Zeusthecat

I've been going through the entire Bombcast back catalog now for around the last 2 years and I'm currently on the June, 2013 episodes (can't believe it took me 2 years to listen to 5 years of Bombcasts!). Whatever negative initial reaction I had to the show is long gone and I absolutely adore these guys now. They really do (or at least did at the point I'm listening) put out some very entertaining content and the mix of personalities is just perfect. Getting through the last few Ryan Davis podcasts is going to be pretty rough though. After listening to him for hours on end every week for the last 2 years its become pretty clear that he was a phenomenal dude. It's so hard to imagine the Bombcast without him.

That is pretty damn fascinating. I stopped playing in the middle of Cataclysm and I remember wondering how crazy the numbers would end up getting a few years out based on the scaling I saw in the couple years I played. If an MMO was faced with the option to either scale numbers up with each release or scale old content down whenever new content is released to keep the high end caps roughly the same (I guess Destiny kind of went this route where 365 used to be max attack and the current max is 320), I wonder if there would be a noticeable difference in how players perceive the scaling and if they perceive the latter as less compelling simply because they are using the same number ranges. I kind of feel like my initial gut reaction to the Destiny re-scaling was slightly negative upon seeing all of the new numbers being lower or around the same as the numbers in year 1. But obviously that was fleeting and my brain pretty quickly adjusted to the new scale.

How do people go about choosing the scale of numbers they use in video games? For instance, kill an enemy in an MMO and you might get 100-200 experience. Get the top of the flag pole in Mario and get 5000 points. Start a new character in an RPG and start with something like 100 HP. Is there a good reason why developers don't just tend to start out with the smallest numbers and scale from there? Why not have 1 XP granted for killing a lower level enemy, 2 for the same level enemy, and 3 for a higher level enemy in an MMO? Why not have your character start with 5 HP and have beginning enemies do 1 damage per attack? Why not 1 point for breaking a brick block in Mario, 5 points for killing an enemy, and 25 points for getting the top of the flag pole? It drives me crazy. I just want small, obvious, and simple to understand numbers.

I feel your pain Dewar (although your list is much more intimidating than mine was when I started). I started tackling my Steam backlog in earnest about a year ago and even with multi-month Destiny interruptions and other distractions I managed to knock out 16 or 17 games since then. I suppose I should update this though with my mini non-Steam backlogs that have cropped up in the last year: PS2: PS3: PS4:

Minecraft.

Yeah, it really was a step back from 2. And I also feel like they padded this game out in the worst way possible by making you go back through areas 2 or 3 more times long after you had already done them to death with other missions. There is one particular area where you have to take jump pads from spot to spot to get to your destination on the outside of some kind of space station and between all the jump pad misdirection and the terrible verticality they tried to implement, it stands out as one of the worst areas I've ever had to deal with in a video game. And their mini map is so inadequate at showing where your valid paths are we would regularly spend like 15-20 minutes just trying to get to the area we needed.

Yeah, just beat the boss on normal. Took 18 hours so I figure I hit enough hours played at that point to shelve it for awhile so I can knock these last games out.

Any idea roughly how many hours it took you to get to the point where you could reliably get to the last area (last meaning that final node on the basic world view, not sure if there's more after that)? I know at 5 hours I'm still taking baby steps here so I'm trying to gauge what the skill curve is. Also, are there some runs that are more or less impossible to beat? I had a couple runs in area 4 last night where I would hit these rooms with 8 enemies that were all rapidly shooting two projectiles each and the layout of rocks in that area gave me almost no room to maneuver. Maybe if I had gotten some better weapon power ups it would have been different but I find it hard to believe I could get good enough to get through that kind of room unscathed.

I'm playing the original with the wrath of the lamb stuff.

Also, any show where a stoner and a stoner dog eat sandwiches as tall as they are is alright in my book.

I finished FTL much faster than anticipated and now have only two games left: Binding of Isaac and Kerbal Space Program. I've put about 5 hours into Binding of Isaac so far and I'm not sure what to think. There are things about the game that make it highly replayable and intriguing but it sometimes just gets to be too much. There seems to be a much higher reliance on luck than in FTL (where even on a bad run I could turn things around) and whenever I get to around the 4th or 5th area, I always hit a random room or two with so much bullshit going on that I feel like there is nothing I can do to avoid being hit a lot while taking out the enemies. It feels kind of oppressive and frustrating especially considering the boss fights have all been pretty easy. Yeah, I could maybe dump 100 hours into this game to get the perfect muscle memory I need to clear everything even with the worst item rolls but that doesn't sound very appealing at this point. I prefer FTL's "get better by getting smarter" to BoI's "get better by having perfect muscle memory and twitch reflexes". Maybe things will turn around though. I'm surprised that I'm not loving this game since I've seen universal praise for it.

