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S3 Ep267: Gaming in July 2023
71 Plays2 years ago
Join Dave and Jake as they talk about the Actibliz/Microsoft merger, a successful lawsuit by Bungie against a player, and every other piece of news for July in this week's episode!
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- Zero Wing - Open Your Eyes (Remix/Cover)
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Transcript
Audio Quality Improvements
00:00:54
Speaker
How's it going, everyone? Welcome to another episode of Soapstone. My name is Jake and I'm joined by my co-host is always Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going right. Thursday's been kind of not here and there, but like not too bad. How about you? I'm doing I'm doing pretty well. My evening has been elevated slightly by the knowledge. I was staring at the microphone in its sand prior to when we started recording. I was like, is this is this like straight on or is it kind of like to the side? And it was a little bit to the side. So.
00:01:24
Speaker
If it sounded like I was talking past you in previous episodes, kinda. But it's fixed now, so this should be perfect. No excuses. Excellent audio.
00:01:36
Speaker
go back and edit every single one. What we do is we just re-edit it to slightly shift the left to right balance a little bit. Dude, it's... I know we talked about the Run the Jewels use of it in one song a long time ago, but I still love when... Because not many things will do it, because it's why the fuck would you? You want balanced audio on both sides. But occasionally, if you can subvert that, it's fun for me.
00:02:04
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Everybody needs their like THX moment. So we have you on one side of me on the other. And it's like the guest is always just, you know, like sandwiched between us. What was what you make that as a joke. But when we recorded in person, if you're using a single audio interface and multiple XLR inputs and condenser mics or whatever, you will record on left channel and right channel. And then part of the preparation process is
00:02:34
Speaker
normalizing those channels so it's not one person in each ear because it's very disorienting actually yeah it sounds like people you know think of a devil and an angel on each shoulder but no in your ears and it's very uncomfortable
Angel vs. Devil Persona
00:02:57
Speaker
Which would you rather be of the two? If we transpose the podcast and us as host to Devil and Angel. Or which one do you think you are versus which one do you want to be? Okay, that's fair. I feel like
00:03:14
Speaker
I feel like probably I'm angel just because if we were to like really need to dig into a topic and like criticize something, like I'm not even going to swear. So like I have zero cred, right? And if we know anything about infernal creatures, they swear. Mm-hmm. That's it.
00:03:38
Speaker
I like how you actually found like a very polite justification for like you're the devil. Well, I even mentioned that I was Jewish, which I applaud you for. But yeah, I think it would be it would be fun if I was the devil and we were in situations where you always had to like find some way to take the upside on every news story that we cover or whatever. You're just like, no, big corporations.
00:04:07
Speaker
our friends. But naturally, I find myself kind of gravitating more to that. I'm the bootlicker angel, obviously. We can be the rogue, the devil. That would be my take, though. Do you disagree with that? No, I would have felt very, very wrong putting myself in the place of an angel. I only have two eyes. Yeah.
00:04:38
Speaker
Oh yeah, biblically. Jake's wearing glasses when we record and I'm not. I'm closer to a biblically accurate angel for sure.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I had something I was going to add to that and then it's just vanished into the ether, which makes great, great podcast tempo. Um, but I'm glad your Thursday's going pretty well. Um, I'm glad we can record for our friends and listeners. Um, we'll never reveal what that ratio is.
Monthly Gaming News Highlights
00:05:13
Speaker
But this episode is where we recap all of what's gone on this month in our gaming in July. We don't always call it July, sometimes it's a different month actually.
00:05:29
Speaker
And you know cover gaming news, maybe what we've been doing a little bit on the side And you know just make sure you guys have the important information because who has time to read a newspaper Which is I assume how most people learn about video game news? Papers that stuff that isn't the printer. I never turn on is that right mm-hmm. Yeah, okay?
00:05:50
Speaker
So what makes it new? What makes it new paper? I guess if I just bought it. Right. It's actually weird. The content is what makes it newspaper. So like if it's if it's news worthy, I think this is a very boring topic. That's fine. Sorry, I was trying to like the plain word of new versus news. Yeah, I was trying to figure out how to follow up on the joke and
00:06:16
Speaker
Yeah, the episodes are washed. Let's just- Again, Jake, you didn't- you didn't jump in to immediately say, juice paper because they control the media. And again, I applaud you. I applaud you, sir, for avoiding that.
00:06:28
Speaker
But you applauding me is lowering your devil cred. So you just got to call me out on it and just be like, how dare you not be a racist. But in the news, which is something we do talk about, some people out there, they play Magic the Gathering, I think it's called. Although I did hear at one point that originally it wasn't intended to always be Magic the Gathering. It was just the gathering was going to be the first release.
00:06:57
Speaker
like that was their season one yeah and then magic highland elves frolicking whatever the crap would have been like the next like collectible release with an entirely different card back um entirely different you know mechanics and cards and all that stuff they were literally just gonna push these out kind of like action figures or something
00:07:20
Speaker
That seems insane. Yeah. To be like, hey, here's this collectible thing, but oh, this is only one thing and it's entirely separate. I mean, to be fair, like they have introduced new mechanics, but I feel like you need the same card backing or whatever, like something uniform to tie it together. You're like, oh, this is a part of that thing. Yeah, the original idea was not that it would be interplayable forever with these upcoming sets.
00:07:49
Speaker
Which is crazy. Absolutely crazy with where we're at.
00:07:54
Speaker
That's magic. One thing you could play, but you never will, if you had to pick one card that you think you'll probably never, it'll never see play. It'll never be in your collection. Which card would you guess that would be? Black Lotus. Obviously Black Lotus. The go-to answer. But if you were looking at the news notes, you might also answer the one ring from Lord of the Rings. There's a brief recap. There's one of these cards out there.
