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[Nonek]

 

I can guarantee you that first Mr Hilary would have climbed Earths mountains

He didn't tho, did He? Before Mount Everest, the highest mountain He has climbed was Mount Cook in New Zeland, nowhere near the second highest mountain in the world. By your logic, before attempting to climb Mount Everest, He should have first focused on other mountains which were not scaled to date, and there was quite a few. Because that's logical progression. So why didn't He? Why did He instead make the illogical step of attempting for the highest one? I can pretty much guarantee you 'logic' wasn't part of the equation. Challenge, curiosity, prestige - those most certainly were. In fact, this is an excerpt from interview with the man himself:

We really didn't know whether it was humanly possible to reach the top of Mt. Everest. And even using oxygen as we were, if we did get to the top, we weren't at all sure whether we wouldn't drop dead or something of that nature. All the physiologists had warned us that the altitude at the summit of Everest was a very marginal altitude and might be extremely dangerous. So, one had this feeling in your mind all the time that maybe you were pushing things a bit beyond what humans were meant to do and you couldn't ignore that feeling. But, because of strong motivation, you keep plugging on and you seem to be going okay and nothing seems to be going wrong, so you persist. And we persisted, of course, and ultimately, set foot on the summit.

Source

 

So we're back to my original question, aren't we? What exactly was logical about being the first man to climb highest mountain in the world that isn't logical about attempting to be the first man to do just about anything?

 

As for the more in-narrative reasoning, and this is a bit of a spoiler, Reapers proved to be more than capable of scaling extragalactic distances after the events of the original Mass Effect.

 

Only a blinkered fanboy could excuse such poor plotting and lack of logical progression.

... aaand we're back to ad hominems. Stay classy, Nonek. By the way, I don't really like Mass Effect series all that much.

 

Except Mount Cook was a mountain on Earth, on the same planet and not a planet or more away. Ignoring any of Earths mountains as I originally stated and aiming to climb Olympus Mons without any experience would be more akin to what Bioware is doing. So Mr Hilary followed the laws of logical progression and climbed a higher mountain that hadn't been climbed before, a simple logical progression rather than skipping to another planets mountains without first learning how to climb or even walk.

 

After all we didn't reach the moon until most of Earth was explored and mapped, we didn't begin on a single island and then go straight to Lunar landings, to argue that we did is simply denying reality and basic logic like a blinkered fanboy.

 

Edit: Yes I know that it's not fondness for the Mass Effect series that makes you argue with me.

Edited November 14, 2016 by Nonek

[Zoraptor]

 

 

 

I would have bought pirated it if not for DENUVO.

 

Fixed that for you. Because, you see, Denuvo does **** all if you buy the game. Just internet neckbeards who blame every bug/problem/mental issue on Denuvo without ever backing up why Denuvo would be the root of the problem.

It does go back to the earlier iterations of Denuvo and Lords of the Fallen, it seem that the constant encrypting did ruin some SSD and cause performance problems. They're probably past that now, but considering how buggy AAA releases have been I would say that they're not even worth pirating.

 

 

It does go back to the earlier iterations of Denuvo and Lords of the Fallen, it seem that the constant encrypting did ruin some SSD and cause performance problems. They're probably past that now..

 

They'll never be past the performance problems. Encrypting/ decrypting uses CPU cycles and system resources, no two ways about it. The SecuROM on TWitcher2 was a fully mature product yet if you replaced it with the DRM free GOG executable you got an instant performance increase for free (up to 20%, so not insignificant). OTOH SSD problems were unlikely to be caused by Denovo anyway.

 

And as usual the sheep keep bleating without thinking...

 

Yeah, bleating about Denuvo having no effect on performance. Very low energy effort. To get the obligatories out of the way, never pirated, will probably buy DAI once I have a computer to run it on.

 

Eurogamer articles are rubbish, for purpose used. They do no comparison to a non denuvo version to show no performance hit- they ask a developer using it if there's one, lol, literally; and say there's no obvious degradation like stuttering- don't tell you how denuvo actually works and basically just parrot the denuvo/ denuvo user line wholesale. I wait, with 'bated breath, an explanation of how every other bit of extraneous guff on your computer eating cycles and system resources impacts performance yet denuvo magically avoids what can only be described as reality and runs without any effect at all. Except for its anti tamper effect which springs from the aether, a champion of truth, justice and the DMCA way. I mean seriously, come up with a way even theoretically you can have software checking for tampering without using resources on a computer.

