Flynn

Members
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Content count

    234

  • Joined

  • Last visited

Posts posted by Flynn

  1. Posted

    I also wonder why we don't see more 2v2 in the competitive scene.  The lone example I can think of is the CSL (collegiate league) which has single 2v2 match built into the best of 7 format.  During the CSL finals there was actually a 2v2 match played with 40 thousand dollars on the line (Berkeley vs a Korean University).

     

    In terms of playing I have to gear myself up every time I do 1v1 ladder.  I feel like I'm getting read to take a math test.  I know it's going to be exhausting lonely hard work for the next 30+ minutes.

     

    But 2v2 is totally different.  It's just hanging out and playing some games.  Most of my friends who sill play starcraft (as opposed to just watch it) play only 2v2.  I don't think is usual either, my guess is that most people who play starcraft casually (aren't studying build orders, watching videos online, etc) play mostly team games.  This could perhaps be a bridge to bring more casual players in if Blizzard pushed it more.

  2. Posted

    I love the Introversion guys.  They just choose the craziest themes.  Nothing like that uncomfortable feeling in Defcon as you annihilate millions of people from behind a console, listening to the awkward coughs in the background.  

     

    Here's an interesting interview with them on how they think about Prison Architect:

     

    http://www.pcpowerplay.com.au/2012/01/chris-delay-the-pcpp-interview/2/

     

    “You could think of your prisoners as the enemy army. And in a traditional game, you would destroy your enemy army. And that would be your victory points. But obviously, in a game about prisons you can’t destroy your enemy army.  But then again, an alternative way of thinking about it is that the prisoners are actually your army. Your group of people, to look after, and work on. And I’ve been trying to find ways to hold back the concept, to try and stop the player thinking about the prisoners as his enemy, that are just in his way, or just wreck his prison all the time, and start thinking about the prisoners as interesting characters in their own right, that you’ll be just as interested in as if they were your own bunch of characters.”

     

    As of this writing, more specific gameplay details have yet to be announced; we asked if you had, say, a safe cracker, a forger, and a master of disguise in adjoining cells, they might tap out Morse code on the pipes to plan an elaborate escape. Chris didn’t take the bait: “[Laughs] Those are great ideas.” Though he did confirm that he wanted to give the prisoners plenty of character, and that part of that inspiration came from Australia’s favourite women’s prison drama, Prisoner.

     

    “I think any game involving prisons will undoubtedly be inspired by that [laughs]. It’s interesting. There’s a lot of good prison television, and prison films. And it’s a challenge making a game about prisons, to try and get something positive out of it. Because it can be a very grim subject. And it is a very serious subject, and a very political subject, as well.  But obviously if you’re making a game about it, you don’t necessarily want it to be really heavy and over the top. And one of the nice things about Prisoner: Cell Block H was that it did manage to make interesting characters out of guards and prisoners. It didn’t have the really nasty overtones that a lot of American prison TV shows.”

     

    In the course of researching the game, Chris has burned through the box sets of just about every prison show ever made. One thing he’s learned is that a TV show or film about prisons either succeeds or dies based on whether you are interested in the prisoners or not. “Because the guards and the staff are not enough. It’s the prisoners who are often the interesting characters.”

     

    Chris also hinted that his game will have a strong moral dimension, and that it will explore what happens when private prisons are run with public funds. “It’s an interesting moral conundrum, when you’ve got shareholders and things, and you have to think about the profit of a prison. It leads to some quite interesting choices.” Then there’s the question of punishment versus rehabilitation – whether you should hate the sin, or the sinner. The degree of actual punishment virtual screws will get to mete out has clearly played on Chris’s mind. 

  5. Posted

    The themes I liked in Infinite:

    1. There's something dehumanizing about believing you can be absolved of sin, about believing sins can be washed away.  It's much more human to believe sins can't be washed away.
    2. American exceptionalism from the rest of the world; Columbia exceptionalism from the rest of America; Comstock's exceptionalism from the rest of the Universe, etc.

    I'm enjoying listening to the Infinite spoiler casts all over the web.  It's fun to be part of the zeitgeist I guess!  

