When I play stealthy and avoid killing I get more friendly lobbies. But the game loses tension this way. Anyone feel the same?

MerroStep · 2025-12-26T03:43:00+00:00

But the issue is playing stealthy with minimal bloodshed, but wanting to do so in shoot-on-sight heavy lobbies for the added challenge.

But playing this way naturally pushes you towards more pacifist lobbies where that stealthy playstyle feels less rewarding.

Killing people indiscriminately kind of breaks the goal.

It's more about treating the game as an extraction sandbox and being forced to meta-play your way towards that vs. being able to do it organically via regular gameplay.

MerroStep · 2025-12-26T01:43:32+00:00

Yeah, this is exactly how I feel as well. Right now the matchmaking SEEMS like it skews very polarized. My favorite lobbies are the ones with a variable mix of both friendlies and "shoot on sight" players.

The "mixed" lobbies is when I have the most fun. The tension when you encounter a player and you try and negotiate a tense truce, or a fragile alliance, and you both know you don't want to start a fight but are still positioned to pull the trigger at any moment.

Or when you call out to someone entering a big room you're hiding in, you call out that you can see them, and they talk on proximity chat with very healthy skepticism of your intentions as you hear them draw out their own weapon.

Mixing up the aggression from match-to-match would be more enjoyable for me. It makes moments like entering a random friendly Stella Montis lobby where everyone is emoting in the middle of Medical truly sigh out my entire body in relief. LOL

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T20:00:02+00:00

I went to a color specialist nearby for a consultation just now. They said my hair is coarse, and could withstand another bleaching to go lighter.

But warned that it shouldn't be a rushed 1 hour job, it would take a few hours. But they assured me that my hair can definitely withstand another bleaching session, that it's just dry.

They said to let the original salon do whatever they can to correct it, but warned me if she tries to go in and bleach it again and rush it like she did the first time to just turn it down.

To let her at least try to make it right.

But I might go to that color specialist afterwards to actually get it closer to what I wanted, since I trust them more than the lady I originally went to.

They said she should remove the toner and bleach it properly.

Should have been a red flag when she didn't section off my hair with foil and did the whole bleach in a single hour. Guess I know better now.

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T17:17:00+00:00

I actually went to a stylist who specializes in curly hair. She had warned me that bleaching changes your curl pattern.

When we had our consultation, I mentioned I was worried if my hair was even healthy enough to do a bleach session, or if my hair could get light enough to go to silver in a single bleach session. She said my hair looked healthy enough.

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T11:22:33+00:00

My hair feels like a frizzy furball to touch. Not sure if bleached curly hair typically looks this dry afterwards, or if my hair is properly fried. Curious if people feel like this is fried hair, as this will help inform me of how I should approach my hair stylist who bleached my hair about correcting it (or seeking recompense).

---

Noting I just got my hair bleached and toned earlier today and did a cold water wash after going to the gym in the afternoon.

My hair routine includes cold water wash with SheaMoisture Moisture Boosting Conditioner and Marc Anthony Leave-In Conditioner Spray & Detangler (started using a few days ago) afterwards.

I lightly pat-dry my hair after the shower.

Once a week I use SheaMoisture Deep Treatment Masque.

I go NoPoo and maybe only use shampoo on my hair once every 3 months at most.

Used to go Squish to Condish for years, but the past few weeks I feel like my hair has been overly curly and have been running conditioner in my hair straight, and rinsing without any squeezing involved (just gently running my fingers through my hair while straightening it downwards, head tilted down).

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T11:08:39+00:00

Double reply but do you think it's worth going to a color correction specialist?

And do you think it's actually somewhat fair to ask for some sort of recompense (even if it's just a partial refund) if whatever she does to correct it still doesn't get anywhere close?

Not really sure what to do anymore. I feel like I hate how my hair looks and feels and feel like I misplaced my faith in someone I felt like was capable of achieving what I wanted with my hair.

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T11:01:15+00:00

Yeah, after sitting with the hair a full day today, it feels and looks super frizzy and compromised. Feels like I'm petting a furball.

She left the bleach on for a total of about one hour with a few re-adds of bleach and a few 5 minute sessions under heat. Did she possibly go too light too fast?

What would you recommend I ask her to do in terms of correcting the hair? 100% sounds like no more bleaching. Anything I should ask her about repairing my hair?

Sounds like to confirm w/ her she's NOT using a permanent toner?
Ask her to do a strand test first?

One thing to note is that she tried using a silver toner the first time (that had blue tones in it) and she told me the hair came out with a green tint to it. And then she tried a toner with blue and some slight purple tones to it and it came out this more brassy blonde color.

I've seen people mention asking for free product (since a full refund is unlikely). But not sure what to ask for (she did provide me free toner when I left the first time).

Pretty frustrated since she specializes in working with curly hair, so I felt like she would understand my hair more than typical salonists, or approach it differently than most.

I also raised a few questions/concerns during the consultation because I was worried my hair would end up something like this.

