Gaizokubanou

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Posts posted by Gaizokubanou


  1. Say they cap the roster to 12.  What then?  You can still get free newbies every week in full squad force, which weakens all the individuality from the adventurers.  Say they put pricing on getting new adventurers... well then, that's a potential failure state right there.

     

    Say quirks can't even be removed.  Then you would just throw out really bad ones and the adventurers at that point becomes too much of a cannon fodder, which is something I don't think you want.

     

    Right now I think the problem isn't that quirks don't stay around long enough, it's that the units (adventurers) holding onto those quirks have so little to be invested in because they can be replaced for absolutely no risk (even though technically that's how it is in all games as they just require time for you to replay the game but that little distinction of game failure state really drives the point well IMO).  We need a reason for that lvl 3 adventurer to hold dear to us, because losing that dude should mean something mechanically other than minor inconvenience (I mean all losses in games are that but you know...).  So it's not that sense of urgency is the goal... it's just a surefire means to giving adventurers high value to be attached to.


  2. Right now all of the problems seem to boil down into simple fact that there is zero pressure for you to progress in this game.


    If this game adopted say, Xcom like mechanic where all missions progressively got harder and you needed to keep veterans alive, the current capacity of sanitarium could be used as is without game becoming trivial.  But right now you can just get free units and cycle them through bunch of level 1 dungeons to max out your town (which is IMO the real progression in this game, and it only goes up) at your leisure.

     

    This game badly needs some sort of failure state.


  3. Another complicated layer on top of that being the fact that people will receive things as more polite or less polite with the same conditioning. Often people of colour can be perceived as being aggressive for saying things that would seem perfectly normal from a white person.

    So do you fall in line with what people expect so that they will accept what you say as polite and acceptable even though doing so cements your position as oppressed by accepting the unfair structure of society?

     

    I would try to go with my best estimate of what would come off with least unnecessary friction based on whom I am speaking to (even if that means giving some ground that I may be right to stand on).  If no estimate is found, just falling back to most humble version I can think of.

     

    Like an example... at my previous minimum wage job, some co-workers would joke to me about how I know martial arts.  I could go and confront them about how that's insensitive and whatnot but I just go along with them cause they got a tough lot in life as is with a minimum wage jobs in a country that speaks different first language, and the jokes felt completely harmless to me (clearly racist jokes, but harmless) as they were generally really nice to me.  But at the same time I would sometimes 'ask' them to not slack off (first, I'm not their boss, just co worker so it would be out of place for me to issue out any orders (guess what though, someone else did and that guy made everyone's life much harder for no reason) and turned out I got lot more hearing time when I was asking rather than telling) when they could cause the work at some level is evaluated on whole so some people slacking off can get some nasty management level shitstorm to tickle down to everyone.

     

    This is assuming that my message's main point is something other than an insult of course, cause then at that point it's all about maximizing harm and I'm already off the rails at that point.  And I do fall off the rail so this isn't me trying to say "oh you ought to be more like meeee", just what I think we all ought to do.


  4. Yes, doing the proper thing doesn't mean that others will treat you back the same.  It's rough out there.  And I sure get bitter and very rage-y  myself.

     

    Maybe this is old news to you but one line of thought that helped me a lot was this one saying from Talmud... "Live well.  It is the greatest revenge."

     

    @SuperBIasedMan,

     

    Yeah, all those are fair things to say.  My thinking was politeness in actual core attitude, not the coverup that's used as a way to sneak in insults and whatnot.

     

    An example would be "hey that's wrong of you to do that" vs "What a fucking asshole to do that".  We see a lot of the latter (not even addressing the person in question to point out the error, just abusive gossiping).

     

    Or another way to put it, get the message out while doing best to minimize potential damage.  Or to put slightly nation-'bashing' spin to it, be the stereotypical Canadian.


  5. My contempt is less for the correction and more for the mob, which feels like the middle ground to me: yes, I'm sure they're an asshole, but right now, my friend, you're also an asshole.