00:08:25
Speaker
Well, that's it. There are multiple rings, but there's only the one ring, which is a one of one, maybe with like custom elevation and everything else. And there was a big search for this. A bunch of people were talking about how much money they would spend to get it.
00:08:45
Speaker
And it was found this month. It was found in Canada, but we don't know by who. Or at least I didn't dig that much. I'm not trying to dox people out here. I would bet they're probably somewhere in public record because they had to get the card verified. They did, yeah. But I think that they were trying to be anonymous as possible for reasons.
00:09:07
Speaker
Also, you mentioned the verification, I said it's 9 out of 10. How sad is that, actually? That the one instance of this card is not a 10 out of 10. Well, I don't know what it counts for that last point. Because I'm sure the person who was opening it, I don't know if you need to have gloves to be like, oh, there can be no oil, there can be no dust, nothing.
00:09:31
Speaker
Yeah, there is human DNA on the corner of this card. But I mean, it could have been from the printing side of it as well. That would actually be hilarious. Which is funny, because they only did one. They think they would check that before it's like, is this good? Uh-huh. I like to imagine that it was just randomized at the printing press with no QA. It was just part of the set. They just hook it up to a computer and it's like, oh, yeah, print 1,000 Shire Hobbits and one, one ring.
00:10:00
Speaker
Weirdly, the printer was just a little bit out of ink, so it's not as vibrant as it could be. Did I actually pull the right one? I don't know. I'll get back to the story in a second, but there was a controversy where some people were pulling cards off the line, actually, prior to it all being boxed up and shipped. And they got prosecuted pretty hard, as you would expect.
00:10:30
Speaker
I think the way that they found it was the person went to a local store and they had like tons of the rarest cards out of the set and they're like
00:10:41
Speaker
That doesn't make any sense. Can I ask you the ID number? Oh, they're sequential. That's odd. Yeah. But anyways, so the one wing was found.
Magic: The Gathering Card Market
00:10:54
Speaker
It was somewhere in Canada. The person was talking to lawyers, as you should do, because as of the last time I checked this news story, the top bid for someone who wanted to buy this card was $2 million US.
00:11:09
Speaker
It was someone not in the U.S. It was like someone in another country, oil money or something like that. But the person had a little bit of a decision to make because if they sell it immediately, it was like appreciate it. Yeah, it was going to count as capital gains also for tax purposes in Canada, which means they instantly 50 percent of it goes to taxes.
00:11:29
Speaker
Basically, that's that is too much money in taxes. Mm-hmm But if they waited one generation and they passed it on as an heirloom that person could then sell it for Like significantly lower taxes because it's not capital gains anymore. Very interesting tax law
00:11:48
Speaker
How old does a child need to be? That is the question, right? I think what if you adopted a kid? Right. That's what I was doing. You put up a looking for orphan post in LFO. By the way, that never looks suspicious. That's true. Yeah. But I'm sure they'll find some way to game the system. Good on them. They have they have the ring.
00:12:18
Speaker
Yeah, that is for anybody who doesn't follow magic and like the appreciable values of cards, which I don't expect any normal person would. What I made a mention to Black Lotus, which is one of the most powerful cards and like super old printing. It even supersedes the power nine. Because it's one of the power nine. Power nine. I couldn't remember which one was true. Believe Dave, he plays the game.
00:12:44
Speaker
I forget. A lot of the Mox cards are in there for Power9, if I remember. But back when I was growing up in high school, I think that Black Lives went for like 6K. So maybe let's say it's gone up to 15K. Now again, that number is 2 million. So it is wildly, wildly up there in comparison.
00:13:11
Speaker
I'm actually gonna look this up. What do you think that the highest black lotus sale price was, let's say within the last year that I can find on an immediate Google search? 20K. $540,000. Ooh, that's a lot of money.
00:13:33
Speaker
That's actually, that's almost, I didn't mean to undermine your argument here, but apparently it sold at auction for $540,000 because it was rated as Jim Mint, 10 out of 10. Okay, that actually, this is why I don't like perfect drops in video games, because if you try and like trade on the store, it's like, well, I have the perfect role and it's that much harder to get. So it's astronomical in price compared to, oh, it's off by one thing.
00:14:01
Speaker
Yeah, it's insane. I tried to take advantage of this. I'm sorry, go ahead. I was just going to say that obviously because they're not printing these cards anymore, the longer it goes on, the more they will appreciate in value because there's going to become a less number of them over time or they will just decorate over time. So if you have one that's in mint condition, it's essentially like a Highlander effect. Yeah.
00:14:27
Speaker
It's like the black Lotus is an immensely expensive card. There's not that many of them out there. They're super rare and becoming more rare. And this one is in the running to be the best one. Right.
00:14:40
Speaker
Um, no, that's a really good point. Uh, in either case, I'm not going to have it and I'm not going to play it. And if I had it, I wouldn't play it. So that's something that Hearthstone's missing is, uh, these fun news stories. Yeah, exactly. Although my, my memories of Hearthstone were usually around cards that I want to see cease to exist. Not ones that I want to stick around for collection purposes. Um.
00:15:07
Speaker
Shutter walk immediately jumps them. It springs to mind is like the worst the worst design card Could you mind what that does? I haven't played. Okay many brief brief hearthstones story shutter walk Has a really obnoxious into the battlefield sound I'm actually gonna look it up now. I'm gonna look up the quote at least
00:15:34
Speaker
enter battlefield sound. But its effect was it's a legendary, which means you can only have one of them in your deck normally. And every time it enters the battlefield, all of the battle cries that would have taken place, replay. So everything from your side of the board the entire time.
