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S3 Ep263: Gaming in June 2023
79 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about jokes for new friends, long relationships, working retail, Diablo IV, Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, and gaming news!
Intro:
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Intro:
- Payday 2 - 8 Bits are Scary (Assault)
- Super Mario RPG - Victory Theme
SoapstonePodcast@gmail.com
Like our podcast? Like our podcast! We'll post when new episodes are uploaded!
https://www.facebook.com/SoapstonePodcast/
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:01
Speaker
you
00:01:03
Speaker
How's it
Humor in Misleading Jokes
00:01:04
Speaker
going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going. Boy, boy, how does it go? Keeping on, keeping on. Sometimes you think it's still, but it isn't. It's going. If it was still, like if you're looking at water and it seems perfectly still, just remind yourself, if it was still, it would be ice.
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, basically every water you have is a form of seltzer. Deep. All right. Well, those are your closing thoughts. See you guys later. After much deliberation, we approach the end of the month. And this is our time to think back, reminisce, be thankful that there are some games we played and other games that we didn't play.
00:02:03
Speaker
I've been trying to equate this to Thanksgiving or something like that somehow, but it's not that dramatic. We do this once a month. The podcast once a month? Yeah. Everything else is filler. Those are all pre-recorded. We recorded a bunch of episodes once we started. Once the AI thing was introduced, they've all just been auto-generated.
00:02:26
Speaker
what would happen is I think that if we said that like hey guess which episodes have been auto-generated we're not going to tell you guys people would start to pick apart like our mannerisms and be like real Jake wouldn't say that real Dave wouldn't say that Dave is usually way more racist than that that's clearly AI
00:02:47
Speaker
We actually have a running joke in our Dota Discord about somebody being racist and sexist. And I forget who it was. Yeah, a newer person was coming over to play. And I think someone was saying, giving them the heads up, like, hey, it's kind of like a rowdy bunch, but they're usually good people.
00:03:08
Speaker
I'm like, yeah, everyone's really good. This one person though is like a little bit sexist. We're still trying to work on them. And that person hadn't been introduced to the meme yet. So we're just persisting the thing and throwing this one friend under the bus. But I love a nice disruptive lie like that where at the end of the day, like it's not really going to impact either of them. It will get sorted out and hashed out.
00:03:30
Speaker
but I like the You just slip in this like a little bit of doubt or confusion and then people just go on with that information like that's true uh-huh They start like equating other things that they say later to be like alright. Well. I mean he's showing good improvement He is there honestly honestly. He's not that racist. He's not that sexist I mean he has his time don't get me wrong he has his time I
00:04:02
Speaker
I appreciate that humor though. I think when I, uh, anonymous work story, when we started working at a company, um, I think one of the first things I heard about another person who worked there who is a great person, um, and very personable individual, uh, was that he was probably a serial killer. And I was like, huh?
00:04:26
Speaker
Interesting. And I think I had at some point a similar sort of meme about myself that I was a cannibal. And neither of those things I think were true. But who's to say? All of the jokes I've lined up are just not appropriate. I will leave it there. Yeah.
00:04:50
Speaker
But yeah, a nice little white lie for memes sake. I think the main reason I like it is the long payoff. Because let's say I saw some family this past weekend. Let's say I give them some information. And it's just like a lighthearted thing where I'm like, oh yeah, I'm just like an activity I've been doing or something. And they find out a year later that I wasn't telling the truth. Actually, that would probably just make our relationship even less close.
00:05:19
Speaker
Yeah, which I'm also not opposed to necessarily but It's got to be something absurd is you got to be like, oh, yeah, i'm in competitive pilates or something like that That's what i've been doing in my free time
00:05:32
Speaker
It's like super gaslighting i'm realizing though Yeah Yeah, I think it really helps you got to judge the vibe with the the forensic group, right? If you're in a group like your dota discord where everybody is kind of friendly poking each other ribbing each other um other, you know gay euphemisms, um then
00:05:53
Speaker
Like that's that's okay. That's okay if it's something with family where like they're just gonna truly believe it without a hint of humor and later it just comes out as a lie you're like It's not really a joke anymore Yeah
00:06:08
Speaker
But it's the best with newer people. Like, hey, so-and-so is bringing a friend over to a social get-together or a recently new significant other who hasn't met some of the other people yet. They're in that position where they want to be accepted and polite and they won't really overstep their bounds.
The Art of Pranking Acquaintances
00:06:30
Speaker
And I want to fuck with those people so much because I've been on that side of it. I've been on both sides. And at the end of the day, like I want them to feel accepted. So I want to start off with a bit. That's how my brain works anyway.
00:06:46
Speaker
you can have something like, depending on the target, right? You could either tell the person, the new person, that an existing person in the group has a trait, or you can tell the group that the new person has a trait. And the one my brain jumps to is like, they just really hate it. It's just like an involuntary thing. They just really hate it if you touch your face. And that's the worst thing you could tell somebody, because now you're thinking about touching your face. You're like, oh, it's mildly itchy. Oh, God. Oh, God. Exactly.
00:07:16
Speaker
But like if I sat through like a new person like, oh hey, you like competitive, I was gonna say Battlebots, Battlebots is definitely competitive. Pilates was the go-to example.
00:07:28
Speaker
Yeah, let's say you like competitive Pilates. Jake loves competitive Pilates. You should go talk to him about that. Oh, the ambush. This is the ambush. Well, see, here's the thing, right? Like they're new. They're going to be typically more shy. I'm essentially providing them an icebreaker. They will find out very quickly that I was lying. And now you guys can bond over me being an asshole.
00:07:48
Speaker
And okay. Yeah, right good. It's it's the hey, you now have a common enemy enemy in quotes. Obviously, I'm not trying to fight people because I destroy you. I would destroy you both, but
00:08:03
Speaker
This actually is not in Sun Tzu's Art of War, also. Just so you know, there's not advice for how to get your enemies to ally with each other against you. That's not, that's not the thing. Sun Tzu's How to Lose the Friends and Alienate People. Uh-huh, yeah. Which is a fun, it's a fun book title. I have no idea what the content is, but it's still a fun book. I feel like it got made into a movie, but yeah, I still
Personal Life and Celebrations
00:08:25
Speaker
have no... I remember it being a thing. It sounds like it'd be a Catherine Heigl movie, but never looked into it.
00:08:34
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not sure. Um, so Jake, can I, can I throw you one of the bus quick? Sure.
00:08:41
Speaker
So you get the friction from the tires. I love all the pipes hitting the, like, oh, the axel's the best. It's like a special form of massage. So recently, Jake is talking about getting new desks for him and his wife, friend of the show. Special guests, too. Especially because multiple times, yeah.
00:09:09
Speaker
And he's talking about the wood he's going to get and the parts and the supplies and staining and we're getting picture updates on Discord and everything. And he's telling me about all this table stuff. And I'm like, hell yeah, it feels good to upgrade something. And then out of the fucking thin air, he's like, PS, I got a second cat. And we're just like, oh, let's never talk about that.
00:09:32
Speaker
I mean, to be fair, like she's been running the reins of like all cat updates. Yeah. Yeah. Also, congratulations to you both. But I just thought it was funny how you're like table table table. They're like, bam, new cat. It's a cat. Yeah. You know what it was is we had our and this was going to mention actually on the last episode, but.
