Gormongous

I think that might be it for most people, at least for me on reflection. It's not a gaming podcast having advertisements for a specific game, it's a gaming podcast having advertisements for a specific product/service/system that the podcast's hosts have no firsthand experience with. I know it's happened before, maybe with Loot Crate, but it does stand out a little more here as troublesome if it becomes a trend.

It's actually rather funny, because I have several friends with enough gaming literacy to recognize the name and enough tech literacy to know that it's coming to Windows Phone, and they're all hugely confused and underwhelmed that Microsoft's Siri-alike is some Halo character. It seems tacky to them, right?

Microsoft announces now that you too can have your own hand-held stripper!

Hah! Yeah, PVP in the first Dark Souls is all about circling for backstabs and PVP in Dark Souls 2 appears to be about rolling into a power-stanced combo. I love playing both games around this actor friend of mine who's taken plenty of stage combat classes because all the rolling drives him nuts. In medieval combat, the advantage is entirely to the person who's upright with their weapon raised, so the idea of rolling around to avoid attacks is anathema. Of course, once I got him into the game last month, he's been rolling with the best of them, so that speaks to the charm of the combat anyway.

I agree and think that the existence of this thread, coupled with the enthusiasm of its contributors at the presence of female voices, is the strongest force for the diversification of this forum. As much as I'd love to beat the streets recruiting for Idle Thumbs, it's better for these things to happen organically by just making this forum the safest space on the internet.

It's interesting, I used to play online multiplayer games a fair amount when I was in high school and college, but over the past decade or so I've increasingly begun to avoid any experience that's subject to the expectations and whims of another. Even with Dark Souls, which has only a few pleasantly limited options for interaction, I stopped summoning friendly players after a couple forged ahead and killed the area boss more or less without me. It's only been Dark Souls 2, where player summons are an important way to get back humanity, that has seen me using multiplayer a lot lately, because all people can do is wave and shrug and bow in between helping each other with a game that's hard on everybody. There are still trolls who strip all their armor off upon being summoned or refuse to follow you into the boss room, but I think the low spectrum for expression means that the entertainment value of trolling is limited enough that most people don't bother.

There was a period in the early 2000s, while I was living in Dallas, when several sheriffs gave endorsements to various mayoral candidates, saying that they knew them best and that they'd be easiest to work with. I found that a little distasteful, because a couple of the candidates had no notable political experience and it was obviously a partisan rather than practical endorsement, but nothing compares to a sheriff endorsing a gubernatorial candidate. It has as much relevance as an endorsement from the assistant comptroller of civic waterworks, northeast district.

So I was going to post my thoughts on Dark Souls 2, having beat NG on Wednesday, but then there was a sale on GMG for the DLC season pass, so I'm playing that instead and discovering that my build, which breezed through the post-King's Ring bosses like nothing, is getting taken apart by large amounts of ranged enemies with high poise and magic resist. I also lost my first six-digit lump of souls somewhere in the Dragon Sanctum, which I was stupidly saving up to 181,000 in order to buy off the sin I got from all the optional bosses. I literally had to go have a sit-down afterward. Jester Thomas, honorary fourth boss of the Sunken King. EDIT: Apparently, if you charge him and attack before he can cast Iron Flesh, he becomes just a normal invader and not a 300,000 HP god. FYI.

This is an exceptionally bad analogy. Not only are you comparing Dota 2, a constantly evolving video game with a ten-year history, to an ancient and timeless work of art, but you're implying that people who'd prefer the option to surrender in Dota 2 are as common or as welcome as giraffes in the Sistine Chapel, which I assume is to say not at all, and that any effort at all to accommodate them is tantamount to destroying the entire game for everyone forever. See, this is why I pretty much agree with various people here that there's no point having this conversation. I feel like pro-GG people are willing to be flexible in what they want from a surrender option, in order to accommodate the concerns of anti-GG people, but every anti-GG person seems to hold the same hyperbolic opinion that any surrender option at all will irreparably destroy the game in a way that the trolling allowed by the current system somehow doesn't, when this same game had an unofficial surrender option for years and still has an official option for professional play. I can do my best to articulate my own reasons for being pro-GG and to acknowledge points for and against, as well as to pull back when I realize I'm taking too extreme of a position like Forbin pointed out, but then someone rolls in and say something as unbelievably vapid and unhelpful as "giraffes in the Sistine Chapel," like there's no need for a dialogue at all. Whatever, enjoy your "perfect" game, everyone.

