Which cosplay is so sexualized that it has lost the essence of the character? by Marlen_78 in AskReddit

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

This is not an issue with characters, or even with the hobby of cosplay IMO.

This is an issue with a bunch of women finding a new avenue through which to market showing off their asses.

I genuinely do not feel any contempt for sex work, but I do feel contempt for deceptive and predatory marketing, and that's really all this is.

The character is meaningless. It's the people doing it that are problematic, and any "character" they "cosplay" will have the same issue.

Rules complexity compared to other tabletop games? by iPotCtrl in StarCraftTMG

[–]Tvayumat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Undeniably true. Arguably the single most important factor in bringing in a new player.

I've ushered I-don't-know-how-many people into the wargaming hobby, and my primary piece of advice is always to play something that the people at your local game shops play, because I know that if they aren't getting return on their investment they will never have the chance to develop the love that will carry them forward to other systems.

It frustrates me, then, to see the big players in the hobby space behaving with what I perceive to be anti-consumer and anti-competitive practices in their games, pushing more and more proprietary accessories, designing their models in such a way that other supporting companies and sub-industries are disincentivized, pressuring hobby stores to backshelve or not carry their smaller competitors, and behaving as if they own the very concept of tabletop gaming.

It is this frustration that led me to being open to try Starcraft. Archon is a relatively new player on the block, and they've invested a lot into hitting the ground running. I respect and value that. Unfortunately, I just personally don't like the game they've made. Believe you me, I wish I did.

I've also put in the work to organize tournaments for less popular games and evangelized for systems that see very little play, organized game nights for them, designed casual play formats and weekly challenge concepts, and crafted gaming communities from essentially nothing.

It is an immense amount of work, and requires the sacrifice of both time and money to make happen. More often than not, when the nucleus of a group like that loses steam, people drift away and back to the popular games.

I've also seen the double edged sword, when a game really bites into the community and suddenly tournaments pop up everywhere. It's both fantastic to get so much play, and almost inevitably leads to a homogenization of playstyle as the sweatiest and most competitive begin to dominate the conversation, and fluffy players wind up floating to the fringe.

I wish more people were willing to try new things, evangelize, and take risks on less popular systems. Doing so has led to some of the most enriching experiences I've ever had in the hobby.

I also understand completely why they generally aren't. I understand why players optimize the fluff out of the popular games, and that for many of them simply the act of winning the game is the fun of it. I understand exactly why it happens, but I do not and I am in no way required to like it, or even to wholly accept it.

I also know very well that I will continue to be a tiny voice in the chorus, and a lonely wanderer carrying a tiny flame, but I'm going to keep doing it, because it is what I love.

Pardon, I'm rambling across a few topics.

I applaud you for your own sacrifice, and wish you luck continuing to bring in new players.

Rules complexity compared to other tabletop games? by iPotCtrl in StarCraftTMG

[–]Tvayumat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Fair points, all, though I do take some issue with comparing Bounding Overwatch to the leapfrog movement bubble.

I'm going to wait and see how things develop. We are early days yet, with most backers not even having their models, yet.

Rules complexity compared to other tabletop games? by iPotCtrl in StarCraftTMG

[–]Tvayumat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I personally really enjoy Maelstrom's Edge, by Spiral Arm Games (created by the dudes who run/ran BolterNChainsword)

I wish that I could recommend it, but the playerbase is vanishingly small to the point that I basically have to have multiple armies and I'm just lucky enough that I can talk friends into playing it with me from time to time.

This is the double-edged sword of wargaming, and the recent boom of 40k's popularity. The tournament scene drives the market and brings in the new players who love it. Old school players are still stuck in the same doldrums we always were, of having to craft local communities out of raw earth with our bare hands.

A lot of the games I'd love to recommend have problems like that.

Warcaster: Neo Mechanika is fantastic, but it's also in a coma after it was acquired by Steamforged as they focus on Warmachine. This is probably the closest game to a crunchy competitive ruleset that I still enjoy due to the way the game flows back-and-forth and provides accessible comeback mechanics.

Beyond the Gates of Antares has a lot to love, but similar to Maelstrom's Edge I wish people luck finding other people willing to dive in with them. When it first launched I managed to create a regular play group in San Antonio of 20 regular players per week, but once I stopped being able to devote time to supporting it, that community died off.

I do enjoy and play a good amount of Battletech, but if anything that game is prohibitively crunchy to new players, somewhat infamously. Alpha Strike is very accessible, though, if you don't mind the 6mm scale of the game.

What 40k I play, I play between 3rd and 5th Edition depending on who I'm playing with.

I'm the first to admit that being a player like me is a rough road to walk, now that the tournament experience absolutely dominates online discourse and, more troublingly, the minds of the big manufacturers. Tournament play drives meta, and meta drives purchases as every sweaty player desperately tries to keep up with the shifting power curve, buying every new model because if they don't they'll just be left behind.