     

    Right.  The proper thing to do is politely point out the problem, not jump into "HEY LOOK AT THIS ASSHOLE EVERYONE" which is what lot of 'Twitter-argument' ends up boiling down into with series of "." retweets and everyone trying their best to be snarky one liner because that's what internet and Twitter popularized.


  6. It might not be breach of contract, but at least in Australia you'd be hard pressed to say that it was a legitimate contract if you promise someone income based entirely on a condition you have no obligation to fulfil. I'd imagine the UK would take a similarly dim view on that.

     

    That's one hell of confusing sentence :P

     

    You agree that it might not be breach of contract, BUT that it would be hard to argue that it was a legitimate contract???

     

    BTW the situation regarding that winner should be looked at through sweepstake regulations, which is completely different from contract and the laws regarding it varies a lot (hence you see why lot of sweepstakes and contests are region limited).


  7. Yeah -- apparently I was more tired than I thought on the bus this morning. I'm dumb and can't read sometimes, sorry y'all!

     

    I also apologies for bit of snarky response without explaining why.  I thought you were trying to flamebait.

     

    On that "interview", wow that's some cringeworthy way of asking questions.


  8. I don't have the time to go into it with links, but Wardell generally has a poor track record as a decent human being. Multiple employees (mostly female) have come forward to complain about a hostile and abusive work environment at Stardock, Wardell's defense of which invariably boils down to his right to treat his employees however he likes, as owner of the company, with the implication (if we're especially lucky) that the complainer was a terrible worker anyway and maybe deserved some mistreatment. It's stopped me from buying Stardock-developed products the last few years, but not yet Stardock-published products, although I don't feel great about any of it.

     

    I googled his name and got few hits in regard to two cases with Alexandra Miseta.  Are there more?


  9. It's certainly questionable whether attempted murder would hold as an actual case to be made against this (This usually isn't applied to comically ineffective methods, but it doesn't have to be particularly promising of success either, as far as I know, especially if the intent is made clear somehow, say in accompanying tweets wishing for somebody's death. Also laws are different in different places) but since I imagine none of us are qualified to speak to that with any expertise, it seems to me more that the argument was about whether such a gleefully reckless thing counts as an attempt to kill in spirit.

     

    Right.  Lot depends on the circumstances, as it should.  Like say, SWATing a known airsoft gun collector while he is streaming and showing off their collection is probably close to murder attempt (sorry the hypothetical is bit oddly specific but you know what, considerations for these issues of attempted murder should be specific as possible) as the risk of death just skyrockets.  Evidences pointing to firm belief that SWATing will likely result in death would also push it towards attempted murder (along the line of ineffective method).

     

    But SWATing on its own, as of right now with about 0.1% chance of innocent death, shouldn't qualify as attempted murder.  It certainly deserves steep punishment to serve as deterrent and SWAT breaches could use bit more vetting then just going after any random information, but that second part is a different issue.


  10. I'm curious to hear this argument in full, because if it flattens the many differences, both subtle and obvious, between calling out offensive behavior with the intent of limiting it further and harassing ideological enemies with the intent of ruining their lives, I'm interested in seeing how it actually holds water. If you're just saying that the superficial expression is the same with both, then that's fine, but if you're not, you ought to look at any "victim" of callout culture versus any victim of #GamerGate. If the intent is different and the outcome is different, then the only similarity is that they're both saying what certain people shouldn't do on the internet, which isn't that profound of a connection.

     

    Lives can be ruined by callout culture, and arguably completely 'innocent' lives.

     

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/magazine/how-one-stupid-tweet-ruined-justine-saccos-life.html?hpw&rref=magazine&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=1

     

    Because of my own train of thought, I find the last part about how most of callouts are mostly attempts for approval to ring true.  Maybe that says something uniquely flawed about myself, but given how nasty some callouts derail into and ultimately boils down into bunch of people self congratulating themselves for how right they were, I think it warrants a thought or two.

     

    Edit: To clarify, I don't find them equal.  But I am worried about callout culture slowly becoming worse and worse.


