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Messages - pacovf

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101
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: October 09, 2019, 08:57:28 pm »
So I just watched Joker yesterday, and a question has been bouncing in my head since then. Staying vague to avoid unmarked spoilers: does Arthur Fleck become the Joker by the end of the movie, or just turn into a vaguely Joker-like character? I’ve been leaning towards the later (or rather, he’s still missing something by the end of it), but I am also wondering if there’s a meaningful difference between the two. Thoughts?

102
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks
« on: October 07, 2019, 04:43:20 pm »
People just shuffle all those cards back into their deck then. It's even worse than just setting them aside.

103
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Dominion 2019 Errata and Rules Tweaks
« on: October 06, 2019, 04:03:07 pm »
Is there any philosophical objection to saying that you go through the loop an infinite number of times in a finite amount of time, and then it ends? I think if something like this happened IRL, that’s what I would rule.

104
General Discussion / Re: roguelike games
« on: September 25, 2019, 07:39:29 pm »
I am a bit wary of games where you build your own spells or so on, because they are impossible to balance. Eventually you figure out one broken combo and use that forever, which hurts replayability.

It does look interesting though.

105
Puzzles and Challenges / Re: Slowest trashing kingdom
« on: September 25, 2019, 06:02:15 pm »
By draining the silver pile. Yes, it’s going to take a while.

106
Other Games / Re: Celeste
« on: September 24, 2019, 01:20:47 pm »
I figured after the fact that was what I was doing wrong (Core has the same mechanic with the moving ice blocks), but by that time I had already watched a playthrough of chapter 9. I didn’t really want to go back to it, when my capacity to execute complex strings of jumps / dashes and so on was already proving inadequate.

I may go back to check 1B and 2B, if their difficulty is more in line with early 7A than late 8A.

107
Other Games / Re: Celeste
« on: September 23, 2019, 07:05:28 pm »
I stopped quite a few screens before the door. I was in one of the first screens with the blowfish, I was supposed to dash into it, boost myself across some spikes, then dash back to that fish so it would blow me into another and so on. I kept not being able to bounce hard enough from dashing into the fish to clear the spikes without using the dash I needed to go back to the fish afterwards. After feeling rather frustrated with some of the screens in Core (and beating them through sheer persistence rather than skill), I thought it was a good spot to end.

108
Other Games / Re: Celeste
« on: September 23, 2019, 03:29:49 am »
So I got Celeste for free through the Epic Store some time ago, and finally decided to play it this week. Beat chapters 1-8 (~130 strawberries, ~1800 deaths), tried chapter 9 but it quickly looked like it would require more skill than I have (then I checked the whole thing on youtube, and there's zero chance I beat that).

I enjoyed chapters 1-6, except the windy parts which I loathed. Chapters 7-8 started shifting the difficulty towards more input precision and longer stretches without checkpoints, and I honestly kinda had to force myself to go through them just because I really wanted to see the conclusion to the story. Maybe I would have enjoyed the gameplay more if RL was a bit less stressful for me right now. I loved the story though.

109
Other Games / Re: Greed
« on: September 17, 2019, 04:42:06 pm »
I am sad Watno’s online Greed doesn’t work anymore. Had a lot of fun playing that, even against bots.

110
Other Games / Re: CIVILIZATION VI
« on: September 10, 2019, 06:55:47 pm »
I have no idea what I just watched.

111
Dominion General Discussion / Re: COMBO: hunting party/patron
« on: September 10, 2019, 12:13:52 am »
since I mean that's just two cards, can't get more probable than that except if it's just one card

*starts long rant about all the things that are more probable than two cards together but less probable than a single card*

112
Dominion General Discussion / Re: Interview with Donald X.
« on: August 26, 2019, 09:52:22 pm »
I feel like you may want to make your posts a bit shorter. But maybe that’s just me.

113
General Discussion / Re: Maths thread.
« on: June 24, 2019, 07:10:31 pm »
The substitution step could be done rigorously if you use the infinite series definition of the exponential. That would give a different result if you have a number other than “e”.

