Bionic_Flea

A lawsuit is merely a formal accusation and a claim for relief. There are some procedural hoops and some costs involved that keep it from getting too out of hand. But yeah, it's scary what someone with a little knowledge and an axe to grind can do. (Look up Jack Thompson)

And if a lawyer or citizen files frivolous lawsuits they can be penalized several ways, including monetary sanctions, prohibition from filing future lawsuits, and loss of license for the attorney.

I like trying to pick their minions off one by one. That's pretty much impossible with a Pain MM, but it can be done with the other secondaries with a little strategy and hit and run tactics. Especially if he's sloppy and sends his pets to chase you.

If the MM has to keep summoning and equiping his pets he will run out of end. If he runs out of end, he can't resummon and his buffs and debuffs go out the window. If he has less or no pets, his bodyguard is no longer as effective.

A fair question, Firespray.

I think the farmers should leave Atlas because Atlas is the starting zone for most players and some brand new player may get into farming before learning anything about the game. I think most people will agree that you should play at least one character to 50 to learn a bit about the game before dedicating yourself to farming.

Atlas is also one of the "hub" zones that people go to. A lot of people go through Atlas to get somewhere else, whereas Galaxy and most other zones other than Atlas, Talos and Peregrine Island are much less busy. Everyone paying SG Base rent also has to go to Atlas.

There are many reasons why non-farmers have to go to Atlas. Why do farmers have to go there? I can't think of any reasons, but maybe someone else can.

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Here are reasons *why* moderator/GM actions are not allowed to be discussed on this forum and the overwhelming majority of forums:

1. The officials taking official action can not publicly denounce a person and lay out all the things they did wrong and all the warnings they ignored. Whether rightly or wrongly, they'd be sued for defamation. They can not trash a person to justify their case. They just can't. Which puts them into a bind because...

2. When a player wants to discuss moderator actions, they're looking to 'try' the case publicly. But if the mods can't defend their actions publicly (see point 1 above), then they will always lose such public trials, even if they're in the right.

3. People who have no business in this matter get involved: Friends of the person who had an action against them; people who have an axe to grind against the mods/devs for some other reason and all of a sudden they become a champion of justice for someone they don't know and over a case of which they have no facts; and those who are simply anarchists and are willing to 'take the man down a peg or two' so they can do whatever they want without consequences. There would never be any satisfying answer given to these people, even if the mods/devs were allowed to explain their side fully.


Actually, when someone starts trashing a mod/GM/dev for taking unfair actions and they have no real basis (or even the facts of the matter) to make those claims, I'd like to see them get slapped with a defamation suit instead of simply having their thread deleted. Then maybe we'd see people be a bit more understanding why the mods/GMs/Devs can't divulge the details of the censures they enact.

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Actually, anyone can sue anyone else for any reason. The real questions are: 1) Is it worth it? and 2) Will you win? (perhaps a subset of 1, but some curmudgeons sue even with no hope of winning just to make a point).

No one will ever win a defamation lawsuit against a company that truthfully lists a players transgressions. Lawyers generally only file lawsuits if they think they can win something or at least have a good enough case to force a settlement.

The remainder of your points are probably accurate though. They may not be legally required to refrain from commenting, but it's usually a good policy to keep those conversations private. Those discussions usually end up in flame wars that accomplish nothing but getting more feelings hurt.

On the other hand, I think it IS good policy for the company to discuss their policy or philosophy regarding discipline, including aggregate numbers. For example, I think it would be OK for them to state (with my own made up numbers):

"Recently we took disciplinary action on 157 accounts that had engaged in exploitive conduct inside the mission architect. On further review we realized that we had mistakenly disciplined 15 accounts. Those accounts have been fully restored, compensated, and have our sincere apology for the misunderstanding. We are reviewing our internal policies and systems to ensure that those errors are not made in the future."

I would appreciate seeing a post like that. I'm sure others would as well; and a bunch wouldn't like it all . . . like most things in this forum.

Now, now . . . I know my title may have been a little provocactive, but keep that comment about where to put farmers to yourself please. You know what I mean.

I have read and participated in many of the different threads where farmers and story-driven players argue over the how each side is ruining the fun of the other.

One of the more valid complaints that story-driven players have, in my opinion, is that farmers clog up broadcast and the architect UI.

Would it be possible for Farmers to agree to to go to a certain zone for farming? I would suggest Galaxy over Atlas because Atlas has so many other things going on, but really any zone other than Atlas and Mercy would be an improvement.

Similarly, if the devs would allow it, create a farm "tab" in the architect. I know Positron said it would probably be best not to call your MA Arc a farm or it might be banned. But I think that he was having the same problem that many of the story-driven players were -- that farms were drowning out stories. If self-identified farms had their own tab or filtering mechanism, story-driven folks could easily avoid them and farm driven folks could easily find them. As could GMs to make sure that the farms are not engaging in exploits.

You could even encourage self-identifying as farms by giving stiffer penalties for exploitive farms that don't self-identify themself as such.

Comments?

Only have to hit 45% to max defense and only to the three positions (ranged, melee, AoE) for fairly godlike performance.

Resistance caps at 75 - 90% and you need to have it to each type (s/l/f/c/e/n/p/t) to get similar performance.

There are many great uses for wormhole. It's an AOE tp foe with disorient and knockback.

