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CoH: Where Do We Draw the Line on Selling Power?
June 29, 2012 Posted in A Tale in the Desert, City of Heroes, MMOs, Realm of the Mad GodTagged amplifier, amplifiers, ATITD, cash shop, choices, city of heroes, drawing a line, F2P, microtransactions, player baseline, power, rotmg, selling power, uncomfortable, what is acceptable, what is normal2 Comments
I'm usually not a person that has issues with microtransactions and cash shops on a fundamental level. I'll look carefully at the cash shop before I start playing a game, to make sure I'm comfortable with the stuff in it, and how the rationale for making the company a profit is derived, and if I'm okay with that, then I don't mind playing the game.
But we're seeing something dangerous happen in the cases of both Lord of the Rings Online and City of Heroes.
The gradual sneaky addition of items to the store to test player limits.
And I think what the devs are finding out is that if you introduce a distasteful substance in small amounts, people acclimatise to the taste and rationalize it off to the point that outsiders start raising an eyebrow at what they're accepting.
Hell, I'm starting to feel a bit like a guinea pig here. It's like the devs are saying, "LOL, let's see how far some of these players will go, how much they are willing to pay for phenomenal cosmic power!"
Where exactly do we draw the line?
When is it the time to say "No, this is unacceptable, I won't play this game as is" and walk away from the game, despite all the temptations of content and prior commitment to it?
From here on, I'll be talking about City of Heroes as I have less in-depth experience with LOTRO's store, and I'll be talking about my personal reactions and feelings in an attempt to figure out where my personal line is. Your mileage may vary.
Things have reached a sort of crisis point in my head with the latest and sneakiest introduction to the Paragon Store, Power Amplifiers.
They come in three flavors: Offense Amplifier, Defense Amplifier and Survival Amplifier.
They last for 1, 4 or 8 hours depending on how much real world money you paid. I only looked at the cost for the 1 hour one, which is 80 paragon points, or $1 USD. I think you can extrapolate from there for the 4 or 8 hours, minus the odd buck or few cents for a discount.
They offer a decent, middling buff. I wouldn't say it is outright breaking the game in terms of direct power given. But I wouldn't say it is a negligible buff either.
The most controversial is possibly the defense amplifier, which also offers mag4 mez protection, the equivalent of mez resistance for squishy classes that can't get it off a normal power toggle like the melee armored classes.
I'm trying to figure out why the introduction of these items to the store disturbs me so.
It doesn't help that my line has been fogged up and disrupted by all the stuff like Super Packs, which I sorta kinda disapprove of on a moral basis, but confess to finding them addictively fun as long as taken non-seriously in moderation (which I -think- I am capable of budget limiting for myself, but I don't really know. Isn't that the slippery slope all gamblers go down?)
The common forums retort is, "Look, they're optional. You don't -have- to buy them. What do you care what other people do with their money? The presence of these items on the store shouldn't affect the way you play, just don't buy them, leave it as a choice for other people to give money to Paragon Studios so that they can continue development of this cool game we all enjoy."
But somehow, the presence of the items on the store does affect the way I play.
I can understand EvilGeko's point here about them cheapening the feeling of having "earnt" something in-game.
But that's not exactly my beef with the items, it doesn't quite resonate with me that way. It frankly disturbs me more that other players are so accepting of the items, that they think and feel that it won't have any effect on the way they play whatsoever because they're not in competition with other players.
Maybe it'll help if I start with a story. My first ever encounter with "microtransactions" as it were. It was a MUD. Medievia MUD to be precise, back in the mists of time. I was bored with my regular MUD and had started a habit of MUD hopping (which is kinda like MMO juggling) to sample different innovative systems and maybe, just maybe, find a new MUD that I was interested in and could invest time in learning and playing.
Medievia MUD struck a lot of notes with me. It was big and in-depth. There were systems I had never encountered before, like trade running from place to place, dragon kills and eggs, even their questing system was all different and interesting. My trial alt was about waist-deep into the game and almost ready to commit, when I had the (mis)fortune? to talk frankly with a veteran on the ideal gear for each body location. He gave a lot of helpful suggestions and I was eagerly taking notes on stuff I had to collect, things I had to kill…
…Then matter-of-factly, he said. "Ok, for the two neck locations, the best are two 'donation' necklaces that you can buy by donating $50 to Medievia MUD."
WHOA, friend. Hold your horses there.
I honestly forget if it was $25 for a necklace each and 50 bucks in total. Or if they were $50 each.
All I knew were two things. $50 to play a MUD was more money than I could ever conceive of spending on a MUD at the time – the huge chunk of investment was just inconceivable.
And I loathed with great emotion that the guy was so matter-of-fact about it. It was the standard. It was the baseline. If you want to be competitive, this here is what you're going to have to do, what you're going to have to pay.
The game exists. It was a payment model that was doing fine by them. But it wasn't a game for me. At the time, I was not willing to pay that sum to merely to achieve baseline performance in order to explore the systems that MUD had. There were other free MUDs out there, and I would not be playing any "pay" MUDs.
So then and there (after thanking the veteran naturally and parting ways,) I logged out of the MUD and never came back.
In contrast, nowadays, I'm paying for two subscriptions to A Tale in the Desert. That's $28 a month. I can afford it now. I'm paying that sum to achieve, how do I put it, "solo" baseline performance in order to explore the systems this MMO has.
You can get by with one character if you are sociable, join groups, are part of a guild, that sort of thing. I'm willing to pay a higher premium for the convenience of not having to wait on another person for a number of things.
They sell vanity cash items like cat pets with no substantial in-game effect or bonuses. I don't begrudge if people buy them. It doesn't change the overall baseline of player power, and it gives money to the devs to keep the niche game alive – which it is seriously struggling with these past few years, to be really honest.
Nor do I mind the items sold by Realm of the Mad God in their store. Most of the stuff sold for real money are vanity items. Clothing colors. And you lose them if you die, so it is temporary. You can buy a permanent pet (as long as you store the item that gives you the pet in the vault) but the pet is just for looks. I have no issue with cosmetic stuff in stores.
They have keys that unlock dungeons, but at the cost they're selling for, it'll have to be someone with lots of spare cash and little patience buying them. Again, I have no issue with these, mostly because there is an alternate in-game way to get the keys, just kill things and hope for a random drop. In essence, though the keys unlock the possibility of killing a big bad boss for loot, they are a time convenience item to speed up the same thing you can already achieve in game.
They have items that give a temporary boost to stats. The closest to selling power, as it were. But they are seriously temporary. Like 30 seconds temporary or less. Which would make them only valuable on very rare occasions, like killing a big boss and trying to do enough damage to qualify for loot…
…Okay, I'm finding it hard to just say that I'm perfectly okay with these. Let's put it this way. At my current baseline, I do not see the importance of buying these buffs for real money yet. As such, it is not affecting my gameplay or playstyle and I'm okay with continuing to play the game… up to the point where I discover they are a -necessary- part of the game. If, let's say, I get all statted up and join some hardcore guild that does lots of dungeons per day, and they tell me, hey, all the pros buy these buffs so they can guarantee their loot dropping, it's the normal thing to do. That's probably the point where I will get really squicked out and log off and never come back.
So, here we are, back to City of Heroes, a little bit clearer on where my personal line is.
I think specifically, I have issues with two things. In-store exclusivity and player power baseline normalizing to store-bought items.
I think what disturbs me about other players being so accepting of store items is that it contributes to the normalizing of the baseline up to the level of store bought items.
(I played the Summer Blockbuster event the other day. It was quite fun and I might do a post about it soon. But I was a bit taken aback when we encountered a bug – the mission didn't teleport us back as normal – and one of the players said, "Oh, it's a bug. Just self-destruct, hospital and come back." Totally matter of fact.
Except, self-destruct is a power that comes with the optional costume packs they were selling back in the day. And no doubt, it's a cash shop power now. I don't -HAVE- self-destruct, thank you. I didn't see the need for the costumes or the power at the time, and I still don't see the need now. But it raises my eyebrows when I see a player assuming that everyone has the same baseline he has.
Conveniently, I was in a part of the map where I could suicide to mobs. If not, I presume I would have to log out and back in and hope the twitchy buggy LFG turnstile system didn't kick me out of game.)
Take Invention sets. Strictly speaking, it's optional. You can play up to level 50 in SOs. But if you look around, especially at people doing Incarnate level content, chances are the baseline is that people are kitted out in IOs and the rare person in SOs is just that, a rarity, who isn't numerically capable of contributing as much as someone in IOs and with set bonuses can. Even Samuel_Tow from the board forums has given in and started to figure out how to use Inventions, because the baseline of Incarnate content is set at a level that assumes you're in them.
There's technically optional, and there's where the normal player baseline is. I think what I'm really not comfortable with, is the lack of choice or alternate option for achieving this baseline.
If the same amplifiers can be bought in-game with an in-game currency, or crafted out of rare items in-game, then the store option is just a time-saving shortcut for lazy people with money they don't mind throwing away.
If the same amplifiers can be traded on the auction house, then economy takes over, and it is possible to either pay insane X amount of in-game currency or Y amount of real world currency to get them, I probably wouldn't feel as worried. There would at least be a theoretical way to attain the amplifiers without money, even if most people are not willing to do so. I'm not 100% sure on this last point, I think I'll have to qualify it by examining the level of buff the power awards before it meets my acceptability criteria.
As of right now though, I don't think those Power Amplifiers meet any of my criteria.
Sadly, the game doesn't think I'm running a subscription, I've just paid for a month of VIP each month from April to June, so I can't fill out a subscription canceled survey form and explain the reasons why I'm stopping.
But the VIP access expires in the first week of July, and I'll be stopping there for the time being.
I hope to be able to finish Night Ward and the other content I haven't played before then.
I'm also still curious about the Battalion story and such things. Maybe I'll renew for a month out of curiosity when content hits, despite the better part of my morals and sense.
But for now, a guy's got to draw the line somewhere.
RotMG: Whaddya Mean I'm Not Done?
June 27, 2012 Posted in MMOs, Realm of the Mad GodTagged archer vs wizard, goals, max stat, moar pew pew, rotmg, updateLeave a comment
Mad God Update.
Steam Played Hours: 69
My archer actually maxed defence roughly a week ago, but I didn't want to post a celebratory note and then proceed to jinx it with YASD.
Instead I was taking a much-needed wizard farming break and having the archer go out to play around. It's been… different. Very much so.
1) Damage Pattern Ain't The Same
I'm using a Golden Bow on the archer. It's the only vaguely respectable bow I own. The firing pattern is a spread of three arrows.
On the one hand, the spread means good aim is less necessary. (And I don't -have- great aim, so that's nice.)
And on the other paw, it means my damage is spread out at long range, when only one arrow can hit. If I want to apply more damage, that means running in closer to mid-range where the god bullets are closer together. Which is more nerve-racking.
In the screenshot, the difference is really obvious. The necromancer behind me has nearly the same firing pattern as a wizard and he's pew pew'ing the beholder at a much faster pace and with higher damage than my archer can.
If I was concentrating more (and not just out to take a screenshot for demo purposes,) I could hit both gods with my firing pattern, but overall dps per god would be lower since likely only one arrow would hit each.
Or I could move in closer on the ghost god and try to hit it with two or even three arrows and increase dps that way.
