Lu Xun
-
Posts
1771 -
Joined
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by Lu Xun
-
-
- Popular Post
- Popular Post
It's almost Halloween. Some seasonal variety is good.
-
1
-
9
-
5 hours ago, Dryad said:
I think it's important to ensure that there is no risk that an exploit exists that somehow lets you win more often; due to EM winning big in keno at least twice there has been speculation in that direction. If there is a risk of an exploit here then i'd say turn it off, otherwise i think its a fun feature that i'd be sad to see go. If on average the net profit from keno is negative then i don't think it's needed to remove it despite occasional jackpots.
I mean we're all numerate here, EV of Keno is .97, i.e, per game played, martingale or not martingale, you should be losing on average 3.5% of your bet per game.
Law of large numbers says that, for an individual player, Keno makes no sense. For a large group of Keno players, some players are simply going to get lucky and make out like bandits from it.
As far as exploiting goes, with .1% yield in the positive direction, you get 50k per game, about 5x better than baseball per keno game. At 1% yield in the positive direction, you get 500k per game, or 50x better than baseball.
-
15 hours ago, Edward I said:
On average, keno is a cash sink and so probably a good thing. To prevent gigantic winnings - which are problematic - cap the amount you can bet at a single time.
Keno is already capped at $50 million per game. Otherwise, alliances, before they lose wars, would decide to blow the alliance bank on Keno on the off chance that they hit the 500 billion jackpot and boost all their nations to C30 or C40.
Pragmatically, the problem with Keno is that the max jackpot is huge. It's the difference between Keno and Dice; Dice has only 1.5% expected losses per game, but Dice only gives you a max of 25 million return on hitting the jackpot. If, say, 10000 players play about 1000 games each of Keno at 50 million, and most players end up losing 1.750 billion, there's a 63% chance at least one player will end up hitting the 500 billion jackpot. And that's really destabilizing, for a single individual to randomly luck out and hit 500 billion, which is more than the quantity of money in all nations right now. Hell, it's half of the quantity needed to hit 100 cities, about the quantity needed for NPO to hit 25 cities, and so on.
Keno is also an incredible money laundering opportunity. Let's say, if Pooball had decided to launder all his money through Keno, with 400bn, he'd have a reasonable chance to claim that he won all his money fair and square on Keno, since the cheatcoin ended up getting converted to Keno winnings. We'd probably never have been able to bomb him under those circumstances.
-
1
-
1
-
-
I'm just making this public since TheNG's stats aren't updating on NPO War Stats, and Frawley reported it was due to a breakdown in bank loot API in the last weeks of September.
-
-
7 hours ago, Bartholomew Roberts said:
Even though they're cosmetic you can't ignore they have a psychological impact on people. Reddit is the most famous example of this - the term "Karma Whore" exists for a reason. People will change their posting behavior to accrue positive feedback. Upvotes/likes/etc are just another positive feedback mechanism.
I'd disable the entire Karma system tbh because it's turned the forums into a game unto itself. Everyone wants to post a witty comeback and get upvotes, people downvote their enemies and if you piss them off enough they'll seek out every post you've ever written, good or bad, and downvote it. Noctis is an example of this - everything he posts now comes with 6 or 7 downvotes regardless of its content.
It discourages true discourse in my opinion and creates an avenue for lazy people to not need to reply.
another example that would be good for at least removing downvotes: Micros post announcements and get downvoted... for being micros.
That's a good point regarding the laziness of the downvote system. A forum is supposed to be about discussion, whereas if someone chooses to reply with a downvote, there's nothing to respond to, and it doesn't require any effort or risk on the part of the user outside of hitting their upvote / downvote limits.
Put another way, if a post is unpopular with an ideological sphere, with a downvote system, what you see are 5-10 red marks. Without a downvote system, for the ideological sphere to make its presence felt, the posters actually have to make replies like "coward", "war dodger", "idiot", etc. These posts can be singled out for low post-quality verbally, or they can be rebutted in detail and addressed. And if they're insubstantial, it's a lot more obvious to see what's going on than it is with a downvote system.
===
As for removing the reputation system altogether, you make a good point, but the point is to encourage posting, not discourage posting. The game-like feature of collecting karma likes does drive posters to post, but the way the game has turned out is that there's a limited number of posters who dominate the discourse, get upvoted, and don't get downvoted for it. People who try to jam the game either end up joining the dominant discourse, promoting an echo chamber culture, or they get downvoted until they stop posting.
As someone who works with new players, I'm familiar with players who make a few posts, get downvoted, and stop. I'm also familiar with players who focus on making non-offensive shitposts (which is not what the forum needs) to avoid getting downvoted and it's not good for the forums either.
