[Dota 2]

SDs Soul Catcher is such a funny skill. It's the only AoE targeted skill in the game where you actually want it to hit as few people as possible.

[Dota 2]

I'm gonna say Shadow Demon based on the title of the latest blog post. Other possible candidates are Lycan, Gyrocopter, Mortred or Templar Assassin. I'm pretty excited about the balance changes too though.

E: Looks like I was right on SD being added. Another good Antimage counterpick. The balance changes are in as well.

[Dota 2]

Invoker

- Chaos Meteor damage increased from 80+Exort*30 to 80+Exort*35

- Chaos Meteor land time decreased from 1.5 to 1.3

- EMP can no longer hit Invulnerable/Tornadoed units

- EMP cooldown increased from 25 to 30 seconds

- Sun Strike damage type changed from Magical to Pure

- Sun Strike now reveals the area it will hit before the damage impact

- Tornado cooldown increased from 25 to 30 seconds

- Tornado Damage decreased from 77.5+(Wex+Quas)*23 to 70+(Wex+Quas)*20

Dota patch 6.74, Rejoice!

[Dota 2]

This is so amazing and cringeworthy at the same time.

[How to write realistic solo piano pieces]

Well, when you have to sequence a piano piece with nothing but a mouse, you basically gotta make sure that both the performance and the arrangement are realistic. The performance depends on adding 'imperfections' to make the playing seem more human. This pertains to stuff like variable velocities and rubato or other tempo variations.

Creating a believable arrangement is probably harder because you will constantly have to doublecheck how the stuff you're writing matches up with a piano players hands so you avoid things like implausible stretches.

Another big thing is chord inversions; If you're used to writing from a guitar players perspective, you might have the urge to note for note translate a guitar bar chord to a piano chord. This would mean, however, that you'd end up with a chord that goes something like Root-fifth-octave-third-fifth-second octave, which is very unusual for a piano chord layout so you should try to avoid that.

Honestly, though, sequencing by mouse is a hassle, and grabbing a cheap midi controller will save you so much time and effort.

[Videogames and Sexism]

The "FREE SPEECH" defense doesn't really hold up here at all IMO. I don't think anybody's saying that he's doing something illegal, they're simply (and justifiably) calling him a misogynist fucknut, which would also fall under free speech.

News like this makes me happy that I never got into fighting games.

[Videogames and Sexism]

Bulletstorm is literally what Duke Nukem Forever should have been. The game is surprisingly clever for something that presents itself as a mindless FPS, and in a way even somewhat deconstructs the whole testosterone-fueled male power fantasy: Grayson behaves like a stereotypical male FPS lead, but right at the start his behaviour directly causes most of his crew to get killed, and he basically constantly gets shit from the other characters throughout the game for being a dumbass.

Also yeah, Trishka is a great character. I actually recall reading some article about how her designer had to fight tooth and nail to keep her breast size modest.

[Dota 2]

A THUNDEROUS APPLAUSE. Yeah, fuck you, Zeus.

[League of Legends: I finally updated the player list in the OP!]

Yeah, Pugna's Netherward is destroyable, but it's possible to hide it behind trees because the range on it is pretty generous. It doesn't do much against characters with high HP or ones that rely mostly on autoattack DPS though. He's a pretty situational pick overall.

As for Brood, her role might be very narrow, but she's REALLY damn good at it. I'm not exaggerating when I say it takes her only a few minutes to take down 2-3 towers if you leave her alone, and her survivability with the webs makes her one of the only characters in the game that can reliably lane 1v2 or 1v3.

Oh, since Zircon brought up gankers, I can't help but mention Nightstalker. His skills are pretty generic (single-target slow+damage, single-target silence), but his gimmick is that he gets way faster and more dangerous during nighttime. Day and night each last about 12 minutes of ingame time and are generally pretty ignorable as a mechanic, but suddenly just picking him forces the enemy team to be on their toes during the night because he can outdamage and outrun almost everyone at that point (at least in earlygame).

