sclpls

Senator, Sean?

FWIW since you guys are trying to gather opinions, it didn't bother me that you were running an ad for WoT, but I also thought it felt weird.

As a new player I've found the DOTA 2 community to be way better than I anticipated. Like, usually when I mute someone it's just because they are kind of annoying, or their mic is too loud or something, and not because they are behaving like some terrible human being.

How did I not know this was a thing? I was just casually looking at the Steam store last night and saw the game, my jaw dropped! I know what I'm doing this weekend (in between World Cup games)...

Looking at the game footage on the stream right now, and it's looking pretty great! Love the map, and the XCOM style loadout

Yeah, I think he's a really thoughtful person, and I think he was just trying to have fun. I just think he didn't need to carry on with it beyond that paragraph. We're pretty far off on a tangent at this point though. I think the whole idea of early concession needs to be handled with the same sort of delicacy that one has when playing a board game with friends. There are times when it is worth calling it because the rest of the game isn't going to be enjoyable for anyone involved. This is not such a common thing for a lot of Euro games that have catch-up mechanics built into the system, but I can think of quite a few games like Axis & Allies played where we just ended the game early because one side did unusually well in the beginning, and the rest of the game would have just been a slog and not that interesting for anyone. I don't know how you reach that level of understanding with strangers on the internet though.

Yeah, he ran with that several paragraphs more than necessary.

I think I agree with Chris Thurston's position on this issue in his recent PC Gamer article. I mean, I'm not 100% certain I understand what it is, but I think I agree with it. http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/31/three-lane-highway-surrender-buttons-gordian-knots-and-other-thoughts-on-giving-up/

I don't really experience any social anxiety, but I also pretty much never want to engage with people that just want to shit all over other people. Luckily the only game I've really experienced that regularly is CS: GO. I avoided playing with people I didn't know for the longest time in DOTA because I just didn't want to experience that infamous toxic community, but luckily I've found that reputation to not really be the case anymore, and 99% of the strangers I've interacted with to be perfectly pleasant. Anyone that isn't you just report. So I guess I would say don't let that anxiety hold you back from having fun. If people do turn out to be shitty just stop playing, and switch to something else, but most of the time people are okay. You could always play more co-op games as well, which is usually a friendlier environment. I've been playing the Red Solstice a bit almost exclusively with strangers, and that's been great fun.

Plus buffing & nerfing various heroes kind of acts as a proxy to the way athletes get better/worse over time. Of course, the actual performance of the players changes over time as well so you have two different levels in how the game evolves.

I am having a lot of difficulty with coming up with a good battle cry

FWIW the specific game you mentioned looked like an early GG call to me as well, but I'm so new to DOTA I'm reluctant to really argue the point.

Okay, I think maybe we're closer in opinion than it appeared at first. I guess the question is if the game is in fact over, is there any value to watching the game play out? This is a weird thing, and this is where LoMas differ from sports which mostly have a fixed time frame instead of an objective to accomplish. The question is would that doomed game produce anything interesting to watch? Some people might think so, but others might find it boring. It's pretty ambiguous I think.

Someone put 2 and 2 together, and so it sounds like this might be a collaboration with the people that did Fallen London/Sunless Sea.

I think that's a reasonable perspective, but it's not one I agree with. I think VG's only obligation is to make the best competitive effort they can, and if they don't see any path to victory with their chosen strategy I don't think they should be criticized for calling GG (if they made a mistake calling GG that's a separate issue worth debating, although I don't think that was the case in the finals). Stated another way, I think teams have a right to pursue boring outcomes, and if a competitive game frequently results in boring outcomes that's a game design flaw. I do sort of think that teams should be allowed a limited number of substitutions like in soccer or basketball. I saw way too many games this tournament where it really felt like the match was over before it started just because of how the draft played out. We do need more Dota Today.

I have mixed feelings about this game. My main problem is that I don't feel like I'm doing much different depending on the enemies I am fighting. Other than that though I mostly like the mechanics involved. I want to try the co-op mode.

The shorter version of what I wrote is that co-op gaming should be more like Magicka.

I love co-op gaming, but I think it's not great in the context of RPG systems. Borderlands is a good example of something that I should find appealing, but don't. The draw for Borderlands is I find the first person combat systems more appealing to engage with than a Diablo style game where you kind of just hold down the mouse, and auto-attack everything, and press a button occasionally to heal up and use an ability (I am simplifying a lot I know, but that is mostly how that style of gameplay feels to me). Now, Borderlands isn't an amazing shooter, but it is a fun thing to play with friends. However I don't find it so fun that I want to play it all the time. But then if I don't and my friends are playing it, then they'll end up far ahead of me and there will be great level disparities, and then I'm basically left with two really unappealing options like: spend time grinding on my own until I catch up with them, or play with them even though a lot of the enemies will be able to one or two hit kill me, and I won't be able to contribute to the fight really. At that point the game feels more like work, and I give up on it.

My schedule for this weekend is basically to work on this stuff.

So this article reminded me of a discussion from this episode: http://www.pcgamesn.com/league-legends/chat-restrictions-increase-win-rates-many-league-legends-players It's an intriguing possibility that punishing toxic players and not allowing them to talk is actually better for team performance. Although we don't know enough about the data to say definitively why this happened.

I remember liking it a lot at the time. I suspect that if I saw it now I would be really unimpressed though.

Robot City

Going from watching the World Cup obsessively to watching TI obsessively has been intense. Hopefully I'll get to enjoy summer and get on with my life one of these days...

So are moon wizards out, or was it just that line of dialog that got cut?

I remember at one point catching a bit of some Irish soap opera, and I understood exactly zero words. There are definitely some intense regional accents!