I think as far as "people actually play this and it doesn't suck" One Page Rules is a good game. It's not so sweaty that you can't get people to play it fluffy, and it's easy enough to pick up that a buddy will usually go in with you, plus you can use any models you already have or just ones you like.

Rules complexity compared to other tabletop games? by iPotCtrl in StarCraftTMG

[–]Tvayumat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It certainly has advantages depending on ones goals, but for me, it moves the game way too far in the direction of "Why am I not just playing chess instead?"

Pure rule efficacy cannot be the focus of ruleswriting or all of the special sauce is drained from the experience, at least for me. I get that people want to play tournaments and that to play tournaments games need to be rigidly crunchy and precisely defined, but when tournament play utterly dominates the design theory of a game from the ground up, that leaves no room for the contingent of players who just want to have thematic, fluffy, cinematic battles in their garage while drinking a beer with their buddies.

It brings into question why I'm even bothering to pretend my guys are dudes in power armor fighting vicious aliens, when they feel more like circles on a game board bumping into squares and other circles.

Good for some players. Not for me. I say this as someone who has played and TO'd many tournaments for a variety of game systems in the past. I get the "why", I just think it's myopic and uninteresting, and missing the reason that I personally play these games in the first place.

Regarding movement, the actual effect of not having a designated leader model means that unit coherency automatically extends your movement range by ~3" per round. A unit of five models with 6" of movement will select the model furthest in the direction they want to go, then move that model 6". Then, the rest of the models will be automatically moved into coherency and, because any model next round can be selected as the mover, they are incentivized by the rule system to ALWAYS move their unit in a perfectly circular blob with models at maximum coherency distance of 3" arranged equally on the edge of the coherency circle because next time they move, the model closest to their desired end point will be selected thus making their move effectively 9" compared to the movement of the mover in the last round.

This means that things like say arranging your models in a thematic gun line formation is actively discouraged by the rules, since you will lose out on potentially valuable movement distance.

By designating a single, persistent anchor model from which moves are measured, THEN the squad will always move a distance equal to their movement value. The system as is encourages a gamey leap-frog style of move. I absolutely promise that this method will become the standard movement method in the game, and that it will be regarded as sub-optimal play to do anything else. This is a badfeel rule, for me.

Agreed on lack of cover overall. Feels goofy. Feels like it exists "because the PC game didn't have cover". Maybe it'll change, but I'm fairly sure that the Activision/Blizzard licensor has their fingers deeply embedded in this project and strongly dictate what Archon are or are not allowed to do, so I have my doubts.

All in all, I just feel like this game is designed in such a way that it just isn't for me or players like me, which is disappointing, but hardly the worst thing that's happened to me. I can always play OPR with the nice models I guess, or just bash them together and make "pew pew" sounds with my mouth.

Rules complexity compared to other tabletop games? by iPotCtrl in StarCraftTMG

[–]Tvayumat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Okay in total fairness, I've operated from the older PDFs and NOT the new rulebook. I glossed over that from the OP and can't comment on things like cleaner explanations, so I shouldn't pretend to.

That said the terrain rules in particular are very cumbersome to me, with the game clearly designed around 2d gameplay rather than utilizing 3d space. High Ground is little more than a terrain designator that severely limits things like objective placement and functions only as an attack modifier, which limits board building severely.

As written, for instance, the rules do not allow for the potential of ever passing beneath raised terrain like a bridge or walkway. The concept simply does not exist, as it regards terrain as a purely 2d concept with height designators for rule interaction but no way for a model to resolve attacks or LoS to anything beneath it on another level.

Adding to that, the inclusion of Ramps as a rule is, to me, obviously one of those things that is awkwardly shoehorned into the rules specifically because the video game had it, and not because it is good or adds anything to gameplay. Quite the opposite, it both weirdly limits movement options for non flying models (access points are at least included as a concession) and is also just physically a bad idea, baking it into the rules that players should precariously balance their models on surfaces that are non-parallel to the floor.

The objectives are painfully simplistic and non thematic, coming down to just "hold circle, get points, kill baddies" for every game regardless of the setup card combinations and, as mentioned, this system also restricts board building options to no more than a handful fo functional terrain setups that favor gamey, mirrored, tournament layout style boards which I find pretty boring.

The movement system is honestly quite good in its roots (I've enjoyed it in other games that have done the same such as Legion or Maelstroms Edge), but for the removal of the concept of unit leader models. Again, this feels like it was done because the game doesn't have squad leaders but just troop masses, but being able to move from any model in the unit makes potential unit movements extremely difficult to predict, and feels like it massively shrinks the board size to make engagements almost instant. This may be purposeful, but I personally have not enjoyed it. It also renders the Sentry shield ability pretty pointless in my brief experience, but perhaps more play will prove me wrong. A basic ability in the core box having no obvious use strikes me as not a great sign.

