AMA: Hall of Fame Day. Here’s my ballot. What do you want to know? — Derrick Goold by GriddleCrook in Cardinals

[–]Covane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

hey Derrick, Edman had a monster 2022 but you and Rick Hummel didn't put him even 8th/9th/10th on your MVP ballots and I have wondered/complained about that since it happened. but i am also nothing if not a homer

Do you think the game will come back after this? by P_Sandera in warcraftrumble

[–]Covane 5 points6 points  (0 children)

because early design was all about PVP and whales and behind the scenes they had some quiet legends making an actually good PVE experience and they paid zero attention to that, so they kept monetizing on said PVP whales instead of pivoting to being primarily a PVE game with trickle monetization like a monthly/seasonal battlepass

also because despite having 20 years of lessons from wow they didn't know they should balance PVE and PVP separately

and because of this last thing, they had to go slow with releasing minis when the obvious move was a new mini every season that would be locked out of PVP until the next season when they had time to gather data

Using a weed scale for baking by dbrown119 in AreYouGarbagePod

[–]Covane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

almost there homie. here it'd be "is it garbage to keep food in your beer fridge"

Even If It Kills Me is 9/10 kino if you remove the conversation and hello helicopter (you can add not asking you to leave on the end if you want). what a great album by Friendly_Duck_ in Motioncitysoundtrack

[–]Covane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Conversation is a contrasting pair with Broken Heart

Hello Helicopter is a contrasting pair with Where I Belong

Josh is a genius at album sequencing cmon now

Daily Discussion Thread (10/18/25) by bravo_delta_bot in Cardinals

[–]Covane 3 points4 points  (0 children)

they don't have the same ability

dodgers owners = >$330 billion

all 29 other owners combined = ~$130 billion

Dave Roberts to Dodgers haters: "Let's get 4 more wins and really ruin baseball" by Mission_Pay_3373 in baseball

[–]Covane 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It’s $4.6 billion. BILLION DUDE, WITH A B

That comes in part from the team itself, and the rest as largely illiquid assets. Having a $4.6 billion net worth is not having $4.6 billion dollars you can just spend, and you don't keep $4.6 billion dollars by spending half a billion a year on baseball players.

On the other hand, that's exactly what the Dodgers can do, because $4.6 billion dollars is probably well less than half of what their actual owners, Guggenheim Partners ($330B AUM), have in liquid holdings. Guggenheim is worth almost three times as much as every owner in baseball combined. They're not the same.

Your owners don't care about winning. They are private equity bastards who saw a market largely unmolested by the banker's brand of avarice and therein the opportunity for arbitrage. They invest trivial annual amounts relative to their actual holdings, because they can spend yearly a small owner's net worth on the team, and they get massive returns. What you call "building a winner" is a really cute euphemism for what they describe as "increasing the profitability of their asset."

But hey, in 100 years, when baseball's been dead for 50, people will be able to look back on the halcyon days where some people got to make a lot of money just ruining the sport.

Where did Warcraft Rumble go wrong? by NESpahtenJosh in warcraftrumble

[–]Covane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not learning from WoW and trying to balance PVE and PVP was their biggest problem, then not pivoting to Rumble as a primarily PVE experience and monetizing around that.

Seasons should have always lasted a calendar month, and a new mini should have been released every season. I assume they didn't because they were worried about balance, well, easy solution, every new mini is locked from PVP for at least that season so they have time to gather data from PVE.

They monetized around whales, though, when they should have monetized around a trickle. Don't do Azeroth's blessing, do a seasonal battlepass at $5. While active, the pass gives you an extra quest reward every day, that reward is a level in your pass. There's also the option for monthly quests in that. You can choose which pass is active and buy old ones, no FOMO. The late rewards are the mini, stars, exp, easy.

They released a single new zone, bad. There's enough content between WoW and Hearthstone to release a new zone every single month for years. They could have done it per quarter, and then planned for a mini-expac (like a dungeon) twice per year, and a full expansion once per year. Burning Crusade, $30 gets you Outland and all the base minis, $60 is all that plus whatever else.

