Lurker > foolm0r0n

Slippery rocks are actually genius game design. If you don't like them, you probably didn't even get off the plateau.

I can clearly see the difference in the classic seasons, but people think it's all the advantages and ignore what has really changed culturally

BlueCrystalTear posted...

Owning a house would mean I'd have to make it look "up to standards" especially if there's an HOA to bust my chops. HOAs suck because they don't offer what condos do.

Condos are HOAs though.

KingButz posted...

The United States subsidizes fee simple home ownership to a ridiculous extent (in particular, single family detached housing), so it is really hard to justify owning a condominium. I have a townhouse.

What applies to single family home but not a condo?

IfGodCouldDie posted...

Krakoa is the first location that has legitimately made games unfun.

I switched to my good cards deck and it's fine

Shattered posted...

If you see it in your shop first does that count as first time seen?

Yes, I remember having Sauron in my shop but then it did the animation when someone played it

tag, keep playing

Yes, and I do own a townhouse condo. Wouldn't mind owning a single family home either, but they mostly suck in location, price, and maintenance. Either way, the house/condo you can get for a mortgage equivalent to your current rent is usually a huge upgrade. You just need a bunch of effort and down payment money on the front and back ends.

I totally get what you all are saying and I do agree with the conclusion (bad production), I just don't agree with the premise that the classic seasons were so much better cast-wise across the board.

As someone who only first watched this show under 2 years ago and thus have read a lot of about what the best seasons are, people really only mention the same favorite 10-15 seasons (which is a super good batting rate for a reality show, to be clear). People also mention several "dark ages" that stretched 4-6 seasons. There's no way to reconcile that with the idea that the seasons were fundamentally better pre-40. Especially since 42 was great and 41 was pretty good too. Seems like 41-44 are batting the same average, despite the worse production and game design.

Also we all got Kitty in the shop right?

I should be able to get her with the next token tuesday. Will replace Sunspot for sure.

Krakoa blew up 100% of my Shuri plays.

It's honestly a great counter to exodia style decks if they add that effect as a card. 4/0, takes over opponent's hand on 5. You'd still have to read the opponent to know they're playing Shuri or another combo.

But also Krakoa is way too random. It should at least mildly try to play to win. As it is, it's almost like another Sakaar.

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I know its sort of pretty obvious, but if you absolutely need to bluff, snap immediately after Wong reveals.

I think I have a 100% retreat rate on it, lol.

Same with Shuri

Also run Rogue. Makes Wong and Patriot and many other decks really fun to play against.

Near the beginning there's an NPC who tells you to go to the castle, so I did. I should've been smart and ignored him. I also should've known to ignore the shrines despite them being huge and glowing. And I should've known that the divine beasts would have absolutely worthless "level" design even though they are hyped up every other line of dialogue.

On the bright side, Nintendo clearly listened to you and not me. They gave the fans the exact BOTW clone they wanted. If we're lucky, maybe we'll never see another proper 3D Zelda again.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

The fact that there's only one after four episodes is a problem, don't you think?

Not really, because it implies that every season needs to be as good as a top 5 one. That would be a terrible expectation to put on a show pushing 50 seasons.

But even ignoring that, Tony was the only one that stood out like Carolyn.

Kass, Spencer, Tasha are fun, but they are only remembered because they got close to winning. It's their post merge that solidified them. They were all boring af pre merge, except Spencer a bit because the nerd type is always fun.

J'tia did ONE memorable thing. It was great but that's it. Like I said, it hard to find people so willing to throw away the million.

It honestly doesn't seem that different than this season cast-wise. Production wise, totally different obviously. And that theme is great. If you're saying we need more beauty tribes as eye candy for the first few episodes I don't disagree.

Out of those I think I've only watched Cagayan and David v Goliath and I don't think the first few episodes were too special. After merge they were super good.

Cagayan in particular seems the same as this one, where you have the nerd kid who you root for right off the bat, and some crazy lady. Carolyn is way better than J'tia though since the latter just did 1 memorable thing and that's it.

I really don't remember anything from the beginning of DvG except again the nerdy guy being a standout. I watched that like 3 months ago too.

Leonhart4 posted...

Ah well that's too bad you didn't coincidently choose to play the game the right way

I legit think my life would be better if I did tbh

Climbed around 30 cubes in the last hour or so, finally getting to 59 after waffling between 56-58 for like a week. The last 15 cubes were playing by Zuri deck which still feels fuckin dirty, but I needed those 20+ power missions.

