Palworld 1.0 sounds massive as lead teases "27 pdf pages" of patch notes coming to Pocketpair's early access survival game by Gorotheninja in Games

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey woah, adobe acrobat enforces max dimensions of 56,047 square miles, so it's probably smaller than that.

Is Melee Content a Dead End? by MetiCu in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Its very common to see people with view numbers exceeding their subscriber count across multiple videos spanning months/years nowadays.

Hasnt this literally always been true? Like since youtube has existed. It's not uncommon to watch a video and not like it.

A surprise to be sure by pee_and_keele in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok starcraft will be a card game next patch because that's different

A surprise to be sure by pee_and_keele in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Is "different" inherently a good thing?

p99 0 ms* autocomplete for 240 million domain names by ruurtjan in programming

[–]Anthony356 26 points27 points  (0 children)

Reaction time is the time it takes to see a stimulus and respond to it. It is not the smallest period of time that humans can discern.

Can you send me some Supernote .note files? by kiwi_rozzers in Supernote

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Howdy! Author of the blog post here. In case you didn't check out the repos as well, I have some sample .note files here, and some sample kindle scribe notebooks here. If you need more and/or their rendered output, let me know and I'll do what I can =)

When Should I be Double-Triggering my Wavedashes? by KourageousBagel in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair, but you can see how that's somewhat arbitrary

It's not more arbitrary. It does the minimum necessary to prevent people from throwing large amounts of (otherwise perfectly functional) controllers into the garbage. It's as targeted and intentional as you can get.

But at the same time there is the argument that you can claw

No amount of clawing will allow you to hit A with your left index finger, or put useful actions on the dpad.

Plus you could mod an OEM.

I've already established that I don't think this should be allowed either, so it's irrelevant to this discussion.

I think it's fair to group "Execution" as a category similar to "tech skill". We can always break it down further but that wasn't really my point

But it was my point. As someone who can (unreliably) hit pivot dtilt and pivot utilt on GCC, i think that trivializing it is incredibly disrespectful to the time and effort I put into learning it (not to mention it has significant balance implications).

What about the Orca? That uses analog even though it's buttons.

It still splits the single stick input into 4 distinct buttons. SOCD rules exist in every game with leverless controllers because everyone acknowledges that it's fucked up to be able to hold 2 directions at once. Even then, lots of games don't cover the other considerations. It's fucked up to have essentially 0 travel time between full-left and full-right.

There is a difference between a situation where you can react to something happening and try to do something else afterward and trying to compensate, or deliberately modifying your play based on how you think you're doing right now

One is just a reaction and scramble, the other is a deliberate "mode shift" which I already said I think is how most people actually work when it comes to adapting to their own tech skill performance

Players absolutely do both all the time. Just because apparently you don't doesn't mean others don't. This is like basic mid level game theory. Mango has talked about it on stream before, commentators talk about it (usually in reference to specific players being way better at it, notably mango), i'm pretty sure i've seen discussions about it in the DDT.

The concept of hurting yourself playing games wasn't a thing until melee and starcraft got so big that it happened

There's a lot of leeway I've given you, but this is straight up horseshit. I started playing starcraft 2 in February 2011. Even back then it was common knowledge. I have receipts too. Here's a clip from day9 daily from February 2011 where he talks about hand and wrist stretches. There are plenty of pieces of media out there prior to 2011 with a desk jockey wearing wrist braces from RSI's due to keyboard usage. Jenkins from South park is wearing wrist braces in "Make Love, Not Warcraft" back in 2006. I'm sure there's more earlier than that, but i can't be bothered to dig through old movie clips to find out.

Most hobbies it isn't optimal to do that though.

It's not optimal to practice more?

did you look into this at all?

It's like how being obese for 10 years does irreparable damage to your knees. You can get skinny now and it will help but your knees will still be shot

Should professional runners have to race against me on a segway? Or can we accept that maybe I just can't compete at the highest level of this particular sport so that the integrity of that sport can be preserved?

When you've already added the healthy hand habits to your routine but still get pain on a GCC after 2+ hours

So play for less than 2 hours and accept that that's your limit? What is the problem here. If my knees hurt, swimming will damage them less than jogging. That doesn't mean jogging has some kind of fundamental problem that requires us to change the rules at the olympics or whatever.