You can use it to set up containment, as an "oh [censored]!" power when a second group aggros to you or your team, to have a reason to sing "It's raining men. Halleluia!", or to pull things into your trap of doom.

As a grav storm, I would perhaps call my rainy day pets by a corner with hurricane on and wormhole a group into that corner. Singularity's repel and your hurricane would keep them in place, the KB would be controlled by the corner, the mobs would be dazed, debuffed, unable to move, no where to go, and ripe for you to pick at.

Cool.

Will you show it to us when you're done?

I'm excited to see my acting debut!

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bats/tarps

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I can understand the bats...but what do the tarps do?

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Covers the dead bodies.

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*hopes she still has that kick [censored] email address*

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heh, now I'm curious....

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Click on her name and be satisfied.

Oh, and WB.

What happened to your last video?

OOOH! I forgot about the character slots. That is hands down one of the best rewards.

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And anyone who quit because they were afraid of being caught cheating is probably someone who wouldn't be fun to have around anyway.

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You may be right about more people quitting over the continued existance of "Meow Farms" than those who have quit because they were eliminated. I have a pet peeve regarding anything becoming too repetitive and the missions containing them and even the mere mention of them had exceeded my tolerance level by a wide margin.

But I do disagree with the statement quoted above. I don't know of anyone who is quitting because "they were afraid of being caught cheating" but I do know many people who are for a variety of reasons relating to the way in which the discipline was carried out. I will miss them when they leave and they absolutely were great people to team with. These people you are seemingly dismissing without care didn't just farm non-stop. They did TFs, they did PvP, they collected badges, they sponsored server events. Many of them were very generous in giving away influence/infamy or other drops to their friends and SG-mates or as prizes for different events.

Even law-breakers and serious criminals have rights and I think most of us want them punished but treated fairly. It's one thing to get a speeding ticket when it's clear you were exceeding the posted limit. It's another to get a speeding ticket when you know there are speeding laws but aren't quite sure what the limit was for a particular stretch of road. And it's something altogether different when the cop that gives you a ticket also treats you like dirt and spits in your face.

And in case you are wondering -- no I wasn't disciplined in any way. I do farm or PL occassionally just as I do things in every other facet of the game occassionally.

All the veteran powers.

I haven't even used any of the respecs. I've used a few of the costume coupons but only to make slight alterations. I usually just have one costume per character throughout their entire life.

I also have used the Base Decorations, but only on one character per side. I also have a few characters that have taken advantage of the wings, trenchcoat, shoulder capes.

If I had to rank the powers it would be:

1. Sands of Mu
2. Nemesis Staff
3. Blackwand
4. Base TP
5. Buff pet

*Pleased to meet you. I am Thus Smake Zarafleastra, a level 1 Natural Scrapper.*

So this thread is about Rush Limbaugh and Jimmy Carter conducting an experiment to manipulate viewship ratings?

Interesting . . . .

Your casino analogy makes a certain amount of sense. There is a tolerable limit of winning. In fact, some winning is required to give others hope while they continue to throw money at the table or coins down a slot.

But if one person wins too much, he gets escorted out or dragged downstairs and roughed up by Lawrence Fishbourne (I just saw 21 on CD last night). If too many people win, the casino loses money and goes out of business.

Going back to my traffic analogy, you could argue that society allows a certain amount of speeding or lawlessness. We don't have cops on every street at every moment giving out tickets. Even if it was self sustaining and the tickets paid for all the cops most people would agree that it's not an efficient use of resources.

I believe Smurphy admitted that you could cause a price spike and possibly make money off of it in the short term, but not be able to sustain a profit over a longer period of time, say a month.

I have done this experiment with a mid level common tech salvage. I bought them all, bidding stacks up slowly starting as low as 11 and buying as high as 750 and then listing them all for 1000 and higher and keeping low bids open to suck up any new low fruit. (It's not big money, but I was just trying it out to see if it could be done).

I couldn't keep up. I initially made a small profit but then started filling up with slots that just sat there without moving and I eventually repriced them much lower to get rid of them. I don't remember if I made a slight profit or a slight loss in the end, but it was slight enough to call it even. (about 30,000 one way or the other).

But since it initially worked I tried in on another character with Essence of the Furies. I had noticed the price went down a bit and bought about 100 of them and relisted them a bit under a million. This was a little bit before the ITF hit live. They still haven't sold. Every now and then I sell one but I have 40-50 left. I lost a few million on that deal.

I then decided to earn an "honest" living selling my drops and crafting memorized IOs with whatever salvage I earned from playing and then graduated to buying stacks of popular but common set pieces (doctored wounds, red fortune, thunderstrikes) and crafting those.

Along with the ocassional lucky purple/lotg/respec recipe drop I now have over 1.5 billion on one character, probably another billion scattered amongst a dozen other characters, and several billions worth of stuff in storage for future toons and my SG friends. I have no idea how much additional inf I have on power slots.

Patience and a little knowledge pay big dividends over time.

Grats, Galactic.

If only we had a belly slider I would have made a Fat Flea long ago.

Happy birthday, Smoke!

Very fun event guys. Good job!

FIGHT ME!

Judads was recently poking people in goodbye threads so I gave him his own goodbye thread.

He can poke at me if he likes, as can you.

I tried to be funny. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail.

HARD KNOCKS, BABY!