00:09:51
Speaker
Uh, then I forgot about it, but we had our nine year anniversary, um, which is like, it's a long freaking time, but it's also inconsequential compared to 10. Nobody cares. Nine is divisible by neither 10 nor five. What's the point? Um, but we're like, all right, a cat is fine. We can, we can do a cat.
00:10:11
Speaker
You can get a cat. Ten is paper. Nine is cat. Okay. Yes, exactly. Exactly. We get a plaque. We get a plaque at 10. We'll get one silver silver plaque commemorating the marriage. Um, and then just, uh, just keep upgrading it at major milestones. Hasn't only been nine years. I mean, as long as I've known you guys, you've been together. So we've been, yeah, we've been married for nine years. So, uh, but we've been together since, uh, 2010.
00:10:42
Speaker
so pre-covid yeah yeah it was a pretty it was it was but then the before times um yeah i guess technically we were what is that what's the math difference there four years we were together four years before we got married but also when i uh moved to pennsylvania i was like working at sears and couldn't get in-state
Retail Work Challenges
00:11:04
Speaker
tuition and all of these other things so like a wedding didn't make that much sense um
00:11:10
Speaker
Let me tell you about Sears. They don't have a salary for people working in Lining Garden. No, not so much. That's kind of where you grind your teeth and realize about the working world and having to interact with customers type thing.
00:11:28
Speaker
And it's never been as bad as it was there. Not actually anything bad about Sears for that. There's other things I dislike about them. The team there was nice. But retail. I would forever work in development compared to going back to retail.
00:11:45
Speaker
No, it is. It is crazy to me. Like I was talking to my cousin's past weekend. She's working at a gym. Um, and it's just like the people who like come up to you and you're like, Hey, you work here. You're my personal whipping person. Um, something's not right and you need to fix it or whatever. And like people are just so blatantly rude. Even I was at salad works the other day, weirdly ran into somebody who I see at the gym all the time.
00:12:12
Speaker
not somebody who I know, I just I'm like, that face looks familiar. Right. But there was a lady in line who was just very, I wouldn't say care any, but she was being very overly particular with some of the staff. And I'm like 16 year olds who are just trying to like, get an hourly wage. Don't be a dick to him. I don't know.
00:12:35
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, that's that's probably it's a good life skill regardless of, you know, it's not something I think anyone, everyone can exercise all the time, but it is nice when you remember that usually the individual that you're interacting with right now is not the originator of all of your problems.
00:12:54
Speaker
That's a healthy mindset to keep. And if you want to go even further into the zen aspect, they might have their own problems going on that could be informing how they're acting right now. They're ultimately still responsible for themselves, so you know that doesn't...
00:13:13
Speaker
remove all of their responsibility to treat you fairly but um i don't know there's been times i made mistakes like the one i think the thing i think of is not this has nothing to do with retail but once after purchasing fallout three yep i ran a red light and i think about that because i stopped in the middle of the intersection the person behind me left me space to back up
00:13:37
Speaker
And I've told this story before, but it's a good one. This was a learning episode for me because now when I see someone and they like make a mistake while driving, I might have that instinct to be like point finger. But I'm like, man, I was just a dumb M.F.R. when I was a kid and stopped in an intersection because I was too, too occupied thinking about the video game and the seat next to me.
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah. I think everybody's allowed fuck ups. It's just when you fuck up, admit you're wrong. Don't be a dick about it. And then just try and be mindful of other people. Like if you're doing like a traffic, oopsie, like apologize to people around you by just doing like the head down, the hand up, like, Hey, can't really communicate through honks. How sorry I am. But stuff happens, you know? Yeah.
00:14:33
Speaker
I don't have like an immediate example, but I know I've done traffic goofs multiple times.
00:14:45
Speaker
I can think of one. There was the time when we were leaving SolidWorks. No, the one I thought of where my brain jumped was just I would know I was in the passenger seat and you started to turn left I think on a red after we were leaving SolidWorks one time.
00:15:03
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I definitely did that. I was like, sorry if I just dug up something that was you had successfully recovered from. But you called me out earlier on the episode, so I called myself out and then I call you out again. And this is what the episode is. It's just us calling each other out. And like I know because the salad works is located next to a gym that we went to at the time. So I always probably just like zonked like my body is like physically done. I'm pretty much mentally done. I'm just got to get back.
00:15:33
Speaker
And so I probably just, maybe the sun was in my eyes, I'll throw that as an excuse as well. It was also rain. And there was sleet. And I had a blindfold on. And I was tied up. This is something a different scenario. There was a guy at the car next to us and he's like, bet you won't turn on red, do it. Bet you won't.
00:15:56
Speaker
It was a dare. I had to. But it's just like when you you're at a red light and then ahead of you at the next set of lights, that turns green and your brain goes, oh, green. You see green. Yeah, exactly. Like your brain's kind of off somewhere else temporarily. You've gotten a trigger of like, hey, you should proceed. And then you're like, that wasn't the correct one, though. Yes. Mm hmm.
00:16:19
Speaker
It's because it's very human, right? Like this isn't something anyone should really hold against themselves. And if it happens often enough, then do some training or something to minimize the instance of this. But I mean, like, incidences like that happen. It's the reason it's dangerous to, like, if you're driving a motorcycle, riding a motorcycle, it's because people are
00:16:41
Speaker
functionally, it's harder to see a multi motorcycle, but you can literally perceive one if you turn to check next to you, where your eyes see a motorcycle and your brain doesn't fire. There was something next to me that I should not turn into because you're looking for a car. It's like, it's the same thing as like how your senses perceive things versus how you react to those reactions, those senses. Jake's basically admitting he's hit so many motorcycles. Yes. Like there's.
00:17:09
Speaker
A number I should not mention on the podcast, but the lawsuits are pending and we will need to run ads. So, um, thankfully not, but anyways, and the gaming front, we can jump to the gaming news this month for a moment as I skillfully alt tab back to what I'm going to call notes, I guess.
Diablo 4: Audience Feedback and Experience
00:17:34
Speaker
Uh, what have you been playing this month?
00:17:37
Speaker
Primarily, it has been a lot of Diablo 4. That's fair. We have a decision point. We got to decide right now. Do we want to have an episode on Diablo 4? We're inviting the audience in for this. You guys could be part of the decision making process. All right, I'm going to base it off the feedback I hear in the next few seconds from the audience.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah. They're saying a standalone episode. Okay. Okay. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah. Thank you guys for the enthusiasm. Um, yeah, I guess, uh, early, early impressions. I mean, if you're still putting time into it, it can't be like physically painful. No, it's not physically painful. Uh, there's some aspects of it that I struggle with a little bit as far as the pacing. Um,
00:18:33
Speaker
I will say graphically, my computer struggles with it a little bit and some of the performance and some I get on a horse and like horse just don't work sometimes. I'm like, cool. It's supposed to be my faster option of travel. But here we go. You get that radial loading menu, like the windows update spinner based on your horse as it processes. There's a there's it's it's mounted. It's so dumb at times. Yeah, I've definitely been lost connection here and there that too.