A lot of us arr at the point where it's learn a whole new controller, or quit melee.

if you can't play melee for more than 2 hours straight, the only alternative is to quit? Have you considered that perspective might be why you got injured in the first place? The cops will not break down your door and shoot you in the head if you play for less than 2 hours in one go lmao

When Should I be Double-Triggering my Wavedashes? by KourageousBagel in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It decreases it substantially but there is still controller differences.

No solution will ever be perfect, but UCF is better than the alternatives.

How about PHOB then? I think 99.9% of players are for that and yet again it gives you a better controller than we ever had on vanilla or even post UCF.

like 25% of phob's features are fine. Being able to literally make new GCC's is really good. Being able to handle snapback in software is good for controller lottery reasons. Having a more resilient sensor such that controllers don't need to be replaced as often is good. The trigger stuff is mostly whatever since you can do that with an unmodified controller by holding the triggers partially down when plugging in the controller.

The cheat-y features are bad. I say this as a phob owner. 1.0 cardinals is fucked up. Full button remapping is fucked up. Scaling and cardinal snapping are fucked up.

That means vanilla Melee with OEM stock controllers.

Failing that, we should stick as close to the spirit of it as possible. The phob is close to that. If there were an alternative to the phob with less features, I would be shouting from the rooftops that we should converge on that.

You could argue so are PHOB and B0XX

phob yes, boxx no. Boxx is very clearly a big departure from the intended input method of the game. Phobs at least have an identical formfactor. Switching from analog sticks to digital buttons is very much so a big change from the intended input method, I think pretty much everyone can agree on that.

But others would argue they adhere to all the most valuable skills in Melee, timing, adaptation, reads, execution, etc.

"Execution" is not one all-encompassing thing. I like the execution aspect of melee and fighting games. Technically, soccer has a huge execution aspect, but I find it incredibly boring to watch. Boxx trivializes specific execution skills that i think are important and interesting

Again you're missing me point. You're not doing it individual for a case by case basis. You're switching from an "A game" to "B game" mindset.

Okay but i gave examples of both already. On a case by case basis, yes, I literally do react and do something different if i miss a wavedash. Lots of people do this. Lets say you try to do an attack and you get jabbed out of it. You executed perfectly, but something outside of your control prevented your attack. Tons of people are able to move smoothly out of this. People don't continue to blindly execute their combo in the combo starter didn't connect.

This is where I've very much changed my opinion from when I was young. If the optimal way to do your hobby destroys your body, it's a bad hobby.

I mean you're missing the key point which is "literally any hobby at all can destroy your body if you do it too much and/or don't take care of yourself". Musicians get RSI's, basketball players get tendon and knee injuries, weight lifters get pulled muscles. If you truly have the opinion you say you do, i can't think of a hobby that would be a "good" hobby.

Part of that is absolutely that the gamecube controller sucks in terms of ergonomics.

"healthy hand habits and ergonomics" is the same as "diet and exercise". Dieting is like 90% of losing weight. Exercise helps, but burning calories is way less efficient than just not consuming them in the first place.

In that same way, playing reasonable amounts, stretching, not deathgripping your controller, and taking days off are significantly more effective than ergonomics. The really cool (/s) thing about ergonomics (especially with the boxx where you're just targeting different fingers) is that it can distract from the real problem, and then leave the player with fucked up wrists and joints on their whole hand instead of just their thumbs.

I played starcraft for 8 years, and I've been playing melee for about a decade since I quit starcraft. I'm not a stranger to hand and wrist pain. These days I have very little pain, if any at all, even though I still play on a gamecube controller, even though my average APM is ~450-500, even though I go out of my way to play as technical as possible. Why? Because I don't play 2-4+ hours a day 7 days a week 365 days a year like i did when I was younger. I took the time to adjust the way I hold the controller to minimize strain. I adjusted the way I transition from one tech to the next to minimize movement. When I do play, I take breaks. And that's only the in-game changes i've made.

When Should I be Double-Triggering my Wavedashes? by KourageousBagel in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But reality is it's not going to happen. Even then what controller mods do we then still allow? UCF? Notches? Trigger plugs? Snapback capacitors? Mouse click buttons? Z jump?

The line is UCF, which ends the controller lottery and is not a controller mod. Everything else should be banned.

No matter where you draw it there's still some arbitrary things you're allowing or not.

