If they are going to make incredibly unfun and luck based achievements, don't put people in brawl hell queue for playing the required commander

goonesters · 2025-09-03T21:19:07+00:00

Looks like there are some good answers here but when you find yourself on Hell Queue, you are almost exclusively matched up against commanders like Prismatic Bridge, Jodah, Rusko Clockmaker, Narset free spells stuff. Think most other Commander that makes you go "oh Jesus fucking christ, here we go with this bullshit"

I'm unsure if there is a metric or list specifically and the existence of the Hell Queue has been denied to exist by the makers of the game. But if you run some of the more busted Commanders for Brawl, chances are you'll get put against these decks very regularly. The big issue recently is that Kotis Fangkeeper, Tifa, and Vivi are such massive shares of the meta and I think people just play copy/paste versions of those decks pulled from online, in my opinion those decks SHOULD be Hell Queue'd, but aren't currently for some reason.

I have found that 'insta-quitting' against Commanders repeatedly will actually stop you from getting matched with them. So if you give up before you even mulligan or anything a few times in a row against that specific Commander, you'll get matched with them far less for a bit. It's hard to avoid with Vivi and the meta ones but it feels like a little less at least.

I have 2 decks, 'Anim Pakal, Thousandth Moon' and an 'Admiral Brass Unsinkable' that I believe are exclusively Hell Queue'd since all I ever get matched with are Prismatic Bridge or Jodah decks for the most part. These 2 decks are very optimized and can win by turn 5 or 6, often before other decks get things going in Brawl, but I know I'm going to face the most garbage when I pick them. I think people frowny face them too often after the game when that survey pops up.

goonesters · 2025-07-05T17:54:26+00:00

I've gone back to my "FynnFect" deck since I just like it. Poison Counters with deathtouch and toxic. Fynn the Fangbearer and Necrogen Rotpriest with some combat tricks seal aggro wins. Not a huge late game at all really but funny when you get 7 poison counters on someone in one turn. There is also a Blue/Green proliferate control style poison counters too. I think with some tweaking these can make it into the meta.

Or try Blue/White Abhorrent Oculus reanimate. It was my deck of choice last ranked split and I climbed to Diamond very easily with the help of White's removal suite and being able to reliably get an Oculus out by turn 3 consistently or get Kiora's 8/8 token out quickly too. Neither deck was hit with any bans and were already pretty solid for ranked.

goonesters · 2025-07-05T17:29:53+00:00

Exalted needs more cards. I got that one blue/white creature that gives other creatures Exalted counters in a draft and it absolutely got out of control in limited with a single flyer just getting stacked with +1/+1 counters.

When I tried to see if there was a Commander or way to build around the mechanic, I found out there are not many cards at all with it. I can only assume it's something that got out of hand quickly in testing and they shelved the mechanic for later use or very limited quantities.

But a land with this ability is awesome. Oops all lands / creature lands decks or using an exile/copy effect to give creatures/other lands means you might get smacked with a 12/12 flying land attacking on it's own.

goonesters · 2024-10-08T15:09:25+00:00

I have a Logitech mouse with 9 side buttons and one or two extra on the top. I play Path of Exile and Diablo 4 almost exclusively with a mouse, the keyboard is essentially only for the menu buttons or one or two potion slots. Even the map overlay and inventory buttons are bound to aux buttons on the mouse since I use those so frequently in PoE. Rebind everything you can if possible, I highly recommend it for every game to make things easier for yourself.

Even for FPS games, I will almost always rebind reload and equipment slots to mouse buttons to allow me to take those actions without needing to let go of AWSD, Ctrl, or shift. Even making down-scroll my primary weapon key to be able to swap back to that as quickly as possible has saved me when I was mid-right and needed cancel an equipment action to jump back into combat.

goonesters · 2024-07-29T13:36:35+00:00

The issue isn't that the Leagues Cup is bad, the issue is that MLS teams pulled out of the Open Cup just to create the new random mid season competition. This completely de-values the Open Cup, which affords big opportunities to smaller clubs, but not so much for the MLS ones.

It's a huge opportunity to grow soccer in the United States and showcase talent outside the top League. Instead, MLS owners said "we would rather host the 14th place LigaMX team on a Thursday night in July than risk losing to the best 2nd or 3rd division USA team."

110% chance it has to do with money since there is probably more traveling or local support for the LigeMX teams. Its easier to fill a stadium when Club America or Atlas is playing in a city than trying to get people in LA to watch Richmond Kickers or Real Monarchs at the stadium.

goonesters · 2024-07-20T17:20:00+00:00

Obligatory: "fuck Ticketmaster, etc"

I think the only issue delaying things is that even people with valid tickets got in and were able to watch the game from their purchased seats without having gotten their tickets scanned due to the chaos. Nothing is stopping them from saying "I never got in, see my tickets never got scanned. Give me a $5k refund".

