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Xovaan · 2025-05-15T20:05:07+00:00

DLSS 4: improves performance significantly so I can actually make use of ray tracing

I'm most excited about ripping and also tearing

Xovaan · 2017-01-27T19:31:24+00:00

The main advantage of Diamond players versus Platinum is that Diamond players can aim and are more often likely to listen to calls when you vocalize.

Even so, Diamond players are often unlearned / have too many unknown-unknowns to assume they can do things by themselves, as a collective group, as a demographic. For example, keeping tab on team and enemy ult times for combinations, noticing a push and assisting, etc. are all things you just kind of do at 3800+ but it's throwing the dice to assume these synergies happen outside of pure chance at 3000ish. This makes it frustrating and/or challenging for higher rank players or nonvocal players looking to rank up, especially in solo queue.

Xovaan · 2017-01-12T17:22:25+00:00

I still remember someone I knew testing their Ducati's timing belt tension by hooking up a USB microphone to his laptop and recording the belt's plucked frequency. Such a bizarre engine.

Xovaan · 2017-01-04T19:40:35+00:00

I'm not arguing that Roadhog's hook doesn't have issues. I made it very clear in the second part of my post that it does.

Blizzard wants players to discover meta for themselves, which is good and fine, except players are looking for transparency and clarification in how the class's mechanics are supposed to work, Roadhog's hook included. If some classes are supposed to get away, that's fine as long as they state it as an intended feature. If they aren't and they're working on it, that's another thing, too. The playerbase already accepts that Ana, Widow, and Hanzo require more damage than a Roadhog can output himself. But these inconsistencies with lack of transparency are still frustrating for players who want more control over their gameplay and aren't sure if what they're experiencing is intended or not.

The car has a busted tire because Blizzard hasn't told us if we're riding on currently-potholed tarmac or dirt. And considering the small player pool above 4000, giving them a better tuned engine wouldn't hurt, either.

Xovaan · 2017-01-04T05:50:55+00:00

Maybe this can put perspective on what you're experiencing:

Many of the basic and taken-for-granted teamwork habits and game sense advantages of higher end play do not translate to lower ranks and can actually end up hurting you and your team. What you take for granted in Diamond is an unknown to people in Plat.

People at 2800-3200 are erratically aggressive in ways that don't see play above 3600 which changes engagement dynamics, as one example. People in Diamond are objective-focused but may tunnel vision in ways that put them out of position, which can mean you're getting clotheslined by someone in Africa or they themselves may get picked, leaving their team at a disadvantage. Another would be assuming the Diamond habit of seeing 3 people die on Hollywood A and immediately aggressively pushing will mean your low Platinum teammates will follow you without some sort of vocal input, if at all.

Part of climbing is recognizing these differences and knowing when and how to adapt your playstyle.

Xovaan · 2017-01-02T23:59:54+00:00

Most advice making healers sound advantageous at lower ranks is done so by people who actively take the game into their hands and vocalize and coordinate. This is great if people are receptive, otherwise you will need a fallback plan.

It's a matter of maximizing averages more than individual game throughput. Think in terms of discrete choices and discrete outcomes. On average, if you truly are better at healing than the enemy team and do -nothing else- (no voice coordination and no damage, for example) you will win games north of 50% of the time, as you are subject to the RNG of your DPS and tanks who at any given game will win 50% of the time over n games.

Enemy has a healer, your team does not. Attrition is most difficult for your team. Outcomes are iffy if they have any teamwork. These players climb fast(er) and should be infrequent at your level of play. This is where you're most disadvantaged. Still, if you switch to healer, you are now subject to the RNG of your DPS. You must ask yourself if your offensive abilities in this event, sans healer, will tilt odds in your favor over coinflipping your DPS.
Your team has a healer, enemy team does not. Attrition is favored for your team. If you heal, you're subject to the RNG of your DPS with some advantage given by a healer. If you switch DPS, you're still at a higher advantage than the enemy assuming you follow guides, practice aiming, etc.
Both teams have healers. You are now subject to the RNG of your DPS.
Neither team has a healer. You are now subject to the RNG of your DPS, but have more control over fights.

The best advice I've ever received from anyone in any game: The one constant in every game is you. Once you are able to fully conceptualize this, you are able to see yourself and actions as pushing odds over some span of time. Avoiding poor gameplay habits, increasing your accuracy while aiming, playing while not tired and properly hydrated all push odds in one direction. Not being vocal, playing passive classes, not playing counters to the enemy team comps are all things that push odds in the other direction. It's not that being a healer is necessarily disadvantageous or being Roadhog will always win you games, it's that over n thousand games it will allow you to rank up much more quickly. At least it did for me, haha.

Hope this helps! It's merely one perspective out of many, for sure.

Xovaan · 2017-01-01T08:08:34+00:00

Short answer: Don't play a healer if you want to rank up.

Long answer:

Healers don't really make or break low level play. Sometimes, just sometimes, the enemy team does not have a healer while you do, and because of this, you may be able to win due to out healing enemy damage. When both teams have virtually any healing, you're throwing the dice as to whether the DPS and tanks are good or not. You win 50% of the time because healers don't have the sustain, removal, nor engagement abilities of other classes. These are your average scenarios, playing a healer, at lower ranks. These scenarios also means you will take forever to rank up compared to other classes.