I think there are basically four options being discussed here. You have the most radical; which is to toss the reputation / karma system altogether. The option originally proposed in the OP was to remove the downvote system, and it seems to be something Alex has suggested and supported. A softer variation of this would be to establish downvoting as invisible to the reputation score, as I've suggested elsewhere, or to limit downvotes to certain boards. Then we have the option supported by some posters here which is to keep the downvote system as is.
I think that in light of what the discussion on the upvote system has amounted to, I have to support Alex's original proposal of just removing downvotes as it's the simplest implementation and the one that is most easily adjusted.
-
1 hour ago, JasperFrost said:
And that's after you've embargoed half the game? Jesus christ.
-
No bank is 100% trustworthy. You're better off having assets in multiple banks, so if any single bank goes bust, you still have assets in other banks.
Orion, for instance, was the victim of a bank theft earlier in the year by Radoje. Purportedly, Radoje had set up a ponzi scheme that was on the verge of unravelling, so he took out his assets and quit the game.
-
1 hour ago, Kevanovia said:
On one hand - well played ?
On the other - if you’re implying that Inst has the same amount of influence on your bloc that Thrax does on ours...that explains a lot about your bloc.
True, as I understand, Thrax is too busy buying hookers and blow to be much involved in PnW. The official claim is that he's retired, isn't he?
-
1
-
-
39 minutes ago, Kevanovia said:
I don’t agree that downvotes are politicized. For instance, the people who have the most downvotes (from both sides of the coalitions) typically post the things that either make the least amount of sense to others/are seeking attention/are generally disrespected due to their own actions.
Roquentin is the leader of the opposite coalition of me, but I would be willing to bet that I have upvoted more things than I have downvoted of his. I would bet that it is the case for a good portion of folks from both sides of the aisle.
Funny thing is, we can easily inject politics into this.
In actually investigating your posting reputation record, I found that you had roughly this upvoting record vs Roquentin:
Your claim is correct, i.e, roughly 6 upvotes or upvote equivalents vs 2 downvotes.
However, your co-coalitionist Nizam Adrienne has stated that downvotes are means of signifying disagreement. A cursory look at Roquentin's downvotes and seeing that the vast majority of them are by political enemies shows that this assessment is more correct, and is representative of general use of downvotes.51 minutes ago, Nizam Adrienne said:I don't think downvotes should be removed. It's not censorship. No one is stopping anyone from posting. It's a method of signaling disagreement and that shouldn't be removed from a game like this. There are situations it gets abused in but that doesn't mean the entire feature should be nixed.
First, when you say that downvotes should not be removed, are you being polite? The literal meaning of what you've said states that you don't support removing downvotes, but that doesn't mean you oppose removing them either. You can be more specific as to what you mean, although the rest of the post is a defense of the downvote feature. As I'm very used to ambiguity, I trend to, but will not conclude, that you oppose removing downvotes.
In practice, though, we both acknowledge that the game is split along two ideological spheres, no matter what the treaty web might indicate. Because downvotes function as a mechanism of signalling disagreement, the effective result is that downvotes end up functioning as an indication of a particular sphere's representation in the forums.
This creates unwanted confusion; are downvotes generally indicative of, as Kevanovia argues, bad posting, or do they indicate that a particular sphere is better represented on a particular forum?
The other concern is that for new users, downvotes are unspecific. For instance, a downvote for being Captain Vietnam (I'm not sure if you remember that individual, a troll from many years past) and a downvote for having a different political perspective than your side looks exactly the same. Requiring posters to actually voice their disagreement as opposed to simply clicking the red button lets new posters know why their posting is considered bad and how they might remedy it. If the disagreement is couched in the form of a flame, that's reportable, invalid, and removes an unwanted downvote.
-
1 minute ago, Azaghul said:
There doesn't have to be only one person playing away games...
There's usually only one person playing away games as prisoner's dilemma encourages everyone to parasite off that single player, although in league play, it definitely makes sense for multiple people to do so.
-
1 minute ago, Nizam Adrienne said:
The deflection is strong with these ones...
Mistaking deflection with absorption.
-
1
-
2
-
-
23 minutes ago, Alex said:
I agree, I'd be fine with just disabling downvoting. I think I suggested that when upvotes/downvotes were added but was shot down.
I'd also like to add to Dryad's point and reframe it.
Downvotes currently serves as a method for users to censor the boards, by giving posters downvotes. However, we have a "Report Post" function already, and board censorship should rightly be the right of moderation and the administration.I want to note that I have posted this thread in public Discord and invited posters who would be negatively impacted by the nerfing or removal of the downvote system to speak their mind. So far, the only poster who has responded negatively against this is Pasky Darkfire, and he's not chosen to provide posts substantiating his refusal.
I strongly encourage people who disagree with the scrapping or nerfing of the downvote system to post here and make their view known.