00:16:02
Speaker
So if anybody remembers the joke about Panharmonomom for Mother of Machines in Magic, you're basically doubling the Enter the Battlefield triggers. So as you play it and it resolves and enters the battlefield, that's Battlecry in Hearthstone. Yeah. And it said, my jaws that bite, my claws that catch,
00:16:27
Speaker
and it's a little bit longer than the average intro which is okay at first but then disregard what i said at the beginning where it was like hey this only plays the battle cry like once this was used in dex that caused it to
00:16:45
Speaker
basically return to your hand constantly. And so you would play one, it would trigger the battlefield effect, it would completely take all of this time, return to your hand, you play another card to return it to your hand, play it again, triggers everything again, and the system literally could not handle this. It took so long that it would skip the other player's turn,
00:17:07
Speaker
because in the background it would switch turns because you ran out of time but your effects are still running oh my god and then it becomes their turn and they can't do anything until your effects finish and so your effects are still going then the rope starts to burn down they run out of turn it becomes the person who's playing the cards originally again yeah it was an absolute mess people hated it and it single-handedly um
00:17:32
Speaker
led to I think a system change where if A bunch of effects are queued up and it's taking too long to go through them. They start like rapid fire resolving Which I don't even think solves it completely but insane I think all Games like that need something like that because magic has that issue as well where it's like hey I'm queuing up some triggers and you're like you just look at your watch like
00:17:56
Speaker
How long am I going to be here? And the thing is, like, they will still have a lot of those animations play when there's no way for anybody to interact with it or interrupt. I'm like, OK, are you making 300 million guys? Do that instantly. Don't queue it up and do like, bam, animation, bam, animation, bam.
00:18:16
Speaker
just because when you have games where it's like hey there can be a
00:18:32
Speaker
Magic paper magic obviously lets you just blow up numbers real fast You're like hey, I'm gonna explain this combo and it gives me infinite health or whatever But I think like they also have a rule that if your turns are taking too long That you're penalized in some way over right like if your combo is too complicated. It just can't go forever I don't know about arena, but I'm pretty sure that exists and I
00:18:55
Speaker
I'm sure it exists in Arena, too. I mean, I've not ever played tournament setting. I've only played, like, casual with other people. But I know that if you have an infinite combo, you can kind of explain the combo and then say, like, to use the actual magic card, ad nauseam, or just like, hey, this is going to continue indefinitely. And then it's like, hey, do you have a chance to interrupt this at any point in the infinite combo? Maybe they have a counterspell or like some instant way to respond to it.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah, so I actually had to look this up because I'm usually wrong on the internet. Apparently, there is no maximum turn length in Magic, but you're expected to play at a reasonable pace. So as long as you're advancing the board state, you're fine. That's kind of scary. But yeah, computers somehow are worse at this when you're dealing with animations and crap like that, like you described. It's easier to say, I make a million dudes and I swing for lethal. Yes. Compared to an animation for making each dude.
00:19:54
Speaker
Well, it is nice to have like those digital spaces for those games versus again, I remember like, oh, I'm making a token of a thing. Oh, I have five tokens. Okay. So the token right now is just a pretzel. And we'll put a die over that that has the number five. So we'll know there are five of them. What's the power of toughness? Oh, we'll probably just hopefully remember that. Right. Yeah, that's not ideal either. No.
00:20:22
Speaker
And they do have actual token cards and stuff, but you do still kind of have to finagle it a little bit.
00:20:29
Speaker
Right. Yeah. In the extreme case, just to round out the story, um, people got so obnoxious or they were so annoyed by shutter walk that you might not actually have the wind condition when you played it, but your opponent doesn't care. They concede when it comes out because they don't want to sit there five minutes waiting to find out if they won or lost. So, um, and it was in a control deck, which makes it even worse. So I'm going to have definitely done that. Mm-hmm.
00:20:59
Speaker
Yeah. You just, you just grind someone down by, by resolution time. I mean, not that specifically, but like I've played magic of the gathering in the morning before work and I'm just like eating breakfast or like watching a YouTube video. So if I see that somebody's going like combo heavy, I'm like, I can wait. I have no time that I care about. So.
00:21:23
Speaker
Yeah, and there's some etiquette there, right? Like if you could complete your turn more rapidly, it's good behavior, I think, to not take the full amount of time that you could take for every single one of your turns. Like running the rope each time is really obnoxious. And yeah, not a big fan.
00:21:45
Speaker
Um, but enough on that enough talking about Hearthstone.
Overwatch League's Uncertain Future
00:21:50
Speaker
Uh, let's talk about Activision Blizzard. Um, I had a couple, like, okay, there's more than a couple pieces of news here. So you can pick, you can pick one to, uh, to veto and just be like, we're not going to talk about that. Um, the first one though, I think is worth speaking of, uh, they are starting to bring their games to steam, starting with Overwatch.
00:22:15
Speaker
Overwatch one. Well, I guess because one doesn't exist. Right. That would be very funny. Could you imagine that? They're just like, hey, we heard you. We're going to bring back Overwatch, not on our platform. That would be I guess my first question is why are they even bringing it over? Because like they have their whole own ecosystem through like the dot net client.
00:22:41
Speaker
Yeah, I spent a lot of time actually thinking about this and talking about this with my wife. Um, cause I'm a nerd apparently. Um, and as far as I can, as far as I can see, it's probably for, there's a couple of reasons based off their last earnings call. Overwatch was not performing like they wanted it to.
00:23:03
Speaker
It's like, I guess down, sequentially, they said this quarter. Whereas Diablo 4 was massive. It actually made, I think it came out Q1. Diablo 4 was ActiBlizz's best Q1, or best quarter ever. They just broke a billion dollars in sales in one quarter, which is a lot of money. But Overwatch, they're like, that is good. So they're probably trying to expand the audience.
00:23:33
Speaker
The interesting thing here is if they do it on Steam, unless they have some sort of like shifty side where the big players in this arrangement, and maybe they do, whenever your game has microtransactions in Steam, Steam takes a cut.
