And the mask comes off.

[Ankhammon]

When people say that these phenomena apply to human cognition, they are including themselves.
(Insert mandatory joke about Arcanaville really being a computer instead of a human here)

Excuse me. I did not insert that kind of joke.


Mine was more of a Arcana's a math professor kind of thing.

[Ankhammon]

It....sigh....sorry guys I just tend to lose it when, meh.  My memory in a way had become a curse for me, it kills my morale and my mood when I see things that trigger those memories(just the mere sight of a bully on TV is often enough let alone this :S).

Don't worry about it. We all got triggers about something.

Mine is about when people accuse me of trying to take over the world. it really bugs me when I think they've found out about my... um... disregard that... nothing to see here.

[LaughingAlex]

I don't think anyone's calling you a liar. I know I'm not. As a matter of fact, I believe I started this whole thing when I brought up my observation about Twilight Grasp.

That being said, I do think that observational bias is the easiest solution for these kinds of observations. Now observational bias cannot be proved any more than any bug in the code simply because there is no code to look through.

There could only be a couple of people on this forum who might have accessed the game engine directly and seen the code (and I don't even know this). Everyone else is really just spouting an opinion, Including those whose opinion is Arcana and Codewalker are correct... well, that might be more of a theorem at this point.

Could be all three of us are on to something.  Trying to calm down but may be that random number god can still occur, go figure.  May be more to it then any of us suspect, I mean do we have the code for the server side of things?

But I do wish the game to come back because as I said, I remember seeing those kinds of things happening that some people say shouldn't be.  I agree they shouldn't have but go figure they did.

[FemFury]

Excuse me. I did not insert that kind of joke.


Mine was more of a Arcana's a math professor kind of thing.

*checks the rulebook*

Does seem to fit in with the general tradition of forum in-jokes about Arcanaville. 

[Kriiden]

Not to change topics or anything (I am deliberately trying to change topics)

So...about Lusca. What do you think she'll(He'll, it?) look like in the revival? I loved fighting that sushi!

Also waiting patiently for any updates from Mr. Downes...(Thanks for everything so far mate!)

[Ankhammon]

Could be all three of us are on to something.  Trying to calm down but may be that random number god can still occur, go figure.  May be more to it then any of us suspect, I mean do we have the code for the server side of things?

But I do wish the game to come back because as I said, I remember seeing those kinds of things happening that some people say shouldn't be.  I agree they shouldn't have but go figure they did.

It is certainly possible that we have observed something in the code. Problem is there is no code to check about it (well, NCSoft has it). Add to this that Arcana has spent considerable amounts of time looking into things that were similar when the game was going.

The absolute best way that I know to determine if there was indeed  something strange in code is to "step through" the code itself. This is a function of most development environments where you can go line by line into the code while the code is in an active state thereby giving you all of the values going on in any single line of code.

The second best (and sometimes much easier) is through data mining. This is basically statistical analysis of the output of the code. In our case it's things like tohit probabilities. This is the information that we've been discussing throughout this argument.
Through this kind of analysis, Arcana (ville) has gotten quite a reputation for excellence and deservedly so not only with our little group but also with the dev team when the game was live.

Final point here, Arcana specifically stated that she does not ever say that people are wrong in their observations, but that we need some sort of evidence in order to positively conclude any observation.

[Ankhammon]

*checks the rulebook*

Does seem to fit in with the general tradition of forum in-jokes about Arcanaville. 

lmao. That was pure awesome.

[Teikiatsu]

...Wait, how did he get a 1586 hit at the 0:57ish mark?

I just figured they were high level differences, maybe a L50 attacking a L15 to L20?

[Nealix]

Any new information on the progress of the deal yet?

[Taceus Jiwede]

Any new information on the progress of the deal yet?

When something is to be heard, you won't need to look far.  It is very unlikely any information will be heard until the deal goes through or falls apart.  At this point I am pretty sure we are no longer privy to any kind of information after what has happened each time a little bit of news comes up.

[Surelle]

Any new information on the progress of the deal yet?

Nope.  I would imagine that Team Hail Mary will make a separate post in this forum if it ever gets to the point where CoX is being resurrected (or even if the deal ends permanently with a "No"). 

As it took them 10 months just to get introduced to the right person so they could begin talks, and the first iteration of a proposed deal was just put onto NCSoft's table to peruse this past July, I doubt we'll hear much of anything for a while.  I'm guessing it won't be until next year the earliest if we ever hear anything more at all, but that's just my guess based upon how slowly NCSoft moves, and how little of a priority a decade-old game they shuttered due to its lack of importance to them could ever be in their eyes.  We'll just have to wait and see I guess. 

I know it's hard, though.  I keep thinking how nice it would be to be hitting the slopes of the ski chalet this Christmastime, even if it was with a level 1.   

[Teikiatsu]

see my edit

Too bad you got rid of the PhD part, it was worth saving.  I deal with that on a daily basis and fully agree.  Letters after your name don't make you infallible.

