Schismatrix

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Not sure why all the angst FatherXmas, but I was confused by it all and wanted someone to explain it to me. The "Player Questions" forum seemed kinda like the place for that. I got the answer earlier in a much nicer post, but thanks anyways.

[/ QUOTE ]His reply contained nothing that resembled angst. Are you sure that's the word you meant to use?

i too am curious as to what you are trying to make work. What is it that you're trying to do?

Short answer: No.

Longer answer: No, we still don't know.

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It's beem entertaining to watch his posts become less rational even as they become more articulate. Eventually i expect him to reach timecube levels of incomprehensibility/irrelevance. It's like he's attempting the Chewbacca defense.

[/ QUOTE ]What's the Chewbacca defense?

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Here.

Also here.

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till he has something worth saying, I'd take everything like a grain of salt from him.

[/ QUOTE ]It's been entertaining to watch his posts become less rational even as they become more articulate. Eventually i expect him to reach timecube levels of incomprehensibility/irrelevance. It's like he's attempting the Chewbacca defense.

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Survive

1 : to remain alive or in existence : live on
2 : to continue to function or prosper



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Okay, going by number 2 I count.

Soul Transfer is Yummy.

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i have 2 Dark Armor Scrappers that occasionally use Soul Transfer as part of their attack chain. Hilarious for disorienting AV's.
<3 mag 30 autohit stun.

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Do we have the grandest idea?

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I had an idea about it all, but so far BABs refuses to discuss Pony Melee.




[/ QUOTE ]It will have synergies with Trout Armor.

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14 pages and goin' strong.

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i only see 4 pages.

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I love what KO blow does, I hate how it looks doing it.

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Hey, if we're really lucky, i16 will allow alternate animations for our powers.

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Knowing BaBs, we would have to be astronomically lucky.


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I think I know me, and I have no idea what you're inferring.

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I think he's saying the odds of getting lucky with you by I16 are astronomical.

I think he's right .... for once.

[/ QUOTE ]i think you're right. Weird, that means J_B's post had two points instead of just the usual one at the end to prevent total pointlessness.[/snark]

Based on what i've read about how the engine handles powers and animations i'd sort of expect BAB to run screaming into the night if he was told that they were adding alternate animations to all the powers. (Assuming the process of making Going Rogue doesn't actually include redesigning the engine from the ground up and free anti-psychotics for the Developers.) Still, just adding the ability to change power colors is a pretty major change, so who knows?

Not seeing wings as more than brief flickers in the tailor screen on any model. i'm also seeing the absence of animations in the tailor screen. The trenchcoat tail is frozen in place, but at least it's visible.

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Well, if you're too high level for him, you don't need anything he sells.

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Go talk to Ghost Falcon near the ferry in Peregrine Island. If Mark IV says you're too high then Ghost Falcon will have what you want. He also requires that you do a mission for him to access the store.

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Mind, Plant and Illusion can even engage battles with enemies scrappers of the same level wouldnt dare attack

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Methinks the scrappers you have seen are wusses. I have seen nothing in the game a real scrapper wouldn't attack.

Silly domesticated scrappers keep forgetting how to kill things

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I don't play Scrappers, but I have not met any yet that "did not dare to attack," bless 'em.

[/ QUOTE ]Despite not having access to the Ninjutsu powerset Scrappers tend to be the most "flip out and kill stuff" Archetype. Solid defenses and an inherent based around doing the most damage against higher rank enemies (bosses and up) means that Scrappers always tend to charge in and attack the meanest, toughest enemy in the area first.

There is also a condition known as Scrapperlock. When it occurs a Scrapper will keep fighting no matter how overwhelming the odds are against them. Rest of team fleeing or on the floor? No matter, they just keep cutting down the enemies until either the enemies all drop or the Scrapper does. However, Scrappers survive this situation often enough that it's actually a viable play style. A Scrapper in the throes of Scrapperlock may make a wrong turn and not notice the rest of the team went the other way until they've cleared half the map and run out of targets.

