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S1 Ep28: Anything
72 Plays7 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about a bunch of stuff in this week's episode!
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Transcript
Podcast Kickoff and Co-host Dynamics
00:00:48
Speaker
How's it going everybody? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake. I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? You say always as if you assume you're going to be here. Maybe you shouldn't be so sure of yourself, Jake. The always is actually attached to the co-host part. It's like, to my co-host, as always.
Format Changes After Poland Trip
00:01:07
Speaker
Dave, what are you doing tonight, Dave? My name is actually as always. Dave is just a verb you use to get my attention.
00:01:16
Speaker
it's like there's a bunch of hyphens in between there it's like as always like comma Dave that's your full name like Hillary Rodham Clinton yeah yeah yeah reverse but have an extra mundane episode tonight not focused on a particular game well it makes it extra all of our episodes from Monday
00:01:39
Speaker
Why do people listen to this? Why do we record it? I don't know. I'm having a crisis at the moment. Not under our own willpower. Well, I mean... We are trapped in a room. Yeah. But I mean, we are changing up the format again to go back to our more freeform stuff because you recently have traveled. That's true. World traveler over here. You were just in Poland for two weeks, right? Yep.
00:02:04
Speaker
Got back. They immediately locked me in this room, waited for the podcast to start. The microphone descended
Content Strategy Amidst Challenges
00:02:09
Speaker
in the middle here. And, uh, when did the budget go up? Uh, no, it's, uh, it's interesting. Yeah. Give it a shot. See how Poland is. That's my advice. Yeah. Jake's saying that because I am also leaving Poland this weekend for two weeks. Yeah, that shouldn't mess up or, uh, are scheduled all. Yeah. We, um,
00:02:33
Speaker
I actually got, I didn't want to interrupt you, but I had no comments about the fact that we released content consistently all the weeks that I was in another country. I love that.
00:02:44
Speaker
I mean, nobody pays attention enough to it besides us to notice, but it was cool to be like, all right, we have a week before you go to Poland. Let's quickly do like three things. So we did two episodes and then we did the animated. And then for this one, we're like, okay, when Jake gets back, we'll, oh my God, I'll leave in a week. And
Halloween Episode Considerations
00:03:04
Speaker
then we're like, fuck.
00:03:05
Speaker
Well, I was like, fuck, Jake doesn't swear. So we're kind of like, let's do an episode. And then Jake got sick a little bit. Yeah. We're just like, all right, we got some ideas, got some topics and things. And then I just like collapsed on the ground and died. Yeah. Wasn't the best. Don't recommend. But I'm here now. We get to record at least one episode.
00:03:29
Speaker
Probably one episode. Yeah, I don't
Gaming Discussions: Faeria and Magic
00:03:31
Speaker
think we're doing another this week honestly, but as you're looking like a Bane looking motherfucker slash Mortal Kombat one of a It's a very budget Halloween costume, please try harder for my party
00:03:48
Speaker
Oh man, we'll have to... Do we even have time for a Halloween episode? We won't, will we? What would you want to even do it on? I have no idea. We can talk about that later, I suppose, but... In the Halloween episode! In the Halloween episode. We'll do it live!
00:04:07
Speaker
Just record the party. We'll just have a... We'll have a speakerphone. We'll pick one lucky listener somewhere in the world. Visit their house and yell at them. Just have to submit your address first. We won't tell you if you've won. We'll just show up and yell at you. I can think of at least three people who'd be like on board for that. I've probably done enough traveling for now since I get sick when it happens. But that's alright. That is alright. Enough about physical sickness.
00:04:37
Speaker
stuff's falling. Leading question into actual topic stuff. What have you been playing recently, Dave? I don't know. Okay. That topic fell apart. Recently in between like work and other hobbies, I like to kind of revisit certain
00:04:59
Speaker
simple games, you're kind of like easy to play for a little bit, kind of like bite size. Right. So like I know we talked about fairy in the past. Yes. I'm still kind of playing that on and off. Oh, yeah. Slowly increasing my card collection so that if you ever dare to play me again, I will hopefully be I have all the cards I want to have that perfectly tuned deck.
00:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, that's the problem though. That's what makes it difficult for me to play against you, is you have a good deck. I only prefer to play competitive games against people that don't stand a chance of beating me. That's why when we first played, I was like, okay, one round with a decent deck. Kind of like a pool hustler. Hold on. It was just, the first round was just a decent deck. And then I came in with the garbage and the thing that just generated legend days.
00:05:48
Speaker
Yeah. You played a legendary, we generated other legendaries. I didn't even know legendaries were cards at this point. And I'm sitting there with my 2-2 like...
00:05:57
Speaker
Oh, shit. They're going to keep coming, aren't they? Mouse is overcard, generates legendary. I held off for a little bit, but not enough to like be like, oh, we did a good job. Yeah. You could have beaten me with a really aggro deck, but not like a random starter. But now I think I have a good diversity of decks. I have the orange deck, which is my red and yellow, red and yellow, red and yellow. Yeah. But the yellow is very like you place creature usually will have haste. That's a lot.
00:06:25
Speaker
intended for swinging at face and red also has some swinging at face obviously but also has some like combat triggers so you might get extra fairy if your character your creatures in combat or you might deal damage to the enemy hero there's a lot of that yeah
00:06:43
Speaker
So I kind of like that as an aggro, or more specifically, my Christmas deck, which is red and green. And a lot of that is just you want to get board presents. So you put out your kind of mid-range. Yeah, presents. I didn't even think about that one. Nice catch.
