New efforts!

[MM3squints]

I wasn't a huge fan of the itrials but i'll run anything at this point if it means we're playing coh again. hell i'd even agree to keyes.

that said i do think it's going to be all sorts of lulz when all of us show up with our SO'd toons for that first lambda run.

SOs are cheating. The right way to run Lambda is to six slot brawl with no TO/DO/SO/IO/HO and just punch everything to death.

[JanessaVR]

I wasn't a huge fan of the iTrials but I'll run anything at this point if it means we're playing CoH again.  Hell, I'd even agree to Keyes.

I didn't mind Keyes, it was the Underground that I regarded as pure pain.  Struggle for 2 hours, then fail at the end and get nothing.  Hope you had a fun afternoon, kids!  After running that one a few times, I considered elective dental surgery as an alternative to doing it again...

[Burnt Toast]

So you only ever did a BAF and Lambda ITrial...


Granted I liked the BAF but I REALLY liked TPN, MOM, Mag, and Diabolique.


I was growing tired of CoH towards Issue 17... but then I got wind of Incarnate stuff..and it piqued my interests. If it weren't for the ITrials and Incarnate powers...I may have taken my first break from the game around Issue 19. Then again I liked almost every aspect of CoH... leveling, farming, power leveling, badging,  pvp, TFs, base building...and marketeering :)


I can't wait for the return of CoH... for all of those reasons :)

I left around Issue 19 / 20 because the Incarnate grind was too grindy for me. It didn't have a purpose, for me, other than "moar power!" Which is probably why I left. I mean, the rest of the game's grind at least had various story lines on the way from 1 to 50, and there was enough that even after hitting 50, you could get more story. Whereas with Incarnate stuff, it was the same exact Trial, over and over and over again, just for more power. No further story once you finished the trial, not really much purpose to getting said power either, since you could only use it on the trial you were doing so many times anyways. Yes, it would be nice for RP purposes, but the whole point of RP is make-believe, and I can make-believe my character is god-like without having to mindlessly grind through the same thing dozens of times to make it true in-game.

[LaughingAlex]

I won't shy away from Keyes reactor even without an alpha slot, it gives tones of incarnate exp.  But the underground trial is easily sabotage-able, so don't expect me to touch it with a 20 foot pole.

I enjoyed all the other trials however, as they were both balanced and fun to play.  But the underground trial needed to seriously be given a "your targetted" icon above peoples heads.  So saboteurs couldn't troll the trial by sneaking in while targeted and watching everyone be instantly killed for no reason.

[JanessaVR]

So you only ever did a BAF and Lambda ITrial...

Actually, I bounced around between BAF, Lam, Keyes and TPN.  I was trying to learn MoM but never got a chance to run Mag or Diabolique.

[Harpospoke]

We listen for radio transmissions because we CAN.  SETI began with Cocconi and Morrison observing, in the 1950's, that 1950's technology could send a radio signal detectable across the entire galaxy.  So if there's LOTS of life out there and LOTS of "people" doing LOTS of different things, some of them will be sending radio signals that we might detect. 

We look for life like Earth life because we know Earth life works and we only GUESS that there may be other types of life that MIGHT work -- and Earth life is a function of chemistry in water -- which means you need liquid water to get it started and make it work. 

We look for it outside Earth, because Mars appears to have been very close to Earth-like conditions (but too small, so couldn't keep it up) and Earth has Earth-like conditions (tautologically) which gives us 2 planets in the Solar liquid water range that are pretty close.  And we know there are a lot of stars with a lot of planets, so a good hunk of them are probably Earth-like.   We also know that we can see signs of life in the earliest rock in which it would be POSSIBLE to see signs of life, suggesting POSSIBLY that life is "easy" in Earth-like conditions.

If you have an alternative suggestion for a DIFFERENT way to look for Extraterrestrial life, it's probably been proposed already, but by all means share it.

In SETI we look how we can, when we can, any way we can.

My suggestion is that we are never going to find extra-terrestrial life if we only look for earth life.   It doesn't sound logical to me to base our concept of "life" on the life that evolved on this planet.   Sounds like the most self-limiting view possible.

There's a huge difference between "is butter good for you" and "newtonian gravity."  "Is butter good for you" is an ill-defined question answered to the best of our knowledge, knowing our knowledge of dietary health is incomplete.  However, the notion that newtonian gravity is just a guess that keeps getting disproven is not how Science works (as previously discussed).

