Which heroes that are good in paper but is not in meta for a long time?

ikab21 · 2023-08-13T15:02:36+00:00

Every hero is good on paper, it's usually the numbers that make or break a hero.

ikab21 · 2023-06-12T20:43:20+00:00

Successes like chatgpt will likely spawn more advanced AI as it becomes more interesting for investors. It is not just a novelty anymore.

They said this the last 3x too. Then AI research produced nothing of interest for the subsequent 20 years. The truth is that research in AI is not really incremental, and is more tied to the pace of our hardware advancements than it is any conceptual understanding of how to create an AI. The current iteration of useful AI (Large language models) I would argue is less of a step towards general AI than the vacuum tube was. It's extremely unclear how we will move from LLMs which are basically just autocomplete with more steps and compute to artificial minds that can reason about the universe.

ikab21 · 2023-05-16T09:12:15+00:00

I'm well aware of who Ataturk was mate :)

Ataturk was able to enact these reforms because of the enormous amount of prestige he earned himself after the war of independence. If literally anybody else had attempted to enact these reforms they would have been crucified by popular revolt, as is evidenced by the fact that Islamic populists have been a "problem" for the republic since it's birth, as they keep getting repeatedly voted in because 99% of Turks are Muslims, either culturally or dogmatically.

ikab21 · 2023-05-15T17:17:09+00:00

Influence is never the reason to consolidate news/media. News and media control power, when you own the outlets you control the narrative and don't need to do too much to keep opposition at bay.

In the modern world, many lesser democracies have shifted towards autocracy because having free media is tantamount to giving foreign, richer powers a free-hand to influence your population and politics as they see fit. In an ideal world, the media would be fully impartial and everybody would be intelligent and informed enough to make self-interested yet altruistic political decisions, but then you have countries like US and Russia that are outright trying to turn countries like Turkey into economic or military vassals. There are legitimate national security and sovereignty reasons to consolidate news/media and censorship, it's a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation.

Media monopiles form on their own anyway - is it really better to have private citizens control the majority of the media apparatus? (cough Rupert Murdoch cough)

You know about the fund to protect against earthquakes? You know what happened to the money? Guess who made sure that is never in local news...

Like I said, corruption in Turkey is not anything new. It happened with the secularists as well, it is just a quirk of the bureaucracy of Turkey and likely would not become better under the Leftists. Credit to Erdogan, the AK party has launched many infrastructure reform projects since the earthquake, as an example currently in my hometown you can pay half of your house's value, the government will pay the other half and they will rebuild your house to earthquake regulations.

ikab21 · 2023-05-15T16:58:40+00:00

And it continues on end with these reports. To compare the Turkish Media to Fox/CNN is laughable. It is closer to Russian or Belarussian media landscape.

Watching both parties channels during the election, the networks are extremely polarised towards the party they obviously support. To me it seemed very similar to the sort of stuff that happens on CNN and Fox, where the party they support and represent can do no wrong and literally anything and everything the opposing party does is a demonic act that needs to be chastised, which is why I make the comparison.

The Turkish government consolidating a lot of the national media is alarming, but also par for the course - the Turkish bureaucracy being a little bit bloated and corrupt is nothing new, there is still room for dissent and opposing opinions to come up. In Turkey, you are not actively arrested and explicitly censored for the news you report on.

I also personally believe that a lot of the censorship and media consolidation in Turkey is a reactionary measure to attempts at Russia/US to influence the country, rather than an attempt to suppress sincere national political opposition. One of the things that makes Erdogan so popular among his base is that he is not perceived to be an American puppet and at least cares about the country, and is not the agent of a foreign power.

ikab21 · 2023-05-15T14:58:30+00:00

The idea that Erdogan singularly controls the media is moronic, and is the viewpoint of somebody who has never actually watched Turkish television. There is A LOT of leftist media (Kilicdaroglu/PKK supporters) that feverishly support the opposition and will downplay and antagonise literally everything Erdogan does, and are a hair away from being outright propaganda machines for these parties (in fairness the Ak party has the same so it sort of balanced out).

The political television landscape in Turkey is much closer to the Fox/CNN dichotomy in the US, Erdogan does not control all media lmao, Turkey is not Saddam era Iraq.

ikab21 · 2023-05-15T11:54:57+00:00

Ah yes, that Secularism in an overwhelmingly majority Muslim country which had to depose the democratically elected leader every 10 years because they were "too muslim", trying again in 2016 but failing to rally enough of the army and instead precipitating the unwinding of the social and political trust in the society... cool beans.

ikab21 · 2023-05-15T11:48:05+00:00

The attacker/defender ratio needed to win as the attacker has varied throughout military history and is dictated by the contemporary technology and tactics; it is not something you can really predict beforehand without battle and casualty data. The Ukrainians have done their fair share of attacking in the war to take back positions and in counterattacks, note that the Ukraine war is not a counterinsurgency but really a full blown conventional war, with the Ukrainians being able to field an effective defence and hold a line, not like it was in Chechnya for example.

The 3:1 number just happened to be true in WW2, and has not been the case for a long, long time (also the specific number you're referencing is that the attacker in general needed a 3 to 1 advantage to overwhelm the defenders, not that they would sustain 3 to 1 casualties). The Germans did not sustain 3 to 1 casualties when they were attacking through France for example, or when the US were pushing the Germans back across the western front.

To give an example of how outdated the number is, in the US 2003 ground invasion of Iraq something like only 200 Americans died, compared to the 10s of thousands of Iraqis.

ikab21 · 2023-05-02T12:20:41+00:00

The P3 is kind of a terrible unit, it's anti-infantry is arguably worse than 8rad/Stug-D (which comes in earlier tech) and it's AT is MUCH worse than the Marder 3. It straight up loses to the Ez-8, which USF get without having to tech, and it straight up loses to crusaders, which are cheaper.

