Henroid

Is anyone here playing the DotA 2 beta for revamping the client from the ground up? I don't know what's included in this feature specifically but Valve is building better in-game tools / resources for spectating DotA 2. I don't know how friendly or useful it is for new or passing fans of the game.

Fallout Shelter news! Not sure how reliable the source is (it sprung up via Twitter for me) but someone managed to hack the game into working on Windows 10 platform smartphones. http://wmpoweruser.com/androids-fallout-shelter-hacked-onto-windows-10-mobile/

Oh I didn't realized that Nick went back to the DotA 2 thing, now I heard what he said. And I can't say I agree. Sports broadcasters don't explain the rules of the sports to people. They don't explain the lingo. They are a measure of how important something is as it is happening through their tone. And in the downtime of action, they can provide analysis of what happened and why, but they're still not required to explain the rules. The only time that comes close to happening is when, for example, a team challenges a ref's ruling on a play in the NFL. In DotA 2, it's pretty easy to tell what's happening as you watch without having to know the terms. "These guys died, these guys lived." There's actually very few terms that are required to understand the general flow of any given match. - "Laning phase," the start of the match when people are getting a critical edge in leveling / ability choices - "Push," which is when a team is going to assault a specific part of the enemy's base. - "Buyback," which is when someone who just died can immediately come back to life at the risk of gold and sitting on the sideline - "Farm," which is when someone is just killing shit to get stronger I'm missing a couple I'm sure but anything else is superfluous, not required to understand anything. You're not required to know what BKB, Raze, Eul's, or any of that means. You can follow the flow just fine. But if you're the kind of person that just has to understand every detail of why something happened, you're gonna have to "learn the rules" of the sport on your own time. The commentators are not there to do it for you, that's not their job. The neat thing about DotA 2 is that it has a built in library you can access and still hear commentary going. Item info, lord info, it's all there. "Why is Laguna Blade important?" you may ask yourself. Open the book on Lina, and you'll see that it's huge damage, huge mana cost, and long cooldown. It's not a thing done lightly. The bottom line is how much of a fan of a sport are you? Because the more you want to be one, the more homework you should do on the sport. If you're not wanting to make that investment, you're actually just not that into it. Which is fine!

E-Sports have some gaps to jump to becoming sport-like. They're mostly there, but the competitor conduct is a huge deal. EG being so muted about winning $6,000,000 was awkward indeed. But the hype around them being an American team I support. Mostly because I don't really have a "home" team to cheer for. Any team that's from North America is my home team, and that's that.

They updated the game with a couple small patches recently and I can't tell whether or not I've gotten better at it or if the patches made major changes. I restarted my file and was just freaking killing it. Lots of successful heists, which means (as long as you don't die) getting the XP bonus. Which builds into something substantial. I was getting 2.6x the money from heists before I finally messed up. It seems like they cut down on the amount of in-escapable situations you can wind up in, as well as how frequently underground/unconnected rooms show up. I'm finally seeing some of the more fun upgrades, my favorite being the scrapyard upgrade. Direct money deposit (which means it's there despite failure) for destroying robots on the map. It adds up.

Monaco: What's Yours is Mine - Discotheque Rouge I'm pretty crazy about that game as it is but the disco club level is one of the best. Most of what you're having to deal with as far as 'security' goes is just the sheer amount of civilians present. I've written in the Idle Thumbs episode for this game before that you don't have to be 100% stealth-person to succeed at the game (and that's actually discouraged), and this level is more or less the best lesson in that. You can just run around being a crazy thief and shoving people around and who cares if people see you? Move around fast enough and you'll be hard to catch!

My source has been Twitter. Sadly, social media is the best way to get news on this sort of thing because major media outlets still don't have the courage to report on police departments acting hatefully or murderously. As easily out of hand rumors and hearsay can get on social media, these days there's at least videos and photos that support activist stories of what's going on.

Unreal Tournament: AS-HiSpeed This was one of the assault maps where one team was defending an objective and another was assaulting. Someone already posted about the (awesome) train level from Outlaws. This too is a train level, only in a multiplayer environment. It was also one of the most direct in letting you know how far the assault team was in succeeding, but still allowed for those surprise drops from people climbing on the roof and entering train cars that way. Oh also you could fall off the train and instantly die. Etrian Odyssey 3: The 5th Stratum So while it's technically all one long dungeon, it's broken up into sections every few floors, and the last one (for story purposes) in part 3 was my favorite out of all the games thus far. Everything about it has a triumphant-return or home-coming feel to it. The aesthetic of the place isn't some crazy, outlandish castle or city or whatever; it's literally back in the original forest, but up higher. Most of the enemies are merely stronger versions of what you encountered at the start of the game. And the music reinforces it all. Plus, they introduce a black-out mechanic on the map that can really mess with you if you don't pay attention; which is to say, when you enter particular rooms, the map marker for where you and all the FOEs (crazy strong enemies) disappear. It's a mean middle-finger, and up 'til the most recent entry in the game it was the hardest exploration trick to overcome. Lethal Enforcers 2: Gunfighters: The Train Robbery What is it about trains? This is a shooter game and something about being on a horse and shooting fools that are on a train is pretty exciting. It was a simple scroll level but this game was pretty much hitting every western staple as far as settings go for gun fights. Only, obviously, way more guns and people involved and bullets flying. Super Metroid: Brinstar This isn't about the aesthetics of the area, but it's more or less the hub that links you between every area in the game (for the most part). On top of that, for speed running, it's one of the most critical places for getting things early or via bizarre trickery. A lot of the best time saving tricks happen here.

