Idle Thumbs 159: Wilson's Ghoulish Countenance

[Gormongous]

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.

 

I don't think Sean's advice was "ditch your friends if they say something sexist," though. I think it was more just knowing that you're not obligated to keep being friends with people who make you chronically uncomfortable, with you acting in good faith and all other things being equal. I agree with that advice in the case of sexism and everywhere else, too.

[Twig]

I'm reminded once again of the fact that Danielle is the best. My new reason for this is that she plays puzzle platformers which is basically my favorite genre. Hurray! I've been meaning to play Full Bore for a while and this is a good reminder. Excellent.

[CaptainFish]

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.

That's what I thought. Looking at the wiki I thought the Mann Co. Store appeared after I stopped playing, but it must've been around, because I remember trading and it launched with trading.

I feel like TF2's journey of implenting items was kinda rocky. They were trying something new, sure, but it always felt pretty rough. Getting new weapons was first tied to achievements, but you had to do all of a set to get the 3rd item. TF2 has pretty good achievement design, but even it has a few which are preposterous to get in a match, which led to achievement servers being the way to circumvent that. Eventually they lowered the achievement requirements to a subset of the full class set, but at that point just cheesing the achievements was more convenient. 

 

Then they introduced drops but no guaranteed drop timer. Something I really like about Dota 2 is that you always get an item at intervals that basically amount to match time played. I remember wishing for a feature like that back when I played a little bit of TF2 every week and got nothing time after time. Crafting was introduced and the amount of items you had to put together to craft things was pretty high. At some point they lowered the requirement for creating scrap metal from 3 to 2, but when it first started I ran out of extras to craft the new weapons that weren't tied to achievements. Crafting in Dota sucks, but I guess it's not quite as bad as TF2 where you needed 81 items to make a hat, initially. Finally they introduced the store and trading and the community weapons, but at that point the best way to make sure you have the new weapons was to idle, something they seem to only have eliminated less than a year ago looking at the wiki.

 

The general system was and still is cool in terms of allowing the community to alter the game and changing up the play from the initial 9 classes, and it's lead to a great system now for TF2 and Dota 2. With the store, marketplace, trading, drops, crafting and chests you have a lot of options for getting the cool stuff on display, it just hasn't always felt that way.

[Henroid]

Regarding Sean deleting rare/valuable TF2 items for charity, it's actually been done at least once in the past: http://www.teamfortress.com/post.php?id=4151

Nice.

 

When I heard that discussion on the podcast I was just beaming with delight. I mean, just making a show of deleting it for nothing wouldn't have the same oomph as a charity drive would be.

[Jake]

They do but they are just aesthetic changes.

That's not true - MannCo Store weapons & defensive items do different things (for instance the boots which give you 0 damage from rocket jumping). It's a more traditional Free To Play item store, but I see people playing with such varied loadouts that it doesn't seem like there is a heavily heavily optimized ultra-build per class. It lets you optimize towards defense, or being a heavier more tank-like version of your class, or just lets you do weird stuff (like the demoman sword which slowly powers up as you collect heads from decapitations).

ALSO the game has really regular unrestricted free item drops simply by playing. I think this is similar to Dota. I don't know if there is a linear timer in TF2, or some more complicated system to determine when you get a drop. I remember it being more complex than "how long you play," because people would abuse it to idle for items.

In my experience (now out of date I admit), the huge variety of items makes the game more daunting to get into and more confusing if you're not up to date on all the weapons, but it doesn't seem to throw the gameplay balance because you can't equip items with the express purpose of leveling up, you just level... different.

[Codicier]

Upon listening to the cast on my phone and then re-reading the cast title on the site homepage, I was confused when I saw that the title was different from what was shown on my phone. At first I assumed it was a typo, but now I realise there is only one explanation. 

 

I must be somehow subscribed to the shadow podcast feed as mentioned in the intro of episode 129 and I must have been receiving hidden Phaedrus messages for months without knowing.

 

I had that bug too except it showed "Winston's" in the podcast app & "Wilson's" when the podcast was actually played

[Oskar]

 as someone who is really into Tf2 seeing those items deleted on stream would be amazing. Me and a whole lot of other tf2 nerds would probably be willing to donate to a charity or something to get to see this. Deleting those items would be the most horrific act imaginable in the steam universe, the biggest sin of them all, please for the love of gaben do it.

