Smurch

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You are offbase. Like i said the particles exist, the definition we call light doesn't. I'm done arguing the point because you are going to keep arguing in a circle of statements you keep regurgitating....

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In physics, the term light sometimes refers to electromagnetic radiation of any wavelength, whether visible or not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light

You may want to actually study more about physics before you attempt to argue about it.

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If a tree falls on a mime in the forest and no one is around does it make a sound?

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It emits the waves that can be detected as sound, but like I've been saying. Until those are interpreted by whatever being can sense it, then it isn't defined as sound.

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So you keep saying. However, you are simply factually wrong. Continuing to say it won't make it any more correct.

I think you're confusing the audible sense of the brain that we call "sound" with the scientific idea of "sound".

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I didn't say it doesn't exist... I said it doesn't exist as we define the perception of it... What causes it to be observed exists in its measurable quantities but if no entity is there to give it definition or a container to fit it into measurable definitions then it is merely just particles, and such existing without being observed.

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Sorry you misunderstood the principles you're attempting to quote. There is a physical reality that exists beyond observation. You're misunderstanding bell's theorem, where in certain subatomic particles are directly influenced in their behavior by the act of being observed, but that only applies in very specific situations.

And also we don't need to perceive things to observe them. You're confounding the common use of observe with the scientific definition of observe. We can make observations indirectly as well as directly.

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Until one 'sees' or 'hears' them in whatever capacity the life form has, then it isn't light

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That is factually incorrect. Photons traveling through space are light. Always. No matter if anyone sees them or not. Similarly, occilating waves traveling through an elastic medium are the very definition of sound. They can be observed to exist without anyone perceiving them and yes, they are still sound, regardless if YOU personally can understand that things exist outside of your brain or not.

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it is a wavelength. It isn't sound, it is a wave.... etc so on and so forth.

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Again, this is scientifically and factually incorrect.

Sound and Light exist independent of biological perceptions. We can prove this.

I suggest you brush up a bit on basic physics. You're very offbase.

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If there is no sensory perception of it then it isn't there.

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Scientifically speaking, this is false.

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The wave is there

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The kind of wave that is there is a sound wave. Sound IS the wave. The problem is coming from the confusion between confounding the scientific definition of sound, which is a wave generated by occilating pressure through a physical medium, and the common concept of sound which is "something I can hear".

Scientifically speaking sound has a physical reality which can both be directly and indirectly observed. It is not a perception.

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Perception doesn't preclude the existence but withot the ability to perceive it, it isn't there in how we describe as 'light' or as 'sound'.

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You're incorrect. Light and sound have physical realities. Our perceptions of them, which are by the way very faulty, do not dictate their existence. Again, we can scientifically prove their existence through indirect observation, i.e. bypassing our perceptions entirely to view their effects on another, unrelated medium (such as light on a photographic plate for instance).

Light and sound have an objective, measurable reality that in no wise requires perception, human or otherwise, to define.

in fact, we can say that the human perception of light and sound is very limited and barely is able to perceive either of them at all. This is why terms like "the visible spectrum of light" and "the audible frequency range of sound" exist: because we know that we can only perceive a very small part of those things and there is much more to the reality of both of them than we're capable of perceiving. No human eye is capable of perceiving ultraviolet light, but that does not mean it does not exist.

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Click the little red star on the left side of the nav bar. It will let you read the contact text. You don't get to see the return to contact text though, and you have to wait until you get into the mission.

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You don't actually need to wait until you go into the mission. you can instead open the Missions window on the nav bar, and click on the button by the mission in the list there. It will bring up the window for you with all the text.

If you'd like to see the return text, ask your team leader to cut and paste it into the team chat.

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There was one little note that got put into one of the more recent patches that no one has discussed, and it disgusts me that the community would let it go unnoticed.

You removed ChickenTug Emote from MA!

I miss having all posable foes looking like they were desecrating a chicken for abhorrent reasons! That emote REALLY tied my arc together, and now it's gone.