00:23:46
Speaker
Like you think about when you spend money in Dota, which is a game Steam also owns. It has that prompt where the UI opens up. You can put in your payment details and then get your in-game currency. It works for games other than Dota as well. For Destiny, those payments go through Steam. So, ActiBlizz was willing to give up that cut, I think, we'll see, but I think, in order to get it on Steam, which is really interesting.
00:24:11
Speaker
It must be almost a desperation play, but like you said, trying to expand their audience to kind of benefit the game. Um, I guess it's not crazy, crazily surprising, but they're definitely not doing great with it. Cause they're like, Hey, there's me one and two. Hey, it's just two. Hey, we're canceling that other thing. Hey, we've canceled the competitive scene. So I feel like they're scrambling a little bit.
00:24:40
Speaker
Yeah, as you mentioned that news piece, I'm just gonna briefly describe it. Um, they haven't full on canceled the league, the Overwatch league, but they're calling a vote for all the teams. And, um, based off of how people vote, they will, they will either take a $6 million.
00:24:58
Speaker
payout each each team will For a total of a hundred fourteen million dollars someone can run the math on that and figure out how many overwatch teams there are But a lot Or they might vote to stay in it and keep running it and then the overwatch league will continue But the fact that they're asking their teams if they want to vote to just call it Yeah, that means a lot Yeah
00:25:23
Speaker
I feel like you have to take the payout at that point because you can transition as a pro video game player in an FPS space to another game that has an active scene. Because if they're offering to buy you out, they don't really want to keep going with it. You're not going to have increasing prize pools every year. It's not going to get the same type of coverage or attention from like a
00:25:53
Speaker
producer space Yeah, like they're not gonna give it the love and attention that another game might like Valorant or something else Valorant's definitely Valorant dota. There's the go-to examples pub G other those big players yeah, this isn't that this isn't that right now and
00:26:17
Speaker
I kind of hope that the Overwatch League ceases to exist, because then the game will entirely be focused on the non-competitive scene.
00:26:27
Speaker
then you can balance things more around. I mean, it still has to be relatively balanced, but you don't have to say like, oh, this is threat that people are doing in pro games, and we can't allow this anymore. So we're gonna nerf Bastion or whatever the crap right is. So yeah.
00:26:45
Speaker
I mean, that's when goats died. I think I don't remember that ever being able to, uh, I don't remember ever actually encountering goats and being like, this is a good strategy, but I saw people do it in pro games. Um, so that's the angel take. I like pro scenes existing because it influences the casual stuff. Like we definitely experiment when we play smash. It's actually, yeah.
00:27:16
Speaker
Yeah. Like, uh, what happens if I try and I'm not going to go too much. It's going to be bad. The joke is good as the aside. Yeah. Uh, but basically like I'll watch videos. I'm like, holy shit. I did not know X was possible. Let me try and do X.
00:27:35
Speaker
Right. And like you're like, Oh, cool. I learned about slingshotting, which I've never done in my life. Um, or you realize certain combos or policy villager, right? This is a joke. This is a slingshot attack. But anyways, I mean, nobody's going to know the gimmer thing anyway. So it's really, we're just degrading the quality of the podcast in real time. I apologize. Yeah. You're making a point about adopting pro tactics.
00:28:03
Speaker
But yeah, you see that, and you're like, oh my god, that is possible. That's so crazy. I mean, obviously they're trying it, because they're on the forefront of the game. They're trying to find new strategies and things that work to maybe break the meta. Right. Yeah. I mean, I saw MKLeo play Joker, and I was like, I'm going to buy that character. Jake liked him so much, he also bought me that character. So they can play while I'm at your house.
00:28:35
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a fair take and the professional community can inspire a level of interest and engagement in your game that otherwise
Pro Gaming's Impact on Casual Play
00:28:44
Speaker
wouldn't. I mean, we went to the, me and several friends went to the, I can't remember, were you there? I don't think you were there. I was not there. Yeah, but we went to the grand finals in Philly and we got like a cool,
00:28:56
Speaker
GIF animation of us all coming out again sexually. No, like for like an intro, a deployment, but like started the match camera thing. And then like a bunch of jerseys and it was fun. It was a really cool arena. And I was like, a lot of these seats are empty. And, you know, other signs that maybe the Overwatch League wasn't doing super well. But it was fun. It was fun to be part of that.
00:29:25
Speaker
I mean, even with professional sports, the people who are playing soccer in their backyard or looking at these professional people as their idols are like, holy shit, I respect what they do because I do this casually, but I see what they do professionally. Holy shit, it takes a lot of work, a lot of effort. Even D&D, I'm sure you take a lot of stuff from watching Matt Mercer or
00:29:51
Speaker
Everything. I'm dripping from him exclusively. When you watch people in a space who are like, this is my thing, you're like, holy shit, it's crazy. We'll also talk about Dota 2 Pro games. Oh my God, they're trying this strat on this new patch. Oh, maybe that's possible in our local games.
00:30:11
Speaker
Yeah, no, it really drives the scene. It does. It really mixes it all up. It keeps things from getting really stale because pros are going to be pushing things harder. So that's fair. And then devil on the shoulder for a second, then we'll go be back to being an angel.
00:30:27
Speaker
Our pro team went to Seoul because all of the players were already South Korean. And they were like, maybe this should just be our home area. And so now there's like a bunch of Seoul teams and Philly's got nothing. And I was like, that's fine. Apparently there was a sale on their jerseys recently I heard. So that's a good sign.
00:30:52
Speaker
Yeah, but I don't know. We'll see where it goes with Overwatch. They'll have their tied people over PvE event at some point. And I'll ask someone who's playing the actual game, whether it's a thumbs up or a thumbs down, I guess. They can get back to you guys. They also had an anime short. Like three little shorts. They were OK, but I added this note here that they were no arcane and they were no edge runners.
