Badfinger

^^^^ The league system will "clamp" you on purpose. It is specifically designed to attempt to keep you in Division 1 rather than moving up to the next league, because once you get promoted leagues you can't drop back down barring inactivity. You basically have to trial by fire and prove your worth to move up from there. I had a lot less frustrating experience with that after I came to terms with it. The biggest difference between something like DOTA and any professional ball sport is that 1) they've been around for decades to hundreds of years and 2) that means they're in the public consciousness. Even if you have never watched a certain sport, you are 100% certain as a person with the internet to have been exposed to it in some way even if that way is just how every day conversation borrows metaphors and phrases heavily from sports contests of all types. You are also guaranteed to know someone personally who likes a major sport where you live, so if you ever wanted it explained they could do it in person. I don't know a single person not from the internet who plays any sort of LOMA. Another big point 3) is that the people who are on the playing field in a sport are people. You can do the 10 second explanation that the men with blue shorts are going left and the men with orange shorts are going right, whereas you would have to explain to someone that the guy playing a bear this game played a satyr last game and they do sort of the same thing in a completely different way. Newbie DOTEs confession: I was not sure at first if the different champions were locked to one side or another, because they're presented as Radiant and Dire. I think the larger point is getting to "the basics" is much, MUCH harder to do with this than a sport. This is true of any LOMA-type game and probably some other styles of competitive gameplay. I could explain a competitive Counter Strike game way more easily than DOTA. Re: Replays - the League of Legends LCS does replay analysis after games, if you're just looking for some LOMA, any LOMA to try and explain what's going on. Re: This cast - I am a big fan of Brad and would love to hear him back with you guys, but I find the cast much more enjoyable hearing about experiences and themes surrounding DOTA "Swing one leg over" rather than having a specific discussion about Remember That One Game We Played?.

I am very glad Nick piped in with "I think we're just old", because I think it's not THE reason but it is almost 100% a contributing reason to something like this, and I include myself in the oldness conversation. I also wonder if not beating the game (beat the last boss) is a more self-aware experience now. Like you Chris, I routinely don't finish games, and it doesn't usually matter. "Not finishing" Skyrim just meant I didn't complete the longest questline, not that I don't have a sword that shoots demons and I killed every horker. With The Last of Us, finishing the game is what completes the experience, and it may be that it and other games that recently have been built so that the most fulfilling part is finishing it don't have any pieces where you can set it down and feel like you didn't just have a partial experience because you didn't put all (X) hours into it.

It's also not saying that "Leisure Suit Larry Reloaded" is gaming's Citizen Kane. I HAVE to think that the comparison was made with full intent to elicit the reaction above, because RPS ain't dumb and they have peer editing.

What characters or themes do you like best in the books? If you're looking for the real evolution of Vimes and the watch, it happens in Men At Arms. That book was also written chronologically close to Small Gods.

I don't actually think people don't think there hasn't been a truly great movie for 30+ years, I just think that the polling sample, almost necessarily, is skewed to be more likely to select works that are older. Either what influenced them, or the influence for the influence, or just people who are so steeped in film that think purer/earliier is better on its face.

My favorite Discworld novels are definitely the Night Watch books, with Night Watch probably being my favorite. Thud! is also a great read. The first one I ever read was Thief of Time, so that has a special place for me. Rincewind seems so long ago and far away now. As much as Vimes is my favorite engine for a plot (and I would argue the most complete character), my favorite character is Vetinari. Can't get enough of that enigmatic semi-benevolent absolute dictator.

