Wulff

I think this is a good example of why I don't like Extra Credits. Defining "game" doesn't stifle the medium anymore than defining "movie" or "novel" does. The issue is that not everything that's interactive is a "game." And that's not to say that things that don't fall into the definition of "game" are bad. But by Extra Cedits's definition of "interactive experience" all Blu-Rays count, because I can interact with it. I can make everyone stop, go backwards, go really fast, etc. Sure, at no point can I be considered to have lost, but I can interact with it.
 
To me, the only reason we're even having this discussion is because some developers have these experiments they made. Programs they wrote for story telling that don't fit "visual novel" but aren't "games." And the programs may be good in their own right. But the developers are scared that no one will be interested in them, so they try to lump it in with video games, because they already have an established audience.

Hey Spufpowered, I have a very serious problem. I'm fucking crying because of how stupid I am. 
 
Okay so my girlfriend was supposed to come over to my house today because I was going to take her to a movie. She lives about 20 minutes away, and the movie we were supposed to see started at 4:15, which was in about 40 minutes. I figured "cool, I'll just play Pokemon while I wait".
 
So I'm playing Pokemon, and having a pretty damn good time. Anyway, she finally does show up, except she's crying as she walks into my room. Instead of doing the right thing by comforting her, I half-focus on my game and her. She starts telling me that her cat died, and just as she was getting into it, I get into a random encounter in my game.
 
A shiny pidgey. Holy shit. (For those of you who don't know/care, shiny Pokemon have less than a 1/1,000 chance of appearing; 1/8192 to be exact.). I stare into my screen in amazement, yelling "holy shit, YES", interrupting her mid-story. She sobs more and she starts to yell "You don't even fucking care! YOU JUST WANT TO PLAY YOUR FUCKING GAME!" I'm still looking at my screen, still focusing on catching my shiny Pidgey, when she walks over, and tosses the game against the wall. I run over and pick up my DS hoping that nothing has changed on screen, and quickly notice that she broke it. My system and my shiny Pidgey, gone forever.
 
I start screaming every obscenity I know, and started flailing my arms around. I didn't know she was behind me, and apparently I backhanded her in the face while I was being a dumbass and swinging my fists around. She yells out "FUCK YOU", and runs out of my house in tears.
 
What have I done? I've fucked up so badly, and I need to know how to approach her. I don't want a game of Pokemon to be responsible for ruining my best relationship ever. Help me, Spufpowered  

I'm well aware that I am not the most active or the most involved member of this community, in fact I tend to sit on the sidelines in various off-topic threads and post snide remarks because I'm a wannabe cynic, but this particular subject is something I do have a bit of experience with. I'm an administrator of another community which is very similar to subSPUF's current situation, but it wasn't always like this. Rather it used to be large and public, with new members joining every day and went on to become a more closed and secluded community.
 
The thing about large and open communities is that it will attract a lot of different people, especially if it is advertised. Here's a fact: You will not like some of those people. Ultimately it is what made me very wary about forum-users, because I (initially) administrated the other community with as much friendliness as possible and I had a real sense of duty to make sure problems were resolved, be it technical or emotional problems between users. This essentially spun out of control and ended up having the administrators and moderators act like councillors for everyone and their everyday problems, because here's another fact: The vast majority of the internet population are retarded and can't deal with their own problems, nor can they let a grudge go.
 
Eventually it boiled down to so much stress on the administrators and moderators, that 70% of them quit their "job" and the community within the span of a year. The rest of us started getting jaded, stopped giving a damn about the community and its problems (because we were bombarded with trivial issues on a daily basis). Essentially, the lack of administration caused a shift in the community, that ended with 80% of the active users to become inactive, leaving only a tight-knit core that's still there today... Much like subSPUF is right now, a tight-knit core of ~25 regular posters. This entire thing happened over the course of 2 years.
 
That being said, there were quite a few benefits to a public community with no real recruitment policies (Anyone and anything goes).
 
A: Even if 90% of the people who joined turned out to be clueless, there were several good people, who we would have never gotten into contact with, had our community been secluded. Good people who I still talk to on a daily basis today.
 
