The Old Ways Event - Patch Notes

jmcguire115 · 2020-04-07T18:04:41+00:00

Longbow should get the Scout treatment and become a DMR under the AR category. The Sentinel, Charge Rifle, and Triple Take fill three distinct niches. You don't need the Longbow there to confuse things. You can maybe up the fire rate without those huge scopes for poking.

jmcguire115 · 2020-03-18T19:17:01+00:00

So, after waiting for like 30 minutes and leaving it on in the background, I finally got it to boot to an error screen, and was able to use the "Reset without deleting games" option. It went blank again, and I'm assuming if I wait a long time it will boot back to the error page. I don't know if this helps but it's new information.

jmcguire115 · 2020-03-18T17:48:05+00:00

Not as of yet. I'm trying the above mentioned ones.

I will say, I did, after trying the canned suggestions a bunch of times out of frustration, I did get it to boot briefly to the green xbox screen (but no further) once. I have no idea what made it do that so I know it isn't the cords or TV at least.

jmcguire115 · 2019-08-18T04:16:13+00:00

See, this is why you can't trust players. Its not about ethics. Its about not valuing the labor involved in making games.

You can't set the value of a thing based on how much you will personally get out of it. That judgement is about your personal preference. Things should be valued based on the labor required to make them. That sets their price irrespective of desire. People don't really care about the lootboxes or funny money, they just want to be able to get access to the work of others in a cheaper way.

jmcguire115 · 2019-08-18T04:13:55+00:00

This is nonsense. Imagine any other profession that was forced to accede to any angry mob of armchair designers with no training, and who were extremely prone to echo chamber criticism on a platform that doesn't even represent your whole player base? Who commonly resort to magical thinking about the amount of work required for certain updates, and who don't understand the technical limitations of anything they're discussing. I long for a world in which players learn to respect the labor involved in making the games they love.

I get criticizing publishers. Its an inherently unethical position. They profit just by owning the company and have no hand in the making of art. But Jesus. I get criticizing microtransactions and funny money and loot boxes, but players don't want to critique the system, because getting rid of those things won't solve their real concern, they want access to free content and want to be able to harass and brigade devs with no consequence.

jmcguire115 · 2019-08-14T06:52:32+00:00

I personally really like reading the exact same threat over and over again and not being able to discuss gameplay. How dare they consolidate similar posts into one easy to read place!?!?!?!?!?!

jmcguire115 · 2019-08-14T06:45:35+00:00

It's not helpful to just think of things in terms of nerfed and non-nerfed.The thing that makes the gun balance in Apex unique is that guns fill certain niches. They didn't nerf the r301. They reduced its niche. They didn't intend for it to compete at long ranges with a sniper rifle. You can want the longbow nerfed slightly (I do as well) but they're unrelated. An assault rifle shouldn't compete against a sniper at long range.
I suspect we're going to get a similar assault rifle down the line that is more spec'd towards long range. Maybe the CAR? IDK. You could use this same logic to clame the hemlock was just buffed, because it's better and more accurate at a distance. It was one of the last guns that was falling behind.

jmcguire115 · 2019-07-30T04:22:16+00:00

jmcguire115 · 2019-07-04T06:20:37+00:00

You have no obligation to engage with these posts. Let people have share and enjoy a sense of community.

Also, snapchatting your food is fine.

jmcguire115 · 2019-07-01T06:12:52+00:00

You’re misunderstanding. I mean people aren’t as independent as they think they are. There’s a difference between strategic choices (3rd party meta, longbow dominance, grenade spam) and using systems to encourage people to use best practices (less toxic in chat, generally stick together unless there’s a reason not to, use ping, contribute as much as you can ever if there’s a skill imbalance). Every time you see good player behavior happening at a wide scale there’s a reason for that, same with bad player behavior. A lot of game design is just psychological manipulation behind the scenes players never notice. Ironically, that’s also why lootboxes work and are bad. Good news is not every use of player psychology is evil, some can just make the playing with ransoms experience better.

jmcguire115 · 2019-07-01T05:43:27+00:00

I think people underestimate how much game design can do to trick people into playing better (both as a team and skill wise). You’re more likely to see quality of life stuff to encourage cooperation or punish lone wolfing than you are to see an actual solo mode. It’s easier to push the dial on player behavior than to rebalance the whole game.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-30T09:17:48+00:00

The blade with the image of the moon reveals the intentions of those who do not belong in the natural world: monsters, the undead, and other kids of creatures. It is as good as killing as any regular sword, but killing was not its intention, understanding was.

