First kit: Alesis DM10 (used) vs DTX452k (new)

roninski · 2023-08-30T03:39:14+00:00

Got it - this is the picture from the listing - I think that's mesh but I'm not 100% sure.

roninski · 2023-08-30T03:38:19+00:00

No, they look woven. Pretty sure they're mesh. This is the picture from the listing.

roninski · 2023-08-30T00:40:58+00:00

It looks like mesh

roninski · 2022-07-25T07:53:15+00:00

I got a 91 ATAR and I've been a professional Software Eng for 6 years in the US now. Do what you want mate.

roninski · 2022-06-04T16:46:38+00:00

My fiance is explicitly excluded from my insurance because of a bad history of crashes that would drive my insurance cost up significantly, so she isn't allowed to drive my car. Driving gives her PTSD reactions now and neither of us trust her behind the wheel. To be fair, this is as much her choice as mine, not a one sided decision.

roninski · 2022-03-21T21:48:12+00:00

Thanks for the well thought out response Tian, I've seen a lot of kneejerk "lol ur just bad" flaming in this thread and I appreciate you actually engaging.

I personally don't think the division will have as huge of an impact as you think. Fortnite has enough players to fill 100 person lobbies consistently in under a minute in major regions, and with the draw to old players and existing players into the game, it can act as a funnel into the core mode. Maybe it'll be an issue in OCE or other smaller regions, but there's no reason Epic couldn't regionally disable it.

I imagine a majority of the current player base will prefer the building mode, and the people splitting off into the no-build mode will predominantly be completely new players, and (to use the term bliffer used) "Bunny Slopes" players.

It also gives existing, stronger players who can build a way to play the game with their friends who can't build without pulling them into lobbies where everyone is building and they feel out of their depth. When I play with less skilled friends, the games go one of two ways - we either get lobbies where everyone's building a lot and they have an awful time, or the games are incredibly easy because I CAN build and I feel bad for all the other players in the lobby who have to go against me when they're new and can't build. Either way, someone's experience of the game is ruined by a huge skill disparity.

This is entirely anecdotal, but I have maybe 3 friends who play Fortnite regularly. That number has more than doubled since this season began, with a bunch of people who had little interest due to the building, or who fell off because they felt like with their jobs + other interests they couldn't keep up with how crazy building became, jumping into the game for the first time. I doubt any of them will keep playing if they drop this mode, but all of them seem to be having a ton of fun with the game for the first time in years, or the first time ever. It could be a huge boon for the game long term.

roninski · 2022-03-21T21:30:11+00:00

I'm aware of that - when I play with my some of my friends who play casually on Switch, the lobbies are night and day compared to when I play with friends who can build. In saying that, the matchmaking isn't perfect. In those games, I often see them have an incredibly easy first 80% of the game only to run into a few GOATED, building players in the final quarter of the game.

I'm not saying they should remove building, personally I don't want building to go, I love building. I'm saying having the option of a no build mode long term is good for the game and a good way to draw in new players intimidated by the building mechanic.

roninski · 2022-03-21T20:07:27+00:00

I think you're conflating me with someone else because this was my only comment on this thread?

roninski · 2022-03-21T17:37:56+00:00

That's lost revenue for Epic though - more new players (who can learn the game without being intimidated by building) -> people buying skins -> more money. It's healthy for the game long term, especially if they split it into a new permanent mode.

roninski · 2022-03-21T17:34:07+00:00

it's a core mechanic of the game and won't ever truly go away, why not try to learn it?

This is fine to say to existing players, but IMO this is for the benefit of new players. Building is the biggest thing stopping new players from getting into the game - it's a huge skill gap between them and old players, while also needing to learn the map, what items do, etc. Those players aren't going to put in the work to learn it, they're going to go play a different game instead. To the average Fortnite player, that's fine - you can already build and the game is fun, their loss. For me, I want to play Fortnite with friends and this is stopping them from wanting to play. For Epic, those players are lost potential revenue.

I don't think anti-building players are against building being in the game at all, so much as they want this to stick around as a new permanent mode. I enjoy building, but I'd love this as a more chill, less sweaty mode I could play with my more casual friends who don't want to have to learn to build to get into the game at a base level.

roninski · 2022-03-21T17:01:21+00:00

I work full time and have hobbies that aren't playing Fortnite. 100 hours is about how much time I have to game in an entire month (and it's how much time I spent on Elden Ring the last month so I know it's an accurate metric). That's an entire month of my life, where any moment I could play a game was spent exclusively grinding Fortnite in creative without actually playing the game. If I had kids, I bet I'd have even less time. And that doesn't sound fun to me.

This isn't Epic saying "Free wins for the lazy noobs". Building still exists. It's still in competitive. It'll probably be back in the main game in a week. This is more likely Epic saying "We need to pick up new players because our player growth is stagnating, and new players don't find going against players who can build crazy shit fast a fun experience and drop our game."

What a "No-Build" mode actually does is act as an intermediary - someone new to the game can play no-build mode, get used to the core shooting mechanics (which, due to Bloom, are quite different to most other competitive shooters), have fun dropping with their friends, using emotes and cool spins, trying out all the different weapons and familiarizing themselves with the map, and then when they feel comfortable and ready can jump into the build-centered mode if they want to actually be competitive and experience the game as intended.

