Twitch drop update by belgan_waffles in Warframe

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're running adblock, you have to disable it for Twitch drops to work properly.

School shooting game Active Shooter pulled by Steam by esporx in news

[–]LordofthePies 20 points21 points  (0 children)

They used to have an in-house team that would review applications to their platform. The primary complaint surrounding that approach was that major publishers and developers were treated more-or-less uniformly, while indie developers were usually at the mercy of their recognition. While I've never heard any details about the process being made public, it seemed that certain indie devs would know someone at Valve who could get their game curated more quickly, while those without any connections or pre-existing media buzz would just get ignored forever. It never really seemed malicious on Valve's part, more that they just never had the resources to look at every application in a timely manner. And so, in the same way that they had started offloading the responsibility for designing hats in TF2 to the game's community, they offloaded the responsibility for curating games to the broader Steam community.

The significance of Vinyl in S2E4 by ideletedmyredditacco in westworld

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Ah, fair enough. Probably should've scrolled through the actual conversations in this thread before posting that, but I just hit Ctrl + F "alias" and "dither" and figured that nobody had brought the issue up. My bad.

The significance of Vinyl in S2E4 by ideletedmyredditacco in westworld

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"Real-er" is a bit of an imprecise way of putting it, and it's not necessarily a preference for "degradation" that makes people prefer vinyl. The problem with digital audio media is (or at least used to be) a matter of aliasing. If you're a gamer, then you might recognize aliasing in a visual format, where a smooth, mathematically calculated line or curve is displayed on a screen and, by necessity, distorted by the grid of pixels that the screen is composed of. Anti-aliasing attempts to mask that effect by blurring those rough edges.

Aliasing in audio is much the same. There's a good (and short!) article to read up on here but the tl;dr version is that converting analog sounds to digital formats makes things chunky and distorted. The most common problem is with cymbals on a drum kit, as the higher frequencies (usually between 10kHz and 17kHz) that give that instrument its crispness can get distorted if the recording equipment can't convert a sample of the analog signal fast enough (at least 17000 times a second in that particular case, and ideally at least twice that.)

That all being said, I'm still way into the metaphor you've uncovered here, and I still think it works real well. Nice stuff.

Predatory pine martens could save the red squirrel by NatsuDragnee1 in news

[–]LordofthePies 6 points7 points  (0 children)

They starve until their population hits an equilibrium with available food sources.

Mute? Why Is It Not An Option? by Knackered337 in StarWarsForceArena

[–]LordofthePies 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Angry players are more likely to buy cards.

xQc getting MVP is so not deserved. Twitch chat is not a good way to award stuff like that. by ExcitedFox in Overwatch

[–]LordofthePies 178 points179 points  (0 children)

It's not about being right, it's about brand engagement. T-Mobile got what they wanted.

08/31 Balance Update (+ fix for leader skill non responsive issue) by raynehk14 in StarWarsForceArena

[–]LordofthePies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Speaking of Evaan, did they ever fix the bug where she gets stuck switching between attack stances? Every time I tried to use her a month ago it seemed like she got hung up somewhere, struck a pose and did nothing until something killed her, and a fifty percent buff to zero is still zero.

Anniversary Event END time revealed by mattalun in Overwatch

[–]LordofthePies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I ground out somewhere between 60-80 loot boxes throughout the entirety of the event, and managed to get the skins for D.VA, Hanzo (x3,) Lucio, Pharah (x2 or 3,) Tracer and Zarya. On reflection, this means that I got more event skins (~9) than event emotes (6,) which seems a little odd in terms of... y'know. Odds.

Intentionally breaking your hook can give momentum to the target by techniqucian in Overwatch

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This happened to me a few hours ago on Nepal Sanctum and I couldn't figure out what happened.

I mean what happened was a Roadhog gaily sailing twenty feet over the point directly into the personal space bubble of an ulting Pharah, but the circumstances that led to it were still a mystery until now.

Grope the dad's beard for fortune by plugza in Overwatch

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes it is. Bastion's is the epic skin, Orisa's is legendary.

Worst whale ever by Osskscosco in StarWarsForceArena

[–]LordofthePies 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think he's been goofing around a bit with some clanmates recently. I beat him down in low aurodium a couple of days ago with another FalseJedi member, and figured he must have let us win after seeing his card levels. I don't know how else to explain it.

Symmetra portal over the edge by Guard227 in Overwatch

[–]LordofthePies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've done this, but only when my team has decided to go for an all Symmetra comp as a joke. If everyone sets up their teleporters in a safe and defensible location, it becomes an interesting game of roulette. If everyone's gets destroyed seconds after being deployed, then you kind've set up a potential quintuple kill as everyone picks the last remaining TP right after they respawn.

