sclpls

Protecting the convoys is so hard!

Yeah, this game is definitely making me appreciate how brilliant the L4D games' AI director is. So good at ramping up tension and excitement.

Helldiver: the video game that presupposes that in the future Donald Trump has the same trajectory as Richard Nixon in Futurama.

Yes feel free to add me as well. Steam name is sclpls

Uhh... anyone complaining about them being stuck in the past needs to pay more attention to Headlander.

Nahaz was great! I appreciated the point he made about what happened with the evolution of early support play during TI4, which gets overlooked since most people spent their time complaining about the 20 minute deathball. It is really kind of shocking to look at replays of the TI3 finals compared to where the competitive scene is now... it just seems kind of cute & quaint even though that TI was such a huge moment for people that witnessed it.

Dear Idle Thumbs community: I added the tag "Walkie-Talkie Simulator" to Firewatch on their Steam page. Please vote for it or whatever. <3 sclpls http://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/

According to this RPS piece, the game is ex-Witcher 3 devs, and specifically one of the designers of the Gwent card game, so the comparison makes sense. Not totally sure what to make of this game to be honest, but I'm looking forward to checking it out. http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/11/24/thea-the-awakening/

I finally got into the beta this weekend, but I didn't have a very good time with it to be honest. I got completely stomped, and I don't feel like there is a good way to learn how to use all the different character abilities. I am probably just being impatient with the game, but it was a really rough starting experience.

Yeah I think this is exactly right. I've found the fastest way to learn how to play against a hero I have difficulty dealing with in DOTA is to play that hero a couple of times, and see how other people stomp me. Restricting off characters like that strikes me as anti-competitive, and just generally kind of a bad deal for your community.

I think Rob overstated how easy it is to follow a SC match for someone that doesn't play the game. I started watching pro matches recently (thanks E-Sports Today!), and while I can understand things like, "oh this player is attacking those worker units and not being contested, he is winning", or "that large army blew up that other large army" trying to understand the nuances of the engagements is actually just as incomprehensible as League or DOTA matches for someone unfamiliar with the game. In other words, sure the big picture details are easy enough to parse out, but there's a lot of interesting stuff underneath that that I'm not really grasping. And I think that's just inevitable. One of the most complex sports I can think of is American football, and I think most competitive multiplayer games are a good deal more complex than that so this idea of the game that non-players can watch and enjoy is still probably elusive for now. Rocket League could have been the solution, but I haven't heard about anything happening really since the game first launched and MLG had that $500 tournament. Anyway... co-op mode sounds really cool! I had only heard about archon mode which didn't really interest me, but the co-op mode definitely sounds like it could be the right kind of game mode for me so I should probably pick up LotV before I get too distracted by all the amazing games that are coming out in 2016.

Secret announced no new roster changes because they are smarter than reddit (who are mostly blaming their loss to OG on Misery, which is stupid). I am curious where the NiP guys are going to end up.

There was a podcast series of interviews with people that worked at Looking Glass studios. There was one episode where they were talking about designing Thief, and they arrived at the same design conclusion as Jamie Cheng about how it is a good idea for the AI to be kind of dumb in stealth games, even if sometimes players complain about the AI being too dumb. For them they thought of a stealth game essentially as a Revenge of the Nerds type fantasy where the smart protagonist outwits the dumb jocks (guards). Guard barks also became extremely important since they would convey important information to the player about AI states even if these exclamations weren't particularly realistic.

Hahaha oh man, I haven't played the DLC yet, but that reminds me that coming back to a strategy game you played awhile ago because of new DLC/an expansion pack is always such a surreal experience as you struggle to try and figure out if something seems different because they changed it up or because you are simply misremembering things.

Figured I'd start a new thread since the other DOTA thread is theoretically about the post-TI roster shuffle. I watched (monkey) business play against EG at the MLG tournament. EG definitely looked better compared to their ESL One performance, but that's a really easy bar to leap. They looked convincing the first game, but unfortunately their other games they looked pretty weak. I think they big problem they had in those games is Universe not getting to play his signature heroes, and Fear continues to look unimpressive as a support. Early aggression and push continues to look really strong versus EG who have two of the greediest players in the game. Did anyone watch VP vs LGD?

Okay, so game 1 of VG vs Secret is a must watch I think. Starts off kinda slow, but by the half hour mark suddenly we start seeing some of the most amazing plays.

So what do people think about the teams? Any reevaluations? I was never sold on EHOME as a team, but after their games against Vega I was pretty impressed with their play. I still don't think they'll be top 3, but they at least definitely look like the belong in the tournament.

They did fine against Cloud9! No real surprise there, the new C9 lineup has looked pretty underwhelming so far. Looks like a decent number of teams are getting cheesed with 5th pick Huskar strats so that's something drafters are gonna have to be careful about going forward. So far the most impressive game I have seen has been that VG comeback game against Vega in the group stages. But I've missed most of the games because of the time zone being what it is most of these matches are happening while I'm asleep.

Also the anti-robot news segment made me think about how all these companies in Silicon Valley and the Bay Area are described as tech companies just because they use software or whatever, but the current business strategy for the new breed of successful companies (Uber, Airbnb, etc.) involves a minimal amount of technical capacity or whatever, but does involve maximally exploiting weak labor conditions in the U.S. A big discrepancy between a company's marketing image and what it actually does is nothing new, but I always find the popularity of these services a bit depressing considering that the success of them is based entirely on taking advantage of how easy it is under U.S. law to classify someone as an "independent contractor" rather than an "employee", with all the loss of rights & benefits such a shift entails.

I think Idle Thumbs probably articulated exactly what it is that I dislike about Bethesda RPGs (even though they weren't discussed as a criticism). The whole spectacle of a Bethesda RPG comes down to creating an enormous world with an even more enormous amount of objects. It is, without question, an impressive technical achievement. And it was the sort of achievement I was really into back when games like Shenmue 2 and GTA 3 were being released. However at this point in time that sort of technical goal isn't really something I'm looking for or want in games, especially when it comes at the expense of a lot of other qualities like camera angles, or an interesting story, etc.

I'm making my way through Alpha Protocol. I held off on playing it thinking that it would be a prime candidate for a game to play with the Steam controller only to discover that the game actually had controller support. For whatever reason I thought it hadn't. Hahaha. Anyway, I can see why the game got panned, and it has plenty of problems in any category you can think of, but it also is a lot of fun to play!

My favorite board game designer, Martin Wallace, has one game, Steam, out on iPad, and Brass coming out later this week.

That was my typical lineup usually too. Or I might have a 2nd support over a 2nd heavy based on circumstances, but always 2 snipers.

Aww man, I completely forgot this was this weekend. Oh well. Thanks for sharing the summary and pictures!

Yeah that's a great post. Also Akke rules.