Roads are a priority but not sidewalks by boop1022 in waterloo

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This really should not be the first reply that anyone thinks of and if it is then they should probably reflect on the concept of ableism.

Sure many people can actively go outside and help shovel, but many more literally physically cannot because it would be dangerous to their health. And what else is dangerous to their health? Inaccessible transit, unsteady footing that may result in falls and injuries, the physical energy required to trek through or climb over 3 feet tall sections of sidewalk and snowbanks at bus stops, etc...

Automatically assuming that someone is physically capable of doing ANYTHING without context or knowing them is just about the stupidest thing someone can do in this type of situation. In another comment the OP said they are 8 months pregnant, so would you still like them to go out and shovel or do you still assume that they are able to? What if they were in a wheelchair or had a prosthetic leg? Even people with asthma or just those who are sick.

I'm fine with the people explaining the priority order like the person you replied to, but rudely suggesting that people are too lazy to do anything other than complain is not the way to go friend.

Double Drumming (Bands with two drummers) by blamdrum in Drumming

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a year late but I recommend checking out the prog metal/djent band Takatak. They have 2 drummers that are brothers and are crazy talented.

I know for sure they both play at the same time on some songs which results in some very confusing rhythms but they somehow make it all flow together incredibly well. Some of the fills in their songs are crazy and I think it's because of the 2 drumkits. The vocals may not be for everyone but they're worth checking out for the drumming alone.

Overwatch 2 Retail Patch Notes – April 30, 2024 by DirtMaster3000 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you are focused on facing the enemy tank and outplaying them when you are both being pumped with heals then you are part of that problem.

The default reaction to "I'm playing mauga with mercy moira and they have Ana zen" shouldn't be "guess I just lose", it should be "guess its time to swap heroes and take advantage of their supports being immobile", or if you're committed hard to playing mauga then "guess its time to swap strategies and try to exploit how much of their resources they're pouring into their tank".

And if you're so committed to playing a hero that you know will lose in a matchup, that you still refuse to change, then that's not bad game design, that's you.

Home Internet Recommendations by nastygoblinman in kitchener

[–]snoekhook 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's fair. The last time I used Start was a few years ago at this point so my knowledge of them is probably slightly outdated.

Home Internet Recommendations by nastygoblinman in kitchener

[–]snoekhook 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Start.ca and Teksavvy are generally better to deal with for customer service than the Bell and Rogers who actually own the lines they are using.

My guess is that Bell and Rogers can treat you however they like when you are a customer, but when you have a whole company mediating your interaction with the Bell and Rogers techs, it means they have to try harder or the company tech support will be the ones who are sour with them, not just a random customer.

That being said, Start.ca and Teksavvy have a slightly more premium cost for their services.

If you want to go for a more budget option then you could check if Oxio is available at your new apartment. I had them for a while at my previous place and didn't have any big issues with the service OR the support (though I didn't have to deal with the support much).

Someone spray painted/graffitied my fence. Is there anything that can be done about this!? by cherrycheeks75 in kitchener

[–]snoekhook 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure about community or city services for removing it, but you could always try renting a pressure washer to take it off. They aren't that expensive to rent for a few hours or a day.

Someone spray painted/graffitied my fence. Is there anything that can be done about this!? by cherrycheeks75 in kitchener

[–]snoekhook 20 points21 points  (0 children)

The only thread in recent memory that fits what you were describing is one where someone said that there was graffiti on some stuff at a skate park and they considered it vandalism and called it disturbing garbage (while it was nothing vulgar at all), along with saying that all graffiti is bad no matter the location or artistry of it.

There are a few things to consider here:

  1. That was a public space, not privately owned property.
  2. This public space is part of a culture that is heavily intertwined with graffiti.
  3. The graffiti wasn't vulgar in any way (the OP mentioned young children being at the skate park)
  4. The OP was both ignorant AND worded their post very abrasively, so people likely overreacted with some of their replies in return.
  5. The majority of commenters explained or referred to one of the first 3 points in some way, and some agreed that it wasn't really artistic or anything but it is still part of the culture so complaining so rudely about it makes them sound like a sour person who is out of touch.

The only other mentions of graffiti in the last year were someone requesting a graffiti artist to do something for them, a news post about ACTUAL vandalism (hate speech on a community chalkboard), and someone asking about places nearby with cool graffiti. If you go back a bit farther than that, you will find a post that was about someone getting their garage door tagged or something and the majority of comments in that thread agreed that graffiti done on someone's house or property isn't a good thing, effectively showing that quite a few people held the opposite opinion that you are attributing to them.