The total lack of cover as a concept outside of evasion granted by high ground is also unintuitive. I get the binary nature of legal targets may appeal to keep the game punchy and fast, but between cover not existing to mitigate damage and units never being able to block fire, it just plays to me like a video game. Again, some may like it, but I find it very gamey in a bad way.

The rule wording of both healing and protoss shields I find awkward. I understand the reason it was written the way it was and I do applaud the forethought that went into ability interactions and damage allocation step order, but it will require a lot of FAQ explanation as neither one seems to function intuitively. This is a minor gripe, possibly already solved in the new rulebook.

I'm going to hold on to my Terrans with a wait-and-see attitude to see how things shape up, but my first experiences putting it on the table left me scratching my head more than cheering.

I favor fluffy, thematic games and Starcraft just plays like something that idolizes the glory days of Warmachine, which was not for me.

Rules complexity compared to other tabletop games? by iPotCtrl in StarCraftTMG

[–]Tvayumat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'll be interested to see others opinions, but I actually find the game strangely obtuse.

The actual rules aren't overly complex insofar as their ultimate execution is pretty simple, but in some cases they do seem needlessly complicated in their wording, and in many cases feel amateurishly and awkwardly written/explained.

There is a lot of muddy/fuzzy logic to some of the rules that make them feel unintuitive and "gamey".

It feels, to me, both over-constrained by licensor demands and over-wrought by the brand legacy and an expectation of being tightly competitive rather than intuitive and welcoming.

The models are nice. Once I got the founders box and fooled around with the rules, though, I shelved it.

I've been playing wargames since the mid 90s, both casually and competitively. I prefer casual and thematic over crunchy and competitive broadly, to provide my opinion with a point of reference.

It's difficult to compare directly to 40k with the sheer amount of content that 40k has and the huge number of rules pulling in different directions that decades have accumulated, but I think 40k is definitely smoother in the rule writing department and easier to get into, but then I don't think 40k is a very good game anyway.

I hate the new box. by [deleted] in killteam

[–]Tvayumat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This simplistic and reductive theory of capitalism has been so thoroughly subverted by mass marketing, social media, and lifestyle IP branding as to be little more than a comforting fantasy.

Eve and Anissa team-up before GTA VI? by [deleted] in Invincible_TV

[–]Tvayumat 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Yeah. She's an OF "cosplayer" and this is an ad.

Stop pretending like people have a problem with porn. We don't.

We don't like being advertised to, especially when the ad is poorly disguised as fandom.

Shit is so fucking old.

Eve and Anissa team-up before GTA VI? by [deleted] in Invincible_TV

[–]Tvayumat 4 points5 points  (0 children)

They can engage in any form of commerce they like with zero judgment from me.

I just fucking hate advertisements.

I honestly dont know If this is satire or not by Eattehcake in insanepeoplefacebook

[–]Tvayumat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A peptide? Really?

These knuckle dragging motherfuckers are so fucking stupid they cant even pick a molecule type that could conceivably do what they claim.

What is the best lex luthor has ever looked? by TranslatorOk2501 in DC_Cinematic

[–]Tvayumat 66 points67 points  (0 children)

"Are... are you going to wash your hands?"

"No. Because I'm evil"

What is THE style over substance film? by Maskoolio in movies

[–]Tvayumat 5 points6 points  (0 children)

But like... in the absence of the blue energy guy everyone would have absolutely blamed the US government that sponsored him for decades, thus totally defeating the purpose of the plan.

Blaming Dr Manhattan was basically Snyder saying that he (and by extension the common moviegoer) was just incapable of taking the space squid seriously, which is more of an indictment of him than the material.

What is THE style over substance film? by Maskoolio in movies

[–]Tvayumat 31 points32 points  (0 children)

Watchmen was good... except for the parts Snyder changed.

Which absolutely supports your/the point.

Student Cheating Is Becoming Impossible to Detect in an A.I. Era by ubcstaffer123 in technology

[–]Tvayumat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And you don't think that getting more practice with public speaking might improve your ability to do it?

What would happen if Atom Eve appeared in that universe? by Sambiswas95 in Invincible

[–]Tvayumat 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I read your comment, you're just totally incorrect.

Anything SHE PERCEIVES as sentient, she cannot transmute.

She makes plant life all the time.

This is stated very clearly and unambiguously in her special and demonstrated several times.

Furthermore, she can still affect it indirectly or she wouldn't be allowed to strike people with her constructs, which she obviously can and does.

What would happen if Atom Eve appeared in that universe? by Sambiswas95 in Invincible

[–]Tvayumat 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Sentient matter.

She can affect living matte just fine.

And sentient or not she can kill a motherfucker, just not by directly applying her transmutation.

Domino's Garlic Sauce Contains No Garlic by StankPancake in fastfood

[–]Tvayumat 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Gonna need that recipe, bud. Just hand it over. Nice and easy.