I will get back to this post. I even have a response all typed out from like a month ago, but I need to look over it and don't feel up to all that right now.



What I do want to say is that I've been playing Mega Man X (or is it Megaman X? I've never been clear on that), and it's given me a better appreciation for Super Metroid. I still think some of the hidden items are kind of stupidly secreted away, but I can better appreciate the base game now. Also both games have ~AMAZING~ tutorial levels and kind of stupid end levels (by which I mean stupidly difficult).

Elsewhere, I'm still playing Dark Souls when time permits.

Oh **** hell Ana is seeing an average of 300% use in my games.

I knew it was going to be bad. But not this bad.

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@lili, We have been using this as a general thread the way we were using the other one as a general thread.

So my average, over the entire night, was about a 275% pick rate for Ana. A 50% pick rate is one person playing the champ. 600% would be 12 people. So on average, 5 and a half people across both teams were playing the hero. It went down because I stopped trying to play it in the chaos, meaning the real results of the night is that I should expect 5 other people to be playing her right now.

My experience from the hero is I honestly have no **** clue. I believe that her abilities are srong, but the actual level of complete and utter chaos means it's going to be a couple days before I know how good she is. Or at least how good I am with the hero. But my opinion of her abilities is:

Sleep Dart: Basically heads straight towards the cursor like a no scope. Like seriously. If you can learn to no-scope with the character, you can land this. The actual utility of the move depends on the teammates at hand. It lasts long enough that it really should be an execution, but it ends on the first hit so people let the sleeping person get away all the time instead of waiting and lining up headshots.

Sniper Rifle: Amazingly easy to no scope with, and doesn't have any damage fall off. Quickscoping is also way easier than with Widow because no charge time (but does like 90 or so damage rather than 150; feels like that). Unfortunately you will whiff because teammates will block your shots.

Healing Grenade: Feels like Lucio's boost on his heal but on a smaller radius. The damage and sotp healing portion of it also feels really good. It's basically an instant explode grenade you can toss and do something decent especially in a mosh pit.

Ult: Literally no clue. Haven't had the teammates to really test this out well. It's a boost....

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The other characters who got buffed all seem to be a bit better, but I also can't tell on them right now.

I have fallen to my death 23 times since I started playing Minecraft semi-seriously, in 15 or so hours.

Not a single other death can be attributed to anything else, and I even got into a staring contest with an Enderman so...

After playing a lot more, my opinion of the overwatch buffs/nerfs is:

Ana - still can't tell because people are still playing her too much in my games.

Bastion - feels unchanged

DVA - massive buff. Like MASSIVE buff. but feels like in a good spot now to be honest.

Lucio - they didn't list it in the patch notes, but they made his wall riding a crapton easier and the character feels like it is massively buffed for me personally. If you are a good lucio then I'm assuming it's mostly unchanged.

Mccree - also a massive buff. Do not play at a level where I can tell if this is a good spot or not, but I am very annoyed by him again.

Mercy - feels like a small buff to me, but I'm not at a level where mercy damage buff stacking was a thing so I can't comment fully.

Roadhog - feels unchanged.

Soldier 76 - feels unchanged to me, but I know this was a high level nerf.

Symmetra - feels like a massive nerf for no good reason and I am disapointed in Rito Blizzard.

Torb - feels like he's in a good spot now.

Zenyatta - like DVA honestly. Massive buff but feels like in a good spot.

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Overall I'm happy with the patch except for the Symmetra nerf, which I feel has massively tanked the character's usefulness in a way that wasn't really needed or even expected by most of the community.

New Number One Rule of Faeria: Never forget to make your 3rd Island before saccing your own Tarum, the Forest World.

I felt so stupid afterwards, and then went on to have a 75% win rate in the next 4 games.

Here's the weird thing between us, then: I died several times to Flowey in the neutral ending, but then somehow kept managing to survive Asriel's attacks by some sliver of health. In a weird sort of mirror to you, I had been under the assumption that it wasn't possible to actually die to that final boss. I wasn't taken out of the experience for it, though, although considering just what the "experience" of Undertale is, I wonder just where that line is supposed to be.


Here's the thing, though: you are always given an out. Every major character sees the good in you, thinks you can change your ways. Papyrus especially, even as you grind him into dust he talks about being SURE that there is a good person inside of you. Sans's entire monologue during his fight basically boils down to "you can be better than this, if you just stop here". It's part of why Undertale works as a psychological analysis.


