BardicKnowledge

One more thing about teamwork etc: When the rest of your team asks you to do something (especially to port somewhere), 99% of the time you need to do what they say that instant. Even if you're sure it's probably the wrong idea, 5 people acting in tandem is always better than 4 people begging the 5th player to help out. This applies to everyone across all skill ranges -- when your team says that they desperately need you, we're not joking...get your asses to where you need to be and help out. It ruins the game when we have to literally beg our own clanmates to help out at all, and frankly it embarrasses us in front of the general public. Edit: The only plausible exception to this rule is if you're playing Sand Wraith, where it's actually more effective for you to ult+teleport into the middle of the fight. Everyone else needs to be there on time (which means BEFORE anyone does anything, not right after it starts).

Yes, just that findable upgrades existed in MM7, not that you had to earn what we think of now as the "basic" abilities. Incidentally, anyone who played Proto Man in MM9 will tell you that two shots + charge < three shots in most situations. Sliding was still super useful though. Oh, and why give him the lamer-looking MM4 charge shot. Let's see the blast from MM5/6 instead (with MM5 sound effects).

I'd really like sliding back, but don't care about charge shot. Maybe have charge/slides as findable upgrades, a la MM7?

I'm still a huge Blizzard fan, and will continue to buy all of their games the instant they release. But hyping this as a major content patch and then not even fixing the game's biggest glitch (TPPK) was a letdown. Similarly, in a game all about getting stuff, new content means new items...and there are none. The new drops from act bosses to get a respec don't count because they aren't useable. That being said, the patch notes that are there are a step in the right direction. Hammer no longer ignores immunity, Amazon's Immolation Arrow tweaked (her best spear skill still misses 75% of the time in Act II normal as a level 99 character...), and some other goodies. More refining and balancing along these lines would be welcome. Still though, much of the charm of D2 is lost on me now -- largely as a result of playing so much of the game that I still know the name's and relative drop rates of every piece of equipment in the game. Few games have gotten as much playtime from me as Diablo II.

Loved MM9 and can't wait for this. Also looking forward to 8-bit Megaman 8.

Yeah, patch notes a letdown. Go buy Torchlight to tide yourselves over instead.

I don't think Sirlin's essay directly equates to this either, but that isn't Jack's point. I do see how it could be used to try and justify poor behavior (though all three of us agree that there is no valid behavior for being a douche to other people, Sirlin's essay or no).

Admittedly, I don't dance while farming lategame nearly as much, and don't orbwalk in the jungle unless I'm creep-pulling. During teamfights I move about as needed -- more if I'm Valk and really need positioning, less if I'm mostly an autoattack hero.

Tensei, I dance back and forth, orbwalk, and when I'm chasing, I click on the ground next to the opponent until I'm in range (so if he disappears for a second I still have forward motion). My APM is _still_ just under 60. Anything above 100 and you're dropping needless clicks, I guarantee it.

Sale: Nvidia 7800GTX, used, a little dusty, but works just fine (I pulled it out of my computer tonight). Ships in not-original box and comes with 1 DVI <--> VGA adaptor. $30 + shipping (haven't checked yet), PM me for details.

I maintain that Sirlin doesn't actively encourage players to be assholes and prevent newbies from improving. However, I also happily concede two points: 1) He should have mentioned something about how to win gracefully, as sportsmanship is HUGE to both me personally, and the longevity of any one game. Leaving it out completely does tend to passively encourage poor behavior. 2) If the skill gap between two players at a tourney is sufficiently big, the better player doesn't need to completely dominate the player. Why not take this time to experiment with risky techniques for a minute? The reaction of an unbiased (doesn't know the "standard" reaction/counter) player might actually help your game develop. Note that here I'm talking about the skill difference between, say, my wife and I in Smash (yep, I'm better than her, go figure). I'm definitely a mid level player at best, and certainly wouldn't hold my own in a large-scale (EVO, etc) tourney -- as a result, I am (almost) never in the 2nd situation described above. It seems like the crux of both sides of this debate is coming down to a desire for good sportsmanship, which I'm sure you, zircon, and myself can all agree is only good for the community (and competitive gaming at large, by comparison). Also Jack, IMO the best thing your ISP project has done was to involve a lot of people (including myself -- I've posted at least twice in the thread) that normally would never have a chance to voice an opinion to the people making metagame decisions. Hopefully rulesets and bans become more open in future games...

Thanks everyone! I grabbed PandoraBox a few days ago (which seems great) and will look into the others.

