Latrine

Yeah, the discussion of the philosophical/spiritual stuff in the game was really interesting. Hadn't seen that really covered anywhere else and I never bothered to look up myself who the people in those clips were.

A few DS2 clips from me, mostly just funny moments and not any major point in the game: https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/GlamorousFlamingoVoHiYo Nick reads donations (thanks to whoever tweeted this one out on @Idlethumbs, it's at 260 plays :)) https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/PricklyDuckDatSheffy There's no way https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/FineBarracudaCorgiDerp RNG manipulation

Of course Nick would find nothing interesting about putting a sword through a wriggling tied-up man.

By the way did Nick ever use the Key to the Embedded? I don't think there's much reward for it but it's such a bizarre sequence. Edit: Whoops, posted this in the wrong thread. Oh well, minor question so I'll just leave this here.

Steve played some Resident Evil IV with Sean on a Skype call on Steve's channel: https://clips.twitch.tv/stevegaynor/ShySardineKeepo

Nick reads donations from chat. https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/GlamorousFlamingoVoHiYo "There's no way that they would do that to me." https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/PricklyDuckDatSheffy Manipulating RNG. https://clips.twitch.tv/idlethumbs/FineBarracudaCorgiDerp

Holy shit, that's scary.

I second the SSD, it makes a big difference on load times and prices on SATA III SSDs are pretty reasonable now. You can always keep the HDD for large media and fit most things on a 256 or 512 GB SSD. See here: http://www.hardware-revolution.com/best-sdd-solid-state-drive-january-2017/#BestValue I also agree that you can probably save money on the CPU. Most modern games are not very CPU intensive. Also the 7XXX series of CPUs just came out so you'll get slightly better price/performance with the newer generation. Since you're downsizing you should double check that your old CPU cooler and graphics card will fit together. I haven't tried building a mini system but also keep in mind that you may have to be more careful about cable management. It would help if your old PSU has modular cables that you can remove if you don't use them all. cakedotavi: Not sure about 10nm, the 7th Gen Kaby Lake is 14nm and reports are that it isn't much of an upgrade from the 6th gen, it's the "tock" in Intel's "tick tock" release cycle. Like I said above, games aren't super CPU intensive and there hasn't been much difference you can feel over the past 5 years in CPUs. I'm still using a 3770K and haven't felt a need to make a big jump yet there either. I think that unless you're making the jump to VR or HDR 4K gaming then an upgrade isn't really needed and it may be better to wait for the next generation to make that jump.

Sega Bass Fishing was a fun one to watch because of its ridiculousness. It's a short game but super RNG based because the big fish that can quickly end a level has a random spawn location and can be uncooperative to the run. It's also played with a fishing reel controller.

Patches the Pirate is one of the best legendaries in the new set. Pirate Warrior is one of the two most popular decks right now and I think Patches is one of only two legendaries in that deck. The reason it's good is because you'll often play a pirate on turn 1 and basically get a free 1/1 with charge for absolutely no cost, both no mana and no card used. In fact it has a benefit in that it thins your deck making it so that you effectively play a 29 card deck, making it more likely to draw one of your better cards. Aggro decks would only play 20 cards if they could. Also early board clears that deal with both the pirate you play and Patches are rare so it's likely that he'll do somewhere between 3-5 face damage for free. It remains to be seen if Pirate Warrior will get countered in the meta, but for now it's one of the top decks that's inexpensive to build and easy to play.