I think without the infinite series definition of the exponential function (or the definition as the inverse of the logarithm), the farthest you can go with this is that the derivative of exp is proportional to exp.

EDIT: what cuzz said

114
General Discussion / Re: roguelike games
« on: June 24, 2019, 12:45:06 am »
I'm really astounded at how quickly I went from "Zone 4 has too much going on" to "Zone 4 is totally doable if I don't make dumb mistakes". Once I got basic patterns figured out I was taking way less damage early on. I suppose that's every roguelike though.

I haven't played CotN in a while, but I remember zone 3 feeling harder than zone 4. Zone 4 has some tough mobs, but the "room" layout allows the player more control over what to deal with than zone 3, which is very open. You should also have somewhat better equipment by the time you get there.

115
General Discussion / Re: roguelike games
« on: June 22, 2019, 03:40:08 pm »
Something important the game doesn't tell you is that permadeath mode also increases difficulty in ways other than just making death permanent, such as by spawning more and stronger enemies. Whether this really feels different, I don't know.

I wish permadeath and hard mode were two different toggles in the options, I don't know why that isn't the case already. I would like to practice against tougher enemies without having to start from scratch every time I mess up. Hard mode also seems to increase the diamond prices of fairy fountains (and Beedle shops?).

Quote
I agree that the way CoH does item-gating is weird. The main progression path has practically no item gating at all. But there are a number of speedrun skips (many clearly intended) that are item-gated. I question whether speedrun skips actually make the game more fun though. They skip playing through dungeons, but when a speedrun consists of overworld movement, dungeon clearing, and fighting bosses, reducing time spent dungeon clearing means you're spending more time on overworld movement, which is boring. The bosses are mostly pretty fun though, so maybe it's a wash.

I like your alternative vision where you just get base dagger and have to use resources to make stronger attacks. As is, it feels like you're being swamped with items yet have not much use for them.

I find another problem with the strong weapons and lack of item-gating is that it discourages any form of exploration. Having the right item at the right time rewards you with either other items, heart pieces, or rupees. Heart pieces are nice, but you will get enough health without chasing them down, especially if you go after bottles, which you can buy with rupees (plentiful) or a few diamonds. Items usefulness in combat are dwarfed by the advanced weapons, so you don't need them for that either, and you will get your choice of items from dungeons anyway, and a few fixed ones elsewhere.

Similarly, the reward for clearing an overworld screen are diamonds, being able to explore the screen in peace, and sometimes unlocking a chest. You only really want enough diamonds to infuse a weapon and/or buy a bottle. Red chests are rarely worth going out of your way; hover boots and glass weapons are nice, everything else is kinda just ok. Heart pieces are worth it if you aren't a Necrodancer god (I am not).

Sooo... if you are just aiming to finish the game, the optimal gameplay is to skip most overworld screens (do a few easy ones for diamonds or if there's a locked blue chest), and go straight for the dungeons. I guess at that point, it's just a reskinned Crypt of the Necrodancer, only with weaker items and more health. Which is a shame, because it could be more than that.

I am currently trying some dagger-only runs. I keep forgetting that I have items, so it's a work in progress :p

116
General Discussion / Re: roguelike games
« on: June 20, 2019, 06:42:01 pm »
Cadence of Hyrule hasn’t impressed me during my first play through. I died five times during my first hour, and then not one more time over the next 5 hours that it took me to « 100% » the run. It suffers from a bad case of one of the usual problems of roguelikes, which is that the beginning is a lot harder than the middle and end of a run. Once you have a few extra hearts and an advanced weapon, it’s very hard to die. Hearts are also about as plentiful as in your regular Zelda game, which is *a lot* more plentiful than in CoN, so being sloppy is not punished as hard. Add to it that health potions are cheap and activate automatically when you lose all your health, and you are basically on auto play after a while.

