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Floss

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Posts posted by Floss

  2. Posted

    A board of directors that isn't independant from management is going to be much less effective.

    Usually a board is comprised of outsiders, industry experts, etc, with maybe 1-2 people from the company sitting on it.

    If your board structure is just the brass of the project, it's really not going to operate as a typical board should. Pulling some people with zero power (players) would actually create some sort of accountability. The day to day decisions should be made by management (devs), but major ones should be done by an independant BOD.

    With the brass on the board, it's too easy for them to just collude and have backdoor deals to get what they want, which makes the board worthless (this is hypothetical). There is also a lot of pressure on people to agree with the brass, as they could likely be "removed" from a project with just a little cooperation from a few individuals. (again hypothetical)

    Board minutes and financials (donations vs costs, surplus/deficit, etc) should also be public information if you are trying to show accountability. Again, the community doesn't need the details of everything, but major decisions (see board decisions) should be made public.

    Saying that "we have accountability to our community because we have a board" doesn't hold water with the current board structure.

    I'd be happy to donate time to perform an independant governance review and internal controls review if you want help. I get paid to do this stuff on a daily basis from small owner managed companies right up to multi-billion dollar companies. Even if the structure is seen to be acceptable, some third party assurance can probably kill a lot of the rumours going on. Also happy to sign an NDA and provide more detailed credentials privately.

    Project management is also something I can help with. The team appears to be IT heavy, which is great for coding, but a mix of skill sets can help out.

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  3. Posted

    The actual damages would be zero, unless EA could prove that this somehow hurt their sales of other games which would be a ridiculous assertion. They could dig into the "donations" and view that as revenue, which could open a small can of worms.

    Also might be some tax implications for whoever actually owns the server/pays the bills/etc as it is income (even if it makes just $1 net over the fiscal year) whether you are incorporated or not, would hit a personal return for somebody. This really depends on the jurisdiction of the owner of the project (person paying the bills, renting the server, paying for the website, etc) and while I'm familiar and have practiced US and Canadian tax, I'm not going to pretend to be competent in other country's tax laws. I would assume whatever jurisdiction they are in is similar, where if the project makes nothing ($0 or less) on a cash-basis for the calendar year (assuming the tax system operates on a calendar basis), then there is no income to report and EA wouldn't have anything concrete to chase.

  5. Posted

    The simplest way to deter 90%+ of RMT is make "ubers" BOP (bind on pickup, non-trade, etc).

    Pros:

    Kills RMT

    Deters monopolization of spawns (no resale value) and gives more people a "fair chance"

    Cons:

    Makes cash relatively worthless at end game

    The Live game had some odd mix of the two, which never really made sense to me. Why is a Hellbore tradeable, but a Rage isn't? Who knows. Balancing the economy and stopping runaway inflation (seen it in eveyr mmo I've ever played) is obviously an afterthought right now, but maybe a mix of highly sought after craftable items could keep cash moving, and make the "ubers" BOP. Making some of the craftable components hard to get can keep some of the prestige to them.

    I tend to favour BOP for end game epic items, as that deters a guild/group from sitting on something 24/7.

  6. Posted

    Currently no, but something like this would be one way to enforce it. :P

    I'm not sure how much spam or lag that would create (thinks of ammo if each piece was an item).

    Even if an item was just time stamped, that could identify who looted and who traded, assuming those sort of logs exist (again, no clue on this).

  9. Posted

    Good to know that people still focus on the important things during testing :P

    ---------------------------------------------

    http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&link=BWU_030510

    Here's the full text of the submitted bug as published by Bungie:

    "Title: Teabagging / humiliation moves impossible

    Type: Bug

    Opened: 3/4/2010 8:53:13 AM

    The respawn camera flies back to the spawn location immediately after dying, so your opponents can't teabag / shoot / melee your body and have a possibility of you seeing it."

    ----------------------------------------------

    (

    if you haven't experienced Halo and XBL, speaking of communities...)
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  10. Posted

    High health or lots of mobs is good.

    One-shotting players with lvl 9 shields is a bit dicey, unless it's clear that you need X resist items prior to tanking (more like a WoW flame resist tank, etc).

    Forcing a PW for example who is tanking to be properly buffed and equipped for defense is a neat idea, assuming he can effectively keep agro :P

    Hard but fair is important, though 6-8 groups based on current state and population might be a bit high, 6-12 players should be a reasonable expectation.