I'm perfectly willing to sandbag a little during casuals while I wait for my round -- even give out helpful advice if they're up for receiving it. I'd never completely floor someone outside of tourney play. That being said, when I'm up when it counts, I spend very little time assessing the relative skill of my opponent outside of "he's currently doing something that endangers me / allows me an opening" or "based on the first round / knowledge gained during play, I THINK he will be doing X or Y, which is countered by option Z." Obviously if there is an extremely large gap in skill I'll notice, but as I personally am neither at the highest echelons of play nor at the bottom rungs of the tourney ladder, I have played very few rounds where someone is vastly worse than me to the point of it being relaxing. Nothing to debate here, but it's nice to know that someone active over at SWF (incidentally, I don't post there because the vast majority of the community are jerks IMO) agrees with me. I completely advocate the sharing of techniques after a round is over. In no way should anyone, regardless of their attitude / philosophy about competitive gaming, expect a player with a secret (or trick he believes is secret) spoil it before he has a chance to play with it. Case in point: HDR gave Ryu a fake fireball which recovers MUCH faster than his original one, and links into any of his special moves with an almost Marvel feel to it. At least three times I've told zircon that I had "something new" to show them about it. By which I meant that I was going to whip him once with it before giving out the details. Two of three times I did, and then shared (time three's mindgame wasn't as good ) what I had just done. IMO it is the responsibility of top-level players (or in my case, players at the top level of a smaller group -- OCR) to share the new things they discover their characters to be capable of at some point. It enhances the game and allows a wider variety of tactical decisions for all characters. If you don't share your "secrets" after a tourney / event, then you're being selfish at the expense of the quality of the game you're making money playing. Anyone truly adopting Sirlin's line of thinking wouldn't question a TO about their choice of rules at their own event. Either you agreed to the rules beforehand, or you didn't show up. Saying that something isn't fair e.g. "Banning MK isn't fair!" is the complaint of someone unwilling to play with the ruleset...and is exactly what Sirlin spends his whole essay arguing against. Debate about this amongst fellow TO's, organizers, and the larger community is just fine, but not one player at Xyro's events has any grounds for complaint. If you don't like it, get the hell out -- I'm sure he won't miss one less bullshit thing to deal with as a TO.

I'd just like to add that it's all about attitude and has very little to do with skill level. Someone who whips me 9-0 in SF2, and then complains that I used "cheap" tactics to eke out one win in 10 is a scrub, despite the fact that statistically, he (she) is a better player than me. Similarly, one of my groomsmen had to ask me the difference in motion between a fireball and a dragon punch last I played with him. After I explained it, he had control over the two moves, which allowed him to play a few mindgames, and even rarely win a round or two. He still falls into very readable patterns 95% of the time and therefore loses to me, but his attitude makes him worth playing with. Edit (after reading Jack's above): Someone alone at a tournament with no iPhone (or knowledge of WHERE to go to get tourney-grade info) is truly at a disadvantage here. That being said, if they didn't know anything about it, they probably weren't ready to show up to a tournament the scale of which you're talking about and win, Jack. Still, it DOES suck getting whipped by something you've never seen before, and I can attest to that personally. Especially when you're alone at an event and you don't have any friends along. First of all, anyone who goes out of their way to mock you for losing against them in a tourney is an asshole, plain and simple. That being said, when it's my round in a tourney (especially when money is on the line) I play for keeps and show no mercy. Even if I beat you without losing a stock, I wouldn't go out of my way to rub it in your face though. I figure that the guy I beat just did me a favor by shoving me up a bracket While I've never played at a tournament quite that large or for that much money, I have definitely been to cash-prize tourneys in various games, and yes 95% of the people I didn't know were absolute dicks to everyone else. I definitely agree that when cash is on the line, people are cocks. However, I don't see how Sirlin encourages this, as he does not address behavior on the tourney floor / post-match. While I'm also aware of this (people playing games they hate anyway), Sirlin neither encourages it nor discourages it. Also, I feel (though I have no evidence) that this problem affects the Smash community more than it does other fighting game groups. I'd make an addendum to Sirlin's "majority rule" that if there is a SIGNIFICANT minority of pro-level players that feel something is broken, then it's worth looking into for a ban. For instance, I'm assuming you're a much, MUCH better Smash player than me Jack. But as you know, if I pick Metaknight and do nothing but my tornado and Up+B, my chances of getting a win out of you suddenly go up by a crapload relative to my actual skill (Lucas is my main, incidentally). This leads me to close with two points. First of all, the gaming community at large is VERY rarely privy to discussion of why and how something is banned. Hell, at Smashboards, we can't even view the SBR discussion threads on issues such as Metaknight / IC infinites. I'm not saying that every 6-year old with a computer needs to be able to post in there, but separating site admin forums from legitimate meta-game debate, and making all members be able to VIEW the debate half of it would only improve the community. Second, I think we're at an impasse due to terminology. There's a difference in my mind between someone reacting to the IC infinite (my best example, thanks Jack) and saying "Damn, that sucks balls. So cheap...I wish I knew about it in advance" and "Damn, that's so cheap -- it shouldn't be allowed". One of them is legitimately being frustrated (and rightfully so, as I was once the victim of said grab and it does indeed suck). The second is someone of the opinion that the player broke the rules in doing it...which to any TO, referee, or observer, is obviously not the case. Oh, and person X banning MK or IC infinites at their tourneys is just fine. It doesn't disagree with Sirlin specifically -- how do you think the competitive community eventually decided to ban ST Akuma? They had to experiment with the bans to see if there is indeed a richer game beneath the surface. That's all that the TO's choosing to play without MK or without ICgrabs are doing, and everyone SHOULD be in favor of it, at least over the short term.