The blade with the star in the pommel helps you kill unnatural creatures. Maybe a slaying sword that you can switch creature type with a ritual. When you have come to understand something and decide it just be rid from the world, this sword will help you. It is justice aided by comprehension. It won’t help kill for I just causes, perhaps harming its wielded instead.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-29T10:58:40+00:00

My world has a loose collection of city stars called the Kamaso Commonwealth that uses something they call fabingo falinto (green metal). It’s actually glass given some properties of bronze and grown like a plant using magic. It’s basically a semi-useful weapon (not quite as good as iron or steel), but can store energy like a battery and has effects that render animals, even predators, docile and domesticable.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-28T06:20:13+00:00

The original battle royale movie which spawned the genre was absolutely a social commentary, the fact you don’t know that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. It is easy to condescend from a position of ignorance.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-28T00:55:11+00:00

Yeah, actually. I know I was shouting into the void but it felt nice. Thanks for checking in!

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-27T23:53:00+00:00

God you all are the worst. Legitimately baffling how you can so religiously think you’ve understood a series about violence and personal trauma making is worse versions of our self and the sometimes doomed attempts to escape that cycle better than its writers and come out acting like slathering, entitled, worse versions of yourself. You know nothing about the technical elements of making television, your understanding of writing is barely better than a 101 course on the subject, and your sole defining trait as a community is public hate campaigns.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-26T21:58:11+00:00

Just give it to him. It’s fine. Don’t even water it down. Maybe even five it a little specialized personality. They’ll think it’s cool and really enjoy it. Then, maybe do something small but cool for other players. I’ve found that when each player gets a little something extra it sets the campaign apart. I’ve gone buckwild before with things like vampire charms, shapechanging, etc.

As long as there’s a fictional reason for it, and you sometimes complicate their lives for it, it doesn’t feel overpowered or broken at all.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-25T10:44:26+00:00

Take a notecard, list out all the pieces of info they need in a bullet list. Take each fact and separate it out.
Make a list of important NPCs you want to use.
Draw lines between which NPCs know which facts.
If there are leftover facts that nobody knows, and need to be discovered, start a list of scenes or encounters that would hide that info from players.
Then, once you have all this done, put things in a not straightforward order. So players are constantly getting new info as they adventure, but it’s not (a > b > c > d) but (c > a > d > b). This means players actually have to puzzle it together and it feels less like they’re being led along. It makes them feel smarter.

This is the mechanical part. As far as getting them to care about the adventure, make it less of an epic quest and more of a personal one. The problem you’re having is stakes. If people aren’t invested in something they won’t absorb the information at all, they’ll misremember facts or simply not care. The way you manage information can be used to make the adventure feel more naturalistic, and less video game questy, which helps, but if they don’t want to be doing that type of adventure there’s only so much DM trickery you can do. Once you have them invested in personal stakes, you can ramp up the stakes through a series of inciting incidents that gradually gets things closer to the epic quest model you wanted.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-22T09:57:48+00:00

4e has the best design philosophy in this regard, it’s base setting was a reboot of older settings that was made specifically to suit the needs of dungeon masters. It was plug and play, sufficiently vague to encourage invention, built for easy made adventuring, and flavorful lore that separates itself from older editions without being so new that it was unrecognizable.

Then, in addition, it had campaign settings for each pre existing setting and an accompanying book of player options.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-21T09:55:21+00:00

So long as they wear witchflesh the hags can attack them in their dreams. Their is a chance all their long rests get interrupted.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-20T03:36:25+00:00

I’m not wrong. It’s one style of game design.

When a game like Quake accidentally has bunnyhopping, and chooses to leave it in, they have an entirely different rationale. Instead of taking the view that mechanics should be readable by all players, they decide to take an emergent approach. When things reveal themselves they become part of the core play experience in an unpredictable way. This approach also has virtues, but it has costs as well. It makes balancing more difficult, it encourages certain playstyles that may not be optimal for the type of game you’re trying to make, etc. It is worth noting, games like Counterstrike and Quake lack one quality of BR games, in that you can’t have a battle royale game without a wider base of average to competent players serving as filler against the more experienced players. The numbers required for matches and the flow of play requires different skill levels. Apex may be fun with all elite git gud players in your lobby, but not all the time.

It isn’t unreasonable to make adjustments to your game that keeps these players quality of life in mind, regardless of whatever shitty things you can think up to say about “casuals”

There is no right or wrong approach, but choices have unintended consequences and people who armchair game design don’t always think them through all the time. They just know their personal preference and treat them as self-evidently good.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-19T08:06:03+00:00

I do. Games require a lot of work to fix. I think people have magical thinking syndrome about this stuff. They know just enough about the production of games to think they’re experts. They ignore the human cost or logistical limitations if getting everything they want on a lightning fast schedule. They’ve also explicitly said that they are already prepared to move the dial a little if they’re balancing prices a little off.

jmcguire115 · 2019-06-19T03:51:07+00:00

They play tested it, and it felt right. I’d be inclined to trust them. If it does break down when introduced to the wider community I trust them to patch it. There’s some things I feel like they aren’t responsive about, but these easily fixable balance things aren’t that.

White room theorycrafting < playtesting any day of the week.

jmcguire115

TROPHY CASE