00:07:00
Speaker
Trying to get like some board clear in there as well. Yeah, cuz obviously like red has some deal direct damage or Place character deal damage nearby or combat deal damage. Yeah, they're they do damage. Yeah, there's a lot of them So I kind of like that mid-range right now. That's where I'm at Yeah, I've been periodically kind of clearing my dailies there
00:07:24
Speaker
the new the new model where you buy in to like own the game initially and then the quest give you a bunch of rewards favors me personally because i don't have as much time to play games as i used to in the past and i have to diversify i've got like obligations sometimes like i have to play specific games for like media and content that we have to create you get to you don't get to i get this opportunity but in either case
00:07:52
Speaker
Appreciate that when I play Faria and it's been like a couple days I'll be able to knock out all my quests and you know immediately get a bunch of cards. Yeah nice like So one of things is like oh deal 50 damage creatures total. I'm like, okay It's like a one or two game stops. Mm-hmm. That might be deals much damage to enemy hero play this number of cards of a certain color. Mm-hmm
00:08:17
Speaker
So if I go on and play for like an hour, I'm probably clearing two quests. If I'm actually doing the quest cards, I'll probably level up. Yeah. Or typically I've been going into Pandora, which is your kind of like you pay in either like two packs or certain crystals, which is the game currency. And you go through like five or six games against AI, or I think you have the option to do players as well. Yeah. But then afterwards you get more than what you paid in back.
00:08:48
Speaker
And it's cool because you get such a like drafted deck. Yeah, yeah. So I kind of base things off of like, okay, well I have some of these cards. And then I kind of be like, okay, what's my mana ramp? What's my overall cost? And it's just, I like the drafting part of it too. You also will get to use cards you don't have. That is very useful. That is actually really cool to get a better feel for the entire collection of things you have encountered.
00:09:14
Speaker
Drafting is a really popular mechanic in many games as it turns out. I mean this sounds really similar to me. I think I did one Pandora run. Yeah. Sounds really similar to me to Hearthstone's Arena. Except I don't do Arena because it puts me against other people who are good at Arena. So Fairy is nice in that you can choose to play against the AI. Then it's kind of just like an increasing difficulty or random distribution of difficulty for the enemies. And sometimes
00:09:41
Speaker
you're basically going to find yourself in a situation where you drafted a deck that there is an enemy that's good against you. Yeah. And my most recent run, I was like on my fourth match and like, okay, let's see what's going on. And I was against Tarum and he had like these really beefy, just mono green creatures. I'm like, Oh, I don't have a way to really clear board on this. Maybe have like a deal, a couple of damage spell. But I didn't have anything like trade to remove his stuff. So I just got wrecked pretty early on.
00:10:12
Speaker
But then I'm like, okay, let me do, let me try again. Cause you have, uh, up to two failures before you get booted out. And I was up against somebody completely different. I kicked their ass. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fairy is really solid. Um, I'm happy with it. And I play as a PV game. I basically very rarely play against people.
00:10:32
Speaker
but I have a lot of fun with it. Do you ever find yourself stretching out one match to complete your quest? You're like, hey, I gotta play this one card so many times. So I'm gonna draw through my entire deck while I completely control the board just to complete your quest, be that, play a bunch of creatures, drop a bunch of lands, something like that.
00:10:52
Speaker
Is that just me? No? Okay, that's just me. I often forget my active quest is, so maybe if I remembered it at the time, I would play the same way. Uh-huh. But there's times where I like have the entire board full of like super, like lethal threats, have the guy at like two health, and then he dies when he runs out of cards and just fatigues. I'm like, got it, maximum quest progress.
00:11:16
Speaker
Jake I'll be honest. I did not know fatigue was a mechanic in the game really. I really did not huh I didn't even consider it because it never got to that point. There's a This is not the fairy of podcasts. We'll have to dedicate one for that later. Not really there's a blue card. That's a structure and On production it's pay to life draw a card gain to now. Yeah
00:11:44
Speaker
and I had a deck that was basically centered around just drawing through everything and generating tons of mana like flooding the board and it was just at suicidal speeds basically which is great for completing quests when you have to draw down to this specific lore card you want to play yeah and so I have like two of those in play I take four damage per change yeah it's like I'm just gonna wait this one out it was pretty great
00:12:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's fair. Yeah There's a related thing here that a lot of people have been playing that we didn't talk about Which is Magic the Gathering Arena? Yeah, I know some of our listeners are actually playing While listening while listening. Yeah focus on the podcast we deserve it. No. Yeah, we don't it's something I'm actually said I haven't checked out yet I need to set aside some time too, but I've been hearing
00:12:41
Speaker
Pretty good things across the board as far as how it's been playing and how it's designed compared to MTG online, which has just been a kind of a claustrophoc. I mean anything designed compared to MTG online, right? Yeah. I did play through my first encounter with a person
00:12:59
Speaker
They do have a very very slow tutorial but you can there's like a little guardian sprite lady like a fairy thing that maybe exists in the universe I don't know about but you can click anything she says to like skip dialogue so if the opponent's taunting you being like haha you'll never find a way past my
00:13:21
Speaker
two guys in play that are taps or whatever. Just something dumb. You just be like, shut up. And it skips it. So you can go through the tutorial really quickly if you skip all of that. Because it's literally just magic rules. Yeah. Yeah. It is magic, right? I'm going to re-interpretize the 90s magic rules. Magic rules.
00:13:47
Speaker
It keeps coming up in videos I've watched recently. It's actually really good. The graphics and sound design and just the whole setup is very smooth. It plays really fast.
00:14:02
Speaker
We had talked
Destiny 2 and Game DLC Critiques
00:14:03
Speaker
a little bit, not here on the podcast, but we talked about the fact that by default, it'll pass your turn if you don't have an action. So like take priority, but you can actually just hold control at any point to hold your turn. And then if you hold control and hit shift, it locks it and it goes into a mode where it will hold all of your turns until you explicitly pass. So you can do that like each round, you just turn that on.
00:14:29
Speaker
and turn it off whenever you feel like it, if you feel like passing. Maybe turn it on at the start of the round and then turn it off later once you've convinced your opponent that you're just, you know, you're not auto-passing. I think it's good in any type of thing like that to always do some degree of mystery. Maybe you have something good in your hands, maybe you don't.
00:14:52
Speaker
But you always want them a little bit on edge. Yeah. Unless you are trying to trick them in to be like, yeah, you should totally burn that powerful spell and get rid of my one small dude. Yes. Because you're sitting on a really big dude. Which is literally the story of my only PvP match, because that game on, like, Faria is only versus players. There's the tutorial, and then, boom, going against players. Yeah. They have the draft mode. They have to do, like, quick play.