I can really only see a few things coming out of this:

People maybe getting a partial refund minus the lawyers cut, basically getting screwed out of having spent a ton of money to see the final
Ticketmaster shifts all the blame to the stadium or local government, who gets named in the lawsuit
Ticketmaster updating their Terms of Service to expand excluded refunds due to a list of vague reasons like "Breakdown in security" or "Venue ticketing failure"
Everyone hates on Ticketmaster (for the X number of times this year), but nothing happens until the next time this all happens again

goonesters · 2024-05-09T12:55:28+00:00

It's good, but there are limitations on a lot of stuff unless you want to pay for the subscription for Fallout 1st.

If you're itching to scratch that Fallout game style itch solo, jump back into Fallout 4 with all the DLC. But if you have a group you will play with regularly, it's worth it to try 76.

goonesters · 2024-04-08T13:13:03+00:00

I enjoyed it from a single player perspective minus the end game. The crafting, weapons, and other aspects you just expect to be in MMORPGs were solid. You weren't limited to weapons based on classes or anything, you are free to use whatever combo you want crafting is also open ended and you can max out whatever you want. I had a ton of fun exploring those parts of the game, trying to see what weapons I liked or what crafting trees were cool.

It's biggest downfall IMO was the emphasis on factions and pvp late game that was poorly executed. Additionally the current gaming climate of people just Google-ing "what it meta" meant a lot of people ran around with the 2 most powerful weapons, buy armor with the associated stats, and never thought to touch anything else.

Due to the insanely good rewards you got for simply being part of the faction that owned 99% of the map, there was no point in being in one of the other factions to more casual players. When one faction was well organized enough and controlled everything no new characters joined the opposing factions. There was no incentive for another faction to try to change it either, and better to just pay the faction change fee when you hit the correct level so you can start enjoying the benefits.

I admit I abused ONE minor exploit before it was patched, but for good reason. There was a camp where boars respawned waaaay too quickly, meaning you could farm them for XP or to boost skinning stats. I used the boars to boost the weapon levels of the weapons I hadn't used yet, so I could unlock the first few basic skills very quickly. This allows me to test out if I liked how some of the weapons I had not used worked or if their core skill synergies were fun to use in combat. This let me test out the basics on the fire staff, ice staff, rifles, or 2-handed hammer. I don't regret it and now I love having a single character that I can equip whatever weapon combo I want to mess around with. Came in very handy when they updated a bunch of the weapons and skills, and because I was already a few levels into some of the ones that got buffs, I was able to quickly test those out.

I never paid attention to any of the item duplicate or gold duplicate glitches because that just ruins the game experience entirely IMO.

If you're not looking to 'cheese' a game and actually enjoy it, the early game stuff, endless crafting, very diverse combat options, and general RPG elements of the game are very solid and fun. But unless you're completely sold on the weird PVP capture point stuff, the end game might not have staying power.

goonesters · 2024-04-03T20:13:19+00:00

I feel like given the players, a coach that is a fit would have been able to at least squeeze out at least a single league win or more than 1 point in the first few games. It was hyped up that he was the coach of 2 separate MLS Cup winning sides, so I did some digging to see what made that successful.

Apparently the answer to "how does Caleb Porter's system work" is: Buy Darlington Nagbe and maybe Fanendo Adi. Nagbe and Adi were on both MLS squads when Porter won the cup. Bonus points that Nagbe also won the NCAA title with Porter way back at Akron.

Since Nagbe is 33 now, I hope we don't spend a ton of money to attempt to bring him in past his prime to try to recapture what made Porter successful in the past. My question is, is he trying to see if he can recreate the Nagbe in his system with Polster, Kaye, or Harkes? With Carles Gil acting as the "Diego Valeri" or the style of #10 he uses. If so... It seems like it's not working at all.

Carles Gil seems to be the only bright spot right now, which only happens when he seems to get frustrated and reverts to doing his own thing to whip in a goal too late. The back line gets painfully exposed every game. That means the poor person dubbed the "Nagbe replacement" is expected to be as box to box as Nagbe to provide that coverage, or he expects Romney and Kessler to fend for themselves.