I don't think it needs to be considered the best film of all time to receive the accolades it does. It's just a moment that can be pointed to and is generally accepted where you can say "look we did it we're a big boy art medium now!" You're also totally right that mastery of concept could have happened prior to Citizen Kane, but something like that is true of most times and places in history where you point to something and suggest that it alone is The Thing That's Important. e: In that poll, the Directors suggest there hasn't been a work in 33 years "great" enough to make the list, and the Critics say 45. Guess what, that's probably nonsense but it's the way of the world. Oh I agree with him that the use of comparison to Citizen Kane in that way is a totally valid usage. I think the writer's mistake was using Citizen Kane at all, where a reference to something more modern or had more similarities would have been better even if it didn't carry the same GRAVITAS. I think Tony Hawk shows up on the tumblr more than once, though.

Citizen Kane was a seminal moment in filmmaking. It doesn't follow the format of a written play and is one of the best/earliest examples of movies breaking out of a conventional storytelling mold and becoming their own interpretive medium, rather than just another way to present the same thing as a book or play. It's also still considered by a bunch of people to be one of the greatest films of all time, and holds up remarkably well today. Video gaming having its "Citizen Kane" moment would be where narratively, structurally a game does something of merit in a way that no other medium can, while being broadly recognized and accepted for it. At least, that's how I think of it. Would love to see other interpretations. Which makes it twice as silly that stuff like Tony Hawk shows up in that tumblr, let alone games that aren't even all that good.

You know what I wonder? How many creeps survive the game. There's fairly often a strong creep wave as you push in to end the game, and not every lane necessarily gets shoved all the way in. Some of the creeps for the losing side actually survive the battle.

That letter was phenomenal. The Dota 2 in-game replay options are out of this world. They blow every other replay system out of the water, I'm so jealous of them. Especially the ability to jump into tournament matches and listen to broadcasters at the same time. Now, the broadcast-style format has a lot of advantages. Directed coverage so you and the broadcasters are seeing the same things, picture-in-picture, having someone behind the scenes load up a replay so you don't have to fiddle around for it. Having a game that literally does not have a break from start to stop is the same sort of challenge as a soccer match, where interesting things that need more discussion don't happen in convenient little chunks with down time, so having someone whose job it is to queue it up precisely where it needs to be is an incredible advantage. But the fact that Dota builds replay functionality right in means that you can potentially check out ANY game. What if you didn't want the highlight package, someone was just playing your favorite lord and you wanted to check out a build order? Or if they were just really good at CSing and you just wanted to watch farming mechanics from a pro player for 5 minutes because we're nerds like that. So good. So jealous. The LoL pro stuff is all on a tournament realm and you can't pull replays from it. Most of the accounts the players use there don't have a single "real" game played on them if you looked them up through one of the profile crawler sites. It is kind of crazy that during tournaments the base client advertises where to watch the games and it takes you to a website.

Very unfortunately, there are plenty of products that are marketed as the official product of (unrelated activity). Have you seen the Bud Light/Ultra/Select/64 commercials? It's the sport beer for people who blood dope and run ultra marathons like Lance Armstrong! But for sports!

Here's where my brain went with the Starbucks story: When they ask you your name, they are going to call it out so you can retrieve your beverage in the noisy bustling chaos of your average Starbucks (even if you are the only one in line). What if that guy, when giving 'USA' as his name, was hoping the barista would call out "Soy double mocha caramel latte for USA. USA." and then there would be a spontaneous USA chant in the store and he would be a hero and get to kick flip onto his motorcycle with the license plate that reads "FTN0STK" and ride away into America.

I don't think I agree with you. For instance, if you started with ME2 and then decided you liked it enough to go back and play ME1, if they just said "WREX Y/N" or other huge things at the beginning of ME 2 not only do you not have any context for what that means but as you develop that context you are potentially ruining things for yourself from earlier. In fact, that's my perspective. I played about 90 minutes of the original ME and then played 40 hours of ME2 without any of that context and because I hadn't, I didn't know what I was missing. It was a totally fine experience. I actually like that BioWare laid out the conceit that there is something specific that ALWAYS happens unless you made the decision to change it. Isn't that what's happening with the new Infamous game? I've heard that players had an end-game choice at the end of InFamous 2, and they overwhelmingly chose one direction. Rather than let you import your save, the developer decided that's what happened as canon and that's how it will be reflected in the new game. Even if you chose differently I love that, and I applaud any developer that stands by their decision. There are hex editors that let you fudge that stuff in any case.

