Lu Xun

@ Malone: I mean this in a negative sense. It is not healthy that you deliberately want Kastor in the community to keep people watching, talking, and playing.

That is pretty smart, I'm in awe of his foresight. He has the foresight to put a trade offer to take advantage of any sudden moves in the market that result in drastic increases in pricing, even something to take advantage of potential gamebreaking bugs. But you know me and how I work and you can judge me appropriately.

I play RTS games and most games are filled with imbalances. The best part of the game is not when players play it as "intended" but when players come up with novel strategies using gimmicks the game's designers never thought of in the first place. The practical matter is that all the tournaments tend to be won by the players using the "strongest" race at a given time, and players who use "cheese" end up dominating the tournaments and becoming pro-gamers, instead of being banned. Long-term, cheese and exploits end up being "fixed" by patches, or they simply aren't fixed and they become part of the gameplay system. I think when you're complaining about Pol Pot, you're complaining that he's smarter than you are and that he managed to discover this particular exploit and you didn't. He obviously shouldn't be allowed to benefit the way he is currently doing so from the exploit, but at the same time just summarily banning him creates a certain lackness in game creativity and the aggressive search for mechanics exploits and bugs. This is part of why people are literally backing Kastor because they complain that the game is boring; a mentality of purely playing by the rules, basically, leads to stale, formulaic gameplay. I seriously think that damming and diversion is the best solution; create a program that allows players to be compensated for discovering game breaking bugs, then make non-reports punishable by reduction (reduction to nation account), suspension, deletion, and banning, depending on severity. People who discover major exploits can benefit from doing so by mailing the PnW bugs department, upon which a ruling can be made on whether or not it's considered degenerate, and if it's banned, the person who discovered the bug will be compensated in credits.

Inb4 swimsuit catalogues can only be sold to people over 21.

That's actually pretty bad for the game, you know? The idea is that the game by itself is so boring that you'd deliberately cultivate and maintain annoying and unbearable players because they increase clicks and increase user satisfaction. While I think that Kastor, if he's willing to play by the unstated rules of the game, should be allowed to stay, I also think that Kastor knew what he was doing (well, not really, if he leaves, I can give you an assessment of his psychology) and this is the natural consequences of his actions. Both he and us deserve that.

Regulated capitalism is the most efficient economic system for humans right now, but why should humans be allowed to get off planet? That's what I'm afraid of, when it comes to humans getting off planet under a capitalist system, the likely outcome will be the despoiling of native ecosystems, the enslavement or annihilation of less-advanced aliens, or picking stupid fights with more advanced aliens that will likely come and wipe us out. Better to fix our problems at home, and replace humans with robots, cyborgs, AI, and other post-human life forms, before Terran civilization gets off-world. They, hopefully, will have better instincts and better judgments.

The end date is tomorrow. But time is cyclical.

The other thing that Sheepy can do is to just immediately reset the game, with considerations and compensation for new players. He can announce out that using anything that resembles the infinite resources exploit can be grounds for deletion, suspension, or banning, and that players should try not to push the boundaries until the exploit has been discovered and patched. Meanwhile, that would give Sheepy time to get into contact with Pol Pot and figure out what went wrong, and if he refuses to cooperate, Sheepy could put out an open bounty for the exploit so the game can be patched and the game can be put back to normal operation. That's what I'd do, but it's Sheepy's game.

Define an exploit. I would actually categorize the infinite money glitch as essentially game breaking, but at the same time tons of run-of-the-mill tactics could be considered exploits. If I were running things I would, first, put out a policy that if you're the first to discover an exploit, you should report it to us. If it's considered degenerate, we will give you credits for it, if it's not considered degenerate, you'll get an approval for using it. Next, I'd go shake down Pol Pot and threaten him with banning unless he explains what his trick was. If you run a business, you cannot spend most of your time blaming the consumer; one of the first things they teach you in business school is that the Customer Is King. Half the users here playing the game are customers, meaning that they pay Sheepy money to keep the server running and to help finance costs of running PnW. The other half are product, meaning they keep the customers happy and keep the customers entertained. If either side is unhappy the customers will stop paying.