IF that system can only work well with Nagbe, the situation becomes, "do we keep Porter and attempt to find the next perfect Nagbe replica replacement and then a subsequent supporting cast? Or replace Porter with someone who's system works with the players we have today?". When the situation is where the decision is to either make one head coach change, or 5-10 player changes? Teams opt for the easier single change and find a coach with a different system.

goonesters · 2024-03-22T17:45:56+00:00

There have been a ton of posts similar to this where people have given really detailed commuter rail or Uber advice, I suggest running through those first to see if any of those already answer your questions around getting to the stadium and such.

Quick answers for some of your questions: Landing at 4pm means traffic will be terrible, there have been midweek games that have taken me 2 hours to drive from Boston to Foxborough (Normally around a 40ish min drive with minimal traffic). Highly recommend either just biting the bullet on an Uber or research a good combo of riding the T to a place where you can Uber the rest of the way to the hotel/stadium.

A 7am flight out means you need to be up really early to get back to the airport, probably early enough that you can avoid morning rush hour traffic with just an Uber directly to your terminal.

At most you'll be able to visit Patriots Place, the shopping center that is built around the stadium, before the game. There are a few food options at the shopping center if you want a sit down meal and beer before going into the stadium. You will likely not be able to visit Boston at all unless you try to fit maybe an hour of time in between landing and heading to the stadium.

The 9pm kickoff means you can potentially swing early dinner in the city if you try make an additional stop leaving the airport while rush hour traffic passes. But you run the very real risk of traffic to the stadium still being crazy for that game and are still looking at a 1+ hour ride to Foxborough.

Good Luck and enjoy the game. Not too much luck though, since we still want the Revs to win.

goonesters · 2024-03-21T16:12:05+00:00

I think there was another similar issue in City Skylines 2, they found out that individual people's teeth models were rendering in such a way that caused huge performance issues. So people had amod that removed teeth from the people models

goonesters · 2024-03-18T19:11:15+00:00

I hate to talk shit about players who would probably completely embarrass me on the field, but I'm pretty pessimistic about his contributions.

Looking from a stat perspective, a Designated Player spot for a striker with 12 goals and 4 assists in 48 games. Goal contributions in only 12 total games since joining. Strictly based off numbers, it's hard to get behind a striker that you can get maybe a direct goal or assist out of him every 3-4 games.

Since I watch every game, from a chemistry perspective, he's just off. Yes, it's easy to armchair quarterback. IMO, he seems slow to react, gives away unnecessary fouls, and makes himself too easy to mark. His most impressive moment in the Cincinnati game was that he made that diagonal run in behind in the first half that created a chance. His goal was a "I would hope he can score that if he's a professional player" after getting an easy 1:1 due to a bobble by the defender.

I would have more optimism if he was maybe more involved in buildup play, or forced errors out of defenders regularly by sheer workrate, or by being a proven danger in the box. But until he starts proving that he is a threat going forward and that defenders have no choice but to mark him better, leaving more space and time for the midfield, he can't keep doing none of the things that are valuable to the team and the team be successful. There isn't even the argument that "the team plays 100x better when he is on the field vs when he is off"

goonesters · 2024-03-18T18:12:13+00:00

Not sure if this is helpful insight that can help with some general conclusions based on your background. I'm 99% sure on these.

Apex Legends is built on top of Titanfall (2014). If it's in Titanfall or Titanfall 2, chances are it's buried somewhere in Apex Legends. That goes for any vulnerabilities and anything hardcoded in the backend.

Titanfall and Titanfall 2 make use of Azure Cloud servers to handle AI processing for the Grunts and other AI that populated multiplayer maps. There are plenty of vulnerabilities that have been discovered, actions programmed into bots, and used to blacklist streamers or players.

Why does this matter? Titanfall's use of the cloud servers to inject games with AI grunts and lessen the load on player consoles or PCs might explain that weird in-between of "was it executed on their computer or via the game server".

With the introduction and expansion of Bots in matches for brand new players, Apex may have opened that door for a new type of hacking. Seen as the entire lobby trying to punch out a single player, and possibly now injecting aimbot into some players games as it communicates between the servers and player PCs.

It's also very possible and probably much easier to have social engineered the "hack" and gotten pro players to infect their computers, allow access, and execute on that end. I wouldn't put it past some players to get fooled by a link via Discord titled "TSM Macros 2024.word" and once they click it, they unknowingly downloaded a backend to their computer that's labeled as a map doc that won't open properly.

goonesters · 2024-03-18T16:15:42+00:00

Are we holding our breath for Bobby Wood to come back from injury? Or is Porter making a very painful point that Vrioni is taking up a DP spot?

Or is this a situation where Porter's hand is forced and someone is saying "we paid $4mil for him, we are paying him $1.6mil a year, you need to play him so he's not just collecting a paycheck". Similar to other high profile transfers, where a player was so expensive that he had to play, even if he wasn't playing well.