00:31:21
Speaker
I mean, is it Dota 2 Dragon's Blood here or worse? I didn't see Dragon's Blood, so I couldn't say. You warned me off of Dragon's Blood, so I can't compare it to that. They were like, okay, but they're all really short. They're like seven minutes long. It's not like a long anime thing.
00:31:42
Speaker
if anything it's closer to like a teaser before they release a hero which is kind of probably what it is but um i don't know it seemed okay yeah i i gotta give them points because they like have done nothing with the lore basically since the game launched and this is at least some of that so good on them i guess it's also on youtube so it's always nice um how do you feel about diablo
Diablo 4's New Season Mechanics
00:32:10
Speaker
I'm so neutralized. I am excited that they are having a thing so that people will start playing the game again so I can justify my $70 purchase. I'm not going to ask. Yes. Are you going to play the season of the malignant?
00:32:28
Speaker
Yes, because of that reason I just described. I'm not going to go crazy heavy into it. Also, for seasonal content, for everybody who's not aware, you have to spin up a new character for that season. And obviously your characters will still persist. But yeah, I'm not... On one hand, I do want to try some of the other classes I haven't gotten to yet. At the same time, I'm not crazy about starting completely fresh.
00:32:55
Speaker
Yeah. So I feel like I will need to literally time it to play with somebody. So I'm not just beating my head against demons. Yeah. What about you? Are you going to hop on the train with some people?
00:33:06
Speaker
I might give like the freebie pass a look. And again, I was already thinking of respecting at this point or playing a different class. So that lines up pretty well for me. I'll probably give it the old college try. But also at the beginning of the season, they apparently nerfed a bunch of strong classes. And so the community was just like, this is sad.
00:33:34
Speaker
But I don't know. It's still it's still a good game. It made them a lot of money. And I'm concerned that part of me wants games to be for something more than just money. As naive as that is. Do you hypocrite? I've seen how many games you've sold. Mm hmm.
00:33:56
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I don't know. That's always, that kind of diminishes a little bit for me. So I'm not going to like being completely honest. The other thing is, I think to what you said, you have to make a new character each season. This Diablo has like a high level grind. You can put a bunch of time into end game, like a lot of time into end game. And there's no way you want to do that every season. No, fuck no.
00:34:24
Speaker
I really wish they would have had at least some rollover. I feel like there should have been at least four. I beat the campaign. I have paragon points. I should have renown type stuff. But I brought up a new character today just checking it out briefly. And I did not have any of those bonus skill points or anything. Just in your boxers.
00:34:46
Speaker
I was just naked. I was asking demons for directions. I was like, what do I do? I'm not crazy about the Battle Pass model because like, sure, I'll make some free progress. Oh, by the way, you get stuff even if you have the free model. By the way, it's shit. You know how I was dunking on Diablo Four's cosmetics when we were talking about it?
00:35:10
Speaker
Right because a lot of them are just so So fucking generic all the cool ones are behind cash money Yeah, so like there's like these little checkpoints of like hey if you have the premium battle pass Oh, you get this cool super detailed helm with like glowing eyes and the next one's like hey, do you not have that? Here's a sword Whatever you're imagining. Yes, that's what it looks like
00:35:36
Speaker
I'm imagining like an armor set where they're like here's the the freebie version and it's just like they just threw a bucket of green paint at you or something and that's all it looks like. Collar would be asking a lot from that. Okay that's fair.
00:35:52
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. And then the last thing I have on the Activision Blizzard news, news cycle here.
Microsoft-Activision Merger Developments
00:36:00
Speaker
There's always a fair amount because they just, they suck it all up, all the news. But I think we talked a little bit about the FTC suit against the proposed merger between Activision Blizzard and Microsoft. And much like the FTC has done recently in other tech cases, it lost.
00:36:21
Speaker
And they said that they're going to appeal but I mean losing is not a great start to winning So I'm not I'm not expecting a very different outcome And from what I last read like other regulatory commissions in like the EU and whatnot Basically saw this outcome and they're like, okay, we'll start getting out of the way a little bit So it'll probably go through at this point
00:36:51
Speaker
Well, our corporate overlords, actually, the reason it benefits us is because it's, I'm not sure if you're familiar with the trickle down ideology. But as they, as they piss on our roofs, it will eventually come through the shingles and trickle down onto us. All right. That sounds nice.
00:37:13
Speaker
um i just want them to put the rest of the games on steam that's what i hope comes out of this um but they might already be doing that anyways so we'll see also don't treat your employees terribly um but honestly they could have started doing that at any point that's true but a lot of people will just do shitty stuff until they get caught
00:37:36
Speaker
Which is crazy to me because I always have a fear of like getting in trouble ever since I was a kid. So I like immediately just steered away from doing bad things. I'm like, well, I don't want to be in trouble. That's a terrible thing. Yeah. I mean, most people have some sort of moral compass that keeps them from being miserable to each other to some degree, but that's not everybody.
00:38:01
Speaker
And other people have magnetic disruptions. Uh-huh. Speaking of the other people there that do not have a moral compass, this piece of news I kind of isolated out because it just caught my eye and I read the article and I was like, this is worth talking about.
Consequences of Online Harassment
00:38:18
Speaker
But Bungie, another developer, they won a good bit of money approaching $500,000 from a person
00:38:27
Speaker
they can get a black lotus they can buy they can they can they'll need to save up a little bit more after court fees or whatever but yeah they'll be able to get the black lotus um and normally you'd be like all right that's a weird opener why would you
00:38:42
Speaker
I'd be happy Bungie did this, but it's because the person threatened, harassed, and made racist remarks to a community manager and their family. And we have a couple examples here before you comment, before you give your take. They left a hideous bigoted voicemail, right, using an anonymized service to call their home, their personal number,
00:39:08
Speaker
And they demanded that Bungie create a mode in Destiny 2 in which players could kill people of color. And I don't think they use the words people of color. They then started targeting the community manager's wife, revealed that they knew where they lived, left them a bunch of messages and stuff, ordered them pizza, and then it was cash on delivery, which is the worst of this, obviously.
