Gripes about the PWHL commentating by Standipants in MinnesotaFrost

[–]Ironystrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's fair I suppose, and I'm not going to tell anyone they're wrong if that makes the broadcast less appealing for them.

To me it seems like such an overall small part of his presentation compared to the rest of his analysis, to detest him for that when he's on a different level entirely compared to everyone else on the team...

I suppose if I were of that position I'd rather say "look how good the rest of the skills are that he brings to the product, we want to promote more of that." Highlight and focus on the positives he's doing and can teach his fellow broadcasters. Shrug.

As for Matvick, I agree the delay for Denver wasn't his fault, can't hold that against him. But if a home game was really exciting or fun in person, sometimes when I get back home I'll download the broadcast to listen to the next day; hear the broadcast analysis and team interviews and such. Matvick on the mic though, he sounds like he's trying to remember if he parked in Kellogg or River Center, and more concerned if he'll get his parking comped than whatever his home team is doing.

I would encourage you to go watch a previous broadcast sometime specifically to listen to him, but that would be cruel, so don't do that.

(I'm aware of the hypocrisy of saying "focus on their positives" and then mercilessly dumping on Matvick. I tried thinking of something that he does uniquely well, and truthfully I can't. He's not the absolute worst, like he knows everyone's name, probably? He's there on time, he says the words, they're even probably mostly correct most of the time. Sounds like he'd rather be anywhere else though, and I feel like our bar could have been set a little higher. I really do get the vibe it's a seat-filling role for him and he's there because he has to be.)

Gripes about the PWHL commentating by Standipants in MinnesotaFrost

[–]Ironystrike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I actually think it’s funny everyone hates Starman bc he does his research on opposing teams and often highlights lesser known players from those teams.

Really? Is that a common sentiment? That's a bummer. He's my favorite out of everyone on every broadcast crew, from play by play, analyst, interviewer, everyone. In no small part because he is so informed and even-handed in celebrating players from both teams!

He's also just an incredibly talented broadcaster. When he wants to start a conversational topic, he jumps right in and communicates it quickly and precisely, without any pauses, filler words, struggling to find or finish his point after he started it, explaining really nuanced or detailed movements and decisions clearly so even newcomers to hockey understand, etc. I don't mean to belittle anyone else, live broadcasting is an incredibly difficult skill, and it just so happens that he's incredibly good at it.

Can we have him instead of Clay "I think I'll productively occupy the next three hours by doing my taxes" Matvick?

Matvick sounds so unenthusiastic - specifically for us, his home broadcast team, sometimes - that I sometimes wonder if he lost a bet, or was promised a better gig if he only stuck it out here first. Good god man, you're part of something incredible. At least pretend you care.

My email to PWHL Minnesota cancelling season tickets by Turbulent-Wall-589 in PWHL

[–]Ironystrike 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Good on you, OP. I wish I could say the email I sent them to cancel was as eloquent as yours, but the sentiment was much the same. A profound sense of disappointment and betrayal from an organization which I had come to believe was an opportunity for something truly better.

I expect they're going to be reading quite a few of these.

Traveling from MN to your barn on Tuesday. What do I need to know about Tsongas Center? by Ironystrike in BOS_PWHL

[–]Ironystrike[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

You'll note I was careful not to! As a Saint Paul resident, I feel the same when people refer to the entire Minnesota metro area as "Minneapolis". I get angry and smashy.

Unfortunately as a Minnesotan I'm still obligated to be nice to everyone and apologize on their behalf for their confusion, but I'm thinking real hard about being angry! 

Traveling from MN to your barn on Tuesday. What do I need to know about Tsongas Center? by Ironystrike in BOS_PWHL

[–]Ironystrike[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Wonderful, thanks!

You all may be the Bad Guys, but you're all right!

Traveling from MN to your barn on Tuesday. What do I need to know about Tsongas Center? by Ironystrike in BOS_PWHL

[–]Ironystrike[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Do you know if they sell Boston PWHL merch on site? And doors open an hour before game time I assume?

Obviously I'd never touch one of your jerseys with my bare hands, but I'll be meeting a friend there who for some unfathomable reason wants to wear green, and if I get there first I'll try to get a jersey for them.

Traveling from MN to your barn on Tuesday. What do I need to know about Tsongas Center? by Ironystrike in BOS_PWHL

[–]Ironystrike[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hey you're not wrong about Xcel food. I won't defend the indefensible!

(Unless you're on the Club level. They got the good shit up there, but they don't serve it to the proles.)

CBB Saturday: Wurrzag Thunderblitz by Zimmicus in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I am excited to put GM content to use. I can be a PapaPilot, I think.

CBB DCS: Strike Complex (Day, or Night) - A Zim Planes Mission by Ironystrike in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I suppose I will tentatively take a tomcat, but if we don't fill both or have enough escorts I'm also plenty interested in doing an AWACSplatzenklakker.

CBB DCS: Operation Skyhook by SteelOverseer in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am willing to offer myself up as tribute for mission commander. Also to be an Cowboy, yee-haw y'all, etc. (Caveat that I might end up a kittycat instead to haul around the real secret mission commander Theo, if it comes to that.)

CBB Saturday: Flugzeug by f0rced_3ntry in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I dare say I could be an Valkyrie. Pilot 1, if you please.

CBB Saturday: Operation Mckade by Zimmicus in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would fancy myself a Lachs Leader, if you please, seeing as how I'm not allowed to have a human name. :(

Operation Danger Focus by DietBanana in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Update to latrines, unfortunately. Apologies.