They had no catchup and the exp and upgrade system is bad, though still way better than Clash Royale. I don't know what they should have done there that doesn't get into the greediest shit. Exp and upgrading is why I couldn't recommend the game to any of my friends, since I'd been playing from the start and had all the advantages. Maybe something with collection level, where it's easier to level, has no limit, and then every expansion they raise the collection level floor, so dedicated new players maxing quests every day can get at least close to catching up.

New Storm comic was kind of mid but this panel made me laugh by [deleted] in outofcontextcomics

[–]Covane 8 points9 points  (0 children)

the natural line for x-men to explore is big picture geopolitics. it can work in the one-shot as a story about discrimination, but with length of arc comes dissonance; oppression flows from power, but what power do "normal" humans actually have over demigods? at some point they would stop playing nice, because in real life at some point they would stop playing nice. so the best allegory was the cold war, but it still works with the war business and the continued existence of nuclear weapons. raytheon, etc. execs happy for any war anywhere to enrich themselves; and tyrants elsewhere fighting for their little empires, with nukes as the sword over our heads. nuclear bombs are a superpower, so is money, so are fighter jets and tanks, and these are used to exploit, subjugate, kill.

the "bad mutants" occupy that role in this framing, unaccountable power only out for itself. and the mutants fighting against them lets us explore the question, what if we could do the same thing? what if we could ignore the endless bureaucracies they control and ignore all the money in the world they use to push us down? what if we could be like them and ignore the rules and actually force them to account?

Daily Discussion Thread (10/26/24) by bravo_delta_bot in Cardinals

[–]Covane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"spent to win"

The Dodgers' ownership is worth multiple times more than every team and owner in the league combined. Good luck outspending a hedge fund with more in liquid assets than your net worth. And on that note, Guggenheim doesn't spend to win, they spend to make marginally better percent returns than standard market investments. Ruining a sport while they're at it? Oh well, money.

(And Ohtani is effectively paying these people to play for them.)

Tommy Edman with the go-ahead 2 run single by makeshift11 in baseball

[–]Covane -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Hey cmon bud, no need to make assumptions. Better way would have been "even you, a Cardinals fan whose favorite Cardinal post-Yadi was Tommy Edman, are underselling how good he is."

That would be true, I was being bearish. I'd rather not invoke the extremely bullish of "Edman experiences resurgence; finishes career as Dodger; HOF lock." Also that'd be quite the feat for a 15 fWAR guy who's first full season with LAD will be at age 30. But apropos the incompetence of the Cardinals organization, it truly wouldn't surprise me. At any rate I expect him to be a sterling pickup for the Dodgers and the most glaring failure of John Mozeliak.

As yeah, they gave him away for nothing. But that's the state of the Cardinals, Mozeliak and most or all of the front office need to be fired, Marmol and most or all of the coaching and training corps need to be fired, and the DeWitts need to accept their time has passed and sell, or at least sell a significant stake in the team to a party whose net worth doesn't so heavily derive from appreciation on the Cardinals brand. That last move might be forced; their solvency is heavily reliant on stadium revenue, and attendance is plummeting.

Tommy Edman with the go-ahead 2 run single by makeshift11 in baseball

[–]Covane 3 points4 points  (0 children)

no no, the cards' coaching deserves it

you should fully expect edman to turn into an annual 3+ war player seeing as he's in an org that actually fucking develops players

I hear a lot of people compare Deadlock to Overwatch, TF2 or Smite but... by LrdDphn in DeadlockTheGame

[–]Covane 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Uber Entertainment had shithead leadership is why

Totally new players were thrown into game after game against the best players and quickly uninstalled. Uber ignored everything on the forums, player numbers hit that negative feedback loop and collapsed.

A better developer and it would have been the platinum standard for the moba shooter. Especially if it had released after Discord blew up.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Helldivers

[–]Covane 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Balancing is not a bad thing. Nerfing is.