B: Our "services" were packed to the brim on a daily basis. Game servers, Mumble servers, forums etc. All of these were packed with people with a wide range of interests, not to mention our forums got several hundred posts per day. We were definitely getting a bang for our buck in terms of servers and advertisement. Today we've cut down and now run only a single game server, a single Mumble server and our forums.
 
C: With a large community comes a large range of options. I'm not going to lie, we were actually making a lot of money in monthly donations (We offered donator perks on our game serves in the form of coloured text and other visual goodies, nothing p2w, along with access to hidden donator boards on our forums). Enough to sustain our servers and even do little things outside of it (Weekly events, where we offered games as prizes). It allowed us to try things out and better the community, make it an interesting and fun thing to be a part of. That's not even touching on the many in-houses we held in various team-games, back when we were enough members to actively and regularly square large teams (TF2 Highlander, for example) off against each other.
 
***
 
I have no strong feelings one way or the other regarding this. I am not as involved with this community, as I am with the other one. I just want to make sure that everyone who voted to keep subSPUF secluded read and understood that SupremeCommander would be moving many of the projects, that currently has a home here, to another place where they can better be advertised and gain attendance/viewership/listeners/whatever.
 
There are merits for a larger community and there are merits for a smaller one. An open subSPUF doesn't necessarily have to go down the drain, like my old community did (To be fair, the MAIN reason for my old community "dying" as it did, was because the head honcho kinda left without a word for the better part of six months).

I'm well aware that I am not the most active or the most involved member of this community, in fact I tend to sit on the sidelines in various off-topic threads and post snide remarks because I'm a wannabe cynic, but this particular subject is something I do have a bit of experience with. I'm an administrator of another community which is very similar to subSPUF's current situation, but it wasn't always like this. Rather it used to be large and public, with new members joining every day and went on to become a more closed and secluded community.
 
The thing about large and open communities is that it will attract a lot of different people, especially if it is advertised. Here's a fact: You will not like some of those people. Ultimately it is what made me very wary about forum-users, because I (initially) administrated the other community with as much friendliness as possible and I had a real sense of duty to make sure problems were resolved, be it technical or emotional problems between users. This essentially spun out of control and ended up having the administrators and moderators act like councillors for everyone and their everyday problems, because here's another fact: The vast majority of the internet population are retarded and can't deal with their own problems, nor can they let a grudge go.
 
Eventually it boiled down to so much stress on the administrators and moderators, that 70% of them quit their "job" and the community within the span of a year. The rest of us started getting jaded, stopped giving a damn about the community and its problems (because we were bombarded with trivial issues on a daily basis). Essentially, the lack of administration caused a shift in the community, that ended with 80% of the active users to become inactive, leaving only a tight-knit core that's still there today... Much like subSPUF is right now, a tight-knit core of ~25 regular posters. This entire thing happened over the course of 2 years.
 
That being said, there were quite a few benefits to a public community with no real recruitment policies (Anyone and anything goes).
 
A: Even if 90% of the people who joined turned out to be clueless, there were several good people, who we would have never gotten into contact with, had our community been secluded. Good people who I still talk to on a daily basis today.
 
B: Our "services" were packed to the brim on a daily basis. Game servers, Mumble servers, forums etc. All of these were packed with people with a wide range of interests, not to mention our forums got several hundred posts per day. We were definitely getting a bang for our buck in terms of servers and advertisement. Today we've cut down and now run only a single game server, a single Mumble server and our forums.
 
C: With a large community comes a large range of options. I'm not going to lie, we were actually making a lot of money in monthly donations (We offered donator perks on our game serves in the form of coloured text and other visual goodies, nothing p2w, along with access to hidden donator boards on our forums). Enough to sustain our servers and even do little things outside of it (Weekly events, where we offered games as prizes). It allowed us to try things out and better the community, make it an interesting and fun thing to be a part of. That's not even touching on the many in-houses we held in various team-games, back when we were enough members to actively and regularly square large teams (TF2 Highlander, for example) off against each other.
 
***
 
I have no strong feelings one way or the other regarding this. I am not as involved with this community, as I am with the other one. I just want to make sure that everyone who voted to keep subSPUF secluded read and understood that SupremeCommander would be moving many of the projects, that currently has a home here, to another place where they can better be advertised and gain attendance/viewership/listeners/whatever.
 
