RedStarRocket91

Put simply, boosting intent for these kinds of posts will be if they're something alone the lines of 'I'm making this topic specifically to boost likes, and I'll give likes to everyone who posts here if they like my post as well', or 'Hey, I'm bored, so I made this topic just so you can give me likes'. There really is no hidden agenda here and we're certainly not going to start second-guessing people's intentions. We're talking open, overt and deliberate attempts to gain reputation without putting any effort into actually creating something worth liking. If you post something that's good, and interesting, and people appreciate it enough to give you a like? We'll notice once it starts attracting attention - we do read everything, after all - but so long as it actually contributes something to the forums, then we don't care why you've done it, because even if you've only created it to gain reputation it's still adding value to the site. Shakespeare wrote for money, not art, after all!

As part of the Spring Update, we opened a member suggestion thread to see what sort of things we could do to make your experience on the site better. Two of the most popular requests were finding ways to encourage people to make greater use of the 'Like' system, and improving our member promotion system, which previously only took a member's posts into account. While the update is an ongoing process, I'm very pleased to announce that as of today, you'll be able to receive promotions to higher members group based on your reputation! From this point forward you'll be able to progress through the higher member groups simply by reaching the appropriate number of 'Likes', the values of which are listed at the bottom of this post. And yes, you can still attain higher ranks through post count alone, with the number of posts required for each promotion remaining unchanged. On a more somber note, however, we need to make clear that while attempting to 'boost' reputation has always been frowned upon, from this point on doing so will be met with disciplinary action. Any form of basic boosting, including but not limited to openly requesting 'likes', offering to trade likes for likes, or deliberately starting threads which encourage all participants to 'like' all other posts, will be punished according to the scale below: the use of multiple accounts, while already prohibited, to boost likes will be met with far more severe repercussions. For this reason, moving from New Members to Members is still going to be based on post count alone, and New Members will no longer be able to submit 'Likes'. In short: be friendly, be social, and be generous, but don't be an idiot. If you are in any way unsure as to whether something constitutes boosting, feel free to contact a member of the moderating team and we'll be happy to let you know: after all, we want you to make use of the new system, not be afraid of it! Begging for likes (1st offence) - one warning point, removal of reputation up to current member group boundary. Begging for likes (2nd offence) - one warning point, removal of reputation up to previous member group boundary and demotion if post count not met. Begging for likes (3rd offence) - one warning point, total removal of reputation and reset to Member usergroup. Multi-accounting to boost - one warning point for each boosted like up to a maximum of 5, total removal of reputation and reset to Member usergroup. On a much more cheerful note, however, we come to our last change. For as long as members have been achieving the rank of Dedicated, they have been asking for a higher usergroup to aim for. I'm therefore incredibly excited to announce that we're opening up our Legendary Members usergroup to everyone! As a particularly special group, we want our Legends to represent the pinnacle of achievement and standing within the community: therefore, you won't be able to gain promotion simply by posting, but will instead need to accumulate a suitably epic reputation level. The reputation values for promotion to each member group are listed below. Good luck, and happy posting! Trusted Member: 100 Reputation Dedicated Member: 250 Reputation Legendary Member: 2000 Reputation

What would happen if the speed of light were infinite?

Eh, why not. I use a shuffled gallery background rather than just one image, and I've linked the images here, if anyone cares - and yes, they're all in delicious 1080.

Honestly, who's in charge of hiring these days? It feels like we're just letting anyone in Welcome back, Mayh3m!

Staff Response No.

One of today's best deals is undoubtedly the XCom: Enemy Unknown Complete Pack, which is currently on sale at a whopping 80% off for just £5 (or your regional equivalent). This pack includes the Enemy Within DLC which adds a massive amount of content to the game, as well as a set of bonus missions and customisation items. Even if you're not normally a fan of turn-based combat, for such a low price I'd thoroughly recommend trying it out!

Mostly, it's a population problem. While the game tries its best to match people of a similar skill rating, it only has a fairly small pool of players to work with at any given time, and of course it has to strike a balance between getting you into an even match, and getting you into a match quickly. When you consider the fairly low number of people playing the MCC to begin with, the different regions and nations they're playing in, the variable compatibilities of their internet connections, and the fact that each playlist tracks skill individually, it's very possible that while you search, there are only nine or ten players of your rank who you could actually be matched up with on a decent connection - and of course, half of those are probably already in a game anyway. The best thing you can really do is try and get into a customs lobby with people of a roughly equal skill level. If this is something you'd like to try, why not have a look at our Game Invitations forum, and see who else is hosting a lobby, or start one of your own?