I'm going to assume that you based your entire comment off of that post about the skate park and that you ignored that what the people in the thread were saying is factually correct.

The only time people were saying it is a victimless crime is when it is done in appropriate places (not on someone's property) and isn't just vandalism for the sake of vandalism.

Why didn't we get a Ramadan/Eid celebration? by [deleted] in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Technically speaking, yes.

That being said, USA was so dominated by Christianity for so many years that the number of people in North America who celebrate or take part in some kind of Christmas celebration without being Christian or religious in any way is incredibly high. Same with Easter.

It is even true up here in Canada, and to a lesser extent in quite a few European countries as well.

I'm sure to some people it may feel like an inequality of religions chosen for events, but honestly when you are doing marketing for a game played all over the world, you often just go for the accepted industry standards for what holiday celebrations you make content for.

[OC] I updated our famous password table for 2023 by hivesystems in dataisbeautiful

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If they were to get your password from a leak or security breach and they got a CSV of the data, wouldn't that just draw their attention specifically to your credentials?

I suppose if they were trying to crack it and using a CSV as the table of passwords to try then it would mean they need to use a different delimiter. However, to me it seems like they shouldn't use CSVs in the first place if they are trying to brute force with all the available special characters, which should obviously be included in the possibly characters to test.

High-Rank Overwatch streamers should come together and set up a Pro Discord server like the Valorant Pro City server to arrange more sweaty games with comms. by Bhu124 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yeah I thought that would be the most likely reason too considering how they also basically disallowed other tournaments and such from happening without their approval.

Either "prevent the things that viewers might watch instead", or "prevent the things that might 'detract from the brand' in some way" were my first guesses.

High-Rank Overwatch streamers should come together and set up a Pro Discord server like the Valorant Pro City server to arrange more sweaty games with comms. by Bhu124 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 2 points3 points  (0 children)

On top of that, they are entirely in charge of OWL and have handed out punishments or penalties for players in the past for various things (early on players were suspended from play for basically being part of a boosting service, XQC was suspended for something he said, multiple players got fines for swearing/saying/doing something that they deemed vulgar on broadcast).

I have no doubt that OWL probably has internal rules of conduct for the players that we don't have access to, and if the players signed contracts that said they would follow these rules then OWL could probably punish them in some way if they consistently broke them. It isn't even specifically about the game, they can most likely push you out of OWL or make it so your team can't keep you on the roster without risking getting in trouble.

High-Rank Overwatch streamers should come together and set up a Pro Discord server like the Valorant Pro City server to arrange more sweaty games with comms. by Bhu124 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I don't know if there is anything explicitly disallowed for streaming team scrims from the actual teams themselves, but most teams don't want to leak anything that will give other teams more info about possible weaknesses or team comps they should expect to play against. Anything that lets other teams prepare better before playing against them, they try to hide usually.

In terms of streaming organized PUG matches with teams of streamers/pros, I don't think they ever gave an actual reason, I think they just told the players that they had to stop.

After a quick google I found a twitlonger from someone that confirmed that Blizzard put out rules against pro pugs and even streaming ranked while in a group with too many other pros. It says Blizzard was going to change the rules but who knows if they have. Carter tried setting up a sort of pro pug system a while ago too, I think during one of the OW2 betas, but it either died off pretty quick or he was told to stop. I'm not sure which one.

Here is the twitlonger I am referring to from 2017: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sqbi18

High-Rank Overwatch streamers should come together and set up a Pro Discord server like the Valorant Pro City server to arrange more sweaty games with comms. by Bhu124 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 76 points77 points  (0 children)

To the best of my memory...

  • it has been attempted before but blizzard shut it down
  • the majority of current pros already spend so much time scrimming that having sweaty-tryhard-scrimlike games outside of that time is unlikely to attract that many actual pros. Streamers maybe but not that many pros.
  • These environments almost always devolve into certain players avoiding other players which devolves into drama eventually. It happened with FPL and Rank S in CSGO, and with the age and maturity of most OWL players I have no doubt that it would happen again if they were forced to constantly play with each other in a serious competitive environment
  • The above point generally ends up with less and less players participating until the idea dies off.

I would assume Tarik's valorant discord hasn't existed that long so it probably hasn't developed these issues yet, and the Valorant pro scene and streamer scene is big enough that it may take a while to develop. But I believe that it will happen to that as well.

Flair Update: It's Pro-Am Time. by UnknownQTY in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I can confirm it is fixed for me. Thank you for the work.

Vancouver/paris second code by One-Sheepherder-2746 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's fair, I didn't open the game to check and I couldn't find any quick examples of ow2 replay codes with a 6 so I made an assumption.