[BigJKO]

Upon listening to the cast on my phone and then re-reading the cast title on the site homepage, I was confused when I saw that the title was different from what was shown on my phone. At first I assumed it was a typo, but now I realise there is only one explanation. 

 

I must be somehow subscribed to the shadow podcast feed as mentioned in the intro of episode 129 and I must have been receiving hidden Phaedrus messages for months without knowing.

What iOS app is that? Did the official Podcast app suddenly become simple and pretty?

[Chris]

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.

Wrong podcast.

[feelthedarkness]

spiritually related sidebar to Sean possibly destroying a hat!

 

Fun popular 80s dance band KLF (KLF gonna rock you) once burned a million pounds, on film, representing their total royalties.

 

sub-sidebar: Another fun surrealist act of theirs was performing 3.A.M Eternal at the British Grammies backed by crustlords Extreme Noise Terror, and at the end fired a machine gun (loaded with blanks) almost fulfilling Andre Breton's statement that the truest surrealist act would be randomly firing a gun into a crowd. 

[sclpls]

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.

 

I'm flying to Europe this weekend, and now I'm afraid that the Super Noah's Ark 3D music is going to be stuck in my head for the duration of the flight.

[Reyturner]

Regarding Ground Zeroes I feel like 90% of the discussion on podcasts, twitter and tumblr was about the gross sex stuff, with most of that from people who heard about it and didn't play it. At least I'm pretty sure they didn't play it, as they usually included some variation of "and that's why I won't play it".

I think there wasn't a wider outcry because the vast majority of the people who played it didn't see it. I played through it twice looking for it (without a guide) and didn't see it. The surgery scene was harrowing, but not particularly gendered (if you were unaware of that other content).

I'm not saying that makes it better, just that a lack of a wider outcry despite it selling more than a million copies might not be cause to lose faith in humanity.

[Chris]

I don't think any of us did the "lose faith in humanity" thing; I think that's usually a facile comment to make under any similar circumstance. Danielle mentioned it, we reacted with what is essentially surprise and bemusement, and commented that it didn't seem like the game got much traction generally.

[N1njaSquirrel]

About doujin games, there are a lot out there that are pretty fantastic. Playism has the best repository for Japanese indie games.

 

Steam is getting them slowly though. I'm not really sure how it all works :/

 

I can't remember if the reader mail also mentioned La Mulana, but that game is brill. And almost impossible to complete without a guide.

 

Another great game is Steins;Gate. Apparently it's better than the anime, but it's a visual novel that isn't porn and is actually a really good story.

 

Touhou is a great bullet hell series, and it boggles me as to why Team Shanghai Alice hasn't gotten them on some online store. You can only buy the official games on CD. I have 3 of them. The rest I've pirated because there literally isn't any other way if you're not in Japan. The creator of Touhou (Zun) is pretty interesting, as he's kinda like the Grateful Dead of gaming, because he's ok with people doing whatever they like with his characters, so long as they don't spoil the endings of the games. This pretty much single-handedly created the whole doujinshi boom, and made events like Comike (a japanese doujinshi convention) a huge event. Even today, there is a whole floor in the con dedicated to Touhou. There is an absurd amount of Touhou related stuff that isn't "official". I picked up a doujinshi of Touhou crossed with bioshock. There is even an anime series that looks amazing. Like professionally made. They would have even gotten professional VA's if it wasn't for Zun publicly speaking out against that idea.

 

I'll shut up now and go.

 

side note: As a brit, the first ten minuets of your show was confusing. I still don't know who this Wilson is or what he looks like or this fence.

[Twig]

Wilson.

 

 

The best part about Wilson (besides his Ghoulish Countenance) was during things like the Halloween episodes when he'd dress up in a costume and you still couldn't see his face. I can't remember specifically what he dressed up as or where he positioned himself. I just remember that you never saw his face. It was the best of gags. It was the worst of gags.

[shammack]

I'm pretty sure he dressed as the Phantom of the Opera.

[tegan]

The best part about Wilson (besides his Ghoulish Countenance) was during things like the Halloween episodes when he'd dress up in a costume and you still couldn't see his face. I can't remember specifically what he dressed up as or where he positioned himself. I just remember that you never saw his face. It was the best of gags. It was the worst of gags.