So I'll make this sweet; Return my emote, and I'll allow you to publish your 'Going Rogue' without any 'unforeseen circumstances' happening to your precious... Stuff.

But seriously, what was up with that emote? Maybe the Banished Pantheon might've used it for rituals, but... What WAS it?!

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It was removed because it animation locked mobs into exploitable levels.

As for what it is, it's the eternal struggle of civilian vs enemy for the chiclets in their purse. But with a chicken!

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Chiclets... chickens... I think you're on to something.

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But seriously, what was up with that emote? Maybe the Banished Pantheon might've used it for rituals, but... What WAS it?!

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Because of the long animation time causing some people to exploit that to essentially be able to kill the npc stuck in the emote before they could fight back. So they removed the emote.

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The Fifth Column Oroborous 'TF'.

Last room. Fighting off ALL of those Ambushes while fighting Maestro, Requiem, -and- Vandal on their little platform. 1 SR scrapper, 2 Regens. We survived by the skin of our teeth through the Triple AV Aggro, then spent a good 4 minutes fighting back against all the ambush waves. Both Regens died at least three times before we all went down.

AWESOME fight. =-3

-Rachel-

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We did it with 1 brute and 1 /kin Corr.
it *was* a great fight!

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For that matter, are you sure this is real at all?

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Yes.

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Perhaps you are dreaming that you are who you think you are, and that you're sitting at a computer reading this thread. Perhaps you are something else when you wake up, but you won't remember that until you do.

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No.

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That implies that at some point in the past, a chicken was hatched from the egg of a different animal, albeit likely related. But a housecat cannot spontaneously give birth to a tiger cub (naturally, that is!).

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Alright I think that explaining the nuances of how speciation occurs over time (and why housecats dont become tigers) via evolution is beyond the scope of this thread.

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Back to the original point. Someone upthread called it "Schroedinger's Zone" and that is a pretty good description. since we have to be in a zone to see if a zone exists then it is not possible to tell if a zone exists or doesn't exist if we're not in it.

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Not exactly, because someone out there, the server ops, DO know if the zone is there or not. We're just limited by our perspectives.

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That's one of the quantum physics quandaries.

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No, but it's a common misunderstanding of it.

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I have often suspected that you could drop a group of players into a perfectly balanced game and they'd never know it, because they would focus on what other players do that they can't, blame build for deficiencies in their skill, and clamor for 'theme' based buffs to already balanced classes.

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I am certain that is true.

Ultimately, however, its not the number of complaints in a forum that show you the health of any game system, it's the percentage of your players using said game system or subsystem. If no one is using it then it's not serving it's intended purpose, to add value to the game as a whole.

People go to PVP zones to get badges and little else. There's a ton of cool content that's not being used or is implemented in a way that no one wants to use it (I LOVE the "hotspot" battle system in Siren's Call, for example, but that's kinda broken now plus even when we had it, hardly anyone used it)

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Arcanaville's post gives a lot of food for thought. I wonder if it's possible to recreate City PvP as she describes, and how it would be received if it were handed over whole cloth. If it is what the Devs are aiming for and they are adding pieces of such a system a bit at a time and gathering data before moving forward, it might be appreciated if they said so straight out.

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Agreed. It'd be nice to know what their ultimate vision is. The devs tend to be very closed mouthed about things in this game, and I do understand why, but I think they sometimes do so in instances where it does more harm than good, this being one of them. I've already decided to give up on PVP in this game and just play PVE (which, again, I think the game does very well). It's going to take some really significant improvements to convince me to come back to PVP.

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Compared to the "take your breath away" MA Arcs? Oh wait, there aren't any.

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Well its odd...because the very people who you say are creating vastly superior stuff are stamping Dev Choice on quite a few of those absolute stinkers.

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I too am perplexed at the criteria for dev's choice. However, that doesn't suddently change my opinion of the content I've already experienced and enjoyed in the game.

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Of course you're probably going to say they are either all lying about the fact that they enjoyed some player made stuff or that the players who got Dev Choice have sucked up to the devs in some form or fashion.