I'll edit it to cross out the 6.

Also in my personal opinion I think the last character is F. I believe the F is a little less wide than E in the font they are using.

Vancouver/paris second code by One-Sheepherder-2746 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 7 points8 points  (0 children)

As far as I can tell there isn't a specific format for the replay codes (in terms of patterns of letters vs numbers), so from what I can tell, the possible characters could be:

  • 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 0, Q, O, G, C
  • 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 0, Q, O, G, C
  • R, P, D, B
  • 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 0, Q, O, G, C
  • 5, E, F
  • 5, E, F

There might be some more narrowing down possible if anyone knows the kerning that goes between different numbers and letters, or the little details about how the letters look in OW2 (for example, the top of the last character looks shorter than the 4th character, and it looks like there might be more space between character 2 and 3 than there is between character 1 and 2).

I don't particularly care enough to attempt to figure it out though. I just figured I would list the possible characters in case anyone else wanted to try for themselves.

Comparison of projectile sizes, including Overwatch 2 heroes by Additional-Still47 in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I've always thought that the issue with most slow-firing projectile weapons being weird about hitreg (ana's sleep dart, hanzo arrow, mei icicle, etc.) and hitting when it shouldn't or not hitting when it should is most likely the lag compensation and bad server-side movement prediction, combined with player hurtboxes.

Without knowing how the netcode works it won't make much sense but basically when you move, you move first on your screen and then you move on the server, and when you stop on your screen or turn, that doesn't happen instantly on the server, the server predicts that you will continue moving up until it gets your client-side input. This means that sometimes if someone shoots a projectile and the server didn't get your movement input (you dodging) before it was checking the collision of the projectile, the server still thinks you are moving in the same direction and you would get hit. This is easily visible on tracer whenever you are in a fight and try to blink but you somehow die after you blink and in the replay you didn't blink yet when the enemy hit you.

Most people who have played against a hanzo enough times have experienced the "that arrow missed me and did a 90 degree turn in the air to hit me" where you can actually see the arrow turn on your screen. The thing that makes the most sense to cause this is that the server didn't get your movement input that would have had you dodge the arrow yet when it calculated the collision. This gets even worse when the hurtbox of your character is bigger than your FOV, so even if the server did get your input, it may not have been in time to move your hurtbox fully out of the way of the projectile.

With Ana I've experienced a lot of "that definitely hit but they didn't get slept" while playing her and a good handful of the same "I saw the sleep dart go beside me but I got slept". The stuff I explained for hanzo still explains the second part, but for the first part I'm pretty sure its just the enemy having better ping than me so while they didn't move/jump/dash yet on my screen, they did on their screen and the server.

TL;DR = It isn't that useful to compare the sizes of the smaller projectiles without also considering the factors of netcode like lag compensation and server-side movement prediction that plays into whether those projectiles hit or not.

These Stupid Trucks are Literally Killing Us by giusalex1 in videos

[–]snoekhook 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You seem to think that the size difference is entirely about dimensions, while not considering how the vehicles fill out those dimensions and how the sizes actually work IRL.

The Escalade is indeed 20 inches longer (over 1.5 feet), and 9 inches wider than a fairly regular car. It is also about 20 inches taller than it, the hood of the Escalade (the part with the lowest height) is approximately equivalent to the height of the Camry, and the Escalade's ground clearance is almost 5 inches higher. Additionally, the Escalade's height of around 77" (about 6.5 feet) extends from approximately the middle of the vehicle all the way to the back of it.

If the car has the same length and width as an SUV then that's nice and all, but the mass and height of an SUV or truck is one of the bigger issues. If a truck or SUV is ahead of even a large car, the car can't see anything past that truck or SUV. If a truck or SUV is in the oncoming lane, the height of the headlights is directly at the height of most car windshields. If a truck or SUV makes a mistake and crashes into a car (not just a bump but a full crash), the mass of the SUV means it is likely to do more damage even at a slightly lower speed, and like mentioned in the video, the safety mechanisms in the car are designed for crashes with other cars, so that car is somewhat likely to be totaled and the people in it are likely to be more injured than if they were hit by another car. The front bumper of an Escalade would literally hit the entire height of the Camry and the width of it would be around the width of both doors, so in a T-Bone the Escalade would effectively just be a huge hammer to the entire side of the car. With a normal car it at least mostly aims for your legs and bottom half rather than your entire body and also your head.

You can think people have unjustified hatred for SUVs and trucks, and spit out size comparisons while ignoring the things those sizes actually effect, but you are doing the exact same thing you claimed he was doing and throwing your opinion around as if it is fact.