Assuming I didn't eat a faceful of bullets.
2) High Stats is Noticeably Better
Then again, eating one or two bullets on the archer is not the "ow, argh, my face!" experience it is for the throwaway farming wizards.
Between the max defence, which cuts down on the damage per bullet, and the high (if not yet maxed) vitality, which determines hp regeneration rate, and the naturally higher health bar reservoir, the archer has much higher resiliency and survivability.
Even if I accidentally get too hurt, the high vitality helps to regen it back at a fast pace. Downtime is a couple of seconds, especially if I throw on a +7 vitality ring for an extra boost.
The wizard by contrast is noticeably squishier.
Come to think of it, after checking the wizard base stats average on the Mad God wiki, this incarnation #5 is possibly somewhat below average to average. Slightly higher dex, slightly lower speed and wisdom, about average on attack and vitality. Not sure on the hp and mp, I'm too lazy to log in to check right now.
I won't be suiciding him to reroll better stats like some people do, though. No point hastening the inevitable. He's been kinda lucky in that he's survived this long, and gotten a T8 Staff of Horror (one tier better than my standard T7 Staff of Destructions for throwaway wizards) and a T4 Destruction Sphere spell. He'll bite it one day on his own. Of that, I am sure.
The one thing I really miss on the wizard is speed.
I still enjoy the glass cannon crazy direct damage mobile turret thing he's got over the archer. But the archer has 45 speed over his 24, and it feels SO much better. It's more fluid and dodging is easier and more forgiving of slower reaction times. One can circle strafe gods and do other crazy risky things with higher speed.
I'm still working on getting the rest of the archer's stats maxed, but once he maxes speed, I'll be glad to start squandering some on the wizard. Probably not this one, since he's starting out below average, but chances are good he'll be dead by then.
(Poor fella, talking about him like that. Maybe he'll prove me wrong? …Nah.)
Both classes are capable of doing sufficient damage for both soulbound drops and stat pots. That I tested. It's naturally easier solo, rather than side by side competing with more buffed out wizard types.
The archer takes slightly longer to kill gods, but the tradeoff is he can hang around much longer as well. And some gods like the sprite god are much easier, the bullet spread lets me hit the god while dodging and circle strafing and the higher resiliency means being hit by a bullet or two is not as painful.
I suspect I'll be alternating between the two to farm.
(Another worthwhile goal is to try and hit 400 fame with the archer as that's a class quest that earns a star. But that one is long-term and all in good time, because the archer will have to die in order to reap the fame, and I really rather not have him die just yet.)
I just have to start playing more carefully with less 'throwaway' mentality from now on. (Which might help Wizard #5 to survive…
…I doubt it, somehow.)
TSW: Decision Made, See You in a Few
June 26, 2012 Posted in MMOs, The Secret WorldTagged I will be there, launch, musings, stories, TSWLeave a comment
Days, that is, not months.
I have just pre-ordered The Secret World.
Reserved a name (though not the one I was using in the Beta and would have been thrilled to have – damn fast people!)
Presumably being this late, early access for me may be only 24 hours, but whatever, it's not a biggie and I'm not a rush-to-endgame type.
So what got me off the see-saw?
I mean, there were quite a number of good reasons why I should delay getting the game.
There's still plenty of bugs and some instability, which would benefit from more time and more fixes, yielding a more polished final experience for myself.
The graphics aren't as great as they could be if I waited for myself to buy a new computer first. (I would be spoiling myself for maximum potential impact for the cutscenes, as that would only be achieved on beautiful ultra-settings AND being new and novel on a first playthrough.)
The game would likely get cheaper – all games are at their most expensive when hyped just before their launch – and maybe even go free to play at some point.
The game could be missing content in the higher leveled areas we haven't seen – it's obvious Funcom is rushing this launch (maybe thanks to their EA overlords.)
Or pull a bait-and-switch on us later in terms of story and quest quality (neither of which is new given the prior precedent set with "Failcom" in Age of Conan.)
The PVP is extremely dubious at present (and is likely to remain so for at least a while) in terms of team balance (Templar was dominating on one server and Illuminati on another…)
…and skill design (you can't reset AP/SP for PvP, so in the early days at least, a PvE solo build is going to get owned by someone who prioritized a PvP build over PvE. And PvP/PvE skills are not unlinked – can you say inevitable nerf outcry?)
Whatever would possess me to think it is a good idea to go play TSW like… now? (Almost.)
Mostly I read Ragnar Tornquist's AMA on Reddit (you can scroll down to narwal_bot's summary of the questions he answered), and started thinking about some of the things he said.
If you read his answers, there is a general gist that he acknowledges that there's still stuff missing in TSW at launch, and that they'll like to be putting more in post-launch.
Here's the stuff that made me think:
(Some extraneous comments trimmed for clarity, see the link if you want the jokes and the thanks and feedback)
Question (TBTakaTBT):
What is the biggest thing you don't like about the game in its current state? What would you like to see done to make it better?
Answer (RagnarTornquist):
Not enough kilts BY FAR.
There are things we would have liked to do for launch — including an LFG tool and more character customisation options — that we've pushed to post-launch, but the great thing about making an MMO is that you actually get to go back and fix, add to, polish and expand upon the original game.
The Secret World isn't done simply because we're launching it. This is only the beginning. The beginning of a long– No, not doing that.
Question (batlib):
What's your ideal post-release roadmap for TSW? Or does that fall under "saying things people will interpret as a promise and burn you at the stake for later"?
I enjoy a good burning at the stake.
My ideal post-release roadmap? New content and new features on a regular, ongoing basis. Which is what we're aiming for. We'll let you know very soon what that actually means.
Commence the burning!
Question (karmaleenash):
I get no sliders, etc. for cc but new heads by launch?
New skin tones to get away from the ethnically stereotyped tying of facial type to skin tone?
New hairstyles and colors by launch?
Not asking for the moon, here. Love the game. The creepy, eerie, lovely world deserves some better characters. To me, that cc is the weakest link in a game that has more potential than any I have played in years.
No new heads for launch, but that's definitely something we want to do in the not-too-distant future.
I don't think we've gone for anything stereotypically ethnical — we've simply tried to find skin tones that match the heads. But we will take all of your feedback under consideration.
Nothing that isn't in the public Beta right now. Again, we will be expanding on our character customisation options going forward.
Question (mflash):
Are there plans for a continued storyline after the game is released?
YES! Definitely yes. We have a pretty massive storyline planned, and our writers are working on fleshing that out as we speak. Well, not literally, it's Saturday and they're done with their work for launch, so they're taking a rare weekend off, but you know what I mean.
Question (CrazyStreetBum):
I vaguely remember from the old days of the Internets, back when Anarchy Online was still in beta, that you had planned a four-year storyline for the game.
How much of that storyline actually happened? I know that at least part of Shadowlands was foreshadowed back in Prophet Without Honour (assuming that the Vanya in the books is the Unredeemed of the same name), but the part about Omni-Tek having ties to the Omega (among other story hooks) seems to have largely vanished.
Plans and stories change as new people start working on it — and that's how it should be. When I left Anarchy Online (in very capable hands, mind you) the writers and designers, together with the community of players, decided to take things in a different direction. And I'm totally fine with that. They made something even greater…although a tiny part of my brain keeps nagging me to go back and tell the story that I'd planned out.
With The Secret World, however, we have built such a deep, solid and complex storyline into the very fabric of the game — every little detail MEANS SOMETHING — so whoever takes the reins in some distant, post-apocalyptic future (where I've become a grizzled, leather-clad warlord and am no longer working on the game) will have to follow through on our SEVEN YEARS OF STORY CONTENT (TM) plans. Otherwise it all falls to pieces. Jigsaw pieces. Being part of this enormous jigsaw puzzle of a story. As it were.
Question (buemba):
Any plans to expand the TLJ/Dreamfall universe with comics, short stories or anything else that doesn't demand as much development time as games?
As for Secret World, what's the game like post level cap? Raids?
No concrete plans, but that's certainly something I've been wanting to do. I'll think about it again after my body and brain becomes capable of thinking about anything besides TSW.
There are no levels in The Secret World, but you can keep training new abilities and learning new skills, you can participate in PvP, explore the world in search of lore and achievements, replay missions, visit our lairs and fight our world bosses — and get to grips with all the post-launch content we've got planned.
You won't run out of things to do.
Question (Warskull):
So… Age of Conan was very buggy and unfinished. In fact at least 6 months in a number of huge bugs were still around (stats literally did nothing ffs.) Anarchy Online was also famous for having an incredibly buggy, unfinished launch. Why should anyone expect The Secret World to be finished? What has changed at Funcom?
Both of those games came out a long time ago, and were made by different teams. Will there be bugs in The Secret World at launch? Oh, for sure. It's impossible for us to catch and fix absolutely everything. We'll keep patching and fixing the game on an ongoing basis. But there won't be any bugs that will detract from the fun of playing, and it will be the most polished game Funcom has ever released.
[Me interjecting: Oh that's for sure. Not that Anarchy Online or Age of Conan are the best comparative examples, but definitely TSW is better than those.]
Question (VideoGameMusic):
Can you give some insight if possible on how Funcom manages their franchises? I was a huge fan of Bloodline Champions but that game's player base died out pretty fast once they stopped advertising for it. Will The Secret World end up only being alive past the two or three year mark?
Also, will TSW have a freemium system like most Funcom games?
Thanks in advance for any answers.
Anarchy Online is still going strong, eleven years and counting. Age of Conan is on its fourth year. So yeah, I'd say it's a safe bet we'll be alive and well past the three year mark. We take care of our franchises.
[Me interjecting: With a small playerbase, but yes, they don't close up shop as quickly as some other companies might.]
Question (whyufail1):
I completely agree, but the contradiction I see here is that there is a MASSIVE cash shop planned as well. I honestly prefer subscriptions to pay for continuous development, but the cash shop placed on top of that just seems like double dipping (paying a sub to develop content that is then being sold back to me…). You can say "well that content is being developed outside of the subscription budget" but without transparency, you could really say that about anything. It's the biggest thing keeping me from trying this game at the moment.
(I am actually bringing this up for a reason. If there is a convincing enough explanation as to why I shouldn't feel like the community is getting ripped off, I would be buying into the game immediately as I approve of nearly everything but the payment model. I'm honestly not just trying to be difficult.)
Our item store sells cosmetic (vanity) items only, in addition to services like extra character slots and dimension transfers. The production of those cosmetic items is, in fact, supported by the revenue from the store — it does cost a bunch of money to make things like clothing outfits and pets. Good thing is: you don't have to spend a dime in the item store if you don't want to. There will be plenty of clothing added to the game post-launch, so unless you're really keen on that cowboy outfit (yeeha!) you can safely leave the store alone.
Question (Zhaosen):
Hi, hello. First thing, i am 50/50 on the game atm. My biggest influence is how character customization will be handled. You answered it earlier i believe about how you plan to add more character customization in the future and i just want to focus on that.
1.Can you elaborate/give an idea to how the future character customizations will be? (ie: more sliders, presets, hair, etc…weight/height?)
2.Will there EVER be a dye option? because frankly…i dont really want to end up looking like someone else =/…and ive already seen about 4 of me running around in the beta (which is not bad all things considered but still).
3.Clothing options, will you only add stuff as microtransactions or will you also be updating the ingame buyable ones as well?
