196

Serious Discussions and Debates / Re: Can a free MMO work?

« on: December 04, 2009, 04:02:52 pm »

Or option 3: Guild Wars

Pay a one off payment similar to the amount you would pay for a normal game, play game. They release an add on (I think the add ons where slightly cheaper than a normal game but slightly more than you'd normally pay for an add on). Play game.

The obvious disadvantage is that as they release the new expansions (including new classes and skills) your skill set will no longer be the optimal skill set. However you'll still be playing the exact same areas with the same enemies so it won't actually make you worse...it'll just make other people better. I originally stopped playing after they bought out the first expansion because I didn't want to buy it and I'd completed all the content from the first game. Recently went back and bought all the expansions in a big cheap bundle.

Other disadvantages of this system include the potential abandoning of old areas when new ones are released. This was solved to a certain extent by the release of various titles which required adventuring in the older areas but they're still pretty deserted now I'll admit (as is most of GW compared to when they were actively releasing things for it).

So there are quite a few disadvantages to this system. That said, why do I like it? It's all about the mindset that you approach the game with. When I originally bought guild wars, for the price of a game I got...a game. Well...I actually spent many more hours playing than I do most games I buy so I got a pretty good value game. For the price of the second expansion I would have got...a second game. And so on.

Over the long term if you buy all the expansions it probably works out about the same as if they just had a subscription service going. The advantage is that you don't HAVE to buy the expansions if you don't want to but get to keep on playing the game. Or you can choose to buy them when you have enough money instead of having to make a commitment to pay every month. Or you can buy some of the expansions and not others. Or whatever.

Also theres no sense of pressure. I've never paid for an MMO and I doubt I ever will simply because I don't like the idea of somewhere down the road sitting there and deciding to play the game not because I want to but because I feel like I haven't got my moneys worth that month.


So in summary, there are problems with the guild wars system but I enjoyed it and definitely that I got my monies worth from the game/games.

Disclaimers - I have almost never PvPd, I much prefer PvE...it seems likely that not buying the expansions would make a significant difference in PvPing so keep that in mind

197

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Slime tube

« on: December 03, 2009, 12:54:07 am »

*facepalm* For some reason I was thinking that the alveoli were the item that gave the skill


*checks what the skill does* 350k? Wow people sure do have met to burn o.0

198

Kingdom of Loathing / Re: crimbo 2009

« on: December 03, 2009, 12:48:49 am »

I really have no idea...I saw some speculation that the most popular choice was the one that gave most meat which those who choose the choice first getting more meat.

But that seems like a silly mechanic to me. Really theres just too little data to go on at the moment. Just guess and see what happens

Edit - is anyone else really sucking at this? <_< Total Earnings: 17,710 Meat

199

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Slime tube

« on: December 02, 2009, 08:46:37 pm »

It always seemed to me that selling things is /trade doesn't make much sense...people will surely just check the mall and refuse to pay any more than the lowest mall price, in which case you may as well just put it in the mall for the lowest price? Or am I missing something obvious?

And cleeshing doesn't add a turn to the slime count? How did I managed to miss that

Other than that we should probably make sure the next run that the thing gets squeezed as many times as possible (I totally meant to be forgot :\) but make sure people know that they need to be cleeshing. Every little bit helps and we were only a few turns short

200

Thread Games / Re: The corrupt a wish game

« on: November 30, 2009, 11:33:44 pm »

All life in the universe immediately dies out. They're all going to die eventually and allowing them to continue living in the short term will only lead to the creation of new species meaning that there will be a greater sum total of extinct species by the end.

I wish we had some sausages in the fridge...

201

Serious Discussions and Debates / Re: Discussion: How severely should illegal downloading of any kind, be punished?

« on: November 30, 2009, 11:20:51 pm »

I'm going to disagree with everyone else so far. Illegally downloading something is theft. Any attempt to try and say that its anything less than theft is just trying to salve you conscience. Saying 'it's fine because there'll always be people who will pay' or 'it's fine unless you're doing it commercially' doesn't really work. Do you let shoplifters off just because you've already had 20 paying customers that day or they're only stealing one item instead of 50? Oddblobs point of saying the artists don't care so its fine doesn't hold water either. If they didn't care then they wouldn't be charging anyone would they? (those of you who feel interested in discussion of the various strengths and weaknesses of different pricing strategies may want to look up the recent indie game World of Goo promotion, normally $20, which was put on sale on a 'pay however much you like' system).

