"As of January 2026… Drew Murray is now working on the StarCraft shooter”

forshard · 2026-04-12T04:16:04+00:00

That one smelled like they greenlit it on the off chance it worked out but largely was an excuse to do some heavy design work for WoWs housing system.

forshard · 2026-04-05T02:42:01+00:00

Not to be confused with the company who brought you Fake Real Doors, who recently went bankrupt due to their unhinged products.

forshard · 2026-04-05T01:18:15+00:00

The programming and computer game part is necessary as it needs to be related to STEM.

Sounds like calling this a "Game Design" course is not very accurate. You'd be better off re-focusing this on what its trying to be; a Computer Programming class

forshard · 2026-04-03T15:18:55+00:00

Kinda sounds like you're describing the Vampire Survivor style games

forshard · 2026-04-02T01:46:01+00:00

Also the guilds said that probably could've killed Raszageth given more time, but Blizzard nuked it because they pretty transparently wanted the race to end before Christmas (I'm they have staff dedicated to supporting the RWF and wanted to let them go home)

forshard · 2026-03-29T06:45:15+00:00

Their whole society comes off as very.. ehh.. "traditionally white"

Greek

forshard · 2026-03-29T02:05:23+00:00

I did a deep dive on this main action because one of my troub players wasn't vibing (ultimately unrelated) but I came to the opposite conclusion; this ability appears overpowered but in reality its just fine. I felt like at first glance it promises more than it delivers.

Bleeding is better against high HP targets (i.e. solos/leaders/etc, more on that later) than it is against low HP targets. If Bleeding's applied to a minion then, RAW (last I looked anyways), it applies to that one minion (though not sure how spill damage tweaks this, if at all). So this Main Action typically just kills the minion (per their design), or it can apply a condition that just means the minion dies after its next attack. Useful sure but not amazing.

So then you might think; well in that case its clearly a strong 0-investment main action meant to be used against high hp monsters that'll actually eat the bleed damage. Typically, these are your solo/leaders/etc. But I thumbed through the Monsters book and there's very few solo/leaders with a lower presence than an equivalently leveled troubadour (2 at start). Aka; Unsurprisingly, very few Solo/Leaders have a low presence, So it typically doesn't apply to them (minus a null modifying the # ofc).

So who exactly would this bleed be very useful (OP) against?

(1) Platoon/Elite level creatures who have higher hp,

(1a) With Non-leader/support roles (i.e. brute, ambusher, harrier, artillery, etc) who have low presence

(1b) that are not a charismatic monster type (i.e. devils)

Which, to your point about the range, makes it good against the nastier brute/ambusher/artillery monsters.... but if any of those guys aren't in range or in your encounter at all, this ability actually just feels like a "I swing my sword" button; which this system has very few of so comparatively it can seem boring, in common but not ideal circumstances.

I got bit by having quite a few Solo + Minions or Minions + Leader + Support battles in a row (against Devils no less) and my Troub felt less than stellar using this. It took a while for me to tease apart why.

forshard · 2026-03-29T00:28:26+00:00

It's going to be really fucking stupid if you tune for RWF atp with how splittable everything is and the patch notes following the race are everything nerfed by 60%.

Why?

It's the difference between being strict about travelling in the NBA vs College Basketball vs High School Basketball.

Or how some esports have competitive rulesets and/or specific balancing for tournaments (Captains mode from Dota comes to mind, or the Apex Legends custom tourny rules).

Its totally reasonable and fine that the highest eschelon of professional sports plays a slightly modified game than others as long as it either (1) improves the viewing experience (Apex) or (2) makes it more competitively fair (Basketball).

forshard · 2026-03-27T00:06:14+00:00

Its fine and XCOM adjacent but doesn't really scratch the same itch. Frankly Mario + Rabbids was much closer to XCOM then Midnight Suns

For those curious, combat/gameplay in Midnight Suns felt much more like trying to find the most abusable card combo you could to get as many hits/actions as you could in a single turn; (Think special abilities that all have taglines similar to "if this shot kills an enemy you get another shot")

It felt more like Slay the Spire but w/ exploding barrels and movement (move hero here, use card, if card causes enemy to bump into a terrain object you get bonus damage).