00:19:03
Speaker
Yeah, any like finer gripes or things that I like about it, I'll probably talk about in episode. But I will say right now I have a level 57 druid, which I'm enjoying casting lightning on. I actually tried a lot of the other things outside of shape-shifting. And now I have like a level 40 barbarian who I'm starting to learn how that works a little bit and just way better than necromancer. Necromancer got the fucking shafts.
00:19:28
Speaker
I I need to make a different class because my main is still necromancer. I don't have anybody else and It again, I'm not gonna go into in-depth that we're gonna have a separate episode, but I don't recommend it as a primary I guess It starts to get pretty tedious as time goes on
00:19:50
Speaker
Um, but it's still fine. They're all they're all fun. I had some more impressions i'm enjoying it I haven't played it as much I think as you have I was like, okay level, uh, what'd you say? Uh, 54 or something like that was your 57 on the druid 57 I was like, that's a pretty high level That's definitely higher than mine. And then you're like, by the way, I have a second character and they're level 40 i'm like, ah, yes, that's what the playtime is um, but uh
00:20:14
Speaker
No, I like it. I'll save other impressions beyond that, but obviously it's been doing a pretty bang-up job so far, and so I'm looking forward to see how Blizzard will ruin it. Oh, give it a month. Give it a month. I had a couple, I think, news bits that were attached to D4 I specifically called out because there were some
Diablo 4: Game Mechanics
00:20:41
Speaker
things here.
00:20:41
Speaker
Some of these were funny for me. So one of them doesn't matter as much. I'm actually going to skip over, but they're making changes to gems. Actually, I'm not going to skip over it because it provided too much context. They're making changes for people who play Diablo, which is a fair amount of our listener base based off the metrics I can see coming back to me through audio boom and Spotify.
00:21:08
Speaker
The gems are one of the few things that didn't really stack. Maybe the only thing that still didn't stack in Diablo 4. All of the other crafting resources just go into a special place in your inventory. But gems are like, nope, you're gonna slot those between all of the gear you picked up off the ground.
00:21:28
Speaker
Um, and so unless you were like dropping a bunch of gems off periodically, you'd start to have less space for loot. They're apparently changing that. And they're just gonna put the gems in a different inventory screen or something like that. So you don't, you only have your loot in that primary inventory. Oh, okay. I was gonna say, at least today, the gems do stack on top of each other for the same type. Yeah. But yeah, they do take up slots in inventory versus some of the other resources.
00:21:54
Speaker
Stacking is the wrong way to put it. If you're a longer time listener and you can go back to like one or two episodes when Dave described the resource stacking tabs in the bank, in your vault or stash and path of exile, similar thing I think is what's going to happen here. But it's just going to be whatever you pick up goes there.
00:22:18
Speaker
I would do it with so many like legendaries as well. I'm like, is this the one I want? No trash. Uh-huh. Yeah. It might be a separate tab, but, um, I'm looking forward to that, but I obviously don't have much to say beyond that. I think good change. Do you agree? Yeah. I feel like I can still continue to make good changes. Just a little quality of life things.
00:22:43
Speaker
And the only other thing I wanted to add, and Dave can maybe attest to that for the historical significance, or fill in what this means, but the butcher in Diablo 4 apparently accounts for 1.8% of all PvE deaths. So that's everything outside of PvP. Yup. Which is a lot. Did you encounter the butcher at all? Yup.
00:23:08
Speaker
Not a fan and I think there's one time where I killed him but a lot of times like I've been So once you beat campaign mode, you don't have to beat it again on any other character So I skipped it for the barbarian just running through But he would just show up and I kicked my ass in a dungeon I'm like Cool. That was sure fun because I'm definitely not equipped for it because brief tangent
00:23:33
Speaker
All of the scaling in Diablo 4, things will be at your level. The Butcher is not comparative to other bosses in that regard. It's just like, hey, I'm going to fuck your day up. When you have this very linear progression where it doesn't seem like you're getting any spikes as far as power, like, oh, I can definitely clear this type of content. It's always an active struggle.
00:23:57
Speaker
stuff like that feels bad because like you can perfectly manage all of your cooldowns and resources and still get fucked up and you're like, okay, thanks.
00:24:10
Speaker
Yeah, I didn't know what his mechanic was. I've only seen him one time, but apparently- Just shows up in dungeons. Just shows up in dungeons. And he has good loot, generally, if and when you beat him. But I just found a square of impassable terrain, and I kited him around it. And I would just use some necromancer ability that generated me corpses slowly.
00:24:37
Speaker
and my ultimate ability on cooldown which was like 60 seconds multiple times to like chip him down and then I just killed him that way and I was like I feel good for having beaten him uh but this was not a good boss fight and the alternative for that was he rushes you down and he kills you he's just very fast and he runs right at you he doesn't do the general boss fight thing of like he's gonna attack and then have like a defensive phase or fall back where he's vulnerable he just runs at you and like throws a hook to grab you and stuff it's
00:25:08
Speaker
It's the butcher, but yeah.
00:25:12
Speaker
I'm sure we'll talk more about how previous Diablo games have informed Diablo 4 in the dedicated episode. But I feel like the reason the Butcher's in the game to such an extent is just because they're like, remember that guy? Diablo 2, right? Like, love this guy who's down there. He's got the mallet. You guys remember the mallet? Mallet was great. We love the mallet. Or mallets like that. We have to change topics before I just start going off. That's fair.
00:25:40
Speaker
But I thought that was funny and 1.8% is a very high percentage of deaths.
Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Review
00:25:45
Speaker
So maybe he's over tuned Get an eye on that The other thing I've been playing
00:25:53
Speaker
Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. Hey. And that one is Breath of the Wild. It is the same game. That's my review. There you go. It's it's just that plus more things. So, I mean, you actually played Breath of the Wild. I think I borrowed it from you briefly and I was kind of burnt on open world at the time. Yeah. Do you feel like it's enough of a change improvement? Like, are you enjoying it or does it feel like I'm just playing the same game again?
00:26:23
Speaker
It's both. So they basically take, without spoiling anything, I'm not going to go into a plot or anything like that, they take the existing game and world and they add some layers onto it. But moment by moment gameplay, like if you stopped playing Breath of the Wild, and then while you were sleeping I swapped the cartridge out for Tears of the Kingdom,
00:26:47
Speaker
and you load it into the game it might actually take a little while to realize that it's different I don't mean that is like a bad thing but it's it's not like a
00:26:59
Speaker
they did it's a sequel that doesn't really change those mechanics they just build a bunch of stuff on top of it including building there's your mandatory pun but um no it's really fun and it actually it's nice from a game critical standpoint we'll never have an episode on it probably but uh i remember how
00:27:18
Speaker
And it reiterates on how this game is just based on scarcity and temporary resources and things like that. Like not even survival crafting games generally do. Like everything is just a resource to be used temporarily. And the absence of any permanent resources, all of your weapons break, right? All of your shields break. All of your meals are temporary. Uh, like.
00:27:46
Speaker
There are permanent upgrades in health and stamina, but like for the most part, if you want to address a tough problem, your solution to that is using the temporary things that you're allocated. And it's so weird. It's so weird to think about.