There are merits for a larger community and there are merits for a smaller one. An open subSPUF doesn't necessarily have to go down the drain, like my old community did (To be fair, the MAIN reason for my old community "dying" as it did, was because the head honcho kinda left without a word for the better part of six months).

I'm well aware that I am not the most active or the most involved member of this community, in fact I tend to sit on the sidelines in various off-topic threads and post snide remarks because I'm a wannabe cynic, but this particular subject is something I do have a bit of experience with. I'm an administrator of another community which is very similar to subSPUF's current situation, but it wasn't always like this. Rather it used to be large and public, with new members joining every day and went on to become a more closed and secluded community.
 
The thing about large and open communities is that it will attract a lot of different people, especially if it is advertised. Here's a fact: You will not like some of those people. Ultimately it is what made me very wary about forum-users, because I (initially) administrated the other community with as much friendliness as possible and I had a real sense of duty to make sure problems were resolved, be it technical or emotional problems between users. This essentially spun out of control and ended up having the administrators and moderators act like councillors for everyone and their everyday problems, because here's another fact: The vast majority of the internet population are retarded and can't deal with their own problems, nor can they let a grudge go.
 
Eventually it boiled down to so much stress on the administrators and moderators, that 70% of them quit their "job" and the community within the span of a year. The rest of us started getting jaded, stopped giving a damn about the community and its problems (because we were bombarded with trivial issues on a daily basis). Essentially, the lack of administration caused a shift in the community, that ended with 80% of the active users to become inactive, leaving only a tight-knit core that's still there today... Much like subSPUF is right now, a tight-knit core of ~25 regular posters. This entire thing happened over the course of 2 years.
 
That being said, there were quite a few benefits to a public community with no real recruitment policies (Anyone and anything goes).
 
A: Even if 90% of the people who joined turned out to be clueless, there were several good people, who we would have never gotten into contact with, had our community been secluded. Good people who I still talk to on a daily basis today.
 
B: Our "services" were packed to the brim on a daily basis. Game servers, Mumble servers, forums etc. All of these were packed with people with a wide range of interests, not to mention our forums got several hundred posts per day. We were definitely getting a bang for our buck in terms of servers and advertisement. Today we've cut down and now run only a single game server, a single Mumble server and our forums.
 
C: With a large community comes a large range of options. I'm not going to lie, we were actually making a lot of money in monthly donations (We offered donator perks on our game serves in the form of coloured text and other visual goodies, nothing p2w, along with access to hidden donator boards on our forums). Enough to sustain our servers and even do little things outside of it (Weekly events, where we offered games as prizes). It allowed us to try things out and better the community, make it an interesting and fun thing to be a part of. That's not even touching on the many in-houses we held in various team-games, back when we were enough members to actively and regularly square large teams (TF2 Highlander, for example) off against each other.
 
***
 
I have no strong feelings one way or the other regarding this. I am not as involved with this community, as I am with the other one. I just want to make sure that everyone who voted to keep subSPUF secluded read and understood that SupremeCommander would be moving many of the projects, that currently has a home here, to another place where they can better be advertised and gain attendance/viewership/listeners/whatever.
 
There are merits for a larger community and there are merits for a smaller one. An open subSPUF doesn't necessarily have to go down the drain, like my old community did (To be fair, the MAIN reason for my old community "dying" as it did, was because the head honcho kinda left without a word for the better part of six months).

I'm well aware that I am not the most active or the most involved member of this community, in fact I tend to sit on the sidelines in various off-topic threads and post snide remarks because I'm a wannabe cynic, but this particular subject is something I do have a bit of experience with. I'm an administrator of another community which is very similar to subSPUF's current situation, but it wasn't always like this. Rather it used to be large and public, with new members joining every day and went on to become a more closed and secluded community.
 
The thing about large and open communities is that it will attract a lot of different people, especially if it is advertised. Here's a fact: You will not like some of those people. Ultimately it is what made me very wary about forum-users, because I (initially) administrated the other community with as much friendliness as possible and I had a real sense of duty to make sure problems were resolved, be it technical or emotional problems between users. This essentially spun out of control and ended up having the administrators and moderators act like councillors for everyone and their everyday problems, because here's another fact: The vast majority of the internet population are retarded and can't deal with their own problems, nor can they let a grudge go.
 
