Free Talk Friday - April 21, 2017
Sup Duders,
Happy Friday! Hope everyone had a good week. Feel free to discuss whatever you'd like in this thread.
Enjoy your weekend!
Posted Apr 21, 2017, 2:43 PM UTC
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I spent so long on that Jeff vs. Jason spreadsheet that I don't want to watch or think about a fighting game again for a while. I'm very happy I completed it, though I guess now I'll need to keep it updated when new fighting games come out.
My wife is working on papers for grad school all weekend, so I don't think we have a whole lot planned. Which is good, because I think I could use some time to just relax. And probably tidy up the apartment.
I've mostly been playing Persona 5, just reached level 7 in the Death Confidant which lets you buy half priced accessories. And y'all, the SP Adhesive 3 is straight up broken. I've been exploring Mementos for the past few hours just earning enough money to buy one for everyone. +7 SP every turn for every character pretty much means I'll never have to worry about running out of SP ever again, ever.
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SP Adhesive 3 might as well delete all your other accessories automatically.
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I've literally just been running through Mementos from top to bottom repeatedly, juggling the one SP Adhesive 3 I have from member to member as their SP runs low. I can't imagine how buying a few more will remove any and all challenge from the game.
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Mannnnn.
There is stuff I know you haven't gotten to yet and oh my god you haven't lived yet.
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WHAT LANGUAGE ARE YOU GUYS SPEAKING
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No kidding. I tried not to spoil much but what little I read said get to Rank 7 Death ASAP for the discounted Adhesive and get to Rank 2 Sun for the negotiation for money thing. I kind of regret it because I went into Dungeon 2 with 1 patch and 0 gold, and walked out with over 250k without doing anything and without coming close to running out of mana.
This game is great though. I really need to do Mementos at some point but I just got my second Memento mission. I need to see if I can do multiple in a single run...
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I need to see if I can do multiple in a single run...
You can. You start getting more quests fairly soon.
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Yeah my weekend is going to spent writing the two grad papers this weekend. Only thing motivating me right now is that is only one week left.
Also great job on the spreadsheet! The RoF series hasn't really grabbed me but I always enjoy when duders go out of the way to drop some science on us.
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It's been a pretty busy semester for her, but she's almost done. I'm really proud of her, I know how rough it is managing everything. You're almost there!
Thanks! It seems like a lot of people like it, which is always a good feeling.
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How many hours did it take you to create it?
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Probably around ten hours just recording who won what, what game was played, searching QL Crew to make sure I had every fighting game. Another hour or two researching the best way to parse and present the data and then formatting everything. About two hours to sort through and automate the best characters for Jeff and Jason. And finally about an hour to create the Spider Man Card Fighters Clash Card. So around 15 hours? That sounds like a lot in retrospect.
I had literally nothing to do at work, so I figured then was as good of a time as any.
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I have been in a depressed state of mind for the past couple of weeks. I played 10-11 hours of Persona 5 thinking that would help get me out, nope. I have 10-15 games I would love to play, but by the time I get home my emotional levels are so drained that I just want to sit in my chair. My kids ask me to play with them, and I do, but they go to bed before dark so I still have lots of time where I just get lost in my head. Ready to get out of this funk, and get back to a level head space.
Sorry to be a downer. <3
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Hey man, I hope you're holding up ok. First and foremost, emotional labor is a real-as-hell thing, and it can absolutely take over your well-being if left unchecked. That said, if you need to find a way to curb it, don't hesitate at the idea of seeing a professional about it. I know it can feel weird to put yourself into that situation, but I can say from experience that it can be beyond helpful if you find a good therapist.
If you don't want to go that route just yet, I would also recommend practicing mindfulness meditation during your downtime. You don't have to spend your entire night doing that -- you can feel better just doing it for five minutes a night -- but if you try that out and keep it up, you should start to feel less unstable than you might currently feel. Drew wrote a guide on this not too long ago, which you may find useful. I'm personally a big advocate of finding a good set of guided meditation recordings (I'm a fan of Jon Kabat-Zinn's sitting meditation guides, which you can find on YouTube). If you're wary of this sort of thing, I'd say just try it for a few days and see how it feels for you. I hope that helps!
And yeah, Dota 2 is not something anyone should play -- especially someone who is emotionally drained (again: speaking from experience here).