My point was that we have debate about science on every level...not that there isn't a difference in the topics being debated.

As to the first point about disparaging dark matter because we had to "invent" it just "to make our theories work" rather critically misunderstands how Science and in particular scientific theories work.

I think you just object to the terms I used.   I should just have said it this way:

Dark matter and dark energy might not exist, and its possible some other explanation better fits observations than dark matter and dark energy does.

We really just don't agree about our assessment of the situation:

In the meantime, either dark matter exists or gravity doesn't work the way we think it does.  Those are the only two real possibilities.  I trust our understanding of the laws of gravity more than I do our ability to observe all possible states of matter.  So I tend to believe dark matter exists, rather than our understanding of gravity is wrong.

I am more prone to believe we have barely even touched on the truth of how the universe works and that our understanding of it will change dramatically over the next few centuries.    If you don't like the word "invent"...well....we are still assuming something exists to make our theories work.   You have more faith in our abilities than I do.   

Also, this paper is technobabble.  Extremely opaque technobabble, but technobabble nonetheless.  That paper (which is not a peer-reviewed paper in the common sense of the term) hasn't changed "what we think is truth and facts."  Not given the fact that pretty much every scientist knowledgeable enough to properly comment on it seems to think something between "interesting, but almost certainly wrong" to "batshit nuts."

I can't explicitly speak authoritatively on the content, but some of it even I can tell is shaky at best, and some of it has been analyzed by field experts that have noted critical, impossible to address blatant errors on the part of the author in his understanding of general relativity.  He might be knowledgeable about quantum mechanics, but even qm experts are not exempt from being drawn over their heads in gr.

Again, my point was there is debate.   You obviously fall on one side of the debate.   Nothing wrong with that.

My faith in "peer review" is not as strong as yours either.   I've heard it more commonly called "pal review" in recent years.

I think it was Martin Gardner who said, "Remember, they may have laughed at the Wright Brothers...but they also laughed at the Marx Brothers." :)

Still do!    ;D

[LaughingAlex]

Actually, I bounced around between BAF, Lam, Keyes and TPN.  I was trying to learn MoM but never got a chance to run Mag or Diabolique.

The Magistrum trial required the lore and destiny slots to be unlocked, but the Diabolique and also the minds of mayhem trial often elitists would put "must be already +3 to do them", which was kind of contradictory in a way, or catch-22 ish for those trials, and the people who didn't have them.  There was, outside of badges(and there were no accolade powers tied to them), no incentive to do the trials with elitists acting that way when you already got your +3 from the other trials before then.  The magistrum was a different story, as you needed to do the trial for the advanced experience to unlock hybrid, but most people only farmed the first part and ignored the rest of the entire trial, which to me was pretty shameful.

[LaughingAlex]

My suggestion is that we are never going to find extra-terrestrial life if we only look for earth life.   It doesn't sound logical to me to base our concept of "life" on the life that evolved on this planet.   Sounds like the most self-limiting view possible.My point was that we have debate about science on every level...not that there isn't a difference in the topics being debated.I think you just object to the terms I used.   I should just have said it this way:We really just don't agree about our assessment of the situation:I am more prone to believe we have barely even touched on the truth of how the universe works and that our understanding of it will change dramatically over the next few centuries.    If you don't like the word "invent"...well....we are still assuming something exists to make our theories work.   You have more faith in our abilities than I do.   
Again, my point was there is debate.   You obviously fall on one side of the debate.   Nothing wrong with that.

My faith in "peer review" is not as strong as yours either.   I've heard it more commonly called "pal review" in recent years.
Still do!    ;D

We may just well find a purely robotic force out there that prefers super hot planets like Venus.  Or species that prefer gas-giants like Jupiter that would "burst" in our atmosphere for example :).

[Arcana]

I should just have said it this way:We really just don't agree about our assessment of the situation:I am more prone to believe we have barely even touched on the truth of how the universe works and that our understanding of it will change dramatically over the next few centuries.

It almost never has.  If it does, it will arguably be one of the very few times since the birth of modern science.  That is to say, we certainly greatly improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe over time, but it has almost always been incremental improvements.  Even general relativity is a refinement of older ideas and did not completely replace previous understandings.

General relativity modifies Newtonian gravity, but to a first order approximation Newtonian gravity still seems to rule the universe: no one has yet demonstrated Newton is not a reasonable approximation for how gravity works throughout the universe in three hundred years.  In fact this notion that we really don't understand the universe and something will come along that uproots everything is so contradictory to all of human history that we actually *define* modern physics to be basically the period after the early 1900s when special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics were born, and the period before that going all the way back to essentially the renaissance as "practically everything else."