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I wouldn't even begin to speculate in such a fashion. I have no idea why the devs selected those missions for devs choice, and unless they choose to tell use, any speculation we could engage in is purely academic.

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For the record I enjoyed several of the storylines you listed in your post. But I still wouldn't say its impossible for a player to create a story that is as good some of them.

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Sure it's possible. But it's also unlikely. And when it does happen it's going to be rare. The vast bulk of the MA is never going to rival the rest of the game. A handful of player created missions that are as engaging as the existing content isn't about to usurp the rest of the game.

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The Neverwinter Nights community had several people that produced stuff good enough to get them job offers from Bioware.

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I remember. I also remember that they were few and far between

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I find it hard to believe that we don't have one decent storyteller in all of the COX community.

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I don't think anyone ever argued otherwise.

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That implies that at some point in the past, a chicken was hatched from the egg of a different animal, albeit likely related. But a housecat cannot spontaneously give birth to a tiger cub (naturally, that is!).

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Alright I think that explaining the nuances of how speciation occurs over time (and why housecats dont become tigers) via evolution is beyond the scope of this thread.

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BTW, before we get to this semi-inevitable point....

There were eggs before chickens.

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Probably.

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Then what laid the eggs?

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Proto-chicken. Likely a common ancestor of the Guinnea Hen.

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But this also implies a type of punctuated evolution of the sort I have never heard of before. I do not think the first chicken hatched from the egg of an ancestor of the guinnea hen.

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Ah you're right it's the junglefowl not the guinneafowl.
It was good for you to call fowl on that.

*ducks*

What?

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BTW, before we get to this semi-inevitable point....

There were eggs before chickens.

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Probably.

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Then what laid the eggs?

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Proto-chicken

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Exactly. Or, if you prefer, Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish, Insects... all orders of life much older than birds and all of which are known to lay eggs.

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The question "which came first, the chicken or the egg", it's implicit the question presumes a CHICKEN egg.

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BTW, before we get to this semi-inevitable point....

There were eggs before chickens.

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Probably.

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Then what laid the eggs?

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Proto-chicken. Likely a common ancestor of the Guinnea Hen.

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Which likely hatched from an egg...

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Which line of reasoning are you struggling with? The mutation of proto-chicken into chicken or the ontological arguement of potential chicken to actual chicken?

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BTW, before we get to this semi-inevitable point....

There were eggs before chickens.

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Probably, if we're talking from an evolutionary perspective.

But ontologically, Chickens come first. Because the egg is only a potential chicken and a chicken is an actual chicken and since actuality preceeds potentiality, the chicken comes first.

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But that chicken hatched from an egg, didn't it?

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Presumably since oviparous species tend to evole into viviparous species and not the other way around.

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BTW, before we get to this semi-inevitable point....

There were eggs before chickens.

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Probably.

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Then what laid the eggs?

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Proto-chicken. Likely a common ancestor of the Guinnea Hen.

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BTW, before we get to this semi-inevitable point....

There were eggs before chickens.

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Probably, if we're talking from an evolutionary perspective.

But ontologically, Chickens come first. Because the egg is only a potential chicken and a chicken is an actual chicken and since actuality preceeds potentiality, the chicken comes first.

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There is no sidestepping. The waves and frequencies exist, but until there is something capable of perceiving it and converting it into information then they are just waves and frequencies.

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There are different kinds of waves and frequencies.
The kind of waves created by occilating pressure through a medium via longitudinal and traverse range is called "sound".

Sound is NOT information as you seem to believe. It's a type of wave. Information can be transmitted via that wave, but the information itself is based on the perception of sound, not sound itself.

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how very Zen.
I prefer the classics though: if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

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No. It makes the air vibrate a lot, yes, but sound is air vibrations converted into sensory information. So no listener, no sound.

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Wait, does that mean that there was no sound anywhere before there were people around to hear it?

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There have been a plethora of creatures that could hear sound before there were humans. There have been creatures that could sense sound waves even if they couldn't hear them.