Brutes are comparable on redside, in fact their inherent encourages relentless, nonstop aggression. Every attack you make or are targeted with boosts your damage output, and it declines quickly if you aren't attacking or being attacked, so once a Brute gets going they tend not to stop unless there's nothing left to fight.

Stalkers, despite having access to Ninjutsu, are the more methodical AT. You take a few seconds to assess the enemy and plan, then you flip out and kill stuff.

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Does it have an adverse impact?

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Nope.



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Well, some teams might leave you behind if they're not willing to wait for you to sprint to the mission.

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Then Hurdle to the mission. It's almost as fast as Fly. Pick up a few +Movement/+Jump set bonuses and cruise. Or play a character with access to +Run Speed, like Banes or /SR scrappers.

Still haven't been kicked from or denied a team due to my lack of travel powers, on any character. Or had my choices questioned. So if you find those mythical "some teams" who do refuse to play with people who don't take travel powers, let me know, because in over three years, I've never encountered them.

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My Widow doesn't have a full travel power, but she does have Combat Jumping. i built her with the concept of using the old-school "ninja leaping" that many action anime characters used before DBZ and the like made it nearly obligatory that nearly everyone be able to fly at jet speeds or faster. With multiple set bonuses it's not difficult to beat other team members to mission doors and even with Combat Jumping for maneuvering it can be hard to not overshoot small landing platforms.

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So you're saying attacks while phased should land criticals? And why can't my AR Blaster use Full Auto while phased for bonus damage?

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No, just saying it makes sense in terms of genre conventions for powers that can be dropped and to left to work on their own to affect non-phased enemies.

With the current limits on phase powers it's rather hard to exploit the mechanic to any significant degree, though there are some powers that can potentially inflict significant damage when used from a phased state. *Thinks a moment.... Hmmm, perhaps i'm wrong about the exploitability* Photon Seekers and Omega Device are two that come to mind. Rain powers like Ice Storm? (No idea on the latter, must remember to pick up Warburg phase power for my Dark/Ice Def and test this.)

Assuming this becomes a significant issue i think the best solution from a balance standpoint would be to have any pet or pseudo-pet powers inherit the summoner's phase buff/power the same way most inherit other buffs, like build up and speed boost, from the summoner.

[i]Edit: Photon Seekers of course work while Quantum Flight phasing is active. Those Warriors never knew what hit them.

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When a player is in phase, they can still lay down traps like caltrops, acid mortar, etc. that effect others?

I thought if a player is phased that they are out of sync with reality, so how is it possible then for these items to effect another player before the person laying the traps unphases?

By effect I mean cause damage, hold or slow. I've always wondered this, just never bothered to ask before now.

Anyone have an explaination?

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Concept wise, you could argue that once the object (calitrops, mortar, etc) leaves the players 'phase field' (for lack of a better word), ie thrown or layed down, they phase back into normal reality, but before the players uses them, they are phased with him.

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I second this explanation, as I was going to offer it myself before I noticed your post. It's like things being dropped by an invisible character becoming visible again in common fiction all the time.

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Characters out of phase with reality releasing an object so that it phases back into reality and causes damage is a very old trope in fiction and comics. This is used to eavesdrop, harass, injure and occasionally kill. In fiction it often causes severe trauma or instant death when done as an attack. Occasionally on a thermonuclear bomb level.

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I make paper! in rate that im fine with! My pvp toons are IOed... and my personal storage bins is stock with some good crafted IO's and Cambell soup. So in the urban words " I gets mine"

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Translation: ELF STALKER has learned how to use the litter box and can opener. When he tries to use both at once he sometimes eats his own poop by mistake.

Thus he has become Mancatdog.

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Yeah. Hey Babs, do you think maybe we could get a list of ALL of the emotes *in* game please? Like the one we already have, but all of them. There are so many I forget about it isnt funny, and I have always wondered why all the emotes wasnt in the list that you can bring up where you can just click on them instead of having to type them in.