I'm honestly on the fence about preordering or just waiting for a month after.
We actually had this discussion over lunch yesterday, so, informally:
More sliders, more presets, more hair — yes, for sure.
That's something we're going to look into, long-term. Clothes-crafting would be awesome. That might even get ME to start crafting, and that's saying a lot.
We are DEFINITELY going to be updating our in-game vendors on a regular basis. We'll be making at least as many clothes for the vendors (purchasable with PAX) as we will for the item store — although the latter does support the cost of producing new clothing. It ain't cheap.
Honestly, the more people buy and play the game at launch, and let us know what they/you want, the more we can deliver. If everyone waits with playing, we won't be able to produce nearly as much as we'd like to — and we'll always listen to our players first and foremost.
Bolded emphasis mine. And that's the phrase that slid me down the see-saw.
Let's face it. We don't know how much of what Ragnar says is just pretty words and smoke and mirrors like Paul Barnett's "Bears bears bears." He might just decide six years of slaving away on TSW is more than enough conspiracy crap for one individual and run off to make the Longest Journey 3 or something else. (Which would make some people happy, but not me, sorry, I'm a heathen, I haven't been able to get back to that game since I encountered one of -those- "forgot to take an important item at the start" gamebreaking adventure game bugs.)
But I do know what I like. And I like The Secret World's modern day occult underground setting. The immersiveness. The voice-acting. The characters. The stories. (More so than the vapid cartoony mainstream pap that is SW: TOR.)
Missions that treat the player as being smart and intelligent. Missions that involve stealth and research and clues and puzzles. A combat system that involves both movement and active reaction, as well as build planning for synergies and the flexibility to change and adapt builds and tactics on the fly.
It makes me excited to hope that maybe, just maybe, some of that seven years of planned story content will actually come to pass. Maybe there will be more ARGs. Maybe there will finally be an MMO that does world-changing story arcs right.
Most of me is a pragmatic realist and a cynic beyond that eternal optimist core though. It probably won't happen. The odds are against The Secret World beating the odds.
But if enough people don't support it, now, at launch, it has no chance at all.
( I have made no secret of the fact that I appreciate an MMO that innovates and does things differently than being a typical WoW clone. I will put my money where my mouth is. Even if all I get is thirty days of the existing storyline experience, it's at least worth the box price to support the devs having worked for years to give us that look at the secret world.)
TSW: First Impressions of Final Beta Weekend #4
June 24, 2012 June 26, 2012 Posted in Game Design, MMOs, The Secret WorldTagged bugs, clarity, clear gimmicks, first impressions, flow, freaky, game design, goals, missions, occult underground, skills, stories, storytelling, TSW, urban fantastic, weird1 Comment
Dark foggy days are coming.
Mixed bag. Mixed signals. I'm torn.
That's the TL:DR summary, you can go away now if you don't want my wall-of-text detailed analysis.
You'll note I took the trouble to specify these impressions are only for this weekend, since their client has this qualifier scrawled across their notes screen:
"Please keep in mind that the version of The Secret World you will be playing this Beta Weekend is not the final version of the game. Many issues and elements are constantly being improved upon before launch."
Riiight. Call me cynical, but I translate that as "We will promise we will be continually working to improve this game, but we have run out of time and have to launch this." In other words, you will be playing and paying for a work in progress for quite a while yet.
On the bright side, I do believe they are fixing stuff as fast as they can. In between yesterday and today, I've had to download quite a few patches to be able to log in, and active dodging in combat was reactivated (to name a really obvious change) so there's fixes coming in.
It's not like they've given up and wiped their hands of the MMO and are just going to launch it to grab what money they can like some other companies I could think of. I think it fits Funcom's pattern to keep working away at their games and keeping the doors unshuttered for the long term, though they may never have enough resources to polish their MMOs to full potential.
On the pragmatic side, this sure is a hell of a lot of -known- bugs and issues for an MMO that is due to launch like…now.
They probably suspect that this is the best window. Before Guild Wars 2 launches. Within 2012, because their story alludes to it being the year 2012.
Personally, I put up with Age of Conan's bugginess and unfinished nature for about 3 months while marking time for Warhammer's launch (which also lasted about 3 months, but that's another story) and I'm having trouble convincing myself that paying for lack of polish is okay, especially when there are more polished and/or free (just less new) options available on the market.
On First Logging In
The program jittered and stuttered on the movies that played the logos but they played, and I got all the way to the log-in screen. Then I tried to pick a server, and found out I couldn't create a character on a single one. Kept throwing me back and saying the slots were all full. WTF? I don't have a single character made, there's three slots sitting right there, how can they be full?
Quit, did some forums searching, turns out that behavior occurs if there's been a patch/update in between that you missed. (Well, I was downloading a huge 20+ gb client for over 24 hours, so it's no wonder that I must have missed a patch.)
Want a good laugh? This was the client downloader midway through. I looked at that progress bar poking out onto my desktop and said, "Lol, this calls for a screenshot."
On the bright side, it did stop before it hit 25 gb, and it later expanded itself into a 30gb folder on my hard disk. (I shoved Aion onto a spare external hard disk to make room. Copy it back later when I feel like trying out the game again, assuming the NCsoft launcher doesn't have issues with me doing that. But that's another story.)
Started the game for the second time after downloading the necessary missing patch, and promptly crashed because I was trying to click away or bang on Esc to skip the corporate logo movies. Hrm. (For the record, subsequent times have allowed me to skip them just fine by pressing Esc once. I have no idea why it was being so temperamental just then. But I'm pointing out the my exact first impressions flow of events, good and bad alike.)
Third time lucky. Started the program again, logged in, selected a server and made it to the character creation screen. Yay, I can actually make a character now!
On the Character Screen and TSW's Graphics
It's about this point that I first started running into an issue that sits like a big plague-monkey on my back. At certain points, like in the character screen and certain cutscenes, my graphics lag and typically take 15-60 seconds to load in, coming in layers, low resolution textures at first and then smoothing to higher resolution stuff. Not all the time, but enough to be annoying.
It's most obvious on the character load screen. This is what it looks like for me right on starting up (after having made my first Illuminati character, that is.)
That's just not normal. Most other MMOs will show you your character, right?
Turns out, so does The Secret World. If I wait for a good minute or so, then this eventually fills in around the brown-grey spaces.
Now I'll quantify right off that I'm not playing The Secret World at the ideal recommended uber-graphics card 64-bit Windows 7 DirectX11 settings. I am completely well aware of the fact that I'll never get as awesomely gorgeous lighting and shadows and beautiful textures as the media screenshots on their website.
Considering the negative rumor mill and me running a 32-bit Windows XP DirectX9 machine with an ATI 4870 card (ATI cards being somewhat notorious for having issues where Nvidia doesn't, now and then), I was already pleasantly surprised to find that the game loaded at all. The starting resolution and graphics quality was extremely low on the default setting, and I was able to crank it up to somewhere between medium-high on a 1680 x 1050 full screen – the client automatically restricts the draw distance and other advanced settings due to memory limitations on 32-bit Windows.
Decently pretty.
However, I'm always aware of and made to feel slightly like a second class citizen because of this graphics lag issue. Even the graphics setting never misses a beat to tell me this.
The impression I get is that you don't care about me as a potential audience. That you can't really be bothered to optimize for lower performing systems. That accessibility of your game is not a factor. Whereas games like World of Warcraft and Star Wars: The Old Republic go for stylized graphics precisely because they want the game to work well on lower-end systems, while Guild Wars 2 tests the look of their game on antiquated graphics cards that can't even be bought off the shelves anymore because they want the game to still look good for the average gamer.
It's weird because I do think you -are- working on optimizing for lower end systems too, as and when you can. My load times have been speeding up over this last beta weekend. And the game -is- playable, on the whole, for me.
Monitoring FPS, I get anywhere from a playable 25-40 FPS most times, going up to 45 FPS in solo instances and dropping to 5-20 FPS for a couple seconds in the rare crowded locales before going up again. It's better performance than I got with Age of Conan, where I could hit 1-5 FPS in the cities. (Ironically, it was AoC which made me feel like I needed to upgrade my graphics card about 4-5 years ago. I did, and it improved somewhat, but not by much.)
So then the final impression I get is that of bugginess and lack of polish and optimization. Bits work here, and parts don't work there. For 90% of the cutscenes, they play perfectly fine and look pretty okay, if not spectacular because my system isn't high-end…
…and then I get this view of a van that dashes in for 1-2 seconds, which is too fast for my computer to apply a good high-res texture to.
And it kinda shatters the immersion that is being built up.
(Unless, hmm, maybe I can pretend that I'm playing in a big Matrix-computer-style set up, so there are occasions where the quality of the graphics becomes digitized as the world fails to render properly!)
On Character Creation
It's not terrible. I'll say that much. There's a decent range of options and colors and head, hair, clothing types. Enough to create fairly unique and distinct characters that don't all look like clones on first entering the game.
That is, if you could actually see your character.
It's that graphics bugaboo I mentioned earlier. I don't get it. For practically any other MMO I play, it doesn't take 3-5 seconds to pause and first load the background in bits and pieces, then slowly load and display the character. In The Secret World's character creation screen, it does.
When it does finally load in, it isn't half bad at all.
At least, if the sliders worked properly. For some reason, they're acting clunky in character creation. I can't click on the knob and drag. The pixel location is off, or something.
At first, I was wondering if it was a lag issue from having to load in the different styles and textures, but my computer doesn't grind or in any way act like it's trying to load anything.
What I have to do is somehow click away at each slider, up and around and down until it suddenly registers as active, and my mouse wheel can suddenly work to scroll up and down through the selections with nary a pause at all. If I get really lucky and pick the perfect pixel location, then I can drag the knobs left and right as you'd expect.
And then I go through the same thing per bar I select. And if I need to backtrack on an option, same problem with the knobs. It's really weird because the color selection has no issues. Click and everything changes with nary a pause. The drop down box has no issues. The knobs make me want to tear out my hair.
My only possible conclusion? Buggy.
On Names
Here's one thing about the Secret World that I do like. Quite a bit.
You have to fill in three names. First name, nickname, and a last name. So everyone goes around being identified as John/Jane "Moniker" Doe and it adds a bit to the immersive aspect of the setting. The naming policy encourages most people to use pretty immersive names too, pretty much the worst I've seen are those that run around in all lowercase. Even those that just have a few numbers tacked on the end of their nickname kind of resemble Internet monikers.
What's less nice, that I found out on my second character made, is that the nickname has to be unique. And no spaces are allowed.
It's a bit of a shame, considering that if you used all three names in combination, we might get more flexibility and freedom in naming, similar to City of Heroes or Guild Wars 1. Now instead what we're going to end up with is people warring for the best sexy superhero or hacker-style nickname and lots of good options being taken up very very soon. It's already a pain on City of Heroes to get good names, and we get the option of spaces there. Here, all we get are hyphens and a shorter character limit, which does not bode well for the future.
I also foresee that people are going to be hard pressed to tell the difference between Nightshadow and Night-shadow (both names are naturally taken by this time.) Hopefully they don't end up playing or talking together at the same time.