Oh, I agree! I don't think any pro-GG party is arguing for a unilateral surrender option from the moment the game starts. It should be unanimous and have a minimum time threshold that everybody agrees on beforehand. After all, the main thing I'd like to prevent is games going on longer than they have to because of antisocial player behavior on the winning side. It's funny that the option only exists in professional Dota 2, where such behavior is the least likely to occur.

The tack you take with my first point is a matter of opinion. I'm just challenging the apparent "consensus" that a surrender option leads to everyone abandoning perfectly enjoyable games. I've heard opinions both ways, just like I hear opinions both ways that the lack of a surrender option allows for unpleasant player behavior like fountain-camping to become ubiquitous. If, when you give everyone the option to surrender a game, everyone is surrendering games all the time, that sounds like a problem with the game itself, not the surrender option. If a Dota 2 game is enjoyable the entire way through, especially considering the "comeback" feeling that everyone always raves about, then there shouldn't be any surrenders except for truly lost causes. I would be interested in hearing why people think that isn't the case and how Valve could design around the problem. My entire "game is meant to be played with preset teams" bit comes from Reyturner's argument two pages ago that the "solution" to getting stuck with annoying randos is to play in a team, which is what the game should be designed for anyway. Basically, what I'm learning is that there's no consensus on whether the random or team game is the "true" heart of Dota 2, which makes design arguments about it a bit more tenuous than I expected. The LoMa model became huge as a custom game on Warcraft 3. Somehow I feel like it's not an insuperable engineering problem for Valve to make the same work, except they get no benefit from people playing Dota 2 any way except the way Valve wants them to play. They're invested in funneling people into a hyper-competitive "ranked" mode that a lot of potential players, myself included, find really unpalatable. I strongly suspect that this reason, and not anything that's been said about the spirit of the game, is the reason why there's no surrender option.

I actually have had the biggest problem teaching Space Alert, which has been praised for its rules, because they're written as introductory scenario that gradually ramps up into the full game. Even though they're very funny and readable, the fact that I have to spend two hours talking almost constantly blows out my voice along with my motivation.

Yeah! That's a good point, Tater. Perfecting the skill of rolling starts and dummy rounds is essential to being a good gaming host.

It's an interesting position, although I don't think Thurston understands what a Gordian knot is. It's a needlessly complex problem that is easily solved by lateral thinking, or alternately the ability of the powerful to declare themselves the winner even if they break the rules. Either way, it's a tortured metaphor that doesn't really enhance the argument of the article.

If I'm hired as a contractor for a job because I am an internet celebrity with a large following, I would expect that any bullying and harassment committed by me or my following would reflect on my celebrity and therefore my employer's reasons for keeping me employed. My pleasure!

Switching from sociopathic man-children, but not really, I just found out about Manfeels Park, which illustrates MRA screeds as delivered by Mr. Darcy. Most of them are more "true" than "funny," but that's okay, because some of them are both:

Eh, the point of my comparison was really just that games likw AC:U tend to get shit for the design assumption that people using their multiplayer component will have a large and ready pool of friends, but somehow not Dota 2 because it's only a multiplayer component and also a "sport," which seems increasingly to be a catch-all for explaining why bad design is really okay. There's no need to pursue it beyond that observation. I'm really just confused by people's arguments about how LoMas are "meant" to be played. If we're talking purism, they're meant to be played in Warcraft 3's crappy "custom game" interface, and good luck getting two teams of five into one of those intact!