Think maybe, please please, huh huh?

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Actually, you have many duplicates in there. You list 285 emotes, but there are only 206 even if you inclue "Dance" "Ledgesit" "Handsup" and "Surrender" which trigger a random one of a subset...

(I'm redoing quickchat.mnu for myself...)

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You made it look like you quoted me...with no list...I know that you are quoting BaBs though...still a tad funny ..And I am sure he knows that there are doubles. He just put a list of what can be used, double or no double.

[/ QUOTE ]Yep, there are a number of emotes with multiple valid commands, so of course there would be more commands listed than there are emotes.

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He bought the game when it hit the shelves in 04 and quickly noticed that people were ignoring how the pvp areas were supposed to be used?

[/ QUOTE ]Or maybe he noticed the complete absence of PvP in '04?
Because, y'know, there wasn't any PvP at launch.

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I take it you didn't read past my first sentence.

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*sigh* Yes, reading comprehension for the lose.
Started to read it just as a headache was coming on and sort of skimmed/was distracted.
*heh*
Going to go sleep now.

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He bought the game when it hit the shelves in 04 and quickly noticed that people were ignoring how the pvp areas were supposed to be used?

[/ QUOTE ]Or maybe he noticed the complete absence of PvP in '04?
Because, y'know, there wasn't any PvP at launch.

Already ongoing threads here (Champion) and here (Virtue).

From the comments section of the article:
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Posted by StarkFist on 07/06/09 at 3:27PM

I am a COH player and veteran of other online games. I'm not a huge fan of PVP, but even though I rarely go into the PVP zones, I had heard of Twixt through the grapevine. However, contrary to this article, Twixt was never the most reviled person in the game or even on his server, just a minor annoyance to the small PVP community with delusions of grandeur.

In my experience, in game or real life, you get back a lot of what you put out there. If you treat people with kindness and respect, they tend to treat you with respect in return. On the other hand, if you treat everyone you meet with contempt, you should not be surprised when people start to dislike you. Or to put it even more simply, what goes around, comes around.
This rule of "social groups," to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, did not originate with video games.

The article makes it sound like "magically transporting other players to a robot firing squad" takes some kind of skill. It does not- even a non-PVP player like me could sit around and do that all day if I wanted to be as scorned as Twixt. In the game it is generally considered cowardly since there is not any actual fight or skill involved. Yes, it is technically within the "rules" but is not considered sportsmanlike or honorable. If what this article claims is true, it wasn't Twixt's "skill" that kept him alive, it was his ability to hide behind the robotic skirts of the zone drones.

His "experiment" seems to be to test the hypothesis that if you behave like a jerk in a video game, people will treat you like a jerk. Shocking, groundbreaking work there. GG Prof. Myers.

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Posted by mellas on 07/06/09 at 4:31PM

What the professor was doing is known by the colloquialism of "griefing". It comes standard with every online videogame ever created in the history of the internet, and the professor's methods are hardly unique. I think it is strange that he's marketing his methods as simply "playing outside the rules" when he is in fact deliberately enraging other players to see their reactions. There's really no shame in doing that, for research purposes or otherwise, so why try to hide what you're really doing?

As a longtime griefer I can tell you that this man's research on the topic is quite uninspired. From 1999 to 2003, on EverQuest's Rallos Zek server, far more interesting things developed as the result of the interfacing between "honorable" player-killers, griefers, and players called "Antis" who opposed player-killing altogether. Because the rules of the server made it free-for-all (eg. no heroes and villains, you simply kill whoever you want with very few restrictions), cliques were free to develop in a more unstructured way far more representative of raw human nature. This, coupled with the fact that the penalty for dying is increased 1000-fold from City of Heroes (your killer loots all of your money, one piece of your armor, and you lose hours worth of experience) make it a far more ideal setting for observing the rage of online gamers. Here you would see revenge crimes extend into real life, the prime example of which being when a friend of mine had his account hacked and stolen, then used to make threats so that police arrived at his house late in the night to interrogate him. This is interesting; the "research" here is not.