00:27:59
Speaker
But that's the main point for people that like or dislike these types of games is can you embrace that or does it drive you crazy? Like that Prosy D skit where he keeps all the healing potions till the end of the RPG. I don't hate the idea of that on paper. But my big thing with it is like it sucks to be like, oh, I got a thing. That's cool. And then it breaks. Yes. OK, so it it's not good then if it's just breaking that quickly.
00:28:25
Speaker
But then you would find something is actually shiny like I forget the little sentinel robot guys you called from breath of the wild I think you're called sentinel the Guardians Guardians Okay, like you get one of their swords and it was like a huge damage upgrade from you using a stick or a little shitty copper weapon and you're like, yeah, and then it's gone like
00:28:49
Speaker
It kind of immerses you a little bit into like, you really have to guerrilla warfare your way through it.
00:28:56
Speaker
That's a good term for it. That's exactly it. It's link using every part of the snake. It's link plisking. Basically, because you know, like I've been guilty of it too. I hoard some of the good stuff, but you can't hoard too much good stuff because your non-good stuff will break as it obviously does. And unless you're finding more supplies, eventually you just need to fall back on the good stock.
00:29:26
Speaker
The most obvious thing I'm gonna not spend forever talking about this game say that up front most obvious thing is like if you kill the skeletons They have a name I don't care They like show up at nighttime. They'll drop their arms and they kind of like to do this like janky motion or whatever you see it moving you can like Use those as weapons and they have no durability, but they do crazy damage
00:29:54
Speaker
So if you can like sneak up on a guy hit him with a sneak attack from behind with this skeleton arm You can like one-hit KO him like skip a fight skip using other resources just use the skeleton armor arm, but Not super great in a boss fight if it breaks in four hits. All right, so I don't know I like that but whether that appeals to you or not will probably impact whether you enjoy the game and it is a traditional adventure game, so
00:30:21
Speaker
Did you ever end up watching the video from the other week about Zelda being an immersive sim? Crap, I even think I said I was going to. If I did, I don't remember it. So you're lucky because the audience hasn't watched it either because I haven't linked it explicitly. But Polygon did a video on it, specifically Patrick. I like when he gets into the nitty gritty of stuff.
00:30:46
Speaker
but he was talking about how essentially it's immersive gameplay because you don't have this linear path to Approach a problem. It's like whatever the fuck you want We're basically giving you tools and how you choose to use those tools are entirely up to you So like in Breath of the Wild, you're like, well, I know I can do some stuff with ice I can move some stuff around and do yada yada, but then with this and like the building mechanic, it's like everything and
00:31:12
Speaker
Yeah, but also like little things will interact with each other such as Like he was showing in the video and I'm sure you've experienced in breath of the wild. Oh When there's lightning storms, that's attracted to metal What if I put metal near an enemy while it's sleeping and you essentially make this lightning rod to like nuke them? Mm-hmm But again, that's something the game like said do this you're like, oh If I put these little pieces together
00:31:43
Speaker
It rewards intuition by actually programming that to be a valid solution. Like, more than pretty much any other game I've played, it does that. Where it's just like, if you have an idea and you're like, I think it would make sense if this worked this way, it oftentimes does. And then that just becomes part of your mental toolkit.
00:32:03
Speaker
But I will say, even though this doesn't seem like my particular type of game, just for some theming and open world stuff that I just at least mentally can't latch onto right now, I really do like that, oh, I think it works this way, and then it does, versus so many times in a video game where you're like, can I kill a kid? Can I get something wet by throwing it into one? Well, you know, the kids are typically annoying.
00:32:30
Speaker
Or, like, can I set this on fire? Or if I, like, shoot a wall, like, does it actually show, like, the bullet marks in there? Or, like, is something destructible? It's little stuff like that that makes it feel a little more immersive because you're interacting with the world versus just, ah, yes, the video game box. If I look at my minimap, I should go in this one corner because why else would they put that there? Mm-hmm.
00:32:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's most exemplified. Wow, I'm confusing some of those words. Emblematic. A good example of this is traditionally in video games, there'll be like a short little ledge that you cannot walk over and it's just like, no, no, that's your invisible wall. Your character, we don't do that here, referring to. Your character doesn't have knees. Yeah, bending the joint a little bit.
00:33:22
Speaker
and tears of the kingdom very much does not do that you can jank your way through so many puzzles and encounters you can the one thing that you really just can't do reliably is brute force your way through things and that is what the game tells you on the loading screens it's like
00:33:40
Speaker
stop throwing your face against the wall. It literally has a loading screen that's like repeatedly attempting to defeat enemies is not likely to end in success or something like that. You know, go build up power first, get resources, do something.
00:33:57
Speaker
I'm not used to games telling you to like hey Get good like you're this is not or you can't get good in this case, right? Go go go get smart and then come back as an alternative to being good, but it's true. I Think all games should encourage that to a degree Mm-hmm. Here's here's my elder ring tie-in
00:34:20
Speaker
Sure. So, uh, the first fight, um, war God is a good example. Margaret, Margaret, Margaret is a good example because it immediately checks you. It's like, I'm going to kick your ass and it's designed to be that way. Cause you get there pretty early. If you're just following the quote unquote canonical path and you're like, this fucking sucks.
00:34:41
Speaker
And from a mental standpoint, just going into that again and just getting your ass beat, even if you see some progression, it feels bad. So it kind of is the design is to encourage you to like, Hey, we have this whole open thing. You can go to so many fucking places, go check out some shit, come back in a couple of levels, right? Or even find a tool to like help shut him down. Like that's the whole thing.
00:35:06
Speaker
Now, does it feel good to do the same thing again and again and again and fail repeatedly until you succeed? Yes, but more so, I'm just happy that I don't have to keep trying versus, ah, yes, I did it. I've succeeded, you know? Yeah.
00:35:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's a very apt comparison, but these games share that exact same DNA where it's like, I've learned, I've been whipped into submission by Legend of Zelda to the point where I see an enemy and I'm like, that?
00:35:38
Speaker
would take all of the meals in my inventory and i will probably not defeat it or i check my weapons and i'm like i've got two sticks and a loaf of bread um maybe i'm not ready to fight gannon maybe i can befriend gannon and feed him and poison the bread he loves sticks and bread that's the these are the two things we know about our opponent um
00:36:05
Speaker
So yeah, uh, threat analysis, and then it lets you just mark things on the map, which I think I called out for breath of the wild. All games should let you do this. Just have like a set of emblems and be like, that is a skull. That's a star. This is a leaf. And this guy right here, I made the mistake of trying to fight multiple times and I'm putting three skulls on the map where he is. Right. So, uh, yeah, it's good though.
00:36:31
Speaker
Refer to our earlier whatever episode where I talked about Breath of the Wild, though. It's largely the same. Well, I will only ask you one further question then. With the building mechanic, what's the dumbest solution to a problem you have implemented?