 

Fear not, dear reader, I'm not really waiting with abated breath, as I have no desire to die.

 

The SSD stuff is bollocks. But if you're encrypting and checking stuff you also cannot do it without using RAM and clock cycles, because you simply cannot decrypt or check for tampering using no resources. They're claiming the computing equivalent of perpetual motion.

[Keyrock]

If Mass Effect: Andromeda was in any way related to that sci-fi show from a decade ago starring Kevin Sorbo, I'd actually be interested in it.  Alas, it is not. 

[Bartimaeus]

Yeah, the performance complaints are mostly bollocks, but the issues you see with Linux configurations are just a start of a much larger problem with compatibility on unsupported systems. It's not that much of a problem right now as most active gamers will run supported configurations, but will the next iteration of Windows be supported? And what happens if it isn't?

 

The original Fallout had no anti-tampering protection and I'm still playing it to this day from the original CD thanks to this - people were able to reverse engineer game's executables and ensure compatibility with modern systems. They won't be able to do anything of the sort with DOOM 4 in 2034.

 

It's entirely possible that games using Denuvo will see official support for decades to come, but somehow I doubt it. Best case scenario is that in 5 years or so, the most popular Denuvo games will see re-releases on PC, ideally free of charge for people owning the original games - but we'll probably have to pay again like console folk do for games basically receiving HD treatment. Worst case scenario is that these games just get irreversibly lost, which is a tragedy for any work of art, and completely avoidable in this day and age.

 

Personally, I don't mind Denuvo too much right now, but I'd generally be quite glad if it quite simply got patched out when crucial period of a title's sales ends - like a year or 6 months down the line, while it's still actively supported. That's not going to happen tho.

 

It could even be longer than that, like 2, or even 3 years: just eventually, so we don't have to worry about games going forever quietly into the night a la consoles. I already regret that with playing Bloodborne: my favorite of the Souls games, and now I don't have a PS4, and so I basically won't ever be able to play it again unless I get a PS4 again...until emulators for the PS4 come out in like ten years, I guess.

[mkreku]

Eurogamer articles are rubbish

 

So.. I give sources from people with knowledge about how Denuvo works (actual developers and tech folks), but you dismiss it them by claiming they're rubbish (without offering an explanation why) and instead counter with.. your guesses. "They can't do blah blah because I don't understand how to do it!".

 

Since you're so sure that Denuvo does indeed affect performance negatively (up to -20%, right?), could you link me to your non-rubbish sources?

[Fenixp]

Except Mount Cook was a mountain on Earth, on the same planet and not a planet or more away. Ignoring any of Earths mountains as I originally stated and aiming to climb Olympus Mons without any experience would be more akin to what Bioware is doing. So Mr Hilary followed the laws of logical progression and climbed a higher mountain that hadn't been climbed before, a simple logical progression rather than skipping to another planets mountains without first learning how to climb or even walk.

 

After all we didn't reach the moon until most of Earth was explored and mapped, we didn't begin on a single island and then go straight to Lunar landings, to argue that we did is simply denying reality and basic logic like a blinkered fanboy.

No, He climbed the highest mountain that's never been climbed before. That's a fairly important distinction, because if He just climbed the higher one, your argument would make a lot more sense. Naturally, He couldn't climb Olympus Mons if he wanted, since it was not technically possible. You still didn't answer the question of how was he skipping all the other unscaled mountains logical, by the way. Similarly, while colonizing the Earth, we could have hardly taken off to Moon as we didn't have the technology to do so.

 

Argument can be made that humanity would not develop technology necessary for extragalactic travel unless this was absolutely necessary, but developing technology was also never what Mass Effect dealth with, considering it's been found ahead of natural curve, not developed. One of the primary defining factors of sci-fi is asking "What if?" and what entire Mass Effect is trying to deal with is a (rather tired) trope of "What if humanity found technology it wasn't prepared for?" What if 16th century Britain was given means of relatively easily reaching Moon or Mars? Yes, going for them would be illogical - yet our own history is filled with examples of exploration or expansion that's been fueled by very different motives than logic, like disastrous Terra Nova expedition or Napoleon's ill-conceived invasion of Russia.