00:15:20
Speaker
They give you a standard deck for each color. I don't believe that any of the default decks are mono color. I think they're all, or no, no, dual color. I think they're all mono. But you can get the packs in-game from anything in standard, I believe, currently. There was like three or four. Well, from what I've seen, they actually have some things which I'm not sure if the latest block is released.
00:15:49
Speaker
but the last new, they keep going back to Ravnica, I'll be honest. It is Ravnica. Which isn't bad. I think most people who follow magic are like, Ravnica is the shit. Because it added a lot of cool designs, mechanics, and lore to the game and the universe. Yeah.
00:16:06
Speaker
But I feel like they're milking it a little bit. I mean, literally made it a campaign setting for D&D. So maybe. Yeah, there is a play test code or redemption code you could use to get free Ravnica packs, which I'm sure is all over the internet.
00:16:31
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, it gets rid of the parts of magic that obviously turned me off a little bit, which was my inability to shuffle a hundred card deck and play EDH. But I don't know, might play a little bit more, give it a shot. It has weeklies and dailies.
00:16:50
Speaker
So they they have those hooks that all new kind of you have the option to spend money and games have as far as repeatable quests things that want to keep you playing
00:17:03
Speaker
That sounds good. I'll definitely have to check that out, install it, and then I'll play a game against you. You can't do that. He's setting a tone, knowing that they currently don't have a way to just match up against your friends. You're just kind of up against random people, right? Yeah, and it doesn't integrate with Steam, which is the other thing I know you dislike. I have it added as a non-Steam game, so it shows up in Steam, and I can launch it through Steam. I think...
00:17:29
Speaker
I don't know, I feel like that might be a mistake. I'm not sure what profits Esteem takes from games that are just hosted on their platform like that. It's a free game and there's other free games, so I don't know. Maybe they have a micro transaction clause. They almost definitely do.
00:17:47
Speaker
But they could have integrated with the steam Friends list they could have not forced people to make like wizard accounts and just use people's team accounts. Yeah so I don't know it's it's a little obnoxious, but If the game gets real good, I'm sure people played anyways I Think it definitely has promised one of her like if they add in some quality of life features direct matchmaking
00:18:15
Speaker
And I think I also heard today, cause this is like part of just like my lunch discussion. Um, they currently only have one or two game modes, right? Yeah, I think I'm pretty sure they have draft and, um, just standard matchmaking. Um, I think that's about it right now.
00:18:35
Speaker
And I'm not 100% sure on the draft. I haven't actually tried that one. I just heard that it existed. So people could be lying on the internet. It must be true. Yeah, that's interesting. Other things I've been playing recently. I've been trying to catch up in Destiny 2. That game is...
00:18:57
Speaker
Probably it has a lot I could talk about that. I'm not going to but TLDR Really fun when it launched played with a lot of friends The season pass gave you the first two DLCs Everybody thought they were garbage and because they were kind of garbage as far as values concerned Just like not a lot of content in the DLC. It's exactly that Bungie has this problem where they are like great at world building They have like amazing art
00:19:25
Speaker
sound design, their characters you know sometimes could use a little bit more work but usually are good and then they have content you can clear in like a night for when the DLC came out. So you play like not even just a night like I'm gonna sit down and dedicated play this but like two or three hours and you're pretty well done. So that was bad.
00:19:47
Speaker
I don't want to interrupt the full train of thought. But what I think is interesting, this is like a societal observation of mine. So how much is the DLC that was shitty and cleared in the night? It was something like 1520 standard DLC price. So is that like five or six hours then? Clear time?
00:20:09
Speaker
For the main story, it was literally, I think, two and a half or something like that. There's also other activities and things you can do, but I mean, not everybody cares about that.
00:20:20
Speaker
So let's say 15 bucks, three hours, right? Yeah. It's like five bucks an hour and you're getting enjoyment out of it where if like you go to a movie, you're paying more. If you go out to eat, you're paying more. I'm not trying to justify Bungie's content and prices, but it is always interesting when you look at it, like the direct, what you're getting out of the value. And I feel like that's kind of.
00:20:46
Speaker
The ratio is definitely transitioned over time. Yeah. Cause you remember the early days, like I'm sure games that cost a lot for the time, but like now they're nothing for anything retro, but like you got, you spent so much time on it and you replayed content. But now like we were, we refused to kind of replay a lot of people and myself included for sure. There is that kind of.
00:21:10
Speaker
a law of diminishing returns. Yeah. You have a backlog. You have other interesting things to do. Yeah, exactly. There's always
MMOs, Grinding, and Replayability
00:21:16
Speaker
something vying for your attention in the current year. The issue, I think, in this particular case with Destiny and Bungie is Destiny is a pseudo-MMO. So people wanted to play it with their friends. They wanted to keep playing it.
00:21:33
Speaker
It even if it's not like an MMO that it's at least something that has MMO like qualities and Be like, alright, let's all come back for the expansion and then everyone's there for one night, you know that yeah, that's not a great sign
00:21:48
Speaker
Even when we revitalize Minecraft servers for like two weeks, it's like, people are on for like four days at least. Yeah, Minecraft had way more longevity coming back to it with no added content than this does. I know we have like the whole fucking episode on it, but it still blows my mind that like a game that I paid $20 for, what feels like at least 10 years ago, has still provided so much value in going back to it.
00:22:14
Speaker
this is the counter argument to those like five bucks per hour thing yeah think about your rate of return on minecraft there are other games like that like a penny falls out of my pocket every two weeks that's how much minecraft has cost me over the course of time yeah it's nuts it's it's pretty good um
00:22:33
Speaker
Anyways, that's the dark days of Destiny. After the season passed right now, they released Forsaken, which is their latest DLC, which is unlike the other ones, it's not like a bite-sized chunk, it's like a full-on expansion.