00:36:48
Speaker
Oh man, I'm not that creative, that's the problem. You see things online like the Dragula memes and whatnot, where people are launching Koroks. I haven't done anything like that. I mean, the dumbest thing, the actual answer for the dumbest thing is the game tends to give you, when you're doing a shrine, it gives you all of the resources in the room that you're in to get to the next room. I don't believe in this philosophy, so I glump
00:37:17
Speaker
all of the resources from the previous room together and I just like attach them with paste and then I just drag it with me into the next room try to find a way to get it into the the workspace for the next solution and I'm like okay for this one we have like one burner and two plates and I'm like great five burners and 10 plates we're gonna make something crazy um
00:37:41
Speaker
So you're basically hoarding is what you're saying. I do. But the game does give you a lot of resources. So you don't have to. They even realize they're like even in a game with scarcity and stuff like that. If we make the building materials rare, people just not engage with that system and we're going to force them to. So we got to give them a lot so they can build up that tendency. But.
00:38:07
Speaker
Um, other than that, nothing too crazy. I did build a box around a, um, basically like a zip line. Cause I had issues with trying to attach something to the bottom. And if it was a platform, it would just slide off. Right. Unless it was perfectly weighted. So I was like, all right, build a box and then attach something to the box. And then the box will move down the zip line. And I'm like, I'm a genius. Um, and then everybody else is doing things in a smart way, but it was fun. Nice.
00:38:38
Speaker
I will say I have been hearing great things about it. Obviously the memes choice and also, uh, another friend who maybe we could even have on possibly to talk about this in more, more detail. Uh, but she has been, she's not somebody who plays games. Yeah. Like anytime I've thought, like she did play some animal crossing, but like she is sinking time into this. Yeah.
00:39:05
Speaker
Which is good. That means like found something that she's really enjoying. So it's got that Nintendo. Like this feels like a Nintendo game feel to it. Like I think Dunkey talks about that sometimes in his experiences with Mario games, but it's like, it's very much a Zelda game and it's an adventure Zelda game. And so yeah, even, even if you don't like a bunch of other games, you can't get into them. Like.
00:39:34
Speaker
It's worth giving it a shot. Again, playtest Breath of the Wild basically at this point. You could probably get it used fairly cheap and retail for exactly the same price it came out as, because Nintendo. Yeah, it's good. Let's see, what else we got for news? Do you have anything else that happened this month you wanna throw a little chat on or shall I pick another from the list?
Gaming News Highlights
00:40:00
Speaker
As a very brief aside, because I don't have any information on an outset of watching a trailer like half a year ago, Skatebird came out June 1st, which is Tony Hawk with Small Birds. It looks very cute. I have nothing else to really say on it. I don't play a lot of skating games. Yeah.
00:40:22
Speaker
but I could I could be easily amused watching somebody play this and then whatever puns they throw into it because of course there has to be puns somewhere but it just looks like a fun time yeah I remember that trailer that's that's a good sign that's that's big for a game right like for a game that I do not own or for a trailer that came out a while ago I remember skateboard and uh no I'm glad to see they made it all the way to launch and hopefully they see some success I'm in a similar boat skating games are their own genre and I do not partake
00:40:54
Speaker
It's like I have played a Tony Hawk. I know what Scott is beyond that. Yeah, that's actually played a lot of American wasteland. That was pretty solid.
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, I fell off the, uh, the, the skateboard, I guess before then back back. I got started in the early games back when it was Anthony Hawken. Um, and, uh, no, like Tony Hawk pro skater two, I think for like in 64, which was the inferior copy as we've said, Oh my God. Yeah.
00:41:27
Speaker
Neversoft was always meant to be on PlayStation. Yeah, very true. And unfortunately the studio is not around, but that's usually the case if we're talking about games that came out and we played when we were young. Did always hard actually die? I'm pretty sure Neversoft died and the people were consumed. Uh, not like Eaton, like, like the thing I do, but the, uh, the thing corporations do. Got merged into something else.
00:41:55
Speaker
Yeah, I'm almost certain they got like bought out by EA or something. If you Google for the name of one of these things and it begins with name of company was, that's your hint, that's where it goes. So I'm looking at the end of their history. Yeah, it was made defunct 20 years to the day after its founding. And the employees built a, burnt a sculpture of this cured eyeball from their logo.
00:42:24
Speaker
to commemorate the passing Man, if you have to go that's way better actually. Yeah, it's pretty badass
00:42:32
Speaker
Yeah. Also, that was a pretty gruesome logo back in the day. Right. Like this is this was these were the days where you were trying to get convince your parents to let you play video games and then you load it up for the first time. And I think it was like an eyeball. I basically imagine the the Pixar. My brain goes to the Pixar logo. Yep. I was going to make a reference to that in a second with the crush. But instead, an eyeball lamp just jumps on something to form the eye. And this is like
00:43:00
Speaker
The eyeball's like running away actively and it's just like coming for you. Yep, impaled. It was pretty serious. So let me see here. Yeah. Well, I don't know. It doesn't look like I don't know what else they went on to, but hopefully they're doing all right. The people that were involved. Did you catch the Nintendo Direct at all?
00:43:28
Speaker
I heard some things of it. What were you, what were your favorite takeaways? I mean, the biggest one news wise, I think was super Mario RPG. They're going to remake and it looks good. Cause I think the original one came out, uh, for super Nintendo, right? Or was it, uh, yes, the very first one. And then they had one for in 64. Okay.
00:43:52
Speaker
But it's old and clunky as fuck. But it was one of those things where Nintendo branched out from just, here's your side scroller. And it actually stuck to landing. People were really hoping that Genos was going to be in Smash Brothers as one of the final DLC characters for so long. And then they put them in as like, here's like a little me fighter skin. They're like, fuck.
00:44:18
Speaker
Mm-hmm, but I played a little bit of it growing up, but I remember liking it And everyone else who I've talked to has great memories about it So I think they're really excited to have a more modern version of it
00:44:35
Speaker
Yeah, I tried to look this up to sanity check myself because I felt I was wrong and it might not have come for the N64. But the reason, I found out, is because in Japan, so many games are named Mario RPG and they just get renamed to something else in the US. So that's probably why I was confused. Paper Mario was one of them. Paper Mario was just called Mario RPG, Super Mario RPG in Japan.
00:45:04
Speaker
Probably that's what I confused it with but if you enjoy Paper Mario, I imagine you'd enjoy this and I'll acknowledge it. I still have Dave's copy of Paper Mario. I do as long as it's on the record But yeah, I I mean it's first party Nintendo Mario it's gonna be good I
00:45:29
Speaker
So I will say, typically anytime that they have done something a little more 3D and involved, like with Paper Mario or Super Mario RPG, I've enjoyed those more. Not to say like their side scrolling stuff is bad, but like it, I don't, I don't care about it at all. Like it's not for me.
00:45:50
Speaker
It doesn't have like the depth of gameplay. Right. Yeah. But they also did announce another side-scrolling Mario. I didn't remember the name of it because like it's it's not for me. But yeah, that was announced as part of the Nintendo Direct as well. Yeah.
00:46:06
Speaker
No new Smash Fighters, unfortunately. It would be... Sakurai would be very disappointed if that was announced. He's like, oh geez, we gotta get to work. Yeah, it wasn't that and it wasn't Silksong, so I was like, okay, alright, I can backburner this. Dave will cover it in the podcast.
00:46:31
Speaker
That would be really funny though, if Silksong came out in the Nintendo Direct. Everybody else, they had their opportunity for all these other platforms the game will come out on and they're just like, no. Nintendo. Also, Silksong, can all of you play online? You were like, Team Cherry's the worst. Uh-huh. How the mighty have fallen.
