Lurker > Paratroopa1

this brothers run is making me super happy

you are almost automatically not poor if you own a boat that you don't live on

Did Alolan Exeggutor have the second most #1s?

I put "minimum effort" into my write-ups

Glad to hear it

transcience posted...

there was that punch out blindfold that is an absolute gdq highlight

I'd love to see someone make a list of top runs/moments (looking at you para)

I forget past years too quickly and miss too many runs (most gdqs I had school during which was unbearable) but I can try

Thanks for doing this again Steiner

Whew I got back into the top 10 outliers, it was really close there for a while. I've never been outside the top 10 I don't think

29, 57, 65

oh well

transience posted...

I got to thinking about why the speed run community is so bad at commentary and it hit me, mostly while watching that Battletoads run.

I really only engage with two online communities, the speed run one and the fighting game community. the fighting game community is toxic at times but also manages to do commentary and community a dozen times better than the speed run one. you can watch an Evo or a regular weekly tournament and it will be miles better than what you'll see at a gdq.

the difference is that fighting games are multiplayer, in-person events whereas your average speed run is a single player game and those streams are usually just someone talking to themselves while grinding on a game. that battletoads run is the perfect example. they'll explode after they've broken the record but it's silent throughout. speed runs are super esoteric but it's not really any different than frame-specific timings in fighting games. people are still doing incredible feats on a second to second basis. they're just doing them in person a hell of a lot more. you get these gdq guys and they put the most knowledgeable people on the couch and that kind of ruins it I think. we don't put the 3 best fighting game players in the world on commentary for every game. we have guys who have a personality along with a little bit of knowledge.

it'd be cool if there was a group of guys with chemistry that knew a variety of games, but I think the marathon nature of a gdq makes that awfully hard. and, again, they only get to do it twice a year. if there was some incentive to do it in person more often then maybe we'd have a better product, but that's pretty inconceivable. they're not playing for money or anything like that. it'll be hard to foster a community when everything is so online and remote as opposed to in person.

Yeah, you're spot on about this. I think there actually are a fair amount of people with personality and wide game knowledge but they just don't commentate everything, basically (that would get old anyway).

I wish I could do some commentary on a GDQ run someday, I just don't really know anyone well enough to couch for them aside from one or two people (and I'm not at the marathon anyway).

Mr Lasastryke posted...

yeah, it was good.

i think para knows darkwing duck in person, actually.

acquainted with. he's definitely cool

Xuxon posted...

for the Mario relay, which games are they playing exactly? 1, 2US, 2J, 3, World?

Based on the time estimate and the people running it, I think that's probably it yeah.

Anyway if you want to avoid cringy commentary the best bet is to watch the most mainstream runs, since those tend to have the best of the best. I would place my bets on the Mario relay for instance - the relay runs have had very good commentary in the past and there are like hundreds of people who could talk about Mario, so whoever commentates it will definitely know what they're doing. Super Metroid is another good bet although it was... uh, bad at last gdq. I echo the sentiment about Blechy's commentary being really anti-cringe too. But yeah it's hard to say without knowing who's going to commentate everything. I'm not tapped in enough to know. I would just bet on the big names as your best bets for avoiding awkward commentary if that really ruins it for you. Generally speaking GDQ has gotten better about this each year - feels like people take commentary more and more seriously

I think that most of the communities tend not to foster people who have really good speaking skills because usually most speedruns don't have people talking really clearly and professionally over the runs. One of the nice things about Necrodancer is that because we do so many casts of races, we have a ton of players who can do really credible commentary at GDQ - I've had a ton of practice myself talking about a game and I think I could commentate a GDQ run a lot better as a result. People generally just aren't that practiced at doing it though, so they kind of get let's-playish with it (which is extremely hit or miss) instead of really describing the game to a captive audience.

I'm just saying don't put a lot of stock into the idea that tvs will be fine because they have a game mode

Long runs are great

woodman posted...

TVs have a game mode button that eliminates the delay

This is a myth - both of the HDTVs in my house have a "game mode" but they don't really do shit for the delay

actually it looks like golem-a and jangmo-o were switched on EVERYONE'S lists. please fix

XIII_rocks posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

At least Obama's jokes were funny!

Maybe I am just biased but I see a massive difference between cracking a few jokes at a correspondent's dinner and taking to Twitter to post wrestling gifs of you attacking a news outlet to further a whiny agenda you've been pushing since Day 1. One is at least somewhat dignified, I feel. The POTUS, to me, shouldn't really be rolling around in the dirt with everyone else. He shouldn't come off as petty, childish.

This should be like obviously apparent to anyone with social grace

For some reason, Alolan Golem and Jangmo-o switched places on my list, and they're nowhere near each other on the list (16 should be Jangmo-o and Golem-A should be 92). What happened?

The_Ctes posted...

All Paratroopa's write-ups scream extreme, almost blind gen 7 fanboyism, it's quite amusing.

what

I roughly averaged my Lycanroc rankings, but i ended up overranking it

I'm at 8, 29, 37, 57, 65, 67 so I really only have one horse left in the race (although none of these Pokemon are terrible. well, .5 of them is terrible)

that's okay though, I don't expect my favorites to be the same as the consensus - don't let the overall list determine your self-worth

The only winning move is not to play

don't play it

I have to agree though that calling it a tradition is extremely disingenuous, it's not a tradition

But it is disappointing that this remains the Republican party line

For what it's worth I don't think it looks like a Miyazaki film either

I don't think Breath of the Wild is even the first time a Zelda game has had Miyazaki-inspired elements in it - which isn't really a surprise given that he is a major cultural influence, it would be sort of like saying you're getting a Disney vibe from something

Jakyl25 posted...

