Dave just left

[elSicomoro]

Actually, I think Zippy is perfect for the role.

[zippyt]

Thats zippyT butthead !!

And i must respectfuly decline as my work schedual is not verry reliable , and my spelling , grammer and diction is wholey inadaquit .
Thanks for the nomination though .

[vsp]

I've only been posting to the Cellar for about a decade, so I'll throw in a few words...

There are parts of this involving offline relationships between our protagonists, and since I don't know the whole story there (i.e. all I know is what I've been told and what I've seen posted, and the Rashomon effect applies), I'm staying out of that mess as much as I can.

It's obvious that the issues go far beyond the eye-joke/unemployment chatter that started this mess, because I've read the threads a few times, and it's _chatter_. It's the old back-of-the-bus gotcha-last stuff where the next target's the mother of whoever laughs loudest. Certain people are reacting like someone's pouring hot sand in their urethras, and untrained observers like myself don't and won't get it.

Originally posted by Undertoad
Also, this confirms to me why I don't like GTGs and didn't have any for a decade. And why I won't attend another one for a decade. Christ.

Honestly, I agree with this. I've been a Cellar denizen for at least ten years (I remember being in Ruthie's fantasy baseball league in '94), including back when it was strictly a Philly-area dialup BBS. In that time, I've interacted with several members outside of the Cellar itself; I've traded games with one or two, shared a hacked newsreader binary with one, had one hook me up with a job interview, and received an old EPROM burner as a gift from yet another. No regrets, and many benefits.

However, I have yet to meet a Cellar member face-to-face (despite GTGs, a dinner invitation many years ago, and similar things), and call me shallow if you like, but I haven't lost any sleep over that.

It's not that I'm actively avoiding human contact; I'm not the Unabomber v2.0. If my wife hadn't been having surgery the week of Tony's birthday GTG (nothing life-threatening, but I still had my hands full), I would've considered making an appearance. In ten+ years, I've killfiled exactly one person (and it wasn't April, Barak or Mike Smith, rather someone many wouldn't have expected from the BBS days), and can't think of anyone that I'd have a problem being around for a while.

Part of it is that I'm naturally like that; I make friendly acquaintances easily, but I'm a wallflower by nature, and it can take effort and a crowbar to drag me out into parties and social events. (If I go somewhere, it's generally because I have a reason to go there, not just to hang out and kibitz.)

Part of it is that I don't dive headlong into every thread like many do; when I have something to say, I pop up and say it, and when that conversation dies off, I disappear until the next time.

And part of it is that I prefer to keep a small amount of distance, just to avoid situations like the one that this thread is about. I keep coming back to the Cellar because it's full of diverse and interesting people with working brains, most of whom refuse to take themselves too seriously (and who have no compunctions about puncturing the egos of those who do). I'd miss it if it went away, as it has at least once. But I don't invest a ton of emotion towards anyone here in particular, because people come and people go and people disappear for a while and shit happens. I've played the "If X is going to be there, then I won't be" social bullshit game with an ex-gf, and it sucks monkey rocks -- and hanging back a little helps ensure that if problems ever do arise between me and someone else here, that emotions won't run deep enough to reach that point where I wouldn't feel comfortable sticking around.

But that's me. Maybe I'm just strung out on cough syrup or something.

[juju]

Getting close to people always comes with a risk. Not getting close to people in order to avoid the potential pitfalls is defintitely <b>a</b> solution. But I like to think that experiencing the positive is worth the risk of the potiential negative.

[Undertoad]

vsp, after you said you don't like multiplayer gaming I don't trust you at all and would not invite you over. Even if you needed a favor of some soldering for a car stereo purchase that I recommended.

(Actually, dave was the biggest multiplayer gamer of them all, so maybe this is not a good metric)

[FileNotFound]

Multiplayer gaming? LAN party? Philly area?

[Undertoad]

Um let's just say I have the ideal space for such a thing, a completely networked single house in the burbs with a T1 and no wife and tons of parking and garage load-in and three cases of beer I can't finish myself, and leave it at that because we were talking about never ever getting together again. ?

[FileNotFound]

Hmm I like lan parties. Going to one on the 20th in West Chester...

Been trying to find a COOP game to play to avoid the whining that happens when one side gets raped. (We always make 2 teams).

BTW if you're in the mood for an asskicking I could dig up some directions to the place for you..

[SteveDallas]

Originally posted by Undertoad
vsp, after you said you don't like multiplayer gaming I don't trust you at all and would not invite you over.

Dang, I don't even like single-player gaming that much... should I pack my virtual bags??

[vsp]

Originally posted by Undertoad
vsp, after you said you don't like multiplayer gaming I don't trust you at all and would not invite you over. Even if you needed a favor of some soldering for a car stereo purchase that I recommended.

