Cymbal Head
Banned
Wait, there are gaming podcasts where the discussion is limited to "I like/dislike this game" and that's it?
Why would anyone listen to that? Serious question, here. The only gaming pods I follow are Idle Thumbs and Brainy Gamer.
Idle Thumbs Megathread | Indepth discussion inbetween horsebags and birdsounds
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Wait, there are gaming podcasts where the discussion is limited to "I like/dislike this game" and that's it?
Why would anyone listen to that? Serious question, here. The only gaming pods I follow are Idle Thumbs and Brainy Gamer.
Well I dont listen to Giant Bomb for games talk, but yes, you wont get much more than that out of them
Cymbal Head
Banned
That's...really weird to me. Why do you listen to it?
Not trying to cast aspersions on you or the Bombcast; I enjoy the tomfoolery on Idle Thumbs as much as the gaming talk (usually). I'm genuinely interested. Maybe I should just go listen to an episode...
Freedom = $1.05
Banned
cut the poor irishman a break, it was like the Super Bowl of DOTA this weekend. The discussion was actually pretty great, too, even for a pleb like me that's never played the game or watched it for more than 10 minutes.
It's only that I've reached my threshold for DOTA talk by now, because it rarely has anything new to say. I wouldn't listen to Super Bowl talk either, but I understand that DOTA is a big part of gaming for certain PC gamer types.
Dota is contained at the start. You can jump past it for no Dota.
I speel my dreenk
Member
I realize you say you don't listen for games talk, but if you even semi-regularly listen to any of the parts of the Bombcast where they are talking about games, you'd know that that simply isn't true. They don't go as in-depth on most things as, say, the Thumbs guys, but they certainly give reasons as to why they do or don't like things about games - hardly a simple aural thumbs up/thumbs down (yeah, I went there).
At around 20:30 for a timestamp.
Thanks! I wonder whether Spelunky chatter sounded so much like 'sports talk' to everyone else, but I'm inclined to think that everything around DOTA and its jargon makes it alienating much in the same manner as American Football, etc.
They don't really get into specifics, so your complaint doesn't really seem accurate. It's more about the International, and far less specific things.
Going into heavy detail about any game's mechanics for the sake of mechanics discussion is potentially alienating.
ebullientprism
Member
How come Steve Gaynor is not on anymore at all? Too busy or lives too far away?
I didn't listen to this episode. In this case, I was listening whilst walking, and Sean rolled into full DOTA talk. I thought "oh no, not this again" and pulled out my headphones and stopped the podcast.
It's clearly not a problem with the podcast. I've just allowed myself to listen to too many podcasts with DOTA banter despite my knowing I'll never play the game.
Both. He lives in Portland, Oregon now and with production starting up on Fullbright's next project he's stopped having time for his own podcast Tone Control
Chris Remo
Member
He lives in Portland, and Idle Thumbs is in San Francisco. Simple as that!
jediyoshi
Member
This is actually a way more bizarre post to me. Why do you listen to any podcasts? Purely analytical discussion? Personalities or humor aren't a distinguishing factor for entertainment? Entertainment isn't enough of a reason to listen to something? Is analysis an inherent element to entertainment?
Technosteve
Banned
When is the Dota Today episode going to go up? As a listener and a payer of your podcast salary i demand an answer.
Cymbal Head
Banned
Well, if I'm listening to a podcast on a topic, it's because I'm interested in hearing interesting information/perspectives on that topic. If I only wanted to feel like I was hanging out with some friendly friends, I'd just go hang out with my actual friends.
Like I said before, it's not that I don't enjoy the tomfoolery. But that's not the main reason I listen every week.
When I want shallow opinions, I come to GAF.
Edit: more to the point, that fucking Mighty Ducks reference this week. I swear to god every time these guys bring up a cultural touchstone that's near and dear to me they get something wrong about it.
I speel my dreenk
Member
There must be some weird meta-narrative - or maybe just something in the air around the Bay Area lately - causing podcasts to end in shit talk (most literally).