Eventually it boiled down to so much stress on the administrators and moderators, that 70% of them quit their "job" and the community within the span of a year. The rest of us started getting jaded, stopped giving a damn about the community and its problems (because we were bombarded with trivial issues on a daily basis). Essentially, the lack of administration caused a shift in the community, that ended with 80% of the active users to become inactive, leaving only a tight-knit core that's still there today... Much like subSPUF is right now, a tight-knit core of ~25 regular posters. This entire thing happened over the course of 2 years.
 
That being said, there were quite a few benefits to a public community with no real recruitment policies (Anyone and anything goes).
 
A: Even if 90% of the people who joined turned out to be clueless, there were several good people, who we would have never gotten into contact with, had our community been secluded. Good people who I still talk to on a daily basis today.
 
B: Our "services" were packed to the brim on a daily basis. Game servers, Mumble servers, forums etc. All of these were packed with people with a wide range of interests, not to mention our forums got several hundred posts per day. We were definitely getting a bang for our buck in terms of servers and advertisement. Today we've cut down and now run only a single game server, a single Mumble server and our forums.
 
C: With a large community comes a large range of options. I'm not going to lie, we were actually making a lot of money in monthly donations (We offered donator perks on our game serves in the form of coloured text and other visual goodies, nothing p2w, along with access to hidden donator boards on our forums). Enough to sustain our servers and even do little things outside of it (Weekly events, where we offered games as prizes). It allowed us to try things out and better the community, make it an interesting and fun thing to be a part of. That's not even touching on the many in-houses we held in various team-games, back when we were enough members to actively and regularly square large teams (TF2 Highlander, for example) off against each other.
 
***
 
I have no strong feelings one way or the other regarding this. I am not as involved with this community, as I am with the other one. I just want to make sure that everyone who voted to keep subSPUF secluded read and understood that SupremeCommander would be moving many of the projects, that currently has a home here, to another place where they can better be advertised and gain attendance/viewership/listeners/whatever.
 
There are merits for a larger community and there are merits for a smaller one. An open subSPUF doesn't necessarily have to go down the drain, like my old community did (To be fair, the MAIN reason for my old community "dying" as it did, was because the head honcho kinda left without a word for the better part of six months).

I'm well aware that I am not the most active or the most involved member of this community, in fact I tend to sit on the sidelines in various off-topic threads and post snide remarks because I'm a wannabe cynic, but this particular subject is something I do have a bit of experience with. I'm an administrator of another community which is very similar to subSPUF's current situation, but it wasn't always like this. Rather it used to be large and public, with new members joining every day and went on to become a more closed and secluded community.
 
The thing about large and open communities is that it will attract a lot of different people, especially if it is advertised. Here's a fact: You will not like some of those people. Ultimately it is what made me very wary about forum-users, because I (initially) administrated the other community with as much friendliness as possible and I had a real sense of duty to make sure problems were resolved, be it technical or emotional problems between users. This essentially spun out of control and ended up having the administrators and moderators act like councillors for everyone and their everyday problems, because here's another fact: The vast majority of the internet population are retarded and can't deal with their own problems, nor can they let a grudge go.
 
Eventually it boiled down to so much stress on the administrators and moderators, that 70% of them quit their "job" and the community within the span of a year. The rest of us started getting jaded, stopped giving a damn about the community and its problems (because we were bombarded with trivial issues on a daily basis). Essentially, the lack of administration caused a shift in the community, that ended with 80% of the active users to become inactive, leaving only a tight-knit core that's still there today... Much like subSPUF is right now, a tight-knit core of ~25 regular posters. This entire thing happened over the course of 2 years.
 
That being said, there were quite a few benefits to a public community with no real recruitment policies (Anyone and anything goes).
 
A: Even if 90% of the people who joined turned out to be clueless, there were several good people, who we would have never gotten into contact with, had our community been secluded. Good people who I still talk to on a daily basis today.
 
B: Our "services" were packed to the brim on a daily basis. Game servers, Mumble servers, forums etc. All of these were packed with people with a wide range of interests, not to mention our forums got several hundred posts per day. We were definitely getting a bang for our buck in terms of servers and advertisement. Today we've cut down and now run only a single game server, a single Mumble server and our forums.
 
