Sacosphilz

Alright, here goes nothing...

Seriously? Because I've solved it ages ago but since I saw the challenge was already over I didn't post a screenshot. And judging from the number of cries I hear from the late solvers (including one of my own), it seems that a lot of new players have already solved it. It will be hard to find a prize that is small enough to be given in great number yet is interesting enough to please the players (who may or may not compare it to the 'prize' that the old solvers already got) I do want the same prize that the other solvers got, but I understand why it shouldn't be given now.

I don't have any conclusive theories or solutions to offer at the moment, only some differences in perspective. About Balance As I see it, one definition for a 'Balance' is a conceptual scale in a given environment or system where one or more existing 'elements' in that system can grow or diminish in its 'strength' or 'worth' as you put it. Depending on how many elements are involved, that Balance may be one- or multi-dimensional. Note that I use the term 'elements' very loosely, they may or may not be the most basic elements and can include anything like the classic 4 or 5 elements, Light and Darkness, good and evil, saturation of various kinds of energy, different elements of the temperaments, political standpoints, etc. Two similar scales of balance in different environments may not be as easy to bend. For example, making sea water more acidic or more alkaline takes significantly more external influence than what is needed to do the same to pure water. Some balances also contain 'uphill climbs' or 'slippery slopes' which make the bending of the elemental compositions increasingly easy or increasingly difficult in certain directions and in certain sections of the scale. There is no such thing as a universally accepted 'Balanced state'. What we regard as 'balanced' is usually the state of the scale that is relatively comfortable to us. There is no 'rule' that some place in our universe should have the stable temperature of 0 to 40 degree celcius, but this is the right 'balance' that we need to thrive, thus we regard this section of the scale as 'normal' while other sections are considered 'alien' or 'hostile'. When we observe and discuss a certain balance in a system, we always pick a number of 'elements' that exist in that system into consideration. In this case, we are primarily considering Light and Darkness, which can result in either a 1-dimensional scale (lack of Light = Darkness; lack of Darkness = Light), a 2-dimensional scale (Light and Darkness vary on two different scales), or something more complex and intertwining. In any case, since we are excluding other elements from the discussion and since there is no guarantee that the rules and theories of a given scale of Balance would prove true in every situation, this discussion is in risk of fallacy. I'm not trying to undermine your views with this, but I'm just pointing it out and leaving it aside for now. About Life With regard to the Balance between Light and Dark energy, Life indeed requires the balance to stay in a certain section of the scale, but not just one 'perfect' spot on the scale - a person with Light or Dark energy slightly differing from the average can probably live normally. About Good and Evil Like the concepts of Love or Fairness, the concepts of Good and Evil are heavily used and heavily defined, so much that their true definitions become vague and ambiguous. We can bring up valid points and counterpoints all day about what Love is and never reach a perfectly satisfactory conclusion. The same is true for Good and Evil. In my opinion, Good and Evil are concepts created by human society in an attempt to maintain itself, with Good representing preferable qualities and Evil representing unpreferrable qualities. When used by a person to describe himself, a person rarely claims himself to be Evil, but he can claim himself to be Good if he believes that he is acting in the interest of the society. When used by a person to describe others, Good and Evil are strong labels that commend or condemn their past actions and encourage or discourage certain future actions, depending on how different actions affect us and how we appreciate or detest them. This means that Good intentions can also result in Evil deeds as well as Good deeds, as we well know. Regarding the relationship between the Dark energy and the tendency to be Evil, I agree with you that 'Dark' does not necessarily imply 'Evil', but a certain tendency may exist. I do not understand what the Shades of Necrovion want nor am I sure I will ever be able to comprehend them. They are very different from us and there is no cause to believe that they would think the way we do, thus concepts of Good and Evil may not work on them. But if they indeed represent Dark energy like you suggest and if they are causing the increase in Dark energy, then they are a threat, without needing to consider if they're Good or Evil. The current threats against Life and Balance The Shades are a threat to us because our Life and our Balance are not their Goal, and we are not even sure what their goal is. While this xenophobic fear may be justified, we do not know of an effective way to deal with this threat. Out of the options you presented, I also prefer the third option the most. If the Shades do reflect us like they claim, then we can only have peace from them when we also offer them peace. However, I very much doubt the practicality of this method. It would require not just the whole world to turn 'grey', but for every part in it to turn into the same shade of grey with no variation. I am still rather ignorant about the nature of the Shades, and I'm quite sure some others out there know a lot about them that I don't know. Perhaps what I've said here has already contradicted with some facts known to them. I'm sorry if that is the case, but I still want to add to the discussion.