That's probably the key. I'm not bored with league of legends. There's something at least every other day that has me saying "I MUST TRY THIS". A big group of us even just set up teams to start a friendly competitive atmosphere and we're finally playing. Going back to bot games at the present sounds like a huge bummer.

Game Dev Story is the UHF of video games.

The goddamn courier, having more levels than abilities, 47 shops, default mapping for item use to the... keypad? (this is fixable, but the default for League is number row 1-6 and you apparently need control groups in Dota which map to your number keys. Doubletap 1 centers on your Lord? Ugh.) Plus just the hours and hours to learn what the items are, and what stats are best for whom outside of obvious basics from ARPGs. Character archetypes and just hearing about the game have given me a reasonable grounding in what lords fill what roles but that's still something to learn, too. The FUCKING COURIER. To see where my perspective comes from, I have about 12 hours into Dota. I expect somewhere between 8-10 of those would likely be actually playing the game since Steam only tracks how long the app is running. I jumped in going "I know what these games are. I got this. Support Lich? No fuckin problem" and the issue isn't that it's SUPER DIFFERENT, the issue is that they're so similar that the differences are maddeningly magnified. I spent some time reading on the proper way to swap Power Treads so you get the most mileage out of them and was like "yup I can do this" but I'm fairly certain I never got to the point where my Treads were sufficiently Powered. e: I also last gave it a shot before there was ANY tutorialization, so no guides, no item suggestions, nothin.

I'd be curious about this too, because I sure as hell haven't been able to.

If you called the surrender option the "Concede" button, would that make it less onerous? As a sportsman, you offer your concession to the opposing team, who have bested you in the contest. For some reason people look at sports that are timed like football and say "YOU'D NEVER GIVE UP IN FOOTBALL!", but 1) people totally concede games by putting in 4th stringers etc, 2) there are totally mercy rules at levels that aren't professional play and 3) there are sports/games where conceding is not only permitted, but built into the rules about how and when you can go about doing it. If you were playing chess and were definitively 15 moves from checkmate and everyone knows it, it is considered good form for the beaten party to resign rather than going through the motions for the extra amount of time prior to defeat. In curling it is customary for the losing skip to shake hands and end the game when it becomes mathematically impossible to tie the team that's winning, but at the same time it's also bad form to concede before 3/4 of the game has been played. Plus if the requirements for surrender were either 4/5 or unanimous, since it seems people here overwhelmingly queue with at least one other person, someone always has your back. If two buddies agree that they're not going to surrender just when it's looking bad, the game goes on.

I find crouching/prone to be pretty much essential, but the last two FPS games I spent any amount of time playing were Battlefield and DayZ. The ability to change your profile, remain unseen, or to take cover behind either low cover or partially destroyed cover is mandatory.

I would love the Nasus skin. I would be happy to reimburse you in some way. Gotta play that Big Dog. That Edward thing is CRAZY. I seriously wonder how much money Curse threw at him.

Yep. You're pretty much right there. Also to actually be REALLY good you need 3 hands.

I keep trying to play Sona because she's really good, and then when I go aggressive my carry is all incredulous and then I'm dead. It's mostly the best. I need to break out Nami, because Thresh is always banned.

His hook is more similar to blitzcrank, but he functions as an initiating support like Leona does, yes. He is awesome.

http://i.imgur.com/Wr5NUmq.jpg People may not know what the original reference is, but someone at Riot does. When I was learning Rumble (about a week before his nerf, yeah boy) I played him jungle and support.

How OP IS Jayce right now? I just grabbed Wukong last night because I keep feeling what I need from top lane is a strong teamfight presence after the Rumble nerf.