On Group and Combat Mechanics
Speaking of playing together, I'm a little disappointed. Just a bit.
Bear in mind the last beta I was just playing was Guild Wars 2, so when I first started the game and got to Kingsmouth, I saw people fighting zombies in a setting that looks like it was cut out from Left 4 Dead… what's the first thing I'm going to do? Run in and help blow zombies up, of course!
Then I noticed that:
a) I generally wasn't getting any xp from helping kill mobs other players were already fighting (or just a smidgen, normally from untagged mobs)
b) when some other well-meaning player helped me on my zombies, the amount of experience I got was dramatically decreased
I guess we're back to traditional MMO mechanics where you have to officially form a group first. I better stop "helping" before someone shouts at me for killstealing them. Sad panda.
From then on, I stopped caring about other players and treated them as essentially a big faceless crowd of moving distractions that are all following the same story path.
It's especially sad because the tutorial mission has you helping out three NPCs with a shotgun, fighting multiple mobs, fer goodness sake's. In action combat. Where running and dodging and firing as you ran was important. It felt so modern and enlightened. Yet we still have a reminder of old MMO roots simply because the reward scheme still feels oldfashioned.
Combat on the whole reminds me of a good mix between Guild Wars 2, Guild Wars 1 and City of Heroes. That's a good thing. A really really good thing.
It has active moving combat pretty similar to GW2, especially when active dodge is operational. I am especially pleased by the clarity of the enemy's attacks and AoE effects (I've complained before about some other games) but TSW is as good as Rift in that respect.
You see the clarity of that circle? That's cool. It's clear and it is fair and it gives you time to move the hell away.
You're a split second too late to see the spinning backflip I did to get out of the way of his AoE attack. But trust me, it was cool.
Double tapping W, A, S, D works well to dodge about. An active dodge bar appears as a countdown timer to indicate that you can't do another dodge until it expires.
Here's another nice one. This cone gradually shrinks in size, acting as a timer to indicate that he's going to do a cone attack in the vicinity. Get outta the way now. Very nice.
It's similar to Guild Wars 1 in the sense that you have to pick skills from a potentially large pool, and the choices of that selection indicate your combat options and role in battle. TSW gives you 7 active skills and 7 passive skills at any time, and the trick is to find stuff that synergizes well together and add on other utility skills as desired.
And it's similar to GW and City of Heroes in that you're generally a profession/profession. TSW has three melee weapons, fists, blade and hammer. Three ranged weapons, assault rifle, pistols and shotgun. And three magic weapons, chaos, blood and elemental. When you're just starting out with limited AP and SP to buy skills and abilities, it's generally a good idea to focus on a two weapon combat synergy style at first, before branching out later.
These two weapon synergy styles have suggested 'decks,' sort of a characteristic class of certain factions, which provide some nice structured guidance for people coming in cold and new to the entire system. No doubt some people will find that certain combinations are more uber than others as time goes on, but a nice balancing point is that everyone should be able to eventually pick up everything they want in a leveless, classless system. I just don't know how much grind that would involve, though.
The holy trinity also still seems to be in operation in this game. Perhaps a little looser as there is quite a lot of option for hybrids and there's flexibility to switch roles, but time will tell.
I actually think grouping might be quite fun in this game, if there is leeway for synergies to naturally develop, but I fear that if the dungeon difficulties are too high and too challenging, then we'll see people being forced into very cookie cutter 'expected' heal/tank/dps roles for simplicity's sake. I suspect the latter will happen, though I much prefer the former.
On Loadscreens
They're there. On my computer, they take anywhere from 1-3 minutes to load, sooner for small cutscenes. People who dislike loading screens for immersion disruption reasons will not be happy.
Me, I don't mind them. And I put up with worse loadscreens in Age of Conan, that literally took 5 minutes or more to struggle to load a very small zone. In TSW, the zone of Kingsmouth looks fairly big and open by comparison, so if I have to put up with short loadscreens to get the zone to a playable unlaggy state, that's fine by me. It's nice art and a helpful tip on those screens anyway.
On Missions and Quest Flow
On the whole, I approve. Investigation missions were turned off in this beta, which make me very curious about them because I think I will like them.
Regardless, the missions I played had a smooth flow, some involved a bit of thinking and looking around (much to some people's exasperation as that provides a constant flow of repeated dumb questions and spoilers flying about on General chat – me, I stopped reading it in order not to spoil myself), and had a good mix of combat and story.
I like the designed difference in mission flow. TSW Search explains it here in a comprehensive guide, I'll just paste the relevant explanation in a picture here for completeness:
Turns out it is actually designed in such a way that as one of your quests ends, you should be able to find another mission to pick up within 50m or so. Some interesting item should be obvious.
I like it. It's a nice blend of exploration and achievement. While on the mission, you have clarity of direction and intent. But you can follow the thread to its end, then pick up another and another and be wandering all over the place without feeling obliged to report back in to quest hub central.
They've also taken the idea of cell phones from City of Heroes and taken it one step further. Mission reports can be sent in from your location once you finish the quest, and you get the rewards beamed to you instantly and painlessly. (Being part of an ancient occult technomagical faction has its perks, I guess.)
On Cutscenes
The voice acting is very good. The quality of writing in the stories is top notch. Granted, you have to like the setting and the rambling high-falutin' prose that comes with that sort of urban fantastic occulto-technomagic 'everything is a secret conspiracy' genre. There are a lot of interesting characters and stories that I want to know more about.
The animation quality is only so-so. A bit disappointing and uncanny valley at times, but generally acceptable.
What's extremely fucking weird is that your character doesn't ever speak at all, and has the strangest robot face in most of the cutscenes.
Okay, I know the pro-argument for this. It's extremely immersion-breaking if your character acts in ways that contradict your character concept. It's sometimes better if the character just shuts up and lets your imagination write in the gaps.
But let me assure you it is also JUST as immersion-breaking if your character stands there silently for the entire cutscene, watching the NPC monologue, nicely voice acted out though it is. Especially if the NPC reacts like you said something, and you evidently didn't.
Guild Wars 1 and 2 has dialogue. Your character says some generic hero stuff, but they say something. City of Heroes sometimes puts words in your character's mouth when replying back to the mission text, and yes, they get it horribly wrong at times, but they do say something and imply some sort of motive or personality. I believe SWTOR also has your characters say something and react to the NPCs, though it may be generic Jedi or Bounty Hunter or Insert Class Here sort of reaction.
TSW is very very weird because in some cutscenes, they do assume some sort of reaction from your character (example, the NPC monloguing changes topic or subject because you presumably said or asked something) and then in this Dragon intro, you're practically having a sexual encounter from the get go (I wasn't expecting lesbian sex when I chose the female character option and that faction, but hey, bonus):
There's -some- reaction animated on your character's face – probably because it's impossible not to. But your character remains MUTE throughout it all. It's really a bit freaky.
It's as if the best immersive option is to assume that your character is a mute telepath that can project their questions directly into the NPC's minds. Perhaps the bug you ate that gave you magical superpowers also took away your powers of speech, along with bestowing fantastic combat ability and the link to a faction.
Viewed in that conspiracy theorist light, it all makes perfect sense.
On My See-Saw Conclusion
Despite the bugs and weird freakiness and general instability (on the plus side, I didn't crash up to the training dojang even while print-screening and alt-tabbing out to paste screenshots – because the ingame screenshot key acts a little weird now and then – on the minus side, I was constantly crashing right after that when alt-tabbed), I am quite intrigued by the game.
I'm extremely fond of the setting TSW is set in. I've always wanted to experience the kind of Mage: The Ascension (or the newer, Awakening) or Unknown Armies occult underground conspiracy theory sort of world.
I approve of the combat system, the idea of a leveless and classless skill-based system, and the missions look quite playable and tell a good story. If you look at the gameplay features on The Secret World's website, they deliver all of that. (Along with bugs.)
I would essentially be playing TSW as a singleplayer game in an MMO world to let the writers tell me their stories, and… this is where the doubt comes in, I'm not sure if I want to pay a box price, plus a sub fee, plus whatever else they decide to throw in their cash shop, for that.
The graphics are a key deciding factor for me. To be frank, if I was on a Windows 7 high powered graphics card kind of system that displays The Secret World well and in all its glory, I would be happy to put down for it right now and just play 3 months or so until I exhausted the content.
At the moment, my real world budget and priorities prohibit that. (My present computer is so put together AND old that I've decided instead of upgrading piecemeal, I will get a complete new system – new OS, new card, new hard disk, new power supply, new monitors, new everything, and bonus, I'll have two machines to dual box with eventually. But budgetary and economic concerns indicate that's not likely to come until Christmas or next year.)
So I'm stuck with pretty, but not awesomely spectacular graphics if I decide to play The Secret World within these six months. (And the bugs, and the second class citizenship thing.)
On one hand, if I wait until next year, it should look and feel really great. Funcom will no doubt have fixed more bugs by then, maybe even have an expansion in the works. The price will no doubt be cheaper.
Or there may not even be a Secret World next year, especially in the wake of Guild Wars 2, which I plan on playing fanatically. And all the spoilers would be out on all the storylines. And it would be quite impossible to find PUGs for dungeons then – whereas if I play with the starting crowd of any MMO, there's always more group-ish excitement.
Then again, do I want group-ish excitement in this MMO, because it still has some ugly oldschool roots? I pay a lot more attention to players and supporting them in Guild Wars 2 because the mechanics support me doing so. In TSW, that's not going to happen until they install some kind of public grouping button because I refuse to make and lead old style groups anymore, they're just not my thing and other MMOs have demonstrated much easier ways for players to casually interact.
I dunno. It ultimately comes down to how much I feel the positive aspects are worth the box price (which is expensive at 50 euros with the exchange rate the way it is), while also taking the negative aspects into account.
And I'm still on a see-saw about that.
For what it's worth, I'm a lot more interested in considering The Secret World -after- my beta weekend #4 experience than before.
So hey, that's something.
TSW: The 0th Impression
June 22, 2012 Posted in MMOs, The Secret WorldTagged beta, client downloaders, musings, quirks, TSW, zeroth impressionsLeave a comment
Found a The Secret World weekend beta invite key in my mailbox yesterday.
Either signing up for that ARG thing finally paid off (except I don't remember if the email I used was the same), or having an Age of Conan account once upon a time has its perks.
It's the super public last beta weekend #4 before launch, so I don't feel special or anything. But hey, if you give me a free trial, I will most likely look at it, if only so I can comment intelligently about it later.
My hard disk space is currently suffering from a surfeit of too much Steam, so it was quite a job to delete enough away to leave 15 gb free – which is what the mail or the website told me to have on hand.
The client downloader has been running for over 24 hours now. Suffice to say, it's not making a great impression at the moment.
~8 hours ago:
Okaaaay?
~30 mins ago:
I just cleared 5 more gigabytes for it.
At last update before this blog post, it is happily on 16.4gb.
I will probably give up at 25 gb.
(And I'm running 32-bit Win XP, so I'm prepared for the Mayan Apocalypse even if I get the client up and running. Stay tuned this weekend to see if first impressions are ever forthcoming.)