[League of Legends: I finally updated the player list in the OP!]

i think it's funny that you're restricting it to those five 'archetypes'. please give me an example of a character design that doesn't fit into at least one of those styles - that is, one that is ranged, one that does lots of damage, one that helps others survive and deal lots of damage, one that is tanky and still does some damage, one that is unkillable. that kind of sounds like every single character in every moba-style game ever. the only role that you didn't mention is 'initiator', which isn't really a role since it's filled by everyone else to some extent. (edit, this isn't supposed to be snarky, i'm really interested in knowing what other ideas you all have)

Sure. Pugna in Dota 2 has a skill called Netherward, which drops down a little static minion that lasts for 25 seconds and zaps every enemy in a wide radius each time they cast a spell. The damage at max level is like 1.5 times the manacost of each spell.

Ultimates on initiators and supports can be as high as 600 mana, which makes this skill devastating against low HP/high Mana heroes like that, and basically makes it a bad idea to ever initiate on a team with Pugna when you're not sure if his ward is up.

If I had to describe his role I'd say he's something like a supportive pusher/counterinitiator.

Then there's Broodmother. Her role consists of putting down a ton of webs in her lane (which give her permanent invisibility and lots of HP regen and movement speed) and basically freefarm because she's almost impossible to gank when there are webs around. She also has a skill that lets her spawn lots of minions that can take down multiple towers in a lane within a few minutes if left unchecked so her purpose is to basically put pressure on a single lane for most of the early and midgame and force the enemy team to commit at least two heroes to constantly defend it.

She's a weird hybrid of a pusher/carry with invisibility, but her webs restrict her to a single lane so she can't gank or quickly split push a different lane like most other pushers would.

[Dota 2]

Tinker probably has one of the more unique playstyles though he shares some similarities with Nature's Prophet. His main role in midgame is to constantly pressure lanes without enemies in them. Basically really punishes teams that want to group up and push or running gank squads.

His burst makes him scary to take on alone so the enemy team often has to dedicate two or more people to gank him when he's sidepushing. He's also really good at poking because his rockets outrange basically everything, so his kit makes it easy for him to follow around enemy carries and prevent them from farming.

His main weakness is that he takes way more time to get going than Prophet and he needs fast levels and farm so he's drastically less useful in a dual lane.

Boots of Travel and Bottle are core, Sheep is THE lategame item for him, but Soul Ring and Force Staff are amazing as well.

The hardest thing to learn about him is how to optimally use all your skills and active items during ganks or pushes. Queueing up spells with the shift key is almost mandatory on him.

[Videogames and Sexism]

Well then, you clearly didn't read my post after Darkesword's. Which I'm not going to explain because it makes perfect sense to anyone with more than 1/4 of a brain. At no point was the "value" of a person judged upon appearance.

You are literally discussing your own personal taste in womens appearances in a thread about objectification. You also have the gall to insult the intelligence of me and other people who call you out on your dumbass offtopic posting.

Stop making this about you. Nobody gives a flying fuck that forums poster AngelCityOutlaw prefers 50s womens fashion to modern womens fashion.

[League of Legends: I finally updated the player list in the OP!]

Yep, don't know what they are thinking. Thing is that their balance team (I guess Morello and co) is actually good. They do a great job of keeping a large chunk of the cast viable. Since I started playing I've seen both overpowered and underpowered champs get balanced out to about the right place. It's a shame that their actual champion design decisions are so unbelievably bland.

Didn't you bring up fact that Graves is pretty much always the best AD carry pick? It makes sense that all champions are more or less viable when they're all relatively minor variations on the same role, but it's still a balance problem because the one champion with slightly better numbers will always be the optimal pick for that role. I feel like very few champions have a 'gimmick' or signature ability that makes them unique by defining their particular role beyond just the caster/carry/support/bruiser/tank archetypes. Orianna is probably the best example of what I'm thinking of.