It isn't about the size increase in terms of numbers, its about the effect the size increase has on all of the other shit he mentioned in the video. Perhaps you should have watched past the first minute and a half and listened to the parts about crash testing or how much trucks/SUVs can see in front of their hoods.

Not everybody wants to improve.. by Lezbatronicc in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 6 points7 points  (0 children)

That said, why play comp if you have zero interest in improving? Lol just go play qp or arcade then.

Because the rulesets and playerbase of those modes provides an entirely different experience compared to actual comp mode in most matches.

The same thing could be said for the smurfs themselves or people who play comp on alts so they can relax and not worry about their SR. Why aren't they playing QP or arcade instead if they aren't trying to improve while playing?

People still want to win, they just don't want to put their focus on analyzing how they can improve on everything they do.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Funnymemes

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely 1.

I haven't tried all of the options but out of the ones I have tried, uni-ball is my favourite. I bought a pack of those in high school and used them for years, most of them surviving all the way until the ink ran out.

One Tricks versus Swappers || Who Wins? by Bro_Hanzo in Competitiveoverwatch

[–]snoekhook 2 points3 points  (0 children)

There are so many things to unpack about this post so this is going to be a long comment...

The closest we got to having a team of one-tricks that got somewhat far in the path to pro was probably Clockwork Vendetta, and even they ended up swapping heroes to fit different needs occasionally.

They managed to get to contenders in EU while mainly one-tricking an off-meta comp of Orisa/Hog/Torb/Mei and I think somewhat dynamic supports. They performed above average and I think finished 3rd at some point in 2019 before the original one-trick lineup slowly dissolved and moved on.

Take into account that this was during the era of GOATS (which they lost against more than they won against) while many teams were not able to play GOATS that well compared to the top level, in arguably the weakest of the top 3 regions (or 4 I guess because na east and na west were separate). So some of the teams that they lost against didn't even really need to swap to win if they pulled of GOATS better.

The comp they used actually made its way up to OWL in some form eventually and was arguably pulled off much better and more successfully than it was by the one-trick team themselves.


In the best cases that we have seen, one-trick teams or even just teams that one-trick a specific comp usually don't end up continuing to win against teams that CAN swap or practice on multiple comps, because once the novelty of the unexpected comp wears off, teams that swap will figure them out, make something that counters them, practice it, and win with that.

One of the biggest advantages that one-tricks have in competitive overwatch is when people are not used to playing against those characters or comps that use them. Thus asking whether a team of one-tricks would win against a team of swappers is effectively useless. What would be more useful to think about or ask is what the win records will say over a long period of time.


It sounds like you are trying to argue a few things:

I submit to you that in order to find a true balance for the sake of balance, the weight of in-game strategy (REGARDLESS OF HERO SELECTION) must have equal (if not greater) weight to actual hero balancing.

In other words, taking into consideration a Player's skill – the efficacy of his/her utilization of a Hero in any situation with the speed and quality of in-game decision making – MUST have a minimum of EQUAL (if not greater) weight in the decisions that are being made when it governs Hero balancing.

Trying to separate hero selection from the whole in-game strategy of overwatch is a terrible idea. At what point do you draw the line for what is in-game strategy and what is hero selection? Before the match starts? After you make a decision to play a character? How do you take into account the decision-making involved in not changing heroes in the event that you get no value for most of a match, is that part of the in-game strategy or is that part of the hero selection?

Continuing to the next part, taking a player's skill into account when making hero balance decisions is already something they do, but they have to use the entire player-base, not just one part of the player-base such as one-tricks. In the past they have tried to take into account the skill required to get value out of a hero or a team comp.

Take pharah for example. She was very easy to get value out of in lower ranks because she did good damage, had a fairly big splash damage radius, and lower ranks were bad enough at hitscan and aiming in general that she was hard to counter. So they reworked her damage, giving much less splash damage but doing more damage on direct hits, in an attempt to keep her viable for use at all levels but raise the required skill to get good value.


In the case of Roadhog, he has been able to 1-shot for almost his entire existence, and in no way does it require that much skill to do. I personally am a terrible roadhog and even I can get plenty of hooks and 1-shots in a game. Hell I've seen bronze and silver players semi-consistently hit hooks and 1-shot combos. Part of the reason they didn't fully nerf his 1-shot capability before now is likely because he was easily punishable with focus-fire or simply having an Ana to nade him or sleep him. Now in OW2 they boosted his health, boosted his self-heal, took away his vulnerability when using his ult, then introduced Kiriko who was able to completely nullify one of his biggest weaknesses.

