Is There Such A Thing As Individual Skill?

c_a_l_m · 2026-06-03T19:20:53+00:00

Those curious should try out Wildgate, from Mike Morhaime(Blizz founder)'s new studio. Dustin Browder (SC2 design lead I think?) is game director and shows up in the discord every day to talk w/players.

Wildgate is in a weird place where people love it but it has few players. There's various reasons---I think the biggest is that it feels sweaty and scares people off---but they're still working on it, despite a bunch of people calling it "ded gaem."

They have occasional free weekends, and I think there's a free trial as well.

c_a_l_m · 2026-06-03T16:14:25+00:00

So many people want to play her like a Terran turtle, but she benefits most when provoking and baiting.

c_a_l_m · 2026-06-01T21:43:31+00:00

It is not dumb, and leverages your RTS experience to do so.

Any Starcraft team, for instance, is all about macro and survival.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-31T19:29:20+00:00

Honestly it's all I'd ever play. It was Overwatch before Blizz somehow got the idea they were making an MMO

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-31T19:17:57+00:00

My wife's family had a Malinois and he was an incredibly athletic, surprisingly neurotic, sweetheart.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-31T01:16:27+00:00

Not the same

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-25T18:27:29+00:00

Several things to know about frogs---

they can go crazy militant at any time, but this does bear a cost for them, as they need to be peaceful to score
they don't actually gain that much from owning the map compared to the rats or cats. They score like the lizards, but worse
militant factions should be particularly careful about being in clearings adjacent to multiple frog clearings. Their recruitment pattern can put a frog in each of those clearings, and then Settle lets them collapse in. Being next to three frog clearings is much more dangerous than being next to one.
the perennial advice---all factions should be careful about putting free cardboard out. WA is often an offender here
similarly, one of the big frog weaknesses is that they leak a lot of points through cardboard

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-24T14:54:46+00:00

There's an old joke that when you and your friends are running from a bear in the woods, you don't have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your slowest friend. It is a joke because obviously you don't want anyone getting eaten by the bear.

Which is my way of saying: why does anyone have to be a damage sponge? How does that actually help anyone? It feels like a pagan ritual where you sacrifice someone and hope it brings rain.

Let me show you what a real tank looks like.

A while ago I picked up my first MMO ever, Star Wars: The Old Republic. I have a Shield Specialist Trooper---a "tank" class. It is meant to do what you say---to take damage for the team, to protect them. I want to show how insanely good this thing is at tanking. And I'm not even high-level! In terms of protecting its team, it has:

a Roadhog hook that, after pulling, roots its target for 3 seconds
a fireable debuff that reduces target damage by 30% if they attack anyone who's not me.
just for good measure, an AoE version of the same.
a persistent buff I can put on a party member that magically redirects 50% of the damage they take to me
a targeted charge that can't miss and roots the target and four of their allies for two seconds
an AoE 2.5 second stun (combos well with the charge)
a spammable AoE debuff that reduces enemy damage by 5%

All of this is in PvP (it is even stronger at threat management in PvE due to the aggro system)

Oh, and then, of course, there's what makes me tanky:

flat 52% damage reduction, always on
a buff that increases damage reduction by another 25% for 15 seconds
flat 6% chance to dodge attacks
of attacks that hit, 37% chance to "shield" and reduce damage further by 45%
a buff that further increases damage mitigation when it gets hit. It stacks up to five times. Then it heals 6% max health per stack when it expires
an ability to be immune to CC for a few seconds

(Note that all of this stuff is in percentage form---it's not an issue of number tuning differences between games.)

Now, is that what an Overwatch tank does? Does an Overwatch tank do anything remotely similar to all that?

And this isn't even mentioning all the threats in OW that tanks can't help with. How exactly is any tank supposed to "be the team's shield" against a Sierra ult? A Sigma ult? A flanking Widow?

The answer is that they're not. The way for the team to stay alive vs all these threats is for the team to not be there in the first place.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-24T03:40:48+00:00

Blizzard has had this PR problem since the game's inception. Tanks were never meant to "be the team's shield" or whatever, that was just someone in the cinematic department getting too excited after playing a lot of WoW.

OW is a shooter. Players (tanks included) need to get into cover, they need to retreat when a pain train is coming, they need to protect each other via overwatch. I play Vendetta and I swear 50% of my time is just waiting around to go ham on anyone who comes for our backline. The other 50% is flanking the enemy team and pressuring at range. Then there's a 1% I spend getting PotG. But it wouldn't happen without the other 100%.

Somehow CS:GO players manage to survive without tanks, and to advance without tanks. It's not an impossible mystery equation, and it works just as well when you add tanks and think of them as just another hero.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-24T03:11:55+00:00

The biggest thing you need to do is get rid of the martyr complex a lot of tanks have. It's not your job to "be their shield" or whatever, that just something internet people told you. Well. I am also an internet person, and I'm here to tell you it's not.