I also feel like Riot is way too trigger-happy with nerfing every FotM champion because of a whiny self-entitled community, which contributes to the static metagame instead of forcing teams to work around it and the meta to evolve.

[Videogames and Sexism]

Agreed, Fallout New Vegas was also really good about having relatively openly gay characters (Veronica and Arcade) without making their sexuality their main character trait.

I think justified objectification in-universe in the way New Vegas pulls it off is more than fine, especially if they put in a bunch of original, well-written and strong female characters like Rose and Veronica (or even Lily) for contrast.

Hell, if I remember correctly the NCR has a very even division of male and female soldiers, which makes plenty of sense for a post-apocalyptic nation that's already short on manpower.

[Videogames and Sexism]

So who was basing the "value of a person" on appearance?

You are, because you've literally posted an (offtopic) image macro to that effect.

[League of Legends: I finally updated the player list in the OP!]

Blade Waltz (ultimate) - Fiora dashes around the battlefield to deal physical damage to enemy champions. Successive strikes against the same target deal less damage.

Alpha Strike (Active): Master Yi leaps across the battlefield striking up to 4 enemies, dealing magic damage to each enemy with a chance to deal 400 bonus magic damage to minions.

Omnislash

Juggernaut leaps towards the target enemy unit with a damaging attack, and then slashes other nearby enemy units, dealing between 175-250 damage per slash.

Really riot? One champion with that skill wasn't enough yet?

Also doesn't literally every melee carry need some form of lifesteal/regen so they can be put solo top?

[Videogames and Sexism]

Advertising very much feeds into the public perception of products though, it's definitely not a one-sided relationship where the market simply responds to social trends.

Read up on the De Beers company and how they marketed diamond wedding rings in the 1930s for an example of what I'm talking about.

In fact, MANY companies advertise their products in a way to make customers perceive them as more than simple products, but as status symbols or as expressions of ones masculinity/femininity.

FYI: Even if 40% of gamers are female, that's still a disproportionate number when you compare it to the male/female distribution in the world.

[Videogames and Sexism]

Sexism has to do with discrimination, does it really discriminate against girls to market toy cars to boys? It's not like girls are prevented from playing with cars.

It does though. Wouldn't you agree that there's a definite stigma against, for example, young boys who like to play dress-up with dolls or something? Mono talked about something similar with her personal experiences with girls playing videogames.

also had a couple of good videos on this subject.

Also, a large part of the OP is dedicated to highlighting how most videogames definitely are primarily aimed at male gamers. You'll also find that I gave examples of games that do incorporate good female characters, and I agree that games like Dragon Age and Mass Effect, while not particularly stellar games, do have a lot of female-focused sexualization of male characters as well. I'm not exactly talking in absolutes here, but the overwhelming trend in videogames is definitely still slanted towards the male demographic, that's the whole problem.

[Videogames and Sexism]

You're confusing sex and gender. Marketing tampons or bras to women isn't sexist because those things relate to the physical differences between the sexes.

Marketing dolls to girls or toy cars to boys is related to gender, and is very much sexist. Same thing goes for videogames.

Also, go back and read Mono's post on why Darangens questioning is bad if it's so important that you hear about it from a female gamers perspective. It's an extremely tired argument.

[Videogames and Sexism]

I've only played the Prime games and seen a few playthroughs of Super Metroid and Fusion, but outside of Fusion I'd say that any character definition for Samus was mostly in the eye of the beholder.

Keep in mind that Yoshio Sakamoto (i.e. the guy that's assumed to be behind the 'butchering' of Samus' character in Other M) has actually directed all the Metroid games produced internally by Nintendo from Super Metroid onwards, so I think it's pretty safe to say that Other M Samus isn't his idea of a bold new direction for Samus but more like an extension of how he always interpreted her character to be.