I'm looking for someone to take over my intro track on the Teen Agent album. I warned everyone involved at the start that I had a lot of real-life stuff to take care of this semester, and indeed that has proven to be the case. I was doing the intro tracks -- I'm sure Oinkness would love it if someone would step up to cover either / both of them. See this thread for the details. Also, I have a good 30 seconds of string quartet done for it -- if you'd like the sheet music / MIDI / wav of that as a starting point (assuming that you'd also go the classical route) PM me or ask for it on IRC. Thanks for looking at this -- hopefully someone will be able to pick up my slack.

Just an FYI, Gamestop has a really nice guarantee on their used games -- in fact, it's better than the one that comes with their new games. One week no questions return policy also...which may or may not have led to me "borrowing" Halo 3: ODST from them a few weeks after it came out.

NJ, you're usually awesome -- the VERY NEXT SENTENCE after your quote explains what "richness" means in this context. Please read the whole post next time. Edit: The whole of your post however, is accurate. "Playing to win" doesn't include utilizing things that completely wreck the game, according to Sirlin. And yes, it's completely subjective (up to the community) what qualifies as "completely wrecking".

The key is that Akuma completely dominates the metagame to the exclusion of all other tactics. Specifically, his air fireball basically breaks the SF2 engine (even the HDR engine doesn't handle it all that well) -- there is flat out no better tactic in the entire game than air-fireball into Akuma's super. Not to mention the fact that Akuma's moveset is the best of both Ryu and Ken -- his fireball (blue) recovers faster than Ryu's, and his uppercut does more damage (and has more priority) than Ken's. His hurricane kick combos INTO his uppercut...and the list goes on. Why is this bad? There's a much richer game left if you remove Akuma. Put another way, there are a MUCH wider variety of available (competitively viable) strategies and ways to play the game if Akuma is banned. No one would want to play a fighter with only one character -- and as far as competitive play is concerned, Akuma is the ONLY character worth playing, assuming that he is allowed. Thankfully, the community decided to ban him. Trust me -- if anything dominated the way the game was played as much as ST Akuma, it'd be banned...assuming that the ban is enforcable.

First-party Nintendo games don't go on sale, period. They're the biggest sellers for the Wii, and retailers have zero incentive to discount them. That being said, Smash Bros. Brawl, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Super Mario Galaxy, Prime Trilogy, Wii Sports Resort, and Twilight Princess are all well worth your money. The cheapest place to get most of them is to buy them used at Gamestop, and use your discount card (if you shop regularly at GS and don't have one, you're crazy). Cheaper, not-first-party games to get include (used copies again:) Trauma Center: Second Opinion (the first game, a rocking DS port) Trauma Center: New Blood (one of these two, probably not both) Okami Tiger Woods 2010 (makes the best use of MotionPlus so far) -- this one's still pricey I've heard very good things about No More Heroes and Muramasa: The Demon Blade but am yet to play either of them. on WiiWare, the Konami "ReBirth" series is pretty solid (blasted through most of Contra at OA's place).

I don't think Sirlin is arguing that rulesets aren't arbitrary. Think of how you helped decide which items to ban for the ISP? (Btw, huge fan, thanks for putting in all that thankless work). Dragoon pieces completely dominate the game when they spawn, to the point of excluding all regular play. In 1v1 the Smash Ball has a similar problem (though nothing is as bad as the Dragoon). However, the Banana Peel and Lip Stick don't have these problems associated with them -- you could completely ignore either of those two items and not be behind (and if they don't know what they're doing with a melee weapon, you could be way ahead). Therefore, you decided to ban the Dragoon and keep the Banana Peel. Sirling is arguing the same kinds of things to determine bans. Is it completely changing the entire metagame to the point that gameplay is focused solely on that one thing? If so, ban. If not, don't ban. Who decides that is the community at large...and it has to be. That being said, I feel that playing with items on actually makes Smash more balanced, as items help to bring MK down a notch, while bumping up characters like Zelda and Peach. Apparently I'm in the minority though

First of all, though I'm not great, I take my SF2 fairly seriously when I play, and would be pissed if anyone ever played short of their top potential. If that includes touch-of-death combos with Bison and Guile, fine -- it just teaches me how to avoid those situations. That being said, everyone playing has to be in the same mindset when a group starts. If one guy wants to fuck around as a boxing Heavy, one guy wants to use his bow to snipe when the rifle is much more practical, and everyone else tries to play a serious match on 2fort, the two guys dicking around will rage. If everyone feels like being crazy though, we all play the Pac-Man map and it works out fine

Pyro also has a worse animation than Lina does iirc. That being said, what pyro has going for him is that the aoe stun also does a fair amount of damage -- THIS is why pyro/hammer is better than witch/hammer. Witch has only one damage spell to unload early, while pyro gets 2. Edit: I'd play in that tourney, why not.

rooooofl @ tempest pic.

haha, Blanka as Madman is hilarious. Thanks to Luke for linking us in IRC.

Just saw this, and it was almost like a missing set of episodes from the 1980s. Great stuff, thanks for pointing it out.