Lady_Sadako

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Still, the only reason I even brought it up is because of Lady Sakako’s almost religious insistence that the devs cannot mess up the price of the new base items

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... by mistake. And I stand by that. There are just too few factors involved. Bases are pretty damn straightforward.

Of course, some people will insist that a Dev can have a workbench, a power station and a mainframe (or even a prohibitively expensive large room) on his screen throughout the design process and somehow fail to notice that they're there. Because, you know, Devs make mistakes.

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Continually poking each other with sharp sticks may be entertaining, but ultimately the only benefit to arguing this whole point is to increase post counts.

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He's onto us!

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busted!

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Because, of course, the devs never forget to mention important details... Like , oh I don't know, how Enhancement Diversification will affect powers after they are done making major changes to powers.

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You're funny.

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Yes, it is, and I shall give my analogy. Again.

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Oh goody.

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It’s like saying that just because someone has atrocious spelling, you do not expect him to have poor grammar.

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No, it's not like that at all. The ability to pre-empt player actions requires a certain kind of design skill. The ability to look at a total Prestige figure on a base design screen requires only basic numeracy.

To use an analogy that does work: it would be like expecting someone who was bad at planning store security to be equally bad at doing simple arithmetic.

A post several pages back suggested that a Dev had somehow forgotten to take workbenches, power and control into account when calculating how much Prestige a SG would need to make an Empowerment Station. Presumably, on the internal testing machines, there have been workbenches, power stations and mainframes sitting there unnoticed for the last month or so.

To listen to you, one would think that was perfectly feasible, on account of the Devs having made too many Winter Lords spawn or some such.

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True, you have sort of made this thread your crusade.

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Nah. My crusade was 'Save Sally'.

*sniff*

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See now I'm confused.

Is the question "What are the empowerment stations?"

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Yes, it is. My error. Sorry. Have gone and edited. Toooooo many posts, not enough coffee.

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It is easy to guess that in absense of anything more definitive then the plurality of "items"

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The question was 'What are the empowerment stations?' How is that not definitive?

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Don't think they are craftable BUT I believe your costs are right if I'm right that the level 2 and level 3 take power and control.

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I already showed you a redname quote that says they don't. Why do you want to believe they will?

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Thank you Posi for posting the numbers, but I think the 130,000 you quoted is light. Assuming these items are craftable, it would require a working Work table.

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Obviously they don't need to be crafted, or Posi would have factored that in. This is a Very Good Thing.

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I grasp it completely. It’s just an irrelevant distinction.

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No, it's not, and I shall explain why. Again.

None of the errors that you have mentioned were obviously errors at the time of design. They are all errors because of a failure to correctly anticipate player behaviour.

However, an accidentally overpriced Empowerment Station is glaringly obvious, even in the design stage. It's a numeric issue, not a behavioural one. It doesn't depend on player behaviour to stand out as an error. Because of that, it's not the kind of error a halfway competent Dev is going to make.

In brief, to make that kind of error, a Dev would have to say 'I know we intended to make these items affordable for small SGs, but we accidentally made them far too expensive, because we forgot all about factors X Y and Z.'

Do you really think that could happen? If so, you credit the Devs with far less competence than I do.

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Low-end...items. Last time I checked the low-end empowerment station and salvage rack would count as "items."

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But the question was 'What are the empowerment stations?'

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What are the empowerment stations?

* Low-end base items that can give your characters a buff in exchange for Salvage. These base items are self-powered, so even a bare-bones base will be able to install and use it.

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(Insert reciprocal snarky comment about reading comprehension here.)

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No, he gave the power and control for the "lowest level empowerment station" and the "Salvage storage rack." NOT the lvl 2-3 of either variety.

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Look again:

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What are the empowerment stations?

* Low-end base items that can give your characters a buff in exchange for Salvage. These base items are self-powered, so even a bare-bones base will be able to install and use it.

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Items. Plural.

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So you want it for free?

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No, no, no. I'm just countering those who were worried about some SGs being too small to benefit. It was a happy post, not a whiny one.

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Hasn't it been stated that all of these are self-powered and require no control?

[/ QUOTE ]Where did you read THAT?

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One of the Positron interviews, I think. I'm trying to find it now.

EDIT: Here you go. It was in the MMORPG.com interview.

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What are the empowerment stations?

* Low-end base items that can give your characters a buff in exchange for Salvage. These base items are self-powered, so even a bare-bones base will be able to install and use it.

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I think this is entirely do-able by 2 or 3 fairly dedicated players, especially if they get started on their base early in their careers.

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I was actually thinking 'woohoo, a SG as small as seven people could use this'. But you're right, of course - even smaller SGs could get a lot from it.

Anyway, it's easily do-able by two. Just fill the 13 other SG slots with alts, and who knows what treasures 300,000 Prestige will get you?

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1) What is the energy control cost for the Lvl 2 and Lvl 3 empowerment stations and storage units? Do they scale as badly as work stations?

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Hasn't it been stated that all of these are self-powered and require no control?

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Empowerment Stations occupy the Empowerment slot, not a Workbench slot.

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So do Storage items occupy a Storage slot?

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Total Cost for working Salvage storage and a working Empowerment Station: 130,000 Prestige

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7 members at 20,000 bonus Prestige per member = 140,000 Prestige

Minimum number of members necessary to achieve this: 7.

Devs' idea of a small SG: seven members.