I don't pay a terrible amount of attention to the NFL during the off season but this bit of news couldn't be passed up. The New York Jets are getting a raw deal as the season is gearing up to start. In the locker room one of their quarterbacks, Geno Smith, got into a fight with one of their secondary (or tertiary?) linebackers. It wasn't football related, it wasn't violent, but it turned that way when the linebacker decided to suckerpunch Smith. He ended up breaking Smith's jaw, and the injury puts him out for 6 to 10 weeks. The linebacker was IMMEDIATELY cut loose from the team. Guy just pissed away his career, potentially, because nobody wants a player that's going to actually injure their own teammates and put the season at risk. He was only going into his second year in the league I think too. Just a note: The NFL being harsh on this situation compared to cases of rape accusation (or proved cases thereof), spouse abuse, etc is not lost on me.

Last night the Ferguson PD abandoned the protest group, and immediately after, a group calling themselves the "Oath Keepers" took their place. Who are the Oath Keepers? Old white guys that used to serve in the armed forces, who felt they should carry their weapons in front of the crowd and tell them what to do. Terrorism alive in America.

I was going to continue on that discussion but it's probably best served by a separate thread elsewhere.

As a listener and fan of Howard Stern I am just sitting here with my "so what?" face. Being samey bland to be safe and 'professional' doesn't make anyone distinguished from one another. If a guy chooses to have part of his professional persona be, "Gosh I love boobs," I could really give a fuck. In a way it's almost more honest. There's too much of a stigma about people enjoying sexual things these days. Which is a separate topic but still.

That's not anywhere near enough context to understand why / how it was weird/gross. If a thread went off on a tangent then whatever.

Men, women, transmen, transmen, genderfluid peoples, gay, straight, pan, poly, etc etc etc etc etc like porn of video game characters sometimes. I think this is one of the lamest things to hold against someone.

A year later, nothing has changed. Riot gear. Tanks. The whole thing. As the interim police chief - a black man by the way that the local government decided to use as a token as if it'd make everything okay - was giving an interview about why the cops were out in a show of force and that they were exhibiting patience, he is interrupted by the police opening fire. On who and why and where, who the hell knows. But the crowd freaked out, as they should, and went running. The cops are claiming they were fired on. Over their Twitter feed they made no mention of a suspect, instead choosing to post pictures of a couple cars that got his by bullets. There's a lot of video right now of the guy as he lays there bleeding out and the cops aren't even calling for EMS. There's no verification of the cops' claims of being fired on, and for the amount of gunfire that happened from the cops it doesn't seem like it was all about the one guy. They were likely trying to make a scene. And on that note, they have officers deployed with video cameras, likely an effort for propaganda creation. Going to bed in tears tonight because our country sucks ass and just sits down letting this happen.

Reading the plot / setting of The Swindle (totally bought it, played it a tiny bit, already enjoy it), it sounds like steampunk thieves are trying to conserve their lifestyle and era from being taken over by cyberpunk robots. Edit - "Jake is becoming a screaming angry bird." My head: "Screaming angry Big Bird, Chris. Come on."

One thing I really appreciated about this year was seeing how much emphasis they put on who gets killed and how often. Compared to last year, the total death counts in each match were so goddamn low. There were more than one occasion where full team fights would break out, and then everyone escapes alive. Meanwhile, there were ganks on supports that weren't entirely meaningful, but then ganks on farming late-game carries that made a big impact. When I read all those changes I was only thinking about how it would change the play, but I never imagined what it would do for spectating. Seeing Dazzle die for the 5th time wasn't exciting this year. But seeing a late-game carry narrowly escape a gank? So. Much. Hype. They really know what they're doing with the meta game as developers and I just approve of it up and down the board. Last year DotA 2 was just death match. This year it became much more.

I didn't even hear it when the match was live, I was too busy freaking out in excitement on my end.

Video games are new to sports events and how to close them out gracefully, give it time.

That play, which I shall not describe / spoil, was so textbook. It was clean, and just... terribly efficient. I couldn't believe it when I saw it.

Today's matches were far more amazing than last year's, but a long shot. I'm so glad I stayed tuned to everything like I did. My predictions were so out of whack but I'm still learning how the DotA 2 pro circuit works.

Okay everyone I need your ears. Just now I was rolling through some WoW content, and when I returned to town the music I was hearing had me going, "I've know this song." Then it hit me. The song from WoW: The song it totally is, maybe not note-for-note, but still:

EG drafting Techies in match 2 last night made a world of difference. That was incredible how much it changed the game, and his mines didn't even catch a lot of people off guard. But the thought of being blown up was too much.

Holy shit the look on his face, that makes me want to cry. I never get to see the player reactions during this stuff.

Oh my god, you guys. The draft for C9 vs. VG round 2 is amazing. The match is only just now starting but it's a total wtf.