What happens when you put those in the toaster? Does a blind, miniature Harrison Ford come out?

Borderlands The Presequel. I think I'm fucking tired of these games. This game was not very fun. It was buggy as hell and completely locked up way too many times, which was made even more annoying by the fact I was playing with some co-workers and we would get out of sync with each others quest progress with all of these lockups and have to redo areas. Beyond that, the controls kind of suck too. Your character has no weight so jumping just feels like a weightless, floating point just going through a jump arc. The double jump is sometimes available and sometimes isn't. Even when it is available it is not a very satisfying double jump. Honestly, the whole time I was playing this I just wished I was playing Destiny instead. The controls and mechanics and loot game here just don't even come close to stacking up to what Destiny has to offer and the experience felt hollow. Also, the characters sucked. Handsome Jack's arc was really lame and predictable and there was this character named Pickle that may have topped Tiny Tina as the most annoying character in a video game. Maybe this game just hit me at the wrong time or maybe my standards have just gotten higher but screw this game. FTL: Faster Than Light. This game was absolutely amazing and I loved every second of it. I don't know if I just had a lucky run at the end or what but the final boss ended up being a joke. I had 4 shield bubbles, 45% evade, 2 defense drones, cloaking, and a teleporter and through all three phases of the boss fight I took maybe 4 whole points of hull damage. I got obliterated the first time I faced him but that second time it wasn't even close. Since I'm trying to finish my backlog I'm calling this one finished. I will probably jump back in and try some other ships at some point or maybe possibly try hard mode (although normal mode hit that difficulty sweet spot almost perfectly).

Personally, I love this thread. I tend to be way out of touch with what is considered a 'classic' and tend to find out after the fact that I am an idiot for not liking a random thing I watched that others apparently consider a masterpiece. This thread makes me feel like slightly less of an idiot. And while we're at it, The Fifth Element is also partially cool but kind of garbage. Bruce Willis just has this slightly rapey vibe throughout the movie that has always bothered me.

I think Pitch Black is overrated. It's kind of corny, Vin Diesel is kind of a turd, and it bothered me endlessly that they luck out and find these glowing slugs that produce enough light to repel the alien bugs and the alien bugs are too stupid to just sweep in and scatter them quickly before the light could damage them. With as vicious as they are, they could have easily overwhelmed them and killed them all without barely sustaining more than a sunburn. Also, I may just not like these types of movies.

Since Black Spindle was up yesterday, I logged on with a couple friends to make a run at it and we destroyed it on our first attempt after coming up short the last time it was available. The key to our victory was dropping a titan bubble with armor of light on the boss and two of us spamming our exotic sword special attacks until he was dead. Took about 15 seconds to bring him from a little over half health to dead. Then we quickly mopped up the rest of the adds and had enough extra time to do a quick nightfall run. It was quite refreshing to have a nice challenge again that actually gave something I needed. Seeing how worthwhile trials is looking now, I think we're gonna make a run at that this weekend if we can't find enough people for an evening raid. This game is really good at tricking me into thinking I'm done for awhile and then dripping just enough content to pull me back in. Still holding out hope for some new PoE stuff soon though.

Oh awesome. Really glad that's the case because I always rename my characters to fit within a certain theme that I'd rather other people not have to be subjected to.

How are the random crew member names in FTL generated? I've gotten some Nick Breckons and Chris Remos in my crew so I assume either the developer is a fan of Idle Thumbs or the names are pulled from crew member names that other people on your friend list have used.

We had a fucking earthquake last night. In Phoenix. I've never had that experience before and because it's not something that ever really happens here, it freaked me out and actually got me to stop playing FTL and go to bed at a decent time.