The average person develops one roll of 24 pictures a month, and of those 24, only seven are keepers. So the first thing you'll need for organizing your photos is a big trash can.
Rather than store photos in a shoebox where they may get creased or torn, place the photos from a single year in an 8 1/2" by 11" manila envelope, write the year on the envelope, and place the envelopes in a corrugated-cardboard storage box. You can keep 10 or 12 years' worth of photos in one storage box.
Use collage photo frames to display selected photos from the entire year. Choosing the photos can be a family project that brings back memories of events from the year.
Have enlargements made of very special photos to display around the house.
Look for photo albums that have acid-free pages; the acids in ordinary paper can cause photographs to deteriorate.
Memory books and scrapbooks are the latest creative way to display photos. Craft stores have an abundance of scrapbook supplies, including stencils, decorative scissors, background papers, rubber stamps and permanent markers. Be sure that all products are acid-free.
Put your negatives in a safe-deposit box at a bank to safeguard them from fire or theft.


This e-book analyzes Western and chinese language philosophical texts to figure out why laughter and the comedian haven't been a massive a part of philosophical discourse. Katrin Froese maintains that many philosophical money owed of laughter attempt to unearth laughter's function, thereby rendering it secondary to the intentional and purposive facets of human nature that impel us to philosophize. Froese additionally considers texts that take laughter and the comic as beginning issues, attempting to philosophize out of laughter instead of in basic terms attempting to unearth purposes for laughter. The ebook proposes that constantly unraveling philosophical assumptions during the comedian and laughter should be essential to stay well.
Quine and Davidson are one of the best thinkers of the 20 th century. Their impact on modern philosophy is moment to none, and their impression can also be strongly felt in disciplines similar to linguistics and psychology. This e-book is dedicated to either one of them, but in addition questions a few of their easy assumptions.
During this impressive selection of essays overlaying a vast variety of fields, from Darwinism and the worldwide inhabitants explosion to chook staring at, unique scientist and thinker Sir Julian Huxley issues out new frontiers for medical study and reaffirms his trust within the intimate connection of the sciences, fairly biology, with the urgent social difficulties of the current and destiny.
Russell Hardin offers a brand new explication of David Hume's ethical and political idea. With Hume, he holds that our normative perspectives might be scientifically defined yet they can't be justified as precise. Hume argued for the mental foundation of such perspectives. particularly, he argued for sympathy because the mirroring of the mental sensations and feelings of others.
Unser »Selbst« existiert gar nicht. Dies beweisen, so der Philosoph und Bewusstseinsforscher Thomas Metzinger, die Erkenntnisse der aktuellen Forschung. Aber used to be bedeutet das für unser Menschenbild? was once sind die technologischen und kulturellen Konsequenzen? Brauchen wir neben der Neuroethik auch eine Bewusstseinsethik?
Extra resources for Why Can't Philosophers Laugh?