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That's just sidestepping the issue. Because now I can ask, "well then what about before life began on this planet or anywhere else in the universe? Was there no sound? Was there no light, until there was an eye with which to see it?"

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Sound and light both exist independently of the sensory organs that evolved to perceive them. We can infer their independent existence through indirect observation.

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how very Zen.
I prefer the classics though: if a tree falls in the woods and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

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No. It makes the air vibrate a lot, yes, but sound is air vibrations converted into sensory information. So no listener, no sound.

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Technically incorrect. Sound is actually defined as a traveling wave which is an occilation of pressure through a solid, liquid, or gas. The sensory mechanism of Hearing is how we PERCEIVE sound, but just as eyes are how we perceive light, light itself exists regardless if any eyes are present to see it. Similarly, sound waves exist regardless if any hearing mechanism is present to interpret those waves as sensory information.

Sound has an objective and independent existence from hearing, and can be measured without resorting to using hearing. Thus sound exists even if no one is around to hear it. In fact a completely deaf person could still perceive sounds through other sensory clues, such as the oscillating pressure of the sound waves on their body (which I am sure you yourself have experienced, such as from high decibel sounds, particularly those of low frequency, such as "bass").

Audibility requires hearing, but sound itself exists independently.

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That it doesn't do that in the slightest? Seriously, where do people keep finding these Architect arcs that exceed developer-made content in terms of quality?

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Let me turn this around. Where do you find developer made content that takes your breath away with its wonderful storytelling?

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Compared to the "take your breath away" MA Arcs? Oh wait, there aren't any.

While they don't take my breath away (nothing really does in any game anywhere), some of the stories I really enjoyed have been:

The Imperious Task Force
The Mender Tesseract Task Force
The Diviner Maros "Cult of the Shaper" arc
The Technician Naylor "Automatic Villainy" arc
The Mender Lazarus Task Force
Veluta Lunata "An Arachnos Ghost Story" arc
Doc Buzzsaw's "Die by the freak!" arc
Marshall Brass "Aeon Conspiracy" arc
Serpent Drummer "Dreams of Peace and War" arc

And I found Vernon von Grun pretty entertaining throughout all his arcs (even if I did get sick of just being up DE)

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What would be the difference between what we have now and a system that was designed ground up for PvP?

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Every power and ability within the game would be designed on the assumption that it would be used against another player, and would not be added unless that addition was fair. In addition, the game mechanics would favor proportionality, without any positive feedback or accelerating benefit curves. Finally, numerical balance would be the overriding design priority, because numerical imbalances cannot be moderated when placed in the hands of players.

On top of that, every archetype or class in the game would have to satisfy two separate balance constraints: their contribution to PvE performance (which would be a combination of solo and teamed) would have to be similar, *and* their contribution to PvP kills (depending on the game either solo or within teams or both) would have to be similar. PvP is dominated by singular kills while PvE is dominated by continuous kills and those represent completely different balance constraints (to take an extreme position: a power that can one-shot anything short of AVs and GMs but recharges in ten minutes is a horrible PvE weapon but a fantastic PvP weapon).


If the original designers were actually serious about PvP from the start, they would have severely curtailed high-order AoEs and the balancing problems involved with them, they would have used multiplicative stacking in most of the stacking algorithms, they would have generated a better tohit resolution algorithm, they would have dampened high-order travel powers during combat, they would not have made melee-only archetypes, and they would have calibrated player health against player attacks and not just critter attacks. They would have factored in PvP issues with respect to attribute caps. And they would have put loads of thought into the effect of heals and regeneration on damage mitigation under PvP conditions.

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This is the intelligent version of what I was trying to say.

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Personally if I see a 10 strong mob of even cons or (depending on the character) +1s, I'm always tempted to dive in and see if I can take them all down.


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Oh yeah I do that sort of thing all the time. Love the big groups of Freakshow in St. Martial, for example. You can get groups of 10 easily there.

Sometimes you surprise yourself with exactly what you can handle. Those are the shining moments of the game for me.