Cool thing with Asteroid M, when Cosmo is there, you can play an on reveal off that location to activate it and still get the card into the lane

Leonhart4 posted...

There was only one way for you to have fun with it, and I'm glad you found it. Thankfully I found a different way that was fun for me.

I didn't though. That's why I stopped playing. You found the 1 way that every other person who likes that game coincidentally also found.

venom white queen in my shop... tempts all my hard-saved tokens

Grand_Kirby posted...

People act like Zelda has never done this before, and somehow forgot about Majora's Mask,

MM is to this day the most productive game development team that ever existed. To make something that original and perfectly executed in 1 year is absurd. No game has ever repurposed assets that well, any many have tried.

Since TotK is another follow-up in the same series, it will naturally get compared to MM in that way. It's not gonna compare well.

Fortunately, they seem to have convinced all new Zelda fans that BotW is the best type of Zelda. So more of the same will probably be received really well. Maybe they'll even go full Ubisoft and do yearly releases in the future.

Kenri posted...

Which games reward your exploration with entirely new guns?

They all give you new guns are you progress. Exploration is entirely secondary, maybe 10% of your time, so getting shotgun shells is fine. It's not fine when exploration is 80% of the game.

Kenri posted...

(The inventory slots thing is also why the guy with 100 hours in the game is gonna be absurdly more powerful than the guy with 2 hrs who did a Hyrule Castle run btw)

You would think so, but it doesn't actually make that much of a difference. You can still stack your inventory with lots of super strong weapons and kill any 1 thing easily. It's just less tedious to have more slots, so you can kill 2-3 big things instead.

And the only way to upgrade those is by far the most tedious thing in the game. So you get to pick your tedium, but you can't escape it.

Leonhart4 posted...

I'm all for breaking the game if the game allows it or even encourages it, and if that's what it takes for you to enjoy the game, go nuts. The flexibility is part of what makes BotW so good.

This is what every defender says and it's just wrong. There's a million valid ways to play the game, but only 1 way to have fun with it. Sucks if you didn't happen to align with that 1 playstyle.

colliding posted...

If you don't want to fight for the sake of fighting, and if you don't want to explore for the sake of exploring, then I feel like it's a larger issue than weapon durability

Absolutely this. It's bad on its own, and weapon breaking doesn't help. It's only the weapon breaking defenders who argue it actually makes the game good.

colliding posted...

if you think the point of BoTW is to get as strong as possible as quickly as possible, you're the one who "didn't understand the game you played"

Read the topic again and look at who is saying that feeling of progression is a benefit of weapon breaking. You'll notice it's not me.

Like did you all really understand the game that you played?

The player who gets right off the plateau and runs to the castle to fill their inventory with high end weapons is far more powerful than the one who spent 100 hours climbing steadily through the main path.

The steady climb might be worth it for story and gameplay content, but it's objectively the worst way to progress and get more powerful.

LightningStrikes posted...

Like, objectively you need to fight enemies to progress your character.

You don't. You get strong weapons from endgame or from a chest and you keep it forever. There's no way to progress better than that. Any extra fighting you do is hurting you since it only converts your strong weapons to weak ones, which will be worse for you since inventory is highly limited.

Kenri posted...

It lets you feel more powerful as the game goes on because your weapons break less and less

You contradict this in your very same paragraph. Which is more important? Feeling more powerful, or constantly resetting your power to be in-line with your current area? It's ok if you can't decide, because the game can't decide either.

To me it's a no-brainer. The absolute most fun I had in BOTW was going to the castle early and getting all these strong weapons. Then I burned them all fighting literally 1 of those health sponge shrine guardians, and was back to my start-of-game self. No reason to fight again after that.

BTW all it takes to get an endgame weapon is a sneak attack with an iron sword and a couple dodge-counters or bomb spam. Then you can crush everything in your path for 1 or 2 hours, until you have to go farm weapons again. It really is a challenge, but for motivation.

Kenri posted...

(tbh an identical situation that nobody complains about)

FPS games don't reward progress and exploration with a 12 pack of shotgun shells. They give you new guns entirely. Every weapon in BOTW is just ammo for the same old shotgun.

To be fair in FPS games I usually just use the shotgun the entire game since it's the most fun. So I can see how someone would find that repetition fun in BOTW.

LightningStrikes posted...

You get weapons so quickly you definitely dont lose from fighting.

