anarchy Online ;)
Bots are hardly a metric, because:
A) _All_ that bots do is kill NPCs in a mindless loop. It's not like anyone made a bot which actually does quests for you or organizes a raiding guild or anything.
So basically you have _one_ aspect of the game which can be botted, the combat system. That's all. For most of us it's even the least interesting part of the game, we're in for the quests and social interaction actually.
So basically it seems to me that rejecting the whole game because the least important aspect of it can be botted, is on par with rejecting TV because a bot (PVR) can start and stop recording without your assistance.
B) If you actually made a game where combat is too complex for a bot, then it'll be too complex for the average human too. Most people lose badly to a chess program or even a Go program. If combat against an opponent was genuinely as complex and required such deep thinking as a Go match, 99% of the customers wouldn't even make it out of the newbie zone. They wouldn't survive the tutorial.
And doubly so for the casual gamer who just wants to jump in some game after work and spend some time mindlessly mashing buttons. There are plenty of people who play a game precisely to _not_ use their head. What makes you think they'd want to learn a system that complex?
I still can't convince mom to learn her abilities in WoW beyond the level of "click on whatever ability has recharged", for example, because frankly that's not what she plays the game for. What makes you think she'd be interested in something with the complexity of chess or go?
Exactly when has the "Bundestrojaner" been actually used without authorization? No, seriously, I'm curious now.
And how's it any worse than, say, the USA? You can find plenty of cases where the FBI planted a trojan or a keylogger on a _suspect's_ computer, which is all that the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to do. The difference is that in Germany there has been a whole debate about it and it's been shot down on constitutional and privacy grounds repeatedly, while in the USA nobody even bothered wondering much about it.
Let me repeat: the "Bundestrojaner" is supposed to only be used with a court mandate, only for a limited time, and only on the computers of people suspected of terror activities and the like. Plus a court is supposed to establish (as per the german supreme court decision) that the use does not pose any danger to a person's other rights, among which their freedom. It'll be interesting to see if they can use it at all then, but at any rate you can't use it, say, to intimidate your opponents.
But seriously, how's that any worse than what the rest of the world already does? It seems to me like the USA just shipped such suspects to Gitmo for some waterboarding. I'll take a court-approved keylogger instead if I'm ever suspected of anything, thank you very much.
And then you have cases like the NSA spying on its citizens without any court approval or legal mandate.
Basically if you think that a law which sets clear limits is actually worse than no law, well, you're naive.
Actually, the constitutional safeguards still work in Germany, so it will likely be more like "no hacking anyone else's networks ever, unless we've already properly declared war and the bureaucracy is done approving the paperwork." (At which point the war is probably over anyway.)