Badfinger

Not that you can't just google it, but here is GB's coverage. http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-helldivers/2300-9996/ http://www.giantbomb.com/videos/quick-look-ex-helldivers/2300-8632/ I really wanted this, to the point I was asking in the PS thread what level of cross-play this had so I could possibly play this on PS3 with people who had a PS4. It has a lot of elements of Magicka, Crimsonland, and Alien Swarm I like. Maybe I'll actually own it this time, even though I now have a modern console! I can definitely see myself spending 20 easy dollars on this, but not sure about 40. I'll probably buy it, and if it's THAT good I'll buy the rest of it. e: Shit, now I want to play Helldivers IMMEDIATELY.

I do not understand where you're coming from. Kotaku is not doing a bad thing. They are verifying information (included in this is vetting the source, assembling the information, confirming the information is true, cross referencing, reaching out for comment) that was offered to them as reportable news, and determined it was information worth making public. Their constituency is the public, and reporting is in the public's best interest. What if someone at a company leaked information that their company was going to be laying off employees, and it was reported in the press? What if someone at a company leaked information that their company was going to be hiring more employees, and it was reported to the press? Are those different things from the Fallout scenario? Are they different from each other? I submit they are exactly the same, and if they serve the public good they should be reported. Your last couple of posts, and the Gawker thing, are a different situation. Your scenario of someone stealing a book and then publishing reprints of material, or Gawker specifically asking for someone to dig up information which they will be compensated for are not the same. An insider tip is not theft, it is not fomenting theft, it is not breaking laws. It is information received that is usable if verified. Maintaining the line across all reporting means that whistleblowing about illegal EPA violations and screenshots of a video game fall under the same umbrella, they're just taking up different sized patches of importance.

Do you like the concept of dailies, or grind quests? A couple of weeks ago I was with remadeking doing one of the grouped up things we were doing, and I jokingly asked if anyone ever used the "increased glimmer from X" items, because I am at max glimmer at nearly all times. He said all the time, he buys all the emblems so he never has any glimmer. And in my brain, I went "Oh, people buy those?" In a game that wants to have broad appeal to multiple swaths of people, it almost by rule means that nothing is going to appeal to everyone playing. I like some of the shaders and stuff, but I'm not going out of my way to get them. I don't care about emotes, or emblems. I want to collect numbers. Specifically, higher numbers that will help me beat content, and show that I've beaten it. When WoW introduce dailies it eroded some of my interest in the game, because it became part of the prescribed content to spend time doing the same thing every day so you could get a slightly different horse. Sure, there was sometimes gear associated with it, but I think their handling of it was largely a mistake. For Destiny, I'm totally happy to do one Heroic Mission, one Crucible match for marks, and then various things that I'm likely going to be doing anyway for xp and possibly other materials in the form of bounties. One of the reasons it's different here than there is something like "Punch 32 dudes without dying" or "get 18 headshots" is something the game already rewards you for doing, and takes some modicum of skill. If there was a daily turn in for foraging 20 spinmetal I might never play again.

I finally caught up on the thread, and I am absolutely gobsmacked that the last 5 pages have been a real, actual debate about whether a press site that received true, properly vetted information that was offered freely to them is in the grey ethically for reporting on it. Of course they're not. They're completely in the clear. If you do your due diligence and vet the information, and it's real, run a story. The reason to not run a story would be because it's not worth the effort to publish, or of worth to your constituency.

You can just delete the stuff you want to not be in there, rather than doubling down on calling attention to it with a strikethrough and an edit.

I am not ok with locking any quest or gear behind weird content like that. I don't know what the deal is, though. Been out of the loop on vidya games for a week or so.

Does that mean you have fewer lords on the field, or are there more players per team? That's a huge mechanical change.

I love datas both big and small.

You should bring this up in the podcasts thread! I bet people would be interested.

Holy fuck, someone not only found Driveclub enjoyable, but enough someones found it enjoyable to give it the 7/10 of approval? I'm Blown Away.