... Except for the implicit assumption that most people will be playing multiplayer with their friends and that the game should be tuned for that. Did you read my post? Okay, several things and then I'm done: You have no evidence that players will do a surrender vote the moment the tide turns. It's purely your assumption, which says more about you than any other player. Anecdotal accounts from other people on this forum who play other LoMa games with surrender options say that player behavior is not noticeably different with or without it. People say fuck it all the time already. It's not like the absence of a surrender option turns a dude who says it's over after five minutes and goes creeping in some deserted corner into a hard-fighting hard-winning player. If Valve is hoping to motivate their players to become better by trapping them in losing games with no hope of recovery, then they've failed and no surprise, because it's bad design. Multiple people have said that the game's meant to be played with preset teams, so maybe the solution to playing with unmotivated players is to play with your friends instead and meanwhile let me have the option to get out of a truly terrible game every once in a while. And really, why should I have to keep playing a game that I think is over and that I'm not enjoying anymore, just for someone else's rocks and the vague philosophy that giving me the choice is a slippery slope? You guys know it's a game, right? Other "serious" games like Counter-Strike let me quit when I'm tired of losing with my team of pub assholes, why shouldn't Dota 2, so long as appropriate measures are taken to keep it from becoming a tool for trolls.

I haaate Dixit just like I hate Cosmic Encounter. Both genius designs, both games I always lose by an implausibly large amount. I used to have a friend who'd bring it and I'd just volunteer to moderate because I've played at least a dozen games and been in last place every time. Good for my humility, but I'm not going to own a copy. There was a Cosmic Encounter game where I didn't get a single colony. I don't even remember how it happened.

Honestly, the easiest way any game can convince me that it's not worth investing my time in multiplayer is for it to be designed entirely around the assumption that I'll always have a stable of friends ready to play with me at all times. I don't see how having a professional scene and declaring itself a "sport" exempts Dota 2 from the shit I give Assassin's Creed: Unity for making the same assumption. If preset teams don't need a surrender option, that's fine. Just make it available to all-random games. To use the sports analogy, if I'm playing a pick-up game of touch football in the park with some strangers and we're getting destroyed, there would be zero issue with my whole team getting together, deciding to forfeit, and the other team taking the win. It certainly wouldn't make us less desirable to play with the next time a game happened. My university's intramural kickball league also has a mandatory "surrender" scenario if a team maintains a ten-run lead for a whole inning. These are natural concessions to the logistics of playing any sport in a widespread and casual fashion, rather than everyone pretending they're in the running for the World Cup or the World Series. Then again, I know of no one who enjoys just dismantling the other team past the point of good taste in real-life sports. Such a person would be a psycho, but on the internet, some people are just dying to feel the power...

Decollum or just collum. "De-necked" and eventually just "necked."

I feel like the attraction of Deadpool to many comic fans is that he reflects how they'd act (or how they think they'd act) if they were in a comic themselves, complete with their own rule-breaking knowledge of how comics work. It's almost like idealized self-insertion played for laughs.

Okay, having listened to the whole thing now, I really agree with Chris that having a number on a review is sometimes important. This is a reversal of my usual position, but hearing Sean say that his gut reaction to a two-star review out of five (which Tom tells us just means "I didn't like it," in a spectrum of "I hated it," "I liked it," I really liked it," and "I loved it") was that the game should have "caught his PS4 on fire, burned down his house, and killed his dog" leaves me feeling that there's something visceral in the way humanity (or at least internet culture) reacts to numbers that makes them an important part of a particularly divisive review. Of course, the downside are the hundreds of trolls who piled onto Tom's one-star Halo 4 review to claim that they hadn't played the game themselves yet, but common sense told them that it's impossible for the sequel to a five-star game to be less than five stars itself. Those people make me think that the only number that should be in a review is the date it was posted.

I could have sworn that Latin has an all-in-one word for "severed limb," but I was wrong and it only has a word for "severed head."

For a moment, when Chris accidentally says that the thousand monkeys on typewriters are writing the complete works of Hitler, I experienced a moment of panic that it wouldn't be commented upon. I'm so glad I was wrong! Also, dammit Tegan. Otaku etymology is my hobbyhorse!