The game still feels like a grind fest to me, particularly getting units to afford bigger ships/freighters, but the base building adds a good chunk of things to do. All of the people you can recruit to your base have little quest chains where you have to go find specific resources to unlock their next dingus. However mostly they seem to unlock things for base building and most of the actual base building appears to be purely cosmetic. Apparently the hydroponics lab adds a farming element where you can get some of the more expensive resources easily but I haven't gotten to it yet because everything takes forever to do in this game. I also haven't unlocked the auto-miners yet so I don't know how those work either. Some observations from what I've seen so far: - They removed the guaranteed suit space upgrade in the space stations. These were convenient and gave an incentive to keep pressing forward. - Teleporting between any space station and your base is pretty convenient. I had to go to another system with more varied planets to find things I need for the quests. - Signal beacons are now a craftable item. You can select one of four specific choices rather than four vague categories, but it doesn't seem to guarantee the same diversity of options. Haven't used these enough to really tell how big this change is. - Certain resources require new upgrades from the base building quests that take up a suit slot and a multi-tool slot for no real reason. - Many new resources depend on the type of planet (hot/ice/toxic/radiation) or a specific area (caves/underwater) or from combat. This gives a reason to go to place that had little reward before, but adds a ton more crap to the game. - Components don't stack in your suit, only in your ship or storage slots. - Components stack up to 5 in your ship and up to 10 in storage. This is a very nice quality of life change,but it also shows how ridiculous the old system was. I originally stopped collecting Atlas Stones because of this. - You can construct up to 10 storage boxes that have 5 slots which have double the capacity of ship slots. I haven't gotten a freighter yet but apparently they also come with 10+ storage sized slots. Perfect place to stash Atlas Stones. - Some of the new crafting things for base building require the new location specific resources so you need to farm up a supply of them. Haven't seen them in trading at all. - Most base building components use 50-100 iron so you need to get a huge supply of that. It's relatively easy to farm with grenades but still quite a bit if you want to build large bases outside of creative mode. - Deleting base components seems to give a full refund of resources which is good for fixing mistakes. - Pulse engines now use iron instead of thamium and asteroids mostly give iron instead of thamium now. Not sure what the reason is for this change but good to keep in mind.

Yeah, I'm still playing but haven't had time to rank up very much recently. Mostly just clear out quests when I can. The current meta does feel stale with mid-range shaman dominating, that usually happens before an expansion. Hopefully MSG will shake things up soon and there will be an even bigger shake up when Standard rotates on the next expansion. I've only been playing super low rank Wild to get rid of crappy but easy to do quests like play 10 Pirates. But from what I hear it's already dominated by previous top meta decks like Secret Paladin. Personally I'm hoping Wild will eventually get its own weird overpowered decks that are only possible in Wild, that'll make it more interesting than what it is now. But I don't think it will ever be balanced to the same degree as Standard is. I wouldn't recommend crafting any legendary within the first few weeks, you never know how the meta is going to shake out. There's probably some important Classic legendary cards that would be a better choice. Also at this point looking at the currently released Legendary cards, there isn't any I would guess would definitely make an impact since they pretty much all require the other new cards to build a new deck around.

Alas, I'm on US. I think playing immediately after an expansion launch is when the meta is most in flux, which is both exciting but makes it harder to adapt. Usually I'm happy to hit rank 15 for the golden rare, but the post-launch excitement got me to climb further the past couple weekends. I keep dreaming of hitting Legend someday but apparently the climb from 5 to Legend is as long as 20 to 5 and against better opponents. I just don't have the time to do that in one month. If you really want to climb high then I recommend checking out the meta snapshot at www.tempostorm.com. It's not always 100% accurate, particularly at low to mid-tier ranks, but it gives you a lot more stats than you could hope to gather playing on your own. For example, even though they list Malygos Druid was the top deck right now (and I crafted a Fandral just to play it), the meta had already adapted and most people were playing decks that had good matchups against it. I think part of the reason I climbed to rank 5 is because I noticed Mid-Range Shaman has good matchups against most of the decks I was failing to beat with Malygos Druid. And of course if you want to watch high level play there's always www.twitch.tv and www.youtube.com, I admit I often find it easier to sit down and watch than play myself. Although note that the most popular streamers are not necessarily the most skilled or best at explaining what they're doing. But they're generally still high level players and one way to practice is to try to predict what plays they'll make before they make them.