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I am okay, just really in a funk. Nothing dark, but this is just something I have lived with for at least 20 known years. I do have a therapist, but I only go every other week. Thanks for the thoughts and concerns.
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No problem. Hope you feel better soon!
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Persona 5 is definitely not the game to get you out of a funk. It portrays a shitty world that your character is fighting hard to get past but it's still a dark place.
Horizon might be a good game that came out recently to play while in a funk because it's challenging but bright and beautiful, but definitely takes place after the world as we know it has ended. It has a really good cycle of frustration and release that I know I enjoy.
Other than that, if it's just a short term funk, I might recommend a daylight lamp. My wife got me a light from Sphere on Amazon for around $30 and 45 minutes of that shinning on me a day definitely helps with my lack of motivation I get around this time of year. If it's a longer term funk though, don't be afraid to talk to someone professionally about it. Life's pretty great and sometimes brain chemistry sucks the fun out of it!
Also I second the recommendation to not play Dota 2. Way too easy to eat up hours there and feel like you got nothing from it.
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I finished the first palace, and I definitely agree its not good to get out of a funk. I will look into that light, I sit in an office with no window most days. I have never played DOTA 2, and don't plan to start soon so I am doing better now.
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I would say if you are depressed or feeling low, I would avoid games. Take your kids on a hike, go visit the local SPCA to look at puppies, get a drink with an old friend and reconnect, etc. Basically anything that involves going out and having positive human interactions.
Definitely don't play any Dota 2.
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I will ask my wife if she wants to go out this weekend. My kids are going to grandmas, they go every other week when she doesn't work the weekend. Thanks for the suggestion.
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Been a bit in the doldrums lately, so I decided to give myself a task with an actual end goal. I'm gonna make my stupid, insane, turn based hockey board game into a browser game... from scratch... without knowing a single fucking thing about how to code in HTML or JS or anything. So far, I've made the board and made some buttons that do die rolls, but fuck man, this shit ain't easy. That being said, it's rewarding to see my typing in a text file show up as something.
I'll probably put the files in a Google drive this weekend and share the link with you duders for anyone interested in seeing my slow progress. Of course, I will need play testers once it is done, but it's a bit like Blood Bowl, so it takes a certain breed to find fun in it.
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I love hockey and board games. I'm 100% interested in this, and would play the SHIT out of it. Good luck!
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The ruleset and everything is pretty much done. I'll DM you the link to that tonight.
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Nice, thanks!
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That's a really cool idea! A hockey board game sounds really cool.
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As I said, the ruleset is pretty much done and everything. I've played 3 or 4 games with my wife and my friends. They have said positive things, so I think it has legs. Need to get some objective third party eyes on it though. Want me to DM you the rules tonight?
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I got back from Japan and still am jet lagged. Some random tidbits:
- There's no room to play a Switch on most commute trains. I could barely use my phone to play TypeShift let alone bust out a Switch or 3DS.
- I saw two Switches in Japan. One was an older guy (possibly retiree as he wasn't wearing a suit) playing Zelda on a mid-afternoon train. The other was an American tourist on a Shinkansen also playing Zelda.
- If you see a line out of Yodobashi Camera at 7am, it is most likely a line to get a lottery ticket that lets you buy a Switch.
- Akihabara has a lot of European tourists.
- There are no deals in Akihabara, Nagano, Den Den Town, or the newer Asagaya Anime Street. Don't go to Japan thinking you'll save money. But they do have a lot of vintage games and vintage gaming merch.
- There are relatively few American tourists, at least compared to Chinese, Europeans, Australians, and Koreans.
- I saw a lot of 3DS, but fewer than when I last went to Japan. Most people were playing Monster Hunter, Pokémon, or PAD. Saw a few Vitas too. Mostly older people were using the 3DS.
- Saw a lot of people playing Monster Strike on iPads.
- Monster Strike and the new Dragon Warrior gatcha game seem to be very popular. Didn't see as much GranBlue or FGO that I would expect. Saw nobody playing Super Mario Run.
- Only saw tourists and people near Pokémon Centers playing Pokémon Go.
- Arcades are doing well. Better than I remembered before. Card building games seem to be the new rage. Rhythm and fighting are still strong. Played some of the new Popping Music and really wish they would continue that series in the US. But, Konami...
