Jake

Idle Thumbs 159: Wilson's Ghoulish Countenance

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Re: The Transistor thing where you lose a move instead of dying when you run out of health: The move you lose isn't random, it's always the move with the highest memory cost that overloads first. You'll probably have noticed when equipping stuff that every move has a memory requirement between 1 and 4, and the total cost of an equipped move is that move's cost plus the cost of all the modifiers you have attached to it.

Example: If you equip Cull(), which costs four bars of memory, and then attach Crash() [1 bar] and Jaunt() [3 bars] as modifiers, the total cost of that move is 8 bars. That cost is then used to determine which moves overload first, starting with the most expensive one.

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Saw the podcast title and was really hoping that the Don't Starve Reign of Giants expansion was going to be discussed. 

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Danielle never seems like a guest, just a Thumb who makes occasional appearances.  It is wonderful and I was excited to have her on another episode. 

 

Also, that Jake pig noise.  Gotta have it.

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Nick Breckon, "our friend who works at Telltale." :violin:

 

They're talking about Nick Herman, but that just means ol' Breckon is left out completely.

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The way the steam item conversation was described it reminded me of a Day Z story. Sean basically Tex'd the poor guy. I'd have more sympathy if I didn't think cold call traders weren't incredibly annoying.

The podcast was somewhat of a minefield for me, since I don't want to hear anything about Transistor yet. I had to skip ahead whenever it came up, and dammit if Sean didn't keep returning to it again and again, like some goddamn Columbo, « Oh, and one more thing about Transistor... »


Yeah, this is one of the few times where a developer actually tries to keep something substantial back from prerelease coverage, so I'd much rather just find it out on my inevitable play through.

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Holy shit, that ending.

 

I'm surprised that the Super Noah's Ark 3D guy didn't mention that the game got rereleased as a physical SNES cartridge late last year.

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In reference to the juxtaposition of news and youth-culture formats. The debates between Obama and Romney in 2012 were featured as live-streams on Xbox Live. It wasn't completely passive; players could answer poll questions that seemed to be written during te debate and them see the final percentages.

http://ign.com/articles/2012/10/04/xbox-live-presidential-debate-stats-revealed

I watched the debates this way and I actually enjoyed the polling aspect. It kind of creeps me out though because I imagine that they use the data to deceptively change wording rather than reconsidering unpopular policies.

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I also get strong Dota vibes from Transistor's combat system. The idea of combining various "functions" in surprising ways totally gels with the way Dota treats skills and items.

 

And the way each function is representative of a character and backstory segment reminds me, in turn, of Dark Souls' item description based lore. It's fun seeing the way the Supergiant peeps have been inspired and how they've adopted their inspiration into something really fresh in its own way.

 

The whole losing skills instead of dying mechanic is pretty brilliant. I felt I had to force myself to experiment with any item combo in Bastion that wasn't gun+hammer. The few hours I've played of Transistor thus far have been so much more mechanically varied than my entire time spent with Bastion. (Not to say Bastion's combat wasn't excellent, just a lot more of a 'pick what you like and stick with it' type of scenario)

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Re: The Transistor thing where you lose a move instead of dying when you run out of health: The move you lose isn't random, it's always the move with the highest memory cost that overloads first. You'll probably have noticed when equipping stuff that every move has a memory requirement between 1 and 4, and the total cost of an equipped move is that move's cost plus the cost of all the modifiers you have attached to it.

Example: If you equip Cull(), which costs four bars of memory, and then attach Crash() [1 bar] and Jaunt() [3 bars] as modifiers, the total cost of that move is 8 bars. That cost is then used to determine which moves overload first, starting with the most expensive one.

 

Brad Shoemaker pointed out that all of the numbers referenced in the world are powers of two(128, 512, 1024, etc)Transistor is so damn cool. 

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I watched the debates this way and I actually enjoyed the polling aspect. It kind of creeps me out though because I imagine that they use the data to deceptively change wording rather than reconsidering unpopular policies.

 

Not necessarily; what they'll probably do instead is if they've got enough policies that aren't connecting with the various Gamer voters, they'll introduce new policies targeted at that category.

 

American politics is horrifying even after you get past the gerrymandering and the institutionalised corruption.

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I could be focusing on the posters or decal designs that are all over Cloudbank, but it seems like a cyberpunk world built on an art nouveau city. A little less in the architecture shapes, but in the details.

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Since it was asked, I am someone who didn't like Bastion, and I am not a liar! I didn't like actively hate it or anything, but the game left me cold, and to this day I've never really understood what is good about the game. The art style was nice, and the music was nice, but I didn't get into the story or the narration, I'm not engaged by point and click style action RPGs, and nothing in the game really came together in a way that I found compelling. But whatever, different people have different experiences!