     

    My second favorite after Idle Thumbs is the PC Gamer UK one: http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/04/10/pc-gamer-uk-podcast-special-bioshock-infinite-spoilers/ 

     

    "Sorry I'm chain-gunning your ghost-mom Elizabeth!"

  6. Posted

    I was kind of wondering if that game hunter guy will end up being a bioshock dlc thing. His only presence in the game is like one or two audio logs and several enviromental clues. But seems like a sort of existing character you could inhabit that isn't a total asshole. In the current game it seems like there's a small importance placed on him for no reason. Or he's just something left over from a scrapped game section. Just struck me as weird.

     

    I love Preston's (the hunter guy) logs.

     

    It's easy to miss some of his story too, like these parts:

     

     

     

     

    Great environmental stuff in the rooms you find them too.

  8. Posted

    I don't want to crawl to far up into the games own fiction but I would guess that it's presented in that way in order to communicate something for players on the second run through. Kinda nodding at the "variable" concept from the ending of the game by not allowing the player to set that decision as a sort of "personal constant". Coupled with the characters driving the interaction I just sort of assumed it was something there to hint or show that on repeat play throughs you are not playing the same Booker.

    Whether Book picks heads or tails depends on whether the player has seen that section of the game before?

  10. Posted

    Booo... you spoiled dieing in bioshock infinite for me. I haven't died yet, I did come very close a couple of times though. But now I know what might happen if I die. In 1999 mode you get perma death right, or can you simply respawn from the last checkpoint. I would rather have savegames and normal dieing (i.e. lose all progress since your last save), that's 1999 for me.

     

    There is no permadeath in 1999 either, it works the same as other difficulties.  However the monetary penalty is so much harsher that the game is easier if you cheat-it by choosing to restart from checkpoint rather than accepting the save from Elizabeth when you die.  The first time I tried 1999 I ended up wiping out 1000 dollars of banked currency a few times -- and basically never being able to afford an upgrade. 

     

    The most 'ironman' run of 1999 Bioshock is the one where you never restart from checkpoint and always pay the money when you die.  

  11. Posted

    A couple of hours into Infinite and I decided to restart in 1999 difficulty.  I was enjoying the combat a ton until I locked onto a vigar combo that just rolled through every encounter and it got repetetive.   I just can't stop myself from min-maxing when I have a good power!

     

    I tried the same combo in 1999 they had an extra restriction on the vigar the prevented what I was doing.  Awesome.  

     

    If you normally play shooters on the hardest difficulty I'd recommend starting in 1999, it feels right so far.  

     

    Do this on main menu to unlock the setting without having to finish the game first:

     


    On PC (with keyboardmouse): Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, (Cancel key), (Confirm key)
    On Xbox: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A
    On PS3: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, O, X

     

  12. Posted

    I love what you're saying, Sean, because so few people stick up for an online community's less than total friendliness, but a lot of your points are straying dangerously close to "It's fun when you play with friends," which is something of a universal truth with games and doesn't entirely address concerns over a culture composed of perfectly nice people with good intentions interacting to form a toxic gestalt.

     

    There are reasons I don't play LoMa games, and not all of them involve a lack of free time or the odd hours I keep.

     

    I'm not sure I agree that LoMa games are more toxic than others.   Certainly not Dota 2.   Ever played Call of Duty on an Xbox?  

  14. Posted

    Maxis has also acknowledged a bug -- water towers and pumps near rivers or the ocean should be essentially infinite but are not.

     

    The sewage treatment plant should be populating the water table with water and should be visible on the map (not the outflow pipe).   Though you still want to use filtered water pumps instead of basic.

     

    I think the best we can hope for with the fundamental simulation is mod support.  I'd love to see what the community could do with an agent based system like this.   

  15. Posted

    Also, I should say I would never communicate with a new player or a stranger the way I do with my friends. There is a lot of "oh, you're dead again, well it's ok." So I guess the real issue is Jake hearing me play with Pierre, Nick Herman, Finol and whoever and then going "wow I would never play that game with you guys," as if we're some sort of despicable heathens.