Sounds fair, but people sent out money, and others converted their funds to infrastructure, and others received money instead of sending it out. The end result may be that a few people have tons of negative money, but tons of resources as well, a few others might have tons of resources / infrastructure for no money, and some people might have tons of negative money and little to show for it.

If your code sucks it's not the fault of the users for finding out that the code sucks. And as I've said before, exploits many times occupy a grey area between creativity and degeneracy; it's the players' job to find optimal strategies and if the optimal strategy is gamebreaking, why punish them for that?

The credit database can be reverted to April 30th, with bonuses reverted to April status. Payments made can be tracked individually and then applied to users after the reversion.

It's good that you've brought this to others' attention, but this can be handled by giving new players either a pre-set nation or a large starting bonus as compensation for the costs of rollback.

Blaming the users for exploiting exploits is stupid; if there's no benefit to be had from discovering exploits people won't search for exploits at all, just kicking the can down the road for later, and not searching for exploits limits players' creativity; the game is meant to be played as it's coded, not as intended in a mouldering design document in a safe somewhere. As far as VE goes, you have to commend them for announcing the exploit publicly instead of storing it in a safe somewhere for desperate times or as a way to surreptitiously generate funds. You also have to note that others have attempted to benefit from the exploit, so it's not only their problem. I think two things should be done: administration should step in immediately to indicate that attempting to benefit from VE's infinite money exploit can be considered as grounds for rollback or reset, and VE should cooperate by disclosing a list of members that have participated in this particular exploit, so that players know not to interact with them in ways that can be considered exploiting VE's infinite money glitch. Second, administration should make a reliable program to reward bug discovery and reportage. Many exploits aren't really "game-breaking", and many straddle the line of decency, so alliances have an incentive to hoard exploits / gimmicks for strategic and tactical use. Getting players in the habit of getting approval for their exploits and rewards if they're considered illegal keeps players looking for ways to break the game, sometimes in interesting and enjoyable ways, while reducing the odds of a labor-intensive reset, or god-forbid, the customer relations nightmare of a deletion or banning.

Idc either, but I'm taking a break from these forums now. @ Foxfire: you asked for it: Great tits, no?

å¾è¼©ã¯çŒ«ã§ã‚る。åå‰ã¯ã¾ã ç„¡ã„。 Wagahai wa neko de aru. Namae wa mada nai. I am a cat. As yet, I have no name.

Alataq: you'd be surprised at how much intel I've been able to extract based simply on good-will and reputation. You seriously would be surprised, Alataq. I do admit I've been burning my political capital as of late, but that is deliberate and with intent. If you want to bring other politics into this, be my guest, if that's more burning of political capital that is also deliberate and with intent.

This is called overreach; once a guy is hated too much contrarians show up and like him / advocate sympathetic measures simply because everyone hates his guts. This still won't change the fact that Kastor is terrible and either needs to change or get out, because eventually even the contrarians will get bored of Kastor.

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nasa-says-emdrive-does-work-it-may-have-also-created-star-trek-warp-drive-1499098 I've always been terrified of the prospect of human spaceflight, simply because I don't think human beings are mature enough as a species to get off planet, and that it would be better for us to undergo the technological singularity before getting off world. There is simply no reason to replicate the patterns, as they now exist, on Earth, on other planets, because we will continue to kill each other, exploit each other, and make each other miserable among the stars. Better to transcend our limitations on Earth, first, than to become a type of interstellar locust. Others may think differently, of course.

Sure. If your dog attacks someone else, is it your responsibility? If you're talking about disenfranchised people who have minimal agency compared to the other classes of America, the fact that they have minimal agency means that it's more your fault than theirs because your level of agency outweighs theirs; you have the resources and time available to make positive changes, they don't. Note that I am being condescending to what black people call the "n" word. They deserve it, but they also deserve compassion for their plight.

If you're going to accept him, insist that he reroll and the moment anyone discovers he's Kastor he should be thrown out of the alliance. If he can't maintain the basic discipline of keeping quiet about his ID while he's on a EZI list, he's just going to create liabilities for you. But, while I'm an optimist, my expectations for Kastor have decreased tremendously since knowing him. Kastor, someone wants to give you a chance. Consider this, have you ever considered trolling PnW by proving to the rest of the community that we were wrong about you and your capabilities? That's more fun than acting like a !@#$tard and getting rolled repeatedly. But, like I said, my expectations for you have decreased tremendously, so, I wouldn't count on it. Quite likely, for you this is it; afterwards, either sit out for 2 years until people forget about you or find some other game to play. Prove me wrong about you.