  11. Common knowledge is wrong. See the linked Cato Institute map of botched SWAT raids.

     

    SWAT raids are dangerous and get people killed. SWATting is and should be understood legally as attempted murder. It will not be though, because that would require the government to confront how flawed SWAT raids already are, even before sociopaths on the internet get involved.

     

    That link doesn't really tell us exactly what constitutes "innocent death"... like, is it including innocent deaths from justified raid (because it's keeping separate tab for raid against innocents)?

     

    Also it shows 40 deaths in 2014 (or is it 40 raids that had deaths?  again too vague) out of what it claims to be about 40,000 raid per year (that estimate is taken from that site as well).

     

    40 out of 40,000...

     

    I say common knowledge looks right based on that link.  You can't claim attempted murder for 0.1% probability (which doesn't sound right, like number looks way too low but I'm using the numbers your link provided).


  12. I've been to Texas few times (3 trips for friends' wedding), and the diversity there is bit mixed from my limited visits.

     

    Like, you go to cities or bit of high density (relatively speaking to rest of the state) population centers and you can find lot of mexicans or other non-whites.

     

    But where my friends lived, it was the whitest towns I have ever seen while living in USA, granted my limited exposure to USA is primarily the tri-state area where I think diversity must be pretty high comparatively to rest of USA.


  13. I think terrorism is likely the most accurate term, but I also hate how overly used (and selectively applied) that word is. It's hard for me to endorse its use at all at this point.

     

    Yeah, that word now is way too loaded in meaning that trying to label something as 'terrorism', despite dictionary accuracy, is just not fair for many criminal activities (this last bit wasn't sarcasm, I sincerely meant it as not all criminal activities and its participant are equally guilty (huge difference in degree in crimes and guilty, etc.)).

     

    SWATing should be treated like attempted murder. How can knowingly sending paramilitary police expecting the worst into the an unwitting person's home responsibly be treated as anything else?

     

    No.  They clearly put the victim under very dangerous situation, but common knowledge is that SWAT or other equivalent paramilitary police forces are fairly well disciplined and doesn't just go around guns blazing so the more likely expectation is that no one dies but just gets their house breached.

     

    If SWATing victim were to die during a raid, the person who called it in is most likely be guilty of manslaughter-being grossly negligent and causing loss of life.

     

     

    I agree that it should be considered both attempted murder (2nd degree, right? likely will result in death, but not premeditated death), as well as terrorism.

     

    I don't think we'll ever see that attempted murder part. Actually, I don't the answer to this, but I suspect the state would be loathe to describe the use of the SWAT team as murder, and I also think they would be loathe to admit that simply deploying these officers carries a tremendous risk of wrongful death. 

     

    You can be convicted of murder for setting up a situation so that police kills your intended victim (there was a case like that in criminal law book).  But I am certain that criteria for passing that up to 'murder' is higher than SWATing.

     

    In that case I mentioned, what the guilty party did was, repeatedly made phone calls to his neighbor, taunting him (the neighbor was admirer of general Patton so his calls were like "You and general Patton are faggots") to confront him (the caller) with a gun if the neighbor had any guts, then called the police multiple times reporting that his neighbor was disorderly with firearm.  The police came few times but the neighbor wasn't there so this guy continued doing this until his neighbor came out drunk with a gun, was confronted by the police, then got shot and killed by the police.

     

    So in that case, two factors that separate it from most SWATing that I have read about are

    1. repeated attempts until death took place

    2. intimate knowledge of his victim, which allowed him to create a specific situation (get the victim drunk with a gun in the street, to be confronted by police who are responding to a call about a disorderly person waving gun in the neighborhood).


  14. Interesting observations about HW2's campaign Sno.  I don't recall it being all that difficult but last time I played it was... back when it came out so can't really say how reliable my impression of it is.  All I remember is that I made lot of missile-beam frigate and ran this deathball style fleet, just sniping enemy ships one at a time.  And that the campaign had 2 wow moments, one is when I had to fight that giant stationary fort and two is when I first get the battleship.