Granted, CoH is not technically a roguelike (permadeath is an option that is toggled off by default). But the gameplay is closer to CoN than Zelda, and I am not sure the Zelda elements make for better gameplay overall. And I say this despite loving Zelda games. I think they should have either leaned harder into the Zelda elements, and offer a more directed experience with item-gated areas and so forth (abandoning the randomness of puzzle-items as they stand now); or lean harder into the roguelike, and restrict how much equipment you can find before getting to the final boss (exploring all of Hyrule gathering loot is not that fun once there’s no challenge, but the final area is harder than what comes before, so you are incentivised to do it anyway). There *is* an in-game leaderboard of completion times, so it seems like the devs encourage you to speedrun the game, which would push the game further in the second direction I mentioned. I guess I will have more thoughts about that once I’ve replayed the game a few times.

Another thing that I think would improve the game is dropping the returning weapons from CoN. Limit it to, say, the starting dagger/short sword, and one special weapon for each character. The items in Cadence of Hyrule are fun, but you never use them, because either they consume resources quickly, or it’s just faster to just use a titanium longsword. If you were restricted to your starting dagger though, you would use these items a lot more often. Then again, non-glass weapons are actually fairly rare outside the death shop, so this complaint might not be applicable to permadeath runs.

The music is absolutely awesome though!

EDIT: I feel like I should add that I haven’t played A Link to the Past, which might colour your opinion of the game. Closest I have played is Oracle of Seasons, which didn’t feel at all like this one.

117
General Discussion / Re: A Song of Ice and Fire [spoilers version]
« on: May 21, 2019, 03:54:10 am »
I mean, George Washington flogged his slaves. You have to put things into perspective.

118
General Discussion / Re: Random Stuff Part IV
« on: May 15, 2019, 12:32:19 am »
Are they artsy people? I think there’s a difference between having synesthesia (e.g. the word “banana” always appears to be written in blue, even when it isn’t), and talking about what sort of feelings something evokes (which is something you can talk about after you spend some time thinking about it).

Like, just because some music-inclined person says a given chord is “warm” doesn’t mean they feel the temperature rise when they hear that chord. It’s just shorthand for the emotional effect of that chord on them.

Or at least that’s my interpretation of my interactions with artistically inclined people. They often use synesthetic language, even if they aren’t synesthetic themselves in a more strict sense. Of course, I wasn’t sitting at that table with you, so I don’t know if my interpretation applies there.

119
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 04, 2019, 01:15:38 am »
EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...

On the contrary, I thought that was terribly clear in the movie, and I'm a bit surprised it's a sticking point for so many people. Different minds I guess.

It goes against the time travel rules they had implied until then. They admittedly never really explain them, besides saying you can’t change your past. But then they also focus quite a bit on the quantum “platform”, and it seems that you can only go back to your timeline through it. Like some sort of dimensional anchor. So when Cap leaves on the platform, but never comes back through it, I had to assume old Steve was a different Steve. They could have had old Steve reappear on the platform, their interpretation would have been a lot clearer that way, at least to me.

Has anyone complained here yet about how Ant-Man was freed? That really bugged me. Such a lame deus ex machina. I would have loved it so much more if it had been Louis who freed him; with some line about how he’d been trying to track down the van for years.

It didn’t bother me. It could have happened in countless other ways (someone moving the van to another storage, or reappraising for a sale, or a janitor touching it by accident... whatever. The rat was representative of random chance over an extremely long time (5 years). It didn’t have to be a rat, it’s just what ended up happening.

120
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 03, 2019, 05:26:42 pm »
There are two time-travelling Captains. The one that disappears at the end of the movie, and the old man that reveals himself right after, who is also a time traveller. Since in the MCU, you cannot travel to your own past, old man Steve has to be a different Captain from a different timeline. It's just implied that his timeline was basically identical to the prime one, so that the protagonists can get some closure on prime-timeline Captain.

EDIT: Read the link to the interview you provided. Apparently the Russo brothers say old Steve is the same Steve as the one that just jumped to another reality, and is only now stopping by, after living a full life in that reality, to give the shield to Wilson and give everyone some closure. This is... terribly unclear in the movie. If it was the same Cap, I would expect him to appear back in the platform, since that's how they've been back to their timeline every time before. It works so much worse than having it be a Captain from a different timeline altogether...

