Isn't it sort-of public knowledge that intelligence agents can use NED and a bunch of others as a cover agency, too, besides its open agenda to influence foreign policy? Or is that a myth?
"Obviously X-COM also faced this problem. One of the biggest complaints is when an enemy is right next to a player and they’ve got an 85 per cent chance to hit and they miss. ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous!’ People ragequit and never play again. It’s an issue they partly solved in XCOM 2, and we had another mode in Chaos Reborn. It’s a rather sobering lesson in game design and how people manage random factors."
People frequently do not understand the statistics underlying real world dynamics, embrace oversimplified world models, and going against that has them discouraged? That is one strong re-expression of the satanic attitude.
From cinematography, two big examples "that may have people leave the theater, then":
-- in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven, the Sheriff (Gene Hackman) re-telling the story of English Bob:
> You see, the night that Corky walked into the Blue Bottle, and before he knows what's happening, Bob here takes a shot at him! And he misses, 'cause he's so damn drunk. Now that bullet whizzing by panicked old Corky, and he did the wrong thing. He went for his gun in such a hurry that he shot his own damn toe off. Meantime Bob here, he's aiming real good, and he squeezes off another, but he misses, because he's still so damn drunk, and he hits this thousand-dollar mirror up over the bar. And now, the Duck of Death is as good as dead. Because Corky does it right. He aims real careful, no hurry... [...] BAM! That Walker Colt blew up in his hand, which was a failing common to that model. You see, if Corky had had two guns instead of just a big dick, he would have been there right to the end to defend himself. [...] Well, old Bob wasn't gonna wait for Corky to grow a new hand. No, he just walked over there real slow - 'cause he was drunk - and shot him right through the liver
-- the scene in Vince Gilligan's El Camino, in which a bunch of gunners is so hijacked by the unpreparedness to the havoc that most bullets end on the scenery.
Not documentaries, but statistically relevant like the ten "black" in sequence at the roulette, frequent as the wheel is having well over a thousand spins.
People don't need to understand statistics for games, people understand what's fun. And that mechanic wasn't fun no matter how much you "well akshually" it.
There's a reason why pretty much ever single new tactics game got rid of the probability based hit chance. It's a dead end in game design.
We're talking about X-COM: Enemy Unkown, the Firaxis game, right? I had so much fun with this game that I don't even remember that RNG issue as being an issue. Most likely, if I failed a "certain to land" shot and the squad was in a really, really tough spot, I'd just shrug and re-load a save [1]. I mean, it's not Nethack, is it? [2]
In any case, I really don't get it. So you point your gun at an alien and you see a chance to hit at "85%". What do you do? Do you think to yourself "oh, cool, that's a certain hit"? It's not: there's a 15% chance to miss.
I think ragequtting over that is just the standard phenomenon, in both strategy games and real life, that people never make contingency plans, they just make one plan and assume there's no chance of failure because they're so smart to plan ahead and the competition is clearly too dumb to have any plans of their own. In my book, any plan where one imagines themselves emerging triumphant after beating all the odds like the dice are loaded in their favour by the gods is not so much a "plan" as a wish-fulfillment fantasy.
And I, for one, don't find those fun. YMMV, but let's not assume that everyone enjoys the same things, in games or in life.
P.S.:
>> There's a reason why pretty much ever single new tactics game got rid of the probability based hit chance. It's a dead end in game design.
You mean, they still have hit chances but they don't tell you what they are so they can tweak them behind your back, so you win enough to buy their next game? Oldest trick in the book [3].
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[1] I hate losing men.
[2] There's an "Iron Man" mode but that turns out to only play the Black Sabbath song in a loop.
I was referring to the interpretation of «ridiculous» as "it is preposterous", not at that which means "it is frustrating".
And personally, in front of "UFO: Enemy Unknown" I lived the pleasure of the masterpiece, not the balanced game - some of us have little taste for the win-and-lose. We learnt assembly when we were kids to make those sides of the gameplay adapt to our will - and went on hacking since.
Of UFO/XCOM, one particularly stubborn subsystem to change was having the "radars" not missing any new alien ship.
> It's true, but I'm not sure it's some great "hack" to get people to start caring.
Ha. I actually think it's going to make people potentially care even less? "Why would I need to preserve anything if nature and life is going to be fine no matter what?"
Some even argue to better speed it up, so we don't destroy too many other species in our own downfall.
They're not complaining that someone is copying 'their' service or files, they're informing their community that it looks like the people behind it are not contributing back, and how they feel about that.
In general, I find it of little help to judge what are merely opinions as "right" or "wrong". Can't we simply disagree, without one having to be right and the other be wrong? You make it sound like there was only one true way of being, and some ultimate source of truth that we all need to follow?
I personally prefer it whenever I do not have to judge things as "wrong" out of personal emotional hygiene, because anything that I see as wrong will make me sad or angry depending on whether I consider it something I can do something about or not, whereas a different opinion is merely a different opinion and leaves me in neutral.
I personally also do not agree with using the term "gatekeeping" for providing additional paid faster servers; it would only be gatekeeping for me if they were limiting certain files to paying users, which they aren't.
Mentioned in the article, the journals by original game designer Jason Mechner are a great piece of history, about growing up, finding one's own path. Recommend, even if you're not into game development!
"Reading them transports me back to that place and time. We all knew this was an exciting new industry, but I don't think we had any clue what it was going to turn into during our careers. There were no schools, no books, no theories covering what we were doing. Everyone was just figuring it out on their own. Following Jordan's creative path is a great example of how to go with your own gut instinct. It's also a great inspiration, showing how persistence and determination can lead to unexpected and wonderful results." -- Will Wright
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