00:22:48
Speaker
And that added a ton of content, a new raid, a whole bunch of nonsense. And I'm still kind of working my way through it. They finally figured out that they shouldn't have the grind progression end like very soon after the main story. So people could just rush through the game and just call it a day. So it's gonna take like probably two months, something like that, maybe even longer to completely cap out if you're playing
00:23:18
Speaker
sort of casually like I do. Do you need to cap out to clear content? So some of the raid content, it really really helps. Basically the first week that we could go into the raid, theoretically, we were at power level like 520, 530-ish, and the first boss on the raid is like 550.
00:23:39
Speaker
So it's like mate something like that. So it's maybe possible really really hard and then every boss beyond that gets harder and harder and harder and I think the the last one or something it's like 590 and the cap is 600 so There's only so much you can do to raise your power levels throughout the week. That's your dailies and your weeklies and stuff like that Here's the trick
00:24:02
Speaker
They have all this content, amazing new area. It's great. It's awesome. Great design. But now that they've spread it out, some people are kind of complaining because you can only get so much done each week and dailies and weeklies like start to wear on you after a while.
00:24:21
Speaker
Yeah. Like it's literally, you'll find the most efficient way to do that. Even if there's more entertaining ways to play the game, you'll find the most efficient way to progress. And sometimes that's like just doing the same content over and over again. You're like, why am I here? Right? Then you quit. That gets really depressing. Cause I can remember back in the days and more of my friends played while some people would log on and just be like, I got to clear my day.
00:24:48
Speaker
And they'd spend like an hour or two hours doing that and that's it. Yeah. And like, why do you play this game? Yes. Because if it becomes mandatory or you need to grind certain things to progress, it seems to take the fun out of it once it becomes mandatory.
00:25:05
Speaker
It's a really, really hard balance. And I don't know if I've ever seen an MMO that does it perfectly between locking content so people have things to work towards, having goals people can work towards, and making the grind just stretch out forever like you're a Korean MMO. And you're just like, hey, let's just add an exponential curve to an experience required every level.
00:25:29
Speaker
So that's where Destiny is right now. It's way better than it was when we left it. But, you know, it's still got stuff that they could work on. I'm just waiting for the hype to die down a little bit so I can play games with maybe like one other person again from that original group of people.
00:25:49
Speaker
I mean, we played Overwatch last night. Yeah, that's true. I was surprised you messaged me. I'm literally always online. I mean, I might travel on weekends, but weekdays, weeknights, after work, after gym, I'm just home. I'm not out doing shit.
00:26:07
Speaker
You're like, hey, do you want to do the Overwatch event? I'm like, yeah, I'll check it out. I realize it's probably been like half a year since I invited you to a game or something. But the thing that really drives it home is I see Jake almost every fucking day, refuses to talk to me. It's really awkward. It's not true. But that was a fun event. I enjoyed that. It's the same one they had previously, just slightly modified. Yes.
00:26:32
Speaker
They, I think they expanded some of the modes, changed up the abilities on the enemies. Since Symmetra had her rework, they're like, let's actually have her use the ultimate. I remember the point, because we did, like, the progressively harder one that had like 20 waves or something. Endless is what it's called, yeah. Fuck you, by the way. Well, she played one more game. Select Endless Mode secretly.
00:26:57
Speaker
But like they had up like two or three walls. And I think I was playing Torbjorn or something. Where like my turret's like, what do you want me to do? I'm like, I don't know. Don't look at me. Melee somebody walks through the wall, figure it out.
00:27:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's an interesting mode. They do bring these back for each event. They have this one in Uprising, I think, or some of the PvE content. But each time they add some new heroes, like Torbjorn to the pool, Genji. Makes it a little more interesting. Efficient way to grind out your weekly loot boxes if you're into that. And I am because I got to get the cosmetics because of Lizard Brain. It's like...
00:27:41
Speaker
sees a Hollow Knight armor or something like that for Pharah and I'm like, I'm gonna buy that if I don't get it. The thing is, they have added really cool designs. Like in a lot of games, like some other Blizzard's content, like let's say here's the Storm. Yeah. A lot of other stuff is, let me say here's the Storm in general. It's fucking uninspired. But they'll have a lot of- I'll contest this point Blizzard, keep me under consideration.
00:28:07
Speaker
They have a lot of just skin recolors and 90% of the time I mean they do an overwatch to just like okay, but why there's your why would you ever? Yeah, like I'll give it to you For free and like thanks, but like I'm waiting for like an actual cool ones like be like I identify as this character I want to be a cool version of this character and show if I can do yeah, I
00:28:32
Speaker
A lot of it's to pad out the loot box pool. Yeah, I think that's true. That's why they added sprays. A curve of kind of experience where it's just like, this is mediocre, this is mediocre. That's awesome. Got the legendary skin.
00:28:48
Speaker
If it was all just the good stuff you could like open 10 or 20 boxes and just be like I'm done everything good so not to tangent back into card games because Everything's connected and the universe as a whole if you think about our individual exists anyway with magic One of the reasons they don't put all like good cards and they have some of those like why would this card be in here? Yeah
00:29:12
Speaker
A part of it is like for new players coming in so they can learn like very simple mechanics Mm-hmm. Like oh, this is power and toughness the other part of it is to like pad out because magic as a whole Like when you have an expansive card game you have like this power creep. Yes Or if you don't have those limitations of different modes like standard you like I'm gonna pair this thing with this other thing here like
00:29:37
Speaker
over 25 years, we didn't consider that as a factor. Yes. And that's terrifying. And you have like these turn, when we're, whoa, words. Yeah. Turn one, when decks. Yeah.
00:29:50
Speaker
super interactive. It's definitely like a different situation because less quality skins don't help new players in any way. But yeah, it's important for card building games to have options like that. And it's important to put things into sets that you know won't be viable for this set because it gives you options for the next set.
00:30:13
Speaker
Yeah,
Skyrim and Modding Insights
00:30:14
Speaker
like it's important to be like, hey, we expect that these decks might come into the meta or we're going to enable these decks. Maybe aggro is going to have its turn to rain. We'll have like token decks or whatever. But we're going to make a very accessible AOE like clear come in or some combo you can you can like fire off to clear the board in a later set. And it'll balance that out so you can kind of like have this ebb and flow that magic is really good at. Probably the best.