00:39:37
Speaker
And yeah, basically we're absolutely terrible. So Bungie had to dispatch executive protection, which included security. They notified the local police and they hired investigators and lawyers to find this guy in Canada, apparently. And then after all of this happened, he didn't even show up in court, so he got default judgment against him.
00:40:01
Speaker
Now you can react. I've said the whole story. Seems okay. This is a nice guy. No, obviously that person is a huge piece of shit. Again, it's one thing to have maybe a bad day and you say something inflammatory.
00:40:19
Speaker
Again, you are the captain of your own ship. You control your own actions. So that's a very excuse to say something awful and racist. But this person went fucking above and beyond because it was targeted harassment. And like, as Jake listed out, like there's so many different things that this person was doing. Yeah. And it's just it's fucking wild how deeply in the pain this person was to like, I want to send hate outs to these specific people. Mm hmm.
00:40:48
Speaker
And on top of that is a racist, which is, you know, usually kind of like you're an easy barometer of like, Oh, they're a piece of shit. Uh-huh. And then they're like, there's open racists, like nonapologetic. Like we're just going to be out and proud about it. And it's, it's terrible. Yeah. So I would like to make a reference. Is it, is it Jason Aldean?
00:41:13
Speaker
There's something that happened recently in like country music news. It was somebody else. I didn't put his name here. Maybe I should have because, you know, who cares at this point? His last name was Comer though, or Comers. I thought that was funny. You know what? Actually let him go. He's had enough trouble.
00:41:35
Speaker
some people some people are born into evil and some people are molded into it by the adolescent ribbing um but in either case this person doesn't have any excuse for not showing up in court at the very least i mean obviously they they deserve just due to lack of legal acumen at this point um but yeah they have a permanent injunction uh they cannot uh bother bungee its employees or any member of the destiny 2 community as part of this ruling so
00:42:05
Speaker
Um, next time you get killed by this guy in PvP, like call up the judge. So, um, hopefully you got those. That is insane. Yeah. Like this person needs to be cut off from everything in society.
00:42:22
Speaker
Yeah, a lot of really shitty. It's it's miserable. It's absolutely miserable. A lot of people did jump in to talk about this. Other people in the industry lended their support and all of that. But this could be taken as.
00:42:37
Speaker
establishing some sort of precedent, as things often do legally, that something that you do online can have real world consequences as well. I mean, obviously this extended. We should provide this case to the Supreme Court again and be like, hey, abortion is though. Real talk. Hear me out.
00:42:55
Speaker
Yeah. It's actually known that if you say real talk, hear me out as part of your appeal going up to the Supreme Court, they have to hear the case. They cannot turn it. It also helps if you say real talk, hear me out after like a deep exhale and a couple coughs. Uh-huh. Yeah. Adjust your glasses. Real talk. Hear me out. Uh-huh.
00:43:17
Speaker
You have so much clout right now. It's unstoppable. Clouds? Yeah, there's some clouds. Uh-huh. Yeah, let me use this very obvious opportunity to briefly soapbox. Hey, you listening, don't be a cunt. Do not be a cunt.
00:43:36
Speaker
Again, the internet has provided such an outlet for people who have shitty opinions and want to be shitty to other people to more freely do so in a loosely anonymous fashion where you feel so separated from the people that you're interacting with because, oh, it's just an online thing.
00:43:55
Speaker
But no, they're actual people. And this person, again, went above and beyond to not just harass somebody in game, like they're actually interfering with people's lives. And if you don't realize how damaging that can be, watch any interview with somebody who streams and has been doxed or has been swatted or other crazy shit like that, because, again,
00:44:22
Speaker
Like I live in an apartment and like a fairly laid back small community and I feel safe relatively, thankfully, right? But imagine- I would tell it and tell it to you obviously. Yeah, absolutely. But like imagine like that crazy shit is happening and you're like, oh shit, is that going to happen again? And just the PTSD alone outside of like the initial trauma from the experience, like it's just crazy awful shit that can be avoided by you not being a cunt. It's really easy.
00:44:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. And to some extent, this person must have realized their actions were completely reprehensible because they tried to do so anonymously, right? So not that being anonymous implies guilt, you're innocent until proven guilty, but it also doesn't protect you from moral repercussions for being a terrible person. So true. Let's see, I've gone through a lot of my news. Is there anything you want to talk about?
00:45:23
Speaker
Head shake. Okay. Our armor cords had another trailer. I'm excited by that. Yeah, it looked really good. Dave held me at gunpoint and was like, watch this trailer before we record the podcast or I'll be disappointed. So I don't really know if the gun was part of it or not. He left that ambiguous, but it was a good trailer.
00:45:47
Speaker
Yeah, but the more content I keep seeing from that, I know it's not going to be. Dark Souls, but as, again, as somebody who's never really explored the armor core space, but at least seeing the direction it seems to be heading from like the gameplay and other things they've shown, I am interested. There was a heavy focus on a Gatling gun attachment. So if anything, this is bloodborne. Yeah.
00:46:14
Speaker
This will be my mech in a wheelchair. I was going to say, the closest thing to Armored Core that existed in Bloodborne was a guy with a Gatling gun in a wheelchair, which was pretty great, to be honest. But the trailer looks absolutely sick. This is one of the things where this has been since like early Final Fantasy games and like even early Blizzard games and things like that. You're like, you watch a cutscene and you're like, man, I kind of just wish there was more of this.
00:46:44
Speaker
Right. And I like the narrative they were setting up with Armored Core. Yeah, it just has very cool mech vibes. I'm down for it. See what happens. Yeah. We'll probably talk about it when it comes out. Hot take. And maybe even play it. We'll see. Yeah.