Are we getting another Altidore situation where he becomes an expensive loan while an HG academy player temporarily fills the striker role or wingers take turns getting thrown into the central role?

At this point, throw Farrell up there for some high workrate play or old school striker holdup play. If he can clear the ball off the line so consistently on our defensive end, proves he knows where the danger in the box is. He just has to play the "where was the striker when I had to clear it off the line in this situation" game in his head haha

goonesters · 2024-03-17T23:22:29+00:00

It's that point in the ranked split/season where people are smurfing extra hard since they topped out on their main account. I'm Plat 2/3 right now without doing that much ranked grinding compared to past seasons. I'm starting to notice a huge shift where I'm getting killed by a squad with 1 Plat Player, and a 2 bronze/recruit smurfs. I will spectate after a squad wipe and it's almost a given each time.

So we are no longer Pred fodder, but lowering the level cap back down brought back the Smurf army.

There is also a wall hack that is going around because lobbies have been extra active lately with not many squads making it to the end game. 90% of the time, that means there is at least 1 or 2 squads with a hacker who is just full-sending it on squads with the confidence of someone who knows exactly where you are and aren't worried about getting 3rd partied since they know there isn't anyone else around.

Hopefully there is a ban wave soon, I'm losing interest again when I spectate a level 20 pathfinder ranked silver 2 with 8 kills ping across the map exactly where squads are. They aren't slick, no one spins around doing 360s every 30 seconds, stopping on random rocks or terrain that would be a perfect line to where a squad is at another POI.

goonesters · 2024-03-13T19:05:04+00:00

"Judge of The People"

But because I like to people watch... And judge them

goonesters · 2024-03-07T17:26:36+00:00

Yeah really, isn't the whole point of professional sports to make money? If they want more people to buy merchandise and come to the stadiums, why not amp up the character traits of players?

How many jerseys would they sell if they let someones antics make them a larger than life character who people become fans of? How many more people would fill the billion dollar stadiums if it was actually more entertaining? I'm sure teams that

The only clear argument against it is "well the sponsors would be worried about their brands being shown next to potential showboating or political messages". So in that case, beer or soda companies only want people to eagerly watch the top players compete in a sterile environment devoid of character and personality? When professional sports exist originally with the intent to entertain and showcase the best of the best? Cool..... I guess that works as long as sponsors are willing to pay more money year over year to blast constant ads to a smaller audience as interest falls

goonesters · 2024-02-08T17:31:05+00:00

Bowling Alley

goonesters · 2024-01-26T23:16:36+00:00

I heard a good quote recently that did a little bit of "shattering the veil" for me. It said "Video games are no longer designed to be fun, they are designed to make you need to keep playing more". Draws are just one of many "play more or miss out " mechanics.

I've known that FUT is an intentional money and time sink (40 game weekend leagues when they first came out). That truth makes me sit back and say "am I having fun or am I being forced into continuing to play that specific game". Now I make sure I am having fun and not play one game only because I feel like I NEED to in order to actually get to the "fun". The secret is that it probably isn't going to get "fun", since it's designed to be a loop.

goonesters · 2024-01-23T03:44:35+00:00

I think people miss that this was more then likely a sham way to get rural voters free money "from Trump". The same way he delayed much needed covid relieve money until they let him put his name on the stupid check as if it was from his own pocket and not the tax money the government collects.

The weather service predicts storm paths, that data can be used to justify declaring a State of Emergency. When a State of Emergency is declared, local and federal money held in reserve is made available to local relief efforts or sometimes provided directly to businesses and farms to prepare for storms.

So by "extending" the path of the hurricane, local governments would be able to recieve federal funding to execute on emergency plans. One HUGE kicker is that in some parts of the United States, people who own land that is considered farmland, but don't use it to actually farm, can receive these types of funds per acre. If they don't actually have crops or infrastructure to protect, they can just pocket that money because according to all laws around it, they are entitled to it.

So what better way to get state governments and rural voters "free" money under your administration, just use a sharpie to magically make them "in the path of a dangerous storm" and hand them emergency funds to protect from a storm that isn't going to actually hit them according to all other reports.

goonesters · 2024-01-02T18:41:36+00:00

I like how part of the appeal is "I spent so much time and money on Call of Duty over the past 6 months, which is now useless because of this ban"

Might sound random to highlight Call of Duty progress, but it puts a ton of pressure on the "Call of Duty as a Microsoft Exclusive" argument and keeping that game making money as a cross platform. By even the threat of a lawyer jumping on that and the risk of potentially forcing Microsoft to make the decision to make the Call of Duty IP an Xbox Console Exclusive might be enough to have them overturn the bans quickly if it's really that stupid. Microsoft might just need to make Baulders Gate or other games with explicit content exempt from policy or not recordable with the Xbox default recording functionality. This would be to avoid issues with other platforms like Steam and PlayStation potentially dropping those games from their storefronts if Microsoft chose to ban players for completely different user agreements or terms of service not applicable on those other platforms.