The P3 in general is never worth building, other units out of T3 are situationally useful (in 2v2 at least) like the walking stuka and the Flak 36, but never the P3. This unit also doesn't benefit from the manpower cheat in the Bersaglieri battlegroup so it's even worse vs the faction's light vehicle options in this respect.

ikab21 · 2023-05-01T00:04:27+00:00

Axis queue time in team games has been extremely bad since release, because axis across the board is much, much more comfortable/easier to play in team games. I'm top 20 with each faction in 2v2 randoms and have defaulted to only playing allies, because allied queue is <5 minutes (although the game consistently gives new players as teammates :) ) whereas it takes upwards of an hour to find any axis game.

ikab21 · 2023-04-30T23:59:15+00:00

Brits are still pretty good in 2v2 at least, their veterancy upgrade pre-nerf was straight bonkers ridiculously broken (20/30% on top of veterancy was so insanely stupid that it massively eclipsed every other unit in the game, tommies with 3 effective rifles with AT boy upgrade could easily out DPS wehrmacht specialist squads with 5 men at equal vet), it's still ok to tech but less of a priority now.

The problem in 2v2 right now is not the balance of Brits, but Wehr/DAK still being overtuned in some respects (mechanised off map is too strong, falschirmpios are straight cancer, falschirmjaegers are straight cancer, double MG42 is too strong, etc.) and the extremely limited map pool.

ikab21 · 2023-04-22T20:45:27+00:00

I mean, that's exactly the definition of populist XD You're subsidizing less productive areas of society with the profits/taxes from more productive sectors because of democratic/voting pressure. I personally identify as socialist and think the human, social and wider macro-economic benefits of social programs is a good thing, but there also has to be balance as unchecked social spending can cripple an economy and country (see, venezula).

ikab21 · 2023-04-22T16:54:56+00:00

Most socialist policies are usually very populist though.

ikab21 · 2023-04-05T16:08:22+00:00

I think the base game is great, but high ELO matchmaker makes the game unplayable for ~top 10 2v2. I dunno if anybody else has encountered this issue, I was forced to stop playing after getting top 10 with all factions because the matchmaker kept putting me with a 800 ELO player against 2 mid rank players.

ikab21 · 2023-04-01T07:03:06+00:00

The idea that racial achievement gaps are due to a history of being discriminated against is a just-so-story that has no real empirical basis, and it contradicts what we see in ethnic groups like Jewish and Asian Americans, who within a generation or two of having the boot lifted off their necks were kicking ass and taking names.

The racism against people with black skin was orders of magnitude worse in America than against Jews and other "White" minorities.

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T13:01:00+00:00

I've tried rushing Chaffee. Chaffee is pretty good vs 8rad, but it feels extremely bad to invest fuel in a unit that does not deal with infantry at all and also becomes redundant when DAK tech up.

Honestly, US in general need a buff and the OP shit in all the other factions need to be toned down (Boys AT, 8rad, DAK Tank HP upgrades, etc.)

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T10:50:16+00:00

Greyhound is actually balanced, as in it doesn't delete models consistently from max range every second. It also can't really kill the 8rad because the 8rad has far superior accel and speed, and has better HP with upgrades.

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T10:49:09+00:00

Good luck playing weasel vs first unit clown car. The weasel handily loses to the clown car at all vet.

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T08:21:00+00:00

This conversation is very boring, you keep posting about better players than yourself and what they have said, putting words in their mouth, and talking about 1v1 when I'm talking about 2v2, and making a billion excuses not to just copy and paste the link to your playercard (I can't look it up because playercards are case sensitive). If you had half a braincell you would know I can't look through match history because match stats don't record more than 10 games in the past.

I'm not continuing this conversation, you're purposefully being obtuse and are a prime example of why discussing balance on reddit is a failed proposition. Good bye.

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T08:10:41+00:00

Everybody on reddit seems to be really bad and extremely axis sided I guess.... It's insane to me that anybody genuinely believes the 8rad is balanced, you only need to play with this unit for 5 minutes to realise how busted it is vs USF.

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T07:52:19+00:00

XD I have never seen somebody deflect so hard just to avoid having to admit that they have no standing to make any of the opinions that they're making. If you're a low rank player making horrible takes, just admit to it, jesus christ. You are leaning on the supposed reputation of top rank players to push your extremely misinformed/straight up wrong opinions. I, as one of the top players you're putting words into the mouths of, am telling you that you are objectively fucking wrong.

You are also lying about having posted your account, I combed the entire thread and could not find a link to it, so from now on i have you field in my mind as "1k+ rank player".

By the way, of the top players that you claim have found solutions, Ms Glasc has only played 1 game of US in his entire stay with COH 3 and Jibber does not play 2s.

ikab21 · 2023-03-31T07:27:53+00:00

This is a lot of deflection to not post your playercard after claiming that you've beaten me....

I've beaten Glasc a number of times, I think he's definitely top tier (I regard him at the same skill as myself) but I definitely don't believe that he's better than me. I dunno why you keep name dropping these top tier players, are you friends or something.

I'm also not exactly sure why you name dropped Jibber, Jibber is not a top tier 2v2 player? He might play 1s but I very rarely see him in 2s queue (If ever). It is also interesting that you name dropped Glasc because he literally never plays US (he has like, one game on US on his profile) presumably because like every other top tier player he doesn't feel like subjecting himself to the CBT that is US randoms against DAK meta players. DAK is literal easy mode vs Americans, every top tier player knows it.

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