00:30:44
Speaker
as far as doing that consistently and building off of their previous release each time. I just prefer that type of progression in, I guess, more open formats. So if I'm going through a game, it is cool to find that special loot. You're like, oh, I found some gold, I found some health potion, found some...
00:31:07
Speaker
hearts. Yeah, from something. Yeah. And then you find like, Oh, what's it? Oh, this is better than mine. Oh, this is dope as shit. Yeah, it is really cool to have that moment and something like
00:31:18
Speaker
Oh, I don't know, Skyrim? Yeah. Where like you find like this, oh, it has this cool enchantment on the thing. Oh, it looks badass. Oh, I'm going to run around and do cool shit with it. Yeah. It's part of the importance of game design is figuring out where to put those like dopamine rushes, where those highs. Yeah, you want to have the progression. Yes. I don't think you can be like, hey,
00:31:42
Speaker
you're starting with a god weapon from here on out to be progressively more insane god weapons yeah okay like you mentioned skyrim i know we both played that a little bit um recently i played it a little bit recently recently if you were to confine for the last two weeks we played it significant amount but uh
00:32:07
Speaker
Probably not as much as other people played over the course of time because it's been out forever. Yes But it was actually born same here came out dragon Now we can But it's one of those things I like
00:32:25
Speaker
I was saying it's easy to go back to. Remember I once subscribed to somebody like as like a kind of like bottom bitch game. Like it's always there for you. You can go back.
00:32:39
Speaker
It's just, it's very cathartic to kind of explore, have that progression. Like, oh, I get to level up. I'm going to put a skill point in this. Yeah. It's cool to unlock new abilities. It's cool to become stronger. A lot of games is that progression. Yeah. Cause you're like, Megaman's perfect example. Cause you always start off at like this baseline because you know, you don't fucking have any upgrades and you then have to work through, beat the bosses, get the upgrades, get your power armor.
00:33:08
Speaker
and then go fuck shit up yeah it's an important part of of games is like having this consistent progression yeah you don't want to hand it to you there's no joining that yeah it's i mean i think we both and probably many people have had the experience where we're like i'm gonna play this game also cheat codes exist i'm gonna use cheat codes what happened to the fun of this game like um
00:33:33
Speaker
the difficulty and the challenge and the rise, I would say, to power is what makes some of those more interesting. Like, I know the first time I played Skyrim, stealth archer, obviously, obligatory.
00:33:48
Speaker
But I also Find it very hard to not go into enchanting like enchant like crazy. Yeah Eventually like get that perk that makes it so you can have two enchantments on something and you're just like alright now how do I like? Optimize everything literally everything else is like it's all just Content I could complete at any point because I can like summon like Daedric Lords at this point with conjuration to kill things
00:34:16
Speaker
You're like, alright, no, bound bow, summon that in, got the whole kit. Don't need to be any more powerful, but I feel like I have to finish the enchanted set of whatever I'm doing for the alchemy, sniffing, enchanting, god, triumvirate of a brokenness that is a game.
00:34:39
Speaker
yeah i don't even know if i ever stuck around long enough to do that in any of my playthroughs because you get way too powerful way too quickly but yeah um
00:34:52
Speaker
It's important to do. And if you screw it up, so like at the start of that game, they give you access to almost every weapon type, but it's all just basic stuff. They're just like, here's a steel sword. Here's a great sword. Here's a bow. Here's a dagger. You can kind of find what you like to play around with and then kind of invest into that more so if you want to as it goes on. Yeah. But one thing I've really enjoyed going back and playing it again,
00:35:19
Speaker
many moons ago you found this mod pack it kind of linked it to me yes which made the skill trees not shit yeah ordinator yeah typically I think it was like maybe I'm just gonna pick number eight let's say like eight things you could build into across like ten level gab shit oh cool I hope to be able to stab somebody with my knife twice at level 100 yeah and it's just kind of like I see what you're trying to do but ordinator really
00:35:48
Speaker
spaces it out better so you have like a lot more going on it adds a lot of perks too and you feel cool it appeals to the male power fantasy it does though it does but it is it does add stuff so like i'm running two-handed right now trying to be a very beefy dude run out with like two-handed axe or club whatever has the highest dps yeah but a lot of my things you're like oh you hit them with an axe they're getting bleeding damage
00:36:18
Speaker
You're hitting them with a club. Their armor is reduced. You're hitting them with a sword. They now deal less damage. And it's just these really cool effects and other things like, oh, you have a higher chance to just like insta-give somebody. I'm like, I like that. Yeah. The only thing like that that existed in vanilla was a decapitation on crit. You could decapitate people. I think it was sold just some weapons, but
00:36:43
Speaker
Yeah. The cool thing about that mod is it splits out so many trees for each type. Like conjuration, one of them specifically for conjuring elementals, one of them's for necromancy. I don't know if you saw that. I haven't dabbled, no. So it's necromancy. And as soon as you start down the path, it changes the loot table for humanoid enemies you fight so you can collect their bones. Oh, no, no, no, I did do that. Yeah.
00:37:08
Speaker
And then you pray at the bone altars to like summon skeletons in the skeleton army. And they're like semi-permanent. And the way it works is, the higher your base magic is, the more skeletons you can summon. And as you continue down the tree, it's like, instead of a skeleton for every 150 magic that you have, it's a skeleton for every 75 magic you have, stuff like that. So you're just like, eventually you just have a ton of these skeletons running around. And then eventually you get mages, and I'm just like, we're back to Diab.
00:37:38
Speaker
You go into the end, you're like, I'd like to rent a room for, uh, Zorazar's counting. I'd like to rent the inn. I'd like to rent the town. A lot of skeletons that need a nap.
00:37:48
Speaker
Yeah, the only problem in that game is, since it is 3D and you've got these tiny corridors and things sometimes, or you walk into a room and you need to leave. Oh, you get blocked by your companions? Yeah. The mod actually makes it so you can shove your skeletons as an action. Like, if you interact with them, you get a shove option. But it's not enough sometimes.