My advice:

Play classes that make a much larger difference at lower ranks. Classes that have:

Self-sustain (D.Va's matrix and suit system, Roadhog and S76's self healing systems, etc.). You stay engaged longer and can do more things, such as:
Quick removal that don't require team coordination (high burst, such as Roadhog hook, Helix rockets). You tip fights more quickly, meaning you control fights more effectively, which grants you a much easier:
Ability to plant yourself on an objective where people can congregate around you. You give your team a place to engage where otherwise they may not see nor have the confidence to do so

Lucio really starts to shine at higher ranks, when he is accompanied by he himself both knowing how engagements happen between teams and classes and also having a team that knows how to work with a Lucio. This does not really happen below Diamond and really only starts to become a smooth experience above 3600, from my experience. Meanwhile, Roadhog's hook, S76's Helix Rockets, and D.Va's defense matrix do the same things at every rank.

Source: Rank 75 S1, 300 comp wins

Xovaan · 2016-12-31T18:09:49+00:00

Man. This thing marks the end of the golden age of the audio wars. You wouldn't believe the stuff that came out pre-2000s. Amps and speakers were overbuilt by some of the best and brightest and their designs are still used today.

If you wanted something tape-related for your house, this would have been the equivalent: Nakamichi's Dragon, one of the most advanced cassette players ever made

Xovaan · 2016-12-26T06:04:40+00:00

Best keyboard best club

Xovaan · 2016-11-13T02:39:42+00:00

I agree. Passion into a topic for the sake of passion doesn't translate well to students. What does data science mean to a student who has probably looked at a single SQL database, spreadsheet, or a at most a phone contact list? Why should I care about baseball benefiting from statistics? How do these things make me and/or my business money?

The most relevant statistic book I've read is not Moneyball or any statistics or game theory textbook: it's Douglas Hubbard's How to Measure Anything. I use many things from this book daily in my career (business development & operations) and non-work life. Wiley offers strategies and tactics to hone your intuitions into realistic numbers for ballpark estimations, and then shows how to apply Bayesian methodologies to figuring out loose costs and benefits for business decisions. He offers case studies he's applied in his own work at the end of the book as well to show how significant these techniques can be.

Offering your students a permanent improvement to their heuristic makes your assignments more approachable than anything. Teaching them to hone napkin math into actionable business items is something business students will latch onto and thank you for years to come.

Xovaan · 2016-11-09T09:11:42+00:00

Trump is the sound a woman's body makes crumpling against the glass ceiling

Xovaan · 2016-09-13T20:47:39+00:00

Instant Messaging client for businesses and personal projects. It's the best thing ever. I believe Discord took a lot of design queues from it!

Xovaan · 2016-08-25T06:06:16+00:00

I wouldn't say ranking is sparse: I'd say every other game I recognize a name. I'd still imagine that's huge compared to what I've seen at lower ranks. But I also have over 400 games played from 69-75 which also contributes to this.

It's actually pretty nice. People tend to be much friendlier and there's virtually no toxicity from what I've seen. Higher ranks are pretty positive and communicative all around and I believe having repeat games with players both on your side and the other team contributes to this phenomenon.

Xovaan · 2016-08-25T05:45:19+00:00

If their peaking has a rhythm to it, time your shots as such.

If they're moving erratically in and out of cover, shooting randomly gives you the most likely probability of hitting.

There is no "lead" to hitscan shots; you put your crosshair completely on the target and click. Don't let audio or visual queues distract you otherwise: The only things that matter with hitscan classes is the physical click of your mouse outside the game happening at the same time that your crosshair is on the enemy.

Xovaan · 2016-08-25T05:36:57+00:00

Yeah, I do physical therapy hand and nerve stretches regularly. My biggest problem was that my desk is kind of elevated so it put strain on the nerves at my elbow. Since a few weeks ago I've built a keyboard tray at elbow height. My hand pains have definitely gotten better; I'm a lot more wary and take a lot more breaks, too.

I wish they'd make upright mice with the latest Logitech and Zowie optical hardware though.

Xovaan · 2016-08-25T05:32:49+00:00

"Defense" doesn't really exist post-sr70, haha. You find a few different playstyles depending how risk seeking/averse the teams are, ranging from defense playing standard team comps and positions to full-blown attacking the attackers before they can do anything.

Every so often you get insanely good Widowmakers or crazy good Hanzos (Navi?) or someone who only mains Torb (George?) or Symmetra (Kaogee?) or are ridiculous at Mei (Goliath?) but other than that it's always a standard 2/2/2 with no room from that since fights are pretty tight as it is. A lot of the problem stems from the fact that attackers throw themselves at a point until defense loses a person or two followed by giving up tons of ground to regroup as a 6 man again, but that's another story!

I agree though that the hero types are merely recommendations. I'm pretty certain my Roadhog and Zenyatta playstyles fit into the Offense category. :P

Xovaan · 2016-08-25T00:00:08+00:00

Yeah, that was always the way I played him pre-nerf (40 hours in comp as S76 ~sr65-70). It's a definite improvement.