     

    DOTA, like any game, video or otherwise, that is about communication and you do the best when you're communicating effectively, whatever the tone is. It also means being sensitive to the personal listening styles of your friends and teammates; so if your buddy yelling FUCKFUCKFUCKWHATAREYOUDOOOOOING at you doesn't work for you, then you have a talk with your pal that starts with "Hey man, that doesn't work for me," and he or she needs to take that heart or you don't play with those people.

     

    I guess I also take issue with the labeling of a game or genre based on people's fears about the play experience.  

     

    Agreed.  I also find some joy in acknowledging the stakes of a particular moment in a match I'm putting so much effort into, and occasionally this comes out as a FUCKFUCKFUUUUUCKRUNRUNRUNRUN or whatever.

  18. Posted

    Mass Effect 3 as a free game is weird -- I'd almost say it needs the DLC for the story to hold together.  The ME 2 DLC was decent but easier to separate from the rest of the game.

     

    From Ashes because it shows us that Protheans are dicks, Leviathan so the overall plot makes at least a little bit of sense, and Citadel just because it is awesome.  I guess 25 bucks for all those isn't that bad if the game itself isn't free but meh.

  19. Posted

    OK guys I need either talking into or out of getting this game.

     

    Since EA are still giving away a free game away to anyone who registers up until march 18th if I'm going to bite I may as well do so now.

     

    I have been sitting on the fence pretty much since launch day looking at the game and thinking "boy it looks really contrived at times, and there's are a lot of flaws to this thing", but at the same time I'm thinking "they seem really interesting flaws, I want to play around with the game and see if I can get it to do weird stuff"

     

    I'm not hearing the cries of woe that I used to on twitter so i guess the servers are at least somewhat stable.

     

    So gentlemen who have already bought the game, if i go in expecting something flawed but interesting should I be able to enjoy it?

     

    (my indecision isn't being helped by the fact Anno 2070 is on sale on steam for 1/4 the cost of Simcity)

     

    With the bolded part, go for it, that's exactly the attitude I have and I have enjoyed the heck out of it.  Also... SO PRETTY.

     

    I have also been impressed by how active numerous SimCity devs have been on twitter -- responding directly to complaints and bug reports.

     

    I wouldn't count on much for the free game though, it's probably a 'pick 1 of 3' of a bunch of older games.   

     

    Anno 2070 is a good game but it doesn't play much like SimCity and doesn't hit the same spot.

  23. Posted

    This might be the best overview video I've seen:

     

     

    He builds a 400k city with no mass transit and no region purchaes, talks about all the bugs and quirks mentioned in this thread, showcases interesting strats, just all around a great summary of the game in its current state.  

  25. Posted

    Isn't the whole point of agent-based simulation that it's more visible, comprehensible, and intuitive to the player than statistics-based simulation? It blows my mind just a little that these were the compromises that seemed appropriate to Maxis to preserve the essence of the simulation, wherein several of the major systems don't even really interact, not that I could really suggest any alternative beyond scaling back to a largely symbolic use of agents.

     

    Nah, the hallmark of an low level simulation is in surprising and complex results, not necessarily comprehensible.  From the PC Gamer review:

     

    Sims are really good at communicating what they’re unhappy about, so much that it can be annoying, but they’re terrible at communicating why they’re unhappy about it. They constantly contradict each other: one house is concerned about crime, while its neighbor compliments the neighborhood’s great police coverage. One house says shopping is great, the other can’t seem to find the stores. Which are across the street. What the hell.

     

    The problem seems to be with what I began this review praising. SimCity isn’t run by spreadsheets, it’s a simulation of hundreds of thousands of dynamic parts, and I think it’s unable to tell me the real reason Sims are unhappy because it doesn’t know. If a Sim has money, it will try to find shopping. If it can’t find shopping, it will complain. It won’t tell me if it sat in a traffic jam all day, or if there are plenty of shops but no medium-wealth Sims to run them, or if it happened to go toward a shop that went under renovation and ceased to be a shop for a short period.

     

    To diagnose problems, I have to ignore the implications of complaints. “Where’s the shopping in this town?” suggests I should zone more commercial, but that’s not always the case, and my investigation must begin with the roads, the shops themselves, and the people living near them.

     

    This also means the problems can be more interesting... if they can get it all to work.