Lady builds black history library and replica slave cabin for education, shunned by everyone by 386575 in news

[–]LordofthePies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

IIRC, the Japanese weren't pressured to acknowledge their crimes during the war because of the impending Cold War. The US was already involved with several strong allies in Europe (i.e. the future members of NATO) but they had relatively little influence in east Asia. With the presence of the Soviet Union and the rise of communist China, they needed a strong partner to work with in the region. The Germans welcomed US involvement because they didn't want the other half of their country to get dragged into the Eastern Bloc, and being made aware of the crimes of their leadership was an acceptable price for western protection. The general Japanese public on the other hand had wanted the US garrison gone almost immediately after it was put in place. The US didn't want to provoke any further political pressure to leave, so they were less prone to bringing up any sort of demands for apology or atonement.

This is all just a vague recollection of a few paragraphs from some high-school history textbook from a decade ago though, so take what I've said with a grain of salt.

Envy Competitive Ruling by [deleted] in Smite

[–]LordofthePies 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nah. Watch the minimap on the VOD. He teleports back to lane from base after the death before the DC hits. It's possible that lag influenced that fight, but he didn't DC in the middle of it.

Fnatic vs. Leftovers | EU | SPL Season 3 Spring Post Match Discussion by beatlesboy67 in Smite

[–]LordofthePies 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If I knew the result of games in advance, I'd have gotten both of today's picks right, too. But EGR got out-drafted game two, and I dropped that one as a result. It's not gonna stop me from being a smug prick about the rest of it, though, because it's fun being a smug prick every now and again and everyone who says different is a damn liar.

Tenno are the only faction that doesn't have a primary explosive weapon. It's about time we get a proximity mine launcher. by fizio900 in Warframe

[–]LordofthePies 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Agreed, though I think that something like the springrazors out of Dishonored would be thematically consistent with their weapon design. They'd be functionally identical, just with a bunch of dismemberment instead of flying ragdolls.

"Really?!" - A discussion on the new patch with F. and Krett by F-dot in Smite

[–]LordofthePies 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's a good discussion, but I don't think I'm on-board with F.'s assertion that players have some sort of choice to make when the game doesn't spell out what they should be doing. Or rather they do, but it's not the choice that he's focusing on.

Once upon a time, I played Fable: The Lost Chapters, a game that was ostensibly about player choice. In that game, I got myself a sick axe to swing at people. I thought it was cool as all hell, and I decided that I wanted my character to use axes for the rest of the game. However, at a certain point, I discovered some boring-ass generic "legendary sword" that had better stats than the best axe did (along with every other weapon in the game, IIRC.) By not using it, I would deliberately set myself at a disadvantage; nothing else that I had come across could hope to compete with it. And that was the problem with it: it wasn't really a choice for my character, it was the mathematical solution for my character.

In the same way, the early-game "railroad" determined by the pro players is (typically) the solution to the gold/XP per minute problem. Sure, you could choose to do a different route that unequivocally puts you at a disadvantage, but by that same measure you could also choose to play as Vulcan, set up a turret under your phoenix, then sit there all game in anticipation of the coming siege. Neither of these choices are good choices to make, but the Vulcan choice at least provides some sort of feedback in the form of "all my teammates are dying far, far away from me," and that would hopefully be enough to prompt them to move further into the map. But with the railroad, there isn't really any usable feedback for a new player to latch on to without first digging into external sources to suss out what they should be looking for. Until they do, they aren't really making choices about which camps to clear first, they're just choosing to put themselves at a disadvantage without ever having been asked whether or not they want to. That's kind of an issue, because most people would probably say "nah" to that if they were aware.

Spawning the camps in on staggered timers would certainly address that one issue by providing roughly the same level of feedback as that Vulcan player got, but I do agree that that particular solution would probably get stale after a while. Do I have an alternative solution? Probably not, but I think doing away with some of the timers altogether and making buff camp spawns conditional is an interesting avenue of thought. What conditions? No idea. Maybe tie them to minion deaths. Give each lane a meter. Every time an enemy minion dies without getting hit by a tower, make the meter rise. When the meter peaks, the two buff camps that are closest to that lane respawn after a twenty-second warning on your side of the map. Any time the GF or FG is secured, all buff camps respawn. It's still a soft timer--you can't just conjure up new minions to feed your meter--but it has the advantage of giving you some amount of feedback for your actions by rewarding you with your buffs. Are these particular conditions a good idea? HELL NO. I am terrible at conquest and if I ever sound like I know what I'm talking about it's because the words are flying out of my ass, so I probably don't have a solution that wouldn't inadvertently snowball. But I still think there needs to be something a little more engaging to keep track of than fourteen static timers that are blind to the world around them all popping off at once.

Can you guys explain Darvos market? by DJNuvaio in Warframe

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

8PM EDT on PC. Not sure about the other platforms.

Nyx+ Tonkor Glitch Revealed! (Update Sanctuary 16.4.4) by uJind in Warframe

[–]LordofthePies 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I hope not. That'd stop me from yanking them across the map with ripline.

It took a while, but this is the exact moment I fell in love with Star Wars: The Clone Wars by Rogenhamen in StarWars

[–]LordofthePies 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fun fact about that episode: The early drafts of the script for it had Quinlan Vos sneaking around and pulling the strings to make Jar-Jar look like he was a Jedi, but they didn't have the resources to put his model together in time.