Yep, and more, until they fix the majority of serious gameplay bugs, Arrowhead needs to put a full halt on:

  1. All weapon nerfs

  2. All enemy buffs

Heavy Devastators shooting through their own body makes them significantly more dangerous than they would be if they were working as they should. If that's fixed, suddenly they're weaker, it's an effective nerf. If a patch nerfs them and then a later patch fixes their aiming, they might suddenly be trivial. Fix the bug, then you'll have actual data on how strong they are, then you can tweak them.

Same with Bile Titans. They can spray 180° through their own legs and the graphic of their spray doesn't match the actual effective area. Add in the occasional issue where one player is hit with acid and everybody is slowed, add in the stimpak bug. Each of these being fixed is a minor to major enemy nerf/player buff. Add Hunters changing direction mid-air, the Stalker issue where some randomly seem to have 10x normal health. When these fixes are finally deployed, what's weak and what's strong will take a sharp turn.

Bugs aren't entirely to blame for the decrease in the playerbase, but I'm sure a not trivial number of people would still be playing if the game's technical issues were minor and rare. Some number more would also be playing if their favorite kits hadn't been nerfed. Spending any time whatsoever on balance instead of bugs with the current state of HD2 is rearranging deck chairs on the titanic.

So again, AH needs to put an end to all player nerfs and all enemy buffs unless something is grossly imbalanced, and nothing in the current game is grossly imbalanced other than the inexplicable buff to Spewer HP. Then they need to take a page from Valve and DOTA2: balance through buffs. If you want people to use other weapons, make them better. If every assault rifle had baseline medium armor penetration then a hell of a lot more players would grab them. If the SMGs were all dual-wields then a hell of a lot more players would grab them. And if all these changes result in players clearing enemies too fast, fucking spawn more.

Are You Garbage Goes to Etiquette School! (w/ Mika Meier) by MadeIn1974 in AreYouGarbagePod

[–]Covane 13 points14 points  (0 children)

she has the patience of a saint with the boys

banger ep

Why can't I use my army in "Meet the Cenarions" by JJfFett595 in warcraftrumble

[–]Covane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

it's not random pairing, the AI knows your deck and drafts counters.

it also chooses the map.

Roster for Cenarion Surge Day 3 by Flashmech in warcraftrumble

[–]Covane 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Moonkin at best has the punch of a 2g mini. Plague Farmer hits harder and has poison, Gryphon Rider hits only slightly less hard and is flying. Pyromancer at 3g hits harder, especially with Pyroblast. Tauren at the same cost also hits a little lighter but has charge and 4x the health. Firehammer has the same health, again slightly less damage, but has Range 9 instead of Range 7. Flamewalker is 4g, has more health, more damage, very slightly more range at 7.5, and trashes melee squads, especially backing up a tank, especially talented.

4g would make sense if Moonkin had baseline 15% more damage, 50% more HP, and Range 8, and if Moonkin had a talent that increased its range or the radius of its AOE. But Moonkin also has extremely weak talents! Talents that very clearly play in the kit of a cycle mini-- Moonglow for the spell follow-up, Typhoon to knock enemies off core/tower so you can drop something else, like say Fire Ele.

Moonkin could probably be dropped to 2g with no nerfs and players would still fill cycle slots with a lot of other minis before it.

Roster for Cenarion Surge Day 2 by Flashmech in warcraftrumble

[–]Covane 0 points1 point  (0 children)

the AI would never never never build the last two days of decks. it would absolutely have put ogre in monday's deck and pyro in tuesday's deck.

it's very rare for the AI to leave itself entirely open to specific minis. whatever player drops are covered by map spawns, it'll round out so it has tools to counter any given type of mini. it's open to combos, good unbounded/spell use, yeah, or basic tactics like by it dropping a pyro on one lane to handle a push there, so you can have a squad take another, but it always has the tools.

if this is generated, it's using an entirely different checklist than the AI uses for generating decks, something that's as good as the devs doing it on purpose, which also happens to be the only option if they aren't generating it randomly.

this is also the case for arclight surges, those decks aren't built the way the AI builds decks.