But my original point stands.  If special relativity and general relativity are wrong, whatever the truth actually is, it has to look like SR and GR.  It *has to*.  It cannot NOT look like GR and SR because both have been proven to make predictions about how the universe works that match observation to the best extent we can measure.  In fact, surprisingly pedantic technology like GPS actually factor in *both* special relativity and general relativity calculations to make them work.  If the GPS system did not factor in both, the system could not achieve the accuracy it does: GPS is sensitive enough to *confirm* both special relativity and general relativity.  Both SR and GR affect GPS satellite clocks in a measurable and predictable way.  Similarly, if quantum mechanics is wrong, whatever the truth is, it has to *look* like QM, because QM is actually the most precisely confirmed physics theory ever.  In every respect, for every prediction QM makes, we can construct experiments to confirm or disprove those predictions and QM wins every time.

Just like GM had to look like Newton on most human scales, there will *never* be some ultimate truth out there that doesn't look like what we already have, because what we already have has already been demonstrated to be right again and again and again.  It is not a matter of opinion that this is true, nor is it a debate point.  It is how modern Science has always worked.  Sometimes scientific conjectures that are accepted as fact but haven't been rigorously proven are overturned.  Continental drift, for example, replaced the prior theories of geology that were more refined conjectures than confirmed theory.  But conflating the two situations is simply wrong.

[Arcana]

I didn't mind Keyes, it was the Underground that I regarded as pure pain.  Struggle for 2 hours, then fail at the end and get nothing.  Hope you had a fun afternoon, kids!  After running that one a few times, I considered elective dental surgery as an alternative to doing it again...

The Underground trial was the only trial I believed to have an objectively masochistic design.

[Arcana]

The Magistrum trial required the lore and destiny slots to be unlocked, but the Diabolique and also the minds of mayhem trial often elitists would put "must be already +3 to do them", which was kind of contradictory in a way, or catch-22 ish for those trials, and the people who didn't have them.  There was, outside of badges(and there were no accolade powers tied to them), no incentive to do the trials with elitists acting that way when you already got your +3 from the other trials before then.  The magistrum was a different story, as you needed to do the trial for the advanced experience to unlock hybrid, but most people only farmed the first part and ignored the rest of the entire trial, which to me was pretty shameful.

Sometimes I wonder if my attitude towards the iTrials (and the game in general) was at least partially a function of my primary server.  On Triumph, I wouldn't say we didn't have elitist jerks but they were too small in number to greatly influence the social dynamics of the server.  iTrials on Triumph in particular tended to be more "just try not to be a moron" than "only the best and the brightest."  In fact, trial runners often agonized for extended periods of time whether to ban someone *deliberately* being a jerk, much less just happening to be an idiot.

In fact as the co-inventor of two strategies that effectively sidelined other players for a significant period of time (the phantom army decoy strategy for level 50 Hamidon v1.0 and the "wait in the damn hospital and let us get the badge for you" Keyes Green Stuff badge strategy) I can say it always troubled me a bit when I was forced to conclude that the best possible strategy involved having some players just wait for the strong players to get past a really hard part for them.  I always tried to find ways for everyone, regardless of build or skill, to at least nominally participate.

(In fact the wait-in-the-hospital strategy bothered me enough that I studied the problem for a week and posted a strategy that would allow players of any skill level to have a reasonable chance at beating the Obliteration badge with almost no practice.)

[JanessaVR]

Sometimes I wonder if my attitude towards the iTrials (and the game in general) was at least partially a function of my primary server.  On Triumph, I wouldn't say we didn't have elitist jerks but they were too small in number to greatly influence the social dynamics of the server.  iTrials on Triumph in particular tended to be more "just try not to be a moron" than "only the best and the brightest."  In fact, trial runners often agonized for extended periods of time whether to ban someone *deliberately* being a jerk, much less just happening to be an idiot.

In fact as the co-inventor of two strategies that effectively sidelined other players for a significant period of time (the phantom army decoy strategy for level 50 Hamidon v1.0 and the "wait in the damn hospital and let us get the badge for you" Keyes Green Stuff badge strategy) I can say it always troubled me a bit when I was forced to conclude that the best possible strategy involved having some players just wait for the strong players to get past a really hard part for them.  I always tried to find ways for everyone, regardless of build or skill, to at least nominally participate.