C: With a large community comes a large range of options. I'm not going to lie, we were actually making a lot of money in monthly donations (We offered donator perks on our game serves in the form of coloured text and other visual goodies, nothing p2w, along with access to hidden donator boards on our forums). Enough to sustain our servers and even do little things outside of it (Weekly events, where we offered games as prizes). It allowed us to try things out and better the community, make it an interesting and fun thing to be a part of. That's not even touching on the many in-houses we held in various team-games, back when we were enough members to actively and regularly square large teams (TF2 Highlander, for example) off against each other.
 
***
 
I have no strong feelings one way or the other regarding this. I am not as involved with this community, as I am with the other one. I just want to make sure that everyone who voted to keep subSPUF secluded read and understood that SupremeCommander would be moving many of the projects, that currently has a home here, to another place where they can better be advertised and gain attendance/viewership/listeners/whatever.
 
There are merits for a larger community and there are merits for a smaller one. An open subSPUF doesn't necessarily have to go down the drain, like my old community did (To be fair, the MAIN reason for my old community "dying" as it did, was because the head honcho kinda left without a word for the better part of six months).

I heard that Ultimate Muscle was the most popular anime on /a/, you can trust that it was there, I wrote it myself.
 
Regarding NGE, if it's good enough for Kojima, it's good enough for you.
 

Finally bought a Cluckles the Brave :3

I was rather proud of this move.

Hugging pics coming never.

Witchever

While it is obviously impossible for us regular users to make a 100% correct prediction regarding this stuff, Valve have been pretty outspoken during the several beta years of Dota 2 regarding the subject. I think it is safe to assume that we won't be getting a ladder system any time soon. I am afraid I do not have the sources, but "a ladder system" is a topic that appears regularly on the dev forum and I recall multiple occasions, where a Valve employee stepped in and said "It's currently not on our priority list".
 
As for reasons why, I could not tell you. I cannot remember if they ever gave a clear cut reason for it. Some obvious assumptions would be the added elitism that comes with a ladder system. I do not care what anyone says, ranking systems WILL spawn elitism. It has happened in literally every single other game with rankings, some games worse than others.
 
I think the most relevant example I can provide is Heroes of Newerth, the closest "succesor" to the original DotA. That game had ranking systems and my god was it a horrible experience to play. The picking phase was constant flaming and constant arguing about who got to play XYZ role, because obviously the people with a higher rating would be better suited for carrying, yeah right.
 
I'm not entirely opposed of a ranking system in Dota 2. As in, an individual ranking system (We already have a ranking system in TMM). My two major concerns are:
 
A: The added elitism, as mentioned above
B: I have yet to see a dota-like game do a competent equation for calculating "ELO". There are -A LOT- of factors that need to be counted in before you get something even remotely reliable and I just cannot imagine a system that can calculate things in a manner that is fair to every role and every type of player.
 
Never say never when it comes to this stuff, because who knows what Valve are planning "behind the scenes". Based on previous statements and actions (Such as dismantling DBR), I don't think any sort of official, individual skill calculator is on its way.

Me watching this is Wulff's fault. Somehow.

While it is obviously impossible for us regular users to make a 100% correct prediction regarding this stuff, Valve have been pretty outspoken during the several beta years of Dota 2 regarding the subject. I think it is safe to assume that we won't be getting a ladder system any time soon. I am afraid I do not have the sources, but "a ladder system" is a topic that appears regularly on the dev forum and I recall multiple occasions, where a Valve employee stepped in and said "It's currently not on our priority list".
 
As for reasons why, I could not tell you. I cannot remember if they ever gave a clear cut reason for it. Some obvious assumptions would be the added elitism that comes with a ladder system. I do not care what anyone says, ranking systems WILL spawn elitism. It has happened in literally every single other game with rankings, some games worse than others.
 
I think the most relevant example I can provide is Heroes of Newerth, the closest "succesor" to the original DotA. That game had ranking systems and my god was it a horrible experience to play. The picking phase was constant flaming and constant arguing about who got to play XYZ role, because obviously the people with a higher rating would be better suited for carrying, yeah right.
 