00:38:08
Speaker
Don't beat your bones. That's another thing. Because that whole modpack, besides the skill trees, we're talking about how much nicer the UI is and how it's fucking legible. Or the convenience of being able to move your summons or companions out of the way so you can fucking get to places. Are such simple quality of life things.
00:38:31
Speaker
that it's surprising that it was missed in the base game. Yeah, it would be if it wasn't Bethesda. Also Bethesda keep me under consideration. But Bethesda's never really fixed some of these basic quality of life things before their games go live.
00:38:51
Speaker
It seems like
Community Contributions in Gaming
00:38:52
Speaker
it always makes it through and there's mods that come out very soon to fix a good example of this before I just ramble on the UI. So the default UI in Skyrim is garbage. There's basically no other way to put it, it's garbage.
00:39:08
Speaker
Yeah. Even consoles eventually got like a radial wheel and things like that. And Skyrim's stuck with vertical selection wheels for like selection bars for everything. Yeah, they googled like, how do we display a collection of items? Yes. First thing, list. There you go. List. There's a list. Vertical list. Yeah. But what if we have to display a collection within a collection? Oh, it expands to a list. OK, gotcha.
00:39:38
Speaker
That's literally the UI that's like the initial like Windows 95 approach to uh, yeah, let's just keep dropping shit down It's like it's a step up from like how do I how do I view my armor well CD armor You have a breastplate some grieves you grieve
00:40:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's brutal and I know We're talking a little bit of shit on Bethesda. Well, I am you someone to work for them, right? Yeah, I don't know. I mean like I mean it about it my options
00:40:13
Speaker
Stuff like that I find frustrating because it seems like why wouldn't you just do this minor thing? Yes. Take this into consideration. Put yourself in the shoes of your consumer and be like, oh, you know, be more convenient? This. Yeah. Because when you have those little things that are kind of wrong or a little bit off or like, why didn't they just fix this?
00:40:38
Speaker
It really detracts away from the immersion. It was really fun to just go into a game. You're like, I'm into it. I'm playing it. You spend like three hours and you're like, that game was really fucking enjoyable. Like I enjoy the graphics. I enjoy the sound, the mechanics of the gameplay. Everything just feels so good, but it sucks when you have like one thing or, you know, 17 things. That is the case. We're just like, why is this janky as fuck?
00:41:07
Speaker
Yeah, for every game that they've released, there's been an unofficial patch released that usually comes recommended and fixes tons of bugs with their official content, including the DLC they release. And because of that, I mean, very rarely do they need to go back and do that themselves. Not that they usually leave game-breaking bugs in,
00:41:31
Speaker
but minor things end up getting fixed by the community. And it's actually really hilarious. You can get mod cleaners and things like that, things that will look through the mods to see if there's missing references, kind of like an empty pointer or something like that. Something that points to something that doesn't exist.
00:41:48
Speaker
and it's just like all of these mods are good all of your custom mods are good but it treats the base expansions and base game also as content and it's like there are a lot of problems here though I'm like I can't change that that's literally the game I always found that funny
00:42:09
Speaker
But yeah, the community definitely steps up and makes the Elder Scrolls for me. Like as part of our time playing around with the game, I played through a modded version, not all the way, but for a chunk. But for the heck of it, I played an unmodded version and it's hard. It's really tough to give up all of that.
00:42:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's not the quality of life change, especially when you become accustomed to the more convenience and tweaks version kind of streamlines. It's not just Bethesda that relies on the modding community, though, like that. I think probably the most common one or the most known one is probably Valve, given that they literally are producing content for
00:43:03
Speaker
All of their money making games, uh, almost solely by the community at this point. I mean, there's exceptions. I guess for Dota two, they did the events, um, things like that. But a lot of the, so let's say they have a.
00:43:20
Speaker
What are they called? Collectors, caches or chests or treasures? Caraf. Trove Carafe? Yeah, I think it's a Frappe Cappuccino. Anytime you get that Moquiato, like you have like, let's say like seven or 10 skins. Yeah. Sure. Certain ones are made by Valve, but a lot of them, like I've seen through like the community submissions,
00:43:46
Speaker
And like, well, that's a really highly voted for like somebody who like spends time to make that and like almost does this living if they, or if they actually just do it as living.
00:43:56
Speaker
Like, Oh, that sounds really cool. And then like later I'll see it like in the game. I'm like, yeah, you guys didn't fucking make that. Yeah. And like, there are people who, who make their living off of that by being the, um, the purveyor of goods for valve, be like the first firsthand, like here's some art I made and vowels. Like we can make money off this. It's almost like.
00:44:17
Speaker
Valve is a king and like everyone else is kind of like paying their fealty. It's like I have three crops of harvest And it's like I won't kill you You kind of just scutter off just hoping they don't you know, yeah change their mind Yeah, to be fair. We have no proof that there's a cause in their contract. I
00:44:37
Speaker
Valve will kill these people if they stop producing content. Valve please consider me. We also don't have evidence that there's not such a cause in their contract. Take that as you will. It's an interesting balance.
00:44:57
Speaker
Valve is always trying to find ways to get the community involved in their games and their projects and finding ways to monetize that also because they're a business and that's what they do. True, but I really, really appreciate it because part of it is I'm not a naturally born citizen. I was going to say, I'm not a
00:45:25
Speaker
I can't think of the exact word I want, but I'm not a generous kind person to like a random stranger. Benevolent God. Yeah, I'm not that guy. I'm okay. And maybe in certain lights, I'm cool or nice. But like, I don't go around being extra nice and just doing things for strangers. Yes. But when you have like members of the modern community that come in,
00:45:48
Speaker
Like when we were doing Dark Souls, and we fucking found that Wolf's connectivity mod, it actually allowed us to fucking play the game together. That basically saved our co-op experience. I know. And it was nuts that we were trying for like an hour, trying to play the fucking game together, because it has that capability and we weren't able to. Or just basic DS fix for other things. The essential for Dark Souls 1, Unremastered.