 

I remember on one occasion he carried a tiny fence around with him.

[mikemariano]

I finished the podcast on the train tonight, stifling my laughter as it descended into Super Noah's Ark 3D nonsense.  I must not have stifled it enough because a woman sat in the seat next to mine and asked: "What are you listening to?"

 

I answered: "A podcast."

 

"Oh, I love podcasts.  Which one?"

 

"Idle Thumbs?  It's a video game podcast."

 

"Oh, are they like a hardcore gaming podcast?"

 

"Not really; right now they're talking about a Super Nintendo Noah's Ark game."

 

"I remember that game!  You said this podcast was called Idle Thumbs?  I'll have to look them up."

 

So hopefully I did right by all of you...?

[SecretAsianMan]

I hope you remembered to tell her to rate the podcast on iTunes.

[Merus]

You should have told her to send in her questions to questions@idlethumbs.net.

[SecretAsianMan]

I remember on one occasion he carried a tiny fence around with him.

 

I think you're remembering an after show thing.  They didn't even want him to show his face to the studio audience.

 

[SecretAsianMan]

I both love and hate hearing about TF2 on the cast.  I love hearing it because I'm always interested in hearing Jake's take on that game and world, but also hate it because all I want to do is correct everything that is said.  So here is a bunch of crap about TF2 that is probably only interesting to me.

 

The store does sell almost every item that drops, be it a hat, weapon, or other thing.  The main exception to this is "unusuals".  Those only come from opening crates which must be opened with keys purchased from the store.  The odds of getting a hat from a crate are small, the odds of an unusual hat even smaller.  The thing that makes hats unusual is they have visual effects such as being on fire, floating hearts, shining rays of light etc. 

 

The weapons operate differently from most other shooters because instead of just changing numbers like damage and accuracy, they actually have different effects both positive and negative.  For example the default rocket launcher for the Soldier has a 4 rocket clip.  One of the variants reduces this to 3 rockets, but for every enemy you hit you gain 15 health.  I really like the system because it lets you tailor your loadout to how you play the game.  Certain situations tend to lend themselves to certain types of loadouts so there is some min/maxing but skill will trump almost every time.  Even the stock loadout is viable.  Some promotional items are actually different weapons, some are just skins (like the Sam and Max ones).  In the case of Sean's Lugermorph, because it's self-made it also sparkles.

 

And the boots that Jake said reduce rocket jump damage to 0 actually do a 60% reduction to damage from your own rockets.  There is a weapon that does 0 rocket jump damage, but that's because it's designed to train players how to rocket jump and the rockets do 0 damage to everything.

 

The way drops work is sort of complicated.  Items (like hats and weapons) and crates operate on 2 different drop timers so getting a crate does not decrease the number of items you get.  The item drop timer determines WHEN an item will drop, not IF.  It doesn't look each second and roll a dice to see if you get an item, rather it rolls a dice to determine how long it will be before you get a drop.  On average, it's about an hour.  There is also a weekly time limit of about 10 hours.  If you hit the limit, you won't get any more drops that week.  If you're under the limit, the remainder will get carried over to the next week, but you can't accumulate more than 2 weeks worth of time.  Free-to-play players have access to a limited form of the drop system (no rare items or cosmetic items) but buying anything from the store (such as a key) will make the account a premium one and give access to the full system.  The system requires you to actively accept the dropped item before it will give you another to discourage idling.

 

I won't get into crafting and other stuff because this is already too much information and I doubt anyone is still reading this.

[Dez]

Jake, that pig noise is adorable.

 

I hope I have a video game dream so I can send it in. I miss the dreamcasts.

[Jutranjo]

Last time I played TF2 the general 'best loadout' was the default one. Atleast for most classes, demo's default grenade launcher and stickies were the best, the stupid sword was a gimick, etc. Only the medic had a viable choice for the uber flavour. I guess most of the melee weapons were straight upgrades with negligible downsides like the pickaxe that made you run faster as a soldier, crits on burning targets pyro and medics uber saw that drained uber juice out of victims.

 

Scout, soldier, demo, medic, spy had the best loadout be the default one. I guess pyro needs the axe, engineer I can't remember, heavy needs food badly and sniper's shit regardless of loadout.

[Justin Leego]

I won't get into crafting and other stuff because this is already too much information and I doubt anyone is still reading this.

 

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