text:
Q: HTML5 Canvas Basic Line Animation So, I'm trying to get into HTML5 Canvas with a small project animating an existing header consisting of red laser-like lines bursting from a single point. I'm able to draw these lines as I want them, and animate them as a group at a nice speed, but the next hurdle is above my head, I think: I'd like each line to move independently!
I've got an object defining the starting point for my lines such as:
var myLines = {
      a: 1500,
      b: 700,
      c: 400,
      d: 310,
      e: 140,
      f: 60
    }

And I then draw with a loop kinda like:
for (var i in myLines)
      {
        var cur = myLines[i];
        context.beginPath();
        context.moveTo(0, canvas.height);
        context.lineTo(canvas.width, myLine.y-cur);
        context.stroke();
      }

Using an awkward method of incrementation:
var step = 1;

    if (myLine.y+step > canvas.height) {set = false;}
    if (myLine.y-step < 0) {set = true;}

    if (set) {
      myLine.y = myLine.y+step;

    } else {
      myLine.y = myLine.y-step;
    }

I'm aware the above code is poorly written, I'm out of my league here, I work during the day as a chef in a small kitchen, but I'd like some advice, please!
Here's a fiddle to see it all in action.
Thanks in advance!

A: If I were you I would change the script so that each line was a separate object, rather than just an offset. Something like:
var line = { x: 0, y: 0, speed: 1 };

That way each line can have its own speed, and inside your loop, you can do something like the following to add on the speed and flip it when you reach the edge of the screen:
line.x += line.speed;
if(/* edge of screen */) {
    line.speed = -line.speed;
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


Do any of these concerns look familiar?
I have less than 3 hours per week for AdWords management.
When my inventory changes, the changes are not reflected in my Adwords account.
I don't get enough relevant traffic from AdWords or my Click Trough Rate is below 1%.
I see my competitors on the first page of Google, but my ads are not there.
I pay too much for each click or my Quality Score is lower than 5/10.
My conversion rate via AdWords is lower than from other channels.
I pay too much for each sale and my Return On Investment is too low.
I'm not sure what new possibilities Adwords has to achieve highest performance.
What type of campaigns will we setup?
Google Shopping: Shopping delivers relevant visitors to product pages. In most cased around 40-60% of the revenue will come from Shopping.
Long-tail AdWords campaigns Search Ads Campaigns: Text Ads campaigns for brands, categories and products support Google Shopping campaigns and touch consumers earlier in their customer journey.
Remarketing campaigns (additional cost will apply): Using different remarketing tools we are able to get shopping cart abandoners and existing customers back with back to the shop when they start searching again.
We will also add other campagnes, like branded campagnes and generic (broad) campaigns if those seem appropriate.
How do we optimize AdWords campaigns?
After the campaign setup we quickly start optimizing the campaigns. Your dedicated AdWords specialist will use the Robot to optimize.
Bid Management: We optimize bids based on product categories and Return On Investment to make sure each category makes you money.
Product Inventory Management: In most cases there products, brands and categories which show low performance. In that case those need to be excluded.
Negative Keyword Management: Keyword exclusions is important to find keywords which have low conversion value and make sure no ads appear when the consumer searches for those keywords.
Shopping Feed Optimization: By placing relevant search words in titles, products are also shown earlier in Shopping. By arranging segments based on price / revenue per product, bids can be used more effectively.
Seasonality Research (additional cost will apply): Sometimes the sales are influenced by the weather, in that case some product must (not) be promoted in some periodes.
How to start with AdWords for PrestaShop shop?


Risk-taking is a natural part of adolescence. To help adolescents see the consequences of their choices, Palmetto Health offers Project READY: Realistic Education about Dying Young.
In our interactive injury simulation session with adolescents, therapists will demonstrate paraplegia and quadriplegia, communication difficulties after sustaining a closed head injury, and daily challenges experienced by trauma patients.
Our program aims to give adolescents a clear depiction of trauma-related consequences sustained from risky behaviors.
This program is open to participants between the ages of 13-18 in Richland, Lexington and Fairfield counties.


text:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<graph>
  <node key="Alpha" color="lightblue" />
  <node key="Beta" color="orange" />
  <node key="Gamma" color="lightgreen" />
  <node key="Delta" color="pink" />
  <link from="Alpha" to="Beta" />
  <link from="Alpha" to="Gamma" />
  <link from="Beta" to="Beta" />
  <link from="Gamma" to="Delta" />
  <link from="Delta" to="Alpha" />
</graph>

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


The regular jobs are controled by anacron by default. But anacron runs randomly in a day(at 3-22), so if you'd like to use cron and control jobs at a time, change like follows.
But Consider to change it if your server is virtualization environment. In virtual server, some virtual machines are running and if they executes regular jobs at a time all, the server will have many loading at a time. So it's necessary to change time on each machine by hand, or Keep anacron setting.
 Remove anacron settings's package, if you installed cron's setting.


Instructions for Parachute Cord bracelets using the Square Knot (a.k.a. the Cobra Stitch). Makes both a single-color or duo-tone bracelet. Use with any Parachute Cord thickness for a slightly different look.
The directions can be downloaded from here.


text:
WOMAN SURVIVES 2 1/2 DAYS
By VERONICA ALANIZ Dallas Morning News
DALLAS — For 2 1/2 days, Jamie Peavy sat pinned and battered in her wrecked pickup truck, wondering whether anyone would find her.
The Irving woman even wrote a farewell note to her family in lipstick. They had been searching for her since she failed to come home Friday night.
"Nobody killed me," the note said. "I had a wreck."
But as she clung to life on Monday afternoon, a construction worker walking near a Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport side road heard her cries. He had been planning a new water line when he found Peavy's vehicle at the bottom of a wooded ravine.
"She's in pretty bad shape," her mother, Martha Peavy, said on Tuesday. "But she's alive. Her first words to me were, 'I'm glad to see you,' and 'I thought you were never going to find me."'
Peavy, 25, suffered two broken legs, a broken wrist, a broken rib, a punctured lung, lacerations, bruises and dehydration. She was hospitalized in serious condition on Tuesday.
Bob Ryding, an employee of a construction company, found Peavy in a 10-foot ditch. "I'll never forget the look on her face when she reached up to see if I was real," Ryding said. "She didn't think anyone would find her."

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


Clínica Tepeyac has made tangible changes to the lives of thousands of Colorado families in its fifteen year history of providing healthcare services to the underserved. At this year's Fiesta on the Plaza, guests heard the personal story from one of our patients, Oscar Padilla, of his health scare and how the staff at Clínica Tepeyac took care of him. Read on as we share Oscar's story, translated from Spanish, of fear and unknowing transformed into gratitude and peace of mind.
"Hi, my name is Oscar Padilla and I am a patient of Clínica Tepeyac.I am very grateful to them because one day I was not feeling so well and I was worried about myself. I called and made an appointment. When I arrived to my appointment I was feeling even worse so they doctor sent me right away to get an echocardiogram. They did the test to see if there was something wrong; if I had a heart attack. There was something wrong with me and immediately they helped me to make an appointment at St. Joseph Hospital. The next day I went to the appointment at St. Joseph and thank God that everything had passed and I was okay."
"I must say thank you to Clínica Tepeyac for the movement they did for me and for being concerned and taking care of me. I also thank all the people that give donations, because thanks to them the clinic can continue going forward. I hope the clinic can keep working and moving forward because there are people like me that do not have many resources and need the help at various times every year. We have never been told that we could not come here and we have felt your support. So I thank you all very much and may God bless you."
Imagine believing that you are having a heart attack and then imagine not knowing where to go for treatment because you don't speak the same language and you don't have the financial resources to see most doctors nor do you own a vehicle to get you there.
Now, imagine a safe haven medical clinic where you can call and everyone treats you like an honored guest, speaks yourlanguage and listens as you explain that you feel like you're having a heart attack. Then they spring into action getting you in for prompt same-day medical care. Once you're at this medical clinic, the physician immediately gets you the appropriate tests and then backs up his findings through a local hospital where you're sent the very next day. They confirm that while you do have a medical condition, you did not have a heart attack.
Imagine that this was all taken care of in a professional and respectful manner where the staff explained things to you in your language and where the fees were affordable because you don't have a lot of money nor do you have health insurance.
This is the gift of peace of mind that Clínica Tepeyac gave to Oscar Padilla. For thousands of Spanish-speaking, low income, uninsured Coloradans, this safe haven is Clínica Tepeyac. Our staff and volunteers take great pride in providing peace of mind for patients like Oscar and can only continue their work because of our generous supporters.