All fighting does is convert your strong weapons into weak ones. If you want to keep your strong weapons, or you simply don't care about gaining more weapons (which is easy), you have absolutely no reason to fight.

The new building abilities here seem wild. If every item has some interesting combo with arrows and swords, that's pretty crazy. It seems like a big improvement for the Fortnite/Skyrim style of game that BOTW fans liked, with Garry's Mod sprinkled in. It's got absolutely nothing of what I want from a Zelda game though.

The other risk is it's like MGSV where you have an incredible set of tools, and a million repetitive mooks to use them on. They should do a video about the variety of challenges and environments if they really want to show an improvement over BOTW.

Kenri posted...

Nah weapon breaking adds nothing of value to a game like Bloodborne. In BotW the entire combat system is based around it.

This is true. It actively ruins the combat, so you can't say it has no value - it has negative value!

RikkuAlmighty posted...

You know what sucks when it comes to location effects versus on reveal effects?

brood on shuris lab creates the clones first, then powers up the original brood only

that seems silly

Would you rather have your idea, but also Death's Domain kills the Brood clones? The way it is now is much stronger for Brood overall

foolm0r0n posted...

The biggest difference is the locations and challenges and rewards and production in general was way better, which helps a lot in the first few episodes.

Further on this, it's really evident that the new season's budgets are half or even a third of the old seasons. If that's the only way the show can continue to be made, then I guess that's what we have to deal with. But I wonder if they would convince Netflix or something to do a big budget season once a year instead of two cheap seasons. Netflix isn't ad-driven so it could work.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I usually start to have favorites after four episodes. Sometimes I even have one after the premiere.

What are some examples though? It just seems like rose colored glasses.

I watched the Netflix seasons in parallel with these new ones and the cast was seriously not much better, except for some standouts like Coach, and All-Stars casts were obv better. The biggest difference is the locations and challenges and rewards and production in general was way better, which helps a lot in the first few episodes.

I mean in this season, we obviously have Carolyn who is very unique. Matt & Frannie are the first showmance in a really long time, which is significant. And right off the bat, Carson seemed pretty unique as a standard nerd archetype except he actually got super buff in a few months. It's the exact kind of spergness that should appeal perfectly to b8. He's even proven to actually be kinda dumb, and got tricked by Carolyn, which fits well with b8 too.

43's cast sucked for sure, but Gabler and Noelle were pretty fun to watch.

42 and 41 casts were solid too, but game design definitely got in the way for them.

yeast >>> cruller > cake

Inviso posted...

I'm not saying blindsides as a strategy are bad. I'm saying production wants the AUDIENCE to be blindsided and surprised far too often (and every tribal council needs to end with some shocking vote that becomes a water cooler moment), and the end result is a bunch of disjointed final results that often carry little emotional weight. I'm just particularly worried, because it feels like their response to an unsatisfying ending to 43 is "let's throw in countless advantages so players are FORCED to make big moves each and every episode, and we won't get a final 3 like that group of duds again!"

I agree with your first line here - the editing way too often emphasizes some non-existent twist and tries to make it seem like a blindside even though it was a pretty straightforward vote. That can be annoying.

But you're still thinking that players make big moves because of advantages. That's not the case at all. The players WILL make big moves every episodes, regardless of anything else. That's how you play and win the game. The only reason they wouldn't is if they don't care about the million $, or they're flat out stupid.

Obviously I love those older seasons where people WERE flat out stupid and literally gave away the million multiple times. That's entertaining af. But it's hard to find people that stupid anymore. Even psychos like Carolyn are clearly focused on the money. Matt and Frannie are not going to throw away the money for their showmance, like Ozzy and such did. Maybe the economic downturn has something to do with it too, I dunno.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

And I can't tell you who my favorite is after four episodes. I literally love none of these people at this point.

What are some seasons where this is different for you? I'm genuinely curious since I've never seen this as an expectation of the show, but I haven't watched that many. Outside of 41/42/43 I've only watched the Netflix ones, which are supposed to be the absolute best ones of the last 40 seasons. And I certainly don't remember the first 4 episodes being memorable at all. Except maybe J'tia throwing rice on the fire.

But even if you can name 10 seasons that had killer starts, which seems doubtful, that's still only 25% of all seasons. Even if there were 20, that's only 50%. So why would you expect every new season to be like those top ones?

Inviso posted...

We don't get to love the 10 post-merge players either though, because by the time the post-merge rolls around, you have 12-13 people all crammed into a single episode, making and breaking alliances for reasons we never get shown because the game moves too fast.