Lol, another Nagisa hat... umm... disapprover. @Glai: I'm sorry if those comments angered you. I did want to see you go つんつん but I didn't want to be too mean. That was a side effect of my playing MD too little and stalking the forums too much. I wasn't too serious about it, and I hope you won't be. For the record (and off the topic): - My native language is not English. - No one in my family or my school has spoken English with me in everyday life outside English classes. - I have never lived or studied abroad. however: - My parents made me take extra English lessons since grade 7 up until high school. - I have been diligent in my use of dictionaries for as long as I can remember, even back when electronic ones weren't widely available. (Having good indexing skill helped a lot with paper dictionaries.) - I tend to play the kinds of games that contain lots of text, and I used those opportunities to look up words I don't know. And I've played lots of games. - I was playing another web-based game for a few years. During that time I had to use English to communicate with a lot of people. I also read the forums a lot, and evolved from mainly reading to occasionally posting some ideas. - My area of study and work is computers. That means I spend a lot of time on the Internet, where the 'official' language is mostly English. Most manuals and help documents available are also in English, so I just have to live with English text. - I'm still learning, and believe it or not, I'm still not proud of my writing skills. (If any of you are struggling to learn a language, be it your first, second or whatever, I'm sure a similar method will work. You can't learn or get better at a language by studying or practicing in a short time. You have to live with it.) Back to the topic, What you described still doesn't make me consider Grasans "cute" , but it reminds me of this: My sister was studying fine arts, and one of her professors/instructors gave this interesting definition of being 'aesthetic'. According to her, if something is able to catch your attention and make you look twice, it is 'aesthetic', no matter if you consider it 'beautiful' or not. A beautiful but unspectacular scenery may not register in your mind at all, but a picture of a grotesque monster may catch your attention as well as a picture of a favorite superstar or a sparkling piece of jewelry. And yes, Grasans' appearances made me look more than twice and more to come, but they're not something I'd choose to hug. No, thanks.

Glaistig, I can't help but notice that you used the word "immaculate" twice in the span of two hours, and you only started using it on MD forums a week ago. In fact, you're the only one using it in these forums. Is that what your homework has taught you? Here's something to help add more variety in your perfect taste. And by the way, what do you see as cute in those creatures? As I consider "cuteness" to be subjective, I take no offense at your claims of your "immaculate" taste, but I'm amused and curious as to how creatures like Grasans can be considered cute. Can you elaborate for us unenlightened souls? Or are mere words insufficient to construe your eminently sophisticated aesthetic senses?

That felt more like a snap than a hint.

Because chances are that if you don't choose the 24 hours option, by the time the chapter of the story ends and you're required to meet certain targets, you'll still be far from that target to continue and will still need days to fulfill it. And even if you can fulfill it and advance to the next MP level faster than most people, your creature will be weaker than others' and you'll still have to wait weeks for them to age anyway.

......says someone who also said that Shades are cute. D=

Hello and welcome to MagicDuel. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask around. I hope you will find this game as fun as we do. Don't worry about bad English. Playing the right kind of games is one great way to learn English, and I believe MagicDuel is one of those games. You can also try to read the forums regularly and learn from other people's writing styles.

@Gchick: I don't have many good reasons for that odd...um... even number of choices. - I wanted the scale to be divisible by 5, stupid reason really. - Unlike many questionnaires out there which directly ask "Are you this kind of person?", my 'questions' are somewhat crooked. I can't explain why I did that either but I wanted the philosophical messages to sound more agreeable than not. You might notice that you picked 3 or above for most of the messages. So if people are going to somewhat agree with most of the messages anyway, why not make the result a bit more diverse by expanding that half of the spectrum? And since each message is crafted to be 'agreed' upon, if you have a 50-50 opinion, a slightly lower than neutral score (2) might reflect it better. Anyway, I have no proof of the reliability of this test. Everything has been arbitrarily decided by me. So if you think it can be improved in some way, please let me know. Thanks for your test result. I see it's quite similar to mine. @Calyx of Isis: I'm not assuming anything. Some background is there in the other thread. I intend to organize things and make everything more clear later, but since I don't have enough time at the moment I just left things as they are now. Sorry for any confusion this has caused. Another reason I don't speak much of MTG is because I don't want to feel like I'm advertising for them. They're doing well enough as it is without one more guy's help.

