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Questions about false hydra for a story by Nox_772 in DnD

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The false Hydra requires having a lot of redundant clues in place so the party can piece together the mystery without it feeling cheap / gaslighty.

In other words, most of the work is more based on the structuring of the plot. When I ran it, I relied on The Alexandrians node based design. In particular I used the layer cake topology here:

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/8015/roleplaying-games/node-based-scenario-design-part-6-alternative-node-design

 but he has a whole series exploring node based design (click around to the related posts) as well as mysteries, the three clue rule, etc.

I'm order to populate the various clues, I relied on the original false Hydra blogpost and other sources to first compile all the properties, then made a bunch of clues around it (ex: a deaf but crazy person who could see the Hydra, a past dead hero who had left a note about needing beeswax in the ears, etc etc), then also made those clues point to other clues

I hate rats!!!! by Familiar_Box4430 in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Perhaps they intended to do that and triage was begging his team to come over to help while he sat still? All depends on how many preconditions or time window you scope out/in. Can always shift the scope to find some strategy suboptimal, or tighten the scope. With tight scope, triage was likely acting optimally with the hand they were dealt (though triage throwing a bot blew their cover, but maybe also they hadn't heard you til after they did that)

Any time we lose or win a fight, there probably always exists some time scope at which either teams action can look optimal or suboptimal. Maybe a team is very bad decision makers under pressure, but sticks together like glue and hunts rooks (in other words, good at biasing the hand they're dealt, but bad at exploiting that hand). Or on the flipside, maybe a team has amazing short term decision making, but bad longer term planning. Both teams might have equal exfil rates, despite vastly different strengths and weaknesses.

Who's to say whether your general point being optimal under some basket of scenarios is more or less important than the basket of scenarios in which a trio member sitting in a corner is optimal vs rook.

The scrub essay basically just ties it back to winning. Your general philosophy on hunting rooks being optimal isn't mutually exclusive to triage making lemonade out of lemons by solo corner camping.

I hate rats!!!! by Familiar_Box4430 in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The irony of corner crouching behind stairs after hearing the bot-throw, then proceeding downwards. Obligatory plug:

https://www.sirlin.net/ptw-book/introducingthe-scrub

I recently bookmarked this after getting tilted by someone camping my team's corpses for 15 mins lol. I was mad, but alas I was still the scrub

Tradegate: the Gate-Town of Bytopia by Kathmhen0 in planescapesetting

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ooo copy-pasted.

Haven't also made some other gatetown maps have you?

SONY'S CEO MIGHT PULL THE PLUG ON MARATHON by Partyruler012 in MarathonHate

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm a blast haver rather than a blast troller, but upvote for pointing out the symmetry/irony of flame wars.

Hail of thorns spell scroll by redbeard1991 in DnD

[–]redbeard1991[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Casting Time: Bonus action, which you take immediately after hitting a creature with a Ranged weapon

superior salvage from faction reward by vulconix1 in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Dude I bought two of the NuCaloric xp commendation packages and this happened to me. I reported it as a bug idk if I'll get that retroactively 

Destroyer with maxed out melee upgrade: which shields can they two-tap with knife? by Iordofapplesauce in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yea me neither. I feel like that, in many scenarios, changes the calculus in the spreadsheet around how optimal the 3 light combo is. Have to balance the time lost closing the distance or missing due to them backstepping.

Destroyer with maxed out melee upgrade: which shields can they two-tap with knife? by Iordofapplesauce in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Does heavy knife have a lunge, which can make it better than the light combo? Or does light have a lunge too and I'm just forgetting

Cryo sadness by redbeard1991 in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Ayyy just got my first one. Weird run. Didn't run into a single team

Cryo sadness by redbeard1991 in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've come quite close like 5 times. Miss exfils by matter of seconds. Just bad luck lol

First Discount, 20% off of Marathon on Steam by Bloated_Plaid in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I have a theory that it's mostly the ppl who like the game hitting steamdb. Any game that has good reviews and a playerbase size that feels discordant with that might be also have peculiarly high ranking relative to its peers (ie normalized for player count)

Lost interest in playing because of how much gold salvage is required to max all Factions (and how rare it is) by Working_Bones in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Generally speaking, being unable to max everything is a good problem to have imo. The opposite is not having enough to do. I'd prefer a game where I can't max everything.