The fact that this isn't congruent with how the majority of (western) gamers interpreted her personality, shows IMO that she was barely established as a character at all.

[Videogames and Sexism]

Oh and I do want to say I don't quite understand why people saw the need to skewer Darangen. There's something people here obviously want to know. What keeps women who don't play video games away from those video games? Is it the sexualization of women in games? The logical choice here, to me, would be to ask some women. He did. It doesn't make him an authority on the subject, no, but I find doing that to be far more productive than conjecture.

Again though, there is nothing you could realistically conclude about women as a whole by interviewing a small group like that. It's completely useless data and can't be used to 'prove' anything. And more importantly, as Monobrow pointed out, THEY might not recognize it as sexism themselves.

If you asked them something like "Hey do you feel like videogames are primarily marketed towards guys?" and followed that up with "Do you think that could be one of the reasons that keep you from playing videogames?", you MIGHT get more accurate results, but it's still highly unlikely because you're looking at a social situation where they're out with friends, some guy they don't know comes up and asks a question about sexism. Feminism is pretty much demonized in todays culture so they might not feel comfortable voicing their concerns in public.

That aside 'Sexism' is a loaded term, and few people actually understand what it encompasses. Compare it to the terms racism and homophobia, which calls to mind situations where someone unironically says "I'm not racist, but *incredibly racist statement*". I mean, people in this thread have trouble recognizing that things like focusing the marketing of something towards a particular gender (for a product that objectively should be gender-neutral, such as videogames) would count as sexism.

In short, there are just tons of issues I have with the way the 'test' was conducted

[FFVII Costa Del Sol]

This is a remix of the song Costa Del Sol from the game Final Fantasy VII. It's kind of a DnB/Bossa Nova hybrid, in the style of the song "Girl in the Fire" by Pendulum.

http://tindeck.com/listen/gply

source:

[Videogames and Sexism]

Yeah I think Jacob is a good example of a character that's designed to pander to female gamers. Too bad he's so boring though.

Thane is actually another decent example I think.

[Videogames and Sexism]

To clarify, the point of asking the girls in the restaurant was not to OK the obvious sexualization of women in video games, but rather to verify my theory that said sexualization is not what keeps most women from playing video games. Of the 9, 3 said they play regularly and the other 6 said they don't play or haven't played in a very long time so they probably fit into your guarantee of not picking up a game since age 10.

And the results of your test still hold no relevant meaning whatsoever for reasons that have already been brought up multiple times.

[Videogames and Sexism]

There seems to be a lot of agreement that there is sexism in games and a lack of decent female characters. If this is truly important to you guys, why not do something about it?

Why not make a game? To keep goals realistic, it could be a casual flash game. Tensei, since you started this discussion and seem to be passionate about it, I think you should lead the project. The proceeds could be donated to a worthy charity that helps women in developing countries like: http://www.charitywater.org/whywater/ (Watch the video.)

I know you guys have the free time, otherwise you wouldn't have so many posts in this thread. If you lack the coding skills, you can pick them up quickly. I can direct you to some books that will teach you all the skills you need to know for a simple game very quickly. I can provide the storyline and dialogue -- I have a short story with a female protagonist that would adapt very well to a space shooter. This community is full of talented artists. Monobrow, for example (and/or others also passionate about this issue) could provide the art. We have many talented musicians in this community and could collab on a soundtrack.

So what do you think guys, is this something you're passionate about enough to do something? You'd be helping women in developing nations, possibly even saving some of their lives, and simultaneously making a positive contribution to gender equality in the gaming community.

I'm willing to give it a go but not without actually having any coding skills. I know fanprojects like this often have plenty of people with 'ideas', but tend to lack people with necessary skills so you end up with a whole lot of concepts but very little work to show for it. Then again, if 4chan can succesfully make a videogame, I don't see why this site shouldn't be able to.

If you could direct me to those books you mentioned, I'd be happy to do some reading.