    Also to Sydo's point, I've had items lose 14% dmg in one "oops". This could probably be looked at before we get too crazy with wiping raid parties.

  12. Posted

    This idea is completely a ripoff of the "Final Hour" skill on the kol battleship from Sins of a Solar Empire

    hmm, don't know what to call it other than Final Hour

    Except EnB beat sins to market by umm... 6 years.

    I have a problem with the description of the talent, "Self Destruct", and the concept that your ship doesn't blow up. It should incap your ship if it is actually "Self Destruct".

    Naming it something else would be fine if it is purely an energy dump (shields/reactor), but anything that sugests you destruct or jettison a core is dumb unless that is precisely what you are doing, in which case you need a JS or a new reactor.

    Give it 50% dmg to trade goods and that stops trade run progen popping, that makes sense and brings it inline with wormhole and lvl 7 summon.

    If you don't want it to incap a ship, it really needs a new name or else it just doesn't make sense. Call it "Last Resort" or something, full dump for high damage, immobilized for 60 seconds but still vulnerable to damage, or else you have just created "Invincible".

    Gear damage is a terrible idea and will result on no one putting a point into it. No one voluntarily blows up their gear, especially at end-game.

  13. Posted

    Now those remember the oh crud moments of I last regged in Antares, well that cause you forgot to stop at OMP to reg before you joined the cooper hunting trip.

    That's exactly how I know it's wrong.

    A terran needs to dock for:

    1) ammo

    2) sell stuff

    In Antares, loot was non-stack, and there was no vendor or manu term there. You had to dock somewhere else to get more bullets and sell your crap. No way in hell could you go raid elsewhere without stopping somewhere else, especially a TW with more limited space.

    All of that aside, what is the purpose of auto-reg? The comment about trade runs effecting the economy is a joke, because the profits from trade are a joke. 10 mins of GSP > 10 hours of trade runs.

    SD needs to be corrected, so that can't be the reason either as it is unrelated.

    Doing a pro/con I get:

    Pro: none

    Cons: lvl 7 summon is crippled

    Thoughts? Whether it was/wasn't in live should be secondary to "how will this make the game better".

    The argument about shortcutting is also crap, wormhole destroys lvl 7 summon if that's the concern. WH to swoop > xipe > bbw is 3 mins, almost the same as QAR registration. Every game has travel shortcuts that are earned.

  14. Posted

    EA owns clients, assets, and name. All code is capable of being copywritten by the project because the project created it from character number 1. We don't claim copyright over anything EA created.

    Copyright requires that you say "I have a copyright" and it be an intellectual work. Trademarking and Servicemarking, as well as patenting on the other require registration with (in the US) the US Patent and Trade Office (USPTO)

    The license is Creative Commons.

    Kyp

    What would the recourse be if someone else used the Net-7 code to run a game server? (assuming non-profit)

    A civil suit = $0 in damages? Who would sue?

  15. Posted

    I don't think copyrighting anything holds any merit unless you legally copyright it?

    Even then, you could only sue for damages if their were damages, which implies profits, which would piss off EA in the first place.

    Encryption > copyright.

    I'm not a lawyer, but copyrighting actually requires ... obtaining a copyright?

  16. Posted

    Hi

    Registering when docking was put in at my request. That is how I remember it was in live and that is what our documentation says. I mentioned this over two years ago when the docking was first coded. However we did not get around to correcting it till recently.

    For all of you that think this was put in to "nerf" something, you are wrong. I did not know how this error was being used till after the change was made, via this tread.

    I suppose if we had fixed the SD skill first, we would have had the same accusations.

    Riia

    It's still a bad system, whether that is the interpretation of live or not. (Which it wasn't, see: farming in Antares, and "oh #@$!@ I'm still regged in antares)

    I'm not sure of the purpose of making it this way? Live doesn't necessarily mean "ideal to make an enojoyable play environment."

    The impact or purpose of the change should be discussed and analyzed instead of just flipping it to how people think it was.

  17. Posted

    This issue has been around for months. It is the difference form the very center of the mob (the spot you need to reach for your shots to hit) and the out side or the humongous space cow projection (the starting place from where the Nag's ranged attack begins) It give them a real unfair advantage, it is a known issue and when it will be addressed, I don't know.