-
I also wish to make a final comment here. If you were convinced of your innocence, you could simply have pointed out that you know the rules, you think you did nothing wrong, and that moderators would act in an appropriate way (i.e, ignore the report). You would not have needed to resort to personal attacks or to try to paint me as the perpetrator (I have invited Pasky and others to put up a thread if they'd like on my use of "moderation as a weapon").
But of course, I think character should not play into moderation judgment. The questions should be: "Did Kevanovia break the forum rules by thread derailment / flamebait?" If he did, he gets warned, if he did, he doesn't get warned, and I don't need to know the outcome. As you have made the counter accusation (and I assume with a confidential "report post" as well), the question also is, "Did Inst break the rules by thread derailment?" But these questions are independent of each other, and how they are answered, besides the information given in this thread, has nothing to do with me.
-
1
-
-
32 minutes ago, Kevanovia said:
You’re trying to set up scenarios into moderation ‘gotcha’ moments, which is not what this game is supposed to be about.
There was a thread created that was about the current war. You are someone (by your own admission) that shitposts about our coalition. I pointed out the irony of you constantly shitposting (to a shitpost you made earlier in the thread) using the topic in the thread (the war) to make my point. Just because I made a post that you describe as “bait to derail” doesn’t mean I should be punished merely because my post gave you the desire to derail the thread.
I can tell you right now that moderation doesn’t give a shit about ‘Soup Kitchen’ or ‘Coalition B/A’ or whatever. You keep bringing up political points, it’s irrelevant. They’re here to moderate behavior, not politics.
I would beg for the warn to shut Inst up. However, it I lay down and take it - it would set the standard for Inst, among other people who want to feel important, to follow in the future and therefore create an even bigger headache for everyone.
That's sort of the point of KERCHTOG$ forums behavior, isn't it? You haven't read anything I've said about how I want you to stop thread derailing behavior.
As I've said, I personally do not care whether the warns are given or not. I encourage everyone to report posts that seems to be in violation of forum rules, and you've said as much you don't want forum rule violations to be reported aggressively. The present policy implementation gives zero feedback on whether a given report has been penalized or not, so for all I know, you got a single forum warn point or a 0-point verbal warning and are hiding it. For me, the report outcome doesn't matter, it just matters that the report is made.
I would beg for the warn to shut Inst up. However, it I lay down and take it - it would set the standard for Inst, among other people who want to feel important, to follow in the future and therefore create an even bigger headache for everyone.
I want to address this in particular. In PnW, unlike in other games, players have no obligation to report rules violations. Consequently, some rule violations are not reported or addressed, and I think things have gotten so bad that Alex has made a statement in Discord to the effect that players should remember that the player on the other side is a human being, and that players should behave with civility.
When the issue was debated on the forums, the moderator line was "use the report post feature, we usually act only if the post is reported." Obviously, some of these reports will not be acted upon, but it's better than having posts that should be addressed not be addressed because people assume moderation does nothing.
And no matter how moderators respond, I will continue reporting posts I feel violate the forum rules. I suggest you do so too, even to me, and even to people I would not like warned.
-
1
-
-
I forgot to mention, but capping baseball delays is, as Edward I has said, removing liquidity. Pitch-only donors are now limited to 12 games per second, encouraging the supply of pitch-only players to dwindle.
In effect, Alex's changes have penalized both the first and third class of players, leaving baseball only to tippers, and tippers in high moderation
What I'd like Alex to be aware of is that there IS a baseball community, i.e, there are baseball Discord servers, there used to be attempts at Baseball-oriented alliances, etc etc etc. Everyone here agrees about the problems with bad actors in baseball (scripters, people who play too much, etc), but what Alex has done is to throw the baby out with the bathwater and punish all members of the baseball community.
One, simpler way to handle this is to put a moratorium on the baseball changes outside of increased controls on scripting. Let's see how the baseball numbers change in the following weeks, i.e, have the bad actors been neutralized, and if so, are baseball changes still needed?
-
1 minute ago, Alex said:
They do, yes. After you've played 1,000 games for the day, you only get 10% of the home team revenue generation.
If you're playing only away games though, it doesn't matter. 10% of 0 is still 0, nothing is changing.
You're not aware of how the baseball community works.
There are three main ways of playing baseball. One involves a baseball player in a donor league; i.e, the player does nothing but away games for hours. This is less affected by your changes because they don't get penalized at all for their generosity.
Second, there's tipping. That involves players tipping other players for running the away game queue some portion of their earnings. This can be very irritating, as you often have scripting support in order to figure out how much you owe any given player. This is less affected, although quite affected, by your new baseball hard-caps.
Third, there's switching. Many casual players prefer this because it means they don't need to calculate how much they owe any given player through the notifications screen. A player does away for a given period of time, then switches to home for a given period of time. This is most highly affected by your baseball changes as it is no longer possible to switch due to the high losses involved.