That's totally NPKJI, you know?

The Economist I believe has a fairly good article on the subject of police brutality in the United States. The problem is that if policing were done "rationally" in the United States, they would be more like social workers, and the people who actually staff the police would revolt because they didn't come into the job to solve nice local problems, they came there to be on the winning side of the beatdown. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyXk3n5FCkw As to the subject itself, African-Americans have been screwed since the Civil War and the handling of ex-slaves and their descendents has been abominable since that period. The Civil War could have been suitably averted if the federal government had nationalized slavery with a gradual phase out program, but neither the Abolitionists nor southern slaveowners were far-sighted enough to compromise (despite the wealth of the north, there were no serious attempts at acquisition-manumission in the run-up to the Civil War), and subsequently the federal government lost interest in an equitable reconstruction for American blacks. As to blacks themselves, I'm on the side of Booker T Washington over W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Civil Rights movement should never have been handled that way. At the end of the process, what happened was that you had African Americans being legally equal to white Americans, but not socially or economically equal. That is what you are seeing here; there is a vast Black lumpenproletariat that is consistently disenfranchised, and not only that, they are also victims of Ressentiment, in that they rarely have the values necessary for success in America. You can see that with African Africans who emigrate to the United States, while they face racism similar to their African American counterparts, their mode of response and their cultural values are significantly different, so that you end up with three classes of black people in the United States, black elites, blacks who have been able to obtain the education and wealth to live respectably in this society, recent African immigrants, who, if impoverished, don't have the same cultural habits as the descendents of slaves, and if not, are reasonably comparable to black elites, and the black lumpenproletariat, which wallows in a mixture of poverty and ignorance. The problem for black people is, aside from a universal but mild level of racism in American society, is the existence and perpetuation of the black lumpenproletariat. While a lumpenproletariat must exist in any society, a racial bottom-tier causes unnecessary problems to the first and second categories, and, to put it bluntly, black trash at least deserves to be treated the same way as white trash.

Someone irrelevant.

Totally drunk, but I seriously made an account in game and forums just for you. Three things: First, you totally got trolled by that witch into committing game suicide. Congratulations. *golfclap* Second, you're essentially done here, you've rolled your reputation into the ground and you're better off rerolling. You probably have friends or people who at least sympathize for you, and if you're serious about playing this game you're better off rerolling, then finding shelter with them, and seeing what they can do for your career development. Third, as I mentioned before and elsewhere, don't be discouraged. You've obviously made a lot of mistakes, you've played things the wrong way. When Estelle says, you're better off not being leadership, she's right, but only for the short term. Take a break, find some mentors, analyze your faults, and make improvements. I think you have some potential and if you choose to play this game seriously, you should be capable of learning and fixing your faults. But that means that first, you have to acknowledge your limitations, and then actively work towards fixing them. It's hard to do, and it's not for everyone. As we mentioned on IRC, it might be better for you just to try something else. Since I decided to make this post, I see that Guardian has given you a protectorship, half for lulz, and half to screw with BoC. I was then told that it was fake, then I was told it was real. In the latter case, there are three possible outcomes. The first is that Guardian finds out that you are too much of a liability even to achieve laughs at BoC's expense. That is, what I think many people here would consider probable, but I am an optimist. The second is that you hover around the game in mediocrity and irrelevance, or you end up merging into Guardian. That's not a particularly good outcome, but it's preferable to the first. The third is that you take this last opportunity that has been granted to you and you make something out of yourself, but as mentioned above, you need to make many changes in your leadership style in order to achieve that. I still strongly suggest that you find a mentor who's willing to take you in, and reroll. That, I think, has the best expected return, and can deliver the best average outcomes for you, but as I said in IRC, I commend you for trying to do things the hard way, by keeping your user identity. If you absolutely must insist on retrying an alliance, you are, in my view, not objectively qualified to lead an alliance and you must seriously look for advice and guidance and you must be willing to learn how to do things right. I wish you the best of luck, but whatever happens next is your own responsibility. That is, I think, the wonderful thing about life, and you should embrace it.