Undertale isn't "the future of games" any more than Eva or Madoka were "the future of anime". It may have gotten wide-spread attention, and may in fact be influential (it is FAR too early to say), but ultimately its appeal is niche, and a lot of people may end up hating what it did. In my eyes it's a subversion of expectations from the JRPG formula, where the normal expectation is to be rewarded for grinding by facing greater challenges and get more loot, and the subversion here is that you are challenged less as you go along and have less need for the loot you are rewarded with.

It also seems to me to be a logical extension of giving all the enemies a unique character instead of just filing them under "enemy" -- when all these enemies are supposed to be individuals, you're not supposed to feel enjoyment by killing them over and over. As someone who looks for games that do more than deliver a single emotional state of "fun" or "awe", I love that Undertale tried (and for me succeeded) to deliver guilt. I think you can make the argument that the delivery of said guilt can be a little ham-fisted at times, but unlike so many other games that try the same, Undertale never forced you to do the things you did.

Unlike in, say, Dark Souls, where you're forced to murder a puppy. Or in Brothers: a Tale of Two Sons, which forces you to do another thing (though it's still a bloody powerful moment). Not that I don't think those games are well-designed, but I feel it's kind of cheap to put you in a situation you CANNOT back out of and then emotionally punish you for it.


Unless Toby Fox just ran out of time or energy to make more boss fights, I imagine it has to do with the content deprivation I mentioned, to make the grinding bit even less rewarding. On a personal note, I don't entirely think it worked as such, but that's my guess.


You mention that but not Alphys's bit parodying tumblr/twitter/facebook? I feel that's the bit most people get annoyed at. But I agree with you. Once you hit that magical number I swear the encounter rate goes up just so that you can be stopped every five feet, like in a Zubat cave. After the first time I carefully timed where I got that last encounter to just before the boss room.

So I've been playing the Elder Scrolls Legends card-game with this deck (Just there for people who have played it):



First things first, anyone who complains about Hearthstone rng but says this is the most skilled thing ever needs to say hello to Cruel Firebloom, Brutal Ashlander, Highrock Summoner, and all the Ally cards. In my deck mainly Cunning Ally. Well there are other rng cards too but those are the ones I've got in my deck.

Cruel Firebloom is essentially Deadly Shot. It's more complicated than that but in the majority of my experience that is the function it performs. Brutal Ashlander is a 1 mana Boom Bot that always rolls a 3. And one of the most popular one drops in the game atm (in my experience). If you don't play a Hearthstone then it's a 1/1 that does 3 damage to a random enemy target when it dies. Literally decides games on a coinflip. Does it do 3 damage to their face and draw them a card? Or does it take out that 3 drop? And I thought old Knife Juggler was rng snowbally. Highrock Summoner is a 2 mana 1/1 that adds a random atronarch to your hand. <- There's one for every situation and getting a Frost Atronarch at the right moment will certainly win the game right then and there. Oh and every single color has a creature that's basically a 50/50 to be insane or a 3/3 for 3. The one in my deck has a chance to add a free Arcane Shot to my hand.

So um..... anyways point is that rng is alive and well in ESL, so if that is your main complaint with Hearthstone keep looking I guess?

Anyways about the game. So far it's been very fun but I've just exhausted the new player experience today so I've still got the rose colored glasses on. All I can say right now is that aggro seems enormously strong in my limited experience not actually knowing what is good or not but at least at scrub ranks I've gone 9-1 with the above cobbled together aggro deck since my Hearthstone skills basically transfer over. Like 50%-70% of my deck is ping cards that can pull double duty as aggro, so I'm doing really well exploiting both the people building really bad control decks and the people building really bad aggro decks. The one loss I had was a game where the dude won with 2 life and I had Crushing Blow (3 mana - 3 damage) in my hand, so even that I would have called insanely close. But its possible I'm just exploiting the lack of a netdecking scene right now.

