n0b

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Everything posted by n0b

  1. BioShock Infinite

    I think the focus of that kind of energy should be on the lack of good female characters in games. Women in every visual medium have been hypersexualized as long as visual mediums have existed. I'm not saying this is a good thing, but its something that everyone has to acknowledge. But many of those mediums have developed strong, interesting, and complex female characters despite this. If you have a less sexualized woman that serves no significant purpose in the plot, has no agency, and has no developed character, she is still just an object. A less aesthetically pleasing one to the masses, but still just an object. Write a pretty woman well and the character has the ability to challenge their objectification. All that leads to is a system like the pre-mpaa Hays Code era of film. There is self censorship on the grounds of "decency" but for the most part you get no less objectification of women, its just expressed in a different way; the soft focus, the sexualization of different aspects of the female form, and the lack of agency that female characters have in that era of filmmaking. (Now of course, an even larger issue is for the most part in gaming there aren't ANY good characters or writing. Lack of good female characters is just one aspect of this lack of focus or ability in writing in games.) As a side note for this specific example, the type of captivity that is suggested for Elizabeth (not in jail, kept by guards in fancy place instead of by restraints in a dungeon) suggests some kind of trophy for somebody in power, and generally those types of captives are kept pretty by whoever is in control. One does not generally have much of a choice in their appearance when they are in captivity.
  2. to Sean: I have to agree with Twig here; I have yet to see a lord that isn't good in diretide. (And I've seen every character in the game played at least once in diretide.) I'm curious as to which characters you were playing, because some definitely require a different mindset, but the way Dota is balanced in general is that some characters need gold to get strong, some need just levels, and that balance is how roles like carry and support are determined. In diretide since everybody gets the same amount of gold and levels for the most part (theres very little difference) everybody gets the gold and levels they need to go at their full potential. Also, its been almost a year now and you still don't know that the location where the candy bucket is located is the ancients spawn for each team.
  3. Nice! I was trying to think of books that I would want to see outside of my main sci-fi genre; If on a winter's night a traveler was my first choice. I would love to see some Philip K Dick though, like Ubik (because it is a classic) or Dr Bloodmoney (because not enough newer PKD readers know it)
  4. Plug your shit

    Being scummy and notifying anybody who is one of those people that don't listen to a podcast if its not on itunes: its on itunes! http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-monopod/id569034524
  5. I agree with pretty much all of the greenlight stuff, except for the example of Amnesia. Amnesia existed in the public mind as basically a spoiler-ific gameplay clip on a website for almost 7 months, and most of its hype was built off of that alone, rather than Frictional's reputation from the Penumbra games. If instead of "pre-order it here on our website" it was upvote us on greenlight I think it would have gotten enough attention to get through the submission process. A lot of times I think people are overestimating what they lose if they show off a more detailed segment of an in progress game, and sometimes underestimating what they can gain if they go "ok, we're going to spoil you a bit here, but this shit is cool right?" Besides Amnesia, Limbo comes to mind, as well as Fez to a lesser extent; all premiered with some spoilerish gameplay and then just sat there building hype forever.
  6. I discus with twig and draw a quick mspaint of the whatmaybe. Each of the different types of structures there is meant to be added all around the thing on all sides, little houses in the walls continue all the way around except for at arms to the central building, which have the nicer wall buildings and kind of extended surface things. There are two sizes of floating structure rooms, stuff inside the main shaft, and paths and stairs going up and out between different arms and floating buildings and wider points midway through some arms. Twig should yell at me now and tell me this is wrong.
  7. Twig and I had a plan at the beginning and then realized oh god twig made it too giant.
  8. DOTA 2

    Prophet is pretty much like the best yo.
  9. DOTA 2

    Well the thing about the balance in dota is that since there is no "AP," there is no scaling to the spells, which means that your abilities are much stronger early game and you don't need any items to make them better. If the AP casters in LoL don't keep up their farm at the same rate as the AD characters, they won't have enough burst damage to do what they need to do to win fights. There are many characters that can function perfectly well off of just a few early game items all the way into the mid-late game. On a side note, as twig mentioned, we have introduced newer players to the game, so if people don't want to jump in on their own I'd be fine with giving some pointers. Either ingame or out of the game.
  10. DOTA 2

    Gwardinen, I have two main problems with your argument; 1. Carries are the same basic concept in LOL and Dota. It doesn't mean a character that can 1v5 a team, the carries are just the people who have priority on the gold because they get more powerful with more gold instead of just with more levels. Its actually interesting because though gold may be spread out a bit more evenly in league of legends, the structure of where to send the carries and how to structure the lanes is much more rigid. It is almost always AP carry mid/AD carry bottom with a babysitter/Tanky lane sustainer top/Jungler as the main ganker. In Dota you can have somebody in any role and in any lane with carry potential, you can have hard carries that sit in the safe lane and just farm up the whole game, you can have gankers that go mid and carry by shutting down the other team, you can have a carry be the jungler, you can have carries that just sit in the dangerous lane and start to build up after your other lanes start pushing in. I honestly saw far more "Carries" as you described them (characters that can solo an entire team) in LoL and far more consistently. Any game with a good Anivia, Annie, Brand, Karthus, Caitlyn, Nasus, Ryze, and tons more tbh would have that kind of stuff happening. In Dota, outside of complete and utter stomps, the only time somebody can ever carry that hard is when you have a Spectre that has complete freefarm and their team manages to hold their own otherwise, because when you fight a farmed spectre your team effectively kills themselves in order to get that kill. 2. The efficiency argument. LoL is ALL about efficiency. Since every character can easily just spam spells to get all their gold, and you never lose gold, 90% of characters just build up to the same items because they are the most efficient and tested ways to build up either ad or ap characters. You never compromise and build mid-tier items, you never save up for something thats so big that you are vulnerable while you are trying to make it, and you never rush a weaker item in order to have an early game advantage. In Dota I can't say there are more than two items that are regularly seen on any significant grouping or character type. Branches and Boots, and they are both starting items. Otherwise depending on your role, lane position, opponents, you can come up with so many different viable item builds that all allow you to play in a different way.
  11. DOTA 2

    Both Twig and I came from a year or so of playing LoL as our main game, hundreds of hours, etc. DOTA is just so much more rewarding, and its worth giving it a chance.
  12. DOTA 2

    (my steam avatar) was a pixel art version of my old avatar that I made for a a minecraft skin, and subsequently started using for steam because it fit the square avatar format better.
  13. DOTA 2

    I am the man wot showed up. I finally got around to joining the forums now since I donated to the kickstarter of dreams coming true. Silly skype users.