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One nice thing when Glimmer Cape was OP was I didn't see anyone building BKBs in my pubs. It was nice to play games without coordinating BKB mind games, but I guess now we'll be getting back to that part of the game.

Oh man, I hadn't thought about that item vs. Huskar. I can't wait to try that out. I feel like Huskar pickers deserve a special place in hell. There are some games where he is the most obnoxious hero to play against, even more than Troll last patch.

The new items are so great. Glimmer cape was so good until it got nerfed (although it still might be good I think, but probably not on any of the heroes I play whereas before it was good on all heroes basically). I just played a game as Omniknight and got the guardian greaves, and I love the sound effect for that item.

Here is the story of Duke Gilbert of Provence: He learned how to stay alive for longer than 5 years. He went to many feasts in the Holy Roman Empire. He went in for a little bit of hedonism (but not too much). He successfully helped lead a Crusade into Greece. And he also got into some less successful scraps as well. And in the end he died of natural causes at the age of 64. He is succeeded by Duke Adalbert. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ft9nw7cwq6uknan/Duke%20Adalbert%20of%20Provence.ck2?dl=0

The coin drops feel a little stingy too. I just played a match with 4 people that had a compendium, and we all hit our challenges, and got about 132 gold out of it. Valve is totally willing to recalibrate this stuff though so I'm sure if enough people are complaining about it we'll see a change in a week.

I agree, in terms of narrative arc Act 2 is sometimes off the mark, although I feel like a lot of the moment to moment dialogue is still strong. I would have preferred if the puzzles had been as easy as Act 1, but they didn't bother me. Certainly compared to Grim Fandango, which I replayed when it was released in its remastered edition, nothing felt obnoxious or too obscure. Overall I'm way impressed with how the game came out, and I hope the Double Fine team feels proud about what they accomplished because I think they deserve major props for what they accomplished. I think the game will end up with a fairly mixed reaction just because there is a huge divide in philosophy about adventure games right now with some people wanting all the puzzles streamlined away, and other people wanting the more old school designs. Broken Age straddles the line and potentially offends either camp.

I really love the scene with Cooper and Annie where the camera just pulls back, and the music just starts getting sinister. It is like such a powerful reminder that what I really love about the show is not any of the storylines really, but just shots that are visually arresting, something that has been lacking for awhile in season 2, but this episode has in spades. For that reason I even like the horse costume. Ridiculous? Sure, but also striking. Like, even with all the lore mumbo jumbo I don't even care about it really because the show is back to looking really cool and I guess I am okay with liking the show for reasons that are more style over substance.

Since I put forth the argument that I wasn't so sure about the viability of HotS as a popular e-sports, I think it's only fair that I mention Rich Stanton's persuasive case that naysayers like myself are wrong - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/04/30/heroes-of-the-dorm-report/

Well that's very kind of you to say. I always stress out when I'm responsible for holding up asynchronous games. Like I forgot to submit my turns for Chaos Reborn yesterday and I have been feeling guilty this whole morning...

Yeah I mean that's totally fair. I love DOTA, but there are millions of good reasons not to play it, and I definitely watch more DOTA than I actually play because of the stress factor.

OMG weirdo Lonely Island style Jake rap

I think natellite gets it exactly right - where reaction time matters are for those team fights that have a ton of super complicated interactions, and that's where split second reactions can turn the tides. But it's worth pointing out that before that even becomes a thing there are usually a million things you can do to improve at the game, so the odds are that's not the thing that's holding you back. For the majority of players you will be in a MMR bracket where team fights consist of people just spamming all their spells and item abilities randomly and hoping for the best. The cool thing about DOTA is there are so many different ways to get better at the game, so even if your reaction time is shit you can still go really far even if you will never be a pro as a result (meaning you're not in the top 0.01%).

So Zane was an alien from another planet, suddenly his character makes so much more sense.

I'm in my 30s, and my reaction time is pretty bad, and I don't feel like reaction time is that important to DOTA to be honest. I mean, it matters, but not as much as good decision making, and so I feel like there are aspects of the game I'm better at than these dumb kids! It certainly isn't as demanding as multiplayer shooters or RTSs at any rate (though obviously more demanding than a turn based game). Anyway, jennegatron's intuition is correct I think. There was some reddit survey asking about demographics, and the majority of people that responded were not in their 20s yet. Obviously I can;t know for sure if that reflects that demographics at large, but I think it is reasonable to assume that it does. So there is a ton of immaturity, and that is an important thing to keep in mind when you encounter all the absurd bravado in pub matches or whatever. That's also probably part of the reason that so many people are convinced they should be at a higher MMR just because we're talking about a lot of people that still lack a fair amount of self-awareness.