I think it's a good thing to have this separate 'Say Hello' section like this and without much organization. From my observation, a lot of people will post this kind of topics anyway in any online community. And if they can't find a proper place for it, they'll usually go for 'General Discussions' or 'Off-topic', which technically isn't the wrong places but doing so can mess up those discussion sections. Because 'Hello' threads are usually numerous but light on content, what often happens is that the content of these 'Hello' threads get mostly ignored while other threads with more serious discussions get flushed down by the sheer number of 'Hello' topics. Separating them is better. And because 'Hello' posts are light and casual, if we have a separate forum section for them (and we do), we should just keep them casual. It's good enough that people wants to greet each other. No need to organize them and spoil the mood in the process. (voted 'Leave it as it is')

It's working for me now. Thanks to everyone involved.

I know how, but I'm not telling.

Negative Trade sense skill should explain it. Trade sense doesn't help you buy items while holding less VP, but it helps you to spend less VP to buy items. Example: If you have a trade sense skill at 50 and you want to buy an item costing 10000 VP, you can't buy it when you only have 5000 VP, you still need to hold at least 10000 VP to be able to buy that item. However, when you actually buy it, you will only lose 5000 VP. In your case, negative trade sense works the same way but makes you lose more VP instead. Let's say you had around 2030 VP before buying that armor. The armor costs 2000 VP, so the game allowed you to buy it. However, with your negative trade sense, you ended up losing 2040 VP, sending you into negative VP.

This is an extension of my other thread. I decided to make a new one because the topic to the old thread no longer reflects what's inside there. This thread is about a personality test I made, inspired by MTG's colors' philosophies. I'll edit this later as the place to publish the test and its updated versions, as well as the (yet to be finished >_>) result summaries. For now, please refer to the old thread for more backgrounds, particularly this post, and to post your comments. The test can be downloaded here colortest_v10_2.zip

About the allowed attack interval difference between alliance members and normal players, I only think it's 'fair' in a sense that those alliance members have earned it, but otherwise I don't think it's 'fair' because it gives advantage to the (mostly) already strong people, and also because this advantage doesn't look intentional but seem like a side effect of an easy way to implement it. What I mean is, since this restriction is supposed to prevent alliances from attacking each other too often, it should only apply between people who are in alliances, not between alliance members and anyone else, so I agree with GlorDamar's suggestion that allowed attack intervals should be: - Normal player attacking normal player = 8 minutes (now = 8 minutes) - Alliance member attacking normal player = 8 minutes (now = 8 minutes) - Normal player attacking alliance member = 8 minutes (now = 1 hour) - Alliance member attacking alliance member = 1 hour (now = 1 hour)

Single grasan is a mean ritual even without alliance bonuses. If you don't have the right countermeasure in your ritual, you'll be toast. Alliance bonus actually doesn't help that much either. I hear that the difference in attack intervals is there to prevent players from different alliances attacking each other too often because the loyalty rewards/penalties are quite big or something. It's the way the restriction is implemented that gives alliance members advantage over other players, but it isn't treated like a serious issue. And after all, alliance members are made out of RPCs and players who had to prove themselves worthy of being in there first, so they've earned those advantages.

Good job dst EDIT: I'd rather have the information on remain secret because it touches on the game's inner working and isn't really a 'basic' that new players need to know. (They only need to know what they might get.) But if the admins insist that it's fine, then I have no more objections.

Hmm...... personally I don't think there is a need for trades between VE/VP/AP. I don't agree that it would add anything to 'strategy' either, because the right course of action is so obvious - trade what you don't immediately need for what you want. It would just make our lives easier, but that's not necessarily a good thing. But if such a system is available, then the value that you should never be able to trade for is AP. AP is like time in MD, the most valuable and irreplaceable resource. Give players an avenue to 'buy' time and things can easily get out of whack.

Yes, it is that big, and even if you retake the same test again, your result will likely change, because people are that... unstable. Should I move the insanity ratio further up from 500? Seems like an alarming number of us itch to go there.

That sounds very much like your character. Thanks for taking the test. If you want me to expand on something in particular please let me know.

LOL :lol: MB, you sure didn't disappoint me. By the way, while I expect the majority of MD players (especially those who read this forums) to have some blue in them, I'm waiting for some Red, Green, and White results, just to prove that my test covers all though by definition, the Reds will have a hard time going through those 50 questions, unless they're challenged, which is what I'm getting at right now.

The numbers always sum up to 0, so some of them must be quite off. But thanks for the info anyway. ...or, you could always take the test again.

I've updated the 'messages' according to Lulu's suggestion and also include a plain text file for those who don't have Excel. colortest_v10_2.zip