00:47:04
Speaker
I will say there is another thing that is coming out that I will be more immediately like I'm already technically signed up for. Baldur's Gate 3 will finally be coming out soon. Next week, where I have a line here, or this week if your week starts on Sunday and you're listening to this when it released.
00:47:28
Speaker
Yes. There you go. Thank you. But again, everything I've seen about it so far has looked really good. I know some other people who are excited to play as well. A lot of those people have also played some RPGs similar to, or including, Divinity Original Sin 2.
00:47:47
Speaker
Um, and I was joking with a group that I was going to be playing with is like, once we've picked out who's going to play what role in like racing class that we should like try and cosplay as our characters. So when we have like these dedicated play sessions, because one of them came on.
00:48:04
Speaker
Well, at least one of them is a dad. So yeah, Web came on. And I'll be a gnome, obviously, because of how short I am. I had to double check that that was one of the races. It is. I listened. We listed them out here. Yeah, the weird the weird one that stood out. Also, that's an excellent idea, by the way. The only way the only thing I would append to that is you should spend a fair amount of time trying to make your characters look as much like you yourselves as possible.
00:48:32
Speaker
pink dreads that might have been a misstep on my part um but yeah they uh so a little bit of information i've actually stayed pretty blind to it because a lot of articles are coming out about the game and so i got a little bit of meta information um here the level cap is 12 this basically doesn't mean anything to you unless you play dnd
00:48:56
Speaker
But I will say most D&D campaigns conclude, if they start at low levels, conclude before level 12. It's relatively high. It's kind of up there. You're not going to be casting Wish, but it's pretty up there. Well, maybe you can if there's like a wand or something for that, but like the DM... Is Wish 7th level?
00:49:18
Speaker
Wish is a ninth level spell. It is maximum level. I've been so happy if I guessed that correctly. That would have been pretty impressive. I probably couldn't tell you a seventh level spell. Wait, wait, wait. I have the edit. Oh, that's true. Yeah, you can just make yourself correct. I feel like Flame Strike might be seventh level, but I'm not 100% sure. I know Fireball is three.
00:49:37
Speaker
because you get that and then you never need to use anything else because it's fireable. But this is also probably a good design decision on their part because wish as a spell is basically wish as a genie would interpret it. It's just change reality to fit your whims. And then if something can monkeys paw based off of what you requested, it probably will.
00:50:06
Speaker
so yeah looks good level cap 12 a bunch of cool races and classes all of the dnd classes so barbarian bard cleric druid fighter monk paladin ranger rogue sorcerer warlock and wizard which is a pretty big list um and then all of the races you would expect um and then
00:50:26
Speaker
Githyanki, which is one you might not expect. But I don't know what Githyanki is. Yeah, they're kind of sort of like, they mostly look like people, but kind of a little bit more lizard-like, and I think they have yellow eyes. I don't really know either. They're not in the standard 5e player character race list, so it's kind of hilarious that they're here. They're definitely normally a monster race.
00:50:54
Speaker
Ah, like an Argonian maid, you say. Yes, I'm familiar. Like that, yeah. Although they also have Dragonborn, so you could pick that if you're going for an Argonian maid as well.
00:51:06
Speaker
I guess you are going in maids in my party. Uh-huh, exactly. Options. Very diverse. I think I read somewhere, it's just like, hey, if you're thinking about picking up the game early and playing early access, maybe don't because you're going to wipe all of your data in three weeks. That was a good note.
00:51:30
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's freaking Larian. The fact that it's been through early access means that people already know what the game is going to be like for the most part, although I don't think it's all released. Right.
Upcoming Game Releases and Updates
00:51:43
Speaker
But hopefully it has caught a lot of the glaring issues going through these essentially rounds of QA from the community.
00:51:53
Speaker
Yeah, it's not going to be like some sort of pong clone on release. That would be very impressive given the amount of coverage it already has. Um, and yeah, it looks good. So look forward to that. Uh, do you know how many players can play at once? My assumption was four, but that's because of how divinity was.
00:52:18
Speaker
Yeah, maybe it's like, maybe it's like it is up to four. Okay. I was going to say, maybe it was like Baldur's Gate two. And for some reason they allowed like eight players. I don't have eight friends that I could, or I guess seven friends I could find to coordinate a time to play a game. Literally impossible. You need like a time chamber you could step into in order to actually play the game at that point.
00:52:47
Speaker
We have it be like a giant game of risk where people take turns logging in, doing an action. Yeah. That would be funny if it's like, there's just an enemy turn and then the friendly turn and you just roll a die to see who acts. You're just like, okay, well, enemy turn. One of the enemies gets to do something. All right. Friendly turn. One of the friendlies gets to do something. This is how we keep things, uh, interestingly paced.
00:53:13
Speaker
As a side some second. I was going to say, I am excited. Oh, yeah, should be good. All right. If that was yours, new your news beat, I just had a couple other things I thought were worth mentioning here. One of them was that Nicholas Cage, popular actor, most commonly known for his portrayal of Nicholas Cage and the overwhelming weight of massive talent.
00:53:44
Speaker
He's been added to Dead by Daylight as a survivor. It was really funny because when this was announced, people weren't sure if he was going to be a killer or a survivor. And it says a lot about Nicolas Cage. This was pretty much 50-50. Because it would have been hilarious to just have him as a killer with no powers. You're just being chased by Nicolas Cage for no reason.
00:54:06
Speaker
But I wanted to note this because he actually has a bunch of voice lines when characters in the game generally don't. They just have like screams and stuff if you hook them on a meat hook or something. And he like will taunt certain killers while they're chasing him. And he sings at different times. In one part he's being chased by, I think I brought this up in the previous episode.
00:54:30
Speaker
If he's being chased by one of the killers, he'll like hum their theme along with him, which is great. I just love this. I owned it by Daylight and I've never launched it. So I'm slightly invested in this. I mean, you should definitely try playing and streaming it to the Discord then. Because I don't know too much about it outside of some of the killer trailers you sent. There are some really cool killers. There are some really cool killers.