I'm not entirely opposed of a ranking system in Dota 2. As in, an individual ranking system (We already have a ranking system in TMM). My two major concerns are:
 
A: The added elitism, as mentioned above
B: I have yet to see a dota-like game do a competent equation for calculating "ELO". There are -A LOT- of factors that need to be counted in before you get something even remotely reliable and I just cannot imagine a system that can calculate things in a manner that is fair to every role and every type of player.
 
Never say never when it comes to this stuff, because who knows what Valve are planning "behind the scenes". Based on previous statements and actions (Such as dismantling DBR), I don't think any sort of official, individual skill calculator is on its way.

While it is obviously impossible for us regular users to make a 100% correct prediction regarding this stuff, Valve have been pretty outspoken during the several beta years of Dota 2 regarding the subject. I think it is safe to assume that we won't be getting a ladder system any time soon. I am afraid I do not have the sources, but "a ladder system" is a topic that appears regularly on the dev forum and I recall multiple occasions, where a Valve employee stepped in and said "It's currently not on our priority list".
 
As for reasons why, I could not tell you. I cannot remember if they ever gave a clear cut reason for it. Some obvious assumptions would be the added elitism that comes with a ladder system. I do not care what anyone says, ranking systems WILL spawn elitism. It has happened in literally every single other game with rankings, some games worse than others.
 
I think the most relevant example I can provide is Heroes of Newerth, the closest "succesor" to the original DotA. That game had ranking systems and my god was it a horrible experience to play. The picking phase was constant flaming and constant arguing about who got to play XYZ role, because obviously the people with a higher rating would be better suited for carrying, yeah right.
 
I'm not entirely opposed of a ranking system in Dota 2. As in, an individual ranking system (We already have a ranking system in TMM). My two major concerns are:
 
A: The added elitism, as mentioned above
B: I have yet to see a dota-like game do a competent equation for calculating "ELO". There are -A LOT- of factors that need to be counted in before you get something even remotely reliable and I just cannot imagine a system that can calculate things in a manner that is fair to every role and every type of player.
 
Never say never when it comes to this stuff, because who knows what Valve are planning "behind the scenes". Based on previous statements and actions (Such as dismantling DBR), I don't think any sort of official, individual skill calculator is on its way.

While it is obviously impossible for us regular users to make a 100% correct prediction regarding this stuff, Valve have been pretty outspoken during the several beta years of Dota 2 regarding the subject. I think it is safe to assume that we won't be getting a ladder system any time soon. I am afraid I do not have the sources, but "a ladder system" is a topic that appears regularly on the dev forum and I recall multiple occasions, where a Valve employee stepped in and said "It's currently not on our priority list".
 
As for reasons why, I could not tell you. I cannot remember if they ever gave a clear cut reason for it. Some obvious assumptions would be the added elitism that comes with a ladder system. I do not care what anyone says, ranking systems WILL spawn elitism. It has happened in literally every single other game with rankings, some games worse than others.
 
I think the most relevant example I can provide is Heroes of Newerth, the closest "succesor" to the original DotA. That game had ranking systems and my god was it a horrible experience to play. The picking phase was constant flaming and constant arguing about who got to play XYZ role, because obviously the people with a higher rating would be better suited for carrying, yeah right.
 
I'm not entirely opposed of a ranking system in Dota 2. As in, an individual ranking system (We already have a ranking system in TMM). My two major concerns are:
 
A: The added elitism, as mentioned above
B: I have yet to see a dota-like game do a competent equation for calculating "ELO". There are -A LOT- of factors that need to be counted in before you get something even remotely reliable and I just cannot imagine a system that can calculate things in a manner that is fair to every role and every type of player.
 
Never say never when it comes to this stuff, because who knows what Valve are planning "behind the scenes". Based on previous statements and actions (Such as dismantling DBR), I don't think any sort of official, individual skill calculator is on its way.

I just hope it turns out to be the real deal.

I just hope it turns out to be the real deal.

I just hope it turns out to be the real deal.

I just hope it turns out to be the real deal.

gonna be streaming RD2L tonight, going to play against BlitzDota's team and I will stream me being a baddie, so feel free to tune in if you want to watch some wannabe-pro dota. 7PM EST
 
http://www.twitch.tv/followmeontumblr