metuk

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Posts posted by metuk

  1. Posted

    I agree that it's a shame that these review eps can be slightly dimished if game-breaking bugs prevent the panel from playing - but it's hard to know that without hingsight (and standard caveat that I enjoy the show and don't intend to whine).

     

    Some blame surely rests with the 4x genre, where increasingly it's not worth playing games until they have 1dlc and 9months of post launch under their belts. 

  4. Posted

    This feels super misrepresentative of DSII. While it does broadly only have 4 paths, the over-world has more connectivity than transcribed. Conversely, DSIII is more linear than represented. A lot of the branching in the figure is purely intra-level connectivity - if you gave the same treatment to the DSII figure it would look similar.

    I appreciate that DSII is the most divisive in the series, but this just feel like propaganda from the anti-DSII camp.

    dark-souls-2-world-map.jpg

     

    It doesn't make for good radio, but Judson Cowan did a very nice visualization for the various Dark Souls' world structures that I thought encapsulated things really well:

     

    CgPeoGkWEAAANdi.jpg

     

    (That middle one for DSII could just as easily be Demon's Souls as well)

  5. Posted

    1. Every faction is unique. Each one of them has it's own back story, and purpose for being on this world. Each unit has back story which explains why it has the abilities it has, and often why it looks the way it does. A campaign has been built for each faction to provide a steady drip of objectives and story to go with it. Also, each faction plays quite differently from the next by having different strengths and resource needs.

     

    It can't be overstated how excellent the faction diversity is in endless legend. It goes a long way towards ameliorating the classic 4x late-game trudge. I personally enjoyed playing as the cultists - a faction which can only build one city, but with the capacity to grow their capital far beyond any enemy cities. It's plays remarkably differently to a classic settle-expand faction and almost every faction has a major distinction like this. That being said, if you're a serious 4X aficionado, it's probably worth waiting until they improve the AI (which they say they are working on) as it's a bit crap currently.

  8. Posted

    Danielle describing The Evil Within as "batshit" made me want to catalogue the meanings we assign to different types of shit in English.

     

    Batshit: (adv.) ridiculously "Batshit insane" (adj.) unbelievable, in a ridiculous or entertaining way "This game is batshit."

    Dogshit: (n.) something of very poor quality "This game is dogshit."

    Bullshit: (n.) lies, often completely disassociated from the truth. "This essay was bullshit" (n.) something that's unfair "This level is bullshit" (adj.) unfair "I hate this bullshit level"

    Horseshit: (n.) lies, often completely disassociated from the truth. "This essay was horseshit" (n.) something that's unfair "This level is horseshit" (n.) something of very poor quality "This game is horseshit."

     

    Anybody got any others?

     

    Chickenshit: (adj.) worthless or contemptible.

  9. Posted

    As far as I remember, it went into how the word ''Xenomorph'' is more of a fan creation than something explicitly outlined by the filmmakers. I believe Aliens introduced the term itself, but that was meant to refer to any alien being, and not the species of the Alien itself. Or something like that. Maybe somebody else has more info. 

    I'm surprised that "Necronom" rarely get's a mention in fan circles, given the Giger inspiration.

  10. Posted

    I've never lost a checked bag, but I've also always avoided checking, even when it was free, because I'm just the kind of irritating person who likes to get off the plane first and get on my way as quickly as I can.

    As far as charging for checking baggage goes, it's not really fair to criticize airlines for charging for it. The reality is, airlines have INCREDIBLY low profit margins, and essentially all non-business travelers buy their airfare based on one criterion only: price. (Business travelers who pay full-fare, especially on business and first class, essentially subsidize air travel for other travelers.) So airlines have to compete on lower airfare above all else. Some airlines are more expensive, and some less expensive, based on a broader reputation as a "budget" airline or a higher-end airline, but they all feel the constant pressure to lower prices for whatever category of service they provide, because it's the main way to attract travelers. And since their margins are so low already, the only way to do that is by charging for services that not all travelers may need.

    Not only that, but an extra 30KG of luggage requires a non-trivial increase in fuel (and cost to the airline).

  11. Posted

    The problem with this, I think, is that

    Bad writing + 'Oooooh, it was written by a kiiiiiid' = Bad writing, just with a disclaimer.

     

    Also, the story is supposed to have been imagined by a kid, but it was still written by adults. And I (and others, apparently) found it mediocre.

     

    I don't actually think that the twist ends up redeeming it either. Yes, there is a suggestion of abuse/neglect: his uncle calls him a faggot, his grandfather is an alcoholic, his parents are distant. But adding the context that the story is all in his head just means that he is imagining the brutal murders of ~5 of his family members. I think this makes the story much weirder/worse than if the designers just thought dime novel tropes were cool.

     

    I didn't think it was great either, but perhaps not as hackneyed as everyone else seems to find it. I just found the thumbs' discussion interesting as it made me consider unintentional cliché as opposed to deliberate cliché. It was Sean's point that "You could write that well" that compelled my comment, I appreciate why they might want to intentionally overdo it (to serve their overall conceit), even if it ultimately didn't work.

    He also mentioned he was hoping it would be an "Adult world", and it's failure to achieve that in this case isn't purely a shortcoming of the writing, it's in service of something.