- Somehow they added a gatcha element to Popping Music. The arcade machine would dispense random physical cards that could be scanned in to unlock something. I didn't really understand this too well.
- KanColle arcade game was wildly popular. Saw a line of people waiting to play it.
- No smoking on some floors of arcades.
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Yeah I noticed a ton of Chinese tourists compared to N/A tourists when I was there (they are the ones breaking all the "rules"). In addition to your comments I noticed a lot of people playing intense mobile games and didn't see any 3DS' in my time there. Although we did transit on off times and away from the crowds.
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Hello.
65 hours into Persona 5. Currently waiting until a certain day in November.
I maxed out the Twin Wardens last night and the final perk is out-fucking-rageous. My reaction was like when Jeff found out he could stack fruit in Animal Crossing. To quote Brad Shoemaker, "changed my entire world view, was just rocked to the core."
It's not legal and it shouldn't be allowed under international law.
Also, Futaba said Aww yiss in a text and I almost turned the game off.
I'm going to drive up the mountain this weekend to eat an unhealthy amount of BBQ. I'm thinking, a BBQ Baked potato, a side of sliced brisket, and probably some smoked sausage.
That's my plan.
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I looked up what the final rank of the Twin Wardens gets you and holy shit that's broken.
Not half as broken as the Star Confidants final ability, but broken all the same. I kinda love how Persona 5 just purposefully breaks its own rules.
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The star one is pretty good, but imagine not having to switch anyone out because everything you do murders everything because hey, the game let me have a level 90 persona at level 51. It's not fair.
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Oh wait shit is it literally any level above you? Whoa, yeah, that's much better.
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ANY LEVEL.
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My reaction was like when Jeff found out he could stack fruit in Animal Crossing.
YOU CAN DO WHAT?!
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How do you people play animal crossing without stacking fruit. I would have gone insane if I didn't know I could do that.
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I'm used to shitty inventory management systems.
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Are you referring to Skill spoiler? Seems more than a little excessive, though you could pull out higher level persona from the compendium on new cycles so not totally without precident :p. Makes my decision to start on Merciless seem a bit less risky though (finally starting this weekend all being well).
The Star skill r/Niflhe refers to sounds pretty rad though - it's something I've wanted to do in P3/4 (on subsequent playthroughs anyway), so nice to see it as a (probably broken!) option.
Futaba said Aww yiss in a text and I almost turned the game off
Localisation by Vinny?
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Futabae is the best.
I just hit 11/21 in my game and yea! About 70 hours in and I can't put it down.
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Haven't been playing many video games. Last week I did 26 hours of data collection at my university's spring LAN event. It was fun but now trying to sort that data is a bit of a nightmare.
I convinced one of my buddies to pick up Player Unknown: Battlegrounds and making him stream it. These are the times where I wish I had a PC. (I'll be partitioning my Mac later this summer but I just don't have the time right now).
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Streaming is amazing anymore. That's really smart to get your friend to stream their play, so you can focus on the stuff you need to get done. It's never been a better time to be watch other people play videogames!
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First time in a few months that I've felt this excited again to be studying history at university. A group project about the League of Nations and its unsuccessful efforts to create a European Union has really grabbed me. You'd be surprised by how little people have written about the subject despite it being endlessly fascinating. Then again, might just be me.
That and the 300+ pages of documentation, most of which isn't going to amount to much, but plough through we must in order to find some golden nuggets of information that lead us to a greater understanding of the past, bit by bit, little by little.
Now that we're on the subject (or I am, at least), this is related to why I love Horizon as much as I do. The 'post-postapocalypse' setting allows the game to give you an experience that is so often found in historical research: an almost spiritual sense of connection to the past. You can converse with those who have come before us, the 'Old Ones' as Aloy calls them, and even though they naturally never directly talk back as such, they do communicate with us in various ways. Be it audio logs or holograms scattered around the game world, ruins of ancient structures in the real world or in Horizon, or a historical source - they all help shape the collective memory of Earth, be it fictional or real-life.
This is A MASSIVE SPOILER but this bit from Horizon is quite possibly the most beautiful, poetic portrayal of past meeting present that I've ever seen in a video game. Brings tears to my eyes.
Anyways, rambled on enough.