-
1
-
-
1 minute ago, Alex said:
That's already the case. It only applies to revenue generated by the home team, and does not apply to the winning team's earnings.
If you're playing away games, you're already getting $0 for home team revenue generation.
The argument right now is whether home games are COUNTED by the baseball cap. Players should not be expected to sacrifice themselves to start home game sells.
Likewise, some casual players do home / away switches with only 15 minute spans. Currently, the home / away switch is requiring about 83 minutes of play at your hard-capped play limit is reached.
-
1
-
-
Currently, the baseball nerfs are excessive, to the extent that they punish casual or normal players.
As a mediocre baseball player, I'd be able to exceed the baseball cap in only 1 and a half hours of play. Likewise, as a mediocre baseball player, I can only do 15 games per minute, meaning that even I myself can end up hitting the "timer" cap on baseball.
Suggested response:
-Increase the baseball soft cap to 2000 home games per day. This would generate about 22,500,000 million per day once tips are factored in. It's a mechanic that benefits active players and encourages activity, but does not penalize others too much. For comparison purposes, a 15 city nation would be making about 20-30 million per day, so baseball would not comprise an excessive proportion of their income.
-Decrease the baseball delay to 3 seconds. This implies a max game rate of 20 games per minute, which most players can achieve..
-
2
-
6
-
7
-
-
5 minutes ago, Alex said:
At this time, I've re-enabled Baseball with some changes:
- Increased security on reCAPTCHA for verifying if human. This applies to baseball, trading, and the game in general when it occasionally asks you to fill out a CAPTCHA.
- Baseball earnings after 1,000 games have already been played for the day will only generate 10% of the normal revenue for home games. The winning team’s revenue is not affected by this.
- There is now a rate limit on baseball games. You can only play a game once every 5 seconds. This restriction should be non-binding for the vast majority of players. It effectively caps the number of games played per day at 16,800.
I think this is too extreme, i.e, if people want to do 2700 games per day over 3 hours, they should be allowed to do so.
Also, I want to point out that from what you've said, baseball game soft caps are applied to both home and away games. This is discouraging people from playing away games; I personally love clearing out away game queues, and you're penalizing me for it.The figure I've given you, anyways, is representative of how "mediocre" baseball players such as myself play. I've yet to pay off my baseball costs, and when 15 games / minute over 2 hours already exceed your softcap, it is punishing me, who is not a serious baseball player.
-
1
-
9 minutes ago, Epi said:
This is biased and that's a good thing. I never read a post without checking it's upvotes and more specifically who gave what type of vote. The results would surprise you and generally tells me where someone stands within the narrative.
On Discord, I've suggested invisible downvoting, i.e, you can see the downvotes, but they don't actually get counted in Karma. You'll still know how downvoted a poster is by their profile, but it doesn't show on the karma calculations.
The problem is, we have some marginal posters. Some of them are like Noctis, who are sincerely bad posters and are negative for it. But say, if your Camelot noobs wanted to post on the forums, they'd get rapidly downvoted for it if they said something KERCHTOG$ didn't like, and they'd stop posting, contributing to KERCHTOG$ forum control.
Nerfing downvoting encourages them to keep posting and keep the forums alive, as opposed to being "KERCHTOG$ coalition forums", although, while I do complain, it hasn't gotten so bad that KERCHTOG$ is now posting "I need a counter on this, or a tac-team to help me hit so and so" in Orbis Central.I'll point out that even if my downvotes get deleted, I'll still be sub 1:1 in terms of karma, and it'll mark me as a bad poster. I don't have pretensions to be an above-par poster, I know this on other boards, and I don't care. What I do care about is whether the current downvoting system is bad for the game.
-
1 minute ago, Tiberius said:
The last part I disagree with unless you could pause the timer. Again if you can't pause it's affecting the majority when they don't make anything like the figures posted. My preference is for a games cap, but it needs to be high enough to not affect the majority.
It is when you are self funding it through baseball.
I'd agree with being able to pause the baseball timer.
I'm curious, if baseball were a donation-only thing (it should not be), how many players would donate to baseball?
-
2 minutes ago, Epi said:
The majority of those who maxed baseball have less than 10 cities rn Inst. Also that guy who played 30k games in one day generated over 800mil lol.
Not arguing for or against just keeping things in perspective
In other words, baseball is an alternative way to play PnW that should be preserved.
-Baseball is its own punishment
-When baseball isn't its own punishment, i.e, players who play too much or are scripting, that is an issue that should be addressed.
-
I'll go on to argue this later. I am more focused on getting rid of downvoting, although I think Dryad has a point with limiting downvotes to specific forums to provide quick polling on support for a suggestion.
peace talks
in Orbis Central
Posted
Where's my old Bush 4 more years memes? Oh well, we'll probably have 4 more years Trump memes in 2020.