(In fact the wait-in-the-hospital strategy bothered me enough that I studied the problem for a week and posted a strategy that would allow players of any skill level to have a reasonable chance at beating the Obliteration badge with almost no practice.)

Dear freaking gods - I wish you had been on my teams!  I would have pulled my hair out less often.  ;)

[Harpospoke]

It almost never has.  If it does, it will arguably be one of the very few times since the birth of modern science.  That is to say, we certainly greatly improve our knowledge and understanding of the universe over time, but it has almost always been incremental improvements.  Even general relativity is a refinement of older ideas and did not completely replace previous understandings.

General relativity modifies Newtonian gravity, but to a first order approximation Newtonian gravity still seems to rule the universe: no one has yet demonstrated Newton is not a reasonable approximation for how gravity works throughout the universe in three hundred years.  In fact this notion that we really don't understand the universe and something will come along that uproots everything is so contradictory to all of human history that we actually *define* modern physics to be basically the period after the early 1900s when special relativity, general relativity, and quantum mechanics were born, and the period before that going all the way back to essentially the renaissance as "practically everything else."

But my original point stands.  If special relativity and general relativity are wrong, whatever the truth actually is, it has to look like SR and GR.  It *has to*.  It cannot NOT look like GR and SR because both have been proven to make predictions about how the universe works that match observation to the best extent we can measure.  In fact, surprisingly pedantic technology like GPS actually factor in *both* special relativity and general relativity calculations to make them work.  If the GPS system did not factor in both, the system could not achieve the accuracy it does: GPS is sensitive enough to *confirm* both special relativity and general relativity.  Both SR and GR affect GPS satellite clocks in a measurable and predictable way.  Similarly, if quantum mechanics is wrong, whatever the truth is, it has to *look* like QM, because QM is actually the most precisely confirmed physics theory ever.  In every respect, for every prediction QM makes, we can construct experiments to confirm or disprove those predictions and QM wins every time.

Just like GM had to look like Newton on most human scales, there will *never* be some ultimate truth out there that doesn't look like what we already have, because what we already have has already been demonstrated to be right again and again and again.  It is not a matter of opinion that this is true, nor is it a debate point.  It is how modern Science has always worked.  Sometimes scientific conjectures that are accepted as fact but haven't been rigorously proven are overturned.  Continental drift, for example, replaced the prior theories of geology that were more refined conjectures than confirmed theory.  But conflating the two situations is simply wrong.

I would say the alternate theories on the Big Bang itself is a pretty dramatic change in thinking.    When you start the discussion of that with "That's right. Everything we know about the universe may be wrong."

http://mobile.news.com.au/technology/science/has-the-big-bang-theory-been-busted/story-fn5fsgyc-1226721187118

Like I said, you have much more faith in our ability than I do.    I tend to think we let our ego inflate our self-worth.

[Baja]

I don't know how to react to this page, talking about the origins of life and iTrials at the same time. If this page was a meal it'd be a steak marinated in monster laid on a bed of jalapeños.

Honestly though if you really loved iTrials and want end game content galore, DCUO is exactly that. It's literally designed from the ground up with this raid grind as the basis. CoH was not designed for this at all, in fact if you played from the early days you'd know they explicitly advertised weekend warriors and hardcore being able to enjoy this game together. An end game raid design is only for hardcores. Incarnate powers totally negated any other objective in the game by making it seem trivial, solo'ing was essentially removed, farming AE was the only other reasonable option. You could literally spend 200 mill on a elec/fire or ss/fire brute get him/her the first incarnate and power level people 1-50 in an afternoon.

By the end of the CoH days it was like watching Led Zeppelin sing Katy Perry covers, it really shouldn't have happened and was painful to witness. This game was almost the only thing on the market that didn't succumb to WoW fever, and in the end the lead developer did.

I miss this game a lot but I already know if it launches it will be a race for 90% of vet players to hit 50 and start grinding out incarnate stuff, because honestly what's the point of taking your time with that content in place? I'll be taking my sweet ass time enjoying all the sights and sounds, playing the game I remember from the early days. To each their own though I suppose, I'm sure I'm a minority.

[FloatingFatMan]

We may just well find a purely robotic force out there that prefers super hot planets like Venus.  Or species that prefer gas-giants like Jupiter that would "burst" in our atmosphere for example :).