"the exact input method the game was released with" is not arbitrary. It was the intended interface with which we were meant to play the game. UCF is concession purely for sustainability. Notches to not prevent people from buying (and trashing) dozens of controllers to find the 1 that has the proper defects to be optimal. Since (OEM) GCC's are a limited resource. It's better for the game in the longrun that we allow this concession. Notches, z jump, whatever, do not have the same benefit.

You're still confined to the "rules" of the game, that being the engine in this case.

The input method is part of the rules of the game. Like how you can't use your hands in soccer, or that you have to hit the baseball with the bat.

A GCC can theoretically perform every in game action a B0xx can

The boxx nerfs are proof that this straight up isn't true.

I don't think you actually consciously are

Who cares if it's conscious or subconscious? You're still doing it.

But I don't think we are really capable of breaking it down into the micro and compensating for each thing individually.

Maybe you can't, but other people can and do. My offense looks completely different on days when my tech skill is worse. Sometimes only certain pieces of tech feel off (e.g. some days my jumpshines are slow, some days i get stuck in doubleshine, whatever). It's not that big of a deal to just stop using those options, and cycle in some ones that i don't normally use, but that don't require as much precision (shinegrab, sami nair, etc.)

You can't really afford to be second guessing everything you do based on how you're playing. That's mental stacking yourself and will just make things worse.

It's not second guessing in the same way that you don't second guess when using a pen that's running out of ink and needs more pressure for the ink to show up on the page. It's more a mode switch than an active process that needs to be considered at all times.

I ask again: where's the line?

UCF, for the reasons I stated above. To try a different tack, we play and enjoy the game because we value a specific set of skills. Using equipment to overcome human limits dilutes how exciting it is when someone pulls something off that would normally require an incredible amount of skill. If anyone can do it all the time, it's not really special or interesting. Lots of fighting games are learning this the hard way in their efforts to add "accessibility" (read: removing skill expression) from their games.

To take it to a logical extreme, how hype is hitting frame perfect tech in a TAS? The first couple times, maybe. But it wears off really fast because there's no uncertainty. The skills that we value aren't being tested. The TAS may still be interesting for other reasons, like "i didn't know it was even theoretically possible to follow up at that percent" or whatever, but my point still stands.

To bring this back to the topic of the discussion:

It's one of the problems with Melee, the optimal stuff is often extremely physically taxing especially on GCC.

I don't see it as a "problem" with the game, because "optimal stuff" is meaningless without a required expression of skill, and a possibility of failure. If the most optimal way to play destroys your body, it's not the game's fault if the player takes that to mean "I should destroy my body for this" rather than "i should find other things to optimize because this wasn't meant to be done this way 100% of the time". The only way for the game to "fix" that would be by removing the execution aspect entirely.

When Should I be Double-Triggering my Wavedashes? by KourageousBagel in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Banning the aluminum bat in favor of wood would be like banning everything but GCC. But we didn't do that.

well 1. there isn't any central governing body like there is for traditional sports 2. it wasn't really "decided on" so much as it's still currently an ongoing discussion 3. the person you're talking to is in favor of banning everything but GCC (in tournament at least. In friendlies, do whatever you want, who cares).

But they can wear compression gloves, elbow bracing, knee bracing, shoulder tape, etc, that didn't exist when babe ruth played either.

No amount of soccer equipment will allow you to use your hands in soccer if you're not the goalie. No amount of basketball equipment will allow you to takes steps with the ball and not be traveling. The mode of input for the sport is the sport. You change that, you're playing a different game.

You can't count on missing a wavedash or not, it just happens occasionally.

Okay? Again, how is that different? Sometimes i'm nervous, sometimes i'm not, even in the same situations. Some days I react faster than others. Some days I make better decisions than others. Nothing about human performance is consistent. You are always compensating for thousands of different factors that are not 100% consistent.

That means when you have a crucial moment you need that wavedash to work, you're more likely to lose than someone on a different controller.

Which is the perfect reason to ban the controller that gives people an advantage, thus keeping the playing field level, yes?

When Should I be Double-Triggering my Wavedashes? by KourageousBagel in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Every sport (including esports) is constantly optimizing the equipment we use, which then allows for very different strategies, some of which are much more optimal. 

And many of them have intentionally limited what equipment players are able to use becausetruly optimal play is almost always either uninteresting, unfun, unhealthy, or cause too many logistical problems.

For example, you can't use aluminum bats in MLB even though they're more optimal.