Yeah it does seem fast. Are merges at 12 now? Maybe they should merge at 10 or 8 and do a couple double elims beforehand

Inviso posted...

EVERY TRIBAL COUNCIL NEEDS TO END WITH A BLINDSIDE!

The players do blindsides, not Jeff. Any player who does a modicum of research will learn that blindsides are the optimal way to play the game, and especially to win the million.

It doesn't make sense to long for the era when players were voting on emotion and not game theory. It's long gone.

BlueCrystalTear posted...

I'd much rather get to know these people as opposed to getting to know their advantages. If that makes the early goings slower, that's fine so long as it pays off later.

It doesn't pay off though. There's always lots of stinkers in the cast, especially now that everyone is a gamebot superfan. You can't just hope that personalities and drama will magically come out. You don't get genuine psychos like Coach or Carolyn every season.

With the advantages you guarantee that there's SOME drama to latch onto at least. Can you really say the birdcage was worse for getting to know people than sitting around the fire eating coconuts?

And again, you're talking about premerge with 18 people. Do you really need to to intimately love all 18 people in a season, instead of just the 10 post merge ones? It's greedy and unrealistic. 3-4 strong storylines a season is pretty good.

Speaking of. First game of the day. They snapped after dropping Patriot. White Queen is great for this counter too.

Also cool thing: Collapsed Mine will destroy ALL rocks on your side when you pass, even ones created later by Debrii

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/user_image/0/6/0/AAZVUhAAEUoE.jpg

ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Ive decided that the most satisfying move in Snap is to snatch their Ongoing ability with Priority Rogue on literally the exact turn they play Mystique.

Can confirm. So loudly telegraphed too.

You can also play Enchantress there when you don't have priority. Often Patriot players will play Mystique on the same location. Darkhawk players don't though.

Lopen posted...

This was a very fun read on Galactus. Was very close with Wolverine playing ping pong twice but Infininaut clutches it out.

If someone has wolverine and sends hobgoblin down a lane, isn't it basically guaranteed they'll play galactus there?

Oh yeah, everyone complaining about way too many idols/advantages are right that it's bad for the game, but wrong that it's bad for the show.

The fact is, pre-merge is a mess in this show, and it will almost never be good or strategic to watch. The best you can get is some enjoyable chaos, and that's what they design it for. Post merge is more strategic and has almost no advantages. Of course, pre-merge stuff greatly affects post-merge strategy, but that's more of a player concern. For viewers it's pretty good to watch.

Veal parm is even worse. If you're gonna kill a baby cow you might as well make something good out of it.

I'm like 2/3rd through pool 3 and I have so many cards that I haven't even touched yet. I've played like 3 archetypes for a decent amount of time, and only 6 or 7 decks total. I feel like I won't run out of cards for a long time.

That said I also like to play poker, which hasn't had a new card in like 500 years.

skullbone posted...

For like 2 months I've seriously just been logging in to do my daily missions and quitting.

I've been doing that exact thing for like 4 months and it's a blast. Literally what else do you expect from a f2p mobile game designed to be played on the toilet?

Killmonger is as common as Armor, Cosmo, Enchantress etc. I hate it

Yeah it's rare but the point is still, you don't really know how bad their hand is. You're giving them a guaranteed 1 cube instead of a chance at 2. If you calculate out the equity % it's prob closer to 1.5 cube profit when they snap against you and you insta retreat. That is equivalent to a 75% confidence in winning 2 cubes, which is pretty fair.

If you include the case that you continue after they snap, because you're bored or whatever, then it's even more profitable. They'll win 4 cubes with a confidence of 75%, which is 3 cubes expected profit. So if you average that situation with the 1.5 cube profit situation, you can definitely get to a 2 cube expected profit overall with that kind of snap.

The key thing in this game is there is very rarely a royal flush type hand, so there's always value to getting a guaranteed win vs playing to the end.

This also means that you really should not retreat if there's even a 25% chance you'll win. I've won lots of times continuing when I knew they had the winning card in their deck and just gambled that they didn't draw.

Mythiot posted...

Best topping for popcorn: hot sauce

Literally hot but not very controversial tbh. Plain vinegar is also great

Chicken parm is one of the worst dishes ever

swordz9 posted...

I usually leave if somebody snaps turn 5 or 6. Enjoy your 1 cube when you couldve gotten 2 out of me since I suck lol

They were gonna lose, so you gave them a net 3 cube profit

The snapping isn't really like poker, but this particular part is