Staff Response Just as a reminder - while we permit (and frankly, encourage) candidates to mock and insult one another as much as they like, all such abuse should be kept light-hearted and funny. Therefore, please remain civil and friendly when discussing, endorsing or opposing candidacies, and avoid contentious or aggressive behaviour and statements. Posting this kind of material may result in a removal request from a moderator, and thereafter additional warning points and bans. In short - keep it dirty, but not too dirty. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have an election to fix.

It has nothing to do with skill, and everything to do with the fact that their head hitboxes are often completely obstructed by their shoulders and bodies from behind. Unless your bullets gain the power to pass through targets once you hit a certain rank, headshotting an Elite from certain angles, particularly if they're looking at the ground, is literally impossible.

Why isn't my name on the list? D:

...what on earth is this heresy?

To get a cup of tea, I'll be back in about half an hour.

It means gifs, the fourth dimension is time. So - anyone know how to make a decent gif?

Shoutbanned for literally no reason whatsoever. Literally. On both counts.

To be honest, I actually think this is a fairly minor symptom of a much bigger issue. In fact, taken on its own merits, I actually quite like the idea, and it's the wider implications of this, rather than the principle behind it, that I take issue with. While we're certainly going to be seeing a lot of mods going premium-only in the near future, I honestly expect that a majority of mods are going to remain free. Now, back in the days of Reach, I was something of a forger. I was never particularly good, but that didn't stop me from building maps anyway, and even though there were tens - perhaps hundreds - of thousands of fantastic maps and gametypes being produced by the community, I still enjoyed Forging simply because I wanted other people to play them. There's something very affirming about the idea that other people are enjoying something you've created, and while it no doubt sounds vain, I loved the idea that sometime, somewhere, someone would start up a game with the words 'hey, this map is by RSR, he's a great forger', or whatever. The fact that you've never heard of anything I've made, or that I was ever even a Forger at all, tells you everything about how well that worked out, but oh well. Anyway, the point is: while it would have been nice if the people who'd downloaded and played my maps had offered me some sort of payment for them, be it a few cents or a few dollars, what was far more important to me was that people would play my maps at all, that I'd get all the recognition and satisfaction that comes with other people appreciating my work. This is basically a very long way of saying, while a lot of modders no doubt will jump at the chance to get paid for their work, I genuinely expect most of them will keep theirs free simply because it increases the chances of other people actually downloading and playing with them, and that's more important than money for a lot of creators. And even if that's not the case - I still don't really see the issue. If someone wants to invest their time, effort, and creative energies into producing something for the purpose of making money, how is that different from any other creative endeavour like writing a book, recording music - or even making a videogame? We're happy to pay for all of these things, so why not for a mod? As ever, it's a case of supply and demand, and the consumer is of course free to not purchase mods if they object to the pricing - and unlike things like day-one DLC or paywall-locked content, you're not actually losing anything from the game itself if you choose not to, but instead you're just not getting bonus stuff. Think of it like going to the cinema: while it might have made the experience better, you're not actually going to miss any of the film itself if you don't buy popcorn because it costs extra rather than coming free with the ticket. More importantly - who are we to dictate what someone is and isn't allowed to do with their own content? if someone feels that they've created something worth paying for and tries to sell it, then either the consumers will agree, in which case they buy it, or they don't, in which case they don't. There is absolutely nothing wrong with creating art for the sake of making money - provided that the consumer feels that the product was worth how much they paid for it (be it $60 or nothing at all), should we really care about why it was made? No, the real issue here is the shocking percentage of what actually goes to the modder. 25% is an appallingly low number, and frankly, I don't understand why it's so little. I'm not sure where the other 75% is going to go - between Bethesda and Valve, maybe? - but this alone is enough to put me off purchasing mods via Steam. I don't have any objection to paying for my mods - in fact, I'm even happy to pay a little extra to Valve for use of their servers and bandwidth - but I'm not willing for so little to actually go to the persons responsible for creating my content. At the very least, the figure should be 35%, which is in my mind acceptable as it allows for Valve's traditional 30% fee, and the remainder then being halved between Bethesda and the modder: this is still lower than I'd like, but it would at least seem reasonable. The real worry here is that Valve is getting greedy - and given that they're essentially the premier PC game distribution platform these days anyway, there's a real concern that in cornering the market on mods as well, they're going to establish a monopoly, which is never a good thing for the consumer.