AHA, an Overwatch thread DOES exist! I can answer the monetization question. It's $60 or $40 depending on platform. Is anyone else in the beta and playing? I'm enjoying my experience so far. It is very vanilla TF2. That's a compliment in that it has nuance and team strategy, but visuals matching gameplay style is straightforward.

You're right. I was tired and frustrated and am being a jerk about it. I would rather be in a place societally where all people were equally supported than all people were equally dicked over.

When I played Rift, I was happy to fork over my $30ish dollars for the expansion content, but that was content that was locked. The vast majority of the game was free, though. Unlike Star Wars: The Old Republic, which was desperate to nickel and dime you on launch of their F2P system. Even with the built in advantage of being in the tier of people who had originally spent money on the game, it constantly reminded you there were more things to spend money on. From what I understand they have improved the way you interact with that system, but it was awful. I THINK Rift had the Eve-style purchasable subscription time with enough in-game currency. That's a very interesting system, because it cuts out 3rd party currency sale sites to at least some degree, and also means sweat equity has a tangible reward. It's actually both more and less evil than you think. If you are a brand new player and you buy an XP boost, you are actually hurting yourself because the climb to 30 accounts for a LOT of IP (sweat equity currency) for buying runes and lords. So if you think the goal is to get to 30, if you get there and feel like you're at a disadvantage because you don't have X, Y, or Z unlocked that you want, you might pay more money to make up for your previous mistake of misjudging what the game responds to as valuable to the unlock experience. It's less evil if you are an experienced player leveling a second account. You probably have specific goals or objectives in mind, so paying $10 as a returning customer to shortcut some of the grind is the exact same argument to be made for other time vs money gaming conundrums.

I'm not equipped to answer on Riot's behalf and I'm trying to figure out the answer myself, hence this thread. Maybe LoL is a horrible pay model, but they caught lightning in a bottle in spite of their pay and play mechanics rather than because of it! If I had to create an argument for their case though, my counter would be - they're not attempting to create a false premise. They're presenting the opportunity to come to grips with the basic gameplay so you can see if you actually like something about it without having to fight through the complexity to find out (tutorials, bot games, basic matchmaking), and then layering it back in with the leveling, rune and ranked systems.

I started listening to Idle Thumbs after the Second Exodus and before the Kickstarter, but didn't get involved in the forums until 2012. That's 3/4 of the episodes, but a very short amount of time for this forum! I still feel like I'm the weird dissenting new opinion in a lot of threads here, but I also think that's ok. I basically assume anyone who isn't explicitly introducing themselves has been posting here since 2010 or earlier. Your thread inspired me to post a new thread! You can always do that if a topic strikes your fancy!

The jumping off point for this thread was the comparison of LOMAs DOTA 2 and League of Legends. They're two of the biggest non-mobile games in the world, and they both cost no money at all to play as long as you'd like in perpetuity. The way they go about this is different business models, brought on by the circumstances of their development. They're also, for the purposes of this thread, exactly the same in the way that Call of Duty and Halo are the same. DOTA 2 unlocks all the essential mechanical content from the moment you install the game. Any purchases you make are changing the game in ways that do not affect game play. You can buy skins and voice packs and UI skins and, and, and. There is a player-driven economic component where players can also be creators. DOTA 2 was built off the back of DOTA, a mod from Warcraft 3. It's aim was to be a modern, exact replica of that original game until all the content was released (except for all the differences). League does not have all the mechanical content unlocked. In fact, until you make decisions about currency (either dollars, or persistent earned sweat equity), there are no permanent unlocks in the game. They have a lot of spinning plates here - You, the player, have a persistent level. You gain access to skill point and rune slots (mechanical customization options) as you play the game and earn account level experience up to a maximum level. You also earn an account level currency that can be spent on permanent unlocks in the form of new Lords and runes. You can then spend real dollars to either instantly have permanent unlock of characters, or buy various skins and visual modifications for in-game characters and items. They initiate you into content by having a rotating pool of 10 champions always available for use, and specific rules for when champions go on free rotation that are new, popular, or "good" for learning the basics. Fun fact: League of Legends was originally a $30 boxed game with a fixed amount of content, which is why there are so many weird nooks and crannies in the system. It wasn't designed F2P from the ground up. Both of these games are so incredibly overwhelming that people who know one intimately will claim the other is too much of a tax on their time to learn or play both. How do you curate content when everything is available so people don't become so overwhelmed with details they quit before they find something worth that's worth throwing money towards? If you are purposefully limiting content in a tutorial-like fashion, how do you make sure people feel like enough of the game is available to them that they have the option to spend money on something they like rather than be put off from feeling the necessity to spend money? Are both of these options good? Are they both bad? Is HOTS actually kicking both their butts in the F2P model and I just have no idea?