Just a quick update that my ruler is getting pretty old, so I should be wrapped up soon. Taking a bit longer just because Broken Age came out, and I've been playing that with my wife. So apologies for the delay but I should have the next file up by this weekend at the latest.

Man, really surprised that Chris & Jake liked the scene with Cooper and Zane's character, but whatever!

Buy two hyper stones. Eat them. Buy two more hyper stones.

taterdactyl - Yeah I mean, when people say they want to play quicker games that is fair enough. DOTA can't be all things to all people. But if it is any consolation a lot of the changes are going to make the games shorter. There were some significant changes to buybacks, comeback gold, and T3 & 4 towers got a big armor reduction. These changes aren't in the main client yet though, just FYI. BusbyBerkeley - Agreed! I end up playing support in probably like 60% of my games, and a lot of these changes will be really nice. I really like how sentry & observer wards only take up one inventory slot now. And being able to TP away with ghost scepter is gonna be huge. It used to be if you were a support playing vs. a farmed Huskar you were basically dead, and it was really annoying.

This latest patch is kind of evidence for why I think Heroes of the Storm continues to underwhelm me. In my opinion, a single patch of DOTA can do more to shake up LoMa conventions than HotS has managed to do even with changes as drastic as ripping out the inventory system.

I feel like so far I'm making similar plays to Cordeos. I think this will be good although the war exhaustion factor might come back to bite me.

Also Billy Zane's character running into Cooper at the Great Northern, and being super distraught... it's like, how has your character earned being this emotionally distraught? Hella dumb. However I appreciate the Cooper appears to be drinking a glass of milk.

I gotta say that for whatever cheese factor exists in this episode, I really enjoyed it because structurally I think the show is back to what I like about it even if none of the individual story threads are all that interesting/good.

Hahaha hexgrid yes! I thought Dave Heron did a good job of describing the potential issues with the game. I think he's right that it isn't the casual game it is sometimes billed as, but in my experience it doesn't win anyone over that does play LoL or DOTA. I tried it out for a few weeks and lost interest and went back to DOTA. That being said, I suspect the game will work out pretty well for Blizzard even if it won't be a runaway success. There was a recent market analysis predicting HotS would end up taking 7% of the marketshare of the LOMA space... about half of DOTA 2's. I think plenty of people will be like Fraser, and happy to play the game just because it is a Blizzard game, and it seems like it worked out for Fraser. Blizzard has enough fans of their games that I suspect that will be a pretty successful strategy for them even if the game doesn't set any new records. I'm less convinced it will have a compelling competitive scene. So much of the strategy of the game comes down to which team is being more efficient with their positioning and timing, and I just don't know how interesting that is to watch. Fraser mentioned that he liked how comebacks were always possible, but my experience is that HotS is actually much harder to pull off comebacks with compared to DOTA (especially in the current patch). A lot of that has to do with the lack of items that Dave was bemoaning. There's no question, the array of items in DOTA and League is overwhelming for new players, and makes the learning curve really steep. Learning about all the different items is not fun, and there's no shortcuts, it takes time, and just sucks as a new player. The trade off is that once you do actually learn about all the different items the game really opens up, and allows for all this creativity and exciting play. Always having these different potential tools means the possibility space is a lot more wide compared to HotS, and if you're behind, there is an item you can get to counter whatever problem you are having. It was probably a good trade off for Blizzard to make in terms of getting people to play the game that normally wouldn't, but my guess is it probably limits the longevity of the game. I also wanted to talk about players calling "gg" too early. It took me awhile to pick up on this, and I used to complain about it a lot as well, but I've come to realize that those early "gg" calls are usually typed with a hint of irony. Here's the thing: in my experience those players almost never actually give up or start throwing the game. P.S. I hate those fucking mounts. I think they are so dumb and such a cheesy way to monetize the game.

You guys brought up Varoufakis, former Valve economist and current finance minsiter of Greece, on this episode, and I know you guys were just joking around, but I find this stuff genuinely interesting so I just wanted to clarify that Varoufakis didn't suggest that Germany should pay war reparations. It was Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras who suggested this directly to Angela Merkel in an encounter that was wonderfully uncomfortable. The way this dynamic works is Varoufakis and Tsipras have a good cop/bad cop thing going on in these negotiations. In terms of outrageous Varoufakis stuff the media has latched onto two things: 1. there was this Guardian op-ed piece he published where he described himself as an "erratic Marxist", and 2. he dresses a lot more casually (i.e. unbuttoned collar) than your typical finance minister.

I guess I was more down on this episode than most people. I agree with richardco's assessment that she's just as bad as Billy Zane's character. Like my reaction to her back story was like, did the writers come up with this when they realized how flat her acting was? I also thought Cooper laying it on thick at the bar was way out of character (the diner scene felt more believable though). Also man, I must have blocked out Owl Cave because I don't remember this at all. What a goofy conceit.