00:55:00
Speaker
None of them as cool as Nicolas Cage would have been, but they literally have Albert Wesker and they have, um, pyramid head from Silent Hill two. Um, they have, I'd want to try more stuff from the video game space from the, then from the horror movie space. Yeah. Cause I don't know too many things about horror movies because I'm a baby man. Um, they have like Michael Myers. You probably know, probably know him. Oh yeah. I know who he is.
00:55:31
Speaker
Like Freddy. They have pretty much all of them. Yeah, Freddy K. That's his cereal, I think. Or it's the name of a drug, hard to say. They have like the Cinnabite from Hailraisers.
00:55:48
Speaker
I can't remember his name. Pinhead? Pinhead, yeah, that's it. Pinhead. The one with nails in his head. In his head, yeah. And he like uses chains as his power. And then they have some custom healers, custom killers that are really cool too.
00:56:08
Speaker
I don't know, we'll give it a shot maybe at one point. But it's kind of heavy commitment at this point, given how old that game is, how long it's been going, launching it is scary.
00:56:20
Speaker
Um, but what's not scary is another recurring, uh, free update that's coming to vampire survivors where they update the engine. Um, so I don't know what it was before. I tried to find out no idea, but it's becoming unity. And apparently this is the engine they're already using for switch and like some mobile version or something. And they're like, this just makes the performance way better.
00:56:47
Speaker
Which is cool. I also didn't realize the performance was bad. I mean, at certain points, if you're doing like an endless run, there can be like a lot of things spawning, a lot of animations going up for weapons. I can see where it would become taxing. Honestly, even like before it got to end game, I was very impressed by how smoothly it seemed to run for how many things that they had to account for.
00:57:14
Speaker
I think it was largely carried by the fact that the game itself was not too complicated. Most of the complication was just in a million things going on at once. And then I haven't actually watched this myself, but it's no clip, so I'm sure it's good. They did a documentary on vampire survivors. It's good. Yeah.
00:57:33
Speaker
Did you see it? Did you watch it? Yes, I did. Nice. Freaking love their stuff. Check out all of their things. It is very much not to give too much away. But it definitely seems like the person wasn't like, I'm going to make this game and it's going to be huge. It's more like, hey, I have this side project. And they kind of like stumbled into this thing. And then it kind of just popped off. And it's just really wholesome.
00:58:02
Speaker
That's freaking internet fame though, right? Like that's the best story for internet fame. And you're just like, I was doing a little thing and suddenly I'm rich, right? That's what happened with Among Us too. They're like getting ready to make a completely different game. Cause they're like, that's it. We're tapped out. And then one person, yeah. Um.
00:58:23
Speaker
So yeah, good on them. We'll continue to cover vampire survivors as they inevitably add more stuff. I think eventually they're coming out with some DLC I think was announced at some point as well. More DLC?
00:58:34
Speaker
Or it already came out and I just haven't played it. I, I have this weird thing where like, I don't care about achievements in games, but because of how straightforward vampire survivors is, I'm like, Oh, look at all the achievements. And then for a while I was like, Oh, we're good. And then they have these weekly updates and I would see the number not be 100% of like motherfucker. And I had launched the game. That's how I felt about, uh, prey initially, actually. Cause it launched and I was like.
00:59:02
Speaker
I love this game. I'm going to come back and do the DLC or do all the achievements and then they released moon crash and I was scared of it because it was a rogue like mode and I was like, ah, this is sad. Like I'm never going to see 100%. I played moon crash and I was like, this is freaking great. What was it? It was like playing, not playing Majora's mask. It's amazing. Give us a shot. Nobody played moon crash. Um, but, uh, yeah, no, no, it's all complete and we're at a hundred percent. That's the only game that matters. None of the rest matter. So.
00:59:34
Speaker
And then my last note here, which I'm just gonna throw in, was apparently this is just to appease the people who get tired of me talking about Overwatch all the time and Activision Blizzard. Team Fortress 2 had a major summer update. Valve swooped down and they had like just a bundle of content and maps and items. And they're like, we have prepared all of this that the community has made. And then we put it together.
01:00:01
Speaker
to an update and they're providing it to you, as is their forte.
01:00:08
Speaker
But one of the standouts was apparently TF2 hit the highest player count it ever has for active players at once Which is pretty big this many years after launch. I'd say 15. I don't know a lot a lot of years a lot of years To quote a famous rapper And then they one of the things they added was a one of the maps the custom maps made by a member of the community not valve obviously and
01:00:37
Speaker
It has a seal that you have to progress like down a path to like the sea or something like that. And your objective is to go get mackerel and feed it to the seal to speed it up so we can make it further to the sea. That's excellent gameplay design. That sounds very cute. I wish I liked that game at all. Yeah, I know. But I think that's about it. You can think of anything else that's worth saying about this month.
01:01:08
Speaker
It's July. Sure is. The good news is nothing bad can happen in the remaining week until the actual end of the month and there will be no news other than the actual launch of Baldur's Gate.
01:01:27
Speaker
look for us in public lobbies or in the official discord obviously um we're very noticeable oh yeah i'm posting feedback everywhere i go my guy uh-huh um so thank you guys for listening if you're gonna pick up uh baldergate 3 let us know uh how you uh how you do what classes you play and whether you're having a good time with it don't spoil anything initially because it might be you know a little slow on the uptake but um
01:01:57
Speaker
I think it'll be fun. So looking forward to talking about that in the future. Very likely to be an episode unless my, uh, my, my Dave radar is wrong. Um, and, uh, if you have other ideas for future episodes, you can send those in soapstone podcast at gmail.com or you can join the discussion on Facebook at facebook.com slash soapstone podcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. My name is Dave and I play a T fling monk.