Reyturner

>Dynasty Warriors >too complex for [a four year old] Pick one. (I kid... sorta ) Have you considered any of the beat-em-ups on XBLA? Xmen or TMNT 2 might be more his speed (plus unlimited continues) if you're worried about DW frustrating him. Or is the idea to play a game you can enjoy as well, in which case, Dynasty Warriors? Really? Kidding. ...sorta.

There are also multiple internet juggernauts who've built their empires on MS Paint and stick figures. Even if it is a low fi aesthetic, just own it and make it consistent. Maybe make future games modular and standardized enough to be able to get some suffering game artist to give it a makeover in exchange for a few sandwiches and a hug.

Unranked is effectively a scramble compared to Ranked since you need to play 150 Unranked matches before you can start queuing for Ranked. You have an unranked MMR, but since it takes so long for it to plateau, it isn't a reliable read of your skill level for the first few dozen of games. The effect of this is that since this warm-up period gives Valve's MMR system has a chance to get a decent read on your ability you'll be placed more suitable games when you enter ranked. By getting matched with people with similar, accurate MMR and a minimum number of games to get an understanding of the heroes, mechanics and items, you should have a more enjoyable play experience. This will have the effect of eliminating the "Elo Hell" effect (or at least the perceived effect) of a new player tanking their MMR while they don't know how to play and having issues pulling it back up due to the fact that they are getting matched with other low MMR players (a % of whom will be in the same situation they are, but will also include trolls and people who don't give a fuck). Even if you're unlucky enough to end up with an unranked MMR several thousand points too low, you start your Win/Loss ratio (which plaus heavily into your MMR but isn't 100% of it) fresh when you enter ranked. It also has the fringe benefit of making smurffing much less attractive. For something super casual and baby like Counter-Strike or Chess you can have a player-base with no experience level required, but this is Dota! (sarcasm)

the mid is typically there for the fast xp more than the money; hit 6 quick and go kill the other team's carry. carry mid is only viable in lowbie games because people don't have the wherewithal to realize that a carry in the early and even mid game is typically very squishy, and has minimal ability to escape making him vulnerable to ganks (or even to his lane opponent). edit: yeah, what Twig said.

"Games" is as broad a category as "transportation" and, as such, I beleive more granular sub categories are necessary. Is genre even the right word? Is "car" a genre of transportation? I don't accept a definition of "games" that can't accommodate Dota, Dear Esther and Euro Truck Driver. Dividing games by mechanics makes to the most sense too me, even if the terms that end up getting used are dumb (see Lords Management, rogue-like, indie). Narrative content is almost meaningless. Knowing Jamestown is a top down shooter tells me a lot more about what it than knowing it is historic fantasy set in the Elizabethan era in which the New World is Mars. That being said, the way in which narrative is presented, its tone and whether or not there is a ghost can be meaningful. I think you could call Dear Esther a "non-linear impressionistic natrative" for example. It also, to me anyways, makes sense to call out platform, business model (to a certain extent) and the necessity of online connectivity. However, I don't think AAA is very useful as it is typically used dismissively, like "Hollywood" is in film. "Free to play, offline endless runner" is a useful description of Jetpack Joyride; I don't think you could leave any of those adjectives out. "AAA historical scifi epic", while accurate, doesn't tell you a whole lot about what Assassin's Creed is and could also be applied to Civ 5, The Bureau or Eternal Champions.

Dragon's Crown (August 6, 2013) - There was the moral panic surrounding Dragon's Crown's use of boobs but I don't know how much talk there was of how it actually played. I really liked it once I became numb to the cheesecake (ironically, I never became numb to the cheesecake* you make in the cooking mini-game). Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (February 19, 2013) - It hacked, slashed and butt rocked its way into my heart. *ok, you don't actually make cheesecake in the cooking mini-game per se, but goodam that food porn is out of control!

there is real coordination needed. Like WoW boss fight coordination. Axe is great fun in the early waves and actually pretty clutch later but you need to have the holy trinity of tank, dps, support to get anywhere.

Or shoot (literally) hundreds of arrows at them

Is primary damage stat advisable? I'm working on the assumption that param bonus is the most important aspect of a weapon after its animation / move set.EDIT: I some how missed a whole page of comments, so I'll just add that the purpose of the Taurus Demon is a tutorial boss to teach you that there is no such thing as "cheesing" in Dark Souls

Man... I own it on PS3 with the DLC... but for $6 I won't have to change the input on my TV anymore