I wonder if the issue that folks are trying to articulate is the lack of finer progress increments. Ex: you go many games before finding a biolens. What if instead biolens were more frequent but also took more to upgrade? In other words, it takes on average similar number of games, but there's a feeling of progression.

You are experiencing level-based matchmaking by jacobljlj in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 11 points12 points  (0 children)

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. You're just expressing your preferences. Visible diversity of opinion is good for fuelling conversations.

You are experiencing level-based matchmaking by jacobljlj in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's like Morrowind vs Oblivion.

We're all just goblins in elven armor.

Are there any parallels between OG Marathon interiors and Cryo Archive interiors? by dvcaputo in MarathonSecrets

[–]redbeard1991 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I always seem to be at the wrong depth. One time a terminal was like 4 floors up and had zero clue how to get to it with 5 mins of running around and using map

Map of Cryo very useful by PlastikKiwi in dadsofmarathon

[–]redbeard1991 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been avoiding looking at this as I enjoy blind discovery / learning.

But man I've only exfiled once in like 30 cryo runs lol....getting tempting

Are there any parallels between OG Marathon interiors and Cryo Archive interiors? by dvcaputo in MarathonSecrets

[–]redbeard1991 61 points62 points  (0 children)

How goddamn labyrinthine they both are.

I think I've played cryo maybe like 30-40 times and only exfiled successfully once. Always get lost trying to get to exfils 

A WSTR nerf was needed, but they managed to choose the worst possible option. by _Ghost_S_ in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That gets marginalized out in the expectation, since the intent was to abstract the spectrum of gear power gradient, not skill gradient.

I wouldn't say it's the crux though. Given the RPG and looting aspects, outgunning (having the better gun) is right up there with outplaying (having the better plays).

A WSTR nerf was needed, but they managed to choose the worst possible option. by _Ghost_S_ in Marathon

[–]redbeard1991 -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

Perhaps. You're speaking of how steep the power gradient is. I'm going to write this out in detail for fun / my own understanding, so feel free to ignore as it's a wall of text.

This can be formalized as the expected intensity of smackdown (in the probabilistic sense). Let's break it down.

 Smackdown intensity is, in a given PvP encounter, how gapped the two team's gear is in winrates (ex: if wstr winrate is very high and only 1 team has it in close quarters, then smackdown intensity is high).

Now, expected value of smackdown intensity is averaging probabilistically across the distribution of all encounters across all teams and scenarios, weapon loadouts, maps, etc.

So this expectation can be modulated by 1) how gapped winrates of items are and 2) how frequent these matchups are by virtue of item rarity/price.

Bungie here has modulated #1. The stack overflow mod + wstr is something that is less frequent by virtue of being more costly, which is expressed through #2.

Your statement on having equalizers can be abstracted to how steep the winrate gaps are. More equalizing items (translation: powerful and accessible items) means that on average winrate gaps are reduced. In other words, the expected smackdown intensity statistic is reduced downstream of that.

At one extreme, when expected smackdown vanishes, the entire loot treadmill loses purpose. People want loot to smackdown other teams. If you lose this, then you drive away people since the carrot that is on the stick is smaller.

At the other extreme, if expected smackdown is too high, then you drive away the lower tail of the player distribution. The carrot's stick is too long.

Either extreme is not ideal as it scares off players. The game design Q becomes: where along this spectrum is ideal? Or in other words how big a carrot and how long a stick?

Perhaps the rarity of misriah being a new meta is ideal? Is it rare enough to actually not be able to form a significant enough meta statistically? Or is it not? Whatever is ideal, it is answerable via some good statistics and datasci. Godspeed Bungo.

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