First time since close to the launch of the game that I've gotten all the way up to Rank 5. Just had a fun game as Mid-Range Shaman against Miracle Rogue: https://hsreplay.net/replay/iNoCUNbXLfsvXLdSJUyqDQ It was a knockdown drag-out game that I won with only 1 HP remaining. Also these replays that let you see your opponent's hand are pretty cool, although not quite as fun to watch as everything happening in-game.

Hmm, the difficulty of getting a ship with more slots (either through grinding units or transmission towers) and getting the last few blueprints is starting to wear on me. I enjoy getting to new types of planets still, but most of the game just feels like farming at this point. I could probably just focus on getting to the end game but that also seems like a grind without much payoff. I might wait until the next content update in the hopes that they rebalance some of these things.

Yeah, the fact that it's a computer video game gives Hearthstone the advantage that it can have more random effects than physical card games like Magic and they lean into that. But I think the bigger problem with Yogg-Saron isn't that its effects are random but that it reduces the importance of the early game. The Yogg player just needs to play enough spells to survive in order to have a Yogg that is pretty likely to turn around the game. I guess that's how all control decks work, it just feels more annoying when you know that every removal spell they cast is making their Yogg better and you can't do much about it.

Yeah, the fundamental problem with most card games like Hearthstone is the luck of the draw can determine the outcome of a game. The key to enjoying these kinds of games is to accept the randomness in any given game and think more about being as consistent as possible over time. The randomness gives variety to each game and lets crazy things happen while the snowball nature of the game makes it so that a game you've already lost doesn't drag out too long. But you do never really get over the feeling of losing to what feels like one lucky moment. Have you tried arena? It's not easy but you're as likely to have good cards as your opponent. If you can average 3-4+ wins then you're not really losing the extra gold value for the entrance free. I used to spend gold on arena exclusively when I first started playing to build up my initial collection, but these days I just don't want to play through that many arena runs.

It's possible to play around ranks 20-15 with a basic deck but to be really competitive in standard you need some recent cards. Arena is still fun and may be easier to get into because there are tools like Heartharena and Hearthstone Deck Tracker + Arena Helper that help you draft the better quality cards. The overall average skill level of people still playing this game keeps getting higher so that may be a barrier to entry, but a is dropping in two weeks and that might be a good jumping on point. Also if anyone new wants to jump on, here's my referral link. You get a free pack and I get a murloc hero portrait.

Steam Controller has replaced the wired 360 controller for me. Using the left trackpad as a d-pad isn't ideal, but it feels better to me than the 360's mushy d-pad. The haptics give a decent amount of feedback. I even played some Crypt of the Necrodancer with it. Street Fighter was still kind of hopeless for me though. Using the right trackpad as a thumbstick camera control feels awkward to me, but fortunately there's an alternate option to have it act like mouse look and that feels even better to me as a long time mouse user. The grip buttons under the controller aren't often used but they're great in some more complex action games like Rocket League and Dark Souls where you need to hold down a button while doing other things. Best thing for me was leaving behind the claw grip for running + camera control in Dark Souls. Customization can be fiddly, default controls for some games aren't great, but you can often quickly find upvoted control setups that are better and it's nice to be able to tune those further to your liking. There was one game where I made my own mix of the top two control schemes. Overall I'd say that the Steam Controller isn't a must upgrade but $35 isn't bad for an extra controller. I bought it just to have a second controller and play around with Valve's new experiment. If you want the best then maybe DS4 might be a better controller in terms of the ergonomic feel to it and it looks like it's also on sale now for $45.

That's a key point that often gets lost in the general discussion of the Souls games. Part of it is the negative stigma associated with summoning help (Nick refused to do it after someone said it was for "quitters"). But if you actually use that system it totally transforms the game experience into something much more accessible. When I get to a new boss I usually try putting down my summon sign before attempting it myself. (One thing I don't like about DS3 vs DS2 is that you don't refill your Estus on a successful boss kill). I would like to see what a reviewer would think of the game if they tried to do co-op as much as possible.