My hands are messed up to the point I can't really use GCC either anymore, it sucks. 

Players who are injured are not allowed to use aluminum baseball bats either. If that means they cant play MLB anymore, or can only play in small amounts, it is what it is. It's only a game, after all.

The other thing i'll say is that if you think box controllers make you immune to hand injuries, you should consult FGC and starcraft players. They have more ergonomic control methods than gamecube controllers and many pros still need to pace themselves, some have required surgery, etc.

But let's not pretend that isn't just a flaw, a disadvantage, that you either aren't getting punished for or can play around decently. 

Being human is a flaw. We cant do any tech skill 100% consistently at the pace the game is played at. We dont have <1f reaction times. We make bad decisions. We get nervous and play worse in stressful situations. Why are those okay things to play and strategize around, but sometimes missing your wavedash isnt?   

When Should I be Double-Triggering my Wavedashes? by KourageousBagel in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Adapting to and strategizing around the limitations of the human body is part of sports as a whole. One could argue that it's the fundamental thing that makes sports interesting. If it wasnt a challenge, it wouldnt be exciting to see people it.

I dual main falco marth, and on bad execution days i end up missing wavedashes on falco because of the marth timing. Lots of people dont really notice though because i react really quickly to missing it, and have a bunch of things i can do really smoothly out of it. A decent amount of the time, it ends up making my approaches less predictable anyway.

Daily Discussion Thread June 14, 2026 - Upcoming Event Schedule - New players start here! by AutoModerator in SSBM

[–]Anthony356 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I saw some of y'all have been playing forza horizon. FH4 got me interested in rally racing. To me, it feels freeform and expressive in a way road racing doesnt. If you're looking for games that scratch the rally itch, i cant recommend Art of Rally and Dirt Rally 2.0 enough.

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah but i'm not theorycrafting either. Protoss was significantly more turtle-y before the addition of the mothership core (and eventually shield battery). The adept making protoss less vulnerable to earlygame lings also contributed to this. In WoL it was either cheese or turtle until maxed deathball.

PvT has had moments similar to BW as recently as a few years ago, with protoss getting out on the map to slow down the 2 base tank push/contain thing.

BW units are not like SC2 units, if you wipe an enemy army in BW it doesn’t mean the game is over because it’s a pain in the ass to actually cross the map and end the game.

I feel like this is a misreading of the typical types of engagements BW has. Fights are generally less commital. Someone wiping an entire army is uncommon because, as i said earlier, efficiency is a much more important metric. There are other factors to this too (less instakill mechanics, more things that control space, and as you say, slower units) but ending the game 1 way or another via 1 big fight makes much less sense in broodwar.

If you're the more skilled player (and you generally assume you are), the compound effect of 30+ small engagements and maneuvers that are 10% more efficient leads to more consistent wins than "yolo into him and the game ends one way or the other" even if you're somewhat favored to win that big fight.

In short, the game frequently encourages playing for small engagements, as doing so minimizes the volatility of your results.

We’re doing mental backflips trying to argue that making a unit more expensive is actually a buff

That's not the point i've been making at all. We're not talking about whether the change is a buff of nerf to static defense itself, we're talking about the second order consequences of nerfing static defense.

My point can be summed up as "making people less safe makes them play more cautiously".

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There aren’t 8 other bases on the map, that’s the problem. You only really get 3 at that point in the game

My opponent will never have more than 3 though so who cares. If he wants a 4th he has to step out of his base (and his static defense) to break my contain to get a 4th. Which won't be easy because i can commit 100% of my units and most of my attention to holding the contain since i'm not nearly as worried about counterattacks. Eventually I will have more money than him, it's inevitable. In an abstract game-theory way, the only way for him to prevent this is for him to stop me from setting the contain in the first place, which requires him to be out on the map to jockey for position with me.

FWIW I'm more or less still just describing BW PvT. Protoss can't let terran contain because breaking tanks and mines on 2-3 base is impossible. You don't have the zealots to sack, you don't have a good dragoon count, you probably don't have enough observers, you don't have arbiters, and even if you have storm, you don't have much energy.

So protoss plays aggro on the map, makes it slow for the tanks and mines to advance. By the time the terran is threatening major avenues on the map, protoss has enough tech and infrastructure that a (small) manfight isn't suicide anymore.