00:46:55
Speaker
But what did you hear about from the Nintendo Direct? Mostly the Mario games. Actually, I know there was that one and then not Phantasy Star Star Ocean. Star Ocean. It was also announced.
00:47:08
Speaker
And I know a friend of the show, Shane, and a special guest also, is gonna probably, yeah, we had one episode with him. I remember because we shilled his Let's Play after, at the end of it. Oh yeah. Or did we shi- We shilled his Let's Play with Justin, with Dice. We had Dice on the episode. That's what it was.
00:47:31
Speaker
that sounds more accurate okay i'm demoting shane back to friend of the show it's like i've never seen shane on video i've seen him in person i've never seen him on video in like so many years like that can't be him
00:47:41
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, not on the list. If you want to jump on an episode, let us know, Shane. But I know he's personally excited for that. And it's really cool that they're continuing some of these chains of long-running RPGs. I mean, Mario, I don't really give him credit for that. It's Mario. Mario was not going to die off. No. But- You approached your boy.
00:48:04
Speaker
Yes, but for some of these other ones, I mean, especially if it's been a decade, maybe since you saw the last game in the series, it's it means the world to people to see that nostalgia revived. They're continuing that. So cool. That's the game you're looking for. I'm glad you got it.
00:48:24
Speaker
and Pikmin 4. I am four games behind. I've played Olimar once in Smash. Never again. I saw the clip he sent me. Purple Pikmin looked pretty good. That boy thick. I had to deepen the voice to say
00:48:47
Speaker
He's chunky. That's all in Mars voice. It's canonically super deep. Yo, Pikmin, get over here. I played Pikmin one for GameCube, I believe when it came out in Walmart for two, three minutes. That's my exposure to the series. It was pretty good based off what I've seen. So it's something to watch.
00:49:13
Speaker
And it seems cute and fun. I just definitely have not did my toes into that, but I mean, nothing about it looks bad. It all looks very cute. Yeah. Yeah. Usually Nintendo lands that for their first party stuff. They do occasionally make a misstep if they're like, Hey, this is Samus outside of a suit or something like that. But otherwise they're generally pretty good. That was actually not a remark for dread. I guess dread is the most recent one where she might not have had a suit, but I think she mostly does in dread.
00:49:41
Speaker
Um, I think it's full suit. I'm just trying to actually remember where a zero suit Samus is from. I mean, she was, yeah, playable. And there was like a narrative game, I think for GameCube or Wii. I had not kept up with any of the Metroid games. Honestly, I couldn't tell you. I haven't either. I just know it wasn't prime, which is what everyone wanted. They're like prime to let's go. Um, but not today.
00:50:09
Speaker
Um, let's see, I have a couple others I've highlighted. Some of these is particularly interesting. I'll skip over some of the ones that are less interesting. Um, but we can cover some that would go quickly. Vampire survivors. We never stopped talking about it. It's coming out with four player couch co-op. That's pretty neat. Yeah, I would, I'd play with people. Yeah. The progression stuff works. Or if it's just a whatever around Robin.
00:50:40
Speaker
What do you mean by Robin? Every time you like get enough experience to level up, the next person gets a level. Oh, OK. So I guess that balances it out so you don't have like four people just on full God mode. They walk away from their their game.
00:50:56
Speaker
Uh-huh. Yes. Which would entirely, entirely be doable with some of those in-game builds with four people. That seems fun, though, because you could have people go different builds where someone's like, I'm doing books. All right. He's the AOE guy. He's doing like a circle. Uh-huh. I need garlic, please.
00:51:16
Speaker
Yeah, they'll just be in the center of the screen at all times. Everybody else is just doing their high damage as they circle or something. It would actually, I don't remember if they said this in the announcement trailer or not, but it would be interesting if they had like distinct powerups.
00:51:31
Speaker
Mm hmm. So like two people could not get garlic. That would be that would be good. I would at least like at least like to see that as a toggle. If not, then the game's going to have pseudo PvP where you're like, you can't hurt each other. But you can hurt each other, right? Like it's.
00:51:50
Speaker
hmm yeah that'll be curious because you could also kind of get pushed into picking someone else's thing if the RNG is bad right that's true if you have limited number of skips and banishes yeah interesting yeah we'll see how it plays out but I mean props to them just adding more stuff I think this is free I believe free update
00:52:13
Speaker
So it was so weird because like vampire survivors has always been, you know, like a three dollar type game on Steam. Yeah. And then having the the Nintendo announcer in like just English saying, you can play together with your friends, survive for 30 minutes, kill legions of the undead. I'm like, what is happening if it's so surreal? It's uh huh. I want him to just read off obituaries with the same level of enthusiasm.
00:52:42
Speaker
We'd like to say goodbye to Gertrude Smith. Your family wishes you well in the afterlife. He has a very iconic voice though, I do like that.
00:52:56
Speaker
that's a cool note that one I'm gonna skip over I'm gonna just mention that Eve added an official Excel add-on as an Excel aficionado I find this hilarious even though I specifically don't really like Eve anymore it does belong so it's on brand for them
00:53:17
Speaker
I don't even need to discuss that one unless you want to jump in and you have something to add about Yves Excel. Nope. That's fair. Okay. Next one I thought was interesting here and I accidentally indented it too much was Payday 3. Obviously has been announced. It's been announced for a long time, but they've started giving us more information about it.
00:53:38
Speaker
And I thought we had to talk about this because for long-time listeners of which exist maybe two in this recording studio right now, one of our very first episodes was Payday 2. Our very first episode is Payday 2.
00:53:56
Speaker
Well, perhaps even the first. Some would go so far as to say. But it was some interesting news for those that tracked Payday 2 where they played it.
Payday 3 Anticipation
00:54:07
Speaker
You know that there's a very distinct stealth section, stealth segment, and then a loud segment.
00:54:16
Speaker
And sometimes the mission is such that you're like, hey, it's going to just be loud. Nobody bring a suit. Wear actual armor, you nerds. Bring like a good gun with no silencer or whatever the crap. We're going to just be mowing through the legions of police officers, because that's what you do in this game. And then other missions were dedicated stealth. What they were introducing in three is a kind of escalation phase
00:54:43
Speaker
where the security on site might be searching for you. Maybe they've found evidence of your intrusion or something like that and they're searching for you rather than immediately just being alerted and going to cops spawning with guns immediately and come for you. And that included even a hostage negotiation phase.
00:55:04
Speaker
So you might have one player have a hostage come out and start like negotiating with the police. They're not opening fire on you. They haven't like shot at you yet. And less presumably you shoot at them. Um, and you're buying time for everyone else who's still in the bank, drilling the safe, filling the bags, doing stuff like that. And I was like, Oh my gosh, that's such a cool idea. How do you feel about that?
00:55:29
Speaker
Interesting. I'm curious how this plays into the tech trees, right? Because I'm trying to remember the four cardinal directions, but they had people who could specialize in like, hey, are you down? I'm going to shout at you to possibly get you up.