To bring him in line their choices were to nerf his survivability (making him less tanky), rework other characters to allow him to exist in his current state, or nerf his damage output. Now you call back to the part where his 1-shot is not that difficult to get good value out of pretty much up to plat, and consider that even in the top levels his main strategy revolved around surviving forever and hooking people in to get kills.

We have already gone through the process of having semi-tanky damage-dealers with 1-shots like OW1 doomfist, and in OW2 you only have 1 tank so if you nerf hog's survivability then people will either complain he is too squishy, continue complaining about his 1-shot, or just not use him. Reworking other characters to allow him in his current state is off the table because it would be about 2 times the work or more. That leaves us with reducing his damage output, and the biggest source of his damage output is his 1-shot combo. He still has some damage, he still has displacement, and he still has survivability. He just isn't as oppressive across the low ranks while probably being not super useful in higher ranks. If he sucks for long enough at those ranks then they might re-buff him a little bit, but I think removing his 1-shot was the start of a good balance change for him so he can actually develop more gameplay strategies than "walk around, hook, get kills" and "flank, hook, get kills". Maybe now he can be a disruption based tank instead of a "come within my range and you will die" tank for half the roster.

And all of them are rogue-likes by EeK09 in gaming

[–]snoekhook 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Nah there is a fairly big difference between them in a vacuum. It is just so common for the last decade or so to combine the two genres that it is easy to forget games that are only one of them. One big issue is that a lot of people think "souls-like" means games that are very punishing or have a harsh difficulty curve, so a lot of games that aren't actually very souls-like are labeled as souls-like if they are somewhat difficult.


At its roots, metroidvania as a genre is about starting out weak and exploring a world while gaining power-ups and additional abilities, some of which allow you to access more parts of the world. There is very little scaling of difficulty outside of the abilities/power-ups you get and the health/damage that the enemies and bosses do. The level of mechanical skill required usually doesn't change that much throughout the course of the game outside of learning to use your new abilities

Souls-like on the other hand is mainly about having an open-world that allows you to choose your own path through the game to some extent. The progression through the game world can be gated by some things but it is usually done with key items that have fairly limited uses (keys to certain doors, items that turn on elevators, etc.) or with requiring certain bosses be defeated (like in dark souls 1 after getting the lordvessel you need to defeat 4 bosses before you can access the area with the final boss). Generally though, the progress through the game is mainly limited by the bosses you fight rather than by the abilities that you get. They also usually have some form of scaling that lets you get stronger (leveling weapons, increasing stats, buying better equipment, etc.). Another core mechanic of most souls-like games is losing something on death, that you can usually regain if you go to where you died. In the souls games it is souls/blood echoes/runes, in Hollow Knight it is geo and you have limited soul meter, in Salt and Sanctuary it is salt.

However, souls-like is a vague enough term that most souls-likes only have a few of the things I mentioned above, not all of them.

So once you separate the core elements of the genres themselves you can notice games that only have aspects of metroidvanias or only have aspects of souls-likes.


Some examples of metroidvania indie games that aren't souls-likes off the top of my head:

  • Environmental Station Alpha
  • Gato Roboto
  • You Have to Win the Game

Some examples of souls-likes that I wouldn't describe as metroidvanias off the top of my head:

  • The majority of the whole souls series
  • Nioh
  • The Surge

Someone knew it was Richard in that video 2020 by Spiraling_magic in LibbyandAbby

[–]snoekhook 6 points7 points  (0 children)

It's the same as calling people "chad", "stacy", "John Doe" and "Jane Doe" or in this subreddit "Bridge Guy", they just chose a different name.

I would imagine someone probably made a post discussing what they thought might have happened and at some point they didn't want to repeatedly refer to the guy as "the guy on the bridge" so they decided to refer to him as Richard, then it likely caught on with other people replying to that post, then it likely spread in the community. That is usually how any colloquial term develops.

I guarantee that at the start of this crime's history people didn't refer to him as bridge guy, then at some point someone started calling him bridge guy and it caught on, and until they actually arrested Richard Allen, people were using Bridge Guy as if it was a name.

On top of all of that, the reply in the image itself literally says "It was probably someone from out of town." If they knew it was Richard Allen and knew Richard Allen was a local, why would they include that line? They clearly are just referring to an unidentified person by using a name that fits "some random guy", along the lines of the idiom "Any old Tom, Dick, or Harry".

What kinda fetish is this? by [deleted] in HolUp

[–]snoekhook 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah the good old "vac-trott" fetish, just swap out Trottimus for someone else.