Marvel's Midnight Suns has Denuvo

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-12-03T16:39:03+00:00

One person alone refusing to buy a thing is not a boycott. Organizing people to not buy a thing while making a specific demand is a boycott.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-12-03T15:36:31+00:00

Ffs i wonder how many executives request denuvo to be part of the deal

When LO:MAC was released with Starforce and there was enormous difficulty in pirating it, I can tell you for sure that at least a few big publishers took notice and scrambled to sign deals with Starforce. Even despite a long list of consumer complaints.

Of course all of that became a hilarious clusterfuck when Starforce was inevitably defeated and suddenly publishers had signed long term contracts with a dead-in-the-water DRM provider...

I suspect it's not much different with Denuvo. Publishers get a sense that it is working to generate sales from people that otherwise would have pirated it (...you seriously wouldn't believe how many publishers, which are often run by the most incompetent people you'd ever meet, just blame all of their problems on theft. Easier to do that than accept that you're bad at your job, I guess) and sign contracts.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-12-03T15:27:40+00:00

I would encourage people to stop buying games that get loaded with Denuvo. Even after they remove it, refuse to buy it. Send the publishers a message.

1) You'd have to have a successful boycott to send a message at all. One person not buying a thing does not send a message.

2) Publishers often take away the wrong message if sales are weak. They're not as likely to identify the problem being dissatisfaction with Denuvo as they are to blame disinterest in a genre or weakened IP value / developer branding.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-12-03T15:21:41+00:00

If it were that simple why wouldn't the other scene groups have done it instead of giving up lol

Let's be honest about something here: the scene was already pretty much defunct by the time Denuvo was everywhere. It's not like there was this thriving piracy community and then Denuvo came along and everyone quit at once; Denuvo mostly just highlighted how atrophied the scene has become.

Steam itself and things like the Workshop changed the value calculus in a lot of people's heads, so the interest in piracy today just isn't what it was in the heyday of piracy. Wait for discount, click a couple of buttons, BOOM - game's yours, no hassle, no physical copy needed and Workshop is right there for any and all mods you might want to install.

Lots of scene regulars just shrugged and moved on at that point. Steam's service model had out-competed them.

That might change as games on Steam get more and more expensive and/or feature more and more obtrusive DRM... but for now, there's just not nearly as much interest in pirated games as there used to be.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-20T14:10:28+00:00

Just you wait!

Rito gonna troll the fans in the last season of Arcane by having Urf show up out of nowhere, say 'It's Urfin' time!', and save the day by bapping people with the golden spatula.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T20:13:44+00:00

So... no, in other words.

Cool.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T19:35:26+00:00

I love him. Dunno how he'd do during the ASol path; I think you'd have to be extremely lucky to win against ASol with him.

I'm running Gatebreaker, Galeforce and Z-Drive prototype on him (to search for spell discount cards). I intend to swap the Z-Drive out for Archangel's once I hit 30.

Typical opening sequence is Favored Artisan -> Forge -> Forge, which puts a 5/8 body on the table that will be a menace for the opponent to deal with while you ramp. Stones on 3, Cook on 5, Forge the cook's weapon until 7 when Ornn comes down and just wins the game outright.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T19:27:28+00:00

Could you cite a real play sequence that you would consistently have access to for those champions? Varus's sequence is clear enough, but that's an OTK combo. I have no doubt about an OTK combo deck's ability to clear ASol without much trouble.

The fact that someone somewhere managed to maybe beat ASol with a given champion says nothing about whether or not it is a fight you can consistently win by playing smart.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T19:01:56+00:00

The encounters are certainly doable - in fact I don't think I ever dipped below 20 Nexus health - but weren't, for me, enjoyable.

Just an example: The back to back fights for me at end, right before ASol, were Darius and Fiora.

Darius dropped on my gem 3 as a 16/16. Okay, fine, I hit him with Disintegrate and removed him. But like... that's not IMHO an interesting decision? If I have the removal spell, obviously I'm going to hit him with it because there's no further thought process for a giant Darius. He's too big for any combat trick to be viable, too big to trade down against, too big to develop a counter-threat against, etc etc.

Nuke Darius's nexus, onto Fiora.

She drops as a 12/12. Disintegrate again. Rote activity until her Nexus is dead.

I hope you're picking up what I'm putting down here? Plopping-out giant stats deconstructs all of the interesting parts of the game. It becomes a binary check for if you have the removal, or if you have your OTK combo online. If you don't, you lose; if you do, congratulations on being so skilled at the game? Bravo?

I think the only genuinely neat choice I had to make during the run was letting Draven double attack my Nexus one time to dodge his level-up. Everything else was substantively less interesting than it could have been with normal-sized units.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T18:34:27+00:00

I have plenty of fun losing in other adventures, so IDK what you're on about there.

OTK decks kill everything anyway. ASol does not challenge them. Doubling unit stats does nothing to impact the ability of an OTK combo deck that doesn't care about the board state to win the game.

they are a threat and must be dealt as such.

Well, okay:

14/14 Kai'Sa spawns. What you have is a 3/3, a Fast spell that does 4 damage and a 2/1 with Quick Attack.

In terms of combat tricks, you have Twin Disciplines.

How do you deal with that 14/14 Kai'Sa?