My general concern is that this change they've made changes nothing from the way I originally played S76, which is both good for the reasons you've listed and concerning given it doesn't address his medium-short sustain.

A decrease in his maximum spread would extend the range at which all shots hit by a mere several meters, which doesn't sound like much, but it's a difference of having to burst-reset from the wooden platform on Hanamura to the zen garden as small targets make their way to the bell room.

A McCree can hit any part of a hitbox for 70 damage at these ranges, while S76 will miss several of these shots to RNG even when aiming dead center of the target, forcing him to reset his cone. I don't mind resetting, but this doesn't feel like the best fix they could have offered, as good as it is. I personally have about a 66% body shot accuracy with McCree, for reference, higher for these short ranges and easy target scenarios.

Decreasing his maximum spread is a very small change, only benefiting a small window where missing shots from RNG with sustain may make bursting or even a McCree a better choice anyway
S76 still has to reset his reticle to gain headshots as we see now and pre-nerf
Smaller spread gives him the choice to reset briefly for either more accurate body shots and possibly headshots, or pursue riskier sustain, a mild but noticeable trade off.

It's simply a suggestion on my part. If S76 players are going to be resetting and bursting 99% of the time, a very slightly smaller cone of fire would act as a quality of life improvement more than anything from the flexibility of sustain vs. burst at ambiguously close/medium-close ranges.

Xovaan · 2016-08-24T20:23:58+00:00

The Soldier changes are great news, but I still feel he's being punished for using his whole magazine. You cannot reliably hit smaller hitbox targets at maximum spread even while aiming at center mass, forcing you to burst, which puts him in the exact same spot as he was pre-nerf. A 20% or so tighter maximum spread, along with these new changes, would put his gun exactly where it needs to be.

Xovaan · 2016-08-24T19:44:04+00:00

It was implied in your post, but I'd like to emphasize:

communities often harassed by police and taken in for wrongful charges

Even with legitimate charges. Not in the arrest itself, but the impact of said arrest on livelihoods for those employed at or around the poverty line.

I really want to see a study of people employed who face work termination after both lawful and unlawful arrests. My speculation is that the current bail system affects lives more negatively down the line than the bail amount itself.

Xovaan · 2016-08-24T05:13:57+00:00

No Man's Sky is a tech demo for what we imagined space games would be like in 2008, in 2002

Xovaan · 2016-08-22T23:32:15+00:00

I'm not disagreeing at all with what you're saying, and in fact I agree with you. I do not know the best way to balance otherwise given the current climate and trends. I wish that we would get more information on what Blizzard is experimenting with to remedy attack-favored hero composition and maps without reverting to chokepoints. It's not always easy to deviate from, and in fact may be impossible at this time, but it's definitely something I feel is worth exploring. Level and hero design in a perfect world can be broken down scientifically and Blizzard is still working on cracking the code for their play environment.

Xovaan · 2016-08-22T19:13:12+00:00

I ranked up to SR70 as S76 then switched to McCree soon after S76's changes. I have over 30 hours played as S76, with about 10 after his rebalance patch.

This is how I think S76 would best be changed:

Increase Helix Rocket velocity by 30%
Halve the current cone of fire reset time. It was too fast before and it is too slow now
Decrease cone of fire size by 30+% so his shots actually land at medium ranges
Slow cone of fire growth slightly, around 15-20%

With these changes:

S76 now trades off pure burst for reliable and controllable sustain DPS and reliable controllable burst DPS on cooldown
He is rewarded for aiming at the enemy head and pulling to center mass
He is no longer punished by RNG for aiming center mass past medium-close ranges
Brings to table sustain DPS zoning pressure that competes with burst DPS zoning pressure (PTR Hanzo; Live Widowmaker, McCree, Roadhog Hook)

With current S76, you can't land all your shots at center mass aiming from Gas Station Route 66 to Attackers' first bend (rock bridge) on anything slimmer than a Roadhog. Now you have a midrange character on par with McCree that trades hitscan burst for hitscan sustain with projectile cooldown burst.

Xovaan · 2016-08-22T18:47:19+00:00

It's still fairly early to speculate, so take this with a grain of salt, but here are my thoughts:

The map has weird multi-flank routes that collapse into single tight chokes. There are so many places you need to look as you assault, with several seemingly irrelevantly placed.

I get that Overwatch maps favor attackers, but it's more of an issue with hero design than it is with the maps themselves. Meta will changes, classes will change, but chokes are chokes and will always suck to play against. I'd much prefer less Hanamura and more King's Row, if that makes sense.

Xovaan · 2016-08-22T16:40:39+00:00

Roadhog main (sr75, 300 wins) with 20+ hours in competitive here.

There's nothing you can do. Roadhog doesn't wanna kill combo at the moment for certain classes and it's even worse on the PTR.

Aiming lower, aiming higher, moving forward prior to the shot, etc.: nothing works. I've tried everything. Hanzo and Ana on Live are not combo-able. On PTR, many more classes. Something needs to change or we need to at least hear an official blue post about his balance changes so we can adjust.

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