 

While you are correct about overal tendencies of human development were those of incremental progress as that's the path of least resistance (and Mass Effect isn't actually refuting this, considering the universe shows humans at large still wanting to colonize more of Milky Way), there are also many examples of highly unorthodox and dangerous ventures, which often ended up in a disaster - and that's what Mass Effect: Andromeda seems to be drawing from. It naturally won't use the principle to its actual potential, which would be turning the game into fairly hardcore survival in harsh conditions, but... I'm not about to buy it anyhow, so hey.

 

Edit: Yes I know that it's not fondness for the Mass Effect series that makes you argue with me.

No. Shockingly enough, I frequent discussion boards because I enjoy discussing things. Also with other people than you.

 

If Mass Effect: Andromeda was in any way related to that sci-fi show from a decade ago starring Kevin Sorbo, I'd actually be interested in it.  Alas, it is not. 

Y'know, I feel like somebody should apologize for this. It would probably be better than another Mass Effect tho.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Fenixp

[Lexx]

Andromeda got pretty good in later seasons, imo. Basically as soon as they started to get away from the old "one story per episode"-thing that was the norm in every tv show back then.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Lexx

[Rosbjerg]

Exploration has always been logical, new lands, new opportunities and a slow steady expansion, this is the rule.

 

What you might've said is that human settlement has always been a slow and steady expansion. Exploration was not - you are right in that it was always searching for new opportunities, or rather to say, fueled by necessity. 

 

From Erik The Red, Zheng He to Columbus .. All of them went looking for new opportunity far away when there were plenty of lands much much closer to home that had not been explored or tapped. Erik went to Greenland at a time when the interior of Scandinavia had not been mapped or even particularly visited, meaning he sailed 100s of miles, when he could've gone a few miles inland for new lands. Columbus sailed across the Atlantic for months on end, when less than a week away there were large swats of land in Africa that had never seen Europeans. In these cases however, economic necessity caused both explorers to seek more profitable rountes and prestigious lands, than the readily available. 

 

Now Mass Effect screws this up a bit by having the expedition being both a colonization and exploration (if I understood correctly?), which seems much riskier than simply running to an uncharted solar system in the Milky Way. But perhaps they found technology that made it easier to jump between galaxies rather than huffing it at near light speed between stars? If so then the jump to Andromeda would actually be the cost-effective route.

[Fenixp]

Now Mass Effect screws this up a bit by having the expedition being both a colonization and exploration (if I understood correctly?)

It also depends on what scale of colonization are they talking - sending in a ship to attempt to colonize entire star systems would make no real sense, but equipping the ship for building a colony once the expedition arrives would.

[Nonek]

 

Except Mount Cook was a mountain on Earth, on the same planet and not a planet or more away. Ignoring any of Earths mountains as I originally stated and aiming to climb Olympus Mons without any experience would be more akin to what Bioware is doing. So Mr Hilary followed the laws of logical progression and climbed a higher mountain that hadn't been climbed before, a simple logical progression rather than skipping to another planets mountains without first learning how to climb or even walk.

 

After all we didn't reach the moon until most of Earth was explored and mapped, we didn't begin on a single island and then go straight to Lunar landings, to argue that we did is simply denying reality and basic logic like a blinkered fanboy.

No, He climbed the highest mountain that's never been climbed before. That's a fairly important distinction, because if He just climbed the higher one, your argument would make a lot more sense. Naturally, He couldn't climb Olympus Mons if he wanted, since it was not technically possible. You still didn't answer the question of how was he skipping all the other unscaled mountains logical, by the way. Similarly, while colonizing the Earth, we could have hardly taken off to Moon as we didn't have the technology to do so.

 

Argument can be made that humanity would not develop technology necessary for extragalactic travel unless this was absolutely necessary, but developing technology was also never what Mass Effect dealth with, considering it's been found ahead of natural curve, not developed. One of the primary defining factors of sci-fi is asking "What if?" and what entire Mass Effect is trying to deal with is a (rather tired) trope of "What if humanity found technology it wasn't prepared for?" What if 16th century Britain was given means of relatively easily reaching Moon or Mars? Yes, going for them would be illogical - yet our own history is filled with examples of exploration or expansion that's been fueled by very different motives than logic, like disastrous Terra Nova expedition or Napoleon's ill-conceived invasion of Russia.