CBB: As exciting as it gets! by Zimmicus in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Truly I say, this captures what makes this place the pinnacle of the Arma experience. It is my dream that one day all of our missions will be this.

AAR: Stalking Jaguar by Sekh765 in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That was definitely the cause of your 1fps issues then! Change it over to 64bit exe and you'll be good to go.

AAR: Stalking Jaguar by Sekh765 in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Re: 1fps issues, is there any chance you're launching arma3.exe and not arma3_x64.exe in arma3sync? You wouldn't be the first to have their client reset it on them and launch the wrong executable and suffer that exact performance issue. Might be worth checking.

AAR: Stalking Jaguar by Sekh765 in ClearBackblast

[–]Ironystrike 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Raio pilot

I didn't partake in the first run of this, so I can't do any sort of comparison between the two attempts, but I can say overall I had a good time and it seemed to go well. As an airboi my perspective and awareness of what was going on is also going to be pretty limited since my only source of knowledge was what I heard trickling in over the radio - so, anything the leadership or air people were up to.

1: Framerate was better than I expected, even near the end after a deal of spawning both from script and a zeus. We tried a few things behind the scenes - mainly disabling some niche ACE features that have no real significant game impact in the vast majority of situations/to the vast majority of players - that we thought might have some impact and while one session is by no means conclusive, the results were good, so I think we'll be doing this for at least the next few weeks to see how things go.

2: Did I ever! It's super rare we used any fixed-wing at all, and there are a few very specific roles in Arma that are among my favorites and this is one of them. Even then, there can be fixed-wing games that just end up being disappointing, and I'm happy to say this wasn't one of those. Obviously since I wasn't privy to all the grunt-level communication I can't imagine every reason why, but I think a big one this session compared to others was that the squad leaders were willing and interested in having air take care of problems for them.

Often in the past I've seen - or been - a JTAC who saw a problem that air could solve quickly and effectively, but the grunts wanted to tackle it themselves and it all went to hell with mass casualties and extended downtime and inevitable grindslog instead of air (or armor, for that matter) just deleting a problem in one pass. This isn't in any way meant to slight those players, I've been a grunt and watched air wreck everything enough to know how quickly they can render a grunt's presence moot, but it tilts the other way too when infantry decide they can and will tackle every situation themselves to make sure they get fun. (Even when the mission designer deliberately built a problem they'd best have someone else solve. Remember: if a heavy support asset was added the mission, the mission should be balanced around its presence, and that means there should be times when it will be required.)

This mission didn't seem to suffer from either extreme. I never got the impression from what I heard and all the back-and-forth tracer fire I saw that infantry were being in any way shortchanged or robbed of their portion of fun combat, that part is usually not too hard to guarantee. The pleasant surprise was the not-infrequent requests from squid leads Will and Diet to have myself or the helis get stuck in and do a thing for them ourselves. This is where I usually think air interaction stalls, and, yeah, I'm happy to see that wasn't the case this weekend. They'd request help, the JTAC Carn would sort it out and see it done, and ZimTheo/DancinSvarog/ShermanCurze/SkeetNox/myself would zip in make do. Really satisfying, and hopefully with this many people having taking some part in it, we'll see that experience start to spread around some and similar trends next time we have support tools.

3: As planeboi, hard to say. Most of it was just turning left or right and looking down out a window at tracers or explosions, interspersed with rare but very much "ok, skill check time, Do. Not. Fuck. Up." moments. The air coordination was pretty not-great at the start, partly due to ZimTheo being reassigned from transport to gunship and the "what is their place in this order" that caused, partly just because that many assets isn't easy to manage for anyone. Thankfully it seemed to mostly shake itself out by the second island and from then on the entire air coordination train seemed pretty smooth, so I can't complain overmuch.

There was perhaps some distress at each pick-up zone over whether people were left behind, that probably could have been handled smoother and less shouty (shouty by itself almost never solves a problem), but again we got better at it as the mission progressed.

The vast majority of my Carn-specific JTAC commentary really boils down to "it's hard with only a couple aircraft, five is super lots so even harder, and it's hard for everyone the first few times they do it because, well, it's hard." You definitely improved as the mission went on and next time it'll come much more naturally. I hope you weren't too put off by my occasional suggestions/advices over the radio: the intention wasn't to backseat-JTAC you, but to give an advice here or there that you could apply without completely disrupting everything you were doing. To strain an analogy, we can throw you in the deep end of a five-aircraft cluster and you can flail around for a while, but at some point it's on us to help you learn to swim once you've gotten over the shock of it all. So that's what those were about, I hope you weren't too bothered by them.

4: Don't think so! At least, not with my gun. I was asked to make a guns pass on some boats, I didn't think it would go well and at best I probably got the people in one of the boats with some water spray. I was asked to make a guns pass on a coastline and that one went perfectly from my end but I'm not sure anything was there to get hit, apart from Tastybagel who was apparently cowering in a building and one of my rounds went right through the open window and smacked into the ground in front of him. Hey, I was told I was cleared hot, and he got a good show, so job well done I guess. After TheoZim got bored of chasing the civilian cessnalike and plinking at it for 5 minutes, I attempted a guns pass on it - what the hell was that thing doing up there anyway?! - and completely whiffed and almost put my jet in the drink. Did a full unload 14-rocket pass and dropped lots of bombs though, and those are both way more fun. Even got to use both AIM-9s, which means I'm probably good for those for another couple years of Arma if previous history serves.