thestalkinghead

yeah you need all the drops for a badge, but you can get booster packs randomly of you get all the drops and the booster packs have 3 random cards, it will tell you more details if you click on the how do i earn card drops? part in the badges section of steam

lol well i think i do/did, but apparently i most look like Cate Blanchett

but both binding of isaac and psychonauts have a total of 9 cards

i guess i sort of see the world in a more math like way than an english type way (school subjects) eg. i wouldn't say that a raindrop has a story (some would) but there are millions of physics "mechanics" that get it where it is but for me they are just things that happen in the same way that a tiger AI randomly killing a guard AI in a game because of it's programmed mechanics is just things that happen (admittedly cool things that happen) the mission i was on at the time was the story, but as i said i enjoy mechanics and i think things like that happening in a game definitely makes the game better but for me there is a separation between random/chaos theory type things and things that are intentionally scripted, but these things are sort of fundamental worldview things, like i wouldn't call a picture created by a random noise generator art, even if it looked good, but some people would, and i guess a lot of the time this just comes down to our own definition of things and the struggle to translate thought into words, so nobody i right or wrong they are just different perspectives and viewpoints. yeah i can see problems in adding modes that aren't properly balanced and obviously people want to deliver a quality product so i could understand that most people couldn't just add a function and not try and make that function coherently work in the product so it would basically always add more work than just simply making a load function, but most games that have optional hardcore modes don't change much in the game apart from the ability to load/respawn so even if there is a worry that a load function would make the game too easy, it would be the players choice and i think that would usually be enough to satisfy the people that choose that option

yeah while i do appreciate a good story in a game (which is very rare) i am generally interested in mechanics while playing and heavily goal orientated (whether that is my own goal or the games goal) but i would never say that mechanics create a story, i just don't agree with calling emergent gameplay mechanics "story generators" i will set my own rules and play by them but i don't make a story, maybe that is exactly how some people play a game, but for me the story is either part of the game or it isn't a story it's just things that happen, that doug bit was really just a descriptive way of explaining where doug went, he wasn't brave he is AI (that did exactly what i told him to do) and another AI killed him because of the way it was programed, but because i called him doug and he was part of the original crew that AI was more important to me than Emma who was his replacement so i guess i am a bit sentimental about things but it was mainly his lost experience that was the bad part....ramble waffle ramble anyway maybe in conclusion all games should have both "hardcore" mode and "softcore" mode so that people with opposite opinions/views about the subject can get what they want out of a game even if by design they are supposed to be played one way or the other not both

yeah i wouldn't argue for making permafail games default load/save games, and i would be fine with it being called "baby mode" and have an attached warning when you select it that says " warning: this setting could greatly reduce the tension of the game and is not the intended method of play" or something like that, i wouldn't care i get what i want from the game, and it wouldn't even have to be quick saves it could just be a loadable checkpoint, but at least i wouldn't lose everything by making mistakes

it crops the picture itself, and i guess i could keep trying until they are all men, but i kind of think not fudging the results is part of the fun and I'm not worried about it, it was just odd. weird though i choose a picture of myself from when i was younger and this happened

it is a 2d top down game set in space where you control a spaceship that travels through a randomly generated universe with randomly generated events to escape a gigantic unbeatable enemy fleet and warn your allies of it's approach, on your travels you can upgrade your ship, buy new weapons/armour/utilities/crew and your crew (who can be different species that each have different skills/traits) also gains experience by working on specific parts of the ship, you control each crew member individually in real time and also each weapon can target specific parts of enemy ships during battle(shields,weapons oxygen etc.), you also have control of the utilities on your ship and have to designate limited power to different parts of your ship eg. weapons, shields oxygen, surveillance and medibay etc. so for example during battle you may want to power down your medical bay so you have more power for weapons or shields, ships can also be boarded, either the enemy boards your ship or later in the game using upgrades you can board the enemy ship, you can open each door on your ship individually including the airlocks, so if a part of your ship is on fire or has enemies in it you can open the doors to let all the air out and either put out the fire or suffocate the enemies, you can pause time whenever you want so you can tactically think about what to do and issue orders, you can also name your crew and ship, also while playing you may unlock new types of ship that at the start of the game you can choose from. (doug died while bravely putting out a fire in the medibay and getting hit by a missile) and yeah i guess i am just arguing for no reason, but it helped me to figure out what more specifically is my problem with permadeath or actually now i have thought about it more permafail, but i still can't figure out what is the problem with having a save/load function as an option (in a permadeath game), it would always improve my experience and not affect people that don't like/use it