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Spoilercast for Fast 8 has just been added to the Upcoming list. Premium podcast, up in a little under 3 hours from the time of this post :)
Finally played a bit of Stardew Valley for myself over the last few days. It seems good (except for the fishing minigame, which I can't stand), but I'm certainly not feeling the love Dan had for it. Only in Winter of the first year, so it could change, but so far it feels a little monotonous.
999 for Vita finally arrived yesterday morning as well. The quality of life changes (VLR-style flowchart, pressing X to show the full line of text rather than being locked to waiting for it to scroll in etc.) are wonderful, as is the addition of voice acting and higher-res art, but thus far I'm not convinced it's the right version to play. If you don't have a 3(DS), it's probably fine overall, but if you have the option I'd probably recommend the original (what would be amazing is the DS version patched with the Vita VA and flowchart, though I suspect that won't be happening anytime soon).
The port feels a little rough around the edges (e.g. going onto the next line of dialogue automatically even when auto mode is disabled), and the way they've handled the lack of two screens is clunky. You basically have a toggleable option to view either the "Novel" screen or the "Adventure" screen, which is fine given how key the distinction between the two is. The Novel screen shows all of the game's written lines, both dialogue and narration. The Adventure screen only shows the dialogue (the narration is skipped).
However, it seems like the game sometimes puts you in the wrong screen by default - early on I missed a lot of context lines because I was on the Adventure screen (which is where the game defaulted me to for that section - it was during a puzzle section, so I only knew there should be other lines of narration because I'd already played the DS version) but they were only displayed on the Novel screen. If the game skips over stuff like that too often, a huge part of the narrative will be lost. It's not disastrous, as if you're paying attention you can just switch at any time, but it's certainly lacking the elegance of the DS version.
Also, unless you have strong opinions about it, I'd say not to use the Japanese voice acting (VLR only had Japanese VA in Europe, so I've stuck with that for the rest of the series). The number of differences between the Japanese and the English localisation (names etc.) make it less than ideal.
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Fishing in Stardew is greatly improved with upgrades like bait and lures. It doesn't really ever get "fun" (IMO) but it's more than tolerable once you've upgraded a bit.
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There are mods that significantly reduce the difficulty of fishing, if you're into that kind of thing. :-)
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Hello, folks.
I know it gets brought up a lot so my apologies for doing so, but I've been thinking about possible new hires for Giant Bomb and what I'm hoping for as a fan of the site.
Lately - I'm not going to lie - the West has felt pretty slow. I feel like Brad is a pretty low-energy guy, and Jeff tends to be at the same level as whoever he's with.
Whoever they hire, I really hope whoever ends up on Team West is capable of bringing the party and having a great sense of humour, the way Vinny and Ryan always seemed to be able to. Nobody could ever replace Ryan, but lately I just can't stop thinking about how his personality gelled with everybody else so well. :-(
(I also secretly just want them to bring back Kessler.)
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I've been checking the subreddit every day for news of hires!
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I don't think anyone is getting hired in San Fran before E3 which is the june 13-15. I mean if they are they better get hired by the middle of may.
I wonder how difficult it is to convince people to move to San Fran. That and I wonder if GB is wary of hiring someone from another city because of the fear they'll leave to go back home.
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On Jar Time Jeff said they were pretty close to bringing someone in, so it's either coming soon or after E3.
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Ok that is reassuring.
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I started playing Mass Effect 2 this week and y'all. That game is good. Although I have to say, sometimes getting video games to work is a real pain in the ass. First the game crashed on startup but I found a fix for that. Then the DLC wouldn't work because it requires some Cerberus Network thing that doesn't exist anymore but someone made a workaround for that. Then it wouldn't import my ME1 save but I figured that out. I think it was probably about an hour between starting up ME2 and actually getting to play the game. I think I'm starting to get real tired of PC gaming since pretty much everything starts off with some amount of time going through options menus or fixing crashes or whatever. It's just... I just wanna play the game y'all. And it's not like my PC is powerful enough to have some massive graphical advantage that makes it worth it or whatever.
But anyway. My friend and I started doing an anime podcast and that's been a fun thing. I don't know if it's any good to actually listen to but it's been fun to just sit down once a week and talk about a thing. Also anime is alright sometimes.
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Link your show!
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Sure! We do it live on her twitch channel (Sundays, about 1 or 2 Eastern) and then upload them to youtube. There isn't really a video component to it, it's just this is probably the easiest way to record/upload them since we mostly have no idea what we're doing.