Okay, what actually happens in the damn Mighty Ducks with the figure skater? I only saw that movie once.
MiniBossBattle
Member
Was there a counter for the rushdown heavy Dota squad? Why did they GG? Is it because, the XP & gold advantage/kills and most of the savvy audience knew it was over in the first 20 minute? Or was it simply they were better and this was a display of dominance that made it not hype?
edit; crap forgot to use a sport reference. Was it boring because you knew Sean would dunk on Obama?
edit:man, I love the rules of Halo vs the variability of Destiny.
edit; crap forgot to use a sport reference. Was it boring because you knew Sean would dunk on Obama?
edit:man, I love the rules of Halo vs the variability of Destiny.
Cymbal Head
Banned
Haha I forgot you posted in the thread. I meant that as a meta-joke on the personality-vs-analysis discussion.
For the record, there's a figure skater in all 3 movies. The girl is in the first one, and she's replaced by a guy for 2 and 3.
Great episode, I enjoyed your talk about Destiny a lot.. as much as I want to like that game, I felt somenthing is off about it; you did a great job articulating it thou.
MiniBossBattle
Member
Divinity plays like Diablo? I thought it was more of a Baldur's Gate (turn-based combat). Online co-op is amazing. My friend and I both play wizards and subconsciously chose opposing elements. The game actually allows your co-op buddy to have a dissenting voice. Talking about strategy and trash-talking each other while fighting together is amazing. Whenever he or I have to check on the kids, we teleport to the town hub and the other person tries to progress through the narrative quests.
There probably is, but VG were a one trick pony. When their one trick got countered, they didn't have anything left and got steamrolled by Newbee.
There was a chance that VG would've come back, as Dota 2 is fairly unpredictable, but since they were running the same strat, had a terrible draft (Newbees heroes were just straight up better in terms of tankiness and endgame potential, not to mention VG fed 7 kills to Ember Spirit which is pretty much game over) and died so many times early on when everyone is still squishy and gold advantage is relatively more impactful, VG got rightfully dunked. Newbee deserved their win since they proved to be much more adaptive (or had a pocket strat) and outdrafted and outplayed VG, but damn if it wasn't disappointing they got curbstomped. This is the goddamn grand finals, it should've been more back-and-forth.
But muh worldwide shipping
NumberThree
Member
Baldur's Gate (like other Infinity Engine games) has real-time combat with pausing. Check the recent Pillars of Eternity videos to see how that works.
The original Divinity games were action-RPGs quite heavily inspired by Diablo, so some people are bound to assume the new one is like that, too.
Antiwhippy
the holder of the trombone
What the fuck at calling divinity a diablo-like.
C'mon, even giantbomb didn't make that mistake.
C'mon, even giantbomb didn't make that mistake.
Chris, you mentioned you weren't sure how the difficulty of Halo single-player scaled. (For instance, whether it was simply damage numbers being increased or whether it was something more)
One of the game designers for Halo did a great GDC talk on the design of halo games that he worked on throughout the series, specifically the balancing for the multi-player and single-player of the game.
It's probably my favorite GDC talk. Jaime dives pretty deep in some of the reasoning for decisions, and goes into psychology and even a bit of philosophy:
Session Name: Design in Detail: Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds for Halo 3
Speaker: Jaime Griesemer
The title may seem a bit strange/oddly-specific, but it's for a good reason. Take a look if you haven't seen it already.
To answer the question though, they do quite a few things; increasing the aggressiveness of enemies, increasing the number of enemies and the level of the enemies. They also do more clever things like such as increasing the speed of non hit-scan projectiles like that of the ubiquitous plasma pistol. This makes them harder to dodge and forces the player to stay closer to cover on higher difficulties.
One of the game designers for Halo did a great GDC talk on the design of halo games that he worked on throughout the series, specifically the balancing for the multi-player and single-player of the game.
