QUOTE (Aaron @ Aug 5 2008, 06:37 AM)
... the fact that they gelled into a coherent system for me would suggest that I'm not the only one for whom that could happen.
Actually, it suggests nothing of the kind. Your ability to see it as a coherent system is just as anecdotal as my inability. Both could be outliers beyond the norm.
That is itself one of the fallacies you comment on in your sig (parargraph above the Venn diagram).
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QUOTE (kigmatzomat)
1) they are the only rules not to use stat+skill.
This isn't entirely the case. I leave finding other counter-examples to the reader.
I'll note you snipped out the rest of that comment.
QUOTE (kigmatzomat)
While drone rules also suffer the same problem, rigging is now a subset of the matrix.
Unless you provide some other non-matrix example, you're doing little more than begging the question, yet another fallacy.
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I also believe (again, wasn't on the inside, and nobody's told me) that the rules were set in this way so that anybody could be a hacker. Really. I believe that this was done to mitigate the problem of the decker not being useful anywhere except the Matrix.
I believe this as well, however I know hackers. White hats at Fortune 100 companies enforcing HIPAA, as well as others who work at data hosting/colocation facilities. Several of them are actually at Black Hat right now. To be a decent hacker requires as much effort and dedication as being a sam. While sams need to exercise/practice, hackers need to study so roughly equal in time and effort.
So by that mechanic, a cash-rich goober should be able to buy his way to sammie-dom for equal price. It's hard to make a decker as good as a sammie with cyber for the same cash you can make a sammie as good as a decker.
But that's not analogous since the the agent-hacker doesn't have any personal risk. We should be comparing drones and agents as both are autonomous AI that a rich guy can use as a surrogate.
Drones, thanks to artificial limit of autosofts to rating 4 and no clear ability to improve the Sensor attribute (core to Gunnery tests), have a lower ceiling than agents. Plus, drones require expendable assets (ammo) and are subject to permanent damage.
Unless Unwired either improves drones or degrades agents, the intention (anyone can be a hacker) has not been implemented in a fair and equitable fashion.
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I was going to continue addressing your points, but it occurred to me that they have been addressed in other posts,
I'll accept links to posts address comments 2 (skills with little/no purpose), 3 (rules with no obvious use), and 4 (signal range illogic). Or FAQs. Or Errratas. Even dev chats logs. Otherwise you're merely implying an answer exists, which is, yet again, a fallacy.
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and that your post, while well-written and containing salient points, didn't actually address the content of the post quoted.
And I was responding to the implication of your comment that only "operator error" could be responsible for people's disaffection of the matrix rules.