[Zubenelgenubi]

I had a standing invitation on the forums for anyone who thought they could either demonstrate this to me in-game, or log it.

Apparently, turning on logging made the effect go away.  It seems chatlogs were an accuracy buff.

Keep in mind, I spent hundreds of hours investigating *all* credible or common reports like this.  On the basis of those investigations I discovered that luck and insight inspirations were mislabeled, a reward randon number generator was bugged, two separate defense buffs accidentally got dropped from the code but not the patch notes, and a bunch of other strange or extremely hard to find (prior to real numbers at least) bugs.  I was definitely not ignoring those reports.  But this sort of thing would have been trivial for me to detect if it actually existed, and I tested for this effect on different powersets, on different archetypes, at different times, on different servers, in different combat conditions.  I had people tell me that the reason why I couldn't find it was because you had to pop an odd number of yellows and use an attack on a whole number animation frame for it to work - and I specifically engineered a test to check for that.

Understand: everyone who believed this believed it was all but obvious.  Exactly zero of them could either make it happen in my presence or have it happen while they were chatlogging.  It *only* happened when the only thing looking were players, and nothing was actually recording the event.  Also, something most players didn't know: the servers logged these events.  On two separate occasions I asked the devs to check *server logs* based on a player's report of the event, and the servers disagreed with the player's recollection of the events.  It took too much effort to ask the devs to check logs unless I was absolutely certain, and after going to bat for the players twice to check on this kind of event I imposed a "you have to convince me first" rule before I would take it to the devs.  For this specific issue, no player ever achieved that mark.

And all of this is why Arcanaville is the most drop-dead smexy female in the entire Western Hemisphere. 

[MM3squints]

Too bad you got rid of the PhD part, it was worth saving.  I deal with that on a daily basis and fully agree.  Letters after your name don't make you infallible.

But it dose make your name sound better . Look at Stephen Colbert.
Her Excellency The Rev. Sir Doctor Stephen Tyrone Mos Def Colbert, D.F.A., Heavyweight Champion of the World✱✱ featuring Flo Rida La Premiere Dame De France

[pinballdave]

Did anyone run mastermind pets when they would go batpoop crazy leave the fight go back down a corridor and go into a room you already cleared, stand and flex at some invisible foe Dragonball Z style?

[Goddangit]

Nope.  I would imagine that Team Hail Mary will make a separate post in this forum if it ever gets to the point where CoX is being resurrected (or even if the deal ends permanently with a "No"). 

As it took them 10 months just to get introduced to the right person so they could begin talks, and the first iteration of a proposed deal was just put onto NCSoft's table to peruse this past July, I doubt we'll hear much of anything for a while.  I'm guessing it won't be until next year the earliest if we ever hear anything more at all, but that's just my guess based upon how slowly NCSoft moves, and how little of a priority a decade-old game they shuttered due to its lack of importance to them could ever be in their eyes.  We'll just have to wait and see I guess. 

I know it's hard, though.  I keep thinking how nice it would be to be hitting the slopes of the ski chalet this Christmastime, even if it was with a level 1.   

I've given up my hopes of Christmas in the Chalet this year.  If this is the normal pace of business for NCSoft I'm surprised they ever managed to BUY CoH.  Or buy paperclips for that matter.  Still, they're talking and that at least is encouraging.  I would just stop reading and come back in about six months and see if there is any movement, but I just know as soon as I wander off that would be when something would break.  And I want to be in on this at the earliest possible moment.  So I guess I'll skim messages and try to be patient.

[darkgob]

Did anyone run mastermind pets when they would go batpoop crazy leave the fight go back down a corridor and go into a room you already cleared, stand and flex at some invisible foe Dragonball Z style?

Mastermind pets had notoriously bad AI.  Shame they were never able to fix that, but then the AT probably would have been even more stupid overpowered than it already was.

[Arcana]

Did anyone run mastermind pets when they would go batpoop crazy leave the fight go back down a corridor and go into a room you already cleared, stand and flex at some invisible foe Dragonball Z style?

Cant' say I did.  Did you know that I once discovered a new status condition?  If you Terrorized someone and put them in the tremble stance, then stunned them, the critter would sometimes just start walking slowly away in a straight line.  I called this state "Oblivious" because they could not even be taunted out of that mode until it wore off.

Fear + Disorient = Oblivious.  Strangely, that actually makes sense; it actually happens in horror movies.

[pinballdave]

it actually happens in horror movies.

  :p

[Rejolt]

Cant' say I did.  Did you know that I once discovered a new status condition?  If you Terrorized someone and put them in the tremble stance, then stunned them, the critter would sometimes just start walking slowly away in a straight line.  I called this state "Oblivious" because they could not even be taunted out of that mode until it wore off.

Fear + Disorient = Oblivious.  Strangely, that actually makes sense; it actually happens in horror movies.

Henchmen: "I think our work is done here. let's split up. Medic... Go check if he's dead by punching him."