 

While you are correct about overal tendencies of human development were those of incremental progress as that's the path of least resistance (and Mass Effect isn't actually refuting this, considering the universe shows humans at large still wanting to colonize more of Milky Way), there are also many examples of highly unorthodox and dangerous ventures, which often ended up in a disaster - and that's what Mass Effect: Andromeda seems to be drawing from. It naturally won't use the principle to its actual potential, which would be turning the game into fairly hardcore survival in harsh conditions, but... I'm not about to buy it anyhow, so hey.

Sorry but no, Everest was still on Earth and the climbing of it was a logical next step, it bears no relation to skipping a hundred billion worlds to spend millenia (at the least) travelling to the nearest galaxy. One is ambitious the other is moronic. This is obvious.

 

Edit: To use Mr Rosbjerg's examples it would be like these explorers sailing past Greenland/the New World and continuing on until they all died of old age from continuous circumnavigation.

Edited November 15, 2016 by Nonek

[Rosbjerg]

Sorry but no, Everest was still on Earth and the climbing of it was a logical next step, it bears no relation to skipping a hundred billion worlds to spend millenia (at the least) travelling to the nearest galaxy. One is ambitious the other is moronic. This is obvious.

 

Not really, the people of the ME universe have literally traveled from one end of the galaxy to the next. How is it moronic? - having listed how history is full of humans also skip locally unexplored ares to oneup their peers - to go to the next galaxy?

 

Sorry, but your logic is not sound when your argument is that it's not the next step, when there's still more to explore close to home.. If so all the examples listed were also 'moronic' within their own time and reference frames.

[Nonek]

Nah they've explored a miniscule amount of the Milky Way centred around the relay network, ignoring a hundred billion worlds, when they know nothing about them and have never even been there. It's not like the Vikings not venturing further into Lapp/Sami territory, or Columbus not exploring the African kingdoms, it's a complete ignorance of the local area and far distant reaches of the Milky Way, and then deciding that they need to colonise another galaxy. It's moronic.

 

"Land ahoy."

"Keep going, its too near."

Edited November 15, 2016 by Nonek

[Rosbjerg]

It'd argue they have a vastly different sense of scale, but to each his own...

[Zoraptor]

Nah they've explored a miniscule amount of the Milky Way centred around the relay network, ignoring a hundred billion worlds, when they know nothing about them and have never even been there. It's not like the Vikings not venturing further into Lapp/Sami territory, or Columbus not exploring the African kingdoms, it's a complete ignorance of the local area and far distant reaches of the Milky Way, and then deciding that they need to colonise another galaxy. It's moronic.

 

"Land ahoy."

"Keep going, its too near."

 

I know what you mean, but you're taking 'logic' rather too far. Exploration has always been goal based rather than outright logical. Sometimes they're the same thing, sometimes they aren't- if the Americas didn't exist Columbus would be a footnote in history about some idiot who illogically tried sailing across a massive ocean when he could have done the logical thing and explored Africa instead or gone to India by land. By its nature exploration involves many leaps of faith.

 

We also need to consider the competitive aspects of exploration. Individuals and countries were eager to stick their flags in the ground and enrich themselves by getting to new land, and maps were jealously guarded. Nothing quite like going somewhere close, sticking your flag in the ground then coming back to find that there's a bunch of moustachioed conquistadors from El Rey Pedro there and who had claimed the land for Spain years previous. The rough equivalent would be going to Andromeda later and finding that in the meantime a bunch of Turians/ Geth/ Asari/ etc had got their first and were busy nicking all the intergalactic Aztec/ Inca gold equivalent.

 

Perhaps the best historical comparison is to the Portugese. Probably had ~1 million population in the early Age of Exploration, found south america (before Columbus found the north, almost certainly) with more than enough land and exploration opportunities/ exploitable opportunities for a small country. Yet a mere 30 years later they had outposts all around Africa, Goa in India and were routinely toodling around Indonesia as far as Papua New Guinea. From a purely logical perspective that makes little sense for a small country with limited resources even with the lure of spices and the like; and much as with Columbus if circumstances had been different we'd have been laughing at those silly Portugese illogically thinking they could sail around Africa when obviously it was joined to Antarctica.