Or ones that ones to rip out brains out and stuff them into semi-organic drone monster bodies that can self-repair an....oh wait, that was a movie... :p

[hurple]

I miss this game a lot but I already know if it launches it will be a race for 90% of vet players to hit 50 and start grinding out incarnate stuff, because honestly what's the point of taking your time with that content in place? I'll be taking my sweet ass time enjoying all the sights and sounds, playing the game I remember from the early days. To each their own though I suppose, I'm sure I'm a minority.

I'll be right there with you.  I plan to re-make my main and level him 1-50 the old-fashioned way, Atlas Park ---> The Hollows ---> Skyway ---> etc

I had great fun levleing him  to 50 the first time.  And was sad when he hit 50 because, for me, his story was, essentially, over.  It'll be fun to get to do it again.

[BadWolf]

I'll be right there with you.  I plan to re-make my main and level him 1-50 the old-fashioned way, Atlas Park ---> The Hollows ---> Skyway ---> etc

I had great fun levleing him  to 50 the first time.  And was sad when he hit 50 because, for me, his story was, essentially, over.  It'll be fun to get to do it again.

Old-fashioned? The Hollows? Hah! :) I remember when "old-fashioned" meant street-sweeping in Perez Park after you gained a couple of levels in King's Row, because Perez Park was locked until you hit level 7! Or you could stick around in King's Row until 10, then head over to Steel Canyon or Skyway if you didn't want to team.

[MM3squints]

I miss this game a lot but I already know if it launches it will be a race for 90% of vet players to hit 50 and start grinding out incarnate stuff, because honestly what's the point of taking your time with that content in place? I'll be taking my sweet ass time enjoying all the sights and sounds, playing the game I remember from the early days. To each their own though I suppose, I'm sure I'm a minority.

To each their own, I love that statement. :D I know my goal is to get an ice/time troller (keep in mind that is probably one of the least efficient builds to level) to 50 as quickly and effetely as possible.  If I so happen to be the first one to 50 while lvl up a ice/time, more power to me. If not (which I'm sure cause there are more efficient builds) I will have a shinny lvl 50 xD

[LaughingAlex]

Or ones that ones to rip out brains out and stuff them into semi-organic drone monster bodies that can self-repair an....oh wait, that was a movie... :p

It's also in new vegas with the Old World Blues plot, you get lobotomized right off the bat and your running around with an artificial brain the whole time trying to get back the original, if you even want it back.  Oh, you lose the spine and heart to.  Probably the best DLC, although it also has a serious sam problem.  Infinitely spawning enemies that are also very tough, I recommend bringing if it's very hard, at least 600+ rounds of 44-70 gov, 600+ 12 gauge shotgun slugs(buckshot and low-calliber weapons are not good in the dlc, to many armored enemies), 600+ other high caliber ammo types as well.  If it's hardcore, use companions to stockpile as much as possible.

Explosives have to bring enough firepower to blow a big city a few dozen times over, energy weapons have easy mode with the dlc though due to an extreme abundance of ammo for them in the dlc.

Edit: Simplified the requirements to beat the dlc successfully on very hard.

[Noyjitat]

Well, I didn't like Task Forces just because of the huge time commitment many of them had. The thing about TFs, as opposed to iTrials, though, is that once you do a Task Force, that's it. You're done. You have the badge, some sort of reward, and you can go on with your life. Yes, you can do a TF multiple times for more rewards, but there are other ways to get said rewards. With iTrials, they hugely incentivized the Trial path to incarnate hood - so much so that I wasn't even playing when the solo Dark Astoria path came out. iTrials were the only way to get iPower, and you had to grind them like crazy. Could TFs be "grindy"? Sure. But I don't think there's any denying that iTrials were the grindiest thing in CoH.

I guess we both just have different opinions then... not that anything is wrong with that. I just have a hard time calling them grindy but I'm biased and enjoyed them extensively and have nothing negative to say about them. I would honestly kill to have a system like the incarnate trials as the endgame system in other mmos.

Now when incarnates first launched and it cost 400 million influence to convert rares to very rares I was quite pissed about that. But over time they reduced that and made it so some of the tfs had guaranteed rare/very rare drops. I think it was underground and minds of mayhem? Or was it the keyes trial?

Keyes was another that I originally didn't like because the pulse damage was initially very high and the 99.9% damage tick on disintegration. Which after time the devs nerfed those but they over nerfed them in my opinion. A trial that went from being very difficult to only slightly annoying.

I found TPN to be very boring, it needed more than just jumping from building to building.