  12. Posted

    In general this isn't something I have a lot of patience for. "All this stuff you found scattered and unappealing totally makes sense if you just play it for hours and hours first." I'm not playing the game as a preparatory exercise to have my mind blown six hours later, I'm playing to enjoy myself throughout. I am not a fan of "the twist" as a justification for any number of convoluted things prior to the twist. I am totally fine with works being dense or subtle or nonlinear or whatever, and I'm fine with totally recontextualizing something that is already interesting—then you make it interesting in a totally different way. That's great!

    I agree that this structure shouldn't automatically justify what precedes itself, and my intent wasn't to defend the game in this regard. However, your analysis took on an extra significance to me as someone who's finished the game.

    Big spoilers ahead:

    Throughout the game you find puzzles based on story fragments authored by Ethan. The third act reveal is that Paul Prosporo is the protagonist of one of Ethan's stories - and this murder mystery is Ethan's coping mechanism for a family that is best distant from, and at worst abusive to, Ethan. In that light it makes more sense that Prosporo reads like a "Dime store detective novel character" - he is.

     

  13. Posted

    On the topic of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter:  The hokey writing and plot is more considered and deliberate that you give it credit. It's difficult to explain further without massive spoilers, but the things you found unappealing are re-contextualised near the end of the game. It sounds like Chris isn't going to finish the game, but I would have love to hear his opinions if he does (perhaps he could watch a let's play of the final act).

     

  20. Posted

    notta be a rudevoxn, but this episode wasn't great. You guys don't yet have the depth of knowledge to make a patch note rundown interesting & surrender chat is pretty tired.

     

    the first 2 episodes were white hot podcast fire though, so please come back swinging !!

     

    I think they mentioned somewhere that this one was recorded remotely, so maybe that was a factor. But yeah, they should leave the patch-note type analysis to elsewhere.

     

    Writing some good mail would probably help them out.

  21. Posted

    I feel like all kinds of surrendering just makes every player worse. Yes sometimes you get that huge deficit, and you're down to tier 3 towers. But with that close positioning and some good play you can turtle those towers like mad. Get a couple pick offs and that's a tower. Instead, you give up, and the aggressors don't learn how to properly push into a base even with an advantage, and the defenders don't learn how to come back from a bad position. That means that later on, when you're in a higher skill bracket, and it comes down to a slight advantage that means more at that level, you will have fewer of the skills you need to either push in and win or defend and comeback. 

     

    This makes sense, but perhaps you're not considering the opportunity cost. In those 15 minutes where I was being fountain dived I could have been playing a really good, tight early game somewhere else. Which scenario are my skills being improved the most?

     

    Thinking about it, the surrender debate is a great example of the tension that exists between dota as a Video game and dota as a team sport. I couldn't imagine "conceding" a game of football, but being unable to walk away from a PC game when I'm not having a good time feels alien.

  22. Posted

    I do enjoy seeing the Ancient die, but of course there's also the counter to this which is a lot of people don't even kill it and just fountain farm which is no fun.  

     

    Agreed, it's when I'm being fountain farmed that I long for a surrender button the most.

     

    I don't really like the idea of only offering the surrender option when you've met certain criteria for losing hard enough.  For one thing, once the game goes late enough things like kills, towers, and levels start to become unimportant and especially when you consider that this is a game where Divine Rapiers exist.  

     

    Sure, and I wouldn't want the button offered in this situation. In my suggested reality the button wouldn't appear because the "surrender algorithm" would say, hey, it looks like 30% of teams comeback in similar scenarios - so don't offer the option.

     

    Hopefully it would catch the case when you've lost 2 rax, they've still got all you're t3s, and they've been fountain farming for 5 minutes. 

     

    Honestly I don't think the current situation is really that bad, especially once you've ascended out of the bowels of MMR - it's just an idea that's been knocking around my head.

  23. Posted

    At risk of beating the surrender topic into the ground, I wonder if this is something Valve can solve with the monumental amount of data they're collecting (and data-science minions they presumably employ).

     

    If we know, for example, that in 99.99% of games where team A is winning by X towers; Y kills; and Z levels they go on to win, then offer team B a surrender in that situation. I expect it would be more nuanced and use more signals, but you get the idea. The button available all the time, or much of the time, but accelerating through the absolute stomps would be nice.

     

    I think that comebacks (such as TheLastBaron's anecdote) are the main counterargument to a surrender button, but with a sophisticated enough approach using past data, we can reduce the harm in this direction.

     

    I'm not sure that Nick's point that you're denying the winning team their coup de grâce holds true for me - I'd rather get into another game than go through the motions. How does everyone else feel? Do you enjoy killing the ancient, or would you rather get into the next game when it's obviously a done deal?

  24. Posted

    I don't know his genre work, but I do think it's one of the strengths of the man that he's managed to sustain two distinct and rabid fan bases for his genre and other work.

     

    I was always impressed by his range across the two bodies of writing. The intricate character work on his non-M. books seemed so opposed to the style of the M. books, where the characters were for the most part interchangeable, actors for expressing sociological concepts.

     

    I would echo the recommendation of Use of Weapons. I've always thought it was unfortunate, although perhaps not entirely unfair, that his M. work was considered genre fiction rather than capital-L literature (unlike, say, Cloud Atlas or Infinite Jest).