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Top White House adviser: Climate policies 'number one' factor in Fed chair pick
A top economic adviser to President Joe Biden says climate-related policies are a major priority as the White House considers who it would like to serve in the top job at the Federal Reserve.
Heather Boushey, a member of the White House's Council of Economic Advisers, said the Biden administration broadly sees a link between economic policies and risks that come from climate change.
"As we're thinking about management of the economy, as we're thinking about the financial system, really making sure we are taking into account these physical and transition costs of climate change, that's an urgent and number one priority," Boushey told Yahoo Finance in an interview on Thursday.
Boushey did not say if she supports current Fed Governor Lael Brainard or incumbent Fed Chairman Jerome Powell for the job, the two rumored final candidates. But Brainard has been the one inside the central bank spearheading efforts to beef up surveillance of climate-related financial risks.
Powell has supported those measures but has also caveated the Fed's work on climate risk.
"We are not, and we do not seek to be, climate policymakers," Powell said at a climate change conference in June. He added later that "[the Fed] should avoid trying to fill in public policy where governments haven't done so yet."
On Friday morning, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Jeff Merkley of Oregon said they would not support a Powell renomination, arguing that he has not been aggressive enough on climate matters.
"President Biden must appoint a Fed chair who will ensure the Fed is fulfilling its mandate to safeguard our financial system and shares the administration's view that fighting climate change is the responsibility of every policymaker. That person is not Jerome Powell," the two Democrats said in a statement.
Other Democrats have also voiced opposition to Powell's renomination, perhaps tilting the scales in favor of a Brainard nomination. Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts said she would not support Powell due to his record on bank regulation, arguing that regulatory rollbacks to the post-financial crisis law known as Dodd-Frank make Powell a "dangerous man."
Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) told Yahoo Finance that she has met with both Powell and Brainard in the last couple of months and said her focus is also on climate.
"I'm interested in a Federal Reserve chair who is also going to be looking at what we need to do to minimize some of the systemic risks in our economy. For me, one of the biggest challenges that we have is the risk around climate change," Smith told Yahoo Finance Thursday.
Climate mandate?
The spotlight on climate policies at the Federal Reserve raises questions about how the central bank should be assessing risk within the bounds of its Congressional mandates.
The Federal Reserve Act tasks the central bank with the following goals: maximum employment, stable prices, and moderate long-term interest rates.
The Fed's most well-known tools used to meet those goals are its monetary policies (i.e. levering short-term interest rates). But another tool: monitoring financial stability risks, which works in tandem with the Fed's power to regulate and supervise banks.
Both Brainard and Powell recognize that extreme weather could incur sudden and large losses on the banking industry. Another risk concerns transitioning to greener energy sources, which could disrupt existing fossil fuel industries and create financial volatility.
Republicans like Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania have argued that paying mind to climate marks a "sudden departure" from the Fed's mandate.
But Brainard has said that supervisors "have a responsibility to ensure that financial institutions are resilient to all material risks—including those related to climate change — both currently and into the future."
Another top economic policy adviser to the White House, Bharat Ramamurti, told Yahoo Finance he agrees that climate is well within the Fed's mandate.
"It is completely within [regulators'] normal, standard statutory mission to examine and protect the safety and soundness of the financial system. It's just that climate change has emerged as a threat to potential safety and soundness and regulators in our view should take that into consideration," said Ramamurti, the deputy director of the National Economic Council.
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Comparing Napoleon, ND homeowners insurance is easy. Enter your Zip at the top of the page and you will be on your way to finding the cheapest coverage for your home in Logan. Home insurance comparison is the most-trusted method of saving 30% or more on your premium. So stop overpaying and start saving by getting your quotes today.
What you should know about Napoleon, ND home insurance quotes is that not all of them are created alike, and while there are those that provide information on products that provide comprehensive coverage for an all-in-one premium, there are quotes that only provide information on certain types of coverage. And yet they will come up in the same query when you use insurance quotes websites, which can be a bad thing if you are not careful.
How much does Napoleon homeowner's insurance cost? Well, that really depends on your state. However, we are finding that across the United States, the average cost is between $600 to $1,600, with Idaho having the lowest average and Texas the highest. Of course, if you take a look at the specifics, you will find insurers that charge lower or higher than the state average.
Start saving now on your home insurance in Napoleon, ND. Enter your Zip Code at the top of the page and browse and compare through the list of the top insurance carriers in your area.
Your residence isn't just a house, it is a residence for you and your liked kinds to share. This is why it is so important to defend your house and pocketbook, by getting residence owner's insurance policy now, as an alternative of waiting around for difficulties to hurt your home. Underneath are a record of tips to aid you uncover the correct house owner's insurance policy for you.
Spend down your mortgage loan to limit how significantly you pay out for homeowner's insurance policy. Clearing a house loan may not be an immediate probability, but instead a extended-expression goal to hold in head. They think that if you totally own the house, you will preserve it better.
When you shift houses, be certain that your belongings are insured for the go. This may imply getting insurance policy from the moving organization. Your homeowner's insurance plan could also include things that are damaged, lost, or stolen in transit. Check out with your insurance policy agent about a "special perils endorsement", which will defend valuables for the duration of a go.
When thinking about insurance policies for your residence, be sure to have your valuables formerly appraised. This will make sure that if they want to be replaced, you will get a honest alternative worth in a a lot quicker quantity of time. To do this, have a professional appraise the belonging and then send out the formal appraisal to the insurance coverage company.
What would do you do if your residence was destroyed in a normal catastrophe and demands to be rebuilt? If you obtained your homeowner's insurance policies years in the past, the expense of design and materials might have long gone up. For this purpose it is important to make sure you buy a Confirmed Substitute Worth Insurance quality which will promise that your property will be rebuilt regardless of the price.
Be positive to update your policy if you make alterations to your home. If you do things this kind of as remove a trampoline or a swimming pool or pay off your house loan, you will see a lessen in your premium. If you insert a security system it will reduce your prices as well.
Improve your property owner's insurance coverage deductible. There are very a few pros and downsides to escalating the deductible volume on your insurance policies. Nevertheless, if you are getting difficulties paying out your residence owner's insurance policy, you may possibly want to significantly take into account it. It can end up saving you anyplace from 10% to 37% off your top quality.
The property you have just purchased is most likely the biggest investment in your existence. It is a normal intuition to shield the price of your property. The way to do that is to purchase a property operator insurance policies coverage, which is generally a deal in between an insurance coverage organization and the property owner. As prolonged as the property owner retains spending the month-to-month premiums, the insurance policies firm pays for specified losses such as damage triggered by human steps or normal disasters.
Put in a sophisticated alarm system in your house, preferably a single that is monitored by a reputable safety company, or is joined directly to the regional police station. Insurance companies lessen your annually quality by up to five% if you can demonstrate by an invoice or deal that you have a centrally monitored stability technique set up.
You will have an simpler time obtaining a great homeowner's insurance policy by making use of these suggestions, and they also assist you comprehend the value of one. It is properly-identified that you want homeowner's insurance policies to safeguard by yourself from the fiscal influence of reduction to your residence and possessions beneath specific situation. Possessing a residence indicates you require a plan to keep it secured.