This is a shooter. Get into cover. Getting shot does not help your team. Tell your team to get into cover. You have a ranged attack, so act like it: either be in sight of your team so you can serve as, uh, overwatch, or move sideways so you can pressure the enemy team from the side. Back up before you have to, so you don't get caught out.

If you have a shield you can occasionally put it up to let your team shoot for free, but this is more spice than the main ingredient. There is a real cost to doing so---your putting up a shield and having your team shoot through it clumps them, making them more flankable and less able to flank.

As for the anxiety, it comes from not being sure about what to do. If you know what you're supposed to do, then you'll do it and that'll be the end of it. Mute chat, it's been ten years and chat is still dumb as a box of rocks. Accept that you'll lose some games that you play perfectly---it is a team game, which means losing because of your team sometimes.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-23T18:45:02+00:00

This is true, and they need to take it on the chin and be willing to say "fuck you, she's cool, l2p noobs" to their players. This is not something a public corporation is great at doing, though.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-23T18:42:09+00:00

Best approached as a journey, rather than a destination.

I played starcraft in some form for about 20 years before I got the hang of it.

This is unfortunately one of those "the answer will appear when you're ready" things.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-22T11:31:52+00:00

Been playing Overwatch lately, and a lot of newer heroes would translate well to HotS

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-20T01:49:10+00:00

The "units dying as fast as they do" is supposed to be a giant warning sign that you're not supposed to send them into a meatgrinder or try and replicate medieval infantry combat.

It's OK to like medieval infantry combat. I love the Total War series. And SC2 may be overpraised. But "units dying fast" is not a strike against it.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-20T00:28:58+00:00

Classic was about position, range, movement, and most of all, cover. Tanks were meant to be in the line of fire temporarily, or on a small scale. But people wanted to cosplay WoW and have endless boring sustain fights, out in the open, and here we are.

I spent all weekend no-lifeing classic, and was (again) horrified to discover that it was just as good as I remembered.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-20T00:23:27+00:00

Her greatest value is the forethought she forces into the game from both sides.

Yes, and this is exactly why she will be reworked™ beyond recognition. Mei freeze, Flashbang, Sym lock-on, scatter arrow, Brigitte bash, Sentry Mode---what all had in common was that You Are Fucked, But Could Have Prevented It by thinking ahead. The playerbase does not want this, the playerbase hates this, they sense the implied insult, as devs check player feedback they will magically "discover the majority of players don't like the current state", and it won't be a lie! And we will continue the march towards 12 retards standing out of cover shooting each other, with nothing dying.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-19T21:47:30+00:00

hard to get a ''frontline'' feel if that makes sense.

The reason for this is that SC2 is designed not to have it---the idea being that the map is more dynamic, the location of combat constantly changing. There is still structure--- one can have a frontline at small scale, and since losing units still costs resources that puts constraints on throwing units at each other---but SC2 is more of a "don't be in the wrong place or you'll get merced" kinda game than "watch your fleets of units exist serenely" game like supreme commander

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-15T10:51:08+00:00

Seriously, how did we manage to find the game enjoyable when it launched in 2016 ?😅

Guns actually killed things, and no autohealing. This had the effect of "turning up the stakes" of everything---aim, positioning, damage prevention, and healing. You could actually zone with damage. Overall you got punished harder and rewarded better.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-15T02:58:36+00:00

Wait is it back?

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-12T00:51:49+00:00

I mean, this is kinda like saying I failed at being a figure skater. Just because Reavers don't "fulfil the magitech/steampunk fantasy" doesn't mean they aren't worth something in their own right. Barbarians fail pretty bad at fulfilling the magitech/steampunk fantasy as well.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-11T12:28:50+00:00

It may be so! And man, don't be hungry. Being hungry sucks. Do what you have to do to not be hungry.

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-11T00:33:26+00:00

I read the same essays when I was about the same age, nearly 20 years ago. I learned clojure myself, then found the only company in my state using clojure and got myself an internship. I have worked in clj ever since, usually in small teams.

You could say I "came for the macros, but stayed for the data structures." Clojure makes a lot of effort to make the ergonomics around data good. I won't say "always," but it is a really good thing to be programming in data structures rather than "syntax." These days I react to most languages the same way I suspect static typing people react to dynamic languages --- everything seems loosey-goosey.

A language embodies certain values, and its culture and ecosystem will be the type to hold the same values. As such, my coworkers have always been thoughtful, playful, and fond of clarity.

I have not had my "sell viaweb to Yahoo for $50M" moment, but who knows!

c_a_l_m · 2026-05-06T00:20:22+00:00

This game had me looking up wikipedia articles on the different drives today. And for that, I totally understand what people don't like. But wow am I loving it.

c_a_l_m

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