well at least they all have strong jaws, anyway i can sort of see similarities and i expected maybe one or two women but three tries and only one man

i did a couple more because i wasn't happy with the first set of celebrity lookalikes but this still happened, all women except for one awesome exception

i bet you could make a decent 3d game exactly like the swapper, but it would need very constrained level design else the extra axis of movement could be infuriating to handle

i like FTL permadeath didn't limit FTL it was well done and made within a small scope, but permafail would limit any game that tries to be bigger than FTL, if FTL had unlimited resources they would have added whatever they wanted to the game but the bigger and more complex the game got the more apparent the limits of permadeath would be. ultimately i guess i mean it limits the amount of people that would enjoy it because obviously you could spend millions and make a 400 hour long campaign and fill it with millions of weapons/items and have multiple stories and side quests and still have permadeath in it, but like 1 person is going to complete it and only a few people will enjoy it, I'm not saying every game should be mass market but the market of one is stupid. also it would limit what players would do in a game, games have there own kind of magic like hollywood magic in hollywood films the bad guys always miss the protagonist (except a flesh wound to the arm etc.) in computer games there is health and loading but without that magic it loses its fun, i could play a lot of games and just restart the game if i die but that would cause me to play the game totally differently because the priority would always be to stay alive not the objective set by the game, i would play a game in the most gamey way possible and basically break the games illusion and just spend my time manipulating the AI and exploiting mechanics in the game because i could, the safety of loading allows me to be awesome, i can decide to just try out running into the middle of the room and one shot headshoting everybody in the room and if that doesn't work the first time i can either keep trying until i get it perfect or just try another less awesome approach, but if i couldn't load i would find an angle where the AI can't shoot me but i can shoot them (because AI is stupid) i would always use the most lethal/efficient weapon and i would never take any risk i didn't have to, some people play like that anyway so maybe a permadeath option would be a good thing to put in every game (as long as it wasn't balanced for a permadeath game ie. made easier) but forcing permadeath and designing a game around it limits what you can expect players to do.

system shock 2 is the event horizon of Video games and damn it!! i had to see who the website thought i looked like

so isn't super mario bros 2 the citizen kane of games?

don't misinterpret me not liking permafail for not liking a challenge, i believe you can have more challenge with a game with a loading function than a game without, you could say that loading makes a game easy, but you still have to actually do whatever mission/level you are doing you can't load the next mission/level so it is as easy/hard to as it is designed to be, but nobody will design a mission/level in a game with permafail that you have an extremely slim chance of succeeding at because only like 1% of gamers are obsessive enough to replay hours of a game to accomplish one thing, hardly anybody would have the patience to to play most games if there wasn't a load function. I'm not a completionist, so no i have not been arguing that the end goal of a game is to complete it, the end goal of a game it to enjoy it. and i didn't say permafail is a mistake in every game design i said "permafail holds back what you could possibly design a game to be", just think about 90% of every game you have ever played, if there had not been the possibility to load in any capacity and you had to start the game over from the beginning every time you died would you be willing to play the game and if so what would change about how you play it, i think most people wouldn't enjoy playing video games at all and the ones that do would probably not do most of the things in the game because the risk/reward would be so bad that it wouldn't be worth it. i would really be interested in how you think loading holds back the scope of a games design at all let alone more than permafail

