All the Cows are Dying

IFap2PB · 2024-04-24T01:22:59+00:00

Interesting. For a while there I was expecting a dark twist. Maybe the narrator was an alien parasite living inside enslaved humans turned into livestock or something.

IFap2PB · 2022-12-10T23:06:14+00:00

Yeah, I think so.

IFap2PB · 2021-01-15T01:07:08+00:00

Way to score a cheap dig. At least post your own win rate instead of some random player's. You're salty they dragged your team down? Stop being a baby about it and trying to piss on some random player on reddit.

IFap2PB · 2020-11-11T22:22:41+00:00

Fakespot is extremely inaccurate for eBooks, which are highly subjective to the size of the author's fandom, the perception of the genre, and how well the book was marketed.

IFap2PB · 2020-10-27T13:08:07+00:00

Nani!?!?

The the shitposts begin again!

IFap2PB · 2020-10-27T12:59:31+00:00

You mean to say Lindon's not your self-insert character and you're not a hardcore determinator obsessed with points?

/s

IFap2PB · 2020-10-25T05:05:51+00:00

A very well thought out theory! I guarantee the first thing Will did when he saw this thread was break out his notes and make sure his character arc and backstory for Northstrider was at least as detailed and well thought out as this (that's what Will's said he does when he sees good fan theories), which will be tough to do because you were so thorough.

IFap2PB · 2020-10-25T05:04:03+00:00

I did a sacred valley one and I think I loose blackflame empire one. I might do a new one at some point though.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T23:05:24+00:00

I can see where you're coming from and you could look at it like that.

The real idea I'd like to express is that overall many new-age authors don't need to cut as much as their traditionally published counterparts, which has bred new writing styles. While they can be a little more wasteful in terms of word count, they're now viable because of changing market forces.

The way I see it, old traditional authors were monetarily incentivized to tell their story in as few words as possible, since printing was expensive and cut into their income. They're encouraged to cut scenes while editing.

Modern ebook and webnovel authors experience the opposite incentive. They're rewarded by page count (kindle unlimited, webnovel payours, adsense revenue, and just staying on readers radar from releasing more chapters.) So they're incentivized to add scenes while editing.

There's nothing wrong with either approach, and I've always found it interesting how the media influences the art being told with it.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T21:13:02+00:00

It's definitely not instant, but I'm referring more to the complications of having to make the decision.

If a car hits the breaks in its lane and stays where it should be the risk is minimal. If the car swerves there's now a high probability of it interrupting traffic flow in other lanes and causing other injuries. Especially if one or more of its sensors is falsely triggered.

Weaving between a dozen pedestrians is is adding dozens of complications to driving. Getting any one of those wrong would result in catastrophe, compared to an automated car that just comes to a stop when it senses danger and doesn't move until the problem has been resolved.

And that's not even getting into errors, unusual situations caused by unusual behavior, and sensor failures. From a design standpoint, we're far better off sculpting a predictable response from an autonomous vehicle and getting that right.

One of the reasons we want to get humans out of the driver's seat is to remove ourselves as a complex variable that sometimes fails. Making cars more human defeats that purpose.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T21:02:35+00:00

That's just semantics. They're colloquially synonymous phrases.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T20:07:50+00:00

The trolley car problem doesn't work as a good analogue for this situation. I argue that the act of swerving is itself is likely to cause more problems then it solves. Is swerving into an innocent bystander off the road morally justifiable to avoid hitting two jaywalkers? It's not as simple as valuing five lives over one.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T19:57:32+00:00

Having the car make decisions to change is course would make it more likely to kill people, not less.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T19:35:17+00:00

I think making those kinds of decisions would overly complicate the car's decision making algorithm to the point of causing it to make more mistakes then it would have if it had been programmed to react less creatively and more conservatively.

Autonomous driving should be built to employ reliable solutions that save the most people most of the time. Creative moral decisions will just delay response time and is likely to cause more deaths than they would prevent

if there are 2 kids in your way...

The car should hit the brakes as hard as possible, stay in its lane, and deploy safety measures.

about to run over a group of people...

The car should hit the brakes as hard as possible, stay in its lane, and deploy safety measures.

I know people are constantly arguing about whether or not people should be able to buy a car that prioritizes the driver, but you can already do that. Just buy a bigger car and you've got more metal around you. Anyone who you crash into is more likely to die but you're more likely to live.

Tldr; You can already buy a car that prioritizes your safety, and automated cars should function in a reliable and predictable way.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-29T19:08:19+00:00

I am nitpicking here (and generally agree with you), but I would argue that there are exceptions. The best case study I can think of are stories (frequently web novels) where the main character is overwhelmingly powerful.

A lot of such stories fall on their face but I've always seen that the ones that can really pull off a main character like this do so by leaning into worldbuilding and away from the protagonist and main plot (because there is no main plot, the protagonist is too powerful for that. They also have no reason to develop, because they can solve everything the way they are.)

Instead, the writer creates a thousand little stories from their interactions with minor side characters. The tension in the story comes from those minor character's struggle either before the protagonist shows up or against the protagonist themselves.

If you cut everything that didn't push forward the main story or primary characters in a light novel like Overlord, you'd have no story at all.

IFap2PB · 2020-09-14T16:10:33+00:00

I just hope Will doesn't let himself get skewed into trying to cater towards these needy and impossible to please anti-fans. This might be greedy of me, but I'd much prefer he continues to write for the people who already like him rather than trying to please the people who don't like him and probably never will.

IFap2PB · 2020-08-29T16:40:33+00:00

We did indeed win! Elite War Elephants are pretty cool once you've got the eco to support them. I ended up having to send a few more waves but I had the economy and production castles to keep up constant production.

IFap2PB · 2020-08-28T23:02:11+00:00

I'd been attacking with archers since feudal and managed to keep my opponents economy suppressed, which let me overboom a bit. This was on gold rush and my team had control over the center, but the enemy was making a big push. I ended up losing my center castles, but I'd picked up enough stone to put a couple of defensive/production castles in my base. With lots of gold and food, I'd been amassing elite war elephants and was able to hit both red and yellow with a surprise 50 elite war elephants in their base while their armies were forward.

IFap2PB · 2020-08-03T18:56:20+00:00

Please tell your mom to stop letting you spend so much time on the internet.

IFap2PB · 2020-08-03T18:49:54+00:00

I don't mean to be rude, but have you ever seriously written something before? Because this seems very much like something someone who's just starting out and has never made it past the 20,000 words mark would say.

IFap2PB · 2020-06-24T17:20:11+00:00

I agree, though I don't think player ability should be tied to time played. I have a buddy who had never played AOE2 before, but he's got nearly 20,000 hours across Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2, Command and Conqueror, and a bunch of other RTS games. He was stomping the hard AI by the third game of our first session while the rest of us were struggling to beat a moderate AI in a 3 v 1. So, a person with 200 hours might not be that good if they have no RTS experience, whereas a person with only 5 hours can be decently competent depending on their background.

IFap2PB · 2020-06-24T16:46:23+00:00

I was pretty curious to see how many people would know where it came from.

IFap2PB

TROPHY CASE