Idle Thumbs Progresscast #9

[gregbrown]

Idle Thumbs Progresscast The Ninth One

Progress continues to be made, and pods continue to be cast. The new website's in progress (thanks Mike and Doug!), and this very weekend we hope to actually put a table in the office so we can set our microphones and mixer down on something. Our postcards came in from the printer (they look lovely), final art came in from Vincent Perea (it looks beautiful), and we're working on finalizing recording date for the EP (so get ready for that).

So, things are progressing nicely, and we continue to be excited as hell. But, without a lot of concrete Kickstarter news for you, we fell back on old habits and decided to talk about games for the entirely of this week's Progresscast. We hope you don't mind! Enjoy discussion of Eminent Domain, Magic The Gathering: Duels of the Planeswalkers, Minecraft, Legend of Grimrock, Guess Who, the ramifications of playtesting, and that summer Jake went to Scout Camp.

If you're looking for A SWEET DIRECT DOWNLOAD LINK, it was right there. Also, like last week, this is a public cast, so feel free to pass it around if you'd like!

Didn't see a thread yet, and it's a pretty sweet episode so I made one!

Edited April 15, 2012 by gregbrown

[dium]

A thread probably wasn't made because progresscasts haven't been given threads. The eighth was an exception.

[subbes]

The ninth was a public cast too, so it probably also deserves a thread.

Presumably one wasn't made because Jake and Chris are trapped under a roll of carpet and three new Aeron chairs while Sean stands nearby, taunting them with his tales of elk.

(SHUT UP THAT'S TOTALLY WHAT HAPPENED)

[Henroid]

Are you sure Jake and Chris weren't at a BMX event or something like that?

Also gonna go out on a limb and say that if a thread doesn't exist for a podcast episode yet, they will get to it. It'll feel weird of regular users start making the threads for some reason.

[Jake]

This is now the official thread for progresscast 9 becaus I forgot to make one. Oops.

Anyway how about that playtesting, or magic cards?

[grumbeld]

I may or may not own over a few thousand magic cards that I've collected over the past 17 years. I am so ashamed, but I can't get rid of them because my friends still love to play Magic, and I don't want to be left out.

[subbes]

I have one Magic card. It is an island.

My gaming strategy is to give myself mana burn, then:

[Patters]

I have one Magic card. It is an island.

My gaming strategy is to give myself mana burn, then:

Mana burn no longer exists.

[Erkki]

Never played Magic the Gathering, but I just tried the MTG game demo on Steam, but I don't like it at all. The UI is horrible, with popups all over the place. Instead of not letting you do something, it will pretend to let you do it, then tell you something in a popup dialog, like "It's not your turn".

[subbes]

Mana burn no longer exists.

oh, well, there goes the first part of my strategy. Kinda takes the fun out of the table flipping part, though.

[Chris]

Never played Magic the Gathering, but I just tried the MTG game demo on Steam, but I don't like it at all. The UI is horrible, with popups all over the place. Instead of not letting you do something, it will pretend to let you do it, then tell you something in a popup dialog, like "It's not your turn".

Cards you can use at a given moment are highlighted. You can always see what's possible for you to do.

[Twig]

Chris' complaints about Magic are exactly my complaints about Magic.

I love the game and its mechanics, but I absolutely detest how going from one game to the next, with the same people, with the same decks, I could either win in five turns, lose in five turns, or have a completely even match, all because of the randomness of shuffling 60+ cards in your deck.

I've had people try to convince me that, no, it's perfectly balanced and reasonable and if you're a better player then you can overcome any hurdle WELL SORRY BUT NO I CAN'T OVERCOME THE HURDLE OF MY OPPONENT GETTING ALL THE BEST CARDS FOR HIS STRATEGY AND ME GETTING NOTHING BUT LAND LAND LAND oh and maybe one monsterthing with one defense and no attack.

One might then argue that maybe I should build my deck better? Well, maybe. But I'm playing Duel of the Planeswalker, and all the decks are prebuilt. Why are they not prebuilt to avoid these sort of things? Maybe the designers are just bad? But I'm pretty sure the decks are actually based on successful decks.

Ugh it is so frustrating.

But, well, at least I never fell into the pitfall of buying Magic cards. (I did buy Pokemon cards. But I gave them all away to some little kid at a local "gym battle" when I got tired of them in like sixth grade.)

[Henroid]

The thing is, the actual composition of your deck is part of the strategy. It's like playing the odds. You can either build a steady deck or a deck that has like two trump cards that require elaborate setups. I use to play the Star Wars CCG (the first one), and I use to play to the latter strategy. And I would constantly get my ass kicked. Meanwhile, my brother was building decks that were capable of covering several different strategies, and while not super strong or swift, it was like assured victory unless I managed to get the right card draws to decimate my opponent with my "fuck you" two or three cards.

But I dunno, overall I still agree with the randomization being an awful component of the game.

[evildoc]

"There's three North Korean versions of us..."

Clearly, you've never listened to "Thumb Lazy!! Super Baboo Megacast!" Recent on-set photography smuggled out at great risk to several conscripted muppets.

Pictured, lead producer considers the inclusion of more bird sound to pep up the hugely popular Mega Wizard Missile Successes segment.

[Sean]

"There's three North Korean versions of us..."

Clearly, you've never listened to "Thumb Lazy!! Super Baboo Megacast!" Recent on-set photography smuggled out at great risk to several conscripted muppets.