[HoonDing]

"Nah they've explored a miniscule amount of the Milky Way centred around the relay network, ignoring a hundred billion worlds, when they know nothing about them and have never even been there."

 

Wasn't there something about a ban on activating relays with unknown destinations after the Rachni wars because they might lead to hostile species?

Edited November 15, 2016 by HoonDing

[Nonek]

Captain Ahab's Log, 10,005th year of the expedition to the Andrmeda galaxy: Today we passed the 7,473rd habitable planet that we have detected in this remote area of the Milky Way, perfect for life and abundant with resources, no native sapient species but there was rich flora and fauna. We will of course press on in this colonisation mission and ignore this planet as we have all of the others.

[Orogun01]

Captain Ahab's Log, 10,005th year of the expedition to the Andrmeda galaxy: Today we passed the 7,473rd habitable planet that we have detected in this remote area of the Milky Way, perfect for life and abundant with resources, no native sapient species but there was rich flora and fauna. We will of course press on in this colonisation mission and ignore this planet as we have all of the others.

How far is that going to look for that damned whale?

[Keyrock]

-snip giant Andromeda picture-

 

Y'know, I feel like somebody should apologize for this. It would probably be better than another Mass Effect tho.

 

I can't help it, I have a thing for campy stuff...  and shows with Kevin Sorbo.

 

Also, as Lexx wrote, Andromeda got significantly better after the first season.

[Malcador]

Have they given any reason for trying to explore the next galaxy when in ME they'd only explored 1% of the Milky Way?

Because it's there.

[majestic]

 

-snip giant Andromeda picture-

 

Y'know, I feel like somebody should apologize for this. It would probably be better than another Mass Effect tho.

 

I can't help it, I have a thing for campy stuff...  and shows with Kevin Sorbo.

 

Also, as Lexx wrote, Andromeda got significantly better after the first season.

 

 

So you're saying Andromeda got better after Tribune made Kevin Sorbo executive producer who immediately turned it into Hercules in Space with no creative direction to speak of and a no internal consistency? The end of Season 2 and all of Season 3 were completely episodic and disregarded its own continuity (e.g. Andromeda would go from having a Commonwealth crew to complaining about not having a crew from one episode to the next, serveral times within the season)? With freaking Bob Engels as lead writer?

 

After Keith Hamilton Cobb and Brent Stait left the show? Because Tribune wanted a dumbed down show with more Sorbo and less ensemble?

 

Maybe Season 5 was decent, I don't know, I stopped watching after Season 4 where they turned Hercules Dylan Hunt into a Vedran demi-god or some such just to hammer home the Hercules in Space theme.

[Keyrock]

@majestic - Yes, because the show stopped having a stick up its behind and stopped trying to be intelligent (which it did quite poorly in season 1) and instead went for fun.  I mean, they scrapped what they were trying to do in season 1 because it clearly wasn't working.  Also, I wanted Hercules in Space.  Who doesn't want Hercules in Space?

 

As an aside, is there a movie called Hercules in Space?  If not, why the **** not!?  Somebody make it happen!

Edited November 16, 2016 by Keyrock

[Nonek]

 

Have they given any reason for trying to explore the next galaxy when in ME they'd only explored 1% of the Milky Way?

Because it's there.

 

So's the rest of the universe, if distance is now irrelevant why settle for Andromeda? Send a colonisation mission to the MACS0647-JD galaxy in the UDF.

 

Edit: Yes they could give it a catchy name when they get there.

Edited November 16, 2016 by Nonek

[Malcador]

Well was referencing Mallory's quote more than defending Bioware's choice. Andromeda is the closest one, so makes some degree of sense. Can't blame them for wanting to not be handcuffed by the previous games.

[WDeranged]

Dishonored 2 seems to be getting excellent reviews, I'll be pretty bummed if they don't fix the PC performance issues.

[Fenixp]

Dishonored 2 is truly a spectacular game. I'm still not entirely sure what the hell happened, the PC version clearly saw a lot of love - tons of UI customization, graphical options, FOV slider, borderless window mode...