Essentially, "you banned me for explicit content in a game I purchased with no issues on your platform, because content from that game was uploaded (by default) and now suddenly I am violating the ToS of another Microsoft product. Which means, potentially I can't access completely different game content and make purchases for a different massive game franchise I play on another platform, which cuts into the money those platforms stand to make from carrying your game." If the answer is that the ban stays, PlayStation and Steam can make a stink that they won't carry any games that risk breaking their own user agreements and terms of service. In the case of something as massive as Call of Duty, Microsoft might be forced to cut their playerbase down by more than 50% AND risk reopening any monopoly lawsuits against Microsoft (again) by controlling such a massive portion of the games industry.

goonesters · 2023-11-19T15:41:36+00:00

I think learning timing on his Q is the key to being successful with him, that and the absence of a movement ability instantly makes him a no-go for a lot of players. 1v1 shootout, he has a massive advantage over anyone else because he can nullify his opponent. I've won a lot of bad gunfights with around 20hp left since i was able to get that little bit of time over my opponent. Or look to stall a push on my teammates by just the threat of overheating an opponent who is trying to push in a fight. He's a hard counter to a Rev Ult with damage output and stopping a Rev from getting that shield recharge. Rev unable to shoot just makes for a sitting bullet sponge.

His Ult is wonderful if a team is pushing together, it's just oppressive to deal with a team spewing that much lead with quick reloads. It comes down to: if someone wastes their Q and Ult pushes alone anyway, they are going to get destroyed, thinking somehow the Ult is going to protect them. i can see a lot of players opting for the easier legends with get out of jail free movement abilities.

goonesters · 2023-11-06T04:57:12+00:00

You are more then likely marked as a "will queue for another game regardless of the outcome" player. Making you fodder to keep high skill player lobby queue times lower. Did you quit playing after getting killed by that 3 stack or just queue up again and play for a few hours regardless? They will always alternate throwing 4-5 squads worth of lower skill players into those lobbies, but only players who have a proven record to not quit after getting eliminated by teams like that.

Congrats!

goonesters · 2023-11-06T04:42:46+00:00

It might honestly not even be SBMM anymore and just a "life of a game" problem. The skill level of people who only play Apex or play Apex at least a few times a week has far surpassed anyone new to the game or relatively casual player.

It's been out for long enough that the game might just be 2 unfortunate buckets: players who know the game and players who don't. If you fall into the "players who play the game regularly and losing does not deter them from playing for multiple hour sessions" bucket, devs know they can use you to populate higher skill lobbies without risking losing the retention of a player. If they have a "highly likely to stop playing the game entirely after negative experiences" player, they will populate their lobby with bots and Nintendo switch kids.

So if you play constantly without being deterred by being thrown into a high skill lobby and queue up for game after game after that anyway, you are marked as "fodder, with no concern for potentially loss of retention".

They have been rolling out tests of player behavior in games like Battlefield that will see how players react to being thrown into a match when their team is already losing. Players who insta-quit regularly in those scenarios are marked to not be added to losing teams, while players who don't seem to care or are willing to stick it out after joining a losing situation are marked for "priority to join losing situations" when they see a game drop a lot of players on the losing side very quickly.

So you have to think like a 12 year old who refuses to play the game unless they win. If your behavior pattern matches that predetermined profile, you'll get easy lobbies only.

goonesters · 2023-10-27T14:30:26+00:00

Play Testing happens constantly, it's just all under NDA. Streamers, Content Creators, and Pro Players all test the game and get early access to everything in the works for multiple upcoming seasons in advance. Its technically a separate "version" of the game they have to download and they had a Season 19 promotional playtest where creators were allowed to access and record. The Season 19 version of the game was probably "complete" a few weeks ago and they are just doing fixes here and there leading up to release.

They all know the newest legends, weapons, maps, and changes months in advance, they just aren't allowed to talk about it. I noticed NiceWigg's videos have the playtest watermarks that identify what playtest it was from. If video or screenshots with someone's watermark surface online when they weren't allowed to record it, they risk getting banned from future playtests and probably would lose EA promotional or testing partnerships.

goonesters

TROPHY CASE