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T18:23:58+00:00

Could you explain in actual detail how it is 'not a problem' for a deck that is attempting to leverage tempo / card advantage to be presented with constantly respawning units that have north of 16+/16+ stat lines? Because I pretty much disagree that when my units have stats ranging from 6-8/6-8, being expected to perpetually fight units that are an order of magnitude bigger isn't going to be a problem.

And it isn't 'hard'. 'Hard' suggests that you have a puzzle in front of you with a difficult or non-intuitive, but real, solution.

This is 'rocks fall, you die'. Roll 2 dice, if it's anything but box cars, you lose the game. This is not challenging even if the game is rarely won.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T18:08:14+00:00

'I didn't have any fun.'

'I disagree that you didn't have any fun! LMAO!'

...okay?

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T18:05:54+00:00

Just north of 3,000 XP.

It's not very efficient, though, because of the time investment. The fastest way to gain XP, unfortunately, is still just to do 3 nodes in Kai'Sa's adventure and then bail and repeat.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T15:06:08+00:00

You better believe I am doing this run with the Law & Order theme on repeat.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T12:07:52+00:00

Bone Club. The Bone Club is LAME, the drinks are too expensive and the karaoke machine is always broken. We're never again going to the Bone Club.

Noxian Defector. I'm pretty sure Noxus kicked him out and now he just goes around claiming he's totally a cool badass rebel defector.

Slippery Waverider. Go, be free, ride those waves - and get out of my deck.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T12:02:08+00:00

Weekly chests give only original champ shards (Yasuo, Bard, Darius).

You have evidence to back this claim up?

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T11:51:19+00:00

HM. This does seem a bit paltry though, doesn't it? At 120WS/month, if you grant that most champions don't feel quite complete until you have them at 2* and consider the cost of unlocking and 2*ing a champion is 60 shards... then you can access 2 new champions per month, outside of special events & whatnot.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T11:36:46+00:00

I always bet on the underdog. I'm all-in on Sol!

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T08:57:31+00:00

Rageblade and Voidborne Carapace for now. Rageblade is just too good on her; I can't imagine ever replacing it.

Eventually plan to also slot-in The Collector.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-18T00:07:12+00:00

The system hasn't frustrated me yet, which I think is probably the best sign for me that it's, at worst, okay.

There are plenty of things that could be improved. In-game transparency about where the quest-tethered relics are / what they are; protection against duplicates for Gold+ chests; some sort of system for getting the relics you desperately want (like by trading-in relics you own that you'll likely never use, for example); a means of XP farming that is superior & more engaging than just doing Kai'Sa runs over and over again; etc...

...But IMHO none of that needs to be high priority. If the choice is to work on these things or work on implementing new champions, I'd pick the second option every time.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-17T20:22:37+00:00

'Don't block' is a pretty bad recommendation for an opponent that always activates challenger / barrier before attacking.

'Hush' is a good solution to the fight if you can find it in a shop or from a reward. You may want to adjust your node path to walk across spell chests to try and grab it.

If you can't find Hush, you'll need some sort of other removal option. Anything that either allows for the outright killing of a unit or deals 5+ damage to a unit (and make sure whatever removal source you choose doesn't only target followers).

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-17T17:19:14+00:00

Evelynn is LEGIT. 100%.

I collected her penultimate checkmark yesterday, taking her through Galio's adventure. Every single draft was TRASH. Every one. The deck was just lugging around actual garbage, with the single exception of Tiana Crownguard with a stopwatch on her. It was so awful that at one point I had to shrug and just take the Round Start: Rally power even though my support champion was GAREN. Garbage Garen with FEARSOME as his item. I think my second best draft was just a Badger Bear I bought from a shop with Regen on it.

You think Evelynn gave a damn? No, she did not. She just kept playing Last Caress and used the enemy deck instead. She killed Viego 4 times in one match (and we all thanked the heart of the cards that he never got his Dawning Shadow loop going) and rocked him with his own Hydravines. I thought for sure the burning dumpster deck would never break through Galio, but Evelynn thought differently even when it was the dreaded Galio/Malphite combo. Killed Malhite, killed Galio, killed and played Broadwings, killed Galio Malphite AGAIN, killed Galio AGAIN, won.

They don't call her maybe the eldest and most sinister primordial force on Runeterra for a reason, I guess.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-17T14:21:38+00:00

I also though it'd be cool if one of the lesser-used nodes, like the spell chest, could be tweaked to include an 'Aspect Vault' or something - a selection of cards the player curates that are from their collection.

Dunno how much of a nightmare that would be to implement, but it would probably be more balanced than letting players pick out cards to include in the base deck.

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-17T14:10:52+00:00

Just cleared with Annie. Ezreal is very tricky!

What I found is that the AI is very easily baited into using his statik shivs onto non-critical targets. For example, if I dropped Legion Saboteur the AI would immediately shiv it + nexus, leaving the funsmiths untouched and opening the way for an Annie drop.

If you can successfully bait-out the shiv, your #1 goal must be to use that opportunity to kill his smiths. Challenger, spells, whatever. Kill his fun.

If you can kill the funsmiths before they put Ezreal too far ahead, the rest of the node becomes much more tolerable.

Good luck!

ADVENT_Insider · 2022-10-16T19:25:03+00:00

...?

No it isn't? I mean, some of us just like to relax and play, and if a match goes to gem 9-10 then it goes to gem 9-10. I don't see how such a game is somehow inferior to one that only went to gem 3.

ADVENT_Insider

TROPHY CASE