IGW mentioned games = online play and 142 said that it was fine to get games because if you want to play them online you often have to rely on dodgy servers or whatnot. I'd like to point out I currently have 20 games installed on my computer, of which only 3 are online/require online registration. This leaves 17 games that I just as easily could have downloaded illegally instead of buying.

Having said all that, let me now explain why when I download stuff illegally, I'm morally in the clear The difference between illegal downloading and say...shoplifting the item in question, is that there is no obvious injured party. In the case of shoplifting, the game store has one less copy of the game to sell and they paid for that game so they are clearly out of pocket. When you download something illegally you haven't actually cost anyone anything.

However, this logic is faulty when you take into account that what the person has lost is in fact the profit they would have received from the sale to you.

So there is an injured party but its only a theoretical injured party, which is why I assume so many people make the claim that it isn't really stealing at all. So in order to be morally in the clear (ish) when you download something illegally you need to only ever download something which you never would have otherwise bought. This is why I allow myself to watch so many movies online. I would never buy the DVD of a movie that I haven't already seen. Of course the important point here is that if I decide I like the movie enough that I'm going to keep a copy on my hard drive permanently I have now slid back into the thieving area as I am now using the download as a replacement for buying the DVD instead of just as a way of killing time/seeing if I think the DVD is worth buying.

So having explained why I think my downloading of stuff illegally is fine (though I freely admit that I'm probably just rationalising to myself so that I can continue to download all that sweet illegal goodness that the internet offers) and why I think that it is morally wrong (ie. it is stealing), what should be done about it?

My gut would say that a fair punishment would be one equal to what you would get for stealing/shoplifting said item, obviously scaled up if you were distributing them for profit. By the same theory you don't stop every customer leaving a shop and strip search them just in case they were shoplifting, don't monitor everyones internet traffic unless there's already reasonable suspicion that something is up (which basically means only people doing this on a larger scale will get caught because they're the only ones who will be under prior suspicion). IGWs point that you can't punish anyone until there's the possibility to punish everyone is nonsensical. Do we fail to prosecute a mugger caught on CCTV because around the corner someone got mugged and there's no CCTV there so the person got away? (Yay analogies that don't really work but make the other person look wrong! )

So basically I don't think its worth investing the time and effort to catch individuals (yay I'm safe ) but that doesn't mean that I think individuals should be immune to prosecution (oh noes!).

202

Introductions / Re: its JD time woot

« on: November 27, 2009, 10:06:04 am »

Heyo!

Keep on getting blasts from the past when people come back

203

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Hobopolis Run?

« on: November 26, 2009, 10:06:17 pm »

Can't seem to no.

Part of the allure of these items is that fact that you do actually have to earn them the old fashioned way, you can't just buy them

204

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Hobopolis Run?

« on: November 26, 2009, 10:50:07 am »

We shaved a whole 196 turns off our last run...speed run here we come!

You can just have an extra item next run Gal and I'll have one less

205

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Slime tube

« on: November 24, 2009, 07:42:29 pm »

It doesn't do X damage. It does X% of your health damage (see wiki for details). At 5 turns of the condition left it always does 132.5% of your health damage minus y% for slime resistance. Hence the thing I posted above:

1) wear 0 ML outfit
2) get covered in slime
3) use free runaway
4) put on "slime hates it" outfit
5) adventure until covered in slime will kill you
6) repeat

You use a tattered scrap of paper (or similar item) to initiate a combat and then leave without it counting towards the adventure count of the run. But you did get covered in slime by a 0ML slime meaning you have 10 turns of coated in slime, which does far less damage (1% for 10 turns, 7% for 9. 20% for 8 etc.). So now you put on your slime hating gear but because you're already slimed for more turns than the extra ML doesn't cause instant death. Adventure for as many adventures as you like but stop before the coat in slime counter reaches 5 (the point at which is starts doing over 100% damage without slime resistance.

Basically you could only ever take 1% of your health as damage each combat if you could be bother to fight, tatter, equip +ML, fight, unequip +ML and repeat, but that would be incredibly tedious and the tattered scraps would cost more than just healing My advice would be to have 0ML, fight, tatter, equip +ML, adventure until 7 turns of coated in slime left (you should have taken 72% damage), use a scroll of drastic healing, adventure again, use another scroll of healing. The counter should now be down to 5. If you have enough slime resistance gear to survive a 5 turn left hit then do so and use another scroll.

Still healing quite a lot but scrolls of drastic healing are way cheaper than tattered scraps so its cheaper in the long run and requires less swapping of equipment so is probably less tedious At least you're not healing EVERY turn

I can fund you for the short term but I can't see it should be all that expensive.