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Since it was asked, I am someone who didn't like Bastion, and I am not a liar! I didn't like actively hate it or anything, but the game left me cold, and to this day I've never really understood what is good about the game. The art style was nice, and the music was nice, but I didn't get into the story or the narration, I'm not engaged by point and click style action RPGs, and nothing in the game really came together in a way that I found compelling. But whatever, different people have different experiences!

 

I didn't enjoy the combat in Bastion much, certainly much less than I'm enjoying Transistor, but it stayed interesting enough for me to finish it anyway.

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Pausing it midway in the TF2 item discussion to say that the only money I ever spent in TF2 (after 400+ hours of play) was for a nametag so I could rename my Scottish Resistance "Gunga Galunga".

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I find Valve's free-to-play position in the market so strange.  On the one hand they use so many of the same obnoxious mechanisms that the worst f2p games use - like having your 'loot' be a chest you can't actually open without buying a key, and you have to spend the money up front to essentially get a single pull from a slot machine.  And they shove the in game purchase stuff in your face all the time.  

 

But. BUT!  

 

Nothing you can buy has any mechanical effect on the gameplay. This is so such an outlier to the rest of the market.  I still feel a little uncomfortable about buying anything in Dota because it so closely resembles so many games that I find totally repugnant for using similar mechanisms that do directly play into gameplay.  (the Compendium being a nice exception here)

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Looking at the episode title, I assumed Wilson was Woodrow Wilson, and that his "Ghoulish Countenance" was some kind of oblique poetic WWI reference.

 

Uh, not so much, I guess.

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Do they not sell weapons in the Mann Co Store? I never interacted with it so I don't know.

 

They do but they are just aesthetic changes.

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I find Valve's free-to-play position in the market so strange.  On the one hand they use so many of the same obnoxious mechanisms that the worst f2p games use - like having your 'loot' be a chest you can't actually open without buying a key, and you have to spend the money up front to essentially get a single pull from a slot machine.  And they shove the in game purchase stuff in your face all the time. 

 

I don't think they've offically said this change is permanent, but the last few "chests" Valve has released for Dota are quite different now. There are no keys, you just open them, and you are guaranteed to not receive duplicate items when you open it until you have at least one of everything the chest offers (besides any "super rare" items that could drop from it). Also, if the chest has full item sets in it, you actually get the full set at once.

 

edit: Here's an example of how a new chest works: http://www.dota2.com/store/itemdetails/10544?r=cd

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They do but they are just aesthetic changes.

Really? Did they change it? Mann Co store definitely used to sell the weapons with actual new mechanics. That's the whole reason it started. Back before community made weapons and all that jazz, people were allegedly just asking to be able to buy the items instead of unlocking them through cheesemints.

Dota store definitely never been game-affecting, as I'm sure you're well aware, but I figured I'd say it just for the sake of saying it.

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Since it was asked, I am someone who didn't like Bastion, and I am not a liar! I didn't like actively hate it or anything, but the game left me cold, and to this day I've never really understood what is good about the game. The art style was nice, and the music was nice, but I didn't get into the story or the narration, I'm not engaged by point and click style action RPGs, and nothing in the game really came together in a way that I found compelling. But whatever, different people have different experiences!

 

The bolded portion seems like it might be the problem. Bastion is way more fun with a controller. So far, Transistor is a lot more amenable to mouse and keyboard, due to its more tactical combat.

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Oh, I actually originally played it on the Xbox with a controller (I later checked it out on the iPad when I felt like trying to give the game another shot). That's me using idiosyncratic jargon to distinguish action RPGs that play similarly to Diablo/Torchlight, etc. from games like Dark Souls that have more expressive movement. I should probably try and think up a better phrase for that sort of thing since the actual control input isn't necessarily what I think of as a defining characteristic of the genre.

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The reader that wrote in about her friends who make sexist comments never specified what the comments were. A few minutes after that conversation, you folks started talking about Playboy and the ubiquity of boobs online, a conversation that would get you reported to HR if you had it in my office.

 

While I agree with Sean's point about the importance of encouraging thoughtful behavior, I can't agree with the suggestion that the reader distance herself from her friends, especially based on the limited amount of information being used to make such a harsh judgment of other people. Danielle's suggestion that the reader take her friends aside individually and talk to them about it is a good one primarily because it comes from a place of respect and understanding. To do otherwise would be to make negative assumptions about the intent behind these comments.

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