121
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 03, 2019, 03:45:35 pm »
The plotholes that bothered me were Thanos and his whole army going through time with no Pym particles, despite that being a major plot point for our protagonists.

The Russo's actually addressed this one in an interview:


Q: How did Thanos bring his army to the future?

A: There is a guy called Maw in his army, he was a great wizard. Thanos himself was a brilliant genius as well. Those two easily reverse engineered and mass produced Pym Particles.

WTF. At the very least, this "explanation" should have been in the movie. It doesn't take long, just a few seconds to have Thanos tell Maw to study the Pym particles.


By my count, they created two very divergent parallel universes (Loki escapes with the Tesseract in one, Thanos and his army flat out vanish in another), and then maybe 3 with minor divergences (stolen Pym particles in 1970, Jane attacked by a racoon in Asgard, and Cap staying in the past in some other universe).

I think your third "minor" is actually a major.

Cap marrying Peggy changes her whole life. She originally would have gotten married to someone else; so that drastically changes that guy's life as well. Also, there is now a non-frozen Cap from 1945-2012. We don't know for sure what he did other than married life, but he's still a super hero. Everything he did for the next however long while he was living there would have been an impact that would make that timeline different than the prime timeline.

Well, there is also a time-travelling Cap in the prime timeline. While I don't remember it being spelled out, it's implied that he did the same as the Cap that left the prime timeline: marry Peggy and live in the down low. He says that he took the piece of advice from Tony to get a life seriously, so I don't think he does any more superhero work after returning the stones and getting back to Peggy. If this Cap didn't affect the prime timeline, then the Cap that leaves this shouldn't change the one he goes to either. By the way, note that we don't know when exactly he goes back. Could have been 1945, could have been 1970, who knows.

122
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 03, 2019, 02:52:20 pm »
By my count, they created two very divergent parallel universes (Loki escapes with the Tesseract in one, Thanos and his army flat out vanish in another), and then maybe 3 with minor divergences (stolen Pym particles in 1970, Jane attacked by a racoon in Asgard, and Cap staying in the past in some other universe).

The plotholes that bothered me were Thanos and his whole army going through time with no Pym particles, despite that being a major plot point for our protagonists. Iron Man figuring out time travel in a frickin afternoon. All of Peter Parker's friends being dusted? And then Thanos's power compared to the main cast fluctuates scene to scene, but I've come to expect that by now. And a minor one: where did Valkyrie get the pegasus?

I know there was one more thing that bothered me, but I don't remember it right now.

123
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: May 01, 2019, 01:41:50 am »
I just wish the time heist was the entire movie.  I could have done without the big battle at the end, honestly.

Gotta super disagree. I thought the first half was just fine, but the second half was where it got really great.

The Time heist was great as a trip down memory lane, to remind the characters how much they’ve evolved, and the audience how far the series has gone. It’s good to give a sense of closure to the characters that will need it by the end of the movie. “I am still worthy” gave me chills. It also has some cute ideas here and there, but I don’t think the franchise could handle too much of it without breaking more stuff than they already have. It also doesn’t survive very thorough scrutiny.

The final battle was epic, but also very fan-service-y. It’s also ultimately just people punching people in a darkish setting. I can see it both ways, why people would like it or not.

124
General Discussion / Re: Movies: Any movie buffs?
« on: April 30, 2019, 01:10:05 pm »
So... nobody is going to mention Endgame?

Without spoiling anything (in case you opened this without knowing better), I thought it ended some storylines nicely, and didn’t have toooooo many plot holes. I am also hoping that some of the biggest consequences of this and Infinity War will stick for the future movies.

125
General Discussion / Re: STAR WARS
« on: April 28, 2019, 03:08:09 am »
This trilogy got me confused. TFA was aping the first trilogy. TLJ made a point of breaking with all the legacy, even when that would annoy the fans. And now they seem to bring back Palpatine? I don’t think they would reveal that in a teaser if he was just going to be a cameo.

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