Semi edit in that I can't be bothered to go back through my post and correct it - Just realised I forgot to say you obviously have to wipe the coated in slime off when it gets to 5 turns so we would need to get the wipe things too which adds quite a bit to the cost :\

edit edit - Man I'm rocking the pointlessly long posts with multiple edits today It occurs to me that even with the extra few free turns, if you just keep the slime hating gear on, take the hit, heal with drastic healing and then wipe and repeat that will probably actually work out cheaper and without all the equipment changing shenanigans So fair enough, carry on as you were Maybe use KoLMafia and set the only active healing item as scrolls of drastic healing and the % health you want to be healed at. Then it should automatically heal you after each comat and you just need to wipe and initiate combat manually?

206

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Slime tube

« on: November 24, 2009, 09:50:11 am »

I don't really know how to powerlevel...my powerleveling all came from Shore'ing for the trophy (expensive) or just general adventuring in high level areas like the sea and Hobopolis

From a quick browse of the wiki page on powerlevelling your best bet seems to just be to carry on adventuring for a bit in the highest level areas you can.

At high levels it seems best for us to open hobopolis again and train with Richard which I think gives you [(stat/10)+2] to [(stat/5)+5] stats per adventure. But by the point that that becomes useful I think you'd have outleveled the Sea and Hobopolis considerably so you'd easily be a high enough level to do the slime tube. Hopefully

Edit - other useful pages might be this one and the one but I haven't actually checked them out myself so I don't know how useful/up to date they actually are

Edit edit - In addition, why are you having trouble? I don't actually know how monster stats scale when you level them but I thought it was a straight +1 per level *goes to check what class you are to see what damage you might be able of doing* ...hang on you're level 25, sorry I assumed when you mentioned level 13 that meant you were level 13 I'm an idiot

So can you just not physically beat the slimes? Divine noisemakers could do the trick but thatd be expensive for an entire run. If its just the slime effect thats killing you then just wipe it off Seeing as you splashed out on nodules I'm sure the rest of us can afford to sponsor the chamoix


Edit edit edit - From a thread on doing slime runs:

1) wear 0 ML outfit
2) get covered in slime
3) use free runaway
4) put on "slime hates it" outfit
5) adventure until covered in slime will kill you
6) repeat

Edit edit edit edit - a quick test showed that by entering combat, tattering away and then re-entering combat I couldn't get more than 10 turns of coated in slime. The wiki has info for 10-15 and 15+ turns of it so my guess would be that having -ML items on gives more turns? I dunno, couldn't find the info anywheres. So it seems this is going to be pretty tedious <_<

207

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Hobopolis Run?

« on: November 22, 2009, 11:36:28 am »

I sent a message in game to Manny telling him to come claim what he wants but it says he hasn't logged in KoL in a week so hopefully he'll get it before your deadline

Difficult to start dividing stuff up til we know what he wants :/

208

Kingdom of Loathing / Re: Extinctionist

« on: November 17, 2009, 02:55:56 pm »

That would be enough to make me keep it just to display in my display case if I didn't think that owning some time pants and hat would give me more joy...if only I had enough for a whole time suit :\

209

Kingdom of Loathing / Extinctionist

« on: November 17, 2009, 10:41:31 am »

So trying to get the Extinctionist tropy paid off

You acquire an item: Platinum Yendorian Express Card

I'm tempted to sell it because 40 million meat is more than its effects are worth to me. On the other hand its my very own ultra rare

210

Power of Meep (Clan) / Re: Hobopolis Run?

« on: November 17, 2009, 10:07:49 am »

I just wanted to see if I could. I'll prolly leave it to you in future seeing as I had to spend a not inconsiderable amount on buffs and items to do it

I did buy two miniborg destroy-o-bots as well so that I could carry on killing hobos with the same +item bonus without overkilling them which was starting to be a problem. For anyone who doesn't have some I'd say they're well worth the investment. I can see funkslinging and them making the first few levels of an ascension much easier. Of course thats only in softcore

As for loot - in order of preference I probably want the hat, the neverending soda, zombos ring, frostys sack, garbage sticker, muscle shirt, chesters cutoffs, dumpster waders, infernal pitchfork, medallion, old silk hat, zombos shield. If El Juan is only having one item (sure you don't want the neverending soda too? ) thats means the rest of us get 4 items. If you want one of the same top 4 as me then we'll work something out