(Actually, dave was the biggest multiplayer gamer of them all, so maybe this is not a good metric)

Heh. I'm not ANTI-multiplayer; I'm sure I've bored you and others by pimping netrek before, which was an Internet game I was known to play in dave-esque proportions when I was in college (i.e. end the session, see the clock reading "6:00", and not know for sure whether it's AM or PM).

But I stand by my usual stance. A single-player game is as good as the designers make it; a multi-player game is as good as the players allow it to be. For me to really get into a multiplayer game, it'd have to meet a handful of criteria:

1) The game has to be sufficiently fun that even when I'm losing, I'm doing things that entertain me or are productive in a losing cause. That alone is a pretty big hurdle.

2) Pickup games with reasonably coherent opposition have to be plentiful. It only takes one too many BIFF!!1!11!s (or one cheater) to ruin an online experience.

3) There has to be a "clued" community where once I've spent enough time in pickups to play the game well and know how it _should_ be played, that I can join games with people who are equally serious about it.

4) There has to be a point to the game beyond simple socialization. I never got into noncombat MUDs or chat rooms for precisely that reason.

5) The game has to be one where you don't have to spend eight hours a day, seven days a week at it to either (a) acquire sufficient skill to hang with typical opponents or (b) build up enough rank/stats/levels/money/allies/etc. to do anything meaningful. (I'm looking at YOU, Evercrack.)

6) I will pay for this game no more than once. Monthly fee == sayonara.

Netrek _used to_ meet all of these criteria, but with the passage of time, #2 and #3 are harder and harder to meet. I go back to it once in a blue moon, but that's about it.

I may be getting old, but multiplayer FPS games have evolved far past my capabilities. I read people talking about stunts like shooting down incoming rockets, pinpoint railgun accuracy, super-speed jumping by blowing yourself sky-high with rockets, and I'm thinking "Holy shit, I'm still trying to draw a bead on somebody and they're doing that?" I feel like a beer-league softball player preparing to take on the Yankees, and I can't spend the time necessary to build up that skill level.

(On the flip side, I'll play single-player FPS'es. I grabbed Serious Sam recently and loved it.)

Ultima Online, Evercrack, Dark Age of Camelot et al. are all in the monthly-fee, sign-up-and-socialize, can't-advance-unless-you-spend-hours-waiting-for-monster-respawns-with-a-heavily-armed-guild-backing-you-up category. Next!

I've heard too many nightmares about player-killing and cheating and hacking in the Diablo family. Next! (Caveat: I like PSX Diablo, which does have co-op, and I actually found its interface to be more intuitive than the PC version.)

There is an online adapter for my PS2, but I haven't found a game that uses it yet that I'd be interested in.

Although I _am_ toying with the notion of <a href="http://cube.ign.com/articles/440/440372p1.html">this</a> little gem...

[FileNotFound]

You know...my most played online game of all time is Subspace (now known as Continium).

Look it up on Google. It's the most fun you can have in an MP game online even if you only have 5 free minutes.

(Play on either Trench Wars or Extreme Games servers).

Oh and its' 100% free. (abandonware)

I've been in it since the Beta when that was I forget..still HS though...

[Undertoad]

Well that's why I always advocated Ghost Recon, because there is no stupid elite trick stuff; it's all about using your brain.

Let's see, one guy is down the alley and one guy is on top of the embassy roof. If I stand up here, the guy on the roof will see me, and if I don't see him first, I die quick. But if I provide cover fire maybe my teammate can climb the stairs and get him from the other direction. But I better lay a sensor in case the guy in the alley decides to take a run for it...

[FileNotFound]

Ghost Recon is a tough as hell game to just sit down and play.

Thing is we tend to NOT know what game we'll play till we get together...so it has to be fairly basic.

I think we tried Rogue Spear and while I was godlike at that game, most people were not. Most of the time our "coop" games turned into everyone watching me finish off the AI...

[wolf]

Originally posted by vsp


Although I _am_ toying with the notion of <a href="http://cube.ign.com/articles/440/440372p1.html">this</a> little gem...

I don't get it. I never thought PacMan was that cool when it was in the arcades ... is it that much better to play the ghosts?

[vsp]

Originally posted by wolf
I don't get it. I never thought PacMan was that cool when it was in the arcades ... is it that much better to play the ghosts?

When you're playing as the ghosts AGAINST someone playing Pac-Man, that's something new and untried, particularly if you can drag a third or a fourth into it.

It's the perfect party game -- EVERYBODY knows Pac-Man, so they can learn what's different about this version in fifteen seconds. You trade off the GBA (control of Pac-Man) whenever he gets caught, so everyone gets to play different roles. Extra mazes. If you could keep Mario from providing color commentary, it'd be perfect.

Miyamoto designed it. What was the last bad game he did?