It's probably my favorite GDC talk. Jaime dives pretty deep in some of the reasoning for decisions, and goes into psychology and even a bit of philosophy:
Session Name: Design in Detail: Changing the Time Between Shots for the Sniper Rifle from 0.5 to 0.7 Seconds for Halo 3
Speaker: Jaime Griesemer
The title may seem a bit strange/oddly-specific, but it's for a good reason. Take a look if you haven't seen it already.
To answer the question though, they do quite a few things; increasing the aggressiveness of enemies, increasing the number of enemies and the level of the enemies. They also do more clever things like such as increasing the speed of non hit-scan projectiles like that of the ubiquitous plasma pistol. This makes them harder to dodge and forces the player to stay closer to cover on higher difficulties.
Klendathu Club Owner
Member
Aren't the Thumbs shipping worldwide? Maybe we can order Natureboxes through them, hur hur. Good opportunity for some extra revenue on the side lol.
ebullientprism
Member
Really solid episode. Chris' talk about Destiny and Halo was really fantastic to listen to.
I think Chris attended that panel. He's cited it a couple times on the show. I should watch/read whatever's available from it as it sounds fascinating whenever anyone brings it up.
Chris Remo
Member
Yeah I was at that talk and it's great. It explains what makes Halo so great as an overall design by doing a deep dive into a microcosmic element that also serves as a really practical example of game design.
Jaime did a follow up talk shortly after leaving Bungie, (ostensibly) about tuning the plasma rifle in Halo 3 and that was also good.
Jaime did a follow up talk shortly after leaving Bungie, (ostensibly) about tuning the plasma rifle in Halo 3 and that was also good.
The link posted above contains the full video of that first talk.
I don't remember a second talk or if i've seen it, ill have to look into it, I hope there is video of it as well.
The bewildered conversation about the etymology of "waifu" can go further into the onion-peeled rabbit hole if Sean is unaware of Lina's provenance.
That's actually the most insane thing about this whole situation: that this completely-ripped-from-an-anime character's existence in a Warcraft 3 mod has now been canonized in an arena-filling free-to-play game. It's like if you found out the TF2 Demoman had a devastating satellite strike that was actually a remake of the GENOM satellite from the Bubblegum Crisis Doom WAD.
Man, Total Conversions! Whatever happened to those?
That's actually the most insane thing about this whole situation: that this completely-ripped-from-an-anime character's existence in a Warcraft 3 mod has now been canonized in an arena-filling free-to-play game. It's like if you found out the TF2 Demoman had a devastating satellite strike that was actually a remake of the GENOM satellite from the Bubblegum Crisis Doom WAD.
Man, Total Conversions! Whatever happened to those?
As an aside, if we're talking dubious Dota hero origins, Phantom Lancer's model in war3 was a copy of Kimahri Ronso from Final Fantasy 10. Templar Assassin's lore in war3 was actually a Dark Templar hailing from Shakuras in Starcraft, and Riki is based off Rikimaru from the Tenchu series but I think everyone knows that.
*Hasn't listened to the cast yet*
*Hasn't listened to the cast yet*
Hot Coldman
Banned
Oh my god, I seriously need an Idle Thumbs Velvet Sundown stream.
ebullientprism
Member
Was just gonna say this. If Jake and Chris havent played it yet, please stream the first time you do.
TheHollowNight
Member
Goddammit. When Sean said "So Extreme. So Allard. On Blade". My brain made that immediate (and unfortunate) jump to the shiba doge meme. Which I guess, in of itself isn't all that surprising since doge2048 has already nested itself inside of the Idle Thumbs lore. I was seriously anticipating an ironic "Wow" to be said at the end of that conversation.
This episode has been totally fantastic though.
Edit: Also yay for the megathread shoutout
This episode has been totally fantastic though.
Edit: Also yay for the megathread shoutout
acheron_xl
Member
Watching the GB guys do it was good. A Thumbs stream would be delicious.