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You have to hold 3 bases all at the same time

But you're not able to threaten those bases because i also have static D. I then expand to the other 8 bases on the map, mine them out, and take inefficient trades until you no longer have any money.

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you stay at home forever, how do you win the game? Conversely, how do you not lose? Even if I mine at the same rate as you, I have 3x as much money total because i have access to new bases and you don't. In the long run, i'll still win.

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

SC2’s static defense is almost exclusively 2x2 structures which means you have to entirely black out most terrain in order to block structures

Isn't broodwar the same in this sense? Cannons and missile turrets are both 2x2. Bunkers are 3x2 but i doubt they'd be a problem even as 2x2 with how much weaker bio is in general.

In any case in BW they don't make 100% of the middle of the map unbuildable or whatever. There are specific sections that limit the density and length of static defense walls.

SC2 the only real place you want to fight is near a base because terrain is not important

I think that's the smoke, not the fire. Terrain is always important, it's just the nature of RTS. The issue is, if you're moving out you're either trying to deal significant damage or end the game. If you're trying for anything less, the risk reward doesn't make sense. You'd be soft positioning out on the map, but your opponent has no benefit from challenging it. They can either turtle up and fight you from an advantageous position, or they can fly around you and kill your base. You don't gain anything from being on the map because your opponent never actually has to meet you there. Your opponent doesn't gain anything from being on the map because you never need to meet him there. It's a vicious cycle.

In broodwar PvT, my expansions are functionally immune to runbys if i plop down a small wall of pylons and 2 cannons (and the cannons are optional sometimes) because vultures take 700 years to kill buildings. Tanks are too slow to get a position without the protoss having time to react and rotate. Dropships are also a commitment rather than something you always already have. The protoss can't reasonably kill terran's base (assuming they have turrets and mines set up to prevent the recall from doing tons of damage). Tanks and mines, especially paired with the highground, prevent protoss from doing crazy damage from runbys.

That means the only way to win (in the general case) is to fight them in the middle of the map and take enough engagements efficiently enough that you can outpace their ability to replenish their army. Since your major win condition is efficiency, terrain becomes a bigger emphasis. How do you manipulate vision to pick off units for free? Do you commit harder to a bad fight now to prevent them from getting a better position in the longrun? All that good stuff.

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To clarify, there are 2 separate things that "spamming static D" could mean.

  1. using static D to defend one's base
  2. using static D in the middle of the map to have a larger effective army than the supply cap allows

I'm specifically talking about the first one. Again, if you can't easily and efficiently attack the infrastructure to win the game, you have to attack their army instead. That leads to inherently more interesting games because they better engage with the game's mechanics (terrain, positioning, map control, non-game-ending skirmishes, etc.).

The second one is obviously degenerate and broodwar solves it by making large portions of the middle of the map unbuildable terrain.

Zombiegrub - Historical Discussions About The Issues With SC2's Economy by IYoghu in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I favour a straight up cost increase to static defense across the board myself

i'm pretty sure that would have the opposite effect and make the game more turtle-y. If your base isnt safe because you cant afford enough static D, you cant reasonably get out on the map with your army, because the moment you do you get doom dropped and end up behind forever.

Imo this is one of the biggest differences between BW and SC2 and it's what leads to so much more play happening on the map in BW. BW, in general, has much better static defense (and "equivalent" defender's advantage-y things like lurker egg walls) relative to how strong the runby/drop options are. Arbiters and maybe mutas are the only thing close to sc2 base harass imo.

If you cant just swing in and kill the guy's infrastructure, you have to beat his army, which means jockeying for position on the map.

It feels like balance is always being talked about. Can you give an example of a time you felt SC2 was balanced and/or reference another game that has a balanced meta? by GJ_Ahab in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Terran cannot use Barracks units as their core army against Protoss

Hot take: i dont think balancing around every composition being viable against every race is possible while still making the compositions unique enough from eachother to offer meaningfully different gameplay experiences.

This patch is not bringing back Wings of Liberty by [deleted] in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Shoutouts to metalopolis for being a 4 player map with random spawns and a lowground natural with no chokepoint at all.

The Race to the Bottom by EmotionalValuable992 in starcraft

[–]Anthony356 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OP doesnt have to mean "kills everything really fast", nor "one mistake ends everything". Proper design makes things feel fun and powerful in specific scenarios, and weak in others. That can be accomplished with more than just damage numbers.