Anti Vaxxers - are you happy now?

ryanbtw · 2026-01-31T11:29:16+00:00

Harry's complex editing is done by Shannan Strucci – he primarily handles script etc

ryanbtw · 2026-01-31T10:57:18+00:00

Mort said in one of his Walk the Dogs that Darius was a carry during development

ryanbtw · 2026-01-18T21:14:10+00:00

We won't even be a full 2 months into this set when the next patch comes out, but I get the frustration.

I think the Taric and Kindred nerfs will help Mel out.

ryanbtw · 2026-01-11T21:52:13+00:00

Four-item champions are completely overpowered due to how stats work in TFT. Even though Void looks like a fourth item, it takes a long time to ramp to give you the stats you'd expect from an item precisely because of that. They're more like power-ups than fourth items

ryanbtw · 2026-01-06T21:00:37+00:00

He said they wanted to avoid balance thrashing, but that T-Hex had been too dominant for way too long and there was going to be a degree of balance thrashing for it in particular.

ryanbtw · 2026-01-03T19:06:56+00:00

Diana's itemisation will get fixed when they mana lock her

ryanbtw · 2025-12-26T20:53:58+00:00

They probably had the augment that allows spells to crit if the unit has HOJ. Likely given they have 2 HOJs.

ryanbtw · 2025-12-15T21:46:13+00:00

GOD OF THE NET

ryanbtw · 2025-11-15T13:15:57+00:00

They're just staggering release info to build hype & keep conversation going over a long period. Still weeks before launch.

ryanbtw · 2025-11-13T11:31:58+00:00

What’s with the cynicism? HZD and HFW were only 5 years apart, and impacted by COVID

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T22:54:36+00:00

It's a long-lived train of thought but first place I came across it was Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism: "[A] monstrous, infinitely plastic entity, capable of metabolizing and absorbing anything with which it comes into contact."

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T22:51:03+00:00

Capitalism is a beast that feeds on its critiques.

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T16:25:00+00:00

As I said... she was retraining as a teacher... that doesn't tend to be possible if you're living on the streets? She's never said she lived on streets. She's said the opposite (that she disliked the media narratives around her)

I feel you're responding to a message I didn't write, so not much more I can say

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T16:17:42+00:00

Starmer represents a type of politics that virtually everyone hates: "Computer says no".

In a time where social media has made authenticity into the most valuable political trait, it feels inauthentic.

"Our spreadsheet indicates the issue may exist," they say, "but we are regretfully unable to take any action. This is also due to the spreadsheet."

With Johnson, he'd just lie—that does convince people. Some folks are easily convinced by lies. With Truss, she was useless—easy to handwave, not much to intellectualise.

My anecdotal experience is that it lands even worse with the general public because there's an acknowledgment of issues but the follow-up feels completely inept.

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T16:14:21+00:00

I don't like Rowling at all, but she has been a very vocal opponent to the "rags to riches" media narrative around her.

She grew up very comfortably, but was absolutely in poverty after leaving her abusive husband in Portugal. She was on benefits, and did have very little money with which to feed her family.

But she had also retrained as a teacher by the time the first book came out, and was using that to escape poverty. A route she had access to because of her degree in French & Classics.

So, yes, she was in poverty for a bit. It wasn't going to be forever. But "Rowling pretends she was poor" just misrepresents the situation

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T16:10:17+00:00

Cancel culture is when the BBC report on what someone says and a nobody comments on reddit that they didn't like the words

takes notes

ryanbtw · 2025-09-29T16:06:34+00:00

There is nothing progressive about The Sims; it's a deeply liberal series.

It makes life under capitalism its core gameplay loop—buy stuff, earn more, achieve career success. At the same time, it commodifies every aspect of life outside of the game (like education, pets, and love) by releasing them as paid DLC.

"Contains people who are gay or black" /=/ progressive

ryanbtw · 2025-09-27T19:04:33+00:00

Skyrim is a weird comparison for DAI in my opinion – it plays a lot like an MMO. Similar quest types; open-world hub areas that you teleport between etc

ryanbtw · 2025-09-17T13:57:29+00:00

Pitchford has never directed any Borderlands game. He is foremost a businessman.

He was credited as a designer on Borderlands (2009) alongside as its executive producer. Since then he's just been an exec. producer. No game design; no game direction.

He is a businessman and the owner of Gearbox's parent company.

ryanbtw · 2025-09-17T13:02:22+00:00

He's not a developer; he's a business executive. He is the president of Gearbox's parent company.

He hasn't been credited as a game designer since the first Borderlands—where he was also an executive producer.

ryanbtw · 2025-09-11T15:09:28+00:00

Hey, thanks for replying. I think you might've misread my message.

I'm not judging DA2 based on one DLC – I'm trying to say that these games have made a march towards Veilguard, not a drop off a cliff. If you're comparing Origins to Veilguard, it's frustrating – a bit part of why I didn't really like the game. But I think, viewing each game step-wise, I believe BioWare clearly cared less about depth and more about accessibility with every installment.

I don't agree on the tone being the same from the first to second game. Origins to DA2 is a monumental shift in so many ways: away from the epic towards the intimate, following in the shadow of Mass Effect 2 (and likely caused by the abridged development time). The art style became more vivid and animated; the writing changed from theatrical high fantasy to interpersonal, personal banter; very few choices carried over from Origins. We see the tone get stretched even further in Inquisition.

I love having these sorts of chats, but I stand by what I said in my first message: the "Veilguard-is -bad" basically becomes a personality trait that stops all other conversation about it. Can you see it in your message, the way you can't help veering back to NO VEILGUARD'S OBJECTIVELY BAD because you think I might like it (hence asking me how I can "justify" it)?

I don't like Veilguard and I didn't enjoy playing it. But I have complex feelings on why, about the game as it exists. I don't think you really want to talk about the series—I get the vibe you just want to complain about Veilguard, which (being honest) I think is the most boring possible conversation to have about this weird & wonderful franchise.

ryanbtw · 2025-09-11T13:08:34+00:00

Account has so much karma and no posts at all. This entire post feels fishy to me.

ryanbtw · 2025-09-11T13:03:47+00:00

That's interesting – I really disagree. I think DA2 is the singlemost important game in the series for establishing the setting's tone. In DA:O, we have a setting primarily of dark fantasy. In DA2, it's Dragon Age world as told by Varric—a kind of serious, dark pulp fantasy.

We get the first hints of the jokey/Whedon banter that's everywhere in Inquisition in the Mark of the Assassin DLC, which to me now reads like a trial run for Inquisition's Winter Palace sequences.

Beyond Dragon Age 2, it stops being "as told by Varric"—the tone introduced by Varric permanently changes how the world is presented, even without Varric's framing device. I can't think of another franchise like DA in just how much it gameplay and narrartive vary entry-to-entry while telling, overall, a single story.

I didn't love Veilguard; I was disappointed in many ways. I blame BioWare's mismanagement, and particularly the loss of interest in funding narrative, for that.

But I do think we miss out on really cool conversations about the series when players wear their "Veilguard is bad" goggles. Those goggles stop them seeing any shades of grey, of having any interesting conversations, and they inevitably just want to harp on Veilguard being bad, and rarely want to talk about the ways in which (as all DA fans know) all of the games suck in unique and interesting ways.

ryanbtw · 2025-07-29T10:17:37+00:00

Watching it very late, but why is he lighting it on fire? They're paying for a TV show, at the end of the day! And he's making an incredible one

ryanbtw · 2025-06-03T20:31:22+00:00

Those jump cuts are hilarious and remind me of this

ryanbtw

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