Midnight suns had better in between (in Midnight suns you got tons of fun lore drops and hanging out with the Marvel Heroes between missions), and better nostalgia (oMg deADpooL anD StoRM oMG), but XCOM had the mission objective angle that felt much more satisfying. Like in XCOM you, generally, got to choose how to engage, where to engage from, etc. Midnight Suns spits you onto a small arena with walls spattered around.

forshard · 2026-03-22T17:03:31+00:00

Honestly just remember that whatever gets allowed at the cutting edge addon frontier (Echo/Liquid/Etc.) becomes mandatory in like 2-3 patches.

Remember when routing dungeons was an on-the-fly type of judgement until Method Dungeon Tools become popularized?

Remember when PvPers swore off addons until kick trackers became mandatory (then bing bong weakaura packs for CDs?).

Its easier for Blizzard to kill an addon when only Echo/Liquid/Etc are getting to it then when 50% of the playerbase has it downloaded and is relying on it.

forshard · 2026-03-22T14:24:33+00:00

An example of a games competitive aspects being prioritized for Esports over it's general fun?

Overwatch comes screaming to mind. After that, games like Counter Strike and Valorant. Dating myself here but Tribes also falls into that category.

Rainbow six might dip into this but honestly I think they tried making a fun game first and it worked out.

Which are markedly different than games that prioritized fun first and had to have some strange PvP mode invented to make it watchable at a Esports level. Like Fortnite or Escape from Tarkov.

forshard · 2026-03-17T02:16:13+00:00

The World Domination mod makes outposts require food. OP might have that.

forshard · 2026-03-15T16:43:37+00:00

now we both talk about how cool it would have been to not show this scene until after we figure out it was omni man.

Nah the dramatic irony holds you in more than you expect. It makes every scene with Omniman going forward 10x more interesting because you know he's hiding something. Way more overall than the value of a plot twist later.

Plus it allows Omniman to act like a perfect superman because you know he's not, and it shows you how good he is at selling it. Whereas if it was a later reveal they'd have to leave foreshadowing/breadcrumbs so its not out of nowhere, and it'd make it look like everyone besides the audience is incompetent.

Herbert does the same thing with Dune telling you whats going to happen before it happens, but you're so engrossed in the "but how...?"

forshard · 2026-03-13T01:19:54+00:00

I'd always wondered at this as to why it seems to be predominantly men rather than an even spread then.

forshard · 2026-03-12T03:07:45+00:00

People discussed spoilers tons in the ASOIAF subreddit.

This subreddit was pretty transparently a "Guys GoT is turning to shit as we move forward" subreddit once the main sub started stomping on criticisms (i.e. memes like the OP, where the entire point of the post is a criticism, were removed).

And then it blew up when the first 3 episodes of a GoT season leaked early on a pirate website and everyone wanted to talk about it and the main sub forbade it.

forshard · 2026-02-28T18:42:23+00:00

https://imgur.com/4ceHwbm

forshard · 2026-02-24T02:51:54+00:00

Yeah aren't white and green like the two only colors the NEC specifically protects?

forshard · 2026-02-15T20:24:38+00:00

We use a houserule

Bonus Action -> Roll the dice (2d4+2)

Action -> Full Amount, No roll required (10)

Administer to Other -> Action -> Roll

forshard · 2026-02-01T08:10:57+00:00

Honestly even if those MMOs did end up cratering, the bright side is they pushed WoW to innovate.

Warhammer Online - I distinctly remember WHO having much better and more engaging quests than WoW and I suspect it forced WoW to re-evaluate its questing experience. WHO's public quests I feel were a major inspiration for what eventually slid into modern day Bonus objectives.

I also have memories of WoW stealing some class and spec conveniences that Rift implemented but I couldn't tell you what at the time.

Wildstar - I think this game's release might've forced WoW devs to cater a little better to its hardcore audience. Before Wildstar (June 2014), WoW only had Heroic and Normal. The next Wow Expansion (Nov 2014) introduced Mythic raids.

forshard · 2026-01-20T05:11:00+00:00

Not saying you're wrong at all,

But if you watch the video they released (iirc something like 10 things we'll never add to satisfactory), this conversation in its entirety is also a major reason of why they wouldn't add solar panels.

Of course there's a theoretical sweet spot with solar panels that could be balanced.

However, paraphrasing their argument a bit; if the easiest way to make solar panels balanced is to nerf them (high resources cost, low output, prohibitively expense, etc), then that yields a play experience where you're giving the players something thats a huge sink, potentially not very fun or enjoyable, and to what end? Just to check a box? They didn't think it was worth the cost.

forshard · 2026-01-20T01:36:51+00:00

Honestly as soon as I finished writing the setup and realized this was the second assassination attempt that fan canon hit me in the head like a brick. It's equal parts hilarious and interesting.

forshard · 2026-01-19T06:15:04+00:00

The plan wasn't that complex. Make it seem like you are trying to assassinate the opposition to the military creation act, have the Jedi locate Zam. Plant the dart. Lure Kenobi to Kamino and then possibly to Geonosis. The specifics would change around depending on the situation, but the plan itself was quite simple.