    It can be demonstrated when you just get to 0.00 range, kill it and the teeny tiny corpse is like 2.8k away (or whatever) which is the ranged advantage it has. <_<

    I had the same problem looting my type A's too :(

    TooTall

    Big fish have the same problem, roughly 1.75k on the master, not sure about the others. Nags are the worst offenders by far though.

  18. Posted

    The fact that you're expecting end game content and a ton of players in a stress test that was scaled back to focus on early game content and testing, in a server with less than 300 players on an average day, is kind of... shallow on your part.

    Part of this whole stress test process is to test. Granted, it's fun and entertaining to do things and play, but overall, in reality, the reason you can play is to test things, try and break things, etc., not to do all the things you want to do. It's just a bit unreasonable to expect all the things you're expecting when the game is still very unfinished. It's a work in progress, and to treat it otherwise is not a developer's problem, it's your own. They will make changes for testing purposes, and if you're unhappy because of personal opinion on how the game should be run according to your standards rather than the direction they would like to take the game, then the basis for your complaints are unfounded and won't be taken seriously.

    Just my two cents.

    Not really fair statements given there isn't direction on what is to be tested. If the focus was early game, set a lvl 50 cap and let's test the noobie stuff. If the focus was mob AI and raid mob behaviour, don't close off BBW, and let's go test that with some people.

    A weekly "would you kindly go try X and report results" would be nice to see where the focus should be. One could assume that the current objective is faction grinding but that isn't logical based on broken faction bars, sort of like testing weapon damage without having operational weapons.

  19. Posted

    Although I understand that raid content shouldn't be soloed, given the population of 150's, it made sense to keep it easy for now for something to do.

    I'm not particulary interested in grinding chavez and get p-wiped down the road, nor lose 10% on gear everytime I get blown up in the fishbowl :) (RD faction is trashed to hell from killing broken-factioned drones).

    Making the 66's 2-4 player encounters would be a good balance.

  21. Posted

    I guess it depends on the player. Some people enjoy the destination, others enjoy the drive.

    I fall into the destination category (any game), so having a juicy reward that I can't get anywhere else makes the time investment worthwhile.

    Other people, give them an interesting quest, and they are happy just doing the quest.

    If you:

    1) Skip game cutscenes

    2) Mash escape through Bioware game chat trees just to get back to killing stuff

    3) Do trade runs to level combat/explore

    4) Got the WoW addon that auto-scrolled the quest chat

    then the reward is probably what drives you to do a quest.

    If you:

    1) Replay cutscenes in the options menus

    2) Replay open world games every which way to see different endings

    3) Level explore by defending miners or mining

    4) Read every shred of lore there was to read in the last MMO you played

    then the quest itself is probably what is more important to you than the result.

    Making both people happy is normally a challenge, but having a blend of quests that appeal to each type helps attract a wide player base. If it's a core quest like this one, I think addressing both groups is important. Perhaps creating a new item altogether would be a good solution, something woth the time (comparable to an Archos) but not something that should be dropping from raid bosses (Spitter).

  25. Posted

    Elitism is more about what the WoW community has become. If that is what you want, by all means you can have the WoW community.

    By saying this, you are suggesting we are better than all WoW people = the very elitism you are suggesting we should avoid.

    Does it hurt to be nice to someone in game? Clearly for you it would be, but hey, we can just ignore you to when you need help.

    Try asking for help with a quest in WoW, and you get 50 flames, 25 go to wowhead/mmo-champion, and maybe 2 people who will help you out. That should NOT be what we strive for here.

    Eh? I said specifically that you should be nice to people instead of writing posts about the plight of a community on the internets. If you want to make something better, you can talk about it, or fix it.

    Roughly 67% (statiscally accurate to within 67%) of questions on Market get "go check enbdb.com".

    I think you misunderstood my post which had a blend of sarcasm and seriousness, but basically, WoW comparisons and forum threads won't change anything, doing something in game will.

    Also it's a MMO, and if someone wants to be an ass-hat within the terms of service, that's their perogative, add them to the ignore list, and move on. If everyone is deemed to be an ass-hat, and that bothers you, don't play. I'm not promoting ass-hattery, but it's inevitable, and people can't get bent out of shape everytime someone doesn't do exactly what they hoped for. Eventually most ass-hats will get ignored/driven out of the game, or form a collective of like-minded people which is also perfectly fine.

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