I think mobile is having a huge impact on how the current young generation, as well as non-core gamers, expect to interface with the games they play. For the core audience, mobile gaming, along with Steam sales and expanded access to places like Brazil and SEA, has had one major impact: games are (or at least they are expected to be) MUCH cheaper, at least at initial purchase. Games cost $20 now, max. Period. Ron Gilbert would be proud. There is literally no reason to pay more these days unless you are a slave to release dates or are you want to support the people who make them. With that shift, tons of new business models are appearing to manipulate people into paying what those games should ACTUALLY cost (or far more); pay what you want, early access, "free to play" (even in games that aren't free), DLC, Kickstarter, etc. Even Playstation+ and now Xbox Live offer free games (with strings) to keep you rooted in their store fronts. Shades of Blockbuster video there; entice people in by taking a loss on the thing you, in theory, exist to sell in the hopes of making your money back on candy (like themes, streaming movies, DLC, etc). I'm interested to know whether the studios, especially the indies, who's games are featured in these deals are actually seeing any positive impact on their own bottom lines. For the most part, modern games should probably cost twice what they do if not more to make up their costs, like Deus Ex: Human Revolution mentioned above, not to mention the disappearance of just about any studio and even publisher that makes anything other than the most successful titles.

Definitely start with the tutorial missions and do a couple of the limited pool matches vs. players. There is a tendency for experienced people to queue in Limited Pool so they can stomp asses, so after a couple of matches, maybe move over to Single Draft or All Pick.

He was making a hilarious existentialism joke about the most ni(etz)che podcast he had (not[?]) listened to.

Heroes of the Storm Revealed at BlizzCon this year, Blizzard's hotly anticipated Hero Brawler is their attempt at reclaiming the lunch Riot and Valve has been eating out from under them for the last few years. It's already earning high praise from journalists and being argued about by the competitive scene. bonus

Going after a more casual Lords Management market (one in which League of Legends already exists no less) seems as fool-hearty as, say, making an MMO in a market where WoW already exists. Also, no matter which way you shake it, the competitive games that take off are the ones that are deep enough to support long term play. One of the issues I run into with Lords Managements that aren't made by crazy people is that game designers don't seem to know how to make them yet; its like you have to break every rule of good design and heuristics in the book to make one that takes off. LoL streamlined the formula, but the community still dug down into the systems, found the mechanics that actually matter, and you still ended up with a game where you have to know a million arbitrary mechanics and meta-game flavours of the week in order to be successful (or at least not flamed). Looking forward to giving it a try, but honestly I'm not sure if this town is big enough for everyone. Hero Brawler though? Really? Come on guys. It is pretty though

Io the Wisp: http://imaginarymarkets.com/%E0%BC%BC-%E3%81%A4-%E2%97%95_%E2%97%95-%E0%BC%BD%E3%81%A4-give-diretide-on-forbes-and-this-item-is-incompatible-with-dota-2/

The happenings over in /r/volvo have been amusing. first the /r/dota guys were all: http://www.reddit.com/r/Volvo/comments/1pp74t/wtf_volvo_why_no_diretide/ then volvo went all: https://twitter.com/volvocarsglobal/statuses/396626888442933248 then valve was all: http://blog.dota2.com/2013/11/not-my-best-work/ then the /r/dota guys were all: http://www.reddit.com/r/Volvo/comments/1q7og8/based_volvo/

Still interested T_T

Awesome! I never have to turn on my PS3 again

I finally understand the middle panel!

Don't get me wrong, QA is a fine job (in a different industry or on a tiny team) but the days of it being the mailroom of games is over. QA was fine when you worked with the team whose games you where testing. Now you're in some publisher barn working on a different game every other week 12 hours a day as a replaceable cog, trying to prove you're worth keeping in favor of 10 people in India for the same money.

Also, don't go into QA. Just saying...

How formalized is the end game? I'm trucking through the PVE without much problem but I'm wondering how deep and structured the PVP is. I've heard the past games were basically 100% community driven with minimal support in game. Has that changed?

I think you'd need to dedicate yourself to the Arena to have much success though; the meta will shift constantly as they introduce new cards and I'm willing to bet there will be a LOT of new cards. However, I can see Arena being able to sustain a player relying on it as their main game without breaking the bank; $2 per go in the arena isn't much, even if you enter every day, if you aren't playing anything else.

It's almost a 1:1 reiteration of the World of Warcraft TCG (which had really fun Raid Decks you played cooperatively vs a single super deck which i'm hoping hoping hoping will become a thing in Hearthstone). The number of rules you need to keep track of can seem daunting but you're only typically dealing with a tiny subset of them at any given time and the game does a great job of visualizing and automating those rules (and they have tool tips that will explain all of them to you at any time, the game is turn based, they can wait ). They've done a brilliant job of making the information readable and find-able. The BIG down side is that the best competitive mode (Arena; in which all players have too draft a fresh deck based on a limited selection of random cards) can't be played for free. This means if you aren't willing to shell up you're going to be stuck with either pre-made decks or grinding to build custom decks (read: decks built based on guides pulled from forums i,e. net decking), which totally nullifies the strategic element. Instead you're just doing the optimum thing based on the information you have each turn and your fate is in the hands of the RNG gods. It's a good time waster though and I look forward to when it is available on a portable device.