This guy's age shows in how out-of-touch with the online gaming community he is. Perhaps he should have spoken to a *real* gamer about his methods before he conducted this hackneyed, boring "study".

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Posted by iltat on 07/06/09 at 5:09PM

I'm actually a CoH player who PvPed both with and against Twixt (I am not any of the players named, and my verbal interactions with Twixt were quite limited). I'd like to clear up a few things that seem to be missing. Note that I am, in no way, discounting the seriousness of death threats, but maybe a little more understanding of what really took place will allow people to relate better to the frustration.

1) Twixt's actions in PvP translated to an investment of time. By teleporting (the action described) villains into a row of firing squad computer-generated enemies, he would give the other character debt. This debt would impede the character's ability to gain experience by cutting it in half for a certain period of time. Thus, anyone who suffered from what Twixt did would pay for it by having their progress cut in half the next time they got the opportunity to play. A full portion of debt could take upwards of 3 hours of nonstop play to be worked off.

Imagine you go play miniature golf. Directly in front of you is a group of 10 children who have no idea what they're doing. You are unable to skip past them, and as is allowed, they refuse to let you pass. Due to this inconvenience, you only get to play 9 holes (or 4, if you're only on a 9-hole course). Would you be frustrated? I sure would be. They didn't break the rules, but they hurt the fun of my outing by specifically robbing me of the time that I had dedicated to accomplishing my goal. It's not much different than traffic, bowling balls getting stuck in the lanes, people talking during a movie, or any other issue that would rob an individual of their free time. The individuals causing your frustration may not be breaking the rules, but they are affecting your enjoyment.

2) Twixt's account of what took place in the PvP zones he visited just plain isn't accurate.

People did chat because many of the players had played together prior to the release of City of Villains (CoH was released in May of 2004 while CoV in October of 2006). Most of us already knew each other. However, that didn't result in a lack of fighting. Many times, Twixt would simply teleport people from battles already in place to his computer-generated death squads. He's presenting the situation as if he was the only one using the zones correctly when, in actuality, he was just the only one manipulating loopholes to allow him to generally be mean to other players. That's the biggest reason why he was despised.

3) Twixt commonly made fun of players he killed.

He did not simply say random hero-supporting things, he oftentimes bragged openly after using his computer-generated helpers to kill someone. Like any other competitive situation, bragging and talking trash will earn people talking back and becoming more upset. He worked to goad individuals into becoming angrier at what he did.

He mentions the forums as a place where people speculated about parts of his life, but he seems to have left out where he posted kill-logs from his time spent in PvP zones. He posted quite frequently on those boards, and he went out of his way to fuel the hate that developed for him. Professional athletes who do such a thing are widely derided by the media and fans. Twixt worked hard to generate hate, he was not simply an innocent victim.

4) Twixt died. A lot.

Twixt perfected his method of generating debt for other players by dying a whole lot along the way. Statements like, "But no one could stay alive long enough to defeat Twixt..." completely misrepresent what happened.

5) Twixt's research plays a role by examining another realm of society, but his results are predictable.

It's not surprising that people get upset when you're mean to them without reason. On an unmarked curb, it's legal for me to park 5 feet away from the cars in front of and behind me, but it's simply rude to do so. If I did so directly in front of hundreds of different people who were looking for a parking spot, it's not unreasonable to think that these individuals would be angry with me. I would say that's completely predictable. It's also not unheard of for such individuals to threaten others in such a situation. The fact that the anonymity of the internet allows such hotheads to go more extreme with their threats shouldn't exactly come as a shock to anyone either. Thus, while I think research into the societies of online communities can be interesting, I don't think Twixt's can be classified as such.

