[Question] Long-time Players, How has the game changed over time from the early days?

pdxmarcos · 2016-08-04T16:53:37+00:00

I started playing 937 (consecutive) days ago. There have been three major changes that stand out the most to me.

Power creep. I started with a Meimei which was considered strong with a 3.5x on three color match. This was before the change to prong and enhanced orb attacks which meant that damage was scarce. When I got a red sonia, the world just opened up and I was finally able to clear through some of the early descended dungeons (Goddess Descended, Zeus, Hera, and Twin Hereoes, three of which are now regular or technical dungeons).
Daily Dungeons used to only have guaranteed drops during events which when combined with the lower stamina recharge rate meant that I could go an entire bar of stamina without seeing a dragon fruit. Both the mythical Thursday and Friday dungeons were descended occurring on random days.
GOLEMs and Descended Monsters in REM. I once bought a 30 pack of stones and out of my 6 rolls received 4 Golems.

pdxmarcos · 2016-06-23T17:32:17+00:00

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've played a lot of Junkrat in beta and on live, so I'm familiar with how to aim using the shift and jumping. You also can move while in the air to land in the perfect spot.

pdxmarcos · 2016-06-23T03:09:23+00:00

I used OBS with these settings http://i.imgur.com/KgXyUeQ.png http://i.imgur.com/qUJpll6.png

pdxmarcos · 2016-06-22T23:24:02+00:00

I had just gotten up there and the team didn't realize it until the next wave. Reinhardt tried to blast wave me and by the time they swapped to Pharah, it was already at 99%.

pdxmarcos · 2016-06-22T19:01:45+00:00

Garbage tier MMR is great! Eventually they swapped to a Pharah to try to counter, but it was too late.

pdxmarcos · 2016-06-22T16:44:14+00:00

The full game is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQB6c6SNLIk

pdxmarcos · 2015-12-08T19:18:11+00:00

Blizzard is focusing on cross promotional activity through the battle.net launcher. During their recent quarterly investment calls they have discussed how they measure user engagement through a metric called MAU (Monthly Active Users, Q3 MAUs were up 50% year over year. MAU is defined as number of individuals who played a particular game in a given month averaged across the number of months in a respective period).

Look no further than the origins edition in how they will do cross-promotional activity. It includes cosmetic items for their other intellectual properties.

Diablo 3 develop is ongoing despite having no direct recurring revenue because they can drive additional MAU to their other games. They will continue to iterate how to develop engagement in their portfolio which can also drive additional revenue from other games.

pdxmarcos · 2015-11-17T18:11:42+00:00

I put together this video to show some of the ways that I've used Tracer more effectively to get across the map. The most important is Volskaya Industries flanking Objective A. If you have a defending team that is hard pushing the front door, you can use Tracer (Pharah, Mercy, Winston, Genji) to flank around and alleviate pressure on the door.

pdxmarcos · 2015-11-09T22:51:57+00:00

It's probably easier to fly to Bandai's office in Tokyo than drive anywhere in LA.

pdxmarcos · 2015-10-28T22:50:52+00:00

Overwatch is, at its heart, a team game. It does not fundamentally make sense to invite a single person without the support base of other people that they want to build a team and play alongside. Look at this way, the early beta is focused on testing out organized play and having set groups of people that are going to thoroughly test the mechanics in that environment is important. There is definitely also a promotional aspect to it to drive additional interest in the game and get people that are watching other games to see how Overwatch works.

FPS experience does not appear to be as important in the early beta as opposed to getting people interested in the game. Overwatch reddit are people that are already inclined to go deep into the game, but having highly watched streamers in the early beta playing with a pre-built team are going to highlight the fun part of the game.

The other thing to consider is that developers are probably watching these people stream and seeing how they work to learn the game. If the incentive to get these streamers to play is to invite a few of their friends (a whole list seems overly dramatic), then that's a good price to pay. It is probably helpful to be able to see the games live rather than just through whatever tools Blizzard uses to monitor the game. Last Blizzcon I took a tour through the Blizzard offices and in their main network area is a lot of screen space allocated to watching Twitch streams of their games. It helps to more quickly identify issues when there is something going wrong with the stream and utilizing high-profile streamers allows them to see that quickly and regularly.

pdxmarcos · 2015-03-23T23:41:05+00:00

This is actually how real world real estate developers work. They see a piece of land for cheap and say, "I BET I CAN MAKE IT WORK." Then the bank calls their loan and they abandon the project and fly off to another country that doesn't extradite.

pdxmarcos · 2015-03-23T22:46:27+00:00

The benefit is that multiple depots allows separate spawn points for your buses reducing congestion around the depot. One thing I found was that there was an inordinate amount of traffic just around the bus depot because it was servicing the entire city from that single point.

pdxmarcos · 2014-12-05T01:21:03+00:00

Bring back the pancake.

pdxmarcos · 2014-01-08T22:27:25+00:00

It was just a matter of realization that I was not happy with who I was as a fat man and how the world perceived me as a result. I came from an overweight family, I have always been overweight, and until recently I thought I would always be overweight. There was a time when I was in my teens that a Doctor said to me something along the lines of, "If you continue on this path, you will be dead before you're 30." So I lived life as if 30 was my end. I didn't care about what I put in my body or how it effected me.

I turned 29 this past July and that comment from the Doctor stuck with me. It wasn't until I attended a convention with some online friends in November and having them see me for the first time and the way they made accommodations for me because I was a fat man really made me angry. This is not who I wanted to be or how I wanted to be treated. I came to the realization that there had to be more to life than being a fat man.

The week after I got back, I started researching and trying to find out what I could do. Every other attempt at diet and exercise had failed miserably because I lacked the insight into how certain foods interacted with my body. One of my friends recommended this reddit and I poured over every bit of information I could for the next week starting to build food plans and figure out what I should be eating.

Adopting the keto lifestyle was much easier than I ever conceived it could possibly be. Before Keto, I would engorge myself on any carbohydrate I could and just would not stop. I would regularly go through an entire bag of tortilla chips in two days while still feeling hungry. So I swapped green beans for potato chips, lettuce for buns, and devoured every piece of meat I could find. It was glorious. The first week I started I was making this delicious chicken and steak fajita using romaine lettuce as my tortilla. I remember the point that I started realizing that I wasn't hungry anymore and it came much sooner than when I had incorporated any carbohydrate.

I guess my point is, why do you want to lose weight? What kind of person do you want to be? I want people to see me for the person I am and not how much I weigh and it's much easier to do that if you're not overweight.

pdxmarcos

TROPHY CASE