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I had a day off yesterday so I tried to finish Bayonetta. The game does...not hold up too well imo. Maybe I'm too used to more "mashy" action games, but everything about the game just feels punitive in a bad way. It does have styyyyyle though!
Frustrated with that, I decided to instead go back to Stellaris after not touching it for a couple weeks. 12 hours of staring at a galaxy map later, it's 2am and I found myself leading a megacorporation of cyber geckos trying to figure out what the hell is up with this talking black hole that keeps eating all of the scientists. Unlike other strategy games, this one actually makes me want play in different ways! I went from somewhat collectivist humans, to aloof gecko capitalists, and I really want to try some hive-minded or xenophobic-militarist civilizations next.
Also: it's not a banger, but I've been really into synthpop lately and my partner turned me on to this song, which I can't stop looping.
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I find it impossible to go back to Bayonetta after Bayonetta 2. The second one kind of perfected it, and now the first is just QTE city.
At least the story made more sense, but that's not saying much.
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You actually got my favorite random event in all of stellaris. Just keep going with it.
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I've been purposely making reckless decisions just to see what happens. One unearthed temple and a ghost encounter later, I can't wait to see how far this goes.
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I also got back into Stellaris this past week!
But even though it's improved a lot since release, there's still a number of annoying things about it that I think the developers really need to expand/improve on.
And it just made me remember how awesome Crusader Kings II is, so now I'm back to that.
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I finished persona 5 last week. I think I like persona 4 more, but by like. A small fraction.
Played some Overwatch. That's still Overwatch. It's fun, but nobody needs to tell you that.
Played a lot of the Witcher 3. I hated the Witcher 2, I don't like Geralt, but Witcher 3 redeemed that franchise for me. It plays totally fine, great story, great world to explore. Oh god that game is long.
Also continued playing Stellaris. I'm a great empire to live under. Everyone is equally integrated on to that hive mind. Outsiders are genetically modified to become one with the great Cervanti Consciousness.
Last but not least, I've rewatched little witch academia for the 3rd time. I hate most anime because it's bad, boring, unfunny, and the action is needlessly complex, but LWA is one of the most charming, heartfelt things I've seen in a long time. There's very little fighting, but it has other action that makes up for it, and if you don't find at least one character you like then I think you might actually have a heart made out of stone.
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Little Witch Academia sounds pretty interesting! I've been out of anime for so long, but in the past few months I've watched like three entire series and have about a dozen more on my list. I'll add that to my list.
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Bump it to the top. You'll have to pirate it at the moment, only fansubs are out. They're pretty good translations though, sometimes they have one weird word but that's fine. Unless you're really looking you won't notice.
Its legitimately my favorite anime in a long time. Maybe my favorite ever depending on how it goes from here.
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Sometimes I like to brainstorm signs I'd take if I ever went to a PAX Wrestling event (one day I swear I will) and the latest one for me is: "PAX Wrestling is my religion and Dr. Tracksuit is the s#!t!"
What are some other good ones?
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"Push Internet Dan"
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This past month was an all out blitz of games for me, I beat Zelda, NieR, Mass Effect, and Persona 5. Now it's time to rest.
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This past month was an all out blitz
Would you say your last month has been... da bomb?
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I beat Mass Effect: Andromeda. It was fine. Not the best, not the worst, just sort of uninspired.
I played some of the Overwatch: Uprising event, which was fun. Not sure why I fell off the OW bandwagon so hard, may have been my decent from 2908 to 2200 last competitive season.
Instead I got back into CS:GO hardcore. Sold all my TF2 vintage skins for gun skins (figured why not move the money from the older game to the hot game and cash out). Recently got into GN4, but am struggling against well coordinated teams vs my team with no mics/griefers/quitters. Won 1/7 games and that team surrendered in 6 rounds...
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In between jobs at the moment. Feeling pretty disheartened about prospects whilst trying to stay sane. Fingers crossed a few of the dream jobs I've applied for come good in the next few days 😔.
Adulting sucks man.
This is the Run is keeping me smiling along with getting back in R6 Siege. Any EU guys on PS4 feeling like some Siege-age let me know!
Have a good weekend everyone!
Hang in there man! Shitty times come, and shitty times go.
Thanks man, I'm holding on pretty well just some days are worse than others!
You don't happen to be a Descendents fan do you?