It's a shame that Twixt is the face of the CoH PvP and gaming community. He presents a very one-sided tale that some folks, such as the writer of this article, have apparently bought into entirely. A whole lot of good takes place in that community, but apparently, writing about that just wouldn't sell a book.

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Was this you?
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Posted by StarkFist on 07/06/09 at 3:27PM

I am a COH player and veteran of other online games. I'm not a huge fan of PVP, but even though I rarely go into the PVP zones, I had heard of Twixt through the grapevine. However, contrary to this article, Twixt was never the most reviled person in the game or even on his server, just a minor annoyance to the small PVP community with delusions of grandeur.

In my experience, in game or real life, you get back a lot of what you put out there. If you treat people with kindness and respect, they tend to treat you with respect in return. On the other hand, if you treat everyone you meet with contempt, you should not be surprised when people start to dislike you. Or to put it even more simply, what goes around, comes around.
This rule of "social groups," to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, did not originate with video games.

The article makes it sound like "magically transporting other players to a robot firing squad" takes some kind of skill. It does not- even a non-PVP player like me could sit around and do that all day if I wanted to be as scorned as Twixt. In the game it is generally considered cowardly since there is not any actual fight or skill involved. Yes, it is technically within the "rules" but is not considered sportsmanlike or honorable. If what this article claims is true, it wasn't Twixt's "skill" that kept him alive, it was his ability to hide behind the robotic skirts of the zone drones.

His "experiment" seems to be to test the hypothesis that if you behave like a jerk in a video game, people will treat you like a jerk. Shocking, groundbreaking work there. GG Prof. Myers.

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Actual post here.
Very well said. Quite honestly i feel the tone of the article and the Professor's own words show him to be very lacking in even a pretense of objectivity or awareness of how many others actually viewed him in regards to his own behavior.

i also recall him being a topic of humor and mild annoyance for most, not "the most hated player in the game". True, some of the PvP types might have felt that way, but even most of them just thought he was annoying or amusing IIRC.

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I confess, it was me. I thought I'd confuse people by using the same handle I've used for 5 years, but you saw through my little ruse.

[/ QUOTE ]Yes, yes. i'm (not) clever like that.

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No you won't. You'll get banned if you impersonate a Dev, but not for RPing as a signature character.

[/ QUOTE ]Minicore. A tiny version of Manticore who still very occasionally shows up at Virtue Hami raids. Minicore was part of a miniature Freedom Phalanx group. i remember seeing several of them running around Kings Row some time back when they were still little in levels as well.

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Okay, what am I missing here?

Every time I go into a PvP zone, it's made very clear that there are no rules. Everything goes. That's been the mantra on every occasion I've set foot in there.

[/ QUOTE ]That's not quite accurate, though people in the zones may have told you that.

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So this professor operates under that agreement, and gets pages worth of hate for it? I'm confused.

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Try reading some of the posts in response to the article. It's not as simple, yet confusing, as you think. If nothing else, the professor misrepresents his behavior and the responses to it in the article.

Honestly, the most insightful and accurate responses i've seen regarding what actually occurred are those in the article's comments section by StarkFist and iltat.

This is also being discussed in a thread in Virtue's forums.

Also, very well-written response at the paper's site, Ping.
i've also found the other responses to the article interesting and occasionally amusing.

This was also posted and discussed here.
Honestly, out of all the posts here, there, and on the paper's site i think StarkFist has given the best response that i've read.

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Its a global channel for Badges, Monsters, Task/Strike forces.

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For the Champion community. It's excellent for joining or forming task forces, teams, community events, and such. Thanks to the people who moderate it!!! You're the best! (Was that sucking up? Oh well, deal with it!!)

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Also a great channel for general chat and fun conversations when certain moderators aren't on!

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Latenight BMT is ----> that way.

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The ironic part is that latenight BMT works just about the same way regular BMT of Champion works during the latenight.

Also my post has nothing to do with farming Schisomatrix

[/ QUOTE ]Farming or following? Though on the forums the distinction may be moot.