After thinking about this a bit more and seeing some of the responses here, I think I should soften by stance a bit. The root of my frustrations with this ad business is how it has slowly morphed from easily ignored banner ads and sidebar ads to this nonsense we have now where you go to a site and before you can even start reading anything a stupid video player takes over your screen to tell you about how you should refuel with Mt. Dew, another video is autoplaying with really loud audio somewhere further down the page about life insurance, and then another ad is just stuck to your screen and stutters around, always staying in view while you try to scroll down the page. It is obnoxious and the few sites that I do frequent on the internet are really bad with that shit (I'm so tired of hearing about NOS every time I click a Polygon article). I kind of feel like if a lot of these websites are going to disrespect their audience with such obtrusive bullshit, then I am morally within my right to circumvent that. Given that I only frequent about 4 websites (I really only use the internet for video game news and coming here) and all of those (with the exception of this site) are pretty egregious with the way they implement advertising, I just have adblock blocking everything. However, going off of what Ben mentioned, if there is a way to configure adblock to only let certain types of ads through, I think I could get behind that as there are certainly types of ads that don't bother me at all and I wouldn't mind leaving them be. I'll look into that more now that I know that is actually possible. As far as podcast ads go, I am totally cool with those and in some cases I actually kind of like them. That is classy and respectful advertising (at least the way the thumbs handle it). They actually use the products, screen what they are willing to advertise to their audience ahead of time, and make it perfectly clear that if you go try out that product using a discount code it will go towards funding more Idle Thumbs content. That is advertising at its best. If websites could adopt something similar, or maybe even just give users the option when they first browse to the site to specify how much advertising they are willing to put up with, while making it clear how that goes towards funding more content on the site, I would totally get behind that too. Also, I might be able to get behind subscriptions for certain websites. Especially if it cut down on the types 'clickbait' of articles that websites tend to post so they can generate max views for max revenue.

I don't know why I'm responding either Twig! Me and my stupid opinions.

But that whole system only exists because it succeeds in manipulating enough people for it to be viable. I get that some people rely on that model to pay for hosting fees or whatever but it isn't exactly a noble business model and I don't think people have a moral obligation to participate in it.

I learned today that I am supposed to feel guilty for using an ad blocker on my browser. Screw that. Until websites stop plastering invasive, auto play ads all over the goddamn place, I will always run adblock, just like I would turn the tv to another channel when a commercial comes on. I've seen the arguments against my stance and I'm just not convinced. First, even if I am not using ad block, I ignore every ad I see. So it's not like that advertising is reaching me and getting me to go buy some product. But because the system is set up so that every ad view generates some tiny amount of revenue for the content creator (because these ad companies rely on a handful of whales (not unlike how a lot of free to play games work (which people are much less likely to defend)) to go buy their shit and justify the money they are paying out to content creators for each of these views), the sheer fact that I am not subjecting myself to the ads means that that is one less revenue unit that the content creator sees. But who is really being unfair here? I feel like it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to say that content creators that rely on that kind of revenue and make their livings off the back of a scammy advertising system are kind of at the mercy of the people that decide to view their content and people that decide to circumvent that system are well within their moral rights to do so (especially considering how invasive ads are now and the risk of malware and other adverse effects from crazy ads autoplaying and jumping all over the screen). The only reason they make a living doing this is because ad companies are willing to give them money for each person that views one of their ads on that page or video. And the only reason ad companies are willing to give them money is because they know they can manipulate a certain percentage of people to buy their shit through clever advertising and psychological tricks. It's kind of gross and it's a business model I'm so sick of. I realize my opinion won't resonate very well with a lot of people and that options for monetizing internet entertainment are limited. But putting an entertaining thing on the internet for anyone to see should not automatically entitle you to some amount of money for each and every person that views that content, just like people that only rely on donations and don't use ads are not automatically entitled to a donation from each and every person that watches their content.

I had no intention of playing this game for awhile since I've got a bunch of other games in the hopper, but one of my bosses at work gave me an unopened copy of the day one edition of MGSV since he had a shipping delay and bought a second copy at the store so he didn't have to wait. The collector in me can't resist someone just giving me a free game to add to my collection but the completionist in me weeps for my backlog. I have the worst combination of personality traits when it comes to obtaining games and then having the overwhelming urge to complete all of them. I suppose this is a game I need to play though based on literally every testimonial I've heard from every person that's touched it.

Thanks for this post. All of this stuff has been majorly frustrating to me lately. Many people on the internet these days seem to expect others to all basically have the qualities of a Super Jesus, and if they aren't then everything about them must just be terrible. Every single person I've gotten to know has terrible opinions about certain things and I still have terrible opinions about certain things. People might like the idea of living in a massive echo chamber but a lot of these "terrible people" are often people that are worth having in your life. My best friend is a republican with some opinions that I strongly disagree with but so what? He's a pretty cool dude in a whole bunch of other ways. And honestly, Twitter has made this problem so much worse.