Anyways aggro is strong. Um... we are basically playing Hearthstone but with stronger cards on curve. I have never seen a game go past turn 12 (for second player), and the majority of games were over before turn 10. The two lanes, especially the one that gives free Stealth to everything on the turn it is summoned, basically makes it harder for the control player to defend, not easier, and the 50 card decks make it very hard to consistently get the GOOD answers to things. Thus it's really easy to put a bunch of aggressive creatures in your deck (Wisp with charge and strong one mana buff in hand anyone?) and really hard to defend against that. There is a rune mechanic where everyone draws a card whenever a rune is broken (25, 20, 15, 10, 5 life or less on that player), and a defensive prophecy mechanic that can let you cheat some stuff out for free, but all in all this feels like a bit of a bandaid that doesn't actually ever stop the bleeding (I lost that clutch game because of a clutch shackle off of a prophecy minon) because it's a bit too random and generally I just build a big board and kill people in 2 turns. Didn't get that 1 in 7 to save your butt? GG.

Edit: Serves me right. As soon as I say the above a really bad, loses to any control deck but completely kills all aggro decks deck came up and beat me. 12-2

I think I know why Undertale was such a miss for me, and it probably has to do with my psychological condition. I have asperger's, and while I don't think everyone with a similar condition will experience the game as I did, I do believe it is the primary thing that colored my playthrough. I'm deficient in social interactions; I already don't really form connections with real people, or view those close to me as friends, so for me to view a video game character as anything except a video game character that is a tall bar. My mindset when playing was almost entirely "if you're annoying, I will kill you", and any of the game's commentary of said behavior just blows right past me. I don't care, it's just a bunch of scripted events. It is literally just a game. The circumstances and culture of the monsters that justified their behavior is irrelevant to me. I barely have empathy, if at all. There was never any chance that I would have a moment of introspection of my behavior, or if I were to, come to any revelation. My attention span is so short I basically never get immersed in anything. And this is why I think Undertale fell flat for me. It tries to interact on a plane I don't exist on, because I can't buy in to the premise.

To be honest, I'm kind of surprised you commented here, especially considering I completely abandoned this thread. I definitely appreciate you thinking about this and coming to say it, since I tend to do the same kind of things. I don't think I have much to say in response, though; I've recently made friends with someone in meatspace who deplores Undertale (I won't bother getting into the whys), and it's made me realize that the game has a very niche appeal. Even beyond your apparent social issues, a lot of what the game was praised for requires familiarity with several gaming systems and conventions that someone may not be aware of or simply enjoys as they are, such as JRPGs as an example.

Yeah, I didn't really intend to start a conversation. It's just something I've had to reflect on recently, and after connecting some dots I figured I could rationalize my experience with the game better.

Breath of the Wild is one massively beautiful open world with nothing to do in it other than go back into another of 120 much more boring mini-puzzles to get another piece of heart you don't need b/c absolutely nothing in the game poses a challenge other than one enemy type that isn't worth bothering with. It also has next to no story, copy pastas the same 4-5 enemies all over the map with a few minibosses here or there, and just generally doesn't have much of an objective to aim for since bosses in this game pose absolutely no threat whatsoever. Everyone's giving this a 10/10 but it's a 7/10 at best.

The Hard Mode dlc further screws up the game by removing any incentive you have to fight even the most basic of enemies, which is half the enjoyment this game provides.

Glad to see you on the side of truth, justice, and garme jurnalizm.

All kidding aside, a two friends (one a hardcore Nintendo fanboi) had me try it and I really, really did not care for it. It might have been okay if it weren't for two things: zero reliable weapons and no starting stamina. The only thing I found worth my while once outside the starting zone was to head straight for the final boss, and even then I ended up in a position where I could not succeed because Link CANNOT THROW A DAMN PUNCH.

In other news, I am in the middle of Shadow of the Colossus, and have picked up Monster Hunter Generations again, both because of a motherboard failure on my computer.

"zero reliable weapons and no starting stamina"

When you first start out for the first time and you don't know what you are doing, weapons are a small problem on normal mode. But after getting off the Great Plateau if not before you'll quickly start to get weapons from fights faster than you can use them up, and the game actually has a real problem with not enough inventory space forcing you to constantly chuck stuff you want to hold onto. As far as reliably having a good weapon goes, this game has that covered on the normal mode. The only way to run out without just chucking stuff, even late game, is to start chaining Lynel fights together.

The other definition of reliable, having a weapon or set of weapons that doesn't break, is a hotly debated issue. The pro and con of the system is that it forces you to use a lot of weapons you wouldn't normally touch because you have no choice. I personally really like this design decision but understand why some people don't.