This forum is cliquish as hell, by which I mean it's very small and everyone posts in every thread so everyone knows everyone's business (by choice). Welcome to this clique.

How can the champion pool be too big to learn what all of them do if they're all just clones?

I played with people who have about 3-4 characters. They play thousands of games, but basically just play those few. I get there's stress, but if you are actually a brand new player trying to learn what the game is, being limited to the free rotation is a blessing. It turns out no one else knows anything about the game either. Dipping into the knowledge base of competitive play is a choice. Nah, you just need a general idea. Tons of people who coach talk about learning to play rather than learning to play against. I also think you're conflating the fact that the League model didn't work for YOU with it not working, even though you found a couple champions right off the bat. There are 10 free characters every week that you can play and figure out how they work, and up to 10 champions in every game. You will see most of what's out there in a relatively short time! I wonder if your experience with playing the game and moving on is drastically inflating the burden of knowledge you think you need to play for fun with a couple of friends for 90 minutes every week. I also know you have some kind of crazy axe to grind with League of Legends.

That one's easy! Your favorite is different from my favorite.

No I think I'm picking up what you're putting down! We agree that it is a unique situation because of the percentage of runtime, rather than the literal seconds dedicated to non-show things.

I was going to make the same post until I saw Osmosisch had already said it. You think he's wrong, but I know for a fact he's right. You can be a competitive player with 5 champions. You can be a competitive player with 1 champion. There is a Korean player in Diamond 5 who has played ONE champion in ranked this entire season, and it's the least popular champion in all of league for the past month at least. The guy at the very top of the NA ladder has spent most of his time playing about 8-10 champions in ranked this season. There's a guy who's famous for specifically playing one champion, and got so good at it he switched to one other champion because it was banned against him so much (InvertedComposer). You could spend $20 on the "Champion's Bundle" and never have to spend another digital dime on champions to be a top-level player. You could get only the lowest tier cost of the sweat-equity cost and be in-meta forever. One of the biggest pieces of advice people give for ladder climbing is to stop picking so many champions and focus on like 3. I mean, it's fun to fuck around with every different release. New toys are rad. Riot wants you to buy skins and shit. But you definitely don't need to do it to have fun or be competitive.

I actually like the content of the podcast! I am picking up what Roman Mars is putting down, generally. Other podcasts I listen to have similar amounts of advertising, too. You Are Not So Smart has 5-6 minutes of ad reads, but they're a) broken up over an hour+ of podcast and b ) feel more like ads that have a purpose in sustaining the podcast than a rambling guy talking about a penny you can get. I don't consider intros or credits to be "wasted", either. People in production deserve to be recognized. It's just so incredibly concentrated on 99 PI.

I'm aware. The system is not good. I want to put my energy towards them. I'm not concerned about saving my tears for the people who forced the system to act on them by being shits.

I know it's flippant, but it's frustrating to see people fret over the consequences faced by assholes when the system that finally catches up to them, when they're too public with their shit, leaves the people they trod over on the outside looking in in the first place.