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All images courtesy Rockfon
by Gary Madaras, PhD, Assoc. AIA
Sound isolation between rooms can be important for speech privacy. For example, in patient exam rooms in a medical building, conversations between patients and their doctors are meant to be confidential; similarly, discussions in an enclosed office between a human resources (HR) director and an employee are meant for no one else. Even when speech privacy is not a concern, sound transmitting from one room into another can be annoying or distracting and can inhibit productivity, concentration, and relaxation.
Achieving sound isolation between rooms relates to the overall construction of those spaces' envelopes, including the walls, floors, windows, doors, and sometimes ceilings. The overall level of sound isolation often depends on the weakest link in the construction.
Acoustics requirements in building standards, guidelines, and rating systems list sound transmission class (STC) most frequently as the sound-isolation metric. STC requirements generally range from 40 to 50, with STC 45 being the most commonly occurring requirement for interior construction when sound isolation is needed. (For more, see this author's "A Guide on the Four Categories for Acoustics Criteria in Building Standards and Guidelines," which was published in the July−September 2016 edition of Acoustical Interior Construction.) Demising walls are required to be full-height—from structural floor slab to structural floor slab or roof, with any penetrations sealed airtight.
As a cost-saving measure in some buildings, interior walls are instead stopped at the height of a suspended, modular acoustic ceiling. They do not extend full-height up to the structural floor slab or roof. This practice not only saves on the construction cost of the walls, but also creates a continuous open space above the suspended ceiling that can be used as a return-air plenum.
Sound isolation between rooms can be important for speech privacy in healthcare buildings, where conversations between patients and their doctors are meant to be confidential.
Specifying a plenum to return air can save money, compared with the cost of adding rigid metal return-air ductwork above the ceiling. This design approach typically does not comply with minimum sound-isolation performance requirements in standards, guidelines, and rating systems because sound can transmit at higher levels through the lightweight acoustic ceiling and over the partial-height wall. Some designers and building owners still elect to use this approach for the cost savings.
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Effects of noise flanking paths
Eliminating the need to choose between a design approach that works acoustically and one that works financially was one of the motivations for the Optimized Acoustics Research Program, an ongoing, multi-year, multi-organization investigation into cost-effective means of designing and constructing interior architecture that complies with the acoustic requirements in industry standards, guidelines, and building rating systems. (For more, visit www.optimizedacoustics.com. The current program includes manufacturers and a material testing laboratory; membership will vary in the future according to the topics being investigated. The initiative began in 2014, and progress updates of the findings, such as this article, have been presented at and published in the proceedings of InterNoise, NoiseCon, and Acoustics Week Canada, as well as published in Sound & Vibration and Canadian Acoustics.) An early phase of this initiative investigated the effects of noise flanking paths, or 'leaks,' through penetrations in the ceiling system when the demising walls stop at the height of the ceiling instead of extending full-height.
Suspended, modular ceiling systems typically have recessed light fixtures, open return-air grilles, supply air diffusers, and other miscellaneous penetrations for sprinkler heads, loudspeakers, security/surveillance devices, and Wi-Fi devices. These openings and penetrations in the ceiling system create noise flanking paths, through which noise transmits more easily between rooms.
Acoustics Ceilings Division 09 Plenum barriers national


ROUND ROCK, Texas - The Round Rock Express will have something for everyone during the team's second homestand of the season from April 17-23! From infants to adults, two-legged and four-legged friends, Dell Diamond is the place to be this week.
The Express return home on Tuesday, April 17 to open a four-game series against the Oklahoma City Dodgers (Los Angeles Dodgers affiliate). The Mother of All Baby Showers makes a stop at Dell Diamond on Tuesday night. Complete with top-notch baby products and services, valuable educational sessions and over $20,000 worth of giveaways, the Mother of All Baby Showers is a must-see event for all new or expectant parents.
Wednesday's special 11:35 a.m. first pitch for Education Day features pregame presentations by Mad Science and TDS Eco Academy for schoolchildren of all ages.
Dell Diamond is going to the dogs on Thursday, April 19 for the inaugural Pints & Pups event, presented by Do512. Fans are invited to bring their four-legged friends to the ballpark while enjoying discounted beer specials as part of The Original Thirsty Thursday, presented by Firetrol Protection Systems. A portion of all tickets sold online using promo code PUPS will benefit Austin Pets Alive!
After the latest installment of Bud Light Friday Fireworks on April 20, the first 2,500 fans through the gates for Saturdays at the Ballpark, presented by A+ Federal Credit Union, on April 21 will receive a Nolan Ryan statue replica giveaway, presented by Dell.
Sunday's 1:05 p.m. first pitch against the Colorado Springs Sky Sox (Milwaukee Brewers affiliate) features the first-ever Om at the Ballpark, complete with yoga in the outfield before the game. Fans can use promo code YOGA when purchasing tickets online to receive a special ticket package that includes admission to the pregame yoga session, led by a Gold's Gym instructor.
Sunday is also H-E-B Kids Day, with events outside the stadium and postgame run the bases for all kids 12 and under. All members of the Round Rock Express Kids Club will receive front-of-the-line access to postgame run the bases every Sunday. Finally, the homestand concludes on Monday with the first $1 Hot Dogs and Sodas, presented by Mrs Baird's.
Chasco Community Partner: Austin Pets Alive!


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Nothing Is What It Seems In the Trailer for Steven Soderbergh's 'Kimi'
Taylor Swift Has Unleashed a New Winking, Self-Focused Pop Song Upon the Earth
For those wondering if the next chapter of Taylor Swift's career would see finally turn back to country, let your dreams fall from the sky now. The pop artist released her newest single "ME!" this morning, and it is very much a pop song in the vein of 1989 and Reputation.
Thank goodness "ME!" is at least more bearable than Reputation's lead single, "Look What You Made Me Do." It has similar fluffy pop production as a lot of Swift's last album, and the video is packed with Easter eggs and jokes, but it's not so gosh-darned self-serious.
The vibe here is actually closer to "Blank Space" than anything, with "ME!"'s self-centric lyrics seemingly riffing off Swift's polarizing characterization in the media. It's a smart PR move—aw, our T-Swift sure can laugh at herself, can't she?—though it does make for a somewhat eye-rolling song. The presence of Panic! at the Disco's Brendon Urie only confuses matters, and many of the lines land with damp thunks instead of delicate footfalls. Ariana Grande just does this stuff better. Her bite's more fun.
Most Americans Believe Christmas is the Celebration of a Real Event
For more tolerant fans of Swift though, "ME!" will be a rich return. There are some inner-circle memes-in-the-making to be mined here ("Spelling is fun!"), but for the general populace, we'll have to keep waiting for the smarter, more earnest, more musically interesting to return, hopefully with that tear-stained acoustic guitar in hand.
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Legendary Rocker, Pete French, Teams With Ripple Music To Release New LEAF HOUND Album, Live In Japan
Posted on July 12, 2013 by Racer
Late 60s/early 70s classic rock band LEAF HOUND is legendary.
And now the band's equally legendary frontman, Pete French, and the rest of LEAF HOUND has joined forces with Ripple Music to release an LP, CD, DVD project of all newly recorded live material – Live in Japan.
Recorded live in July of 2012 in Tokyo, Live in Japan will see worldwide release later this year via Ripple Music. Look out world, LEAF HOUND has been unleashed once again!
"As good a rock album as you could hope to hear. (LEAF HOUND, 'Unleashed')"
-Alastair Riddell, Kerrang!
"…a long-lost and quite wonderful doom-tinged hard rock band"
– Dave Ling, Classic Rock
"…rightful heirs to the Led Zep/Bad Company blues rock crown"
– Pete Sargeant, Blues Matters
Few bands from the proto-metal period command the undying respect and nods of approval as does Leaf Hound. Talk about a pedigree. Leaf Hound formed in 1969 under their original name, Black Cat Bones. Early incarnations of the Black Cat Bones featured guitarist Paul Kossoff and drummer Simon Kirke who both left to form Free. Black Cat Bones issued one album then replaced their vocalist with perfect-wailer Peter French, Guitarist Rod Price departed soon after to join Foghat and French added his cousin Mick Halls on guitar. With that change, Leaf Hound was born.
In 1970, Leaf Hound released the seminal album "Growers of Mushrooms" which has rightly been hailed as a bonafide classic of 70's British underground rock scene. Classic Rock magazine has raved that "Growers of Mushrooms" is one of the most influential pieces of music on the stoner rock, and the album has gained a reputation as being one of the true lost gems of the early British hard rock scene. Original Decca vinyl copies on are one of the most rare collectable rock albums out there with prices soaring above £4,000!
After the band broke up, Peter French found himself in high demand. He has been the voice of Atomic Rooster, Cactus and Randy Pie as well as releasing an acclaimed solo album on Polydor, 'Ducks In Flight', which featured the likes of Micky Moody, Brian Robertson and Kenny Jones. But the legend of Leaf Hound wouldn't die. Interest in the band took a seismic shift when the album was first re-released on CD in 1994, finally giving rock fans easy access to the buried treasure. It gained a second re-release in 2005. The music is a prime slice of classic 70's hard rock – a heady mix of Cream, The Who, Free, Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin.
Following intense public demand, Pete French put a new version of Leaf Hound together in the Spring of 2004, and in 2007 Leaf Hound released their first new album in decades, 'Unleashed' on the R.A.R.E/Repertoire label to highly positive critical acclaim. The opening track, '105 Degrees', was voted one of the top 100 rock tracks of 2007 by Classic Rock magazine. To launch the release of the album, they headlined the second night of the All Hallows Festival at London's Camden Underworld.
Now, the next chapter in the myth that is Leaf Hound unfolds as the band has joined the stalwart heavy rocking label, Ripple Music to unleash an all new set of killer live Leaf Hound onto the unsuspecting public. Soon to be released on LP, CD and DVD formats, Ripple Music will bring to a whole new audience the legend that is Leaf Hound. With a roster of classic proto-metal rockers that includes Poobah, JPT Scare Band, and Iron Claw, Ripple Music has already proven its ability to bring classic rocking bands to a modern audience.
LEAF HOUND is:
PETER FRENCH – VOCALS
LUKE RAYNER – GUITAR
PETER HERBERT – BASS
JIMMY ROWLAND – DRUMS
www.leafhound.net
Doom, Leaf Hound, Proto Metal, Protometal, Sludge, Stoner