Reyturner

Looks more Batman than AC. Was it you, Mington, that was bemoaning games eschewing bespoke experiences in trying to become systems driven lifestyle games? This game forces me to second that emotion.

Hats are for closers.

Maybe if surrendering prevented you from getting any battle points for the match but still burned point booster time (this mostly to prevent any incentives for item farmers). And if you were limited to how many surrenders you could initiate in a week, like reports. And and, if it counted your surrenders (including initiated surrenders that didn't pass) along with your wins and abandons, if only to mark you forever as a quitter .

I think that gives aid and comfort to the babies; it changes the situation from "I want to quit but there is no way to do it without cost" to "I want to quit but these other players won't allow me to use the feature in the game that permits me to do so without cost".

I can say anecdotally that those games happen though I've never seen a game turn around without the baby (I guess calling these guys "babies" is my fault, sorry) debabbifying at some point in the game due to the enemy throwing their lead or the akf carry coming online and housing fools. I feel like the fast gg is almost always a knee-jerk fight or flight response that is very rarely justified. It can be hard to let go of the narrative in your head about how the game is supposed to go; if you internalize the defeat, it's a self fulfilling prophesy. This all sounds like shitty halftime football speech cliches, but I really think that the players' character (their attitude not their Lord) has a lot to do with Dota being rewarding, if not always "fun". The mechanism design of the game should push players to dig deep and let go of their fear of failure (even if it doesn't necessarily do it nicely). Maybe that's a lesson game design hasn't learned yet and why the game seems so wrong yet efforts to fix the problems seem to diminish the whole. The idea of expecting the player to conform to the game is verboten for a lot of designers. What would Donald Norman think D: !? Maybe it is because it is a very "sports" (the activity, not the fake Scoops) thing to say and ew sports ummaright?

I've had far more games ruined by fast surrenders in HoN than I've had stomps in Dota 2 where I wished I could surrender. Sorry to get all

I read Brannigan's remark about "repecting people's time" as the choice of not including the feature being a failure of the game or the designers. If that's not what he meant then I retract the specific admonishment, but not the argument. I believe that a games like Dota 2, which are reliant on the players to drive the quality of the experience, should not foster behaviors (like choosing to quit when things go bad) that degrade that quality.

There are so many ways to come back (and throw) in Dota 2, but it is hard and you actually have to try. Giving people an easy out with a surrender option totally undermines that. From my experience in HoN, there are way too many people for whom the threshold for hitting the surrender button is the support KSing First Blood or guy x on their team not playing Alch "properly". I could get behind an MLB style "mercy" rule of some kind, but letting one baby kill the team's spirit by hitting the surrender vote button is the worst. I try to act in Dota (especially when i'm solo) the same way I'd act at a pick-up softball game with people I don't really know; I'm not going to commit to a game unless I have the time and I'm willing to see it though. I'm certainly not going to starting yelling at my team to give up because I don't have time to play a losing game any more than I would call people racial epithets and stomp off the field or start intentionally throwing the ball the wrong way, regardless of how "bad" I think my team is. Before you complain how "the game" isn't respecting your time, you should think about how you are respecting the time of the 9 other people you've matched up with. Or play LoL.

Factions actually sounds like a F2P game worth playing. No wonder it isn't making them any money Definitely going to try it and give them some money if it's even sort if good.

can you sack characters you already have? Would there be a reason to? Would you describe any games you play as "grinding"?

How does Factions work? Do you have a persistent team that levels up, or are your units stateless and the progression based on unlocking new, more specialized (powerful?) units?

I look forward to her coverage of Saints Row 4.

On the other hand, I hope nobody saw my ghost get eaten by that mimic.

My only objection to the permadeath of NPCs is that the first time is happens, it is never on purpose and the mechanic for absolving sins is both pretty deep into the game and very unclear. I know I killed Andre once because i'd punched him by accident, ran, rested and the bonfire in hopes of resetting him and then returned to find him still aggro'd. At that point I figured he would be hostile forever and killed him. It was only after reading the wiki to figure out how to resurrect NPCs that I discovered the concept of "sin" and how it affects NPCs (and how you can't resurrect them and fuck now I have to spend 30min killing the Fire Drake again). Killing an important NPC is virtually the only way you can ruin your playthrough in Dark Souls (I don't count losing Souls or Humanity since those are infinite given time). The fact that it was also almost guaranteed to be accidental with no recourse didn't feel in step with the rest of the game's firm but fair ethos. Also, all these mofos are undead, why don't they come back to life

That's kind of cool within the fiction established in Dark Souls (i.e.: Undead go more and more crazy the longer they are hollow). This will force people to spend more time in Human form and make the multiplayer better (especially if they do something that makes passive co-op happen). Still better than having to go back to New Londo Ruins.

If an orthogonal mechanic evokes the emotional reaction in tandem with the emotion the story is intended to evoke, I don't think you can call it ludo-narratively dissonant (though you could call it manipulative). However, we're entering the territory you'll find QTEs residing in, which I would (half seriously) describe as narra-ludicly dissonant; sacrificing the player's gameplay flow to insert a mechanically orthogonal sequence of events intended to invest you in what amounts to a cut-scene. I think something like Dread works because its effective but strange Jenga mechanic is elegant and quick and isn't bumping up against more verisimilitudinous mechanics so there's no gameplay flow to take the player out of.

Orthogonal gameplay is the bread and butter of board and pen and paper games. Dread is an RPG with a very simple conflict resolution mechanic: you play Jenga. Every time you do something beyond your character's ability, you pull a block to succeed. Since knocking over the tower means death, or some other tragic but permanent end to your character, you can refuse to pull a block and fail without tragic permanence (for you anyways). Alternatively you can intentionally smash the tower and sacrifice yourself in exchange for a dramatic success. The build up and subsequent release of tension is perfect for horror games, which, in my experience, struggle to find resonance with a lot of gaming groups.

Just in case you thought 5kg objects, random sloped surfaces and altered gravity would save you.

That's a relief. I feel less bad about making jokes about map awareness, wards, "no MIA, report mid", etc.

alive cast! thumbs reband!

Not having to eat would have zero impact on whether I get fat (I can probably count the times I've eaten because I "needed" too on my invisible third hand that doesn't exist because WOOOO FIRST WORLD). Since I can still sleep if i choose to, sleeping is the clear choice for me.

re: wikis The Dark Souls wiki opened that game up dramatically for me. While DS follows a certain internal logic, it requires some fairly wide leaps to grok it. However, now that I feel like I understand how Dark Souls thinks, I want to play DS2 without spoilers.

It is in a population that cares deeply and vociferously about IGN's GOTY.

I thought the way the items and the economy worked did a great job of conveying an atmosphere of desperation and improvisation.Instead of the vendors having a ubiquitous and infinite supply of coins, you get fragments of identify scrolls and materials to enchant the rusty crap you pulled off of soggy zombies. I'm not sure how much of a time sink this ends up being, but it was neat in the first couple of hours. The way the gear appears on your chatacter is also pretty evocative. It lacks the character specific flair that appears on a Diablo 3 chatacter, but again, it conveys the sense that your toon is making do with found materials (and raises the question of why a random goatman would have a sash tailored to pair perfectly with the greaves you pulled out of a quill beast two farms over).

Quick Question: If you've never played XCOM Enemy Unknown, should you play it through before trying Enemy Within? Or does Enemy Within make the overall XCOM package more complete?