Stamina in this game is a non-issue. People have actually done no-climbing runs and it's depressingly easy once you get out of the chamber of restoration. Personally the first time I played this game I wanted to prioritize the towers and got every single one of them done (and there are a whole lot and several very hard ones) on 4 hearts and minimum stamina (one bar), so you start out with plenty as long as you are good at stamina management. 1.6 bars is enough for basically anything I could think of past 1 being enough for most of the game. "No starting stamina" is more of a qol issue than a real gameplay problem.

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There is a real weapons problem on Master Mode, but the entire mode is just horribly balanced and not much fun to play.

I mean, I obviously can't speak to the mid- or late-game, but I never had a weapon that lasted more than maybe a fight and a half. I don't mind the idea of forcing you to use weapons/attacks that you normally wouldn't use and experimenting with it (that is one thing I loved in Transistor, for instance), but blowing through five different weapons permanently fighting one single enemy does not make it enjoyable. One last thing, and this may be more related to the way I play than anything (though I never considered myself unique in this aspect), is that I was always somewhat underpowered because any good weapon I picked up went to the bottom of the list for the "to be used in emergencies" situations, resulting in the exact same cycle I've always had (such as with FO3's mini-nuke) that it NEVER gets used for fear of something bigger coming down the road. I'm the kind of person who has only used a master ball when he had the item multiplication glitch.


I mean, when I can barely run 20 feet before I have to go back to walking, I consider that a gameplay problem. For the various doomed climbing ventures I went on, I can see the argument for the low starting stamina – I mean, after all, I did make most of them with some clever positioning – but it was not enjoyable going anywhere because I was constantly being told by the game "you can't go fast anymore".

I have the feeling that your friends may have forced you to play Master mode. The game on the normal mode is balanced so that enemies drop something that can roughly defeat 1.5-2.5 enemies of the same type. Weapons don't last very long but you literally never run out of weapons. That's sort of the gameplay loop they've got going on. There is absolutely no way you should need 5 weapons to deal with a single enemy other than guardians and some of the minibosses, but that's the entire gameplay flaw of master mode.

Super Mario Odyssey took less than 10 hours to "beat" in a casual play-through where I got 170-200 moons. I wasn't trying to beat the game that fast, and I did quite a bit of exploring, grabbing usually 3 or 4 moons past the requirement in each stage, sometimes as much as 10-15 extra before moving on. I even revisited a couple places for a bit.

I understand that "post-game" is where the difficulty tends to be at in Mario games but this is by far the easiest 3D Mario game I've ever played on home consoles by a canyon sized margin. The difficulty is really low compared to Galaxy, Sunshine, or 64; which are the entries I would mainly compare something like this to.

The post-game is also too easy in my opinion. There are 883 moons in the game, but they get handed out at higher rate than Korok Seeds, and I've only experienced 1 so far where I decided to "give up" and come back later. And that was because I wanted to save my money (lose some money on each death; can add up a lot) rather than thought I couldn't do it in a relatively timely fashion.

Optimistically I hope that at least 20-30 of these will provide a real challenge, but so far I'm just not seeing it. I know that really stupid hard post-game levels exist at a few very high milestones but I am not motivated to get there at the moment.

If you want to 100% this game I would estimate it has a roughly 50-80 hour runtime depending on how bad you are at finding random **** in levels. That's not bad but in my opinion that is going to be mostly a collect-a-thon rather than a real challenge.

Edit: I DO like the game. This **** is amazing. Just a bit too easy for my taste.

MY main complaint about the game, other than the above, is that in order to 100% it and access the final level you have to buy EVERYTHING from every shop in every world at some point.

After doing everything else in the first two worlds it is already clear to me that at some point I am going to run into a MASSIVE grind for coins to finish off this objective; 9,000+ coins of which will be completely 100% filler spent on filler moons you can't buy from the shops until after you've already beaten the game. The number of moons available for purchase for 100 coins a piece in each world borders on the ridiculous in the post game (when there are no levels aside from super end game ones still locked away), and there is absolutely no reason they couldn't have reduced this and scaled unlock requirements accordingly. It's a blatant money sink in a situation where you are just going to run out of things to do but still have to finish off the money sink.

Of course you can skip this grind by not attempting to get any moons past 500, but then you miss out on the last level. It's not like Zelda where there's literally no point past 400 and something. And if I do that then the game time probably gets cut by more than half.