00:55:47
Speaker
So you just mash the button. And that was like a leader role. That's some people who are like better at like explosives and like using the drill and other stuff. So I wonder if there is going to be like perks for negotiating basically like a charisma stat. That would I now imagine like Dan's just as his brain's firing off. He's like, I can bard stat this.
00:56:10
Speaker
Right, exactly. I think that would be good for like that leadership tree. The other thing is, I don't think they've talked too much or I haven't heard anything about the skill trees coming into 3, but it is a jumble lie of like nonsense in 2. There are so many skill trees and perk trees and things like that because they have the main perks and then you get a perk deck on top of that from like your DLC character.
00:56:39
Speaker
It gets absurd. Um, it's just too much and I don't really recommend it also because the game's aged a lot, but I'm hoping that they pair so much of that back and come back to like this description, like what you're providing, what you're describing here of like these core trees and trying to pick out traits from them. Um, cause that was fun. It was a good time. Yeah. I liked people having their, I like when people have respective roles and you can be like, I'm basically going to play as this character today.
00:57:09
Speaker
Especially if like people have like the preferences of like, I want to be like the in the back, snipey person with better vision and better accuracy. I want somebody who's got more self options.
00:57:24
Speaker
There are certain people who specialize in taking down certain types of cops when things go loud. Yeah. I would always bring the Thanatos. If I was going like heavy guy, I'm like, OK, Thanatos. Because they'd have these people walk up in full, I'm going to disarm a bomb that I'm planning to go off in my face type armor. Dozers. Dozers. Yeah. And you had to hit them in the head with armor penetration rounds. And this rifle was like,
00:57:50
Speaker
I'm that guy. I'm 100% that bitch. This is an anti-material rifle, basically. Yes. And it's not like they died in a hit. I think it usually took like two. It was two, I think, yeah. It was good for that. And I occasionally use it on to shield people as well because it would just blast through them.
00:58:07
Speaker
Yeah, it one tapped I think any other special. Yeah, you just kill them with a direct hit. It was really good, but you couldn't get ammo pickups for it. I remember that was being, that was like the downside is usually you can refill your ammo from just standard drops from the security, but you couldn't for the Thanatos because like the ratio of ammo you got back was less than one bullet per pickup. You had to use like dedicated ammo bags to reload that one.
00:58:37
Speaker
It was good. I really like it. I really like that world-based System and I hope they come back to it because by the time we were done in payday 2 I was playing as jacket with a dodge build with like the grinder perk deck for life steal and it's like Is this a heist game anymore? It was still fun but
00:59:03
Speaker
I'm actually, for how long we spent in the game, I'm too scared to go back and play it because of all of the stuff they've added since then. So I need a clean slate. That's why I hope so. I'd be willing to try three, depending what other news comes out for as far as the gameplay. From the trailer that they showed the other week, it very much seemed like two. They're like, here's people in a level. They have guns. They're trying to steal stuff.
00:59:31
Speaker
Yep, familiar. Yes.
00:59:36
Speaker
Nothing mind blowing. I don't think it needs to be. I just need honestly like an engine improvement. Something similar to like what valve did when they went like source one to source two, or source two to source three, whatever source wanted to. If I don't need a third party utility to make your game not shit. I feel like we'll be okay. Yeah. That would be nice too. Let's not go crazy though. That's probably still going to be necessary. Hopefully the engines good. And if they can do make multiplayer stealth work well, then I think that'll also help.
01:00:07
Speaker
Yeah, there was always a big disparity between I'm the host and I'm spotted. Yes. And I actually hope that's what this new like activity phase in the heist introduces to the game is like crap. We were spotted.
01:00:22
Speaker
The mission's not over We might be able to salvage this right like maybe you can take out the guard that spotted you and then All of the other guards are just patrolling now or something like that But it's not like an instant failure scenario where it's like oh, we're all wearing suits. No one has assault weapons Reset, right? We'll spend more. Yeah, that was the other thing
01:00:45
Speaker
Cause like you definitely had to optimize your build specifically for that type of mission. Like shadow raid, probably our most, um, prolific we're going to do stealth and steal shit. Everyone has their specific jobs. I have the two things that threw my basic going through the double, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. Right. But it went loud room to get the key. It was, it was a fail state. And that was just it. You technically did have like a minute to get stuff out, but like you were pretty much just done at that point.
01:01:15
Speaker
Mm-hmm But yeah, there's there's a lot of missions I never tried because they were just they just didn't play very well in that existing payday to structure or they were too complicated a Golden-grin casino. Yeah, we did that maybe once I think I literally did it once golden-grin
01:01:34
Speaker
because it was just not worth it. It was just too much effort and the system didn't really support it. So they have the work cut out for them. I don't have the highest hopes for overkill. Unfortunately, if you guys are listening, prove me wrong. Because the last game I know they worked on was like the Walking Dead one, one of the ones that did not do well, not the telltale story, but
01:02:00
Speaker
it performed very poorly. And I'm hoping that they've learned their lessons and they've taken what they need to to make this one good because we put so much time into Payday and I would love to play it. I just don't want to play Payday too.
01:02:13
Speaker
Yeah. It's one of those things where at the time, okay, again, harkening back to your example of if you have a bad game, but you're playing with friends. I wouldn't say it was a bad game, but so much of the experience was the interaction with friends and like inspiring together, um, regrouping when shit went bad. It was the theming of like the characters and the music was just, Oh my gosh.
01:02:40
Speaker
Choice. I would still go back and listen to that soundtrack so many times. It was so good at so many of those aspects. I like having different cosmetics as a loadout. I was like, oh, this is my heavy loadout. I'm going to find a heavy looking mask. They had so many cool things. I just definitely had some issues throughout. Yes.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, it's a perfect example of a game that has such a great core, and then all of these flawed elements tacked onto it. But that core was so good that we went back to it a lot. And Shadow Raid a lot a lot. That's basically me. I have abs of the gods. The rest of my body is just comically bad, though. I can't speak to Dave's abs. It's been a while.
01:03:30
Speaker
I could show you. It's obviously, it's obviously I'm joking. Rest of his body though. Great shape. He's doing fine. He's speaking in jest, obviously. Um, it's all muscles, pure muscle, just around a marshmallow center, you know?
01:03:46
Speaker
uh-huh sonic and muscles too uh-huh um i know that we're over time you can you can hold this against me i want to talk about one last thing and we can we we can call it because this is dota related this is it
01:04:06
Speaker
So, the people that worked on Dota, presumably, announced that they're going to be moving away from the Battle Pass model.
Dota 2 Community Changes
01:04:20
Speaker
Dave's showing a gasp expression. Why do you think? Why reaction gasps?
01:04:28
Speaker
Oh, I was doing a fake reaction because obviously I played Dota a lot, like it's come up. So I was faking surprise.
01:04:36
Speaker
Okay, I'll tell you their rationale here and you can break it down how you feel about it They said that their rationale was they had I think it's called a foundation update. Was that the last big one or I might be confusing that with no man's sky. I don't know They had a big update the community loved it. They made some sweeping changes to the game again This is the one people were calling like it might as well have been Dota 3, right? I
01:05:00
Speaker
And they're like crap that we got such a good response from that Maybe we should not attach all of our development effort into the content that goes into the battle pass and they specifically called out and I Am interested to hear this. They're like most people don't buy it And so they're gonna stop doing it As someone who plays dota, how does this impact you your day-to-day life your work your religion?