Big government wants to storm in and take your data by force

Isn't this why the Second Amendment exists?

Yeah when exactly did it become that we were supposed to comply with government overreach again? weird

But no you're right it's completely unthinkable that someone might ever just like a cute Pokemon

Also it doesn't really make any sense because every Pokemon in the top 10 aside from Ninetales is something that's fairly prevalent or well-featured in the game somewhere

OrangeCrush980 posted...

I think a good chunk of the rankers hadn't played the games and are rating mainly on design, which helped out the cute Pokemon and NFEs. If this had been run for the first time 3 years from now, I think the top 10 would be quite a bit different.

Bad assumption on your part

Let me know when you guys have figured out when this conversation isn't worth having.

4, 8
25, 29
37
47
57
65, 67, 69

Well, at least my #81 dropped just before the top 10 I guess?

Legitimately surprised my #4 is still in this

Now I feel weird because it looks like I bumped the topic just to get more praise but I really just wanted to say thanks

I actually wasn't sure if anyone would remember it was my birthday today - not like "oh no I hope someone remembers my birthday :(" but just out of pure curiousity

Thanks!

I don't really get why people are so upset about them

It's a fad, but it's a fad for like, kids, so whatever

They're mildly amusing to play with

I am missing a tooth on my right side, so the left.

mnkboy907 posted...

In the Top 25, though. I don't think that's gonna make too big a difference?

remember that it hits twice though because now stuff in my 60's is going to be even further away from popular opinion

I was all like 'hey my list isn't an outlier this time' and then immediately my #2 and #5 drop

bah

Calintares posted...

my problem with the "sacrifice Arcadia Bay"-ending is it just doesn't work.

the true antagonist of the game is the universe. fact is, the universe hates Chloe and insists that she must be dead at a certain point. If she's not, then things will happen that will kill her. an early example of this was when she suddenly became stuck in front of a moving train. The tornado is just another expression of this. My problem with the ending is that there's no reason to believe this will stop with the tornado. It's much more likely to keep on escalating. in my headcanon, the timeline that follows after the tornado is that Max has to use her timelord powers to the fullest to prevent more and more catastrophes from killing Chloe, until the universe finally throws something her way that she simply can't handle. like a "wipe out dinosaurs"-tier meteor or something of that magnitude.

another reason why the Chloe-ending simply doesn't work is that it involves Max flat out ignoring the most important and sincere plea Chloe has ever made. Chloe begs Max to save the city, by ignoring this, Max shows that she doesn't care about Chloe's agency and instead chooses to be selfish. Max is infinitely more powerful than Chloe and fully capable of bending both her and events to her will, twisting their relationship into a real nasty shape. Chloe is also going to live with the mother of all Survivor's guilts.

Everything you just described is why I like the ending, though. Your interpretation is 100% valid but it's speculation and it's also assuming that the story should have Max make the right choice. Not everyone comes to the conclusion that the 'fuck Arcadia Bay' option is correct! You might feel that's 100% the wrong choice and I am inclined to agree but the fact that the choice is given, to allow us to come to that conclusion ourselves, is what makes it good. It doesn't have to be a choice with two correct answers.

2, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9
18, 19
21, 25, 26, 29
31, 34, 37
47, 48
51, 56, 57, 58, 59
65, 67, 69
76, 79
81

this is the least outlier-y my list has been ever

I've never been outside the top 10 but it's looking probable that I will be this time

I liked the ending too. The ending was, in my opinion, an inevitable one to come to, it was pretty much pointing that way from the very start of the game - the important part was the journey to get there and the realizations along the way that inform the final choice. I didn't feel like it "made my choices not matter" at all. It wasn't really about that.

yeah that's kind of weird I guess

I'm a big fan of sales taxes because they are inherently a tax on the income that you can afford to lose - so long as things that are actually necessities are not taxed, which I think might need some reforms but I'm not sure

The War on Drugs is also a really awful part of Nixon's legacy that I have trouble with.

A brilliant politician, and there was good done during his term (remember when republicans used to give a shit about the environment?) but yeah, I dunno. If we could get around those two big albatrosses we could talk.

Ford and HW Bush are pretty much the only ones I don't consider to be complete disasters and even then I'm pretty sure I would quickly change my mind if someone reminded me of something terrible they did

trdl23 posted...

If Eisenhower were in the group, he'd be the choice and it wouldn't be remotely close.

I'm pretty sure that's why the cutoff was there, Eisenhower was actually a decent president

the spreadsheet is so far behind :(

Anagram posted...

I don't know how people live without cars.

You live on the west coast. Many people don't.

it got a little weird when I noticed that cutiefly had a single tear

LordoftheMorons posted...

HW

Would be Nixon if not for Watergate etc

trdl23 posted...

HW > Ford >>>> the rest >>>>>>>> Trump

Yeah, this seems right more or less