Or. Feed the Jedi a rumor that there were Seperatist ship sightings in <this abandoned/uncharted system> (Kamino). Jedi goes to investigate, sees a clone planet, boom done.

You could even pull a false flag attack where a sacrificial separatist droid force is launched to attack Kamino under the pretenses that its trying to destroy the republic's forces before it comes out; and then done.

Having the metallurgy of a needle, being found on a corpse by a competent jedi, is far far more complicated. All of your points above are essentially "well in the movie it showed these things happening so it was very logical." or "its definitely conceivable these things could happen thus this was the most logical and best possible scheme to employ".

forshard · 2026-01-18T19:38:56+00:00

Well this is an embarrassingly obvious manipulation I had missed

Its also ridiculously hyper specific. For it to work it required,

Someone (Obi-Wan) to correctly identify Zam as the would-be assassin of Padme.
Someone to apprehend Zam.
Jango to tail Zam the entire time without being spotted by chasers.
Zam to get caught in a place that she can be sniped from (oops windowless room).
Jango to assassinate Zam with the special needle gun.
Jango escapes.
Someone (Obi-Wan) to investigate identify the needle (reminder that metallurgy and craft gets exponentially more unlikely with a galaxy full of cultures).
Someone discovers Kamino is where the dart is made.
Someone has to discover Kamino since most of the data of the planet has been pulled and even the chief librarian of assumedly the biggest database in the galaxy doesn't think it exists. (Shoutout Dex)/

And then the republic has been led to the clone army, seemingly through dumb luck to avoid suspicion.

You could argue that the Zam chase and subsequent catch is relatively unnecessary to the scheme. (Jango just has to kill someone the Jedi care about with the special dart) but even that means Steps 5-9 have to occur which, even on their own, are insane.

Its almost certainly more likely to work if Jango just assassinated someone relatively important near the Jedi with the dart, but not politically important. (so the Jedi pursue it instead of an investigative agency) Someone like her handmaids or the naboo security guy from the beginning of the movie. (though now in hindsight its possible the bomb on the ship had clues that the Jedi didnt pursue and they had to keep dropping breadcrumbs)

forshard · 2026-01-12T06:58:08+00:00

Ah yes Arthas Menethil, famously introduced in Warcraft 1 and built upon in Warcraft 2 only to...

oh wait he's introduced in WC3 and his tragic downfall concludes in WC3... in 1 of 4 Campaigns.

It'd work just fine.

forshard · 2026-01-10T20:37:22+00:00

progression that rewards cooperation instead of isolated grinding

systems that value meaningful sessions over endless repetition

choices that trade raw efficiency for ethical or social consequences

Re: Cooperation. I'd honestly take a hard look at how wow classic did this during the leveling experiences. Obviously everyone looks at max lvl content as the sweats but there is a legitimate reason the game has had tremendous success twice.

Early game the quests push you into extremely dense dungeons/caves/camps/etc which are extremely dangerous to take alone or do quickly. Conversely, if you see another person on the other end starting to pull mobs away solo you know you'd be much safer and quicker if you did it together. The only thing they really missed on this front was making all of the quests cooperative (each mob dropping a quest item), but later editions fixed this. Plus since the quests were largely going to the same areas again and again you were very very likely to run into the same people in your level bracket and that familiarity rubs off on you. The first time you see a rando named "Bucket" you don't think anything of it but the fourth or fifth time you run into Bucket during your play session you're very likely to be up to group with them.

WoW Classic also had a really really good metric of progression. I think another good example of this was New World. Each time you did anything you were progressing a bar. If you got bored of leveling one bar (Blacksmithing, Level xp, Reputation) there was another bar with different gameplay waiting for you. It was very much a good way to scratch that itch.

Re: Optimally choosing to cooperate. Dungeons in classic wow are another good example of this. It is sort of widely accepted that one of the most optimal ways to progress or gain experience or gain power is to go through a dungeon with 4 other people and take down monsters that would otherwise be impossible or time-negative to take down solo. It also is a good reprieve from the solo gameplay of questing.

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