01:05:28
Speaker
Needless to say, I've cancelled all my future plans because I'm going to kill myself. No. So like, for I think a lot of people, if you're a casual player, meaning you occasionally get on and play because it's a free game, you're probably not incentivized to get the battle pass.
01:05:47
Speaker
, and
01:06:00
Speaker
So it feels a bit of that, I guess, FOMO where you feel like you're missing out on something, because you don't have the cool shiny cosmetics that are locked behind. Money! Or money and a fuck ton of time. Then there's like me, who I will invest a little bit here and there, slightly above casual, and then you have some people who are whales.
01:06:23
Speaker
I know one or two whales who, not like they are godly rich, but like they will sink money into it because they want that stuff because Dota is one of their main games, right? So they will just buy Battle Pass levels to get all the cool content that they want.
01:06:40
Speaker
But a lot of that content in there is kind of filler. It might be temporary emotes or I can send out a balloon for my character. Things are so superfluous and just for shits and giggles. But again, it's just temporary for that season of the Battle Pass.
01:06:59
Speaker
So I think that they were trying to get rid of some of that. I am curious though how it's going to be for a lot of the cool skins that you would see in the Battle Pass were usually community made. The Dota 2 community for making cosmetics and skins.
01:07:17
Speaker
It's at least 90% them. They will get a cut of stuff, but so much of that money just got poured into, here's your big tournament, everyone's getting the battle pass, everyone's getting those skins, and that's where it's really popping off.
01:07:37
Speaker
So I'm curious from like a monetization standpoint, how it's going to be. Maybe those have separate things where it's like, hey, here's a pack of skins, maybe still made primarily by the community. And you can opt into it if you want, but it's not gated behind. You got to get a level 500. It gets cool Arcana or like the dog version of Crystal Maiden, right? Yeah. So. Which was Crystal Maiden with a dog, by the way. She didn't become a dog, right?
01:08:03
Speaker
Oh Jake, you haven't played in a while. I haven't, but okay. I guess I'm not aware. She literally is a dog for the one Arcana. Okay. You can also have the dog with you. So it's just two dogs. Dog with dog. Dog with dog.
01:08:17
Speaker
Which is how God intended this is like bristleback bristleback with the armadillo So I guess to answer your question I do like that. They're not going to specifically gate stuff behind it I think a lot of the community is upset because they don't like change and it feels like a weird thing to care about because The major update they had where they changed stuff with the map. It feels good. I
01:08:45
Speaker
Yeah, like it's still I never feel comfortable farming at any point because somebody because of how big the map feels now. It's harder to have like vision lockdown on an area and you'll get ganked a lot. But it makes the game feel fresh, makes it feel more active. Yeah, I feel like I've talked about it too much.
01:09:05
Speaker
I don't know, that's fair. I mean, I was, I was going to let you finish that out. I mean, I can't speak to it for the game perspective as much because I mean, I had a couple battle passes, compendiums basically we called back then, um, where I invested a lot of money into it. Invest is the most generous word I can use. I saw you use it. I'm like, that's a great word. I'm going to use it as well. Um, I got my Enigma bracers make black hole look cool. That's all I needed, but.
01:09:34
Speaker
Then I basically stopped doing that, stopped playing the game, etc, etc. I'm not putting money into a game I'm not playing. Based off what they said, I guess a lot of other people that were playing the game also just weren't picking up the Battle Pass. I'm curious on two fronts. One, everyone else is pushing Battle Passes right now. Everyone else in the AAA industry.
01:09:56
Speaker
Like the numbers have to say that this is where the money is or Else these other companies wouldn't be doing it like bungee is gonna have a battle pass and everything Blizzard battle pass and everything And valves like hmm
01:10:10
Speaker
Well, the out before launch and here's the battle pass. We're not going to have that, you know, right. We're not going to do a seasonal thing. We're not going to do any of that. So I'm really curious how this lead, what the lead up is to this, like what, wherever this goes, um, because it's so against the industry right now. Yeah.
01:10:30
Speaker
And I can't imagine it was a snap judgment. There was one guy, Steve's just like, hey, I don't like working for the battle pass. Could we not? And Gabe's just like, yeah. And then they wrote up the blog post, right? So I'm curious where this goes.
01:10:46
Speaker
It could be not that they specifically need to do it, but it could just be like a good PR move. That's true. Because they essentially pioneered the battle pass, I feel, or at least were an early adopter. And then had they had whatever success with that or didn't definitely did not impede their efforts. And then everyone else kind of like hops on to be like, this is our monetization scheme.
01:11:11
Speaker
Maybe there's like, hey, we don't need to do that to retain player attention, audience. That's pretty insightful. They really were one of the first in and probably one of the first out, assuming that this, well, I'm not going to assume, but if this becomes a trend.
01:11:32
Speaker
So I'm really curious about that. And the last thing, which is a short note, I know we're over time, is the, I wonder if this is gonna impact Valve's development cycle at all, because before they were like, hey, we have to get all this crap ready, we gotta try to ship it in the Battle Pass. And they made it like 50, 75% of the way there, and then everything else in the Battle Pass were just promises for content that was going to be released once they finished it.
01:12:00
Speaker
Um, and so I'm wondering if this could like slow their cadence or if they're just going to start like moving to other projects or exactly what the impact will be. But I guess that's going to be news when it becomes applicable. Yeah, we'll definitely see how it shakes out. Um, I don't think it'll be as catastrophic as the Dota 2 community thinks. I think a lot of those people are just very reactive. That's good. Yeah, that's accurate.
01:12:28
Speaker
Listen, I've been in my 20s. I get it. Uh-huh. Everything's life or death all the time, but. It could be because they saw things like Overwatch where they removed loot boxes and they added the season passes and made added these expensive skins and stuff. And they're just like, ah, Valve, please don't do anything like that to us. Maybe that's maybe they're afraid of losing value. I don't.
01:12:55
Speaker
I don't hate the idea of loot boxes if it's something that's kind of just accrued normally over time. Because as you play Dota 2, you can essentially get a random cosmetic after some games. But usually it's just a small one piece for a character you don't really play. And you're like, okay. And it just goes into a pile you will never see.
01:13:17
Speaker
Yeah. Mm-hmm. But I don't hate the idea of getting things that way. If you're enjoying playing, you get rewards for playing over time type thing. But I just don't like the... I've never liked the incentivization of... Incentivi... hmm. We're definitely over time. I couldn't figure out my words. Can't from it words anymore. I do not like when games incentivize, you should spend money on this.
01:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. It's like, well, nah, you should make the actual content good. Diablo 4. I'm not paying $25 for a fucking horse armor. I get the fuck out of here. $25, yeah.
01:13:51
Speaker
Play Bolivian instead. That's my life advice. Or Diablo if you enjoy it. But if you guys have life advice that you want to send in to us, we're really looking for anything particular to podcast hosts. So we're going very specific on this one. Usually we get too much life advice.
01:14:11
Speaker
Please send that in soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook Which is usually very philosophical full of good life advice and things taken from posters on walls at Facebook.com soapstone podcast and as always we'll see in the next one later haters