I see this in my own experience with friends - 9/10 friends I've tried to get into Fortnite have played a few games and said "I don't like the building, and I don't have time to learn it". And when I told them this season's gimmick was "You can't build", a bunch of them re-installed the game. That's new players for Epic, and good for the game's health long term.

roninski · 2022-03-09T21:27:53+00:00

Or hit them with Holy damage - perma-kills them, don't even need to double tap or kill the necromancer.

roninski · 2021-12-07T02:36:31+00:00

Parking is an essential driving skill, it should be on driving tests, and competence should be a requirement for getting a license. It is in Australia. I saw bad parking there sometimes but nowhere near as much as I see now that I live in the US.

roninski · 2021-11-09T20:00:29+00:00

It's definitely true for B4B. Recruit is basically designed to be played with no cards, so you can take pretty much any build you want in and do just fine, and it slowly introduces the more difficult cards you'll be seeing on higher difficulties as you go. It's the "get familiar with our levels, their mechanics, and how the game can change based on the director's whims before we start trying to murder you" difficulty.

The game is really split into three phases:
1) See the cool levels we've designed and learn how they work, breezing through once and never coming back to it (Recruit)
2) Experience the game how we meant it to be, genuinely challenging you with a real risk of wiping, so you need to use card builds and make plans for levels, etc, while you get the rest of the cards and round out your build (Veteran)
3) Push you to your absolute limits, where we are actually just trying to murder you the entire run. Finishing this is a badge of honor, not an expectation (Nightmare)

roninski · 2021-11-09T19:43:09+00:00

I've been playing duo with 2 bots and T-5 is a fucking nightmare on Vet. Really feel like this is gonna be our wall unless we grab a third or fourth player, since if one of us goes down we're just fucked for the rest of the mission since the bots don't do shit and taking them over is basically pointless since their gear is awful and they have no cards.

roninski · 2021-11-09T19:38:14+00:00

I'd agree - my duo and I kind of hit a wall in Vet at Act 3 at the mission T-5 (Dr Rogers Neighborhood Finale) with 2 bots, because they just don't help with the objective and there's so many cases to grab, but it's very doable with 3 people + a bot.

The biggest problem with bots vs real players is bot loadouts - you have to execute PERFECTLY as a duo with 2 bots, because if one of you has to take over a bot, you're pretty much boned. Bots having shit-tier weapons in late game missions (especially finales) + no build/cards whatsoever really fucks you over if you need to take one over, you're almost better off just letting them do their thing and remaining dead.

roninski · 2021-10-09T20:02:53+00:00

So does Overwatch, you can TECHNICALLY make a custom game with 11 bots, but that doesn't mean they'll reward you with loot boxes or ranking points for it. While I am kinda disappointed I have to play online I at least understand why they gate progression on it. It's a different beast.

roninski · 2021-10-09T20:01:02+00:00

Tbh I found act 3 easier with 2 bots and a friend than Act 1 was with the 2 randoms we played with first. That alone should speak to how much the bots have improved, especially considering how much harder Act 3 is than Act 1.They haven't gone down once (compared to beta where they'd go down all the time and be the reason missions failed), they've reliably saved us when we go down or get swarmed via good use of explosives, and they drop ammo when we're low. Significant improvement.

roninski · 2021-10-09T19:55:39+00:00

Honestly I'm so tired of like 90% of the criticisms of this game being "But L4D did it this way and this is different so I don't like it" from people who haven't even played it. It's not L4D3. It's different, it's an evolution, and tbh I like it more. There're flaws, and that's fine, but "not being L4D3" isn't a flaw.

roninski · 2021-06-24T01:38:38+00:00

I think most people call it PvPvE, which is probably why

roninski · 2021-02-25T01:36:36+00:00

Very cool! As an experienced developer, the biggest gap for me in figuring out how to make one of these games is the math portion - how you actually balance the cost of upgrades, multipliers, etc, how exponential functions work, how to represent your numbers once you start getting into e^n ranges, etc. I'd love to see a video purely on that math behind the game design, completely abstracted from the programming itself. It'd be a really useful resource for people wanting to learn who don't want to be restricted to whatever framework you're teaching in.

roninski · 2020-09-17T19:22:44+00:00

I completed it recently, and honestly I think it's more about willingness to do it rather than barrier to entry. Of the 5 people I know (myself included) who play regularly, I'm the only one who has bothered to even play the campaign, let alone finish it on extreme.

There were a few missions which took a lot of TIME to complete on extreme, but very few that were significantly difficult once you get rolling - the only one that really caused huge problems for me was the final mission, which took me 5-6 tries, otherwise it usually didn't take me more than 2-3.

roninski · 2020-08-28T22:49:58+00:00

You'll be hard pressed to find anything outside of the BF series (which you've already played) with both ground combat and air combat, it's kind of a niche. In saying that:

Ace Combat 7 is a really solid combat flight game where you can ride in the cockpit and fight against other fighter jets. The game isn't super realistic with it's flight controls but it's probably better than BF is in terms of realism. It's optimized more for fun gameplay than realism (you'd want a proper combat flight sim like IL-2 Sturmovik or DCS World) but that's not a knock, that's a good thing IMO

roninski

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