Pictured, lead producer considers the inclusion of more bird sound to pep up the hugely popular Mega Wizard Missile Successes segment.

Well done, you.

[sLiPdIsCo]

http://kerbalspaceprogram.com/ Speaking of failed rocket launches, everyone should check this out. I think there's still a free alpha version. If not definitely worth a few bucks.

[vogon]

Chris' complaints about Magic are exactly my complaints about Magic.

I love the game and its mechanics, but I absolutely detest how going from one game to the next, with the same people, with the same decks, I could either win in five turns, lose in five turns, or have a completely even match, all because of the randomness of shuffling 60+ cards in your deck.

I've had people try to convince me that, no, it's perfectly balanced and reasonable and if you're a better player then you can overcome any hurdle WELL SORRY BUT NO I CAN'T OVERCOME THE HURDLE OF MY OPPONENT GETTING ALL THE BEST CARDS FOR HIS STRATEGY AND ME GETTING NOTHING BUT LAND LAND LAND oh and maybe one monsterthing with one defense and no attack.

it's true that there are unwinnable games of Magic.

your deck can be statistically more likely to win than someone else's, but if you get the one-in-a-billion shuffle where all of your land ends up on the top of the deck, you're never going to win. this is true of prebuilt decks, and decks you build, and of every deck that could ever be built.

but there are ways to be doomed to a loss in every game with random components -- you'll be hard-pressed to win a hand of Texas Hold 'em with off-suit 2-3, or to win a game of Chutes and Ladders where you keep rolling 1s.

One might then argue that maybe I should build my deck better? Well, maybe. But I'm playing Duel of the Planeswalker, and all the decks are prebuilt. Why are they not prebuilt to avoid these sort of things? Maybe the designers are just bad? But I'm pretty sure the decks are actually based on successful decks.

Ugh it is so frustrating.

I think the core of it is that Magic is a complex enough game system / collection of systems that it's very hard to extract information about what you're doing wrong without straight-up having a better player than you tutor you about what's going wrong. there are tens of thousands of moving pieces and a ruleset 192 pages long which stand between you and playing optimally in all circumstances.

when the chain of causality between you and a loss could have been introduced by a weak combo; or poor defenses while you were setting the combo up; or a lack of acceleration meaning that you never got enough mana to play it; or the fact that you played Giant Growth at the wrong time and so your enemy chose not to block the dude that was going to kill their huge creature; or you misunderstood and thought that a particular ability wasn't blocked by "this creature cannot be targeted by spells or abilities"; or the combo you were basing your deck on was written up on the Wizards site, and a lot of people in the top 8 at a Grand Prix event have been using it recently, so your opponent built a deck with a card that explicitly breaks that combo... then it suddenly becomes very difficult to pin down exactly why you lost and how you can get better in the future, and there lies frustration.

(personally, I find Magic really compelling, but I don't ever want to spend the time or money to actually become good at it, so I mostly just watch it from the outside.

also, Duels of the Planeswalkers doesn't allow you to select specific mana to pay for a cost, and there is one puzzle for which there is an obvious solution that requires you to be able to do that. so fuck Duels of the Planeswalkers.)

[dium]

I've always had the same attitude towards MTG as you, Vogon; a really compelling game, but one that requires a stupidly large time and money investment that I will never ever consider paying.

I picked up Duels of the Planeswalkers on Steam during the same sale Chris did; it's a game that I can pull up in windowed mode and play 15-45 minutes of, and for that reason it was an excellent investment. But...

(also, Duels of the Planeswalkers doesn't allow you to select specific mana to pay for a cost, and there is one puzzle for which there is an obvious solution that requires you to be able to do that. so fuck Duels of the Planeswalkers.)

I noticed this pretty quickly and it annoyed me a lot.

[Squid Division]

Mana burn no longer exists.

WHA?! Since when?

[evildoc]

People in North Korea heard they should like Idle Thumbs and then they produced their own Idle Thumbs.

Clearly you've never listened to Thumb Lazy!! Super Megacast Show! Photos smuggled out at great risk to conscripted muppets.

Pictured, show producers contemplate adding more bird sound to the popular Mega Wizard Missile Success segment.

[vogon]

WHA?! Since when?

Magic 2010. here's the article all about the change: http://www.wizards.com/magic/magazine/article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/feature/42a

the gist is that players never knew mana burn existed until someone sprung it on them ("heh, heh, noob, you just took two damage :grin:"), cards which allowed you to manipulate your mana pools had to include all sort of mana burn workarounds, and almost nobody ever actually hit mana burn legitimately anyway, so it was largely superfluous.

[Marek]

I like how sad and resigned Big Bird looks in that pic, like he's been forced to do this for a long time.

[berniesbc]

The only customizable card game card I ever owned was a Pokemon card that had "BIKES AND AWESOME FRIENDS RULE!!!" written on it. I found it in the woods while I was in high school and had it in my wallet for ten years until I was robbed at gunpoint. Losing that card was a total bummer.

[Chris]

The only customizable card game card I ever owned was a Pokemon card that had "BIKES AND AWESOME FRIENDS RULE!!!" written on it. I found it in the woods while I was in high school and had it in my wallet for ten years until I was robbed at gunpoint. Losing that card was a total bummer.

This is an incredible post

[dium]

"BIKES AND AWESOME FRIENDS RULE!!!" pretty much sums up the entire aesthetic of Pokemon.