I had the craziest Tavern Brawl game, (for context the current tavern brawl is both players have 30 Raven Idols. 1 mana, choose to discover a minion or discover a spell). My opponent was a Hunter who early game played Brann + Gelbin Mekkatorque and summoned two 0/3 Repair Bots that heal a random target for 6 at end of turn which made for an interesting board state. He also played two other Gelbins later in the game. I didn't have much early game to counter, but I did discover three Elise Starseekers, so I just had to hold out with priest removal until the end game. Sea Giants and King Crushes fell to Lightbomb after Lightbomb with smaller minions falling to weaker removal and Shadowform's Mind Shatter hero power. The lich Kel'thuzad was Entombed into my deck and played the turn before I slammed the Golden Monkey, which luckily I got after my first Map. Confuse was able to clear out the Repair Bots and the rest of his board and paved the way for victory with an onslaught of legendary minions. Also the nerfs for Standard have been announced and they're pretty interesting. Druid and to a lesser extent Rogue are getting some big shakeups, and the nerfs to Owl and BGH will make bigger slower minions more viable. It's not clear if some of the other nerfs like the one on Knife Juggler will really shake things up, but they'll certainly have some impact. I don't think we have too many active players here but anyone planning to check out Hearthstone when the changes drop?

Rob mentioned this but it bears expanding that Dark Souls is not just a "difficult" game. It's different from games like Super Meat Boy and apparently Hyper Light Drifter that have a tight retry loop on each challenge. Dark Souls is a fantasy game and the experience it's trying to deliver is of really being a medieval adventurer and the tropes that come with it, including dastardly traps and ambushes. If you were really an adventurer who blunders into an ambush of molotov cocktails then your experience should be dire. The fact that the game simply punishes you by dropping your souls than actually just ending the game is a compromise for the sake of the player. (Roguelikes like Spelunky actually do just kill you but make other design concessions so it doesn't feel too bad.) But the punishment has to be there so you'd be as fearful and cautious of danger as you should be if you were really there. In more mainstream games you'd most likely only see these kinds of things in cutscenes where the hero automatically evades the trap (or with a few quick-time prompts) giving you that sensation vicariously but not really experientially. That distinction is what makes the Souls games special as an experience and in terms of game design. Also while it may be the case that there are some Souls players who have an elitist attitude about people who enjoy the game, I don't think it's fair to paint us all with that broad brush. I think it's more often the case that Souls fans are just enthusiastic about the games and want to explain why we enjoy it even when it can be a painful experience at times.

People who play Souls games are not just people who have the free time of a child and you don't need to play multiple hours straight to improve. In fact, you don't even need to really improve much to beat the Souls games, for example see . The Dark Souls games may take a while to play through, but they don't take ludicrously more time than other big single player RPGs. I can understand that everyone chooses to spend their time differently, but I think there's only a small correlation between the amount of free time you have and whether you choose to fill it with a leisure activity that asks for a patient mindset. Also I'd say that once you get good at the Souls games, the skills are pretty transferable to new ones in the series. It's like learning a new game genre like FPS or RTS. Once you get over the initial learning curve you make steady progress like most other games. For me, making that initial investment to learn a new system has been worth it over just enjoying the convenience of the familiar.

Very cool, I noticed some of the repeated themes and melodies but it's nice to see it all broken down like that. Also another interesting thing I found out about the music is that the track Megalovania actually appeared in Toby Fox's earlier work as an Earthbound rom hacker and animation for Homestuck, a webcomic. You can hear it here, although this apparently contains massive spoilers for Homestuck if you care about that:

Very cool, fun pilot episode and the VR interactions made it more enjoyable than I would have expected. You've probably considered it but you could have your own version on Youtube with like 3D and 360 video support. It's nice that someone uploaded episode zero but in the future you and other content creators would want to control that distribution. Also reminds me of this thing that Microsoft released recently: