Smuel's good morning extravaganza

I didn't even notice the time change. All my devices updated automatically, and I only found out that there had been a change from the memes.

We really are living in the future.

Good morning.

 

Remember! Remember! The 5th of November!

Good morning.

 

I always thought that that rhyme was weak as a mnemonic aid, because several months rhyme with "remember" and lots of numbers are single syllable. E.g. "Remember, remember, the 4th of September" fits just as well. The rhyme doesn't help at all!

Good morning, good morning, this place is a warning.
Arcanum, trolling, and bot. We do not post a lot.

 

https://i.imgur.com/1Hvej8L_d.webp?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=medium



Good morning.

 

I do my bit for the environment, and efficiency in general, okay? Like when I'm ordering from Amazon, I don't do it piecemeal - I save up a few things and then order them all at once. So that they only have to use one set of packaging, and the delivery truck only has to make one journey.

Then Amazon goes ahead and sends me an order of four things like this:



Sorry, future generations. I tried.

Good morning.

 

Have you bought them from the same seller or are them four different people? That would explain it....

Anyway, as of today searching on google a Schwarzenegger movie won't show, in the cast section, Schwarzenegger himself. Weird. And good morning.

 

No, they were all shipped (or "fulfilled") by Amazon.

Also, they were sold out of the whey protein I usually buy, so I got a soy one instead, and I don't like the taste of it at all. Ugh. Now I've got to work my way through 2kg of it.

Yes, I know, it was an elementary mistake to buy that large an amount taste-unseen. But hey, what's life without a few risks here and there.

Good morning.

 

So they were all sold by amazon itself and not separate subsellers operating on amazon? Dayum.

And regarding the soy protein? Dayum.

Good morning.

 

Merry xmas and good morning.

 

Pfft, you say that, but I know your game.

Good morning.

 

First post of 2023! Woot!

And good morning!

 

What game? My memory is a bit fuzzy lately....
Also, good morning

 

At first it was interesting but then I saw it was made with a ****ing AI. Lost all interest in one blow....

Good morning.

 

At first it was interesting, until it turned out to be a bunch of still images.

This one is much better, can't remember if it's been posted here before:



And good morning!

 

Good morning.

 

Ah, I miss Jojobobo.

Good morning.

 

It's time for another round of SPRAT - Smuel Pointlessly Rants About Things.

A friend of mine has got me into playing Arena of Valor, which is basically a rip off of League of Legends, but for mobile devices. It's quite fun playing in a team with my friend, but the game itself reminds me why I dislike MOBA as a genre.

Firstly, the game amplifies tiny differences in skill. It's not uncommon to end a game with a 10:1 ratio in kills per side. Like your team has killed enemy team members 30 times, and they've killed yours 3 times. This is because, even if you're roughly evenly matched at the start, every time you kill an enemy, your character gains XP and money towards levelling up, while they're not earning XP or money as they wait to respawn. So what happens? The team that starts off better quickly gets stronger characters, while the other team stagnates.

Imagine a game of soccer, where every time a team scores a goal, the opposing team has a player removed. The first goal between two evenly matched teams results in 11 players versus 10 on the losing side. So the next goal will be easier for the team that's already winning. Now it's 2 goals to 0, and 11 versus 9. Basically, as soon as the first goal is scored, you know which team is going to win - the remainder of the match is pointless.

Secondly, there are all these extraneous additional aspects of the game. In the MOBA version of soccer there would be little games of mini golf dotted around the pitch. Any player can run up to one during the match, and try to putt a ball, and if they succeed then their team's goal shrinks by 5% for two minutes. Also, every 10 minutes an additional brightly coloured soccer ball is launched onto the pitch, and the first player to kick it is allowed to pick up and carry the regular ball for the next 30 seconds.

I guess some people think that this type of change makes game better, if they like having lots of additional rules to memorize. But to me it seems that it just adds chaos and doesn't fundamentally change the snowballing effect of a winning team having more chances to win, since the team with more players can afford to spend more time playing mini golf and chasing extra balls around.

Thirdly, when you're losing, you often have no idea why. In soccer, it's clear why a better player is better - they kick the ball more accurately, or have more pitch awareness and pass the ball to their teammates at the most opportune times. When playing a MOBA it's not uncommon for an opposing player character to materialise next to you, kill you in under a second, and then run off, and you're left without any clue how they did it. Sure, you can test out that same character yourself next time, but I guarantee you that their special attacks won't produce the same results in your hands. You need some special combination of equipment, optimized not only for that character, but also the characters you're going up against, plus learning the optimal timings for the attacks, plus learning the order to upgrade them. The best games don't have this kind of thing at all. The best games have simple rules that you can learn in an afternoon. Nobody is playing chess and thinking "wait, how did the bishop move like that?" and then afterwards going and looking it up and discovering that every 4 turns a bishop can mimic the move of a piece it's previously taken during the game, or some such nonsense.

I tried DOTA 2 a few years ago, and got turned off almost immediately. The concept of pushing minions down lanes, to gradually wear down the opposing team's towers, is pretty good. But actually, that's not the main purpose of minions. Their main purpose is for you to earn gold by killing the ones on the enemy team. But wait... you only get gold if you land the killing blow, so actually, you just stand there waiting for your own minions to whittle down the enemy minions' health, and then kill them at the last moment. But wait! The opposing player is trying to do the same thing with your minions so you have to deny them by killing your own minions first. I'm not kidding. The game's tutorial walks you through it. _A core game mechanic leads to players destroying their own side's assets_. I imagine that this was an oversight in the original incarnation of DOTA as a custom map for Warcraft III, because who would _design_ a game like that? But rather than fix the problem in DOTA 2, the developers were like "well, everyone is used to it now" and doubled down. Unbelievable.

Also in DOTA, each team has a "Secret shop". Guys, I hate to tell you this, but it's not a secret. The tutorial literally tells you about it. Its only function is to make it more awkward to buy the equipment that you want. Which, as I mentioned before, is already annoying, because you shouldn't be buying that equipment, you should be buying this other equipment because it's more effective in this specific situation, and so on.

"Well Smuel, this is just how MOBAs are, get used to it."

Nuh-uh! Actually one of my favourite games is Fractured Space - a MOBA which managed to avoid all of these problems. Even a lopsided match would still have some suspense, since it was extremely rare for a team to get so far ahead that they didn't have to make sure to keep blocking access to their home base. In Arena of Valor it's the opposite. It's usually clear after the first minute whether you're easily going to win or are hopelessly outmatched, and for the remaining 10 minutes you're just going through the motions. There's no tension at all.

Sadly, Fractured Space is no longer available, but during its brief glorious existence it was able to demonstrate that I'm 100% correct, that DOTA, LoL, and AoV all suck, and that the players who chose those games over Fractured Space, leading to its demise, are dumb rules lawyer types who prefer to memorize hundreds of optimal build configurations over playing a game where there's a risk they might lose to a noob who is paying attention to the map.

Good morning.

 

As we say in Italy, "they always take* the good ones"

* as in killing and similar

Good morning.

 

I never cared for the standard Summoner's Rift map on LoL. Always liked the 3v3 Twisted Treeline better. Fewer people, less extra stuff going on. There was another game mode once upon a time that was pretty good, I think it was called domination; capture and hold points on the map, 5v5. Both of those are gone now, but the newer ARAM (All Random, All Mid) is by far my favorite mode. One lane, no jungle, random champs. So the chances of anyone on either team ending up with their main is pretty slim, and the games are (usually) less lopsided and less than half as long.

But yeah, in general, MOBAs suck. Good Morning.