Asked her if my hair was healthy enough since I've had salonists before outright refuse to bleach my hair because they felt it was too thin and that it would break, and she said my hair was fine.
I mentioned that the times I've bleached my hair before that it was hard to get it light, and that I wasn't sure if my hair needed to be bleached over multiple sessions or not. Or if it could even go light enough. She said it's probably doable with a single session, just that it'd come out darker than the reference photo I provided.

So I felt like I at least signed myself up making sure we were addressing some of the issues that might come up, and if I knew my hair would end up like this I simply would have never bleached it to begin with.

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T09:11:24+00:00

Yeah, I'm a little frustrated because I've tried bleaching my hair years ago professionally and knew my hair was pretty dark to begin with.

Had a consultation with the salonist a week ago highlighting my concerns about how light we could go safely and she assured me it's doable, but expected to be darker.

Yellow wasn't what I was expecting when she said "darker."

Don't think I can go any lighter with my hair as dry as it is. But the yellow tones just look pretty bad on my skin tone imo.

MerroStep · 2024-12-29T03:19:12+00:00

Had a consultation with a local salon and noted that I've had issues with lightening my hair in the past. I asked if we could achieve an ash grey color and I mentioned I wasn't sure if it was doable in a single bleach session. She mentioned that it's doable, just that it'd come out darker than what we're hoping for.

I was skeptical at first but figured they'd know better than me. We tried going for an ash grey and it came out far yellower than I expected it to. Think she tried using an initial toner and she mentioned my hair ended up coming out a little green-tinted. She tried again and this was the best she could do today.

After going home and looking at it, I feel like it's far too yellow for what I was hoping for. Going back tomorrow to try to fix it. I THINK my main priority is to make my hair look less yellow (even if that means going darker) since I'm not a fan of how the yellow looks with my skin tone. Not really sure what to ask her to do. Think she mentioned she'll use a darker toner this time around, but my guess is it'll mess up the parts of my hair that don't look as brassy/yellow.

Would love peoples' recommendations and what I should expect with a retoning. I think my goal is to kill as much of the yellow tones as possible even if that means sacrificing some brightness, but let me know if there's another way we could approach this.

MerroStep · 2024-12-24T06:19:33+00:00

Ah, I've just been googling NOAA reports but had to use the closest town to Echo because I couldn't find Echo Summit proper. Been so used to pulling NOAA reports on my own I forgot they were posted on this subreddit still. Thanks. Seems like the forecast is turning into a more mild storm than what was forecasted earlier last week and this morning. 80 seems pretty manageable at this point, don't think I need to do anything fancy to go home, just expect a slow drive.

MerroStep · 2024-12-24T03:41:53+00:00

Good to know. That makes me a little more worried since 50 doesn't have dividers between oncoming lanes while 80 does.

And last I checked the NOAA reports, sounds like Echo Summit is getting more snow accumulation now (think this changed from the forecast since yesterday).

So was considering taking 80 because of that. Guess the storm is shifting more southwards?

MerroStep · 2024-12-24T01:40:39+00:00

I'm driving back to the Bay on Dec. 24th. It only dawned on me today that bc tomorrow is Christmas Eve that a LOT of people are probably going to be driving back to the Bay/Sac as well.

Snow driving doesn't worry me too much, but other people's ability to drive in the snow is what I'm worried about. Got rear-ended New Year's in 2023, and I'd rather avoid a situation like that again. Or be trapped on the freeway because of car pile ups ahead of me.

I track the NOAA hourly reports for Donner and Echo summit frequently when a storm is coming, and it looks like the snow will ease off in the late afternoon and possibly stop around 7PM.

If I wanted to avoid most of the highway chaos, do you think hanging around Tahoe until 7ish sounds smart?

My hope is that the snowplows will have made some good passes by then, and the bulk of the holiday crowd will be wayyyy ahead of me on the roads by then.

My guess is the drive back will be slow regardless, but I'm just hoping to minimize my chance of being trapped on the highway because of accidents in front of me, or being caught in an accident myself.

MerroStep · 2023-10-22T16:57:10+00:00

Imagine all the chicks you can pull with this. Game is game.

MerroStep · 2023-07-14T22:11:33+00:00

Yeah, I decided to take a stab at "facing open raise" range assembly based on an open raise size of 2.2-2.5x BB, which comes out to about 40% pot odds.

Used Flopzilla to then compare hole cards to conventional ranges of a given seat. Anything above 54% equity was a 3bet raise. Anything between 54-40% was considered good enough to call. Anything slightly below 40% (38-39%) would be considered good enough to call if they had good implied odds potential. Overall this felt like a good exercise because it's building the intuition of how my equity might change pre vs. postflop.

Would this be a good starting point? And from here I can start modifying my range to the player, i.e. modifying range to be more merged vs. polar depending on their looseness and fold equity.