  15. I backed this; it's great. That said, feel free to wait until it's out of Early Access, as all the content is not in yet (classes, end dungeons) and there are a couple of balance issues.

     

    Note: Once you're over the early gold crunch hump of rebuilding/opening your village and training your A/B team, sending three heroes to the Sanitarium each week to remove negative traits can preserve your favorite heroes.

     

    Is it play-efficient to preserve your heroes?  It doesn't have to be the best choice, so long as it's not super sub-optimal (equivalent of sabotaging yourself).

     

    More I think about it, I'll probably get it either way to study it.


  16. The State maintains a threat of violence in order to enforce laws. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I would consider it violent to put someone in a cage against their will or threaten to do so.

     

    Right, but I don't believe that social order and the authority of many states are maintained purely through this threat.  And it shouldn't play a big role anyways outside of some rare police state cases or in times of political strife and uncertainty.

     

    For example, let's just take myself as an example.  Every decision I take that leads me down to living out a relatively docile subject life for my state isn't based on ruthless calculation of "can I get away with XYZ from state's retaliation"... almost all of the considerations are so far removed from "will the SWAT come and punish me with force if I do XYZ" because I'm so habituated into defaulting my decision making within a scope that is far removed from there.

     

    Things may trace back to this threat of force, but that's not the actual motivation for order and authority is what I'm suggesting.

     

    And yeah, property rights are super important so it's probably a good place for further analysis.


  17. In capitalism, at least, the state's supposed to be the arbiters of the market, which doesn't have any kind of violence component.

     

    Moreover, I think it's a bit reductive to talk about the violence inherent in the state when it's frankly kind of unusual that we've decided that regular creatures should not have access to violence. Violence is inherent to life on Earth, it's just that there's advantages to living in an environment where that's not really a concern.

     

    Right, it is a very abstract discussion but I think it ended up there because it went from the question of legitimacy of violence against state and Gormongous' point was that it should not be automatically disqualified as an option because state is violent by definition.

     

    And I think the specific and abstractness is warranted because most of us are discussing this under the assumption that default state of group of people is that they are non-violent towards each other, and on top of that the social norms of our current ultra high density civilization demands that most of remain even less violent than ever before, so the question is about exception, which should be quite narrow.and abstract.

     

    Maybe that assumption of mine is totally off though, cause every time I read Gormogongous' post, the vision of state I have in mind based on his/her post is where bunch of people are commiting ritualistic violence every day and occasionally takes few days off.  I assume it's just a breakdown in communication somewhere because that would be too strange of a claim.


  18. I'm so glad I backed this when I still had spending money. It's been a really fun timesink the past few days. I've put 8 hours into it and I barely even noticed.

     

    Sooo I have no clue about endgame but character progression sort of goes like this. Experience levels are analogues for the amount of stress each character can take rather than how much damage or constitution they have. All characters start out as level zero and must complete one mission to gain 2 resolve points to attain lvl one. So far the amount of resolve points for each mission hasn't increased but I've mostly stuck with short missions because even the medium ones can turn gruelling fast.

    If you want to increase a character's power you have to use the blacksmith to upgrade their weapons. Such upgrades are costly however and are best reserved for people over level 3.

    If you throw level zeros at a level 3 mission they quickly collapse under the weight of the evil they face and you'll be lucky to make it past two-three rooms.

     

    My advice is to not grow attached to anyone and to dismiss people the moment their -ve traits outweigh the +ves even if they're your best.

    It can feel like a frustrating game while you learn it and it definitely benefits from an immediate restart once you've got the hang of the game (say by week 10).

    I've had a lot of experience in only placing my town upgrades into the stagecoach network and just the bar for stress relief. My aim is to basically factory farm adventurers and throw away anyone that isn't the best. Think Timothy Dalton in Penny Dreadful without the weird sex issues.

     

    Ooo that bolded bit might be a deal breaker for me.  I will still look further into the game but thanks for the explanation.