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SHOW ME where I said that PLAYERS would make empowerment stations unaffordable. My first, last, and only point has always been that the DEVS could easily screw it up, because they have made so many simple and obvious errors in the past. What part of “devs” do you not understand?

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What you are evidently having immense trouble grasping is the NATURE of the errors that the Devs have made, which you cited. They all depended upon player use to screw them up. My point, which is really very simple, is that making a design decision to which players then react to unexpectedly is NOT the same as making a design decision that cripples your intent in and of itself, straight off the bat, making it unworkable for the very players for which it was intended (small SGs).

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I’m saying that the devs might set the price of these things too high.

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Oh, do pay attention - the idea that they might set the price too high for some people's tastes isn't being disputed. The idea that they might set them too high by a) requiring a big room to put them in and b) brainlessly overlooking the prestige cost HAS been disputed.

Or - as I keep asking - do you perhaps think that's a valid concern? Do you really think the Devs would accidentally make empowerment stations too expensive by SOMEHOW requiring you to buy huge rooms for them? Maybe I could get an answer this time, instead of your delightful rhetoric?

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You seem to have this truly bizarre idea that numerous examples of past mistakes from the devs has nothing to do with the possibility of them making future mistakes!

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Are you really not capable of telling the difference between different KINDS of mistake? It's one thing not to anticipate what players will do with Winter Lords. It's another to promise affordable additions which then turn out to be unaffordable, not by design but by oversight.

By the way, there are numbers now, so this discussion is redundant.

Just as well. I hate disagreeing with someone with an Invader Zim icon.

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NONE of the examples that I gave above, which were the start of the “kerfuffle” you and I are involved in,

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I'm afraid that this has nothing to do with 'you and I' - that's not the kerfuffle I was talking about. I was referring to the ongoing disagreement about the likely pricing of the empowerment stations, to which you are but one contributor.

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has anything to do with what a dev said. You know, all of these examples are of decisions.

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And the whole reason why your examples are inapplicable to the discussion is that they do have to do with decisions that have been taken and the results of which are evident, rather than inferences made from statements like 'easily affordable'.

Try to keep up.

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You start out by saying (implying, actually) that the devs would surely have thought of everything when they price the new base items.

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Yes. There are a few, extremely limited, influences on item cost, and it's safe to say they would have thought of all of them.

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So I give examples of other bad outcomes to their decisions that they never “thought” of.

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... which had to do with unexpected things that the players did with their ideas. Now, I'm sure they should have thought of some of these things in advance; but if you can come up with a way in which a player could make the empowerment stations unaffordable, then I'd love to hear it.

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Then to you it all suddenly becomes an argument about what a red name said.

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This has all proceeded from what a redname said, and whether said redname can be trusted to deliver... that has been the crux from the word go.

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When I post the classic example of a direct statement from a red name that was in conflict with later reality, you claim “vagueness,” but not necessarily deceit, stupidity, or incompetence. When I point out that at least one of these three had to be involved,

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I don't remember agreeing with you on that.

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your argument changes again into “catastrophically stupid” (as opposed to, I guess, regular everyday stupidity).

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Yes. Because they would have to be catastrophically stupid to overprice empowerment stations by accident.

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You’re comparing the game breaking effect of moving travel powers to level 46 with the game breaking effect of over pricing a few pieces of totally optional base equipment.

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No, I'm saying that a comparatively high level of incompetence would be needed to do either of these things unintentionally. And that's what you're just not looking at. The point where I first expressed disbelief at the reaction here was when someone suggested that the Devs would require players to get unaffordably large rooms to place otherwise affordable stations in. That suggestion is ridiculous. Or don't you think so?

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Its being included so that small SGs can have something functional.

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Yes, exactly. It's there to make bases have a POINT. And making bases USEFUL is so crucial to getting the whole base idea back on track that they'd be crazy not to make the empowerment stations easily available.

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With data points you can determine the baseline.

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My point is that there is no reason to suppose that the Devs have excluded even the smallest SGs from their definition of 'small'. You're acting as if a 'small' SG had to have some kind of a minimum level of membership. You're also acting as if it's important that these new features should be worked for - that whole 'you don't value it unless it cost you' line. I don't think that's the design philosophy here at all. This is supposed to be a boost for small SGs, not a new sort of carrot to keep small SGs grinding away.

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Where would that leave the 5 member SGs if they set the bar at 15 as their baseline?

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That's exactly what I meant by 'too small to warrant help'. The question isn't what is small, it's what is too small.

I don't think you can properly design something to help small SGs without it helping even the very smallest SGs. The empowerment stations range from Basic to Advanced, so that allows a variable cost for variable items. I'd be very surprised indeed if a one person SG, with the 20,000 Prestige bonus awarded for having one member, couldn't build a Basic empowerment station.

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We really need to answer the following question: What does the development team think a "small SG" consists of?

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Actually, we need to answer the question 'What kind of SG does the development team consider too small to warrant help?'

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Still, you simply haven’t been reading my words very closely. Most of the examples I gave earlier had nothing to do with what they said,

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This whole kerfuffle is based on what they said. If it had been based on a decision, then there might be some merit to it.

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I’m just calling you out on your utterly unsupportable position that the devs cannot make an error

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But this is the kind of error that would be tantamount to giving bazookas to Hellions or moving travel powers to level 46. The Devs are NOT infallible. I've never said that they are, not once. But they are NOT catastrophically stupid either.