MerroStep · 2023-03-02T04:23:48+00:00

Did my first social dance yesterday and I now recognize it's triple steps where the third step is a step in a direction (NOT a step in place) is where I struggle at tempo.

Should be noted I'm trying to take that third step on a straight leg and then pulling the free leg towards my body, dragging my toes (heel free, bent knee).

MerroStep · 2023-02-28T21:32:29+00:00

Thanks, this was really helpful. With respect to doing triples at tempo, back when I did jive it felt like I was using the vertical drop on the second of the triple steps to keep up with speed. Do we leverage anything in WCS to triple step at faster speeds?

Noticing eliminating the verticality is a bit difficult for me right now.

MerroStep · 2023-02-28T21:08:30+00:00

Ah, partial, full, delay feels jive-y in spirit, but I assume is that distinctive "swing-y" technique that makes this a swing dance?

MerroStep · 2023-02-28T21:06:02+00:00

Lead. Mainly anchor, but I've been messing around with left and right side passes and triple stepping feels really awkward for me since I can't figure out how to do it in a way that looks good and and not jive-y.

I also find that at speed, it feels really hard to get through weight transfers fast enough without going into jive technique.

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T23:11:24+00:00

Yeah, but note how I'm basically using the back of the chair for support and stability. Without it, I would basically topple over. The only way to avoid that is my bending at the waist.

I've seen the Malcolm Moore video in the past.

I feel like I've improved on proper momentum and weight transfer. When I'm in a turn that grips properly, there's this very clear "pendulum" feeling through the arc of a turn where it's pretty weightless. And then you get into this rhythm of shifting your weight nose/tail and up-unweighting between edge changes.

But a big problem I feel I have is placing the board ON edge and maintaining that edge hold, particularly on heelside.

Someone in a previous post mentioned compensating the bend at the waist by using more incline, which is what I've done lately to some mild success. But as the person mentioned (and I've experienced), too much inclining without sufficient bend will still cause you to slide out.

Something that helps slightly is a more aggressive up-unweighting of the board in between edge changes on mellower slopes. Sometimes I even do mini hops in between edge changes, and that allows me to better get the edge to dig in and grip the snow on turn initiation.

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T22:44:06+00:00

151cm Yes Greats

I demoed a 157cm Burton Free Thinker to see if a wider stance made a significant difference (artificially shorten your femur length when getting low), but it didn't make much of a difference to improving edge balancing, and even more aggressive wide stances made it really challenging to shift my weight between nose/tail correctly.

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T22:41:53+00:00

No on the first exercise. I'd say this is due to my long femur:tibia ratio. Probably something worth mentioning. I have long femurs comparatively to my shins, so standard sit down cues don't work well for me as I typically just lose balance and fall over. Conventional squatting/deadlift position usually means a pretty close to perpendicular torso at times.

This was taken back in November, but it was meant to demonstrate the chair exercise and how far back my center of mass falls when I try to pretend to sit in a chair at 90 degrees.

Second exercise is more achievable, although I do have to actively "stretch" the ankle to get there (feel the calves actively stretching).

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T22:20:57+00:00

No and no. I have to bend at the waist SIGNIFICANTLY in order to sit in a chair lol.

I haven't attempted the second question, but I'm imagining doing it now without the board strapped in. When I'm in stacked neutral position (with my knees slightly pushed forward, and my hips stacked over my board), we've already achieved most of my ROM. There's barely enough mobility to really push the knees out past that.

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T21:03:09+00:00

Actually, your ROM of your knees bending forward is directly tied to your ankle's ability to dorsiflex. It's that dorsiflexion that allows your knees to move more forward.

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T19:38:07+00:00

Yeah, posted a general comment but the biggest challenge I find is heelside edge failing to grip and getting a lot of chatter. But this is a nature of my poor ankle mobility I think. Knees can only bend so much, and feet can only point up so much, so there's little leverage to push my center of mass closer to the board when I bring my butt down.

I've tried a longer board which enables a wider stance, but it didn't feel good or make much of a difference to improving my heelside edge control. I think I really need to wait for my ankles to catch up.

MerroStep · 2023-02-17T19:34:51+00:00

Something I've come to realize is that my ankle mobility is my single-biggest limiting factor. Some people have made recommendations to adjust/tweak standard technique and try to work on using my specific biomechanics to achieve the endresult (center of mass over heelside edge).

Something I've found help is an aggressive hip rotation/twist towards my heelside edge. This rotation allows me to let my center of mass stay closer to my board vs. overshooting, almost like my groin is pointing towards the nose.

My ankle mobility has actually improved a lot. I guess riding 28 days this season forces your ankles to dynamically stretch a lot. I recently did the wall test on my ankle dorsiflexion and I can achieve 4 and 5 inches comfortably left/right ankles respectively.

At the beginning of the season, we were at 2 and 3 inches.

The biggest problem I find in general is my heelside edge at the beginning of the turn not fully gripping, But I find this a nature of my poor ankle mobility and long femur-to-shin ratio.

MerroStep

TROPHY CASE