00:46:19
Speaker
So, like, if it wasn't for a lot of people in the modding community, a lot of games would blow extra dick. Yeah. Like, even Isaac, which is a great game on its own and still keeps having these updates and DLCs. Like, when Antibirth came out, somebody had just, like, made that of, like, their own version and had all these different items and effects. That was really fucking cool.
00:46:43
Speaker
Yeah, no, it's a solid amount of content that the community fills in here. And usually when it comes to mods, the diversity is there so you can pick whatever experience you want. Like there's...
00:46:58
Speaker
I've almost said billions, probably not billions. Hundreds, thousands of Skyrim mods I'll never try. Because I just don't care. You couldn't make me care. But they're nude. Right, right. They're naked crabs.
00:47:14
Speaker
You can get top hats for the mud crabs. Send me that shit. It's actually great. I think it replaces their sounds with a guy yelling or something like that. It's amazing.
00:47:29
Speaker
Did you watch or do you remember Dunkey's video on Skyrim not to go back to Skyrim too much But was this the dragon replacement? Do you have the dragon replacement? That was one of the things there's just fucking Thomas the Tank Engine And like you start to hear like the theme instead of like the dragon or it's like what the fuck
00:47:47
Speaker
Off in the distance. Yeah. Part of that is just for like meme sake, which I love. But the other part is how you're saying for like customizing your experience. Yes. Like Dark Souls. Yes. Sunny D instead of Estes. It's essential. I mean, those are like really cool cosmetic tweaks. I feel still under the line of meme-y. Yes. But for like games as a medium, if you're watching a movie,
00:48:15
Speaker
The movie is what it is. You can take what you want from it. It might speak to you in a different way. You can change the language. Yeah. Without subtitles. Let's go Spanish. But it's really cool when you have a game that's like, hey, it might be somewhat linear gameplay, but do it how you want. Which is cool because you can be that stealth archery. You can do that two-handed. You can go more mage-y, more summon-y.
00:48:43
Speaker
It's what you want it to be. And I think that's the draw of a lot. I like how I just, where's my little soapbox in here? You're slowly moving closer and closer to the mic. Like, can you hear me listening? Can you hear my impassioned speech? We are the gaming community. The TLDR is I like when that exists in games. Oh yeah. And especially when the community, they should never fucking have to.
00:49:10
Speaker
But when they add and make an already decent game, better. Yes. Just some of the some of the best games I played have been made the best because of mods or it's refreshing experience. Yeah. Can make can
Review and Nostalgia of Overload
00:49:25
Speaker
make a game that you've beaten and completely new game when you go through and play it again. And that's awesome. Great for value. Speaking of value, though.
00:49:35
Speaker
overload. That doesn't make any sense, but alright, go ahead. Alright, I'll take the reins.
00:49:42
Speaker
Did you ever play Descent back in the day? I did, yes. You know I did. They don't know it. Cheek. There's certain things that happen behind the screen. We were supposed to talk about that. You said you wouldn't talk about that. Off camera. So for those who didn't get a chance to grow up with it, Descent was a game back on the days of DOS, where it was a kind of free-form space shooter. Six degrees of freedom.
00:50:10
Speaker
Yeah, you could turn left, right, up, down, you could tilt, which certainly made the game a little bit fucky. Because you had a map, and there technically was a, this is your upright way, and this is you going straight. But you could change it at any point. And a lot of times, yeah, you would get disoriented, because maybe some evil mining robot's chasing you, or shit's going down.
00:50:39
Speaker
But it's just, it was a really fun game where you were shipped, you had your shields, your energy, you had a variety of weapons, right. Of enemies had to go into like the mine, shoot the reactor. And then in the original game, I think so. Yeah. You had to save them. They were trapped in cells. You could fly your ship into him to like, pick them up and save them original game. Really? Maybe it was descent too.
00:51:02
Speaker
Hmm. I remember saving people at some point. You're just a good person. It's actually unrelated to the game. I could have sworn I saved someone at some point. Jake's just bragging about his day-to-day ongoing. Yeah.
00:51:17
Speaker
Sorry, go ahead. So after you destroyed the reactor, you'd have like 10 seconds to leave the facility. So you would have had to have already mapped out where the fuck the exit is. Yes. And try and get there using your boosters and other shit still going on while like the entire fucking game is shaking. It was very intense and you're like, oh.
00:51:37
Speaker
It just made me feel alive as a kid. It was a really fun game. So Overload was actually made by the same team. It came out I think this year. Yes. And it's essentially like the polished remake of Descent. It's not Descent, but it's very fucking similar. So all those things I've ascribed still exist.
00:51:55
Speaker
It's just a lot smoother now. Yes, I kind of hope so. Also, graphically smoother. Yes, yeah. The enemies aren't polygons anymore. No. But I will say I do miss some of that rustic polygonal action.
00:52:13
Speaker
how some of the music was just because of that limited technology of like we have let's say 32 notes we can play total how do we wanna how do we wanna spin this guys yeah but it turned out really good and i picked it up and i've been reliving my childhood a little bit and i know i've talked to you about it quite a bunch it's just really fucking fun yeah it's it's on my list now like i feel like i have to go back and experience this because the original descent was something i played back in the days of like
00:52:41
Speaker
I found a CD somewhere and there was some software on it and it was like half of its like shareware or something or not even a CD in some case and in like the sense the scent was a CD I believe yes yeah
00:52:57
Speaker
I've played some older games, but those are different. Commander Keen episode. That guy who jumps. The original Doom. Some might color that. They're not very accurate, but they could color that.
00:53:15
Speaker
But yeah, Overload's definitely on my list. I want to take a look at that. See if they have shield warps, which is still cool. They do. They do actually have shield warps? Of course they do. Oh, man. They have, like, the little... I don't think they have the exact energy blips that they did from the first one. But you can still get energy from something. They still have, like, the energy charge rooms, which is just all these, like, light particles go in. Oh, you have to go through, like, the charging... And it, like, fully charges your energy up to 100, I think. Yeah. But I think other things could get you past that.