i mean if permadeath was removed at design stage, not removing permadeath from a finished game, so like with FTL you could have a more complex story with side quests, you could have multiple bosses and more hard battles and the game could be longer, the permadeath aspect of FTL and other games is sort of a cheap way of hiding how simple the game is and as i said most roguelikes just feel like prototype versions of an rpg. i bought FTL and i felt like it was worth the money so I'm not saying the game sucks because of permadeath and obviously the scope of the game would never be as big as something like the X games or freelancer because it is an indie game, however i do think permafail holds back what you could possibly design a game to be

i guess everyone has their own motivations when playing video games, but when i play FTL i play to win and unlock more ships so i can win with them and i play on easy because the other settings just made the possibility of winning so slim it wasn't worth me putting in the time of playing, and now i have beaten it and unlocked the ships i could i feel like i am done with the game, i think that game could be much more complex and have more strategy to it if you could save and load the game, i feel like permafail holds back the scope of what you could do/achieve in a games design and most games with permafail would be improved if that feature was removed

so are you saying that you play roguelikes the same way you would play pinball, as in the highscore is your goal you set out to achieve?

pinball is a game about getting the highest score with limited resources (balls) the point of the game is a high score (high scores don't really interest me but that is a different discussion) so that wouldn't count as permadeath or permafail as my more accurate description of what i don't like should be called, sports games don't end before the match ends because you make a mistake so it doesn't count(and punishments are like lives in a Video game and they are handed out for cheating), multiplayer matches you respawn and if you don't that doesn't equal permafail because the match is completed before it ends the game (the whole game is one match so it completed the game and you were part of that no matter how small) the whole pointless part is that nothing you did mattered (even just existing as cannon fodder changes things in a multiplier match), i don't rage quit from permafail games i just don't feel like playing again because there is no point (to me)

can someone explain to me what "citizen kane of games" actually means in a non-ironic and ironic way? i wasn't around when citizen kane came out and all i know about it is the plot twist, so is the plot twist the thing? i liked to replay the walking dead, but i liked to make consistent stories for myself so i would decide on an attitude for my next playthrough so it was easy to keep the stories separate in my head

dungeon keeper (more 2 now) is a game i replay constantly, and hitman blood money also but i have almost played that every way (i want to) possible, i come back to plants Vs zombies a lot and black and white, but with most games i play the most recent version of that game (including games that aren't sequels, just similar games) but i think games i have played to death are jagged alliance 2 and fallout 2

well i think to properly explain the reasons for my perspective on why i feel like dying before accomplishing anything is "pointless" i would have to explain my entire life story, but to me games do continue on after the "congratulations you beat the game" screen, also why something that for some people would be a frustrating determination to try harder next time like permadeath just seems pointless to me, is because in short, frustration and stress is something i have worked my whole life to avoid and if i allow myself to get frustrated and annoyed by things bad things happen, so i have developed and internal off switch for stress and frustration and because of that a mechanic like permadeath just makes me feel nothing so it just seems "pointless" it's probably why high stress competitive games don't really do anything for me

i have played a few, but my personal response to dying without the ability to load is something like "well, that was pointless" i would try out a few different character builds to see what they are like as with any RPG but i don't see the point in putting my time into the game any more than just testing character builds because to me dying just makes that time a waste of time (personal opinion, not saying you waste your time playing a game you enjoy) it's a bit like how you wouldn't make a war film about the guy that died before doing anything important, you make the war film about that guy that survived the omaha beach landing not the guy that got shot in the boat. i have my own set of rules for saving and loading, i don't like to use it to cheat, like in XCOM i have a save at the beginning of the mission i keep for if i feel like i should just restart the mission, and another save mid mission when i have cleared an area and am safe, but i do have the ability to cheat save/load if it really comes down to it even though i don't like to do that

even though in XCOM there was never anything like my fictional scenario, there were some missions where the odds of beating it without anybody dying seemed totally impossible without the ability to load it, and i got satisfaction from doing exactly that, i would never have been satisfied with just accepting the loss of my soldiers that just seems like accepting defeat to me and i don't like doing that