00:53:44
Speaker
Gosh, it like over-tried you a bit. Yeah, that's really cool. They still have Secret rooms and other unlockables, which are really fun Because I hate when I complete a level and it's like oh you did good you found three of 27 like what? Like I was just running around my eyes closed I
00:54:04
Speaker
Now you see them. Yeah, but I think one of the things I really got a kick out of It was like a round level three or four There is like a series of tunnels for the mine, but there's no lights in them But one of the options you have in the game so much original descent is pressing F to shoot out flare right now in original descent It would shoot out like this fucking
00:54:25
Speaker
Trap is a light piece of shit. Go in a straight line and stick to something and hang around for maybe 10 seconds. Now with the flares in this one, they kind of go, it's like a blue, pretty light. It actually illuminates and it actually bounces off edges. So I'm like speeding through these tunnels, shooting flares, which are kind of like bouncing, but also kind of following the trajectory of where I'm going at the same time.
00:54:50
Speaker
So it really assists for like a fast gameplay experience. Yeah. And then all your weapons are also, none of them are like giant nukes. All of them are like, how fast do you want to shoot a second? 32 times good enough? Yeah. Like that's your goss cannon. Yeah. Or there's like a flak one. There's like bouncing lasers and some other stuff. I still haven't found everything because I'm still kind of early on. Yeah.
00:55:19
Speaker
But well have a has your stomach been handling the game? Well, see because that was one of the that was one of the concerns I had was it's been so long since I played descent. Yeah and descent notoriously Gave people like upset stomachs and motion sickness due to just how Unconventional it was for its time. Have we gone past that is it now a completely playable? Oh
00:55:46
Speaker
I want to say like I've been immersed in gaming enough where I'm kind of used to that type of disorientation There are points where I have to like stop and be like, okay I'll just like rearrange my entire shit to be like, okay things now look correct. All right. Yeah Yeah
00:56:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, I'll have to check it out. It's a very unique type of game that basically doesn't... I was about to say it doesn't exist anymore. It didn't really exist then. It was just dissent, right? Well, around the same time, they were almost bundled together, but there was a game called Free Space, which was essentially like that, but imagine there's no level design, and you're just in the giant fucking... You're in space, and it's dog fighting. But that was really dope, too.
00:56:38
Speaker
Yeah, that is that is fair. There's something inherently more disconcerting about like traveling through the depths of like
00:56:47
Speaker
an asteroid mine than just flying around in space where you have no confining things. Descent, I remember being claustrophobic at times. Yeah. Especially if you lost yourself. You're just like, oh geez. Also, like original Descent had a lot of, I don't want to say lighting issues, but they made that shit fucking dark. Yeah. And it was very spooky at times. So when you- Shoot your flare. There's like an enemy right there.
00:57:11
Speaker
You just feel like the enemies light up like, what's up? You're like, oh shit. Am I misremembering or do they have like red eyes? Like the, or cockpits and things, the robots. I think all of them did. So you could technically identify them in the dark. Uh-huh. But that's creepy enough. Yeah. And then there were the ones which were like, uh, digger robots. Mm-hmm. But they're like a little triangle, but they had like these giant mongoloid arms with claws. Mm-hmm. They would come up and just start like shredding your arm where you're like, ah!
00:57:37
Speaker
It's basically a space horror game. Which is tough to do while in a ship. It was probably honestly one of the first games that I was like, I feel a little bit spooked. Yeah. Oh man. But yeah, I would say check out a trailer for Overload if any of that I've mentioned, we've mentioned kind of floats your boat. Yeah. I don't know what the fan club,
Episode Wrap-up and Listener Engagement
00:57:59
Speaker
the modern fan club for Descent is anymore. Like it could literally be us. The only people that ever played the game. But yeah.
00:58:07
Speaker
Anyways, I would like to thank everybody for listening to another episode of soapstone.
00:58:15
Speaker
That's it. Yeah. Yeah. Guess that's it. Nothing fancy kids. Yeah. I guess we'll throw the social media at you. Feel free to like us on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And if you have any comments, you can send those in to our Gmail at soapstone podcast at gmail.com. I got that one, right? Yeah. You can also be on Facebook too.
00:58:40
Speaker
Yes, actually, Facebook probably works just as well. We like the personalized messages. Yeah. If you if you feel like sending those in a little bit more private, you know, just to the two of us. You can also post on Facebook and say, nobody else, please read. Yes. Our other listeners are very respectful. They will not read your comment, I promise. It's true. Yeah. You have to put at least three spaces in there or new lines. Yeah. Yeah. So there's like a see more and they're like, I don't want to see one. Yeah.
00:59:07
Speaker
Also, one of the benefits if he falls on Facebook is I don't know how to post videos to Spotify. It's very tough. So if you want to see.
00:59:18
Speaker
two videos um they are on facebook yeah if anyone knows how to uh post face or post videos to spotify uh let us know send that to our gmail i guess we don't want to make a youtube we're very lazy we don't have the money for that anyways well i'll see you in the next one guys yep have a good night
00:59:44
Speaker
Nausea, heartburn, indigestion, hypostemic diar- ugh, diarrhea, yeah, pepto-bismol. Wait, here we go. Drug facts. Active ingredient in each 30 milliliters. Bismuth sub-sacelate.
01:00:01
Speaker
525 milligrams. Purpose for that is upset stomach reliever, anti-diarrhea. Uses, relieves, diarrhea. Travelers, I wonder what travelers' diarrhea is. Upset stomach due to overindulgence in food and drink, including heartburn, nausea, gas, fullness, indigestion, and belching.
01:00:26
Speaker
Warning, Ray's syndrome. Oh, this must have Tylenol. Children and teenagers who have or are recovering from children pox or flu-like symptoms should not use this product. When using this product, if changes in behavior with nausea and vomiting occur, consult a doctor because these symptoms could be an early sign of Ray's syndrome, a rare but serious illness. Allergy alert. Contains salicylate. Do not take if you are.
01:00:58
Speaker
Allergic to sassolates, including aspirin. Oh, it's aspirin, that's not how. Taking other sassolate products.